#idk WHAT he did to these other people but the comments were fucking VICIOUS

[starbuck]

LOVE minding my own business while community drama i’m not involved in implodes around me…

[salazarslytherin]

under the waxing moon (r.l x y/n)

requested: yes!! [could you do a young remus lupin smut perhaps? if not than cedric!! one with a marking kink, maybe!! and (fem) reader has love bites all over her and remus has scratches on his back from her yk.... and maybe the marauders notice or something cheeky like that at the end! thank u my love!!] send in your own request here!

🃛 masterlist!

cw/tw: smut, marking!kink, hickeys, oral sex (both male and female receiving), fingering, idk just sex man, basically porn without plot

word count: 2.9k

a/n: i hope you guys like it! i wasn't sure whether there were any cw/tw other than the ones listed? if you guys notice any please leave a comment or dm or smth to let me know! thanks :) ALSO i realise i use the word 'boy' a lot jic that makes people uncomfortable all the characters in my fics are of age, i just don't feel comfortable calling them men :/ anw, if you like it please leave a comment, like or reblog to help boost xx

☯︎ tag list

The door slammed shut behind you two as Remus kicked backward, not that either of you would have stopped what you were doing should the door have stayed open.

His hands were currently in one of his favourite spots – nestled under your thighs while your legs were curled around his waist, hands clinging to his neck like you were afraid he'd dissipate into thin air if you were to let go for a second.

Your two mouths moved furiously against each other, his tongue furiously dominating yours as he brought you two towards his bed, bringing you along with him like you weighed nothing.

"Fuck, I can't wait any longer."

Remus tossed you onto the bed, his tall stature casting a long shadow above you as the late morning light shone through the Gryffindor tower windows, the young werewolf's smirk glowing beautifully in the bright light.

"Then hurry up and have me."

The words seemed to do the trick, breaking the trance Remus was in– scanning your body almost in a predatory fashion. It was hot. The prefect almost growled at the sound of your words, diving back down to press his lips to yours, hands by your head, impassioned by the waxing moon.

As the full moon drew closer, you found that Remus' libido would be heightened. He often drew you into empty classrooms, broom closets, once even getting you off in the Three Broomsticks during a Hogsmeade trip. But you weren't complaining. You got your boyfriend's mind off the full moon, and an – actually, several, intense orgasms? It was a dream come true.

As you were lost in your thoughts about the last full moon, Remus had found his way away from your lips, trailing soft kisses down your jaw to the sensitive spot behind your ear, sucking roughly to draw a moan out of you, and effectively, you out of your thoughts.

"Mm, you like that? Like it when I mark you? When the whole school knows who you belong to?"

Nodding, the words vibrated against your skin as Remus traveled down your neck, never hesitating to bite and suck on every last bit of naked skin he could find. Your hands had moved from behind his neck down to his button-up, detaching each one in a frenzy to see him, to feel him.

His hands did very much the same, moving down your own school shirt to unveil your bra, showing more skin as his lips ventured lower down your body towards your collarbone– his favourite place to leave a mark. Nibbling on your left collar, Remus balanced himself on his elbows, moving to grind his hard-on on your clothed crotch.

"Fuck yes, Re I need you. Please."

Your hands had landed themselves on his pants, unbuckling his belt and pants with shaking hands as the two of you moaned together. He detached himself from you for a second, both of you undressing entirely in record time before latching back on immediately, your lips melding together before the two of you had even hit the bed.

Remus' knee found itself between your legs, nudging them apart as his hands sought residence roaming your body, leaving light trails that caused shivers throughout.

One hand eventually landed on your breasts, alternating between massaging and squeezing them as you elicited moans with each movement. The other made its way down to your thighs, gripping onto them hard, sure to leave fingerprints for the next two weeks, purple reminders of this night.

Whining against his lips, you took matters into your own hands, grabbing onto his hard-on and squeezing lightly around the base, making Remus growl in return.

You began moving your hand slowly up and down Remus' shaft, your thumb spreading the small droplets of precum that had gathered, picking up the pace as the werewolf let out breathy moans, moving away from your lips to bite onto your neck.

Continuing to jerk Remus off, your other hand reached down to tug at his balls. When you felt him start to twitch in your grasp you let go, making the boy gasp as he abandoned the section of your neck he was currently sucking a hickey onto, in shock at the fact that you had pushed him so close to the edge and not let him cum.

Smiling innocently at your boyfriend, you rolled him over– an action he definitely hadn't expected and kissed him on the lips, before making your way down his body.

"Couldn't let you cum like that. I want to taste you."

⚔︎

You gave a little kitten lick to the werewolf's leaking slit, making him moan as he propped himself up onto his elbows, watching you go down on him, fascinated.

You swallowed the tip, swirling your tongue around the head and grazing your teeth softly against the shaft. Remus' hands flew to your hair, tightening his grip as you hollowed your cheeks on his member.

You answered by sinking your nails into his thighs, scratching down slightly as he impatiently push you down further, moaning out as he felt his tip touch the back of your throat, making you gag slightly.

You looked up at the boy through your eyelashes, lost in euphoria as he looked back down at you through hooded eyes, one hand leaving your hair for a brief second to caress your cheek, before flying back to pull your hair as you pulled off of him to swirl your tongue around his head.

Having already been pushed so close to the edge, it didn't take long for Remus to start twitching in your mouth again, the only indication of him reaching his orgasm aside from the sudden pull on your scalp.

The boy threw his head back, letting out a loud moan that you were sure would be heard down in the common room, before gripping onto your hair tightly and thrusting up into your mouth.

Ropes of white hit your throat, letting go of Remus' cock with a pop, before swallowing his seed, looking down at the boy panting beneath you.

"I fucking love you."

He pulled you down onto him, wrapping his hands around you to meld your lips against his, the two of you gripping each others' hips as Remus rolled you to the bottom again.

"Now I'm going to pound you into the fucking bed baby."

⚔︎

Remus' fingers slid inside of you without a hassle, you were so wet it was as if your body was welcoming him. He prepped you at a pace that was so quick you didn't dare to think how intense he'd be later.

Remus wasn't one to break a promise.

Your nails drew thick lines down Remus' back as he added a second finger, scissoring the two inside of you, hitting your g-spot which made you let out a small shout in response, gripping onto his shoulders with your nails.

"Re, oh God."

Your back arched off the mattress, eyes falling shut as you threw your head back, moaning louder and louder as Remus drew fervent circles on your clit.

Remus watched you from above, smirking as he moved down to suck on your tit, leaving a hickey above your nipple.

A third finger slid into your hole, your walls slowly fluttering around Remus' fingers as you felt a heat begin bubbling in your stomach, your toes curling as your orgasm quickly approached.

"Re, fuck, please, Re!"

You scratched onto Remus' back, gripping tightly onto his shoulders as you drew closer, until your high was denied, the nails that were gripping onto his shoulders relaxing in shock.

"What the fuck!"

The boy shot you a smirk as he looked down upon you, leaning in to nibble on your earlobe, whispering in your ear.

"You only get to cum with me inside of you."

⚔︎

Remus brushed the head of his cock up and down your folds, collecting your essence before pushing in, the both of you moaning at the feeling.

He pushed in further, bottoming out as you gripped onto his back, drawing thick red lines down it. Your tits pushed up against his scarred chest as he fucked into you slowly, sucking a hickey into your jaw.

Remus moved out of you so that only his tip remained, right before slamming back into you, making you moan out at the movement, his hands moving to land a firm slap on your thigh, his pace increasing every time he landed another slap. The small bits of pain mixed with pleasure, Remus' hollow slaps aiming only to arouse you rather cause any pain.

As he moved in and out of you, his hands gripped onto your thighs rather than continuing to deliver hits. He held onto them firmly enough to leave a bruise while maneuvering them so that your knees pressed against your own torso, hitting you with a new angle that caused him to brush against your g-spot with every movement, his crotch rubbing against your clit with every thrust.

Your lips found their way to Remus' shoulder, biting hard onto the skin to suck a hickey into it, biting down particularly hard as Remus' thrusts grew stronger, causing the boy to let out a guttural moan.

"D'you like this baby? Marking me up, showing everyone who I get to fuck every night?"

You nodded into Remus' neck, his own lips kissing your neck as his tongue darted out to trace the red marks he'd left behind, sure to turn a dark purple for everyone to see later tonight.

His hips moved at a vicious speed, the sound of skin on skin being the only sounds to echo around the room aside from the raspy sounds that would emerge from both of your throats, the two of you too immersed in the pleasure to make any proper sounds.

"Re. I, close."

Your walls began pulsing around Remus, incoherent moans leaving your mouth as your orgasm began to build for the second time that day, one hand moving away from your thigh to massage your bundle of nerves, his lips moving back on top of yours.

"Cum for me baby, I want to see you scream my name."

Despite his own orgasm building, Remus never faltered in his movements, his hips snapping to hit just the right spot to bring you closer and closer to the edge, his chest pushing down your knees as his hand moved to hold your neck, admiring the way your eyes rolled back in pleasure as the two of you build towards your climaxes.

"Such a pretty girl baby, all marked up and fucked out. You ready to cum yet?"

Nodding despite the hand wrapped around your neck, you threw your head back, your hands never ceasing in their movements to draw lines on Remus' back.

"I–fuck, yes, Remus!"

White clouded your vision as your orgasm hit you– a tidal wave followed by ripples that came in the form of Remus' slowing, yet still strong, thrusts into you, his head brushing against your g-spot with each movement which made you whine with each moment, your juices leaking out from around him, making you impossibly more wet than before, sinful sounds echoing from around the room.

"Cum for me Remus, I want to feel you fill me up."

Your hands reached out for the boy above you, pulling him down so that both your heads nestled in each other's necks. Tired from your orgasm, you were still eliciting noises as the boy moved in and out of you, him moaning as he felt your walls tighten around him with every other movement.

"Yes baby, I'm going to cum, fuck."

The werewolf moaned, muffling it by biting into your red neck, leaving yet another mark to remind you of this day. You felt hot spurts of Remus' cum hit you, moaning as a new warmth filled your hole.

The boy fell on top of you completely, his knees giving out under the ecstasy he experienced.

⚔︎

You whined slightly as Remus pulled out of you, suddenly feeling empty when he left you.

Your combined juices flowed out of you in that moment, but the sadness you felt was suddenly replaced with a shot of pleasure, the werewolf leaning down to place a soft kiss on your lower lips.

"Such a good girl, letting me cum inside her twice."

The kiss turned into a tongue, teasing at your sensitive entrance as Remus licked at the juices flowing out of you, drawing moans from your mouth that you didn't know you still had the energy for.

"It'd only be fair if my baby got to cum twice too, wouldn't it?"

Your eyes fell close again, nodding as your hands searched for Remus' body below you, trying to find something to grab, something to grip onto.

"I need to hear you darling, otherwise I don't know what you want me to do."

A smirk fell on the boy's lips, making you want to cry out in frustration as he moved away from your cunt, instead peppering kisses and sucking on the soft skin of your inner thighs, intent on marking you there.

"Fuck, Remus make me cum again."

The boy hummed against your thigh, moving away to admire a small hickey he'd left behind.

"Not good enough baby. I need to know how much you want it, I'm not here to be told what to do."

Tears welled in your eyes as you grew more and more frustrated, tired from the first round already you propped yourself up on your elbows, watching Remus much like how he watched you when you sucked him off.

"Please Remus, I need you to make me cum again. Please?"

Your bottom lip stuck out, making the boy chuckle. Another stupidly handsome smirk grew onto the boy's lips, leaning down to dart his tongue out onto your slit, flicking over your nub for a brief second.

"Of course Y/N, anything for you."

You fell back on the mattress as Remus dove back in, his hands gripping your thighs to push them apart, fingers digging in yet again to leave as many marks on you as possible.

He sucked on your abused clit, tongue darting back and forth at the same rhythm as his hands, massaging your thighs with his fingers. His mouth moved lower, drawing figures on your lips as his tongue danced around, occasionally dipping into your hole, fucking you with the appendage.

"Oh Re, faster."

The boy below obliged with a moan that sent ripples up your spine, fucking his tongue in and out of you at a speed reminiscent of the way he pounded into you mere minutes ago, two fingers moving to rub rapid circles onto your clit.

Moans grew into pants as you felt him speed up, your toes curling as your hands gripped onto his hair, pulling Remus' mouth further onto your pussy.

Your thighs trembled as your orgasm built, pushing you over the edge as your walls clenched around Remus' tongue, the boy muttering a 'cum for me' onto your lips.

You released with a shout, legs shaking as you pulled Remus' hair tightly, your back arching off the mattress as you rode out your high, Remus continuing to eat you out until you were reduced to a twitching mess.

"Feeling good?"

⚔︎

An hour after your activities, Remus walked the two of you into the Great Hall, both of you famished and ready to stuff yourselves with lunch.

You tried not to limp as you walked, and then had to brace yourself as you sat down on the wooden bench, Remus kissing you softly on the cheek as he joined you, greeting James and Sirius with a smile.

"Hey Y/N!"

Your housemates called out to you, prompting you to wave at them in return, before moving to serve yourself some food.

"Merlin, Y/N did you get mauled?!"

Peter came towards the table, dropping himself in the seat across from you.

"I–, what?"

The boy gestured towards your neck, making the other two marauders crane to see what Peter was talking about.

"Fuck, Y/N, what the hell happened?"

Remus looked down at your neck, then turned red as he realised what the boys were talking about. In the past hour or so, your hickeys had darkened immensely, covering every part of you, from behind your ears down to your collarbones– which could be seen from the undone top buttons of your blouse.

"Uh, I uh."

You had also caught on to what the boys meant, biting your lip as you looked down at your food.

Remus suddenly felt very warm, his skin heating up, rolling up his sleeves and tugging at his collar to let some cool air touch his skin.

"Oh, Moony! You really didn't have to mark her up that much you know. I think the point's been made. The whole world already knows she's yours."

Sirius chuckled and elbowed James, pointing down at Remus' arms.

"Look, I'm thinking Moony's not the only possessive one here at the table y'know."

The thick lines you'd drawn up and down the werewolf's arms still remained, and the few hickeys you'd left on his neck were small, but still noticeable.

Your cheeks heated, shifting your hair as best you could to cover up your neck. Remus let down his sleeves, shifting his collar and let out a cough.

"Moony just gets antsy 'round the full moon, y'know?"

[dmclemblems]

Some super quick explanations for some of them included!

Love A Lot:

Miklan: for those of you who may new be here/have not seen many of my posts about him: had a lot of headcanons confirmed in Hopes that I held from Houses. he needed someone/people to steer him in the right direction. when he had someone/something to fight for, he was loyal. his behavior growing up and afterward were a result of being given no direction on top of overwhelming jealousy and spite that turned into hate. even if he wasn’t able to entirely forgive his family/the system, he did get over it and find a goal for himself that he really wanted to reach and more or less moved on (see: fuck you, Gwendal).

Rodrigue: see: my rodrigue tag that’s all i can tell u or this will be an essay also i adore him

Sylvain: his writing is WAY better in Hopes than Houses. he has genuine relevance to the plot itself and is extremely important to Faerghus’ army and politics it in all routes. I love him in Houses but in the main story his relevance is honestly abysmal and there are way too many offhand flirtatious comments on a constant basis. he matured, but not even remotely like he did in Hopes. Hopes’ Sylvain is everything I would want and expect from his character (Felix is basically in the same boat).

Love:

Sothis!fused Byleth: more development to her personality at this point and she’s actually very cute! I love her sassy little crossed arms lean thank u. also, I really feel like her and Dimitri (in AM) really worked well together as characters and grew together. seeing them both grow emotionally with each other’s help was really sweet.

Ingrid: much more development for her in general, and her relationships are expanded upon (not just scolding Sylvain, is good friends with Dedue, doesn’t have an utterly crappy friendship with Felix that survives off nothing but childhood friend willpower, actually has conversations with Rodrigue that are both about and not about their shared history and show more than one side of their relationship, etc). much less bland of a character in Hopes.

Gilbert: BOISSSS HAVE U SEEN THIS MAN IN HOPES MY GOD HE IS THE MOST LOVING AND DOTING FATHER THERE DO BE OUT THERE shit man im jealous like my parents didn’t dote on me like that when i was in my early twenties ajkfgsgjs also, he’s actually a well written character with a good past and present in both games. I’ll write up a long post another time probably. I do like him a bit more in Hopes, but I’ve always liked him a lot at the very least in Houses.

Rhea: it was between Like A Lot and Love, and since Seiros!Rhea is below her for reasons explained below, I had to bump up her a bit.

Like A Lot:

Male Byleth: idk why i like female byleth more, maybe bc i just like girls more irl and she’s rly cute when she gets more development like i don’t dislike byleth but u kno there is just somethin else about titty teacher

Serios!Rhea: she’s really cool in the opening cutscene! I like her generally speaking, but I feel like they made her batshit in CF just to excuse making her out to be a villain (kinda like they did in SB’s bad ending for Claude). I like her in Hopes in GW a lot though - it’s just the CF nonsense that makes me like ???. I get Edelgard pushed a lot of buttons, but Rhea has always been about protecting innocent people. setting Fhirdiad on fire is so out of character for her. she’s vicious and violent at times when it comes to people who attacked the Church, harmed innocents, etc, but she never otherwise harms citizens for any reason. what happened in CF just felt like an asspull to make her a villain.

Thales: I like him as a villain, not a person, but Hopes also gave us more insight into him. he’s just an interesting villain to me, really. most of them in this universe are pretty eh to me as villains, which leaves me to base my opinions off who they are/their character, which... most of them are lolz. not even much to go by. Kronya is just some kill obsessed clown lady who was afraid to die in Houses and was just in denial about it in Hopes and that’s... that’s it. Solon just has a grudge against the bloodlines I guess.

Like:

that’s abysskeeper and baron dominic not generic npcs lmao

Claude: it was really between Like and Like Slightly because a good half the game is just normal Claude, and we did get a lot of good background info on him, Almyra and his family relationships (even if indirectly, like when Nader is talking to the Almyran soldier about how Claude is the favorite child). the things about Claude that I didn’t like in this game (especially bad ending SB which is massively just ??? wtf ??? eh wot nani the fucc fuccies mcdoodles ???) I have very strong opinions about, but I think the bullshit parts are outweighed by both normal Claude and a slightly differently characterized Claude who didn’t get to spend a year at school (there are still bits and pieces of that difference in him even in AG, though they’re a lot more subtle and he’s more on the fence about what to do after everything is over in comparison to GW/SB).

Hilda: way more character and actual growth as a person. she grew a little bit in VW, but overall there wasn’t that much change. she didn’t feel like much of a character and it felt like she never had anything useful to say that didn’t involve being lazy and wanting people to do things for her. she’s lost a lot of that behavior and attitude in Hopes and actually has humane dialogue in Hopes.

Mask!Jeritza: just less characterization overall. he’s still funny tho. still funny.

Monica: idk, I feel like she kinda lost of the cool parts of her character with what little bit we did get in the prologue chapters (any route). I still like her and it’s not even about her devotion to Edelgard being a little (read: a lot) overboard, and let’s face it, I’m beyond overjoyed that a ship I shipped long before the existence of Hopes actually sailed and it sailed so hard it’s on the other side of the world now. idk what it is tbh that really makes me prefer her in the early chapters (not counting Kronya!Monica in Houses, who I left out since it wasn’t really Monica).

Shahid: good villain, some background detail, and useful for drama. that’s uh that’s it tho really lol

Like Slightly:

Cornelia: an actually good villain aside from Thales, which is a rarity in this universe. terrible, horrendous, nasty person, but sometimes you need that! she’s/he’s (i.e. not really Cornelia) also actually smart and not so kill happy that she’s just stupid about it. she has a lot of contingency plans and backups, and she managed to convince Faerghus for a good long time that she was still the real Cornelia. it’s rare in this game that we get an actual villain with a brain.

Erwin: lbh Hopes saved his purple ass. he’d be down in dislike-hate otherwise LOL. Hopes really did do a LOT for him though imo regarding characterization. all we really hear about him in Houses makes him sound like a horrendous asshole and makes you wonder what Lorenz even sees in him to respect him. Hopes gave him an actual personality/character and showed us intellect. I think he’s done some pretty crappy things and he’s been shady, but in Hopes his assessment of Claude isn’t really that wrong or far off, so I can’t hold that against him the way I do in Houses. he’s also a very caring and loving father, whereas in Houses I was more under the impression that Lorenz was just his heir and that they didn’t necessarily have much more than a respectful relationship. I feel like in Hopes there’s a lot more to unpack with his character and it did him a lot of good for me. since of course Houses is also the “main” canon and whatnot, I can’t really say I like him all too much, but Hopes definitely gave him a lot more to work with.

Lonato: Good dad vibes, but I think it’s super questionable that he’s willing to fight/kill Ashe out of his desire for revenge for Christophe. What I would’ve hoped they’d have done with Lonato is that like in Radiant Dawn, if two characters were on opposing sides but had a strong relation, they would refuse to fight each other (an example of this is Brom and Meg, who are father and son but won’t fight each other. Even though you have control of Brom, you can’t use him to attack Meg because he just won’t do it). He did so much for Ashe and basically saved his life by taking him off the streets, even despite that he’d be taking in three kids, and yet... he’s now willing to kill this kid he took in just because this kid is enrolled at the school at the monastery headed by the archbishop he hates. Couldn’t really put him higher because of that. They always talk so highly about him in the game, so he seems like a generally good dude but then... I also don’t like he’d kill Ashe for Christophe, and tbh I don’t think he’d do that the other way around and kill Christophe for Ashe fi the situation was reversed.

Matthias: Not a bad character and definitely loyal to Faerghus. Heavily in politics and is a good person to have helping run the country. Rodrigue says he changed after his first wife died so I guess that’s where he got his argumentative and more practical side, though I feel like he tends to be practicality above emotions at all times and definitely doesn’t have a balance for it (to the point where Rodrigue has to be the one to tell him to go to apologize to Sylvain to something he said to him instead of Matthias choosing to do that on his own). Not gonna bother talking about the whole “bad did” stuff because... that’s general knowledge lmao.

Rufus: He’s a semi-good villain, and I’m not sure how I’d feel if he got more time in the game. As for who he is as a person, he’s a pile of trash to be taken out into the dumpster to await the trash trucks. I am putting that lightly.

No Opinion:

Aelfric: A pretty low-tier villain imo. I like the way he planned things out and how he got everything together, but his overall goal and how single minded he was about it was kinda lame.

Anna: Sometimes she has pretty nice things to say, especially regarding the war, but otherwise... she’s just eh in the boring sense.

Kostas: Tbh we don’t really know much about him or why he’s a bandit. We know Ashe used to be a thief because of his situation, so I don’t want to assume Kostas is just scum of the earth based on being a bandit since it seems like he just takes jobs for money. The guy you meet in Abyss who is hiding there and says he has a family waiting for him at home also insisted they didn’t know the real details and all that, so I don’t really... hate Kostas? I more wonder if he wouldn’t turn himself around if given the chance. I don’t like him or dislike him since we don’t really know enough about him personally.

Tomas: I’m assuming the persona Solon had of him was as close to the real thing as he could get if he wasn’t detected all that time, so judging by that I guess I’m like sure why not about him. Not super interesting but a nice dude.

Eh:

Caspar: This version of him is literally totally brainless and he doesn’t do anything except fight and care about fighting. He literally has no morals or care for anything and it’s baffling to go from Houses Caspar (either version) to this Caspar. He’s worse than Raphael in that sense because Raphael at least has times when he’s shown to have other traits, but this version of Caspar just doesn’t feel like Caspar to me.

Hegemon Husk Edelgard: Not enough information. Just a husk! At least the name in and of itself proves a whole lot of my points about her...

Ludwig: He actually cares about the Empire, so... kudos for that. Obviously he wasn’t super terrible to Ferdinand and the Empire at large if Ferdinand grew up idolizing and respecting him. He’s not like Bernadetta who is actively afraid of her father but wouldn’t want him to just straight up die, and is in fact sad in both games about Ludwig dying. He can be pretty shitty and be involved in shitty things so he doesn’t really get a pass from me, but he gets above the hate scale.

Marianne: I get she has the whole issue with her Crest and thinking it’s a curse, but jesus christ if she’s not annoying about it. When people just want to have a conversation and not even really get involved with her she’s too quick to push people away and leave them thinking they did something wrong. Overall I just found her response to a lot of things very annoying. I don’t hate her but I’m too annoyed and bothered by that stuff to say I’m neutral.

Myson: Not enough information on him as a character. He kinda ended up with Sandima (FE4) syndrome where he was a main lackey and not much else. You see him, you get used to him being there, but you don’t know enough.

Randolph: He’s lucky Hopes happened or he’d be one tier lower or worse lol. That whole nonsense conversation he had with Dimitri in AM would’ve kept him a tier or two lower, but he had at least some semblance of a character in Hopes. Putting the two together, I just don’t really like him. Like, yeah, sure, he’s kinda a nice dude... but wanting to distinguish yourself and your house so much that you’d take live on a battlefield and be grateful for the war for that purpose doesn’t sit right with me. Also, being part of the force that initiated the war makes me see it with an even more critical eye. Imo he’s way too deep into wanting to be a distinguished name and it seems like he doesn’t really... have any morality in doing so. As far as Houses goes, YIKERS. He really had the audacity to say he was fighting for his sister and home (as if other people aren’t also doing that???) and so he didn’t want to die. Y i k e r r r r r s. It’s like, when HE’S on the verge of death he wants mercy, but he’ll cut down any number of other human beings to have his name known/have a (political) house and won’t spare their lives just because they have families waiting for them. He’s a hypocrite who’s hyperfocused on his own deeds at war, and the fact that he thought he could spew insults at Dimitri and act like he was A Pure Bean would have kept him on the shit list forever if not for Hopes. He’s one of those people where he’ll do bad shit and keep doing it until what goes around comes around and when it’s finally his turn, he begs for it to not be his turn. At least Dimitri owned his shit in their conversation. Randy here did not, refused to and literally thinks that fighting for his supposed good cause is justification for his actions. Big yikes, yikers, yikees. No want, no like.

Raphael: I just kinda threw everyone in alphabetical order so it’s not that I like him less than Caspar as I brought him up briefly in Caspar’s description. My main issue with him is that also largely lacks morals in this game. Marianne is the one who keeps questioning all the killing, and Raphael doesn’t give half a fuck most of the time. He just wants to fight and they wrote him like he’s too stupid to understand having morals while at war. It doesn’t feel like Raphael to me. He was great in his paralogue, but other than that he was just... devoid of character outside of his overblown traits. It’s like they took Houses Raphael and just stripped away any characterization except for two of his traits and went “ah yes, much better”. He’s still a kind guy, just... kind of a shell of Houses Raphael.

Male Shez: Idk lol he’s just like... more childish and brainless to me than female Shez? For sure I think it’s the delivery in their English lines, but there’s just something about him I’m not really caring for.

