#interference-proof

[youareinlove]

kamala pls demand a recount

[sybbi]

"If enough of us vote third party for president, we could actually GET somewhere with our policy goals!"

Baby girl you can't even get a majority of third party/independents in a single state legislature. In the past 30 years there have been seven independent/third party state governors, and of those, only three were genuinely independent. The rest either got elected as a R/D and switched mid-term when they alienated themselves from their state party, got elected as I and then switched to R/D during their terms (with some of them having served the R/D parties before), or served as proxy candidates with heavy backing and support from one of the major two parties. Even VERMONT, a relative stronghold for independent/third party candidates -- the place that brought you Bernie Sanders -- doesn't have a majority of third party candidates. And when I call them a stronghold, I mean they are the only state (I know of) that consistently elects (less than a handful of) Independent candidates to the state legislature; the place is still dominated by Ds and Rs.

"The highest power in the land can't actually be voted on so there's no reason to vote for the democrats"

Hey princess here are some high school civics question for you: How are Supreme Court judges nominated? :) By what process are they appointed? Who starts that process? :) Why is the Supreme Court considered reflective of who has won the presidency? :)

[woodland-sys]

this isn't a vaguepost this is about my father

I hate it so much when people refuse to even consider that they might be wrong about something unless you put irrefutable evidence of it right in front of them. I'm not talking about when somebody doesn't want to change their opinion until they see evidence. I'm talking about when a friend or family member disagrees with someone and their first thought is that the friend/family must be less informed and then they try to educate them.

Even if somebody hasn't shown you proof yet, it's your job to engage with their ideas in good faith, and genuinely make an effort to learn about their position before passing judgement. A lot of the time if somebody says something that sounds dumb it's because they know something that you don't. Even if you still disagree after learning about their stance you will probably learn something from their ideas. People are smart, they aren't always right, but you should assume that the people in your life have meaningful thoughts that you can learn from.

If somebody angrily says something along the lines of "you always assume your opinions are correct until somebody proves you wrong" and your response is to laugh at them and say "obviously I believe in my opinions" you are literally proving their point right there. The issue isn't that you have beliefs, obviously. Nobody on the planet would get mad at somebody for believing something. They are saying that you always assume that your opinions are correct, not believe. When you assume that you're correct, it means you don't consider the possibility that you've missed something, that there's more to the story. Because of that, when somebody says something you disagree with, then the logical conclusion is that they must be less informed. Saying "of course I think my opinions are correct" is literally an example of that exact behavior. You didn't take the time to understand their point, and just interpreted it as them saying something stupid because you never considered that maybe you are the one who doesn't understand what they're saying.

[scottguy]

[princessaffirms]

you don’t hope to shift — you COLLAPSE the WAVE FUNCTION. 🍎✨

the SCIENCE of reality shifting/law of assumption

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

is there any SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that reality shifting is real? what about the law of assumption? you might be surprised by how much QUANTUM PHYSICS already aligns with the shifting/loa concepts you know and love.

in quantum mechanics, there’s this core concept called WAVE FUNCTION COLLAPSE, first introduced by the copenhagen interpretation. it says that particles like electrons or photons don’t exist in one set state — instead, they exist in a state of SUPERPOSITION, meaning all possible states at once. but the moment they are observed, the wave function collapses into a SINGLE OUTCOME (zeilinger, 1999).

Figure 3. The Copenhagen Interpretation: Wave Function Collapse (World Science Association, 2020).

before observation, there is NO FIXED STATE. reality exists as an infinite, limitless wave of probabilities. and the observer’s awareness is what selects one of those possibilities and collapses it into experience (zeilinger, 1999). this doesn’t just tweak physics. it REDEFINES what we call reality.

and in quantum mechanics? this isn’t just hopeful theorizing.

this is experimentally proven FACT.

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

🤍✨ THE DOUBLE SLIT EXPERIMENT

this experiment is currently one of the CLEAREST PROOFS of how observation determines outcomes. when particles like electrons are fired through two slits without being observed, they act like waves — creating an interference pattern. they behave as if they went through both slits at once (arndt et al., 1999).

but the moment you observe which slit they go through, the interference disappears. the particle behaves like a solid object and chooses one path. the act of observation alone changes the result (arndt et al., 1999). this collapse is not metaphorical — it literally happens.

^ a visual of this experiment! courtesy of tumblr <3

this experiment is truly powerful because it physically DEMONSTRATES how conscious measurement collapses potential into outcome. aka, HOW YOU CONSCIOUSLY SELECT THE REALITY YOU EXPERIENCE!

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

🤍✨ REALITY SHIFTING = WAVE FUNCTION COLLAPSE

this is what reality shifting and the law of assumption point to. you’re ALWAYS FOCUSING your awareness (consciousness, identity, energy, whatever you want to call it) into ONE specific reality from an infinite quantum field (thaheld, 2005).

that INTENTIONAL ASSUMPTION collapses the wave function, making that version real for you. you don’t chase it. you don’t pull it in. you assume it’s already yours, and the quantum field reflects.

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

🤍✨ BELL’S THEOREM & EXPERIMENTAL CONFIRMATION

“but what if the particles are ALREADY in a fixed state, even with no observer present?”

WELL…physicist john bell mathematically proved that NO HIDDEN VARIABLES (aka no underlying mechanics) can explain quantum behaviour, UNLESS we accept that observation itself changes outcomes.

(which is literally THE BASIS OF SHIFTING/LOA!! 🤭)

his theory was put to the test in the ASPECT EXPERIMENTS, and the results confirmed it: entangled particles (more on quantum entanglement soon!) react to each other instantly, across vast distances, and ONLY WHEN OBSERVED (aspect, dalibard, & roger, 1982). these interactions defy space and time, and yet they STILL depend on measurement (aka observation).

“SO WHAT’S THE IMPLICATION OF THIS?” 🤨

form doesn’t exist until it’s consciously interacted with. MEANING: realities don’t “lock in” until your awareness CHOOSES one.

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

🤍✨ WHAT THIS MEANS FOR SHIFTING + LOA

so when we say reality shifting and loa are real, we’re not talking fiction — we’re talking PHYSICS. the universe literally doesn’t finalize outcomes until you observe them. your assumption is the observation. your inner state is the collapse (chalmers & mcqueen, 2021).

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

🤍✨ FINAL THOUGHTS?

this isn’t “woo”. this is physics.

the universe is built on PROBABILITIES, and you are the one collapsing the wave function. every assumption, every shift of identity is a quantum-level decision.

your chosen reality is always waiting. so which version are you READY to assume?

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

i tried my best to simplify this info so it’s more easily digestible, but as always i recommend doing your own research and reading up on the sources listed below if you’re interested in more! i hope this post helped bring you some insights and clarity. 🫶

love and light always <3

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

🍎✨ REFERENCES

feynman, r. p., leighton, r. b., & sands, m. l. (1965). The Feynman lectures on physics: Vol. 3 Quantum mechanics. Addison-Wesley.

aspect, a., dalibard, j., & roger, g. (1982). Experimental test of Bell’s inequalities using time‐varying analyzers. Physical Review Letters, 49(25), 1804–1807. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.49.1804

zeilinger, a. (1999). A foundational principle for quantum mechanics. Foundations of Physics, 29(4), 631–643. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018820410908

arndt, m., et al. (1999). Wave–particle duality of C60 molecules. Nature, 401(6754), 680–682. https://doi.org/10.1038/44348

thaheld, f. h. (2005). Does consciousness really collapse the wave function? BioSystems, 81(2), 113–123. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303264705000237

chalmers, d. j., & mcqueen, k. j. (2021). Consciousness and the collapse of the wave function. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.02314

a study on the interaction between human consciousness and artificial intelligence in refik anadol’s quantum memories: the creation of quantum memories by the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics – scientific figure on researchgate. (2020). world science association. available from: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Copenhagen-Interpretation-Wave-Function-Collapse-World-Science-Association-2020_fig2_380334190

[endofthelinegang]

i've got sunshine

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠ˏˋ°•*⁀➷  thunderbolts x fem!reader

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲ˏˋ°•*⁀➷  a sunshiney reader brings warmth and healing to the hearts of the Thunderbolts—John Walker, Yelena Belova, Bob Reynolds, Ava Starr, and Bucky Barnes—each responding to their light in different, deeply personal ways. through detailed bullet points and intimate mini fics, the post explores how these broken, complex characters slowly learn to love and be loved.