Sothis: Lord almighty did I find her annoying. In Hopes I’m super eh about her because she’s kinda... bad/mean/evil/what have you? But just in general in Houses I didn’t really care for her. I didn’t hate her and I definitely don’t think she deserves to disappear or something, but her attitude just typically bugs me.

Dislike:

Arval: He’s just... annoying lol. Annoying, smug and tries to pressure Shez into things that they clearly don’t want to do.

Bernadetta: I hate that she’s played for laughs, but I also hate that characters can’t even speak to her without her screaming something completely unrelated. She has issues because of her dad, sure, but to be afraid of every single stranger and all her classmates to the point where she didn’t even remember what Claude, a house leader, looked like? To the point that nobody can even speak to her because she never listens? Annoying. Literally the most frustrating character I’ve ever seen in any franchise. She’s better in Hopes, but in Houses, especially in at the first half... Y I K E S.

Gwendal: Bad adoptive dad, traitor, also killed Miklan in Hopes. 0/10, I have Yuri kill him in Houses in every time.

Ionius: Him being a seemingly good dad is the only thing that kept him from being any lower tbh.

Leonie: Rude, annoying, and not a personality I’m into. Got better, but like Bernadetta I can’t stand her in the first half of Houses.

Dislike-Hate:

They all suck but I don’t feel burning rage of hatred lol.

Hate:

Fleche: Basically her handling of revenge in AM knocked her to rock bottom for me. Nothing in any other route in either game could save her from that lol. Let’s be clear: Byleth killed Randolph. It doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t matter if it was a mercy kill. At the end of the day Fleche clearly did not know who exactly killed her brother. She just wanted to kill someone for revenge, regardless of whether or not she targeted the right person. Now mind you, not ONLY did she target the wrong person, but she murdered a man totally uninvolved in her revenge. MIND you, she went on about boo hoo revenge for her ONLY LIVING FAMILY BEING KILLED and then murdered a man’s ONLY LIVING FAMILY because she TARGETED THE WRONG PERSON in her revenge. Yes, Dimitri wasn’t all there mentally, but no, he did not kill Randolph. My issue with Fleche is that this told me she wasn’t really in it to get actual revenge on the person who killed her brother (like she did in Hopes in all routes). It’s that she didn’t care WHO she killed or HOW MANY people she killed in her path to revenge. To her it never mattered who died. She’s selfish, apathetic, and doesn’t care about other people outside her own family and their standing in the Empire. She doesn’t care about the truth or who did what. She just wants to murder people. That’s her revenge. She attacked Dimitri and attacked like a literal pos toward him with that sarcastic shit, again, not her brother’s killer, just off the assumption that he did it merely because he was... the leader of the army, I guess. He was going to capture Randolph, and honestly from there someone could have convinced him (someone: Rodrigue) not to torture Randolph because they could have used him as leverage or gotten information or what have you. This isn’t to say Byleth was wrong for killing Randolph - it’s to say Fleche did not give two whole hoot hoots as to who actually killed her brother and just wanted to cause havoc regardless because boohoohoo someone killed your brother AT WAR when you all know what the consequences could be AT WAR during the war your uwu emperor started.

Really need to write a fanfic one day where she gets away and then Felix seeks her ass out and slaughters her and goes “uwu u killed my only living family during war so i wanted revenge uwu and hey at least im killing the right person for it instead of being a lil baby and killing whoever the fuck just bc im uwu mad” because FCKN D A M N Y’ALL THAT WOULD BE THE 👌 CATHARTIC 👌 SHIT I NEED. ...don’t worry he’s not gonna say uwu that’s just the implication of a mocking tone so felix’s mocking is the last thing she hears because he slays her

being a rodrigue fan is hating fleche’s entire being alright xoxo love u roddyrod

Edelgard: we’re not getting into that LMFAO it’s all over my blog anyway if you can find it among my love and affection for other characters

[noenvyy]

HOW did vicious baby, (aka Meng Yao), and Tall Daddy, (aka Lan Xichen), actually meet??

Okay I’m really curious to hear everyone’s take on this because I just watched the donghua and listened to the audio drama and each way is a little different! 

And BECAUSE each way is a little different each way could have many different interpretations and implications for the way I see Meng Yao and Xichen’s relationship.

Exhibit A: The Live Action Version aka Love at First Pinky Stroke OR Is it Actually Just More of Meng Yao’s Conniving Ways?

So in the live action Vicious Baby and Tall Daddy meet after Tall Daddy very ala Jane Austin rescues Meng Yao from the nasty social comments of some random hoes. 

Meng Yao seems both genuinely grateful and genuinely smitten at Xichen’s chivalry...

Whereas soon as Xichen sees him smile he literally makes this face. 

Poor Daddy Lan Legs is literally struck dumb by the sight of Meng Yao peering up at him all doe-eyed from beneath his dark lashes. But alas Meng Yao puts the kabash on any possible romantic entanglements much to the audience’s disappointment. Meng Yao is after all, at this point in the show, a taken bottom and his loyalty to Nie Mengjue seems sincere.

 At the very least the face he makes when looking at him in this scene shows that he and Nie Boss Daddy are definitely fucking and Meng Yao is definitely into it. 

Too bad for ol’ Xichen who immediately compensates by trying to vicariously live a romantic life by becoming way too invested in his younger brother’s. 

Then Meng Yao fucks up in front of Mingjue, compensates by getting stabbed for him...

---- BUT knows he’s still on the hook when he hears this.

So here’s my thinking: if this is the real way they met it seems obvious there was some sort of attraction. Therefore, when Meng Yao hears about the burning of Cloud Recesses, he must be genuinely concerned and wanting to help Xichen. 

That’s what I WANT to believe. OR is Meng Yao just already doing the math in his head and figures he might be banished and thinks that if he’s gonna have a rebound it might as well be a rich, powerful, hot and kind one. What is it they say about sociopaths again? How they’re always able to single out the kind people?

I don’t know. Thoughts anyone?

Exhibit B: The Audio Drama aka Xichen is Adorable Helpless Rich Boy and Meng Yao is the Girl Next Door

In a cute extra in the audio drama we see an overly eager Xichen trying hard to pull his weight at the (inn? whorehouse? Meng Yao’s house?) by doing a set of laundry which he proceeds to accidentally tear to shreds. Meng Yao shoes Xichen away from the clothes before Xichen can create more sewing work for him. Xichn laments being a helpless, rich boy who doesn’t know his own strength, expressing regret that now Meng Yao has twice the work on his hands having to care for the both of them. 

Meng Yao however tuts this away, saying he’s used to doing chores. He finds Xichen’s fumbling endearing. However, as he leans over to scrub Xichen’s robes he notices the distinct pattern of the Gusu Lan clan. 

First off, WHAT THE HELL XICHEN?? You’d think the leader of the Lan clan would be a little brighter than this and think to hide his clan robes when he’s on the FREAKING run from the Wen clan.

Meng Yao however, doesn’t call him out but does gently hints that he should keep the robes out of sight.

Meng Yao: These patterns...

Xichen: Hm?

Meng Yao: Nothing! I just think they’re pretty...um young master, these robes are important aren’t they?

Xichen: Yeah I suppose so! ^__^

Meng Yao: Then it would probably be a good idea to keep them stored safe somewhere right? 

Xichen: ^___^

Meng Yao: Like out of sight....

Xichen: ^___^

Meng Yao: Away from prying eyes....?

Xichen: ^____^

Meng Yao: Hide your f**king robes you beautiful simple man!

The whole scene ends with an adorable exchange as Xichen stubbornly gives laundry one last try and fail and Meng Yao gently and playfully teases him for it. 

Okay so if this is the true way they met then once more there is evidence that there was a genuine attraction between them at first and one without any of Meng Yao’s schemes! He truly hadn’t known who Xichen was before deciding to help him. 

This is another version I want to believe.

Exhibit C: The Manghua Version aka Xichen: Meng Yao Would Take a Bullet For Me I Swea---no, no, stop shaking your head Wangji

So this version is the most questionable because its told from Xichen’s POV and he’s biased because he really BELIEVES in Meng Yao. 

We know Meng Yao rescued Xichen, that much is true. 

But Xichen claims Meng Yao rescued him only out of the goodness of his heart without knowing who he was. That he did it because he despised the tyranny of the Wen clan. 

Okay so does that sound a little hollow to anyone else’s ears or is it just me? First off, when has Meng Yao ever just done something out of “the goodness of his heart?” That boy is a calculating bitch! 

Second off, Meng Yao is clever enough to most likely at least know the way Gusu Lan cultivators dressed. Even if he didn’t recognize Xichen as the clan leader he’d still be smart enough to know that having a connection with any member of the Lan clan might benefit him in the future.  Also when do we EVER hear Meng Yao criticize the Wens?? Not once!

I feel like this version makes Meng Yao out to be more sus especially since we see Xichen talking him up later on to Nie Mingjue. This makes Xichen and Meng Yao’s relationship out to be a lot faker than the others as its not a far leap to think that Meng Yao decides to rescue Xichen to gain his favor, only pretending to not know who he was. 

It would fall in line with other bit of the show such as when Meng Yao COMPLETELY manipulates Xichen’s emotions by giving him back the Lan Jade talisman. 

I actually don’t hate this because I think that the donghua is definitely making Meng Yao out to be a lot scarier and evil and I kind of still dig that. 

Exhibit D: The Novel aka I actually don’t really remember this one...

 I don’t remember this one guys. I don’t think we ever actually see it do we? Like don’t we just hear Xichen say that Meng Yao helped hide him when the Wen’s were after him? But we don’t know exactly how they ran into each other or wether they had known each other before or anything? 

Again. IDK. 

Anywho, I’d love to hear people’s take. I do confess I was not in my right mind while writing this post and I apologize for my midnight ramblings. Peace Amigos. 

[firelxdykatara]

I was the anon who sent the ask about cs, and you actually addressed some of the major arguments i've seen - being with hook turned emma from a strong, independent woman into just a love interest, hook pursued emma with no reciprocated feelings, and that he never really redeemed himself. I've also seen arguments that cs is abusive, which i've seen to some extent in anti-kataang posts. i try not to dive too deep into the anti tag for my own sanity but these are some of the main things i've seen

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

ok, sorry, i was just caught up in the euphoria of reminiscing about my captain swan feelings that for a moment there i lived in a world where the Anti CS Brigade didn’t exist. but no, yeah, i know exactly what you’re talking about and honestly i think i just......blocked 90% of it from my mind because so many of those arguments were so vitriolic and widespread but also baseless, like...

gods, ok, here we go. anon you have activated my dormant ouat wordvomit processors and idk if i’ll be able to shut up any time soon but i have A Lot Of Thoughts Here, and also a lot of really bad memories cause ye gods, the ouat shipping wars of the days of yore were vicious.

ANYWAY, like, the vast majority of these arguments came from the ‘swan queen nation’, which is where you can trace a lot of super toxic wlw ship stans back to--just for a little context, but clexa and supercorp both had their roots in swan queen, among other ships, but those are the Big Three i always go back to because what they have in common is ‘the main character of the series is explicitly abused/treated horribly by another woman and for some reason the shippers go nuts over this pairing and will insist the show is queerbaiting them if this specific pairing is not made canon’. and swan queen stans, in particular, had it out for captain swan, because they were incredibly insistent about regina and emma being in love, and naturally the existence of emma’s romantic arc with killian threatened that.

as a result, they quite literally made shit up.

it’s funny (not ‘funny ha ha’ but like funny depressing), because a lot of what they accused CS of is actually shit that happened explicitly on screen with regina and emma. they claimed that emma was no longer strong or independent because she fell in love with killian, while ignoring the fact that she’d become a literal doormat for regina’s many abuses (there are so many things regina did to emma even after her alleged redemption which, if she weren’t being so coddled by the narrative, emma would never have let her get away with--like blaming her for saving the life of a woman regina had murdered in the past, or like telling emma to her face that she wanted to tear killian’s throat out because he managed to come back from the underworld while the man regina loved stayed dead) because, for some reason, they interpreted emma being happy and no longer closed off to the people she loved, choosing to let down the walls she’d built up over a lifetime of trauma as her being ‘reduced to a love interest’ which just did not happen.

like, factually, straight up, emma was every bit as badass while dating killian as she was back in season 1. the only difference is, in season 1 emma didn’t trust anyone, she was closed off, she had a million walls built high around her by trauma, and she wasn’t willing to let anyone in because she believed that if she did then she’d only be traumatized again when they inevitably left. by season 4, when she started officially dating killian, many of those walls had come down, she was happier and healthier, she was falling in love and she was letting herself be in love, she had her parents, her son, the whole town full of people she loved. she was fucking happy, but she wasn’t happy with the right love interest, so swan queen shippers insisted they wanted ‘season 1 emma back’. because they would rather emma be miserable so they could interpret her antagonism with regina as closeted gay pining, than have her dare to be happy with a man and a family that didn’t include regina.

as to the other claims, while hook did make his feelings for emma clear once he realized he felt them, the ball was in her court almost completely. he made comments, told her how he felt, said things like ‘when i win your heart, and i will win it, it will be because you want me’ where the clear emphasis was on emma’s feelings--he believed she had some feeling for him, but he wanted anything between them to be because it was what she wanted. emma initiated every explicitly romantic interaction. killian made a flirty comment, which he was wont to do, and which she could easily have brushed off--instead, she grabbed him by the coat and yanked him into a kiss which lasted far longer than it needed to if all she wanted to do was make a point. (sorry, that scene is just burned into the brain of every CS shipper, i know it literally by heart lmfao) he made it clear that if she wanted him he would be there, but i she didn’t he wasn’t going to push her. he followed her through an entire damn portal into the past because he wanted to help her, because he’d go anywhere for her--to the end of the world, or time--but emma was the one who invited him to dinner with her family. emma was the one who noticed he hadn’t come in yet, and went to see him. emma was the one who kissed him, initiating their relationship.

like @storynightlight said in the replies to the last ask you sent, a majority of the important milestones in killian and emma’s relationship were initiated by emma. she was the one constantly progressing their relationship, it went entirely at her pace in large part because one damaged soul recognizes another, and killian had been through enough trauma in his long (long, long) life to understand that emma needed to work things through on her own terms. he wanted to be part of her life, but it had to be when she was willing to let him in. and he was perfectly content to wait for her to be ready.

as far as the ‘abuse’ claims go, that was honestly just straight up fabrication on the part of swan queen shippers mostly, which is intensely ironic considering the state of emma and regina’s ‘friendship’ for literally the entire damn series. most of them referenced things that happened while emma and killian were enemies (they called their sword fight ‘abuse’, which like.... i’m sorry but two people on opposite sides of a violent conflict having a fight is not abuse, and incidentally that’s an argument that zutara gets hit with too, to this day, clearly words don’t actually mean things anymore), and ignored the fact that killian’s behavior changed as his redemption arc progressed. he didn’t become a good upstanding citizen overnight, but he did feel remorse for his prior bad actions and the harm he caused, he went to great lengths to make up for that harm when and where he could, and he tried to be as good a man as he possibly could in later seasons, even when circumstances (like, oh, gold having possession of his heart and using it to control him, which anti CSers also blamed him for, go figure) made that nearly impossible.

meanwhile, as late as season 6, regina was still blaming emma for everything that went wrong in her life. regina happily browbeat emma about everything she ‘stole’ from her for basically the entire series. regina, in the context of their friendship after her alleged redemption, was constantly verbally and emotionally abusive to emma--and yet that behavior was completely overlooked, or deemed ‘pining’ or some other obvious evidence of romantic feelings, by swan queen shippers who would prefer to claim emma was being abused by her caring and loyal boyfriend who constantly believed in her even when she had trouble believing in herself. (incidentally, it truly is incredibly rich of regina stans (and rumple stans, a lot of them say this too) to claim that killian never redeemed himself, when regina is the one with a vault full of hearts she never returned to their proper owners, and regina is the one who murdered someone emma cared about and never confessed to it, let alone apologized for it; graham died in emma’s arms while regina crushed his heart, and it was never once brought up again. regina got away with it scott free, and it is just one on a list of crimes she literally never expressed even the slightest bit of remorse for, let alone tried to atone for. yet killian is the one who ‘never redeemed himself’ mmhmmm ok sure jan.)

I’M SO SORRY ANON, you probably had no idea the can of Worms you were opening with these asks, but CLEARLY i still have a lot of damn feelings about this fucking show lmfao. THANK YOU THOUGH!!! i haven’t talked about captain swan or even really reminisced much in a while, and i miss them a lot, so it was nice to dive back into my Feelings and remember so much of what i loved about them! i may do a rewatch soon >.> it’s ok if i just skip 4b except the finale and then turn it off immediately after emma and killian’s reunion at the end and pretend the entire show ended there, right????

i hope you’re having a good night! thanks again for the asks <33

[consumedkings-archive]

ancient names, pt. xvii

A John Seed/Original Female Character Fanfic

Ancient Names, pt xvii: what the wolves taught me

Masterlink Post

Word Count: ~6.9k  

Rating: Explicit.

Warnings: mentions of gore and blood, like a LOT of mentions of blood, mentions of self-harm, shower sex without Reasonable Protection, also like kind of dubious if you squint because John is tripping, bad decisions are made as well as some questionable dirty talk (John really likes that she beat a man to death). Elliot kind of has like one (1) tiny power trip. Idk man just like proceed with caution??

Notes: A little bit of an interlude chapter, this one! Last chap was a bit intense, so this one's more of a transition--not a lot happens in terms of plot movement, so everyone can go ahead and catch your breath. ♡ As always, a big and huge thank you to everyone who reads and comments, has come and said hi to me on my tumblr. This fandom has been so incredibly lovely and welcoming and just understanding of my general chaos and my inability to bend to canon at all. I'm just so grateful to each and every one of you! Thank you thank you thank you!

Big thank you to @shallow-gravy for lending me their eyeballs and for making me this GORGEOUS moodboard for Elliot. When I say that I like died inside when I saw it, it's because my life became complete and I was ready to ascend. Thank you so much!!

And of course my angel @starcrier, my lover my life my shawty my wife, who proofreads all my garbage even though she doesn’t even go here but she goes here for me! ILY ♡

As always, I hope you enjoy and thank you again!  ♡

John felt pretty good, all things considered.

Yeah, he was probably going to feel like shit when came off of his high; yeah, kissing Elliot did smear blood all over his mouth, but when he spotted the two of them in the reflection of the truck’s dark windows, Elliot’s face and hair splattered in crimson and the very obvious incrimination on his mouth, he thought, well, don’t we make quite a pair?

Everything blurred and pulsed pleasantly around him now as he sat in the passenger seat of the truck. The crash of the drug wasn’t really much of a crash at all—idly, John wondered how it was they got the downturn to be so easy, so slow, so mild. Each time he took in a breath it felt like the car expanded with him. There wasn’t anything the world, in that moment, that wasn’t for him, not a single thing that didn’t sway and pulse and beat in time with the rhythm of his own heart.

Except for Elliot. When he looked at her, red sparked off of her in violent waves to their own metronome, mimicking the dashes of crimson on her face and in her hair; the bruises welled red and blue along the pillar of her throat, her jaw, one on the corner of her mouth. She looked wild; her eyes moved with a sharp clarity that had him wondering how long that Wrath had really been sitting inside of her.

Not a good girl, he thought, watching Elliot drag her thumb from one end of her mouth to the other, wiping the blood their liplock had smeared around. He could still taste it in his mouth. Not anymore.

You couldn’t be good and bash a man’s skull in, could you? And it was bashed in—John had gotten one single good, long look at Kian’s face, and there was nothing of it left except bloody mush and two battered eyeballs barely stuffed into his skull. Gruesome. Well past the point of killing him.

“They attacked the compound,” Jacob was saying from the driver’s seat, pulling out onto the highway with a not-so-kind lurch as they hit pavement. “About an hour after you took off. I bet they were waiting. Fucking cockroaches.”

John glanced into the rearview mirror. He meant to look and see if he could catch any movement in the trees—anything that wasn’t Eden’s Gate—but he just looked at Elliot. Sharp-eyed, bloodied, fingers knotted into Boomer’s fur as the dog lay with his head in her lap. It wouldn’t have done any good, looking back there; everything was moving. Everything was breathing.

“Drugged me,” he offered helpfully, his tongue feeling a little too big for his mouth. Jacob looked at him through the sides of his eyes and hit the cruise button. “Got a radio back, too. I tried calling you guys, but—”

“But not Elliot,” Jacob said, less a question and more a confirmation of what he believed to be true. John shrugged idly.

His eldest brother glanced back at Elliot then, but she was silent for two heartbeats longer than what it should have taken for her to answer before she replied, “Wouldn’t have been fun for him if I was.”

“Yeah, well,” the redhead muttered. “You sure made...” His voice trailed off, and his eyes fixed on the road again. “... Work of him, didn’t you, deputy?”

Elliot sighed. That Jacob said you made work instead of you made quick work made John painfully, delightfully aware of how many times and how much effort it must have taken for Elliot to cave Kian’s face in, and that knowledge writhed pleasant and desirous in his stomach.

But Jacob didn’t sound pleased. John supposed that he wouldn’t be, all things considered. Kian was dead, sure, but the rest of the Family had almost certainly scattered like rats to whatever corner of Hope County they could reach. They would be a problem. By now, they were all supposed to be hunkering down in the bunker to outlast the End Days, and instead, they were contesting with an entirely different pest.

Maybe Elliot was right; maybe without Ase and Kian, they would just leave. Go and kill some other tiny town of people. Get their skin melted off by the nuclear war.

In fact, if John really thought about it—and it did take work—he didn’t think that the Family was much of a problem at all anymore. The only thing that remained questionable, and up in the air, was Elliot herself.

My wife, he thought, his brain ticking and idling like an engine cooling down, wading through the neck-high water of his thoughts. Each leap from one thread to the next felt sugary-slow. Little killer, aren’t you?

He didn’t think that she would be content with hunkering down in a bunker. That would take some time to warm up to, probably—and, John reasoned, he would have to first broach the subject of their legal binding. But that was another problem, for another time, and right now all John wanted to think about was getting home and enjoying his high while he had it.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

When Elliot was very young, she remembered coming across a snake coiled on the hot pavement of the path up to their front door. It had been after school; her mother had had the windows of the kitchen open, playing an old song, something about a dream, and she could hear it from all the way down at the road. The snake was basking—drinking in the sunlight, mottled in shades of brown and copper, flecks of white highlighting the prettiest parts of it. The snake had been a dream to a girl who ran wild and barefoot through every inch of the Hope County wilderness she could reach; the speckled pattern begging for a touch, it’s elegant coil beckoning for attention.

The window to the kitchen had been open, and the second her mother had seen her staring at the snake, she’d come sprinting out the front door. Her mother had never liked any kind of animal that didn’t have four legs and wouldn’t fall under the “fluffy retriever” category, so at first, she had thought it was just her mother’s aversion to the scaly members of the animal kingdom; but after her mother’s insistent shrieking that she give the rattler a wide berth on the way up to the front steps, she’d thought maybe it was actual danger worrying her mother.

Of course, Scarlet had called the sheriff’s office and immediately demanded someone come and get rid of the snake (even though you weren’t supposed to call the sheriff’s office for that kind of thing, there was animal control) while she made herself a vodka soda.

“He’s pretty, mama,” Elliot had said, staring out the window at the snake. “Did you see his spots?”

“Pretty.” Scarlet had never sounded more displeased. She squeezed her lime into her drink, muttering furiously. “All those spots mean that ugly thing would kill you with one bite, bunny. Do you hear me? Venomous. Stay away from it.”

Now, sitting in the back seat of an Eden’s Gate truck, her face mottled with a dead man’s arterial spray, she felt like that prairie rattler, her spots belying a poison and vicious bite.

Pretty, she thought tiredly, combing her fingers through Boomer’s fur. Pretty venomous.

Her gaze drifted absently, away from the landscape blurring past them as Jacob cruised back to the compound and instead onto the occupants of the car. John was leaned back in his seat, eyes fluttering shut occasionally like he couldn’t keep them open very well, and Jacob had a tight grip on the steering wheel. A pack of cigarettes sat in one of the cupholders in the center console, and she reached for them on autopilot.

Jacob’s gaze flickered down to her hand snaking between them. For a second, he looked like he’d been about to grab her hand, like maybe he thought she was trying something—but his fingers stayed on the steering wheel, and he said, “Probably a lighter in the console.”

Elliot snagged the cigarettes and then fished around in the console until she found the lighter. The cotton fabric of Ase’s high-necked dress felt sticky on her skin, like she was in the middle of a summer storm; chill seeped down into her bones, and her skin bloomed feverish, and she thought this is when the crash happens, but it didn’t hit. She lit a cigarette and rolled the window down before she took a drag and felt the tiredness pull at the corners of her vision.

The song from her memory played on a gentle loop in her head. Leisurely, lulling. So dream, when the day is new; dream, and they might come true. Her mother had listened to that song so many times, growing up. She wondered, briefly, if her mother was alright. If she’d gotten out. If she’d gone with the resistance and fled, or if she was still here somewhere, or if she was dead.

“Anyone get hurt?” she asked after a minute. “At the compound?”

“A few,” Jacob replied. His eyes narrowed. “None dead, though.”

Elliot exhaled smoke out the window. She thought she would have felt dirty, now, sticky with Kian’s breath and his fingers and his mouth against her skin—but she didn’t, not right away. She just felt—

“Sure that’s disappointing for you,” Jacob continued.

—tired.

“Eat shit, Jacob,” she muttered. “I just solved your biggest problem.”

“No, you didn’t,” he snapped back. “Not by a long fucking mile, deputy.”

The redhead eyed her through the mirror, but she didn’t say anything to that—and for the rest of the ride back to the compound, it was blissful, empty silence.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

John thought he must have certainly fallen asleep in the car, because one second he was blinking through Jacob talking about how the compound had been attacked, and the next they were parking.

The compound looked a little worse for wear, but it was quiet; if not for the bullet holes in the walls of buildings, and the occasional blood spray dried nearly black with time, he wouldn’t have known anything was amiss at all. He would have thought it was a regular evening—but was far from it.

At the very least, John felt a little clearer now. His high was slowly cruising down, and he’d probably feel all of his bruises once he sobered up, but for now he buzzed.

Jacob climbed out of the driver’s seat beside him, and his body operated on autopilot to do the same. He saw Boomer drop from the truck and stick his nose to the ground instantly, eyes wary and waiting to see if any danger still lurked. When Elliot’s feet touched the ground, the Heeler did a single loop around her legs and then nosed her hand.

“John,” his brother said, his voice clipped. “Chapel.”

“Right,” John replied. He glanced over his shoulder and then looked at Elliot; she took in a little breath and waved her hand.

“Gonna shower,” she told him. “I’m good.”

John reached for her, fingers itching; Elliot caught his wrist before his hand could land on her shoulder, or her face, but she used it to pull him closer, and then she kissed him—leaned up and pressed her mouth, tasting like wild copper and a little like ash, against his. John’s brain fizzed white static and he sighed against her kiss, and he was reminded of how electric she had felt back there in the forest with the buzz of her kill still sitting under her skin.

“John,” Jacob insisted, louder this time, “now.”