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ none besides bad words

John Walker has no damn idea what to do with you because you are going to kill him one day…

You call him “sweetheart” first—and he almost short circuits. He mutters “don’t call me that” the first few times, but never really means it. Eventually, he gets real quiet every time you do, like it hurts and heals at the same time. He literally would worry if you stopped saying it. In fact one day you don’t say it and he is like “what happened to sweetheart.” And you are all in. 

He gets protective to a fault. You smile at a barista and he’s already squinting like, who the hell is this guy and why is he breathing near you? It’s not jealousy—it’s fear. Fear that someone like you will get hurt because of someone like him. He literally has to go everywhere with you even if it interferes with his life because if anyone hurts you he needs to be right there. 

He doesn't know how to accept gentleness. The first time you brush your fingers through his hair after a nightmare, he flinches. The second time, he leans into your palm like it’s the only time he has ever felt someone love on him. He loves the way you take your time touching him in any circumstance so slowly and with ease. 

You talk during breakfast; he listens. He never interrupts, just sips his coffee with his elbows on the counter, looking at you like your voice is sunlight filtered through dust motes. He never thought mornings could feel safe again. You love to tell him about your weird dreams and at first he is like “what the fuck.” But eventually he just laughs along and asks little questions. 

He gets weird about his scars. You kiss the one just under his ribs and he jerks away like he’s been burned. Later that night, he kisses your shoulder and whispers, “You make me feel so damn weird.” 

He doesn’t do pet names until he does. It slips out one day—“baby”—when he’s scared you’re going to leave. It’s hoarse, desperate, like the word’s been sitting on his tongue for months. He barely breathes after saying it. And immediately the world melts around you and even though you maybe don’t forgive him you can’t help but just hug him. 

He tries to “warn” you off. Tells you he’s too far gone, too angry, too violent. You just look at him with that soft, infuriating smile and say, “Then it’s a good thing I’m not scared of the dark.”

He loves your laugh like it’s sacred. Every time he hears it, something inside him unclenches. It’s like proof that the world can still be good, that he didn’t ruin everything. He will go out of his way to make you laugh when he really can’t listen to the world anymore. 

He doesn’t believe he deserves you. Not deep down. Every time you tell him you love him, he swallows it like a blade. But he clings to it like armor—your love becomes the thing that keeps him from spiraling.

He’d burn the world down to keep you safe. And the terrifying part is—he could. But he doesn’t. Because you remind him that staying is the bravest thing he’s ever done.

🥀 good morning soldier 

Your bare feet pad across the cold kitchen floor, humming some half-remembered melody from a playlist he’d never admit he listens to. The sun hasn’t fully risen yet—just enough light to spill gold across the countertop. John’s already there, mug in hand, back leaning against the sink like he’s been up for hours.

You grin, rubbing your eyes. “Hey, sweetheart.”

He looks at you like the word physically hits him. His jaw tics and his eyes target you, “You shouldn’t call me that.” He sets his drink down and just like every other morning he spins around to face the sink and turn on the water. 

Walking all the way over to him you stand as close as you can to him and pour yourself some coffee. “Then stop blushing when I do.” 

“I don’t blush.” He jumps back a bit from the water steaming the sink that he just had his hands under not paying attention to what he had done. 

You laugh, and it’s unfair how easily it cuts through his defenses. He looks away. The silence sits thick for a beat. But then you notice the half lidded eyes, the still in pajamas outfit, and the fact that your coffee was cold, “You have another nightmare?” you ask softly.

He doesn’t answer. Just keeps his eyes on the window, watching the empty sky. You slide into his space, standing between him and the sink putting your hands on his chest, “You know you don’t have to stand alone every time something hurts, right?”