“Okay,” John said, but he said it into the kiss, sliding his hand from Elliot’s grasp. “Okay, I’m—”

And like that she had pulled away from him; she whistled for Boomer and set off across the yard for the bunkhouse, and he turned and forced his legs to move towards the chapel. I’m good, she’d said. What did she mean? What did “good” constitute?

His brain felt too muggy for him to contemplate whether or not he was spiraling on a thought because it had some other meaning or because he was high, so he just pushed aside as he walked into the chapel, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Joseph was there, sitting beside Faith; their heads bowed in silence, only disturbed when the sound of his and Jacob’s footsteps echoed in the quiet.

“You’re safe,” Joseph said, sounding relieved. As John came closer, his older brother lifted an arm; beckoning him, and he went instantly. Joseph’s hand cradled the back of his head and pressed their foreheads together in an embrace that was far softer than anything that had occurred between them as of late. It felt like John’s entire body sighed in relief. “We were so worried, John.”

“And high as shit,” Jacob replied as they neared. “Tripping fuckin' balls, aren’t you, Johnny?”

“It’s fine,” John insisted, though he could hear the words slur a little even as he tried very hard to punctuate them on their way out of his mouth. “Not so bad.”

“You look awful,” Faith murmured. “What happened?”

“Um,” he said.

“Kian’s dead,” Jacob explained helpfully.

Joseph blinked. His expression was guarded, but hopeful. “Good news, then.”

“Deputy Honeysett bashed his skull in with a shotgun.”

Faith said, “Oh.”

A moment of silence stretched between them. Jacob paced to the front of the chapel; Joseph absently scratched at his cheek, his hand having withdrawn from John as he took in this news from his brothers. John tried not to shift too much, but the silence was killing him—he didn’t know how Joseph was going to feel about that. If he would still want Elliot with them.

“Was she?” Joseph asked after a minute. “Drugged?”

“No,” John said. “Not—I mean, she said she wasn't.”

“So she did it on her own,” he continued, “without being influenced by anything that could arguably… Cause a hallucination which would make her do that.”

“I—” John’s brain struggled to keep up with Joseph’s train of thought. “I—guess—”

“This is good news, then.” Joseph’s voice bloomed with warmth. “Don’t you see? There is no person more in need of us,” he continued, “than someone who has nowhere left to go.”

“And where would she go,” Jacob muttered, “that wouldn’t commit her to a psychiatric ward.”

Joseph nodded. His hand returned to the back of John’s neck and gripped there, firm and steadfast.

“You’ve done so well, John,” he said, “but our time is running out. You know that, don’t you? We are borrowing it now, from God himself, and I don’t intend to go into the next phase of our lives with a debt to pay.”

John blinked through the fog in his brain and swallowed thickly. He thought he knew what it was that Joseph was telling him—but before he could think too hard on it, Jacob interjected, “John hasn’t told the deputy about their blissful union.”

“What?” Faith asked, head snapping to look at him.

“Well,” John began.

“Actually,” Jacob continued, “he lied about it.”

“Well,” John tried again, irritably, “it had already been done, and she didn’t remember it thanks to Faith’s handiwork, and at the moment in time I thought—maybe—it would be worse off to tell her rather than…”

He fumbled for the words he wanted to say; the truth was that there were no good excuses. He just didn’t trust Elliot not to go absolutely feral when she found out, because she certainly didn’t remember it which meant she certainly was going to have feelings about it. And that was a problem.

But a problem for another time. Right?

“You’re gonna stick us in a bunker with her,” Jacob snapped, “and let her lose her shit on us while we’re trapped.”

“I won’t,” John insisted.

Joseph exhaled softly. “John—”

“I’ll—I’ve got it under control!” he exclaimed, looking at Joseph. “I know Elliot better than any of you, and I’ll find the right way to tell her, and it’ll be fine. I know.”

His older brother watched him with a pensive gaze. For a moment, John thought he saw regret flash across Joseph’s face—maybe for praising him too fast, maybe for entrusting this to him at all in the first place. But if he let someone down, that wasn’t his fault, right? This shit was so far beyond the plan of attack—so far beyond what they had anticipated, that there was a margin for error.

No, John thought, no, there isn’t. I know better. I’m better. I know.

“Borrowed time, John,” Joseph cautioned at last. “We’ve got to get rid of these locusts, and then we will be retreating for the End. You understand?”

John steadied the breath that tried to slip out of him. I don’t want to go into the next phase of our lives with a debt to pay.

“Yes, Joseph,” he replied. “I understand.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The stinging shower water ran pink to the drain. Elliot dunked her head under the water and passed her hands over her face; she stood there for a moment letting the water pool in the cups of her hands until her lungs ached and she had to let it go, spilling over her neck and shoulders. The dark dress, wretched thing, had been discarded and tossed into the trash; she thought if she had to look at herself in it for one more second she was going to come fucking undone, and that just wouldn't do.

The door clicked open; a brief moment of hesitation sounded before she heard footsteps coming inside. “El?”

She turned in the shower, wiping water from her eyes before tugging the curtain back. John regarded her with eyes only half-intoxicated, more clarity about them now than there had been in the truck.

Elliot watched him for a moment as she considered. The chill hadn't left her bones, even in the scalding hot water.

“Are you getting in?” she asked, watching his gaze flicker absently before landing back on her.

“Are you inviting me?”

Elliot pulled back from the curtain and ducked back under the water. “I’ve never known you to need an invite.”

“Fair enough, I won't disappoint.”

There was the gentle rustle of fabric, the push of the curtain, and then she wasn’t alone in the shower anymore; but it was fine, because she didn’t want to be alone anymore, because it felt like her entire body was vibrating and she couldn’t get it to stop. Unlike John, who she guessed was cruising down the same gentle crash that she had felt when the Family had drugged her with their weird shit, there was nothing inhibiting her body now. Only the quick, sharp, violent buzzing of blood on her mind, under her fingernails, between her teeth.

It felt good, too. An adrenaline high; the fall, right before impact.

John’s hands slid along her hips. The calloused pads of his fingers—fingers meant to hurt, to twist and coerce—skimmed the scars along her abdomen, sloping across her hip bones; she didn’t have to glance down to see that’s what he was doing. You’ll tell me, he’d said that morning. Eventually.

“I did them,” she said around the dull roaring in her ears. The words tasted strange on her tongue. A verbal admittance was very different from scribbling it into a journal. But the catharsis had begun; with Kian’s collapsed skull imprinted into her mind forever, it felt as though a tension had released in her, pulled taut and sharp and finally ripped free.

“Did what?” he asked, nosing past wet hair to glide his mouth along the pillar of her throat.

“The scars,” Elliot murmured. “I did them.” To feel real, she wanted to say, I did them so I could know that I was still real, but the words wouldn’t come. Maybe they didn’t need to.

John’s thumb swept along the one that stretched over her hip bone. He hummed, low and hungry, into her skin. He might have been coming down from his high, but it didn’t seem to be pushing him into sleep; he was enjoying it, the gentle careening to sobriety.

And maybe tomorrow she would regret telling him. Maybe tomorrow she would feel dirty for the way that she killed Kian, instead of intoxicated with her own magic. Maybe, maybe, maybe—but that was a thing to think about when the time came, and just like she had done everything else about herself that she hadn't liked, she would strangle it and move on.

John turned her around so that he could pull her against him. He said, “I thought so,” like he had recognized it in her, and she thought about that dream. Just like me, holding her blood-covered hands in his. You’re just like me.

Lifting her arms, Elliot carded her fingers through his hair and then gripped, pulling him in to press her mouth against his. She kissed him the way that she wanted to; no time for shyness now, she thought, no room for hesitation. John had watched her cave a man’s face in, and he was still here and hungry, so she kissed him hard—dug her teeth into his lip and revelled in the way that he moaned and leaned into her.

He’d kissed her frantically, too, back in the clearing and with Kian’s body just a foot away from them. Kissed her with blood in her mouth, greedy and insatiable, and frenzied, like he’d wanted her right then and there and wasn’t willing to let her go until he absolutely had to.

The raised skin of his Sloth scar dragged under her fingers. She dug her nails into the soft expanse of his shoulder, and he made a low, delicious noise against her mouth. I could give him more, she thought, dizzied at the idea of it, at this sudden humming, heady power she felt had become hers. This something that had become unlocked inside of her. I could give him more, and he’d thank me for it.

“Elliot,” John began, hands gripping her hips as he nudged her back against the shower wall. But he didn’t follow it up with anything; he just kept her there, skin on skin, heat bleeding out from every inch of him. His hand drifted up above her head, fumbling at the window, trying to push it open. “Fuck, it’s so fucking—hot in here—”

I want to be yours. I want a home with you.

Briefly, she wondered if that dream had been as wishful as she’d thought. John had been exactly what she wanted him to be—just the color, just the shape, everything in him built to lure her and keep her there like the most perfect predator. It was easy to forget that she had never known that she wanted a man whose hair was dark and his eyes a little cruel until she had looked at John Seed. But now it was impossible to ignore; she pressed to him, craved him, this delicious anchor of hers.

He could be cruel, if he wanted—he’d considered drowning her to death. He’d been greedy to mark her skin forever with her sin. He’d littered his body with markings and scars, testaments to his devotion, just like he had done every other conversion.

Yes, she thought absently, against the stifling heat of the stinging shower and John’s own radiating warmth, feverish from the hallucinogen seeping out of him. He is cruel. But maybe I—

And then he murmured, against her ear, “Want you,” hazy and buzzing and warm. His fingers slid down between them, gliding along the curve of where she most wanted his attention, and she felt her breath hitch in her throat. He buried his face into her neck and sighed, pressing into her and eliciting in her a spark that traveled straight down her spine; and then, almost as though he wasn’t thinking too hard about it: “Would’ve—back in the forest—”

He cut himself off and his movements stilled, just for a second. Elliot tilted her head to look at him through her eyelashes and canted her hips to gain some friction against the heel of his palm; she wasn't bothering anymore to stifle the stuttered, half-breath-half-whimper that came out of her as slick pleasure pooled in her stomach, the feeling of his fingers dragging a delicious, heady burn through her. 

Elliot heard him swallow back a sound over the white noise of the shower. It was a wicked kind of thing, this watching John as she leaned down into him; watching the muscle in his jaw tense and flex just before he beckoned his fingers against her and bit out a swear between his teeth when her body tensed and arched prettily into his touch. Needy and wanting; just the way that he liked, she was sure.

“Would’ve what?” she prompted breathlessly. John’s lashes, long and darker still from the shower spray, flickered. He seemed to be weighing it in his head, the pros and cons of what he had been going to say, but Elliot was no longer in a place of wanting to wobble. No floating, no drifting between ethereal and corporeal—she didn’t want to have to wonder, to have to piece together what it was he was thinking with the crumbling threads she could scoop up.

He didn't answer her; instead, he dragged his mouth along the slope of her neck, teeth digging against her pulse point. Elliot moaned, choking the noise halfway out of her spitefully, because she wanted him to earn it, and he did it again—harder this time, less like he was testing and more like he knew that she wanted it. The sting rippled heady anticipation straight to her brain, sparking through that hazy fog in her mind.

She sighed, "John," just as he dragged his fingers out slowly, torturously slowly, not enough to give her even half the friction she wanted and not so little that it didn’t make her suffer in the best sort of way. As soon as they didn’t return, but rather traveled the expanse of her abdomen, a quiet complaint slipped out of her; John kissed her, his tongue gliding against hers, his teeth nipping and biting as he dragged her leg up around his hip.

Everything felt like it was happening between breaths, between heartbeats, her pulse moving so sluggishly it was lava spreading through her body. Stifling, so hot, too hot, too much, but John’s mouth over hers pushed and pulled the breath out of her, guided the currents of her like the moon. Elliot tried again, giving the words more punch on their way out, “You would’ve what?”

She thought that she knew what he was going to say, and she wanted to hear him say it, that he would’ve—

“Fucked you,” John managed out hoarsely, just as he rocked into her. “God, I—”

Yes, she thought; the word left her mouth in something close to an exhale, and she didn’t know if she was responding to what he’d said or to the way it felt like he’d set a wildfire going racing along her skeleton the second they connected. He managed out a half-moaned swear and shifted into a slower, more leisurely paced as he sighed, “I would’ve, El— fuck , you’re so tight— ”

Pleasure wrenched in her stomach and writhed, hot and wicked. John’s pace was halting; he was trying not to go too fast or too hard even though he wanted to, but then he said things like how he wanted to fuck her while she was covered in blood and—

And she felt seen, and wanted, and she thought this must have been how they did it: took all of the grit and gore of someone and worshipped it, like something holy.

Biggest fucking Peggy-killer this side of Hope County, he’d spat at her that day they’d found Waylon’s body. But now? Now, it was all, so tight, El, want you, would’ve fucked you right there.

His hands grazed the bruises on her body before stopping at her hips again. He pulled back to get a good look at her, and then reached up, cradling her jaw with his left hand and dragging the pad of his thumb across her lip. A thrill crawled up her spine, hot and searing and latching onto her; she thought, this magic is mine now, too, and she parted her lips obediently to drag him into her mouth just so she could watch John just about come unglued.

And never before had she felt like this, wicked with John’s eyes blown wide and dark with want as his gaze fixed on her mouth and moaned, “God, Elliot—”

She wanted to forget about Kian’s hands on her body, his mouth on her skin, his words ringing in her head. So she did; she indulged in the feeling of John’s breath trembling as her tongue flickered against the pad of his thumb and the way he hissed as his pace changed. 

“Should have,” Elliot managed out when his thumb slipped from her mouth so that he could press his hand against the wall by her head. She said it between dizzying, radiating pleasure dragging through her body, devouring her, dragging her further and further toward the edge. “Should have—fucked me then, John, I—”

“F-Fuck.” The swear left his mouth wrecked, his movements stuttering. “Fuck, that’s so— filthy.”

He stopped tempering himself. If he was doing it because he was worried about whatever injuries she’d sustained, she was glad that he’d stopped—each haphazard, frenzied connection of their bodies sent her rapidly hurtling towards her finish, his fingers digging and dragging against the parts of her that craved him the most. It wasn’t fair, really, that John could rumble a few dirty things about wanting to fuck her in the woods and get her so close: but he did, and she was, and that was the end of it.

She breathed out, “Close, John—I’m—”

“Liked that, did you?” He sounded awfully pleased with himself, even as each of his breaths were punctuated with a desirous sound. “Liked me telling you how badly I wanted to push that dress up and fuck you right there? You get s-so —fucking tight when I say that—c’mon, El, let me hear those pretty noises—”

“Yes,” Elliot moaned, hazy with want, desperate and still trying to swallow some of it back, so close so close so close. “Yes, yes, I— John—”

John said something into her mouth; she couldn’t have said what it was, because all of the blood went rushing through her head the second her climax hit. There was a strange, suspended moment of nothing before it ripped straight through her, every neuron firing off rapidly as she buried her face into John’s neck and dug her nails in hard while the wave washed over her, wicked-hot and nearly too much.

Nearly, but not quite. John’s teeth on her lip dragged her back, and he moaned, “Holy shit, fuck yes —fuck, El, I’m gonna—let me—”

He couldn’t quite get out what he was trying to say, but Elliot thought she knew; it wasn’t hard to guess, anyway, considering the way he was gripping her like he’d fucking disappear if he didn’t. And she felt a little wild, a little wicked, only a vicious desire left before she hit empty, so she managed out, “Beg.”

John pulled back a little and let his gaze rake over her. His movements slowed, just enough that she could tell that he was pacing himself, holding back the same way he had that first time when she’d dragged him through his own climax. Though his eyes were blown nearly black, the clarity about them made her want to squirm—that she knew he wasn’t quite so high as he was before, that he was going to remember this.

“Wh—” The brunette swallowed thickly; his hands skimmed absently across her skin, like he didn’t need to really think about it to do it anymore, but that they did it of their own volition. “What?”

With that same kind of recklessness, Elliot knotted her fingers in his hair and said, “ Beg to finish inside me.”

A short, breathless laugh barked out of him. He said, “Fuck you. I’m not—I don’t—”

Elliot squirmed, pulling on his hair until his lashes fluttered and he was leaning back into her on instinct. “You do now,” she replied silkily against his mouth. And then, in an attempt at graciousness: “Didn’t you want me to be loud, John? To hear me?”

He groaned. “Y—Yes—”

“So beg me,” she bit out, canting her hips against him and feeling his breath stutter and hitch, “and I’ll be as loud—”

“Fuck—”

“—as you want—”

“— yes —”

“—tell you how much I want it—”

“ Please,” John moaned as he slotted his hips against hers, unable to hold still any longer. He made a low, wrecked sound, and by the time the adrenaline rush from hearing John Seed say please to her had hit her brain he was foregoing all pretense. “Please, El, let me finish inside you, I’ll—fuck—make you feel so good, baby, make you mine—”

Elliot kissed him, hard and punishing, and moaned “Yes—yes, John, so good ,” against his mouth until he was driving into her like a man incensed, frenzied, each desperate dig of his fingers against the bruises in her skin delivering a different kind of delicious pain; and when he came, panting, yes, fuck yes, don’t stop, El, please, fuck, she held onto him tighter.

Anything to feel whole. Anything to feel safe. Anything to forget, even for a moment.

“Don’t move,” John managed out unsteadily. “Don’t—Jesus, fuck, it’s so fucking hot in here.”

“Don’t know where I’d go,” she replied in a murmur. Her brain felt foggy now, delicious sliding down from her high, remembering the surge of delight she’d felt when John had said please, El. The water had since gone lukewarm, and she wasn’t sure she even got all of the blood out of her hair, but it didn’t matter; pleasant after-currents rippled through her, and all she could think about was how little of her brain was being spent on churning around the Family.

John’s mouth traced a bruise on her neck—either from him, or Kian; she didn’t know—and his breath slid across her skin.

“Viper,” he murmured huskily, admiringly. “Aren’t you?”

“You said it yourself,” she replied tiredly, eyes fluttering as the desperate need for sleep finally registered in her brain; no more adrenaline to keep pushing it away. “More devil than woman.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It was the second time waking up next to John, and the second time of having to try and brace herself for some kind of impact after.

That is to say, Elliot thought that maybe fucking John Seed felt a little bit like throwing herself off of a cliff, and so every time it happened—she thought, as though it had been more than twice—it was the same sensation of falling. The feeling prevailed over any other logic in her brain: upon waking, she thought very little of the sensation of his arm draped over her waist or his face buried into her hair and only of the sheer blast of panic that raced through her.

I smell, I feel, I hear, she thought, closing her eyes tight, but when she did, she saw Kian—blood streaming down his face, gripping her jaw, will you feel guilty about this too? And the panic shifted into dread, knotting tight and hard in her stomach.

She forced her eyes open. Sheer exhaustion had pushed her through a dreamless night, but that didn’t mean that her nightmares were confined to sleeping hours only.

When Elliot shifted, John stirred; his fingers skimmed up the back of her shirt, palm flattening at the spot between her shoulder blades, and she winced. Everything hurt. Everything ached. She wondered what was worse; nightmares, or this?

Definitely the nightmares, she thought, each breath a labor of her bruised and battered body. Right? Has to be the nightmares.

“Stop moving,” John muttered against her head.

“I don’t know why you don’t get the concept of a twin bed,” she snapped. “Fuck, my body hurts—”

“Well.” He was clearly trying not to sound smug, and failing; she could feel his grin into her hair. “I do recall you spurring me on—”

Oh, she thought, reminded of their shared shower. That.

A problem.

“Not from that, fuckhead.” She squirmed back from him, back pressing against the wall. “Feels like someone tried to curb stomp my ribs eighty times.”

“Probably did,” he replied. John tilted his head, wincing a little, and then nudged the blankets back from her body. His gaze was admiring. “Christ, you bruise easy, huh?”

“A fucking van t-boned us in a truck that spit out pitiful, half-functioning airbags, ” she bit out, “and then I got tossed around like a ragdoll, so—yeah, I guess if you consider battery and assault “easy”, then—”

John’s hands came up to her face and he kissed her. It lacked the same kind of urgency that it’d had last night; this was John taking his time, savoring her, parting his lips against hers and sighing into the kiss as he carded his fingers through her hair. The gesture itself was so unexpected that Elliot could do nothing but reciprocate, and the breath hitched in her throat as he tugged her back against him—part in pain and part because of the way he did it, like he just couldn’t get enough of her.

“So ungrateful,” he said against her mouth, “after I gave you what you wanted so badly last night.”

“I’m not the one who begged,”   Elliot replied sharply, “am I?”

John’s hand skimmed the slope of her hip, and he made a low noise, thumb digging past the top of her underwear to press lightly into a bruise that she thought his fingers had left. She sucked in a sharp breath as a familiar heat sprinted down her spine and squirmed.

“Worth it,” he replied after a moment, teeth catching her lip, “to have you say how much you wanted me in you.”

He flashed that half-cocked, shit-eating grin that she could feel against her mouth, and she swatted his hand away from her hip. There was, perhaps, a part of her that regretted goading him like that—that regretted spurring him on—but there was no point in lingering on it now. As much as John might want to. As much as, when he looked at her with those too-blue eyes, she might want to.

Elliot opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, there was a soft, quick knock at the door. Boomer, curled up on one of her sweaters by the door, immediately pricked his ears and barked at the intrusion.

“Elliot?” It was Faith’s voice. She felt her stomach somersault, plunged into—well, it wasn’t quite shame, but maybe a little bit of embarrassment, in the way that it was to have the little sister of the man you were currently entangled with knock on your door while you were still in bed.

“I’m—” Elliot sat up, slapping a hand over John’s mouth when she saw him start to say something. “I’m getting dressed, what is it?”

“Joseph wants to talk to you,” Faith called back, pausing. And then, perhaps with a bit more slyness than Elliot liked: “And John.”

Fuck fuck fuck. The last thing she wanted was for Joseph to know . There was probably a ninety-eight percent chance that Joseph was going to be flashing that psychotic smile the second she walked in, knowing that she and John were—

“W—I’m coming,” she said, as John gripped her forearm and pressed his mouth to the pulse point on her wrist, letting his teeth drag there. She yanked her arm out of his grip and hissed, “Stop , you fucker, or I’ll pick my teeth with your fucking bones.”

“Okay,” came Faith’s light-hearted reply. “See you soon!”

As soon as she heard the footsteps receding, she turned to John. “What the fuck does your brother want with me, John?”

John shrugged. “Contrary to what you may believe about me, I am not entirely all-knowing.”

“As usual, you are stunningly unhelpful,” she muttered crossly, sliding out of the bed and over to her bag of clothes. Now, she really felt it—each impact had been dulled by the adrenaline at the time, but as she shimmied into her jeans, every inch of her body screamed in pain and her vision fuzzed around the edges.

John had gotten out of bed as well, but he departed to the bathroom and returned with a bottle of aspirin, which he shook two pills out of and held in his palm for her.

“You might consider something with a higher neck,” he suggested lightly.

Elliot snatched the aspirin out of his hand and swallowed them dry. “My teeth,” she said, jabbing a finger into his chest, “your bones.”

“Just trying to be helpful.”

“Suggestion box is closed,” Elliot snapped. “Now—”

Her eyes flickered over him. It was very easy to disassociate John’s personality from his physical body, but harder when he was half-stripped-down in front of her, scars and tattoos on display and reminding her how intimately familiar she was becoming with them.

“Now put your clothes on,” she finally said, somehow managing to keep her voice mostly steady. “I want to get this done as fast as possible.”

The brunette flashed her a cheeky smile and gave her a two-finger salute that rang sardonic at best.

“Anything you want, baby.”

[trensu]

Episode 46: The One with All the Yunmeng Bros Angst

gross, ouyang and yao are talking. let’s ignore them!

blah blah plot plot blah

ooh thank god, wwx is now the one talking

being all detective-y and asking relevant questions

I LOVE MY SUNSHINE BOY WHEN HE'S BEING CLEVER

wwx makes some Plot Relevant Point and yao is like I DISAGREE bc ofc he fucking does

LOL WWX'S FACE WHEN YAO INTERRUPTS LIKE THAT

IT'S LIKE HE'S BITING DOWN ON HIS TONGUE TO NOT SNAP SOMETHING BACK

kudos to him on his self-control tbh but it's wasted on yao. 

wwx is all asking things like why are you ladies fessing up now, oh and btw that's a real neat bracelet you got there...

and then nhs is like, gee i wonder what kind of person would've sent these ladies here today

LOLOLOL NHS IS SUCH A TROLL OMG

and yao is like DETAILS DON'T MATTER, WHAT IS CRITICAL THINKING ANYWAY LET'S GO MURDER FOR JUSTICE AGAIN

and everyone else is like, HEY, THIS LOUD GUY HAS A POINT LET'S GO MURDER

okay, they don't actually say anything about murder but they're harping about "justice" 

The last time they did that, it resulted in murder so i'm gonna go ahead and assume this time isn't any different

lwj: many skeptical points remain

THANK YOU, LWJ, FOR BEING SENSIBLE

oh, and i would like to point out that the crowd had been getting rowdy 

but the minute lwj interjected there they all fell silent

My guy didn't even raise his voice and was able to shut up a whole room full of people.

I LOVE YOU HANGUANG JUN

lqr: what are they?

wwx: SO MANY. 

wwx makes some Points and is like so we got some witnesses now but where's the HARD EVIDENCE GUYS??

and yao is like, whatever, we'll find it sooner or later now that we know THE TRUTH

and wwx's reaction lolol

it's like oh my god how stupid is this guy, that's not how it works, that's not how ANY of this works

I FEEL YOUR PAIN, WWX, I FEEL IT IN MY SOUL

ppl are blabbering Plot Stuff

i'm just gonna enjoy the occasional shots of wwx and lwj's beautiful faces

blah blah blah plot plot plot blah

gosh, my boys are so pretty

LOOK AT THEM BEING PRETTY, I LOVE THEM

(i say as the crowd devolves into vicious mob mentality)

wwx's had enough of this and turns to leave bc angry mobs are old news at this point

And we all know how he ended up last time there was an angry mob

but yao and some rando interrupt his exit as if they have ANY RIGHT to speak to my sunshine boy at all

Eventually we DO escape sword hall and the mob of stupid people and our boys are alone together wandering lotus pier!!!

they're reviewing Plot Info and bouncing ideas off each other and IT'S BEAUTIFUL, THEY'RE SO SMART AND IN LOVE

They determine that they don't have enough clues to say who the mysterious 3rd party is

but they def have enough evidence showing jgy murdered nmj and is generally an evil conniving bastard.

lwj mentions that he's going to send word to his brother to be careful since jgy is EVIL FOR SURE NOW.

oooh, our boys just came upon the jiang clan's ancestral shrine

wwx freezes, eyes red-rimmed and shiny, MY POOR SUNSHINE BOY

lwj: what's wrong?

ALL OF HIS ATTENTION IS GLUED TO WWX'S EVERY MOVE ALL THE TIME, ISN'T IT??