He swallows hard.

“You shouldn’t say that either,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “You’re starting to make me dumb. I forget who I was when you act like this.” He doesn’t move he just stares at you with what little opening his eyes are giving him. 

You move your hands up his chest a little more—right over that old, angry heartbeat that still hasn’t learned how to trust. “You’re not who you were.”

His breath stutters, and you can feel his heart kick up a bit. “You don’t know that.”

You step up onto your tipt toes, brushing your lips just barely across his. “I do.”

He kisses you just as gently as you chose to approach him. And when he pulls back, he rests his forehead against yours, “I don’t deserve you.”

You smile, soft and maddening. “Good thing I’m not asking you to.”

Yelena Belove thinks you might be an Alien or worse real…

She pretends not to like you at first. All sarcastic quips and fake eye-rolls like, “Why are you smiling? Did I miss something?” But she notices everything—your laugh, your warmth, the way you care. The way you hear she likes music and makes her playlists, the way you give her different eyeliner colors to try, and the way you make sure she eats, drinks, and sleeps. 

You bring her little things. A weird trinket from a thrift store. A hot sauce bottle shaped like a cat. A donut with a smiley face. A pot that you sat and decorated because you had nothing else to do. She acts unimpressed—until you catch her hoarding them in a drawer like treasure, you kindly offer to take your trash and throw it away, and she simply says “Are you crazy? No.” 

She calls you annoying instead of saying “I love you.” “Ugh, you are so annoying,” she mutters when you kiss her forehead or help her fix her hair. But her hand doesn’t leave yours and she is always smiling at you when you aren’t looking at her. 

She becomes very defensive of you. The moment anyone makes a snide comment or flirts with you too aggressively, Yelena’s voice gets dangerously calm. “Say that again. Slowly. So I can break the right fingers.” And she makes you stand behind her and hold her hand, not because you can’t fight for yourself but you shouldn’t have to. You also do not match so she needs to make sure everyone knows who you are with. 

You sneak softness into her life. She goes from “I do not need flowers” to ���I kill anyone who touches this pressed daisy in my journal” real fast. Especially if you gave it to her. She also loves when you make her things special, like inside she gets all giddy.

She gets flustered when you compliment her. “You’re so pretty it makes my chest hurt,” you sigh. She immediately chokes on her drink and shoves a pillow in your face like “NO.” 

You make her laugh when she doesn't want to. After missions. After nightmares. After she punches a wall. You’re just there with a dumb joke or an armful of snacks and a movie queued up. And she hates how much it helps.

She learns what safety feels like—with you. She never used to sleep through the night. Now, with your hand resting on her stomach and your breath in her hair, she sometimes forgets the world exists.

She lets you fix her up. Cuts, bruises, bullet wounds—she lets you clean them, grumbling like a wounded animal but never pulling away. Sometimes she kisses you when you're concentrated, just to feel your love in real time.

She falls in love before she realizes it. One day, she looks over at you singing to your plants in a hoodie that’s way too big, and it just hits her. “Oh no,” she whispers. “I would actually kill for her.”

🥀 you talk too much and i like it 

“You talk too much,” Yelena mutters, leaning back on your couch while you animatedly explain the plot of Criminal Minds. Though she is finding it amusingly disturbing she can’t help but comment. 

You pause mid-rant. “Excuse me?” You plop down on the couch practically sitting on her lap as you do so. 

She raises an eyebrow. “You do. You talk too much. About everything. Movies. Animals. Crime. It is like listening to a podcast that smiles at you. Yelena puts her hand on your leg absentmindedly as she scrolls on her phone. 

You cross your arms, pretending to pout. “Fine. I’ll shut up.” You are now staring right at the TV not saying a word anymore. You completely ignore her hand and you don’t say anything about her makeup. 

Silence falls for a beat. Then her voice softens. “Don’t.” You look over. She’s not watching the TV or her phone  anymore—she’s watching you. Like the world’s already on fire and you’re the only thing not burning.

“I like your voice,” she says. Barely above a whisper. She clicked the TV down a few volume ticks and throws her phone onto the floor. 

You blink.

“I like the way you talk when you think no one’s really listening. I like the way you ramble. I like…” She swallows, jaw tight. “I like you.” You throw your arms down and then move her hand throwing it back at her as you climb onto her lap. 

You put your thighs outside of hers and put your hands around the back of her neck. “Even when I sing to myself?”

She groans, tossing her head backwards. “Ugh, especially then. You are so weird.” Her hands find their way around your waist pulling you close.  But she looks up and you look down slowly you bring your face closer to hers until you are barely kissing. Because sunshine like you? It’s the first real warmth she’s ever known.

Bob Reynolds feels like it is rain hitting gold…

He doesn’t understand you at first. You bring him coffee with a little heart drawn in the foam. You bring a second mug just in case he doesn’t like the first one. You say things like “Have you eaten today?” with that sunny curiosity that makes it feel like a love letter, not a chore. He stares at you for a solid thirty seconds before answering—because no one’s asked that in years. Everything you ask him about himself is so strange to him because you really care about his day, how he feels, if he feels like he can take care of himself, if he has taken care of himself, and what he wants to do. All of that matters to you. 

He thinks you’re too good for him. He watches you dance in the kitchen to the radio as you help him clean up, barefoot and glowing in the golden light of afternoon, and all he can think is don’t touch it, you’ll ruin it. He stands in doorways and doesn’t step forward. He watches more than he speaks. Not because he doesn’t want to—but because he doesn’t believe the light will let him stay. 

 You catch him crying over small things. You offer him your scarf when he forgets his coat. You make a point to fold his sweaters so they don’t lose their shape. You hum when you brush your teeth. It’s these things. The tiny soft normalities that gut him open. That whisper, you’re allowed to do those things with her. 

He touches you like you’re a miracle. At first it’s hesitant—just a hand grazing yours, his shoulder leaning into your side on the couch. But when you kiss him, really kiss him, his hands shake. He cups the back of your head like he’s afraid you’ll vanish. He pulls you into his lap like he needs the weight of you to stay grounded. You get so excited and you are so happy to touch him and feel how warm he is. 

 He watches you sleep to remind himself this is real. Sometimes he doesn’t sleep at all. He just lies beside you with his hand gently curled over your hip, counting your breaths like prayers. You drool a little. Snore softly. And he still thinks it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

You make him laugh like a boy again - You tell the worst jokes imaginable and wait for his reaction with this eager little smile that kills him. The first time he laughs, you don’t even register how monumental it is. But he does. He excuses himself to the bathroom and stares at himself in the mirror for ten minutes, hand over his mouth like holy shit.

He tells you about the Void in fragments. It starts with a bad night. He says, “There’s something inside me.” Then: “It’s not always under control.” Then: “It wants to hurt everything I love.” When you hold his hand through it, he cries like a man unworthy of forgiveness. But you don’t let go.

You learn how to pull him out of the dark. It’s not with screaming or logic. It’s with little things. You name five things in the room. You tell him where you are. You sit with your knees touching and say, “You’re here, Bob. Right now. With me. Not there.” And it works, sometimes. Not always—but enough. When it doesn’t work that way you go on runs with him, you take him on drives, and you stay up all night with him. 

He tries to leave you. He writes a letter. He packs a bag. He almost disappears. But you find him—always. Sitting in a motel off some highway, pacing in a parking lot, crouched in an alley like he’s back in a war he can’t name. You find him, and you don’t say why did you run. You say, “Are you ready to come home now?”

He’s terrified of being loved fully. Because love means vulnerability. Means closeness. Means you see him. And if you see him, then you’ll see the rot. But when he panics, when he spirals, when he screams that he’s not safe to be around—you cup his face, brush back his hair, and whisper, “I don’t need perfect. I just need you.”

 You teach him softness. You show him that being held isn’t the same as being restrained. That being needed isn’t a burden. That crying in front of someone doesn’t mean weakness—it means trust. And one day, without even realizing it, he smiles first.