SEE HOW INTENTLY HE LOOKS AT WWX??

me too, lan zhan, me too

wwx: nothing. it's the ancestral hall of the jiang clan

he says this softly, like it hurts to acknowledge it or smth

lwj: do you want to enter?

wwx: no

WHICH IS A BLATANT LIE

EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM IS SCREAMING HOW MUCH HE WANTS TO GO IN THERE

they make to turn away and pause for a moment, during which wwx looks back at the shrine longingly

cut to the next scene where we see wwx burning some incense sticks in the shrine

AND OUR BOYS BOW TOGETHER  3x TO M-YU, JFM, AND JYL

wwx greets his deceased loved ones solemnly

wwx: it's me. i'm here to disturb you again.

idk about m-yu and jfm, BUT JYL WOULD NEVER THINK WWX'S PRESENCE WAS A DISTURBANCE

now wwx is telling lwj about how he used to spend a ton of time in that shrine bc m-yu would punish him by sending him there to, idk, reflect on his sins before the ancestors or smth

and lwj is like, yeah, i heard about that

then wwx comments on how he's never met a woman as irritable as m-yu, and how she punished him for trifles all the time

then he laughs bashfully and says "my fault, my fault" and bows another 3x bc omg wwx you can't speak ill of the dead, especially not at their shrine

this is a nice moment between them so far, actually. 

it's nice to hear wwx reminisce in a way that's not 100% painful

and the fact that he's sharing these little bits of inconsequential info with lwj, his soulmate, is just very sweet to me

lwj: won't you tell jc?

wwx: idk. at least not yet

lwj: after all, you two are sworn brothers

it's nice of lwj to acknowledge that, without any sort of rancor in his tone, considering how much he does not care for jc (to put it mildly)

wwx: since the misunderstanding between us is so deep, it's not that easy to solve

HE SOUNDS SO RESIGNED, AND THE LITTLE SMILE THAT FLASHED BRIEFLY THERE WAS JUST SO SAD

and then he's like, besides, I created Plot Device 2, regardless of whether or not jgy ended up using it to make Plot Device 3

UH OH, HERE COMES JC

jc: wei wuxian

OH GOD, CAN HE PACK ANY MORE BITTERNESS AND VENOM INTO THAT NAME??

wwx stands immediately when he hears jc call, he doesn't look at him tho

lwj stands a beat after as jc enters the shrine

jc: you still take yourself as one of the jiang clan? come and go at any time you like, then bring people here when you wish. Do you remember whose house this is? who's the owner?

YIKES

THAT ONE HURT.

and wwx just takes it

wwx: i didnt take hanguang jun to any confidential places in Lotus Pier. i just brought him here to offer some incense to clan leader jiang and madam yu.

he's so submissive here and not even in a fun way

it’s in his posture and tone of voice, even in how he still doesn't look directly at jc...it makes me sad

wwx: we're leaving

He tries to retreat bc he def doesn't want this this confrontation to happen 

jc: you really should kneel down to them, for coming to their presence to destroy the view and ruin their quiet.

DOUBLE YIKES. 

that one hurt EVEN MORE

and lwj, who had been following wwx's lead and staying quiet, intervenes

lwj: clan leader jiang, pay attention to your words

oh boy if looks could kill, jc would be dead as a doornail

he's like HURT MY SOULMATE AGAIN, I DARE YOU. JUST GIVE ME A REASON AND I WILL STRIKE YOU DOWN

which is pretty gutsy since jc is higher ranked than him, technically, as clan leader. 

AND they're both in jc's domain rn!

jc: what did you say? i think someone else needs to watch his behavior

he's glaring at wwx's back and he's got a mean twist to his mouth that would be a smile if it weren't so cruel

jc: you have already been kicked out of our family. how dare you enter and face my parents and my sister?

STOP HURTING MY SUNSHINE BOY

wwx is just accepting this. he's just accepting all these cruel things with his eyes downcast and submissive

BC IT HURTS AND HE BELIEVES HE DESERVES IT

lwj: jiang wanyin

HOLY SHIT

lwj fucking HISSED that name

and he took a VERY MENACING step towards jc

MY GUY

MY GUY, YOU CAN'T ATTACK A CLAN LEADER

ESPECIALLY NOT IN HIS OWN HOME

LIKE, I TOTALLY GET WHY YOU'D WANT TO RN, AND, Y'KNOW, I'M NOT THE MOST POLITICALLY SAVVY PERSON AROUND

BUT THIS JUST SEEMS LIKE A BAD IDEA ALL AROUND

thank god wwx is there

wwx stops him, pressing the palm of his hand into lwj's torso (!!!!!)

wwx: lan zhan. lan zhan, let's go

he practically whispers this, head bent down, AGAIN SUPER SUBSERVIENT

but jc is looking for a fight and he's not letting go until he gets one, apparently

jc: go as far as you can. i don't want to see you AWFUL PEOPLE again before my dead family

wwx just halts in his steps.

he had been all prepared to go after taking that tongue lashing that he thinks he's earned, but at that he takes a deep, fortifying breath bc jc crossed a line

he purses his lips a moment before turning to finally face jc head on

wwx: jc, scold me as you like but not the others (aka LWJ)

oooh, but that was the wrong thing to say to jc right now bc jc goes off on a VERY PAINFUL rant

he's like, oh, i should be nice to lwj? don't you remember that MY PARENTS WERE KILLED AND LOTUS PIER FELL bc you just HAD to play hero and save lwj?? and it wasn't enough! you HAD to play hero and SAVE THE WENS too, which killed my sister!!

oh he's getting really mean here

he's like, how generous you are wwx! letting wn wander the entrance of lotus pier and letting lwj offer incense!!

the minute jc started his rant, wwx cast his eyes to the side, again just enduring everything jc is throwing at him

oh but now jc starts in on lwj again

he's like, lwj, the great second jade, ignoring his reputation to side with wwx, your brother and uncle must be so proud

wwx: JIANG WANYIN!

wwx shouts at him

he's shaky and almost panting here.

wwx: apologize this instant.

jc: apologize? why should i? bc i insulted your great friendship?

THIS WHOLE ENCOUNTER IS A SHIT SHOW AND IT HURTS.

wwx just loses it here and grabs jc by the collar of his robes and gives him a shake

wwx: ARE YOU DONE?

and jc is still the little brother, you know, so obvs he does not back down here, he's not intimidated at all

jc: LET'S FIGHT THEN. should i be afraid of you two?

wwx's breath is all shaky and he's trembling and he would've given into jc's demands for a fight anyway but then he sees jyl's nameplate

and he must remember how upset jyl would get every time they fought

ME TOO, JYL, ME TOO. I HATE THIS, I HATE THIS, MAKE IT STOP

so he lets go of jc and stumbles back. he's looking very weak right now AND I’M VERY CONCERNED

lwj, obvs, catches him by the arm when he stumbles

lwj: wei ying

wwx: lan zhan, let's go

lwj agrees and the two of them turn and leave the shrine, lwj still gripping wwx's arm and providing support bc wwx is NOT looking good what’s happening to my sunshine boy, somebody fix this RIGHT NOW

BUT JC IS LIKE A DOG WITH A BONE BC HE JUST STORMS AFTER THEM, HE WANTS HIS FIGHT

he freaking leaps across the little lotus pond and lands before them, blocking off their exit

he starts antagonizing wwx, and he grabs wwx by the collar now, and again, wwx just takes it BUT LWJ DOESN'T

lwj slams his hand around jc's wrist (the one that's grabbing wwx), WRAPPING HIS FINGERS AROUND JC'S ZIDIAN, EVEN

lwj: let him go

holy crap. Stone Cold. LWJ'S STARE IS STONE COLD, AND HE TIGHTENS HIS GRIP ON JC'S WRIST

god damn, if lwj ever looked at me like that, i'd drop to the ground and beg for forgiveness. i'd be scared witless

when jc makes no move to let go of wwx, lwj releases his wrist and hooks his arm under jc's forearm and shoves upward to FINALLY break jc's hold on wwx

wwx stumbles at the force of it and his nose starts to bleed

MY POOR PRECIOUS SUNSHINE BOY LOOKS SO WEAK AND OUT OF IT!!

lwj looks at him, eyes wide with worry

lwj: wei ying!

even jc looks concerned (i would even say scared, tbh)

wwx reaches up and wipes his nose; he's not steady on his feet AT ALL

wwx: lan zhan, let's go.

lwj: okay

and he immediately starts to leave, practically dragging wwx with him bc wwx is barely able to stand at this point

lol, lwj shoulder checks jc as they walk past him

but jc is a stubborn bastard and brings out zidian and whips at their retreating backs

brief moment here to admire how FREAKING COOL THE ZIDIAN IS OMG,  

*GRABBY HANDS* I WANT ONE OF MY OWN SO SO BAD. 

IT'S A SNAKE BRACELET!! 

THAT TURNS INTO A WHIP!! 

A PURPLE WHIP!!! OF LIGHTNING!!!!!! 

LITERALLY NO ASPECT OF THIS WEAPON IS UN-BADASS

so jc whips purple lightning at them but the hit never lands bc lwj swings his still-sheathed bichen and bats that attack away like nothing

but as he does that, wwx starts to fall

lwj spins around and AUDIBLY GASPS, eyes wide with worry again, as he watches wwx lose consciousness. 

he dives forward and catches his soulmate in his arms and cradles him gently

jc doesn't see this happen and swings right back with another lash but wn swoops in out of nowhere to take the hit instead. 

AND HERE WE'RE GONNA GET THE BIG REVEAL OH GOD I'M NOT READY

jc is all who let you in, how dare you?? and whips wn again

BUT WN WILL NOT STAY DOWN, NO SIR

HE'S GOT STUFF TO SAY AND BY GOD, HE'S GONNA SAY IT

he offers up suibian to jc but jc whips him and sends him flying again

Wn gets right back up goes back to offering the sword to jc, DEMANDING HE UNSHEATHE IT

AND IN A FIT OF FURY JC PULLS AT THE HANDLE AND SUIBIAN COMES FREE

SHOCK, UTTER SHOCK ON HIS AND LWJ'S FACES

(also YIKES jc nearly sliced out wn's eyes with the force of his unsheathing of siubian. he obvs didn't expect anything to come of him pulling at the handle)

GOLDEN CORE TRANSFER REVEAL!!

FLASHBACK to wn's part of the story

we see wn holding an unconscious jc and wq is telling wwx to come out from where he was hiding behind a convenient boulder

and we see wwx give the go ahead to start the golden core transfer

back to the present, jc looks like his whole world is a lie 

bc it kinda is

I'm still kinda mad that wwx never told him anything.

like, i get why he didn't and i sympathize but informed consent in medicine and surgery is kind of a big deal!

and then omg, we got a close up shot of lwj's face

his eyes are wide and shiny and his jaw is dropped open just a bit. HE IS SHAKEN TO THE CORE 

HAHAHA GET IT? THAT THING WWX DOESN’T HAVE ANYMORE?? Oh god i’m sorry that was AWFUL

he turns his gaze back to wwx, who is still resting gently in crook of his arm

i love the camera angle here btw

the scene is at a slant, with the white of bichen's handle, and the white of the flowering tree behind them filling all of the right side of the screen

it makes the dark bundle of wwx and the dark flow of lwj's hair more stark

the slant of it really emphasizes how the whole of lwj's attention is on the man in his arms

And how his whole world is off its axis at this revelation

god lwj is really just letting his whole heart pour out of his eyes as he watches wwx

jc and wn are arguing loudly in the background but lwj makes NO INDICATION of hearing ANY of it

now we get to watch the emotional confrontation between jc and wn

lwj finally looks back at them when wn starts reciting details that no one outside of jc would have known unless they were there themselves

another flashback as wn describes everything in excruciating detail

oh this line gets me every time

wn: the reason you thought it was repaired was because of my sister, the best doctor in the wen clan of qishan, Wen Qing

WN LOVES HIS SISTER SO MUCH. HE WAS SO PROUD OF HER 

AND HE LOST HER. HE DOESN'T HAVE HER ANYMORE

GOD DAMN IT, SHOW, LET THESE BOYS KEEP THEIR SISTERS

and now we go back to lwj, gazing soulfully at wwx and a single tear rolls down his cheek as it really hits him what exactly wwx did, what wwx gave up

wn is going off on jc, like, didn't he ever wonder why wwx never picked up the sword again?

wn looks hardcore here tbh. 

we cut back to lwj, who is now holding bichen tightly, and boy, he's got his jaw clenched so hard.

at least until he looks back down at wwx, and his mouth softens as more tears drip down his face

flashback to when jc first found wwx after the burial mounds, and a series of flashbacks of every time jc brought up wwx's lack of suibian and wwx brushing off his questions

THEY SHOULD'VE JUST TALKED IT OUT, MY GOD, THEY COULD’VE SPARED ME ALL THIS PAIN IF THEY JUST TALKED 

another flashback to that time that jc pushed wwx and wwx fell hard to the ground and jc thought he was just drunk

I AM DONE WITH THESE FLASHBACKS, THX. CAN WE NOT, ANYMORE? IT'S HURTING TOO MUCH

and we also keep getting shots of lwj's face, STREAKED WITH TEARS

HE'S GOT A TEARDROP ON THE TIP OF HIS NOSE

ALL OF THIS IS PAINFUL

PLEASE STOP

oooh, lwj's mouth twists into a firm scowl and he slams bichen on the ground with a loud CLANG

this is too much for him too! he's furious, he's had enough of hearing how wwx suffered for jc

so he scoops up wwx, carrying almost all of his weight, as he walks the both of them outta there

wn leaves suibian with jc and tells him to have anyone else try to unsheathe it if he doesn't believe him

jc doesn't want it. he doesn't want it at all.

he desperately wants it to be untrue

AND I CRY A RIVER FOR MY YUNMENG BROS

WE'RE ON A BOAT NOW

UNCONSCIOUS WWX SPREAD BACK, HELD LOVINGLY IN LWJ'S ARMS

Now we get some lwj & wn bonding time where they discuss a-yuan! (after lwj promises not to tattle on wn to wwx)

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!! WE'RE GETTING A FLASHBACK FROM LWJ

LWJ IS ENTERING WWX'S LAB CAVE THING, ALONE, FRANTICALLY SEARCHING FOR WWX

lwj: on that day, when the wen clan were captured and killed, i went to the burial mounds to seek wei ying but discovered a-yuan instead

we see him find a-yuan, who is unconscious and clammy. 

lwj immediately drops to his knees beside him and checks his wrist, then presses the back of his hand to a-yuan's forehead

oh, lwj's hand is all roughened with dirt. That’s very striking, for some reason.

he purses his lips making a split-second decision, and scoops a-yuan up 

lwj: he was hiding there for so long that he had a fever and was severely ill

wn figures out that the fever is probs why lsz doesn't remember anything, and hasn’t mentioned wn at all. lwj looks surprised

lwj: didn't you tell him?

wn: about his birth origin? he's happy now. knowing too much about the past and remembering something heavy, would make him less happy than now

HE'S SUCH A GOOD PERSON

WHY DO THE BEST OF THEM HAVE TO SUFFER SO?

lwj: sooner or later, he will know

and wn doesn't deny it. he's like, yeah, sooner or later. just like master wei and jc with the golden core transfer.

at this lwj looks back down at wwx

lwj: is it painful?

the way lwj's throat bobs before he asks tho.

like he's forcing himself to ask, bc he needs to know even if he already suspects the answer. 

He needs to know even tho knowing will hurt. he's steeling himself against the pain already.

wn: what?

lwj: taking out the core, is it painful?

wn: you won't believe me if i say it's not, right?

lwj: i thought wq might have some method

he sounds desperate, hoping against all odds that it didn't hurt wwx as much as he suspects it did

and here wn explains that wq wanted to ease the process, make it less painful, but due to the nature of the procedure, she couldn't use any anesthetics

wn: the one who donates the core has to be awake the whole time

THE WHOLE DAMN TIME

HE HAS TO BE CONSCIOUS TO WATCH IT GET CUT OUT OF HIM AND EXPERIENCE THAT CONNECTION SLOWLY BE SEVERED OTHERWISE IT DOESN'T WORK

HOW MESSED UP IS THAT OMG, HOW MUCH TRAUMA MUST THEY PUT MY POOR SUNSHINE BOY THROUGH

lwj: awake?

HE SOUNDS HOARSE AS HE SAYS THAT

wn: two nights and one day. he has to be awake

MY SUNSHINE BOY, MY BEAUTIFUL SUNSHINE BOY SUFFERED SO MUCH

lwj's lips purse briefly. he's staring at his wei ying

lwj: at the time, what were the chances

wn: fifty percent

lwj looks at wn here with horrified disbelief

lwj: fifty percent?

wn proceeds to explain how wq didn't want to do it but wwx kept insisting that the odds were worth 

AND OH MY GOD LWJ FLASHES BACK TO THEIR FIRST CONFRONTATION AFTER THE BURIAL MOUNDS, WHEN THEY FINALLY FOUND WWX AFTER 3 MONTHS OF SEARCHING

IT HURTS JUST AS MUCH AS THE FIRST TIME AROUND

Wwx must have some sort of sixth sense for knowing when Emotional Discussions are Done, bc he regains consciousness only AFTER wn & lwj finish bonding lol

he sits up, head aching, and pulls himself from lwj's embrace

I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY, BC LWJ OBVS DIDN'T MIND HAVING HIM THAT CLOSE

IN FACT even as he helps wwx sit up, you can see his hand trail up wwx's arm, grip loosening and tightening sporadically

He's def trying to prolong contact here, very reluctant to let go of his wei ying

wwx: lan zhan, how did we get out?

lwj: we had a fight

AND ~THEIR SONG~ STARTS PLAYING

wwx: i knew that jiang cheng wouldn't let me go that easily. so unreasonable.

and then he looks at lwj and hurries to assure him that jc didn't mean all those cutting remarks. that that's just how he gets when he's upset.

lwj looks off to the side, pressing his lips closed bc he couldn't care less about jc or jc's words. THEY MEAN NOTHING TO HIM

wwx covers lwj's hand with his own and very earnestly says: so don't take it seriously

BC HE HASN'T YET REALIZED THAT LWJ DOESN'T ACTUALLY GIVE A DAMN ABOUT JC'S ENTIRE EXISTENCE

lwj doesn't look him in the eye as he's told this, and his lips are still pressed together in a firm line. 

he probably doesn't actually want wwx to realize just how little jc means to him.

wwx notices they're on a boat on a lake now lol

wwx: i often played here with jyl when we were children

AND HERE HE HALLUCINATES HIS PRECIOUS BEAUTIFUL KIND AMAZING SISTER JYL

Jyl: a-xian come have some lotus seeds

WWX'S EYES REDDEN WITH TEARS AND HE CALLS OUT FOR HIS SISTER

AND I'M FIGHTING BACK SOBS

WHILE JYL'S SWEET GENTLE MUSIC PLAYS AND JYL SMILES WARMLY AT HER LITTLE BROTHER

wn snaps wwx out of it

ONLY FOR WWX TO FLASHBACK TO JYL CRYING AND SAYING THAT THEY'RE THE CLOSEST THREE IN THE WORLD

WWX LEANS HIS HEAD ON HER KNEE AND SULKS ADORABLY ABOUT HOW HE'S HUNGRY 

AND I WANNA DIE FROM ALL THE FEELINGS I'M HAVING

back on the boat, wwx eyes are still filled with tears and it's awful

wn is all, wwx what's wrong? and wwx shakes it off and just says he's hungry

so he yanks out some lotus pods from the lake and gives one to lwj and one to wn and one for himself

HE'S SMILING NOW, THANK GOD

wwx: it's perfect timing to be here now!

and he's happily tearing into the pod

I LOVE SEEING HIM HAPPY AND SMILING

SUCH LITTLE JOYS AND HE REVELS IN IT

I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

HE SHOULD ALWAYS BE HAPPY AND SMILING. 

NOTHING SHOULD EVER BE ALLOWED TO MAKE HIM SAD. NOTHING

lwj: wei ying

wwx: what

lwj: does this lake belong to someone?

LOL, HE GAVE THE POD A SUSPICIOUS LOOK BEFORE ASKING THAT AND HAS NOT TRIED GETTING ANY SEEDS OUT YET

wwx: of course not

HE SAYS IN A COMPLETELY NOT BELIEVABLE WAY

YOU CAN TELL BY HOW HE DOESN'T LOOK LWJ IN THE EYE AS HE RESPONDED AND KEEPS MUNCHING AWAY ON THE SEEDS AS A DISTRACTION

Lwj is watching like, yeah, i’m not buying it.

lwj: i heard that lakes here all have owners.

lolol wwx pauses in his chewing for a second and looks around guiltily for a bit before letting out a nervous laugh

wwx: hanguang jun, you really hear much, don't you? i didn't even know that.

he's looking at him all innocently and LWJ LOOKS BACK STILL NOT BUYING IT LOLOLOL

wwx looks away and then looks back, relenting

wwx: fine. 

HE'S ALL POUTY, IT'S ADORABLE, I LOVE HIM

he sulkily tells wn to get them moving

and sulkily tosses his lotus pod at the bottom of the boat

HE'S JUST HAVING A SULK-FEST RN AND IT'S SUPER CUTE, I'M ENJOYING IT A LOT

wn starts to get the paddles to get the boat going, when lwj suddenly leans over the side of the boat and snaps up a lotus pod

he very seriously offers it to his wei ying, who is watching him wide-eyed and surprised

lwj: only for today  

bc i just found out about your traumatic golden core transfer for your awful ungrateful little brother and i feel horrible that you suffered alone, he doesn’t say

bc i wish i could have done something to help but i couldn't so now i'm gonna steal you a lotus pod bc that's literally all i can do right now, he also doesn’t say

LOL

THE WAY THE CAMERA CUTS TO WN HERE CRACKS ME UP

WN IS JUST PASSIVELY MUNCHING ON A SEED AND WATCHING THAT EXCHANGE HAPPEN WITH HIS BIG BROWN EYES TAKING IT IN, WITH A VAGUE, "HUH, THAT'S INTERESTING" MANNER

wwx looks at the pod and then back at lwj before taking the pod with a nervous laugh

I am convinced that he had WAR-FLASHBACKS to that time drunk!lwj gave him roosters

He’s probably frantically trying to remember if lwj drank ANY alcohol earlier

TRYING TO CALCULATE THE CHANCES OF SOMEONE SLIPPING SOME ALCOHOL TO LWJ BETWEEN THEIR FIGHT WITH JC TO THIS BOAT ESCAPE LOLOLOLOL

he clutches that pod with both hands and gives lwj a pained smile 

The exact pained smile he had when he accepted the roosters that time

LMAO WWX TURNS TO LOOK AT WN, HIS BROWS ALL FURROWED IN CONFUSION LIKE, WN WHAT THE HECK IS HAPPENING, EXPLAIN WHAT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW

but wn just smiles cheerfully at him

cut to the next moment where we see the boat's floor is now littered with a bunch of lotus pods and wwx is happily munching on seeds, all smiley

BUT OF COURSE I'M NOT ALLOWED TO ENJOY HAPPY PEACEFUL MOMENTS EVER

SO A GLOWY GLITTERY MESSENGER BUTTERFLY APPEARS AND LANDS ON LWJ'S OUTSTRETCHED PALM

I mean, wwx giggled happily there for a moment there!!!!! WHY CAN'T THEY LET ME BASK IN THAT FOR ONE MINUTE, GOD.

anyway, the butterfly

wwx: the paper butterfly messenger from the jin clan?

(side note to say that the butterfly messenger is actually very pretty. i like it a lot)

wwx pats lwj on the knee after the butterfly flies away

wwx: what happened? what did it say?

Lwj’s like, jgy is in yunmeng now and my brother hasn’t responded to my message...

wwx: you worry jgy would harm him when desperate?

bc wwx can tell right away when lwj is worried. BC THEY'RE SOULMATES AND THEY KNOW EACH OTHER SO WELL

And then bc my sunshine boy is a GENIUS, he remembers the deed jgy had hidden away in the secret chamber, for Yunping City in Yunmeng

he excitedly tells lwj that this is where jgy will be

lol he was so excited he tipped himself over a bit and jostled the boat so lwj had to reach out to steady him

we cut to the next scene we see people dying fabrics and our boys wander through 

Wwx confirms with some random worker lady that they’re in the right place and tells lwj they should explore the city as a date for Plot Investigation Reasons

lwj nods in agreement and then wwx turns back to look at the lady and gives her THE SWEETEST SMILE, THE ONE THAT SQUINCHES HIS EYES CLOSED AND MAKES ME SWOON

BUT LOL LWJ SEES HIM SMILE AT THE LADY LIKE THAT AND IT NOT AMUSED BY IT AT ALL

oh god, just the way his eyes flick from wwx to the lady and how his lips firm up before he stalks off in a snit cracks me up

GREEN IS NOT YOUR COLOR, LAN ZHAN, I'M JUST SAYING

LET THE GUY SMILE AT ME, I MEAN AT PEOPLE. IT'S NOT A CRIME

wwx is confused by the reaction but hurries off after him

oh wwx, you dense idiot. you're lucky i love you so

now we see come random guys bully wn for no reason 😞

wwx tells them to back off but they don't listen and lwj very nonchalantly pulls out a talisman from his sleeve and offers it to wwx

wwx looks at the talisman and then back at lwj with SUCH A PLEASED SMILE

OMG I WOULD DO JUST ABOUT ANYTHING FOR HIM TO SMILE AT ME LIKE THAT

wwx: lan zhan, you even kept it until now?

AHHHHHH SO CUTE, I LOVE HIM

lwj doesn't respond but it doesn’t matter bc wwx does that squinchy-eyed smile AGAIN AND I DIE, I DIE

wwx activates the talisman which releases a whole bunch of glittery butterflies that distract the guys and allow wn to escape. 

omg guys, this is the same trick lwj used to distract wen chao and wen zhuliu to escape ages and ages ago WHICH MEANS LWJ HAS BEEN CARRYING A PIECE OF WWX WITH HIM ALL THESE YEARS AHHHHHHHHH

And after that wonderful, touching revelation, the episode ends.

SO, we had lots of depressing Yunmeng Bros Feelings that made me wanna die 

BUT we also at the end here get rewarded with MULTIPLE squinchy-eyed smiles from my most precious darling sunshine boy that made me wanna die but, like, in a good way

I WOULD ENDURE SO MUCH MORE FOR THOSE SMILE, NGL

Return to Masterpost

[zot3-flopped]

I came to an important realization about myself yesterday lol. So I'm sure we can all think of several YT reactors (or just fans in general) who start out by listening to Harry, fall in love with him, and then are eventually coerced into watching 1D or one of the other four's solo stuff by stans spamming their comments 24/7. It's infuriating.

There's a middle-aged man who fell in love with Harry after seeing him slay Sledgehammer on Howard Stern, and he's become a genuine fan of him since then and has been reacting to his new stuff for months. He's made it pretty clear that he had no interest in 1D, so I was hopeful that he wouldn't get sucked into that same trap like everyone else despite the nonstop comments from 1D fans, but his most recent reaction was to a live performance of Drag Me Down and I made the mistake of looking at the comments to see people just straight up LYING about how incredible and successful the other four are and how he's going to fall in love with all of them and how Harry isn't the most talented but just has the most exposure and the others are underrated and blah blah blah.

And I just got so fucking MAD at the thought of him potentially liking any of the others after being introduced to them that way. Like legit wanting to throw my phone across the room mad. And I kind of just had a moment with myself where I was like, okay, why does it make me so angry when that happens? Do I really care if the others are getting listeners/fans via Harry? And I came to the conclusion that no, I really don't. I don't particularly like them but I don't really give a fuck. I don't wish anything negative on any of them and I'm not sitting here hoping for their failure because I hate them personally.

But I hate, and I mean absolutely HATE, that their despicable fucking fans get any satisfaction from it. THEY DO NOT FUCKING DESERVE THE CHARITY THAT HARRY'S NAME AND TALENT DOES FOR THEM. They do NOTHING but spread vicious, defamatory lies about him and STILL get to benefit off of him by bullying people who start out as fans of Harry only into listening to the others or constantly creeping out on Harry's videos to try and recruit people with false statements that put down Harry's talent and hard work. It makes me sick. They treat him so poorly and don't deserve to ever use him for their own gain.

They always want to say Harry would be nothing without 1D, but they should be so fucking grateful that Harry is attached to that band. They can pretend all they want that another member was the reason for its success or that they all equally made it what it is, but to every single non-stan, that's just not true. It was ALWAYS Harry Styles and co (even the reactor I'm referencing had NO idea who the others were during the video. He didn't even realize Zayn had left and thought Liam was Zayn the whole time).

I am 99.9% certain that 1D would not still be attracting new fans if it wasn't for Harry. He's the gateway into it for so many people. Whether they see him on TikTok, hear him on the radio, see his fashion, or read an article about him, it prompts people to look into him more, become fans, and eventually, in the search for more Harry content, they stumble into the stuff he did before he went solo.

It's obvious that the others haven't gained many fans since going solo, but any new fans that happen to find their way there likely came from someone who was a Harry fan first and that just enrages me to no end. Anyway idk why I felt like I had to share that but there you go 😅

Thank you for this epic message. Fully agree that Harry is the main reason for the upsurge in 1d support. I too wish that youtube reactors wouldn't cave to zot3 stans' pressure to comment on the others, but if they do, they should be honest about their abilities instead of saying Louis has an 'unusual voice' or whatever to appease his desperate supporters.

You also make a good point about zot3 stans being in denial about how well they're doing. Sea is an obvious recent example with her post about Zayn and Louis 'doing better than ever'. Where? Nil is far and away Z's worst album, critically and commercially. Louis has all these manic Twitter fans who love to post about him being gay and closeted, but they're all 'what's Spotify' when it comes to streaming.

All four of zot3 have a very small US career now and last charted in the top 60 there in 2017. That isn't going to change, even with a good song like NTMY or KMM. The interest just isn't there anymore.

[makeste]

BnHA 235: How Do I Turn This Flashback Off

Previously on BnHA: Re-Destro plucked off three of Tomura’s left fingers like flower petals and also destroyed one of his Emotional Support Hands in the process, prompting Tomura to have more flashbacks. We learned that AFO specifically gave Tomura the hands so that Tomura would never get over the trauma of the whole experience (like, he even told him this directly, wtf). We then got more flashbacks of Hana, as well as new flashbacks of Tomura’s mother and grandparents. Our boy then started to use his quirk on RD with only two fingers, which prompted RD to be all “wha?!” and let him go and finally realize that Tomura was going through a good old-fashioned shounen awakening process. Not wanting to be on the wrong end of this, he powered up himself and tried to finish Tomura off. But as he tried (and failed) to deliver a final blow, Gigantomachia finally came storming into town. At the same time, Tomura finally remembered everything (!!!) and got this really sad look on his face, and holy shit you guys the hype for this next chapter is real.

Today on BnHA: The tragic story of the Shimura family is finally revealed in all of its inevitably doomed glory. This chapter deserves an introduction from Lemony Snicket. This is not a fun time you guys. Baby Tenko was pure and idealistic and wanted nothing more than to be a hero just like All Might (and hey thanks Horikoshi, that was a nice heart I had once before you ripped it out and stabbed it 27 times here), and his father was a bitter and broken man harboring unresolved abandonment issues which he needlessly took out on his own children because humans are flawed and sometimes terrible. And we all know how the story ends, so if you happen to not have the stomach to watch terrified little boys being beaten by their parents, or cute little dogs getting hugged and then crumbled to dust offscreen, or if you don’t feel like getting faked out by Horikoshi half a dozen times because he’s a fucking troll who knows full well what he’s doing, might I suggest putting this chapter down and taking a stroll on over to the theater next door? It’s not too late to see a film about a happy little elf.

(All comments are my unspoiled reactions from my initial readthrough of the chapter. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity immediately afterward, and added one or two ETAs in the process, but aside from that there are no changes.)

  YESSSSSSSSS

YOU GUYS, I HAVEN’T EVEN FUCKING CLICKED TO THE CHAPTER YET AND MY HYPE HAS ALREADY ASCENDED TO NEW UNPRECEDENTED HEIGHTS. DID I NOT SAY??

AND LO AND BEHOLD, MY GD MIND IS BEING LOST AS WE SPEAK OMG

anyways so yeah I fucking called this back in chapter 222, along with a zillion other people I’m sure. but still, feels good

and this officially makes Tenko the fourth character to receive an “origin” chapter now, after Deku (chapter 01), Shouto (chapter 39), and Katsuki (chapter 62). so that’s actually a pretty big deal! this whole thing just makes me really happy because I love seeing such a carefully planned character arc come together, and it’s so pleasing and gratifying to see the pieces falling into place exactly as they should. it’s like watching one of those “oddly satisfying” youtube compilations. this is the manga equivalent of this. god I can’t wait to watch it play out

anyway so here’s the color spread we were promised last week! awesome

look at all of these characters we haven’t seen in a couple months. it’s a testament to how thoroughly entertaining this arc has been that I haven’t missed class 1-A nearly as much as I would have expected. which isn’t to say I don’t miss them dearly! but it’s just, normally I’d be practically going through withdrawals if you took my favorite characters away for such a long time. and I mean, we cut away right when Kacchan and Shouto had finally gotten their hero licenses, and Deku was going through “AFO’S POWER!?!?” angst, and so forth! and then we just left them for almost half a fucking year! that’s insane!!

but like, the shocking thing to me is that I genuinely have been pretty cool with it. that’s how compelling this arc has been to me. it’s nothing at all like the Basement Arc where I was all but ready to start slapping posters of Bakugou’s face on the walls asking “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD?” like, I am sincerely shocked to tell you the truth. this arc could go on for another month or two and I probably wouldn’t mind, so long as the quality remained this high. and that’s the biggest compliment to Horikoshi that I can think of. good fucking job dude

that being said, I don’t think this arc will continue much longer, and it is awesome to see the 1-A kids again all the same, so let’s just take in this page real quick before finally getting on to the Tragic Tenko Memories action

I like how Bakugou and Deku have both incorporated elements from their hero costumes into their orange ensembles for no real reason. but they are literally the only two characters who have done this, so I feel it’s worth pointing out

speaking of things that are there for no real reason, Bakugou also has a string tied around his ankle just completely at random. someone want to tell me what’s up with this? should I start inspecting the other characters’ ankles to see if there is a matching one

Mineta looks super cute, there I said it. I’m sorry but it’s true. let’s just cut him out of the rest of the manga moving forward and only have him randomly hovering in the background every so often. Mineta you can’t fly so what are you even doing dude

All Might is just completely defying gravity. just standing on absolutely nothing at all at a 45-degree lean. everyone else who’s mid-air is at least in the process of jumping or landing. but not All Might, no ma’am. he just doesn’t give a fuck

I see you there Inasa. up there spreading joy. and lest you guys believe Seiji and Camie were left out, let me assure you they were not and they are actually chilling over on a bridge just below Bakugou’s mystery bracelet. so that’s nice and also I still ship them yep

Miruko is here which gives me hope we’ll be seeing more of her soon! yes please Horikoshi do this for me

Hawks has no right to look so bored when he so recently texted Dabi a picture of a backpack sitting on his front porch with the caption “your package from Amazon has been delivered.” you are the reason Best Jeanist isn’t in this cover spread, Hawks, so what do you have to say for yourself

Todoroki has the fondest fucking expression on his face, and if you follow his gaze I swear to god it’s landing on Bakugou of all fucking people which makes me believe that contrary to everyone’s initial expectations, he is the one who actually has the matching ankle bracelet. that’s right kids, it was TodoBaku all along, we’ve all been played. either that or he’s looking at Tokoyami. idk guys the whirlwind teenage romance drama continues

anyways I hope everyone is good and cheered by this page, because we’re about to step back into our bleak and violent villain narrative now so say goodbye

okay so the first page is basically just RD thinking about how he’s refined his “stress” ability since childhood and that it can’t be dodged easily, but Tomura still managed to do it

and then we’re cutting to Tomura’s face which has the same sort of weary shell-shocked expression we ended the last chapter on, and ffff you guys I’m not ready but here we go anyway I guess

hooooooly shit

that is some good dramatic imagery. can’t wait to see Viz’s version when it comes out; that last panel definitely deserves to be seen in its fully restored glory

but anyway, so! that’s the Papa Hand! he just took it out of his pocket! and now he’s just holding it and staring at it! SHIT’S ABOUT TO GET REAL HERE YOU GUYS. THE SHIT IS ABOUT TO BUST THROUGH THE WALL AND WATASHI GA KITA THIS BITCH

why does he look so happy oh god :’D this is about to fuck me up isn’t it

so he remembered all the details of the Shimura Massacre and now he’s thinking that he really is just a vicious killing machine? is that what it is? oh god Horikoshi just show us already I can’t take it

but first we’re cutting to Re-Destro posing villainously and looking for all the world like that demon from the “Night on Bald Mountain” segment in Fantasia. I don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but the art for RD these last couple chapters has been giving me a strong old-school Disney animation vibe. they came up with some scary stuff back in the day

Horikoshi really got us rooting for the guy who’s arguing for the destruction of the world. smdh. like I said, we’re being played

OH NO OH SHIT HERE WE GO

okay, without knowing anything at all about the context of this scene, I immediately suspect that this shadowy man tipping his hat toward Tenko and Mama Shimura might be All for One up to his bullshit but let’s see

(ETA: this is probably Mikkun and/or Tomo-chan’s dad actually. but I’m still watching you, mister.)

oh shit oh shit oh shit you guys aahhsdfhshah

SHIMURA KOTARO. THERE HE IS, AT LONG LAST. NANA’S SON OMGGGGG

HE LOOKS SO MUCH LIKE HER AND YET HE’S SO STERN AND UNFRIENDLY. WHERE IS THE TRADEMARK SHIMURA SMILE, OH GOD I’M NOT READY FOR THIS ANGST

let me guess, it was a “in this house we don’t speak the H-word” rule. with the four-letter h-word in this case not being what you might typically expect

also! black hair! so that’s also confirmed! so I guess it changed color due to his trauma? oh god

and you can see he’s got the little scratches which were hinted at in the previous chapter, but they’re not nearly as bad yet. I have to assume that habit got much worse also due to the trauma. oh god. again

I haven’t watched that new HBO show about Chernobyl yet, but I feel like this is kind of what it must be like? knowing full well that Very Bad Things are about to go down but not being able to do anything and having to just watch as it all plays out. shit

anyways yep. no h-word allowed

so he was five! one whole year older than I thought omg. my mistake

in other news guys, I’m currently researching how to build a machine that will let me enter a fictional two-dimensional world and then travel back in time in that world to rescue and adopt a small child who needs lots of hugs omfg anyway so if anyone wants to help me out I think it’s a worthwhile endeavor

...why did I laugh omg. Tenko why is your dad the most dramatic bitch

(ETA: in all seriousness I think we should investigate the possibility of the Shimuras being distantly related to the Todorokis.)

HIS ALLERGIES ARE ACTING UP DAD HAVE A FUCKING HEART

anyways it’s all good because Hana will go visit him and they’ll sneak into dad’s office and she’ll show him the picture of their grandma to cheer him up. and then I’m sure eventually his dad will see reason and they’ll sort out their issues and they’ll all live happily ever after. la la la

so now Grandma is suggesting that Kotaro has maybe been a little too harsh on Tenko lately. yes Grandma make him see reason please

also I’m really curious as to whether or not Grandma is Kotaro’s adopted mom, or Tenko’s maternal grandma. if she is the adopted mom I love her even more and that makes me even sadder about their deaths, because they took in this boy whose mother basically abandoned him and then later DIED HORRIBLY, and they did their best to raise him with love, only for AFO to come along and eventually murder the lot of them which is so fucked up I can’t even. they deserved better

Kotaro has such a jaded look in his eyes here that it’s hard for me to be mad at him at all even though he’s being a jerk dad

he’s had a really rough life. yes he’s being a jerk but he thinks he’s doing what’s best for his children though. fml why is this shit so complicated

okay this next page is kind of conflicting on the are-they-or-aren’t-they-his-adopted-parents thing sob

like on the one hand, he literally calls them mom and dad. but then two panels down Tomura says they’re his parents-in-law. so what is the truth. maybe it’s not him talking to them in that first panel? or maybe he’s just really tight with his in-laws idk

anyway so now we’re cutting to Tenko and his mom, and this is the sweetest thing ever and why are you doing this to me Horikoshi!?

FFFF OKAY BUT!!

BABY TENKO’S LIL TRAIN SET OMG SO CUTE. AND IS THAT A PLATE OF ONIGIRI ON THE TABLE. TENKO YOU MADE A MESS AND YOU DIDN’T EVEN FINISH IT, SUCH A TYPICAL FIVE-YEAR-OLD OMG

THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT KIND OF ALLERGY IT IS?? AND IT ONLY ACTS UP WHEN HE’S AT HOME. THIS IS SUSPICIOUS AS FUCK. WHAT KIND OF FOUL PLAY IS GOING ON. OR IS IT JUST STRESS?

MOM SECRETLY SUPPORTS HIS DREAM TO BE A HERO AND HE’S OPEN WITH HER ABOUT IT I CAN’T

MIKKUN AND TOMO-CHAN! OH MY GOD DID YOU GET INTO A FIGHT TO DEFEND YOUR FRIENDS AND THAT’S WHY YOU GOT INTO TROUBLE I FUCKING CAN’T HE WAS SUCH A GOOD BOY. HE REMINDS ME SO MUCH OF DEKU HERE HOLY SHIT

(ETA: they even look alike.)

cuuuuuuuuuuuute

OH MY GOD

SHIMURA TENKO WAS AN ALL MIGHT FAN CONFIRMED OMFG?!

you guys. that is a lot of emotions that just hit me all at once holy shit. where do I even begin

first of all this continues the pattern of “origin” chapters showing how the characters in question admired All Might when they were growing up. we’re 4 for 4 as of now. I love this

second, it just hit me like bam to learn that Tenko felt drawn to All Might, knowing how they’re actually connected. All Might doesn’t even know (yet) that Nana had a grandson, and Tenko has no idea that his childhood hero is actually his grandmother’s protege. and yet he still winds up admiring him even without that knowledge. pow right in the feels

and lastly, I wouldn’t have thought this whole situation could get any more fucked up, and yet Horikoshi still managed it! Tenko goes from looking up to All Might and wanting to be like him, to hating him and wanting nothing more than to hurt and destroy him. fucking ouch you guys. god but that one hurts

oh and also you better believe I immediately went to the wiki to see if there were any characters around Tomura’s age whose first names might believably be condensed to Mikkun or Tomo-chan. specifically, I went to Miruko first because I wasn’t sure if she was one of those characters whose hero name was similar to her actual name! but sadly her actual name is Rumi. so much for my “Miruko and Tomura were childhood friends” theory which lasted for all of two seconds but was a wild ride while it did

you guys baby Tenko has the chubbiest little boy legs lmao I love him so much oh god. and also on a more serious note this makes presentday!Tomura’s almost emaciated appearance all the more jarring. tack on yet another reason to hate AFO to the list. it’s getting to be a really long list

the parallels between him and Deku are off the fucking charts you guys. this is getting ridiculous. god I’m so weak for this kind of storytelling dfsldkjfk

don’t think I didn’t notice the enormous rack you went and gave Tenko’s mom, Horikoshi. but you know what I’m going to allow it because this is just so fucking good and also because for once he’s being pretty subtle about it all things considered

adult!Tomura’s narration is shockingly insightful here

like, he’s so in touch with his five-year-old emotions, and also his understanding of how this all affected him in hindsight. that’s a lot of self-awareness for a guy who only just remembered all of this like thirty seconds ago

doesn’t Tomura have like a 5/5 on the intelligence score according to the character book? for a longest time I was really skeptical about that, but the more I see of him in this arc the more I see that it’s not just talk

oh my goddddddddd

LOOK AT HIS FACE OH MY GOD. he’s fucking entranced. you can tell he’s instantly captivated by her

HORIKOSHI NO, WHY

GODFUCKINGDAMMIT I DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS YOU BASTARD

son of a bitch. well now I’m more subscribed than ever to the theory of Hana also surviving and being taken in by AFO in secret. she can’t be dead! she wanted to be a hero just like him! brother and sister heroes! Horikoshi I s2g if you really did kill her off I’m going to kick your ass. this is the exact spot where I’m drawing the line. this is how much angst you are allowed to have. right up to here and that’s it. the rest of the family can be dead, whatever, it’s sad and it’s fucked up, but don’t you dare touch Hana or I will...!!

and they promised. they made a brother-sister promise about what they were going to be when they grew up! and Tomura only just now remembered it! lord help me this boy is going to need all the therapy after this

OH NO

THAT DAY oh my god this is it strap yourselves in kids, we’re about to luge down this icy hill of Dead Family Feels and I don’t know how to fucking luge you guys

he’s so fucking happy. I’m so fucking stressed rn

oh GOD

TENKO DON’T MOVE!! DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING! OH GOD. HOW DO I TURN THIS FLASHBACK OFF THAT’S IT WE GOOD I’VE SEEN ENOUGH!!

LDSKFHHHH

KOTARO NO GO AWAY, EVEN IF YOU’VE BEEN A JERK DAD YOU DON’T DESERVE THIS AND TENKO DOESN’T DESERVE THIS, AND GOD, ALL FOR ONE CAN FUCKING BURN IN HELL, THIS IS SO FUCKED UP

AHHHHHH

OH GREAT THE WHOLE FUCKING FAMILY IS RIGHT THERE! JUST FUCKING PERFECT. THIS IS ALL GOING TO END SO FUCKING WELL I CAN’T

OH SHIT

KOTARO YOU’RE SUDDENLY CANCELLED YOU FUCKING DICK, BUT YOU STILL DIDN’T DESERVE TO DIE, BUT HOLY SHIT YOU SUCK!!! I DIDN’T ACTUALLY THINK YOU’D REALLY GO THROUGH WITH IT BUT I GUESS I WAS GIVING YOU TOO MUCH CREDIT YOU RAT BASTARD

I’M GLAD MAMA SHIMURA IS YELLING AT HIM NOW BUT I ALSO HAVE A TERRIBLE FEELING THAT HER RUNNING TO INTERVENE IS GOING TO SPARK A CHAIN REACTION, GIVEN WHAT’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN OH GOD

(ETA: or maybe I gave her too much credit. turns out there was no intervening to speak of.)

anyway so now Kotaro is yelling “that’s not your grandma!”, and I can’t decide if this is anger or something else on his face in this moment, which unbeknownst to him is one of the final moments of his life hahaha sob somebody help me how do I stop this ride

also Mon-chan keeps barking and I know that’s going to end really badly in just a moment as well ugh. it’s like those final few seconds after a grenade rolls into a room and everyone sees that the pin is missing and they know what’s about to happen but they can’t do anything to stop it. we’re all gonna die folks

oh no it actually was Something Else on his face oh fuck me

I’m fucking furious at Horikoshi right now for pulling this shit again and giving this scene so much complexity. there’s so much going on here that we’re never even going to get the chance to unpack because it’s all about to go to shit. and Kotaro is an absolute bastard, but he’s also a man who’s still reeling from the pain of being abandoned by his own mother and never came to terms with that. and yet that absolutely does not make this okay in the slightest, at all, and it’s abundantly clear that he is still very much the bad guy here and that what he’s doing is unforgivable. I just really like that he went and gave him this much depth despite him playing such a despicable role here. god BnHA is so good

anyway back to being devastated

HE LOOKS SO FUCKING TERRIFIED AND I’M SO MAD ABOUT EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW HE DIDN’T DESERVE THIS!!!

MOTHERFUCKER HERE IT COMES

[takes a deep breath and clicks to the next page!!]

hey what the

not the panel I was expecting with Tenko reaching out defensively and touching his father and accidentally turning him to ash while the rest of the family shrieks in fear and shock, but okay. I can’t say I was exactly looking forward to seeing that so I’ll take it!

oh Horikoshi. you see, this is exactly the type of shit I’m talking about

okay Kotaro, I can feel sorry for you in this moment and sympathize with the child-you who did not deserve that at all, and also feel yet more rage toward AFO for utterly destroying this family. but that doesn’t mean I don’t absolutely hate you at the same time for what you did to your son. it’s just like that. you had reasons but you’re still a dick. just BnHA character things

Horikoshi why oh my god

RIP SHIMURA FAMILY YOU DESERVED BETTER AND YOU WILL BE AVENGED!!

and yet all the same that does not make it right for you to take out your pain and frustration on your helpless five-year-old son! YOU FUCKED UP KOTARO. but this next page is still going to hurt oh god

[takes another deep breath!!]

oh okay we’re still drawing it out

-- holy shit, wait a sec. is this all taking place after? wait a fucking second

okay you guys holy shit, I just went back to the “house my father built” page and it is very clearly segueing into another flashback. like, in hindsight it’s obvious, but these aren’t actually Tenko’s memories any more. I think what happened was that Kotaro actually did hit Tenko another couple of times and then that was it, and then it cut back to this scene here which is actually taking place after that incident

which means Tenko’s memories were indeed tampered with then if my hunch is right!! let’s read on, but I’m pretty sure AFO is about to come along and murder the shit out of these folks, holy shit is this really happening?!

okay so Mama Shimura is telling Kotaro that she’s done following his rules

like, I’m glad she’s standing up for her children but I really wish she’d rip him a new one much more severely than this though

though he does seem genuinely regretful. but that’s hardly helpful now?? girl just take the kids and leave

oh no we’re cutting back to Tenko and he’s hugging Mon-chan out in the backyard and it’s nighttime now noooooooo

all right, for the third fucking time I’m going to take a deep fucking breath and turn the page holy shit you guys this chapter is taking years off my life

ffff ffff ffffffff

(((╹д╹;)))

(⁽⁽ ⁰ ⁾⁾ Д ⁽⁽ ⁰ ⁾⁾;;;)

(φ Д φ )

...well shit

parting thoughts:

I’m okay with this being the only bit they show and not getting any more detail. please for once don’t give us any more detail, Horikoshi, holy fuck

though if we don’t actually see anything, part of me is still going to suspect AFO of directly interfering right up until the end of the series. the whole thing just comes together too perfectly for him. there’s no fucking way

I still 100% believe he gave Tenko the quirk, too. especially now that we know he was quirkless until age five. we’ve previously established that if a child hasn’t evolved a quirk by that age it almost always means they’re quirkless for life. Horikoshi thinks he’s smooth trying to play it off like Tenko was a tragic late bloomer but WE KNOW THE TRUTH. I will go down with this theory damn it

I would say this is easily the single most fucked up thing we have seen in this series up to this point, but I see Horikoshi eyeing the upcoming Noumu plotline and the tragic tale of Tsubasa and his fucked up mad scientist grandpa and looking for somebody to hold his beer, so. I’ll just keep my mouth shut, I think

anyways this chapter was amazing and terrifying and I can’t wait to see how Tomura’s story moves forward from here. happy 5th anniversary of BnHA, y’all

[fae-fucker]

Zenith: Chapter 52-55

Chapter 52

Valen interrogates Andi about his father’s decision to make her his rescuer, and instead of going “take that up with your dad because I don’t know his reasons for doing this,” Andi tries to be all apologetic about all the Kalee stuff and saying how she’s changed and Valen’s like nu-uh!

“It was a mistake,” Andi said again. “If I could take it back—”

Valen gritted his teeth. “Murder isn’t a mistake.”

Have I finally gone off the deep end or is this fucking funny?

“If I recall, you were the one who allowed your little sister and her friend to sneak out for a joyride on your father’s brand-new transport,” Andi replied. Her words were soft and casual, but her eyes were on fire.

“Spectre,” Valen said. “Spectre first, and always. You failed her as that.”

“Again,” Andi said, “it was a mistake. I’ve had to live with the cost of it.”

“Kalee didn’t!” Valen screamed. “She didn’t get to live, Androma!”

It’s honestly impressive that whenever I go into a chapter that’s relatively short and think it’s gonna be fine and I’ll just skim over it, Shinsay proves me wrong by including more bullshit that I just have to talk about. But hey, part of the reason I have this blog is so that people know what not to do and examining why certain things just don’t work, with the added bonus of having the context for it.

It’s also impressive how two women somehow keep making the wrong choice for the same one book, over and over and over. Every narrative choice in this book is wrong.

So, what’s wrong with this particular bit? Remember when Dex and Andi were having their stupid argument and Dex, right after trying to apologize for what he did and explain himself, turned around and started blaming Androma for it instead? Here it’s even more jarring, because Andi genuinely believes she was to blame for Kalee’s death and genuinely wants to atone (or she claims to want that, at least). So when she, out of nowhere, starts trying to defend herself and shift the blame onto Valen? That shit don’t make no sense, y’all.

I think this is a result of the book having too many pointless POVs. We’re in Valen’s right now, so obviously he needs emotional triggers to react to and start monologuing over. He needs to be provoked and damn logic and character consistency, he’s gonna get provoked! Andi’s words make no sense and will not be examined closer once we’re back in her POV, she just said this OOC shit for the sake of drama, yet given everyone’s awful characterization, even small things like these serve only to undermine the characters and their motivations even further.

Shinsay don’t understand that sometimes, no arguments is far more impactful than a dramatic verbal battle of cheap witticisms. Instead of this, Andi could’ve just sat there, quietly, letting Valen dunk on her because she feels she deserves it. Hell, this entire conversation could’ve been saved if only Andi’s blame-shifting line had been given to someone else! I didn’t even read it as her saying it at first and had to double-check and that’s when it fell apart to me.

God, I could go on like this forever. Feel free to send me asks if you want me to elaborate on dialogue and characterization, I guess? Let’s just move on.

The others try to figure out how Valen was taken and what happened when he was, asking him if he knows anything about Queen Nor, at which point Rage Unlocks Within Him, and he gets up and leaves.

I also want to mention that Valen talks about “things being tense after Kalee was gone,” but Kalee’s been dead for four years, while Valen was taken two years ago. Sooo uh ... huh? He makes it sound like it was two months after and not two years. He could’ve said things “changed” after her death and it would’ve sounded better. Idk just a preference I guess.

Also ... I just realized Valen’s been missing and tortured for two years. How he still talks normally is ... pretty bonkers, to say the least.

Chapter 53

Andi goes out to find Valen but finds Lon instead, his blue tiddies out.

Lon leads Andi to where Valen is, all while dropping hints that Lira has something to say to Andi and that Andi shouldn’t try to influence her decision. To her credit, Andi says she won’t, and that she loves Lira as her sister.

Andi and Valen sit around in nature for a bit and talk about Valen’s art. I don’t hate it?

“When I was locked up, I almost forgot what colors looked like,” [Valen] said, lazily brushing the stick back and forth against the mud. “Did you know that black is more than just a single shade?”

Anish Kapoor would like to know your location.

Valen says he can’t forgive Andi for what she did, but he can also not forgive himself for being part of those choices(????). Andi speculates that her accusation earlier must’ve struck him deep, but that’s all we get on that, no explanation as to why she accused him at all.

“In Lunamere, I had nothing to keep me company but my pain and my thoughts. I had lots of time to think about that night, and everything leading up to it. Time to realize that we were raised in a society where perfection is the only option. But that doesn’t mean it’s always possible. We all made bad choices that night, not just you. She got on that transport herself. And I chose to stay behind.”

Andi wanted to speak, but she feared it would shatter this strange, heart-wrenching moment they had somehow found themselves in.

Thanks for telling me it’s heart-wrenching, lest my idiot self got lost in all this emotion and forgot to realize what was happening.

Christ, even when Shinsay have a decent dramatic and emotional moment going, they just can’t keep their grubby little hands to themselves, huh? I know it’s your book but can you shut the fuck up for a moment and just let the prose stand on its own?

God, if only there had been an editor.

Both Andi and Valen admit they wish they’d died with Kalee and in any other more competent book this would’ve been quite touching.

“Without Kalee...” Andi began, finally voicing the realization she’d come to terms with these past few days. “Without Kalee, there wouldn’t have been a sentence for me to run from. And without that running, I never would have found Dex. And without him...”

“You wouldn’t be the Bloody Baroness,” Valen finished for her. “My father would not have hired you.”

It was a vicious cycle, one that Andi wished she could have undone before it had ever started. But it was her story. Her life.

Her life is a series of reactions to things outside of her control? Love that for a protagonist.

Listen, I know it’s supposed to be sad and stuff, but even Andi’s backstory reinforces her reactionary personality and the way the plot is driven by things completely outside of her control. It’s hard to feel invested in a character when they never make choices and instead only react to whatever happens to them.

Anyway, Valen and Andi seem to have gotten over their differences and go to the festival together. That was easy. I guess it’s to throw us off the scent and make it more surprising when he suddenly turns out to be evil? I’m honestly not sure. It’s pretty bad either way, but I don’t have to tell you that.

Chapter 54

We’re with Lira again and she’s staring off into the distance thinking about the festival. Lon appears again, tiddies still out, but now his muscles and “sculpted” chest feels kind of weird to comment on since we’re in Lira’s head? Whatever, maybe Adhirans are weird like that.

Lon says some cutesy shit about how technically Lira is this planet’s princess but she doesn’t reply or even think about how that would make him the prince? He just says he’s her brother and has to guard her. Maybe Adhirans also don’t let men have political power because that’s what Shinsay think feminism is.

Anyway, they join the other girls and head to the festival while Lira mopes about her decision and how she can’t have two families. Except you can. But whatever. Logic isn’t dramatic enough, I suppose.

“It’s time to let loose,” Breck said. “Lir, you look like you’ve just puked up a pound of Moon Chew.”

“Lira doesn’t puke,” Gilly said.

“That’s ridiculous. Everyone pukes,” Breck added.

“I’ve never seen her do it. And I spy on her, like, all the time.” 

Lon chuckled beside Lira. “I see it,” he whispered. “What draws you to this crew.”

I don’t.

Also they’re in the same close space it seems, so I have no idea how they 1) don’t bother to ask Lira what’s going on and 2) don’t notice Lon being all whispery and shit. Convenient!

Gonna gloss over the spying bit as well, I see. Hey, they do have those eye implants that you don’t need consent to activate. Maybe Gilly’s been using it to perv on the rest of the crew.

Lira decides ... not to decide, and just fuckin party down for tonight. I guess in this universe it means she’s gonna get blackout wasted, because That’s What Adults Do. I should also mention that she decides not to decide and then never has to decide anyway because the plot intervenes and the choice is made for her. Love that for a character.

*sigh*

Chapter 55

We’re in Dex’s POV and we get some decent descriptions of how cool the festival is with more incidental aliens and traditions. Dex spots the crew and thinks about how they’re his crew now and realizes he’s bonded with them. I’m glad this is spelled out because I would not have noticed it myself, and frankly I both do and don’t mean it this time.

They’ve only been together for a couple of days, tops. I guess extreme situations make people bond faster but I really feel like we’re jumping the shark here. At the same time I can tell that Dex clearly fits into the crew pretty well, and this just feels forced and redundant. All in all, this comment is just unnecessary. Let the characters evolve and grow closer naturally, Shinsay. You don’t need to convince us they’re a crew, you can just show us and we’ll believe it!

Dex spots Valen and Andi and of course we get a horny description of how cool and sexy Andi is and how impressed Dex is that she and Valen are already friends. Then he decides to get drunk and eat some meat.

Frankly? Relatable. Chapter? Pointless.

[for-bucks-sake]

Underwater.

Pairing: Stucky x Reader Word Count: 4.5K. I know, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Warnings: Angst, Endgame Spoilers, general sadness? Characters death. That’s it probably. Summary: For the past five years, Y/n has been holding her breath.  A/N: Idk man, I want to thank everyone who read Missing Is a Recurring Theme. I was overwhelmed by the comments so just,,thank you! Currently working on part two (get ready for fluff!) But for now, this was requested by the lovely @fandomnerdxox. Hope you love angst, because that’s what this fic is all about. Hope you like it! 

Her lungs were filled with dust. She could tell. Unable to expend them enough to take a breath, ribcage staying painfully small. “Bucky?” She called, maybe yelled. Nothing was clear anymore. Not even the air.

The fighting stopped all at once, there was a shift in the atmosphere, like the universe itself sensed something has gone terribly wrong. She stopped running when a Wakandan soldier reached for her, hurt, looking distressed as he tried to come closer, his back bent.

She swallowed, the urged to find her partners almost overpowering her instincts to help the man. She took his hand nevertheless, holding it tight in hers and pulling him up. She glanced to the sides, forever searching with her eyes familiar figures, when she felt the man slipping from her touch; “Are you oka-“ y/n looked back just in time to witness him disintegrating in front of her eyes, warm human flash crumbling in her grip, nothing left but dirt.  

She gasped, nearly falling back. Her eyes widened in panic as she finally started to notice more and more people dissolving into thin air.

Y/n ran. “Steve!” Knowing it’s too late. But she ran. “Bucky!” The field was too big to cover on foot. But she ran.

There was a long leg clothed in navy blue uniforms, scattering into invisible particles. Wind spreading them all over two silver, Vibrenium made shields, That’s when she stopped.

“No.” She choked, vision clouded, not even registering the chaos she walked right into.

A single, large, sniper rifle abandoned on the grass, inches away from where the leg was no longer. “No.”

It can’t be. It can’t. Not them, it can’t be them.

She collapsed to the ground, the weight of her injuries finally hitting her fully;

“I can’t breathe.” She panted, holding her sore throat desperately, starving for oxygen,“I can’t breathe.”

-

Loneliness is a funny thing. You could be lonely for years, decades, even. And never once notice it. You could live content with what you have, not even wondering about what you might miss. That’s when life tricks you. It lures you into tasting it, like a pinch of salt you bake inside a cake, bringing the sweetness out. Life places it on your tongue, melting it away into your bloodstream, changing you forever so you will never be the same. And then, they wait.

Wait in the shadows, until they think you’re too used to it, until they decide you don’t deserve it anymore. So they take it. Snatch it from between your fingers with brutal force, leaving you alone, bare, unworthy.

Funny may not be the accurate word, no. But all the other words she thought of to describe her situation were too tragic. So she sticks with funny.

-

Nat asked her to move back to compound today.

Y/n said no, of course. Not even remotely considering this as an option, furious at Natasha that she did. It got heated quickly, on her part, mostly.

She was alone all her life. Both of them were before the universe was vicious enough to give a meager taste to the starved.  She thought maybe Nat, could understand.

Y/n didn’t want to move in. Waking up to the sound of Natasha trying to save a world that already lost. Listening to her secretly wiping about what Clint has become. She didn’t want to do that. Y/n had enough shit to deal with on her own.

She finally reached her front door, fumbling with her keys, groaning as the jingling continued because she couldn’t find the right one, hands still shaking from anger.

“Did you know how quickly smell fades away?” Nat’s hair was longer, red color vibrant than ever. It suited her.

“I’m sorry?” Confusion replaced Natasha’s fading smile,

“Smell.” Y/n stressed, “of people, I mean. When they’re not here to renew it, it just disappears. Dissolves into the air, like it was never there.” She refused to sit, not once stopping to chip on her nails.

“Are you okay? Y/n, I’m starting to w-“

“Especially with clothes.” She frowned, burring her hands inside the pocket of her oversized leather jacket, changing her mind right after, bringing right hand fingers to her lips instead,  “you know, I tried keeping their clothes in the closet, I thought maybe, it will help preserve the smell. But it was all bullshit. Turns out I just missed about a year of their scents. When I opened it, it was barely there.”

Natasha remained silent, too alarmed to speak. Y/n accepted it as an invitation to continue her ramble.

“I was so angry, you won’t believe.” She laughed bitterly, “At myself of course, like, I could’ve googled it or something, but I didn’t. So I don’t have much to go with now.” Y/n continued, either going through an aneurism, a fit, or finally losing her mind all together, doing so hysterically right in front of Nat.

Natasha left her chair, walking towards y/n as carefully as she would approach a wounded predator.

“Listen to me, it’s going to be fine.” She cringed at her own words, feeling terrible at making people feel better. Steve was great at it, he always knew what to say and when to say it. Surly if he returned to give an advice, it would’ve calmed down his grieving girlfriend.

Natasha was relieved to be her only audience, if anyone else was seeing her state she would get a fast pass to a psych ward. Nat knew she wasn’t crazy, just…hurting.

“Yeah. yeah,” y/n dismissed her, swinging her hand, “anyway, that’s my way of telling you I can’t move here.” She finally sat down, leaving Natasha facing the wall. She turned around.

“Why not?” She said carefully, crossing her arms, “the thought of you all alone is- .”

“I don’t mind being alone.” Y/n cut sharply the kind words directed to her,

“do you?”

She finally managed to find the right one, shoving the key to its lock and twisting. She pushed the door with her shoulder, dropping her small bag to the floor.

Five years had gone and she still wasn’t used to the unnatural silence.

The blinds were shut, the air didn’t move, and for a second she could believe that time actually stopped.

Y/n inhaled deeply, standing still in the middle of the room, not daring to make a sound - maybe time did stop. She jumped when a car honked outside. A loud, ear cutting sound that tore her ruthlessly from her bubble.

She blinked, as if waking up from a deep slumber, realizing her precious reality was nothing but a dream.

That’s how she felt everyday, if she was being honest. Sometimes their touch felt more like a delusion than a memory. Sometimes, metal hand and starred chest turning into dust were just a horrifying nightmare. Sometimes, two purple, ugly fingers snap themselves together was just a fucked up hallucination. Sometimes, the existence of two, perfect men, reciprocating the strong, burning love she felt was just too hard to believe.

Nothing was real anymore.

Y/n walked into the bedroom, grabbing the white bottle of aspirin from her bedside table and swallowing down two. It was an exhausting day.

Her head met the sagging pillow with a soft thud, unlike most days, sleep came quickly, and with a flutter of her eyelashes, she was already gone.

He was so handsome with that beard. It was really impacting her ability to focus.

“Hi, ms. Astronaut!” Steve called her, golden fragments of light dancing in his eyes, “your pretty dreamy looks won’t help you on the battlefield.”

“Really? So you’re just that good at punching people?” She smirked, adjusting the straps of her sports bra, “no staring at your enemies with those baby blues until they beg for mercy?”

He caught her off guard, using her shoulder to hoist himself up and tackle her ankles from the back. She hit the soft padding embarrassingly easily, Steve not even giving her the time to react.

He offered a strong hand, swinging her off the ground like she weighs nothing when she took it. He smiled at her, eyes a brilliant cerulean- “ready to beg for mercy yet?”

Y/n huffed and hit his shoulder, “not a chance.” She paused, tightening her ponytail, returning to starting position, “now explain to me how to block it.”

Suddenly, her scenario dusted away in a disgusting black ash, swirling around her body, ruthlessly throwing her into a field.

She started running. She didn’t know where she ran, but it felt like she’s been there before; sounds and smells familiar, recognizing the path to god-knows-where as her legs kept carrying her.

A more clear image started to form, the sky bore lightning but it was warm outside, faceless monsters with sharp teeth and slick skin tried to attack her but only went through. Y/n was starting to realize where she was; it was their last fight against Thanos, and she got another chance.

Running was a part of her by now. Unable to stop or slow down, one mission in mind. Looking for a reflection of the sun on metal, or just the eyes of two bearded men before they disappear for good.

She heard them calling for her, loud and clear, two voices she hasn’t encountered for a long time, yet will never be able to forget.

“Bucky?” She screamed, this time she has to find them, she has to, “Steve? Where are you? Steve, Bucky!”

The tears woke her up, cheeks stained and breaths that were no longer under her control, hasty gasps that choke her up instead of supplying oxygen.

She was so close this time.

Her body shook violently, trembling with fear and drenched in cold sweat. The headache she had when she fell asleep was worse now, an echoing sting compressing her brain every time her heart beat.

It wasn’t just her failed attempt to say goodbye. She dreamed this every other night, and every single time she finds herself inside an unknown territory, not knowing what she needs to do until the very last minute, when she fails miserably, only to awaken to the voices of her loved ones, calling her to come save them.

No, it wasn’t just that. Because this time- this time she had a good dream too.

They used to spar all the time together, it was a good energy outlet and an excuse to spend more time with each other. She had a lot to learn from two super soldiers, and to her surprise, she taught them some moves too.

Y/n remembered that day, Steve and she were having an early morning while Bucky was still soundly sleeping, so they decided not to wake him, leaving an orange sticky note on his metal arm that said, gone to kick steve’s ass, be back by 9:00. love you.

Steve drove them to the compound, crisp breeze hitting her freshly opened eyes as she clutched his firm chest tighter, leaning her body weight on his.

He asked if she was okay, loud noise of the engine and the wind free whistles in her ears, maybe he thought he drove too fast.

She nodded, smiling in reassurance when they bypassed traffic, Steve maniacally dodging cars and driving in between the small spaces vehicles leave. He was crazy. But he managed to bring them to the compound in under twenty minutes, which was a new record.

They entered the gym, Steve’s hand still on her lower back as they stopped walking, taking off their jackets, staying only in training clothes.

“I really like that jacket.” She said, feeling the worn leather of the large brown cloth under her fingertips.

“I know.” He smiled and bit his lips, taking her hand and guiding her to the large ring.

They took their positions, adjusting their stances, “Last night I remembered some old fight moves I didn’t use in a long time.” Steve scratched his beard then stretched his shoulders, “maybe we could start with them?”

She remembers nodding, not registering exactly what he said because she got distracted, thinking about his beard and his eyes and everything else.

It was a good day. Peaceful day. A day she would give anything to experience just once more.

Her eyes were tired, begging for an actual rest as she got up, still in her clothes from yesterday, blindly walking to the kitchen and hitting some buttons on the coffee machine- it was too old now. Needed to be replaced.

Nothing has really changed, since half of the world disappeared, since Steve and Bucky disappeared. She set next to the kitchen table, filling only one of four chairs, like every other day, holding the same bitter, black coffee in the same chipped mug.

Even killing Thanos didn’t mean anything, and she wasn’t even there. Too struck with grief to see the last light behind this monster’s eyes before they darkened forever.

Y/n felt like the world ceased to move, like maybe, in a way, they were caught in a lop, and time did stop.

-

“I’m sorry.” She went to visit Natasha again. Being sad was no excuse to treat her only friend spitefully. She leaned against the lintel, trying to find support, or hide behind it, she didn’t know.

Natasha’s eyes were swollen, eyes still threatening to tear up again any moment.

“It’s okay.” She took a bite from her sandwich, “Clint did it again.”

Y/n thought about yesterday, her own thoughts were so unfair to Nat, who did nothing but help her the past five years, how could she be so selfish, thinking she was the only one in suffering.

“I’m sorry, Nat. I really am.” Y/n approached her, taking the chair that was opposite of her, “did you try looking for him? Clint is a good guy. You know he is. He’s someone who lost everything at once. Something like that gotta mess up with your mind.”

“You’re still here.” Nat said quietly, already regretting it,

Y/n bit the inside of her cheek, reclining against the back of the chair, “If there’s someone in this world that could save him - it’s yo-“

“Hey, Hello, This is Scott Lang. We met a few years ago, at the airport, in Germany, I got really big-“

Both women were startled, slowly getting up from their chairs, looking at the small monitor.

“Is this an old message?” Y/n asked, her eyes burning, she inhaled sharply. Scott Lang is supposed to be missing, he dusted with all the others. And if that really is Scott it means…

-

Scott didn’t disappear because of Thanos’ snap like the others. So it didn’t mean shit. And hope crushed her chest once again, hating herself for letting it invade her thoughts repeatedly, not learning her lesson.

His incoherent ramble about a time machine sure didn’t help. Natasha insisted they would go visit Tony anyway, saying that if he recognized a real chance he would never hesitate to help-

But when she sees Tony with his daughter, her world nearly crumbles for the second time in two days. The odds he would cooperate were now down to zero.

Tony saw them approaching. She watched him letting the kid down, following her with her gaze as she ran all the way to the front door, swallowed by the wooden house.

“I’m happy for you Tony,” y/n heard herself saying, “I really am. But you can help so many people, you can help bring so many people back, and you won’t even…”

“No. I won’t even.” There was a finality in his voice, one that clearly states they are done.

“Steve? You remember Steve? He used to be your friend. Or have you already forgotten him. How easy.” She pierced the air with an ice cold tone , anger consuming her. “You live your happy life, and you got everything. Tony. Everything. What do I got? What do I have?” She heaved, breathless, and he looked like he was going to say something, when his daughter came jumping on his lap, securing her little arms around him in a firm hug, “mom told me to come save you.”

Y/n finally got a good look of the girl. She was sweet looking, a visible brain behind her eyes; And she didn’t know Tony Stark very well, but y/n could tell the kid shared a deep resembles to him. Who wouldn’t do anything for their child? Even if it means letting the other half of the world burn. -

She clearly didn’t know the man at all, because for some reason- Tony Stark came back.

Everything they did seemed to fail, and when Bruce couldn’t figure it out, almost making what’s left of the Avengers babysitters to baby Scott, Tony arrived to the rescue.

“He turned into a baby, didn’t he?” He snarked with a sly grin, revealing a weird looking metal bracelet and a proud attitude that said, I did it.

“Thank you.” Y/n took his hand, squeezing it hard, knowing that as of now, she owes this man her life. “Thank you so much.”

He offered a knowing smile, grief shifting his features, “I know what it’s like to lose someone.” - “See you in a minute.” She heard Nat, giddy with excitement, before all of them were pulled into a colorful vortex, a hurricane rearranging her guts, staying with her even when they landed in an unfamiliar ally in New York.

“Are we in the right place?” She asked Tony and Bruce, changing her white and red, Quantum traveling suit, into a more area fitting one with a single button.

Smashing sounds got closer by the second right after she asked, not long before they saw a much greener Hulk, destroying everything on his path.

“I’m pretty sure this answers my question. “ Y/n said to herself, amused, heart light inside her chest despite the heavy mission ahead of them.

Y/n wore a big SHIELD identification, saying she was incredibly high clearance, it’s supposed to get her what she needs quickly, no questions asked; but when she entered an elevator full of Hydra thugs, testosterone reeking the small space, she assumed there might be some questions.

“Gentlemen.” She said, too ceremonially, “I will need you to hand me the Scepters. Orders from high, I’m afraid.” She felt all of them tense around her,

“And who are you, if I may ask? I have never seen you here.” The bald man who looked less threatening than all of them asked,

Y/n held her ID high, pointing out her clearance level, “not ever seeing me here is a good sign, Mr…”

“Mr. Sitwell.”

“Very well, Mr. Sitwell. Now, if you will, the Scepter. I’m in a bit of a rush. Wouldn’t want to keep people on the higher floors waiting.” Y/n decided to do something bold, the outcome could either be a success, or one that she would have to punch her way out of. She leaned against Sitwell, bringing her mouth closer to his ear and whispered,  

“Hail Hydra.”

The man looked apprehensive at first, debating with himself for a long moment, until finally nodding to one of the other men, handing her the long suitcase reluctantly.

Y/n gladly accepted it , the elevator finally opening up as she turned her back to them, smirking in satisfaction, going towards the exit.

Her legs stopped in their tracks. She wasn’t supposed to see him. Not now, not like this.

Steve, wearing a very cheesy and outdated Captain America suit approached her, holding his earpiece, and before she could even registered what was going on, she heard him say he has eyes on Loki. Fucking Fantastic.

It wasn’t her Steve, she knew, but it was harder to accept than say, because as it seemed she is going to have to fight him, and she wasn’t ready.

In the months before the mission Natasha got her back into a very strict schedule of training, trying to beat her into shape again. It couldn’t repair years of damage and neglect, but it was better than anything. And as past Steve swung his shield to her direction, y/n held onto every bit of shape she head.

It wasn’t her Steve, her mind screamed as she dodged his punch, fighting the desire to take off his mask and kiss him.

He hasn’t met her yet, of course he won’t recognize her.  

“Hand back the Scepter, Loki.” He demanded, she was suddenly happy she couldn’t see his eyes.

Steve tried to use her shoulder to hoist himself up, but y/n hunched over, waiting for him to miss his jump, and placed two hands securely on his broad shoulders, lifting herself and using his support to flip over, forcing him down along with her, wrapping her body around his, trying to chock him long enough for him to lose consciousness.

“I can’t do that. “She panted, struggling to keep him in a tight enough grip, “and I am not Loki.”

Steve fought out of her hold, twisting his thighs around hers and kicking her kneecaps, rattling her entire body as they changed positions, now she was the one being strangled. She arced her back, hitting him in full force with it, but he didn’t budge. Not even when she jerked one ankle, jolting him right in the junk. She’ll apologize later.

Y/n couldn’t beat him in a hand to hand combat, poorly shaped and outmatched by him. Distraction was her only possible advantage, and she was running out of time, options, and air. What could baffle 2012 Steve Rogers? She thought frantically, just as the answer presented itself to her.

What would faze 2012 Steve Rogers? The same thing that would faze 2019 Steve Rogers, or any Steve Rogers for that matter.

“Bucky, is , alive.” She coughed out, and it was enough; the lock on her throat was released, giving her an opportunity to take the Scepter and run. She took it out of its case, pointing it at Steve general direction just as he gained composer again, hovering above her. She caught a glimpse of blue, cold and painful to watch without the warm undertones that appeared every time he looked at her.

“Sorry.” She squeaked as he dropped to the floor, head planted down. Only falling asleep, she hoped.

- The minute she saw Clint collapsing, an empty space to her left, she knew Natasha was not coming back.

They didn’t know exactly what happened, and it didn’t matter. Because everything else was clear. She gave her life to get that stone, to get everyone back. That only meant one thing; They could not fail.

- As time went by, y/n thought less and less about what would happen if they came back. There was no point to lead herself on, right? So she didn’t.

But now, as the possibility of them returning appeared more vivid, worry began to chew on her confidence.  Insecurity seemed the last thing she needed right now, so insignificant, superficial, in times like this, when the faith of the world was at stake. Yet, she was staring at the mirror, for the first time in five years, really looking. Examining carefully, with attention, how her body has changed. She didn’t like what she saw.

It’s not about you, she had to remind herself, it’s about them.

“Also", a very familiar voice, challenging her with the cheek in her tone; Nat. “Give those two dumbasses more credit, they will love you, no matter what.”

-

It was only them, and they were losing.

They managed the snap, and it almost cost Bruce’s life in the process. Nothing in the world seemed to scream about drastic changes so far, and then Thanos decided to pay a visit, depriving them of finding out if everything they have gone through was for nothing.

Slowly but surely, they were losing. Being wrecked by the purple alien that already destroyed once their lives as they knew and loved.

It wasn’t fair, Stark was the last one standing. She watched him from where she landed, after being brutally thrown. He could never face him by himself, he wouldn’t survive long enough. She remembered that day, it seemed like thousand years ago now; when she swore, she owed her life to that man.

No superpowers, no special suit, no weapon. Just her, and her fists. That’s all she had to offer. She owed it to too many people to not just surrender and die, leaving a world to burn behind her. She owed it to herself.

Y/n gritted her teeth and spit blood to the side, standing side by side with Iron Man, bringing two fists to the front of her body and fixing her stance.

She inhaled deeply and glanced at Stark, he nodded, letting her know he’s ready when she is.

“Y/n?” She heard her name, somehow loud, in her earpiece. Tony looked confused just as her, he heard it too, and it wasn’t him talking.

“Doll, it’s Steve. Do you copy?”

Her breath was knocked off her lungs, she searched around her for any sign of him, of Bucky, of anyone, when an orange portal was opened behind her. And then another one, and another one, and another ten.

“Holy shit.” Tony called from beside her, laughing, somehow, “holy fucking shit.”

Y/n was at a loss of words.

“Go.” He opened his helmet, motioning her to the sea of warriors behind them - he wasn’t standing alone anymore - “go!”

She shook her head, not moving an inch. “I’m staying right here.”

-

It was her dream again. Her eyes scanned the crowds, running amok between injured people, bodies. Vision too blurry and burning to see any face at all.

“Y/n!.” A deep voice called in her direction, and she nearly twisted her neck attempting to find its source.

Her eyes teared up instantly, knees threatening to buckle underneath her, a metal arm coming just in time to hold onto her, support her in place. Wiping tears was useless, she found out soon enough, giving up instantly to simply sobbing into Bucky’s shoulder.

“Bucky, Bucky, Bucky.” She kept crying out, he had a long cut on the side of his torso, he shushed her gently when she tried to bring it up.

There was a subtle movement behind her, and she tensed, head shooting up, “Steve?”

“I’m right here, sweetheart.” He said softly, another pair of strong arm enfolding themselves around her, his eyes radiated warmth, bright in the middle of a dirt stained face. She took one last look before burying her body deeper between them, surrounding herself with a scent that was a mix of salt and earth and blood, so humanly them.

“You were gone and I-“ Y/n kept glancing every other second at Bucky- even though she was still in his arms, hysteria got the best of her, gradually taking over any rationale left- the fear they’ll disappear, like last time, becomes too real.

“I didn’t say goodbye and-“ She gasped for air, they caressed her, talking sweet nothings in her ears, just to calm her down.

“It’s been five years and I…I couldn’t live without you.” She said finally, physically struggling to speak, clutching onto them harder,

“We’re so sorry.” Bucky muttered, choking down on tears of his own, weaving fingers through her knotted hair, “So fucking sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Steve reassured her one more time, kissing her temple, then her knuckles, then her lips. “we’re here now.”

[velveetacrackncheese]

Hey, Rad... Alex... Alexlememe? I know that's the name you used to go by and I know you've kinda disconnected yourself from Viv's fanbase after ZP ended, and I remember your memes and such but I kinda just wanted to get your take on the Hazbin drama since you reblogged the headcanon blog's post on the subject. More or less regarding the issue of her being uncharitable to fans and non-fans alike, plus that one callout post on twitter?

So this is weird. I wasn’t expecting to get asks on the subject since like you said, I’ve generally been disconnected from the fanbase aside from the few reblogs here and there retaining to Hazbin and its more recent developments. But yeah I guess I could give my take on this since I mean.. old fans still follow me. Idk why, but they do!So, really. In regards to that callout post (which is now deleted) I really, really don’t care that much. For one thing, Initially I did because I really hated to see someone be slandered so viciously with inaccurate and uncharitable attacks, but I kinda just stopped because even when I linked the addresses from both Viv, and the Ken dude regarding all the drama mentioned, it was either ignored and resulting in me being called a “pedo sympathizer” or “It wasn’t even an apologyyyyy weh” and like, whatever. I stopped giving a shit.

Terms of the traced animation thing... Lol, ok. I mean homages do exist, and her animation thingy was based on a meme so whatevs.

Anyways,I knew from the very start that the whole “tracing” and “stealing designs” stuff was nonsense since there was an entire like, tumblr drama arc on the issue, and albeit Viv’s post is gone, there’s evidence of legal contracts regarding Jiji and that whole nonsense that was years ago. In regards to her drawing pictures of Blaire White and Shoe… Eh. I mean, yeah, fuck em, but she’s made it clear that she doesn’t support those views anymore, and she wasn’t even really aware of the other things they’d done at that point, and I see no real reason not to believe her because what does lying about that gain her? Yeah her comment on the “blackface” thing if you wanna call it that was dumb as shit, but considering 2016 was a rough year for her in terms of trying to find where she fell in the political sphere, I can relate because I was in the same boat. A lot of sjw cringe comps, shaming feminists, and purposely misgendering transpeople… Not a good time for me either! Course I’ve changed. I went from being a reactionary alt-centrist to an anarchist so. Whether that’s an improvement is up to you.

As for the whole pedo/zoo shit, I really don’t see it. I mean like, look, obviously porn art portraying people fucking feral animals is disgusting right. Not saying it isn’t problematic or anything, but to be fair, she did draw this shit like 8 years ago. I’ve seen worse from even more well-established artists and I don’t see people trying to cancel them? Also, the art was suggestive for one thing and not necessarily 100% porn. I mean it’s still creepy and gross, and I’d understand scolding them if they continued to do so but a lot worse, but I haven’t seen anything like that from Viv past those 2 drawings. As for the pedo shit… The relationship between a 17 year old and a 19 year old is… hardly creepy and reminiscent of pedo shit. So yeah no fuck that. Now with the drawing of Mirage and Kestrel and the tag that said something jokingly like “Mirage and her pedo tendencies” or whatever… Yeah idk, I can’t defend that lmfao. Again, Viv said she disapproves of those drawings and doesn’t care to think about them, but that one piece of artwork definitely had some baggage to it that made me feel uncomfortable after reading the tags.Only issue I took in terms of her addressing that, is that she was very adamant about it being an inside joke… Which if that’s true, you must’ve had some fucked up friends like damn.

I would also like to state that cub art is legitimately disgusting and I am of the belief that it can cause harm depending on the context since I assume the consumption of cub art can reinforce the urge for pedophiles to act on their desires instead of finding healthy coping mechanisms for it through therapy. There have been stories from younger users on the internet that older people have tried to groom them and have the notion of pedos preying on them be normalized by sending them art depicting kids in sexual acts with adults. Of course in isolation cub art isn’t as harmful as the actual act of raping a child, and I would argue that people have their priorities kind of messed up since the illustration being acknowledged should be part of combating pedophiles preying on children. However, people, typically twitter wokescolds tend to focus on the art solely and I don’t know why. There’s a lot of MAPS trying to find their way into LGBT spaces and it’s fucking gross.

Now with Hazbin itself… It’s meh. Initially I watched it with rose-tinted glasses and loved it. After watching it for like… the 3rd, 4th, 5th time? It’s alright. I don’t hate it, but it’s far from perfect. Now ofc I know it’s a pilot but a very lengthy pilot I’ll say. My biggest gripe with the pilot is that the editing is really fucking weird. Like the editing where Angel tells Alastor “I can suck yah dick!” and the scene that followed was really off. It seemed like too many cuts were made in that instance and seemed very cluttered. It also feels that way during Charlie singing “Inside Every Demon is a Rainbow” and how many little animated bits were like almost wiped off the screen by how fast it came by, and ntm there was just so much happening all at once on screen as well. I had to pause at points just to process everything that was happening. The palette is also very, very, verrrry red. There’s so much red going on and like… I get it, it’s in hell. But lemme rest my eyes on something else besides red, please. The palette they use needs to be better diversified, and the same goes for the characters too. Every character seems to have red on them. Whenever Baxter shows up later he’s gonna look really out of place. Some of the jokes were ok, and others seemed non-clever. I didn’t think Angel’s joke about sucking Al’s dick was funny. I did like the joke with Pentious and Angel though. “SON??” Some of it could’ve been written better too.

Regarding the drama with the show itself… Personally I don’t get it. Like, I don’t feel as if Angel is homophobic as a character since his queerness isn’t at the face of the jokes he makes? He just happens to be sex worker which… sex workers are fine? Support sex workers y’all, seriously. There’s also nothing intrinsically wrong with being sexually active either? As long as it’s within reason and you’re being trustworthy.The issue lies in the fact that people viewed the things I just mentioned as negative, and associate it with gay people as said negatively portrayed thing to push the sentiment of “Gay man do sex a lot therefore the gays bad” or that sort of thing. Also there’s a bit where it shows there’s more emotional depth to him and I’m hoping they’ll expand on that later. Honestly though, the criticisms in regards to that have been pretty uncharitable. Same with the criticisms for Vaggie. Apparently Vaggie is racist because… she’s loud and angry? Again, this is a case where people assume those traits are negative, and because it’s assumed to be negative, the negatively portrayed thing pushes the sentiment of “Being a loud fiery woman made, and latina women are that, therefore latina women bad” or some shit.  There are stereotypes that are bad no matter what the context is like sambo-esque caricatures of black people. Then there are tropes that are applied to certain demographics that have the capability to be written well into characters without it being offensive or disrespectful. Vaggie is literally angry because she’s protective of her gf. Like. C’mon.

So, I think that settles what I think about that? It honestly seems like superficial shit to me tbh, and I’m saying this as an sjw-y beta cuck anarchist.

The only REAL gripe I have, is with what the mod from @zpheadcanons posted. Because I know this is probably true as much as it hurts me to say it. Faust def has a history of being pretty petty and bully-like to people she deems undesirable, and Viv harbors it by not criticizing it, and if anyone else within their friend group does it then you’re scolded vehemently and treated like garbage. Her attitude also stretches to harboring an audience full of white knights that I personally don’t approve of.

There’s also this

Faust has hurt distant people I personally know and… yeah. Maybe I’m biased but I can’t vibe with that. Sorry. If you don’t make an effort to criticize abusive behavior within your own friend circles then that makes you just as bad, because then you’re just a bystander to things you could have prevented.

This isn’t to say Viv herself hasn’t dealt with bad faith actors, or people who had the intention to hurt her, or very uncharitable criticism. Particularly from the badwebcomics forums which is honestly 4chan like in how they operate. It’s vicious as hell, and a lot of their criticisms boil down to insults and personal attacks, which serve to be nonconstructive. That’s not to say Viv has been kind to even the more charitable criticism though. I know because when I happened to send an ask to the zoophobia criticism blog (where did it go???) regarding something relatively minor and superficial, she blocked me from her blog. I’m still blocked lmfao. I’m not blocked on twitter though! (not yet anyways). Faust has me blocked there though, and I have no idea why. She’s had me blocked for years even though I haven’t spoken out against her till recently. So, there’s that.

As for her apology itself, I feel like it was fine. I think it could’ve been worded better? The take I disagree with in terms of that is like… If I made a mistake in the past, and I make it clear that I don’t care for what I did, I don’t feel as if me explaining why I felt compelled to do certain things negate me from still not caring for my past actions? That’s just me providing context. That’s a really weird take, but I guess that could be viewed as an excuse idk. Personally I think people are holding the bar super high to a state of irrationality.

*sigh* So yeah there’s that. I miss the old days where honestly I could be ignorant about this, but at the same time I look at my old obsessive posts and I kinda just… cringe. I was such an irrational stan I almost hate myself for it. Fuck XD

Edit: I’d also like to point out that I’m not saying Viv or Faust are totally awful or totally good people, and I know they’re capable of being better. It’s a matter of whether or not they wanna be better.

[choupichoups]

I agree with anon who said the thing about Daphne however I also agree and totally understand what you said. Sometimes it can be hard to understand that not everyone is a ‘bad’ person but I guess it’s easier to have that view point when ur not part of the demographic she’s shading or something. Does anything I just said make any sense ? 😂😂 what I’m trying to say is that some of the things daphne said this season did throw me off and it ruined some things for me but idk. No hate btw !!

Yup, don’t worry I totally get what you’re saying! This bout to get sorta deep though so look away now if you don’t wanna get sucked into this long and slightly (only slightly, gOTTA KEEP THE MYSTERY ALIVE!!) personal response. 

Not sure if everyone knows but I am indirectly part of the demographic she’s shading— I’m not white. I’m very visibly Asian despite the mix in my blood and grew up very, very religious. I’m not kidding, pals, this is gonna be hard to believe but I didn’t even swear in high school.

I had the same problems of misconceptions about how I lived my life as Sana and Imane. People had a hard time understanding why I don’t drink, smoke, hook up, etc. and every time I’d do or say something that’s not considered “proper” my friends would throw my religion (mostly false material, ya know how it is) back in my face. I had a close group of friends, more than one ‘Daphne’ among them, it was a stressful time. I got accused of homophobia TWICE (me!!!! the audacity!!! the gall!!!!), with one friend actually ghosting me all of a sudden, solely due to the fact that I am The Christian Girl™, I had the same experience watching someone close to me get together with the person I like simply because I can’t be as ~available~ as they are. Seriously, the tears I shed during Sana’s season were not A Joke, I was Very Triggered. 

I’m not muslim but I saw parts of myself in Sana and I’m not black but I experience racism just like Imane. And yeah, I know, racism in Canada?? In this day and age?? If I had a secret camera on my forehead, you’d be surprised at the shit you’ll see.

I have 3 very ridiculous examples off the top of my head actually, ranging from hateful to plain stupidity:

1.) When I used to work in customer service, an Italian man scoffed and asked for someone else because he wanted someone who would “understand his words better”. My white coworker told him the exact same thing I did and he believed her. The best part of this? I don’t even hAVE AN ACCENT. JUST ADMIT YOU DON’T LIKE MY FACE AND GO.

2.) Y’all recall that Pokemon Go craze? I don’t play that game but I was walking with my head down at one point, typing up a very long text message, when two white boys started singing the Pokemon theme song at me lmao like wow so cool of you yes the Japanese girl on her phone must be playing that weird Asian animal game!! So cool of you!!!

3.) Last one would be my brother’s friend who went up to me and the conversation went like this:

“Hey! Were you at campus the other day?”

“No, I’ve been off for a week now.”

“Ohhhh haha, must’ve been someone else then. I was so confused cause you all look alike right? So I was like is that her or no?”

No, Nancy, we do not all look alike. I have never seen anyone with the same face as mine, but thank you for your input. Wanna know something? The person who said this was black. Point is, no one is immune to dumbass juice.

Anyway, maybe in my oLD and wISE age (jk I ain’t) I start to see which comments/actions are straight up vicious and which ones come from ignorance. Or maybe I’m just not the type to see black and white despite all this bullshit. And no, I don’t call people out all the time, nobody does that irl like… that would be super tiring. But I do get mad. I get hella angry every time this happens. Just because I understand that not everyone who spews stupid things isn’t inherently a bad person doesn’t mean I don’t respond with snark.

The main skam characters are shades of gray and that’s probably why I like the show so much? Idk, feels good, feels organic. Of course I don’t wanna see my favourite characters suffering and having fallouts with their friends/significant others but I also don’t wanna see perfect characters who constantly do no wrong cause lbr, teenagers? Like… I did everything wrong… maybe at the time I thought I was hot shit but no…. teenage Kari…. you were… wrong….. all the goddamn time. Actually, even present me is wrong a lot of times too so let’s rephrase that: People in general, not just teenagers, are stupid sometimes. 

Aight end rant Skam is just very important to me ok I don’t talk about it cause I don’t like negativity but it does bother me when people are so quick to “cancel” the girl squad or Sofiane or whoever fucked up. It’s okay to have beef with them (hell, I got mad at them too) for what they did but I just don’t like them being painted as “bad” or “evil” in any way. Cause they’re not.

[chain-unchained]

June 4

(are these blurbs before the actual writing pretentious? ;~; idk)

I always kind of imagined that Shane has this vicious cycle of drinking, feeling like he let Jas and/or Marnie down, trying to make it up to them but failing in some way, and then drinking harder. So this chapter is a bit fluffy and melancholic. I hope you like it ;u;

With the weight of what had transpired a few days ago still fresh in Shane’s mind, he was determined to do what he could to make up for it today, Jas’ eighth birthday. Even with all his failures and him spending most of his paychecks on booze, he’d saved enough to get her a new Welwick Court doll. He didn’t really know much about kids’ toys, but he did know that Jas loved the Welwick dolls, and he’d gone through her collection to make sure that he didn’t get one she already had.

It wasn’t near enough to make up for everything he’d put her through, he knew that. He knew that if he had even an ounce of restraint and saved up his money, he could have gotten her more than just one present—if he had his life together, he could have gotten her a dozen gifts, taken her out to Zuzu city for a day of fun and shopping because he would have remembered to put in for the day off in advance, and actually been the godfather that he was supposed to be. But this was the best he could do. It was all he could do.

The day at Joja-Mart seemed to drag on even more than it usually did; when 5 PM finally rolled around, Shane clocked out, grabbing the gift he’d messily wrapped from his locker and tucked it into his jacket. He’d make a quick pit stop at the saloon on his way home, pick up some pizza for Jas’ birthday dinner and have a drink to help settle his anxiety while it was cooking, and be back at the ranch by 5:30. Plenty of time to celebrate the squirt’s birthday with her and Marnie.

As his feet carried him down the road away from that hell-mart, his thoughts meandered as they often did, filling his mind with fantasies about what life would be like if he didn’t work at Joja, if he hadn’t torn his ACL playing gridball, if he hadn’t dropped out of college. It was almost unbelievable that once upon a time, he had potential to actually make something of his life. He could have been a fullback for the Tunnelers if he hadn’t blown out his knee…

“On your way home?”

Pausing at the sound of Ashe’s voice, Shane took his eyes away from the ground where he had been looking and saw the petite farmboy standing a bit further down the road, covered in dirt—it looked like he’d had quite the day on the farm, to say the least.

“No, I’m walking to my second job at the other Joja-mart.” Shane snorted quietly, coming to a stop before the youth. “But yeah, actually, I am.” He admitted after a moment; after what had happened on the first, he couldn’t bring himself to be as cold and mean as he had used to be with the kid, especially not since Ashe was still treating him like a friend. “Today’s Jas’ birthday, so I’m just gonna stop by the saloon and pick up a pizza or two to bring back.”

“Ah, I thought so!” Ashe clapped his hands together in delight and reached into his bag. “I was so busy on the farm today that I didn’t have the chance to stop by and say hello before the shop closed… Would you mind giving this to her and wishing her a happy birthday for me?” As he spoke, he pulled a bubblegum pink pinkcat flower out and held it out to Shane with a smile.

Shane gave it a thought for a second. “… Nope. Give it to her yourself.” He commented as he began to walk again, not wanting to keep Jas waiting longer than necessary. She could get pretty hangry if dinner was even just a little bit late.  

“Eh--?” Confused, Ashe turned around to watch him go. “But… the shop’s closed--?”

“So?” Shane stopped again to look back at him, jerking his head to indicate for Ashe to follow him. “I’m saying come back with me, ya dingus. Marnie won’t care, she likes you well enough.”

It took a few seconds for Ashe to realize what Shane said; slowly, the biggest smile lit up his face. “Okay~!”

“You’re so fucking slow sometimes.” Shane shook his head and shoved his hands into his pockets as he began to walk once more, with Ashe hastening to catch up. “I still don’t get why you keep bothering with an asshole like me. Shouldn’t you be hanging out with people your age, like Sebastian or Abigail?”

To be honest, it was a question he’d had in his mind for awhile now. While it was true that most of his time was spent stocking those damn shelves, he’d never really seen Ashe spend time with the youngers of the valley—he was always busy with something or other, and what little free time he had seemed to be spent bugging Shane or doing favors for the townsfolk. Sometimes, just watching Ashe flit about like a hummingbird made Shane feel tired.  

“Mmm…” A contemplative look came onto Ashe’s face at the question. “I talk to them on the computer during the evenings… it’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but most of the time I have trouble connecting with them.” He looked to Shane with a shrug of his shoulders and an airheaded smile. “Not so much with Sebastian, we actually talk a lot over chat. Sam’s easy enough to talk to because he’s so easygoing, too. Abigail’s nice, but I have trouble keeping up with her sometimes…”

“That so?” It struck Shane as Ashe talked that he really didn’t know much of anything about the kid. “I figured it would be the opposite since you’re such a nosy bugaboo. Guess that means you have nothing to do with Alex or Haley, huh?”

“Not really, no.” Ashe agreed with a vigorous shake of his head. “Haley doesn’t even acknowledge my existence. Alex at least will say hello, but… Oh, I do sometimes talk to Penny. Not very often, though, since she’s usually busy with tutoring.” There was also Emily, but he didn’t need to say anything, since Shane knew how the two of them got on since she worked evenings at the saloon, and Elliot, who was going through one of his rare inspiration phases and had barely left his cabin since spring started.

“What’s stopping you from doing what you did to me to them?” Shane gave Ashe the stink-eye. “I’ve got half a mind to make you go and bother them until you make friends. Kids like you shouldn’t be bothering with old farts like me.”

Defeated, Ashe just gave him another smile and laughed meekly, and Shane looked forward again with a quiet snort. It was an empty threat, honestly, though he was surprised to hear that a cheerful, personable person like Ashe couldn’t connect with people in his age group. He found that hard to believe, but Ashe didn’t seem the type to lie, not about something so trivial at least.

With pizza and 2-liters of soda in hand after a quick stop at the saloon, the pair took the southwest road out of town and made their way to the ranch. Struggling a little to open the front door since his hands were full, Shane let them in; as expected, the shop was empty, and they could hear Jas’ excited chattering coming from the kitchen. “Shh, this’ll be a surprise.” He whispered to Ashe, who nodded his head in silent agreement.

“Aunt Marnie, when is Shane gonna be home?” Jas asked, sitting at the table and swinging her legs restlessly as she colored away in her Welwick courts coloring book; it was hard being patient, especially as a kid, and especially especially as a kid on your birthday. But she’d been extra super good that day in the hopes that it would mean she’d have a good evening.

“I’m not sure, sweetie.” Marnie kept her back turned to Jas as she spoke, putting the finishing touches on the birthday cake as she tried not to let her smile come through in her voice; she certainly hoped that her nephew could pass up the saloon for one day and come home early, and she hated that she honestly didn’t know what he would end up doing. “I’m sure that he’ll be back soon. He at least said he was going to get some pizza, and I don’t think he’d keep the birthday girl waiting for her dinner.”

“… Is he gonna be drunk?” Jas’ legs stopped swinging, her voice becoming quiet and almost somber; at the counter, Marnie paused in her icing.  “I don’t like it when he drinks… and he always seems unhappy. Why does he drink if he doesn’t like it?”

They were difficult words to hear from a little girl. And what made it even harder was that Marnie simply didn’t have an answer to give—not the kind of answer that Jas wanted, at least. “I wish I could say, kiddo.” She turned to look at her young charge with a sympathetic smile. “But that’s something only Shane can answer.”

As expected, Jas struggled to understand why Marnie didn’t have the answer. Before she could prod her aunt any further, however, Shane loudly cleared his throat, announcing his and Ashe’s presence. “I have a large cheese pizza for a Ms. Jas.”

“Shane!” Jas twisted around in her seat to look at her godfather, her face lighting up at his presence; despite it all, it was clear that she adored him more than anything in the whole world. The delight on her face was replaced by surprise as she saw Ashe poke his head out from behind Shane—the hallway was rather on the narrow side, and there was no room for him to stand beside the man. “Mr. Ashe? How come you’re here too?”

“Well, I heard it was a certain someone’s birthday today~” Ashe smiled as Shane stepped fully into the kitchen, setting the pizza down on the table and flipping the box open to reveal its ooey gooey cheesy contents. “I just wanted to wish you a very happy birthday, Jas. I didn’t know what all to get you, so…” He held the flower out to the girl. “It’s not much, but I bet it’d look very pretty if you pressed it in a book.”

Jas’ eyes widened even more as she carefully accepted the brightly colored flower. “Thank you…” She didn’t expect him to get her a gift.

“You’re welcome~” Ashe raised his hand in farewell and turned to leave. “I’ll let you all have your evening, then. Bye~”

“What, you’re not going to stay for some pizza and cake?” Marnie inquired, giving Ashe pause. “Come on, sit and relax for a spell.”

“Ah… are you sure?” Ashe turned back to look at the family, uncertainty written on his face. “I don’t want to impose on a day like today.” His expression shifted to one of meekness as he looked down to his dirt-covered self. “And I’m such a mess right now, I—”

“Mr. Ashe?” Jas interrupted, looking from the flower to Ashe with her large, expressive eyes. “If you don’t stay, there’s gonna be a lot of leftovers. Even Shane can’t eat this much pizza.”

“Hey, what are you trying to say there squirt?” Shane pretended to look offended by her comment. “Well, you heard the birthday girl. Might as well, right?”

Momentarily overwhelmed, Ashe looked to Marnie for confirmation; the portly woman smiled and nodded, reaching up into the cupboards to get an extra plate for their guest. “… I guess if Jas wants me to, I don’t have a choice~” He admitted with a sheepish smile.

It felt just a little strange to him, to be sitting with the little family as they ate their way through as much of the massive pizza as they could, but it wasn’t an unwelcome sort of strange. It almost felt like… he had a family again, a feeling that he thought he wouldn’t get to experience again. It was bittersweet.

“Mr. Ashe, how come you decided to be a farmer?” Jas asked, once the pizza had been demolished and the cake polished off (no matter how stuffed you were, there was always room for cake).  Still at the table with Ashe and Shane while Marnie cleared away the dishes, she was quite happily playing with the new doll that was Shane’s gift to her, though it didn’t stop her from being the inquisitive child that she was.

The question caught Ashe off-guard. “Well…” He looked thoughtful as he tried to think of the best way to answer her question. “I just needed a change.” He finally answered after several moments of contemplation. “Before my grandpa died, he gave me an envelope and told me to open it when the time was right. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but it was the deed to his farm.” He smiled merrily. “I worked at a Joja office for awhile, and then I got tired of being an adult and came to be a farmer instead~”

“You worked for Joja?” Shane couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice, lifting his head up from where he’d been resting it against his hand to look at the kid with raised brows. “When? You look like you just barely graduated high school.”

“Never judge a book by its cover~” Ashe chimed, looking carefree as ever—yet for some reason, Shane got the feeling that this time, that happy go lucky attitude was fake. “I didn’t even finish high school.”

Jas’ jaw hit the floor. “You didn’t? Why? Didn’t you like school?”

“Oh, absolutely.” Ashe nodded his head vigorously. “I loved school.” His smile softened just a little, and for a moment, it almost seemed to become melancholy. “But sometimes, you have to do things that you don’t want to do.” And just like that, he was back to his normal self, giving Jas a big ol’ grin. “And then later down the road, you might be able to do things you want to do again.”

His words gave the little girl quite a lot to think about, as she tried to stifle a yawn behind her hand. “Alright, little missy.” Marnie turned around as she dried her hands on a rag, as though she had eyes in the back of her head that saw it. “It’s way past your bedtime. Come along now, let’s pick out a book to read.”

“Awww…” Jas pouted, her attempt to stay up later duly foiled. “Okay…”

“G’night, squirt.” Shane bid, watching as his aunt led Jas out of the kitchen towards her room; as soon as the two were out of earshot, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the tabletop and burying his face in his hands as he let out the heaviest sigh. Somehow, he’d managed to hold himself together after catching Jas’ comment about him drinking; it had taken everything he had in that moment not to turn and walk right back out the door, her words unintentionally crushing his already crumbling heart.

“Shane…?” Ashe gently touched the man’s arm; he of course had heard what Jas had said, too, and seen the way that Shane’s face had fallen, even if it was just for a moment. “You okay?”

For a long minute, Shane didn’t answer. “No, I’m not okay.” He finally mumbled, curling his fingers to dig his nails into his skin. “I’m a fucking wreck and I can’t even pull myself together for Jas.”

He wouldn’t say it, but hearing how even Ashe had taken control of his life only amplified Shane’s feelings of shame and self-hatred. Here was a kid who by all rights should be out having the time of his life but instead chose to work one of the most grueling, laborious jobs out there, all on his own, without so much as a single complaint. And then there was Shane, still living with his aunt, working a dead-end job that he hated with no savings, no future and no ambitions.

“…” Ashe scooted a little closer, putting his arm around Shane’s shoulders in a sort of semi-hug; abruptly, Shane knocked his arm off, leaning away from the farmer to make sure he couldn’t do it again.

It wasn’t that the gesture wasn’t appreciated. It was that it was so unexpected, and Shane was in such a bad place, that he couldn’t accept it, and his first instinct was to violently reject it before he had a chance to realize how much he needed that kind of support.

Of course, he wasn’t able to verbalize this to Ashe, whose arm fell back to his side, his eyes widening as he realized that he went too far. “S-Sorry.” The farmer apologized. “… I think it’s time I headed home.” He murmured, not wanting to overstay his welcome any longer. “Thank you for inviting me over, Shane.”

Shane couldn’t even bring himself to acknowledge Ashe’s gratitude, burying his face deeper into his hands; he listened to the sound of Ashe’s boot heels as he headed down the hall towards the front door, and could faintly hear him bid a farewell to Marnie and Jas on his way out. The whole time, his shoulders were shaking, his chin quivering as he scrunched up his face in a desperate attempt to keep the tears in his eyes from overflowing. He didn’t even have it in him to treat the person who had gone out of his way to befriend him with the smallest amount of decency…

[my-love-peterp]

Mistaken Chapter Five

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Word Count: 2721 (this actually comprises chapters 7 and 8 on Ao3)

THERE ARE NO ENDGAME SPOILERS, THIS IS A DELAYED UPLOAD FROM AO3

Fic Summary: Peter Parker has been given the responsibility of bringing in a new recruit. Now, as an adult, he realizes that none of the trashy YA novels he read in high school could have prepared him for this. There was a storm on the horizon, and all they could do from the Tower is watch.

Chapter Summary: Lol updating within a few hours after weeks of not updating at all? It’s more likely than you think. HOnestly, not my finest work but I’m so tired and I feel so bad about not getting anything out there sooner. I want to change bits and pieces of this story but my goodness, yeah. So if you’d like to Beta read shit for me, y’all would be much appreciated.

Warnings: honestly idk, if I missed something besides language hmu friends

Chapter One   Chapter Two   Chapter Three   Chapter Four

I ran. There was no stopping me. I stole a cowl from a closet and drifted into the shadows, just long enough to leap from the window.

I materialized and flitted down back alleys until I hit Park Ave. I didn’t know much about this area of New York, but every borough has their drinking holes, right?

Minutes later, I was staggering into a quaint little bar that wasn’t quite the dive that I was looking for, but it would do. This was probably better in any case, fewer leering eyes and a hefty, red-haired, Irish woman who kept my drink full and men away.

Hydra was just one of the many skeletons rattling around in my closet, but they were the Rosetta Stone to my trauma in a lot of ways. Not the foundation, but the guide.

Two more glasses of Lagavulin and those pressing thoughts were kicked to the wayside.

Behind me, the grandfather clock chimed five o’clock. Just call me Jimmy Buffet and saddle me up with a margarita.

What no amount of alcohol could do, unfortunately, was erase the people I’d… met with Hydra. Or lost with them. Most of all, I could never forget my sister.

Brave and stupid drunk, I left my drinking post and headed down Park Avenue rather aimlessly. It felt like I was being drawn in a certain direction, meant to be there, which is absolutely absurd, but I was just drunk enough to believe it.

My feet halted half an hour later outside of a quaint little tattoo parlor. I’d always wanted a tattoo but I’d never had the time nor the money to get one. Fortunately, as a runaway Avenger-in-Training, I had both of those in spades now.

And, as fate would have it, the shop was advertising that they were available for walk-ins today.

Whipping out my new cell phone, I pulled up a picture of what exactly I wanted. My sister and I had always fancied we'd get matching ones someday.

The overly muscled and extremely tattooed man just nodded his ascent and began freehanding a design for the Phoenix on my right side. I was decently numbed from the booze, but as time passed, the more my sides protested in pain. Occasionally, I would feel a quick rush of air push cold wind over my aching skin and nearly groan in pleasure.

Finally, three hours later, I was gingerly easing my shirt back on, sides to be kept wrapped for the next hour or so, in case they started bleeding or weeping plasma and ink.

I stood, signed my name along the dotted line for the payment and stepped out on the street to find none other than Pietro standing, back resting against the side of the building with his arms crossed, obviously waiting for me.

Rather than acknowledge his presence, I moved to hail a taxi. He took that moment to wrap his arms around my middle, sending bolts of pain shooting from my fresh tattoos, and bolted down the street.

Fate, should it exist, obviously had a sense of humor. Minutes later, we were standing in the lobby of Avengers Tower.

Hesitantly, I moved for the elevator doors, wincing with every step as it pulled along my aching muscles, both from the walking and the movement of inked flesh. Pietro followed loosely behind me, as I anticipated. Once he had retrieved me, he certainly wasn’t going to let me escape. He was perhaps the one Avenger I couldn’t simply evade or trick, his eyes caught things as though they were moving half the speed they actually were.

An uncomfortable silence ensued as Pietro pressed the button to take us up to the Penthouse, the de facto floor for team meetings.

Despite receiving an equal number of concerned and suspicious glances, most of the team paid me little to no mind.

Peter gestured to Pietro, eyes questioning, and nods were exchanged. What I wouldn’t give to be able to hear what they were thinking. And maybe it was vain of me to assume that they’d been communicating about me, but I was almost positive.

Lost in my reverie, I almost missed the command Cap gave to Wanda to put me under. I hadn’t even taken a step by the time I was falling to the ground, unconscious, caught in lean arms.

It would be the best rest I’d get for weeks to come.

________________________________________________________________

I woke up in my own rooms, restrained to the bed. What had happened was fairly obvious, considering the only person who was in my rooms besides me was Tony. And he had an Iron Gauntlet trained on me as I came to. I hacked to clear my throat before speaking. “Seems like a bit of overkill Grandpa.”

Tony just glared down at me, not moving a single inch or softening in any way.

I tried again. “So I take it Witchy rummaged around in my head and found some… Not so savory things. Perhaps my stint as a Hydra assassin. Maybe the length of my kill list even. Let me guess, you’re currently prepping a room for me at whatever new and improved raft you built to keep Thanos locked up and never coming back. Fair warning, I’ll never go willingly and I can put up one hell of a fight.”

“Fortunately for you, that decision’s not up to me and would require the input of the feds, which, knowing what we do now, I can fairly certainly say, you’d prefer if they stayed out of it. 12 US government officials assassinated in less than three months by yours truly. Wow. Talk about a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Were I not a better man, I’d shoot you right now.”

“So why are you here Tony, if not to kill me?” I snarled back at him. “What good does me being alive do? To anyone.” That startled him a little bit, shell shocked enough to look up and into my eyes, where I saw my own feral irises reflected.

But he steeled himself again within moments. And then, out of the breast pocket of his blue blazer, he grabbed a sheet of paper.

Not a sheet of paper I realized as he folded it out for me. A picture of a skinny redheaded woman. One I recognized intimately. “Target 17. What do you need to know?” I questioned coldly, unfeeling. That made him jerk backward in his seat and hastily stand, panting and heaving, murderous intent glinting in his brown eyes.

“Her name was Pepper. And she was killed three days before our wedding, carrying my child. So I’d like to know. Was it-,“ he spat out like the words were physically fighting to escape from his body.

“Was it me? No. I was in the wind with my sister for a few months after our covers were almost blown taking out a diplomat in Indonesia. For what it’s worth, I truly am sorry Tony. Especially,” I said, voice dropping to a whisper, “about your son.”

“Excuse me, my what?” Fists clenched, he strode up to the side of my bed, closer to my head. I shied away from him as he bent down and got into my face. “What did you just say to me?”

Fuck. He didn’t know and I just made it ten times worse. The sound of his repulsor charging broke the most pregnant silence I’d ever heard. Before he could fire, though, Thor and Steve burst through the door and caught him as he collapsed in anguish, taking him away, leaving me alone. They knew everything about my time with Hydra. The evil I’d done and the evil I’d allowed to happen. I was the enemy. And I had no backup.

So back to normal.

Hours later, I gave in to my bone-deep weariness and collapsed into sleep. Dream after fever dream encased my drained mind, ephemeral and diaphanous. Most images were forgotten immediately, flighty and fragile as a butterfly’s wing. Others though, others stuck like mosquitos stuck in amber. Flashes.

Light, blood, destruction. Tattooed stars and deep, harrowing scars on ragged faces. Sobbing little boys with green eyes and silky hair.

Despite the intense lunacy and deep feeling of realness, I felt while dreaming, I was aware of a deep, striking pain within myself. It settled in my chest, buried deep, as though I’d replaced my stomach with Mjolnir. The ache was both sharp and dull, full and waning. It signaled that a harsh reality awaited me in the waking world. When I was dreaming it was like the pain had no anchor, no reason for tormenting me, as hapless and defenseless as a newly hatched bird.

When I’m half-awake, like I am now, I know why the pain is here, understand the presence of gut-wrenching guilt and searing hot shame and thus can accept them. I’m not sure which is worse to experience.

Sometimes I’m fully awake, being handed crackers or grapes or bottles of water by a person whose name I don’t know because I’m never cognizant long enough to catalog their face. Seconds later, I’m again drowning, pulled into the depths of my dreamscape.

My reality blurs and the cycle continues, vicious unto the end. And every time I wake, my cheeks are embarrassingly wet. It feels like weeks before I’m awake long enough to realize I’m not alone. That every time I wake, a new face is staring back at me from a different chair in my room.

I come to recognize them again in time. Wanda, Pietro, Bucky, Steve, Vision, even Peter. But never Tony.

I sit up for the first time after what feels like a month, though the limited aching emanating from my bones tells me, logically, that it’s only been a fraction of that time. One either side of my bed is a Maximoff. Wanda looks more concerned than wary. Pietro looks like a lion who caught the scent of an enemy pride.

“Go slowly Kaida,” Wanda urges, “you must be weak. It’s been a few days since you rejoined the land of the living. Her continued inquiries and entreaties fall on deaf ears. As vulgar as it now sounds in retrospect, I knew I had to move or else an accident would occur. I stumbled into my en suite, knowing even without needing to look that they would have removed anything that would have made a suitable weapon.

I also know that, should my biology betray any sign of shifting to make use of my abilities, F.R.I.D.A.Y. would alert the others and the full might of the Avengers would fall upon my head. And Wanda would have me back out in seconds. What couldn’t be stopped of measured for, of course, were things such as my superhuman hearing, that was currently picking up on the muffled conversation the twins were having in my bedroom on the other side of the bedroom door.

“Why are you blocking FRIDAY, we should be alerting the others that the prisoner is awake and ready for their attention.”

“Pietro! She’s not our prisoner,” Wanda reprimanded. “Besides, I wish to have a moment alone with the girl. Even if she is not a child of Strucker, she is what Hydra made her to be, somehow. I just… I’d like for her to have a sympathetic listener at first. We never got the benefit of the doubt. If you remember we weren’t exactly unwilling in our crusade against the Avengers.”

Pietro just grunted in agreement but remained tense at his sister's side. I quickly twisted off the faucet and reentered the bedroom. Rather than speak, Wanda simply patted the seat of the chair across from hers, indicating that I should take a seat. It was the gentlest command ever issued. I slid back until my shoulders brushed the high back of the chair.

Wanda opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off with a gesture of my hands. I leaned forward, extending my head towards her.

“Just look, let my mind answer your questions. I don’t know that I’d have the strength to or that we’d have the time before the others come charging in. If I’m going to die, I need at least one person to know and believe the truth. Maybe help persuade Captain Rogers to end my life swiftly. It’s more than I deserve.”

With that Wanda, eyes shining, placed her hands on my temples and breathed deeply as we were both transported to an infinitely darker place, many years ago.

Sinking through my memories was like drifting uncontrollably through a minefield. Tiny bursts of anguish shot through my mind as Wanda relived my upbringing with my sister, the house of horrors that was our home, being tapped to join Hydra and agreeing without ‘persuasion'. The missions, targets and our downfall. My sister's son. And finally, the mission that sent us both running for the hills...

The time since then. One dead-end job to another, sisters working to support each other, all while looking for the last remaining piece of our family. And, then that day had come. The snap and dust. Guilt flooding me and overwhelming a sense of horror as time passed.

Homeless until my… boyfriend. The horror that home turned into, one that I do still feel as though I deserved. Until one night he went too far and I left. The night Peter found me. Of course in the midst of all this, you had my ‘heroics' that mostly consisted of helping women out of situations I understood all too well. And that damned school. So Peter was looking for me at the behest of the Avengers after the most recent event had even landed on the front page of the New York Times.

My deeply buried need to have somewhere to call home, to have not just someone on my six but to have a family. All the emotions that Hydra and I, through my conditioning at their hands, thought of as compromising and weak.

I had agreed, understanding that I could play the role of Asset for the good guys for once, maybe correct some of the horrific circumstances I had had a hand in creating. My mission would be protecting others for the first time. Only in my wildest dreams had I imagined I'd ever have a family again, but they had begun to feel like home, in spite of the secrets I kept. Now that was ruined. That was inevitable, I reminded myself. Because of who I am, I could never have a family. I didn't deserve one.

“No,” Wanda said, interrupting our shared stream of thoughts, "not ruined, just a little, broken. They accepted us in time." Pietro nodded, eyes alighting on his sister and then on me. Curiosity burned in his soul-deep gaze. He leaned forward and used his abnormally large hand and rough fingers to cover his sister's hand, which I just realized was now twined in mine.

Connected like this, I felt the smallest flicker of hope come to life in me, setting my heart aflutter. Understanding and acceptance filled their eyes and I did tear up a little. I never expected this.

“You are not the monster your parents created. Nor the asset that Hydra trained. You are more than that Kaida. Let us help you find it. Find yourself.”

I nodded, leaning into her embrace as she gripped me by the shoulders and kissed my cheek.

At Wanda’s urging, I stepped into the shower, running my hand through my hair as nearly a week’s worth of grime was stripped off my body. I think it was safe to say that I’d never felt more confused and well, vulnerable in my life.

For the time being, I didn’t have a mission or a purpose. My handler, or the surrogate my mind had appointed was questionable at best now that all had been revealed. I didn’t like being left to my own mind and devices. Too many thoughts would rattle around inside my head. After a few hours, the twins left again, gentle eyes and kind reassurances.

Later and not seconds after my stomach rumbled with a fierceness I had forgotten it had, my door opened and a tray of food entered, held by Bucky, the Winter Soldier.

A/N: I’m uploading another chapter tonight that I am formatting and scheduling right flipping now so I don’t flake again. Really pumped for the new fic I’m starting though!

taglist: @peeterparkr @laurfangirl424 @private-bucky-barnes

[mvrnic]

*please be aware serious topics are talked about so tw for; miscarriage, substance abuse, relapse, mental health. please look after yourselves.

DISCLAIMER/PSA/IDK; THIS ALL TECHNICALLY HAPPENS AFTER CHRISTMAS BUT DANI IS ON A WEEK HIATUS BEFORE THE CHANCE/MIA WEDDING AND ITS THAT WEIRD PERIOD WHERE EVERYONES A LITTLE BUSY SO I PRESENT TO YOU

THE TEGAN AND DANI FUCKS SHIT UP AGAIN SHOW.  okay so previously on  “some fuckery we pulled” marnie and angel lost their second child in a miscarriage, first trimester so it was pretty early but a horrible experience for them both. obviously. in the events of this marnie stopped taking her BPD medication and went down into a really bad mental health period and angel has relapsed into his alcoholism and substance abuse. (please be aware the breakup is intense but they will get back together bc mum and dad) so after angel gets into some car crash and totals his car marnie has to come and pick him up from the police station, the following is a recount of their breakup that we wrote last night bc we’re headasses. 

guilty. that was definitely a good way to sum up how he was feeling right now, nervously pacing around the holding cell of the station, absentmindedly fumbling with the rings on his fingers. drunk was another way to describe him too, but he was doing his best to mask that fact. it wasn’t too hard to tell though. his eyes were bloodshot and he already looked like a broken shell of himself. he let out a sigh of... relief? but also panic? as marnie walked in. he avoided eye contact until it seemed nearly impossible, a tired, half-assed smile upturning the corners of his lips. “hey.” he didn’t really feel like explaining himself, but he knew he wasn’t going to have much of a choice. not when it came to marnie. marnie didn't let shit slide, that's why she was good for angel, she called him out but she stayed by his side to help work on things. she wanted him to grow, she knew life was hard and healing wasn't easy  --he did the same to her. they helped each other.  it was a last minute rush to mia and chances house asking to mind xander just for an hour or two, she knew she could count on them for these last minute things especially at such a stupid hour but there wasn't a chance in hell she was bringing xander to the fucking police station this late at night to see his father in a state. she walked in with exhausted looking eyes, licking over her lips as she looked at him looking like a caged puppy who had done something wrong.   "hi," she responded in a near whisper looking to the cop as they unlocked the cell.  there was something sickening about seeing him behind bars,  "...okay...well...lets get you home i guess." angel hates being this person. especially in front of her. he couldn’t even imagine being anything like this in front of xander. in fact, the thought made him sick to his stomach. he’d done such a good job at separating his current self from the person he used to be in the past, but now, having to be led out of a jail cell, it felt an awful lot like stagnancy. he’d never really changed, had he? his head hangs low as he exits the cell, and he keeps his hands shoved in his pockets, not making a move to grab her hand or her waist. he didn’t want to touch her— to hurt her. because that’s all he ever did to people. it was almost laughable at this point. he’d been doing so well, and he’d went and fucked it all up in the blink of an eye. “im sorry.” he muttered under his breath. he was on such a good road, he had been doing so well and she had been so proud but the second something in their personal bubble seemed a little hard he freaked out. but that was what a relationship had to deal with, there would be hardships and he couldn't do this every single time, it wasn't about him getting 'fixed' it was about him healing and they were two very different things but until angel realised he didn't need 'fixing' he needed HEALING there wasn't going to be a change.  but weirdly enough the blank i'm sorry and lack of effort to physically or emotionally reach out to her was what got her.   "i know." every time something went wrong, he snapped right in two, and marnie had to be there to pick up the pieces and stick him back together. he’d voiced his concern before about her being a crutch for the rest of her life, and although she insisted that that wasn’t the case, it sure felt like it was. god, he felt so stupid right now. she deserved so much more than him— so much more than he could give her. she was way more mature than him most of the time. he couldn’t fathom why she insisted on staying with him. maybe he’d just played her right... played her like every other person he’d let into his life. he’d went and sucked the soul right out of her because he didn’t have one for himself. just the thought disgusted him. he didn’t want to be a shit person— not to her— but he didn’t know how to fix this. he brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, reaching to hold open the door for her, and gesturing for her to exit. he couldn’t even think of anything to say. he didn’t want to talk to her. he didn’t want to be around her. not like this. her eyes were glued to his hand as he opened the door, she was going to be there for him that wasn't even a question in her head, when she said yes to his proposal she has said yes to a lifetime with him. she'd said yes to the ups and the downs and weathering out the storm together. but she had just lost their baby not long before and she was going through it herself, this time she didn't have the strength or the energy. this time she needed him and he wasn't being her crutch. the silence between them was awkward, which was a bad sign because their silences were almost never awkward.  over the past week the mood of their house had dropped, which she had expected considering losing a child when you wanted them on this earth more than anything was the hardest thing to go through. what she didn't expect was losing angel too.   "how much have you had to drink?" she knew, it would've been stupid for angel to think marnie didn't know him like the back of her hand at this point. his features twitched in annoyance at her questioning, and he stayed silent for a moment, waiting for her to step out of the building so he could follow suit. “i don’t want to talk about it.” he finally retorted, his words a bit snappish in tone. if marnie knew him, she’d know he was bound to get hot headed right about now. it almost never failed. he just felt an overwhelming need to defend himself against... well, he didn’t really know what. he just felt the need to argue and make stabbing remarks at the first person he saw. hating on other people was better than hating himself. “—- let’s just get in the car and go back to the house, yea?” he’s growing impatient, as evidenced by the way he’s toying with the chain around his neck. he couldn’t even call it home at this point. that’s not what it felt like. all it did was make him feel anxious and small. wrong time to snap angel, that'd be the only advice anyone could give him. she was tired, she had to beg a friend to mind THEIR child while she picked up her grown ass  FIANCE from the police station, after going through what may have been one of the worst moments in her life.   "you don't wanna talk about it, okay," she scoffed turning on her heels.   "no we're not getting in to the car, answer my fucking question, how fucking drunk are you angelos?" her brooklyn accent always got thicker when she was angry, livid might be a better word.  "you're not going anywhere near xander when you're like this." he was an asshole. he knew it; now he just had to accept it. maybe it’d be better to be just that. it was his most authentic self. it was who he always jumped back into being the moment something got the slightest bit tough. that’s who he was. an asshole. a scoff escapes him as she uses his full name, his eyes involuntary rolling along with his words, “who the fuck cares?” he hisses out, “can’t stop me now. get the fuck over it.” maybe it would’ve been different had he actually reacted to his own words slipping past his lips— had their been any hesitance... but there was nothing. every last syllable escaped him easily, and his expression remained stoic. “i don’t want to be around him.” not like this, “—- fuck this. im calling a cab. whatever. see if i care!” she didn't believe it at all, she knew who angel was when he was comfortable and content what he needed to work on was his coping mechanisms. hurting people wasn't how you cope.  but marnie grew up on the wrong side of town, you just didn't fuck with her and her fire was as lit now as it was when she was younger. this was dangerous.  "roll your eyes at me one more time i'll slap your fucking face," she threatened before her nails started to dig into her palms, a habit angel had to know too well, he had mended the bleeding and pierced palms before.   "i fucking care you absolute moron," she hissed in return .  god she was angry, she didn't have the chance to even be hurt by his words because every ounce of pain she had been feeling over the last week was being lashed out on angel.   this bitter, disgusting laugh coming from her lips at his words.  "you don't wanna be around your son," she said slowly, but her words were full of venom.   she was vicious at this point, you could see her seething.  "you call a fucking cab and you don't take it to the house." angel had grown up having everything he could ever possibly want handed to him on a silver platter. that didn’t mean he didn’t know how to be cruel though. it made him an expert. you didn’t make it in high society if you couldn’t fight back. searing comments were all he’d ever known. he’d only ever received backhanded compliments from his parents. lashing out like this felt mundane. he met her gaze, holding it for a moment to make sure that she was paying attention to him before he gave another roll of his eyes. she could slap him. it wouldn’t be the worst thing he’s felt today. he already had a huge bruise on his cheekbone from smacking his head against the window as his car crashed. he almost has to laugh at her demand, a cocky, shit-eating grin taking over his features as he looked down at her, taking full advantage of his tall stature to loom over her menacingly. “i’ll do whatever the fuck i want to.” he begins, “that’s my house. i bought it. and your fucking lambo? that’s my car. you...” he begins, gesturing towards her. “... you don’t get to tell me anything.” and that was the first time he’d ever alluded to being above her in any way. he’d never wanted to dehumanize her before, but he was just shooting for the lowest possible blows now. she wasn't sneaky, marnie had never been conniving or backstabbing, she was just straight up and straight forward to your face. if it came across rude, that's your problem. but marnie wasn't nice, that was just fact. but angel knew she kept her word, she wasn't empty that was one thing that was both good and bad. and almost as if on queue at his eye roll she brought her hand back and swung it right across his face. she was tiny but boy did the girl have a strong hand.  he was scary, he was tall and broad but marnie had dealt with worse men.  "okay take the fucking house, take the fucking car...your money and your purchases don't mean shit to me angel," she retorted.   now she was starting to feel hurt, he was acting in a way he'd never done before and suddenly she hated who was in front of her. this wasn't angel, this wasn't the man she was going to marry and she refused to believe it. a low hiss of pain escaped through gritted teeth as her hand made contact with his skin. he brings his own hand up to his cheek, unable to stop himself from wincing as his fingertips met the tender spot on his face. he was still human, after all. no matter how much of a god complex he could have. he was human. and he hated it. he hated being vulnerable like that. his arm falls back down to his side, and his hands are balling into fists as he stares her down. “take your fucking kid and all your shit and get the fuck out of my house then.” almost as soon as the words left his lips, he regretted them, but he wasn’t letting that on. his glare remained icy. “ask me if i fucking care.” he pauses, shaking his head slightly. “—- i don’t.” she flinched at those words 'your fucking kid' and her gaze upon him lost any and all love in that split moment. he was her soulmate, she was still sure of it, but those words made her cold and suddenly she was the marnie she was to absolutely every man that had ever hurt.  and she simply stared at him, there was literal disgust in her eyes.   she dangled the keys and dropped them at his feet,  "there's the keys to your fucking kid" she said harshly,  "drive yourself home...maybe you'll crash again and finally feel something in that cold fucking heart of yours." that hurt. he couldn’t deny it. all he’d ever wanted was to be a good father, but he couldn’t do this when he was so susceptible to breaking like this. to his drunk mind, the logic made sense: leave marnie, leave xander, hurt her so she’d never come back... it would just be less pain in the long road. and he’d get to happily waste his life away on drugs and parties and hookups and not have to worry about hurting anyone. that would just be his brand. “fuck you.” he shot back, bending down to pick up the keys from the floor, squeezing them in his hand with an iron grip. “you’re so fucking stupid.” he growls, pointing a finger at her. “im drunk, and im still smarter than you. good fucking luck taking care of your kid.” he lets out a bitter laugh, refusing to call xander by his name or even refer to him as his son. that would hurt him too much. he’s not trying to be hurt. now she was deathly scared, she didn't know how to be a mother by herself. she didn't know how to do this when every time she looked down at xander she was looking at angel. if he thought pushing her out of his life was good for her he was fucked in the head because now she had a constant reminder of everything he tore away from her. a partner, a best friend, a father to their child....home.  "i'm stupid?" she retorted, that might have been his lowest blow yet, that was something she was so desperately insecure about and really angel was one of the only ones that had ever made her feel a little more comfortable about it.  but crying wasn't something she could do right now, he didn't deserve her tears.  "you're the one who pushes the good things out of his life only to blame everyone else for leaving," she said stepping into him,  "you're the one that isn't smart enough to stay sober," if he wanted low blows, marnie could throw low blows.  "you're the one thats losing something here...i'm the best fucking thing that has happened to you," she gets closer,  "i'm the best fucking thing you'll ever have....and you're dumb enough to lose me," if he knew her, which he did, the look in her eyes wasn't hatred it was pain. it was the angry pain she held when she knew she was going to cry because hated crying.  "and i'm smart enough to walk away." his eyes lacked any and all emotion; his features were hard as stone. the worst part was that he couldn’t even deny it. she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. she was the best thing that ever would happen to him. he knew, looking down at her now, that he would never find anyone that could replace her. never. but he couldn’t be with her. because she was right. he wasn’t smart enough to stay sober, and he couldn’t risk being this version of himself around xander or around her anymore. “—- then go.” he states firmly, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder to push her away from him. he still couldn’t touch her with anything less than softness, though his eyes read something completely different. “we are fucking done.” she hated how he was standing there lacking anything and yet she still couldn't hate him.  she was sure she'd never be able to hate him, she could act cold, fuck, she could feel cold towards him in that moment but unlike everyone else that has come and gone she couldn't hate him. he was, would always be, her person.  it might have been gentle but it was the meaning behind it. her own touch to smack his hand away harsh.  "don't fucking touch me, you piece of shit," she hissed.  "you don't get to ever fucking touch me."  but fuck he had a hold on her.  "yeah, we are, and i hope when you wake up in the morning you realise what the fuck you've done," she said backing away from him but then as it hit her she couldn't control the single tear that escaped. marnie instantly wiping it away, pulling out her phone to order an uber. oh and there he was with xander as her screen background, she closed her eyes and stood still for a moment.  but she wasn't going to talk him through this time, beg him to see her side, she just ran her fingers through her hair and actually walked away down the street. @ofangelos