🥀 sanctuary

The walls are shaking. Not physically—but inside his skull, he can feel the vibrations and it hurts. Inside the Void, where the air is thick and wrong, where the voices hiss about destruction and obliteration and how dare you let this happen—

He is sitting in the freezing cold outside on the concrete stairs on the library, he is not tired, he is not even feeling human at this point. He can no longer hear the buzzing of the streetlights or the sound of the cars fighting for one side of the road where the road work is not. But then there’s a light. Your voice. Soft and steady.

“Bob.”

He can’t answer. His throat is locked. His hands twitch. You kneel in front of him, legs folded beneath you, your hands reaching for his like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He is freezing, his hands do not even feel like they have skin they are so solid. “Come back. Come here. Come home.”

“I can’t,” he chokes on his own spit, he forgot to swallow, he can barely hear you.  “I—I’m not—I’m not safe. I could hurt you. I could—”

“You won’t,” you say. No fear. No flinching. Just absolute conviction. You feel so bad, he usually does not suffer like this, in fact he had been good for months. But like he was addicted to drugs his brain is addicted to this and he has no control. “Not with me.”

He lets out a sob and tries to pull away—but you follow. You always follow. Your forehead touches his, and your thumbs swipe the tears from his cheeks letting his shaky hands sit wherever he lets them lay as you whisper:

“You’re not the monster in the dark, baby. You’re the boy who came back to the light.”

And that breaks him. He curls into your shoulder hugging you, even his clothes feel like ice. He clings like a man drowning. Bob starts to realize that he can barely feel his own body, but he can think and he is truly so happy you are there with him. He keeps his face in your  should as you rub his back and push your head against his, whispering, “You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re mine.”

And for the first time in years, the Void goes quiet.

Ava Starr believes you have changed her whole orbit…

At first, she doesn't trust the sunshine. You smile too easily. You're gentle in a way that makes her skin itch with confusion. People like you—happy people, softpeople—usually get swallowed by the world she lives in. So she assumes it's fake. It has to be. But it’s not. You just... are.

She keeps waiting for the mask to drop. Ava tracks you, like a threat. Watches your body language for signs of manipulation. Keeps mental notes on every kindness you show her. But weeks pass, and it’s always the same: soft eyes, warm hands, a voice like safety. She realizes one day that you never were wearing a mask. You’re just light. Real light. And that’s somehow scarier.

She tries to push you away with sharp edges. “Don’t get close to me,” she says. “I’m not safe.” You grin. “Neither is the sun, but here we are.” It’s the first time she blushes in years.

She doesn’t know what to do when you fuss over her. You put lotion in her bag because you noticed her hands crack in the cold. You bring her tea and sit with her in silence after missions. You brush her hair away from her eyes during bad days. She stares at you like you’re speaking a foreign language. Like no one has ever cared for her without needing something in return. And you don’t. You just do it. Because you love her.

 You’re the only one who can touch her without flinching. Ava’s afraid of what her phasing will do—afraid of hurting you. But you cup her face gently, pressing your forehead to hers, whispering: "I trust you. I trust your control." And she doesn’t cry—but she does shake. A quiet surrender.

You give her a place to land. When the pain gets too loud, when the ghost-scream of her molecules starts shredding her calm, she finds you. She doesn’t even need to speak—you just open your arms, and she’s home. She can phase through walls but never through you. You ground her like gravity.

She protects you with a terrifying ferocity. Someone raises their voice at you once—and Ava is instantly on them. No words. No warning. Just a look that promises blood and consequences. It’s not a bluff, either. You're the one who has to tug her back and say softly, “It’s okay, baby. I’m okay.” (But you secretly like it.)

 She learns how to soften for you. She’s not good with affection at first—her hands hesitate, her voice comes out clipped. But she learns. Learns to hold your waist when you’re cooking, to rub your back when you’re anxious, to whisper “I missed you” into your collarbone like it costs her something to admit it. But she does. She admits it. Because you’re worth the burn.

You’re the first person she lets see her scars. She shows you the damage. The places her body never fully healed. The marks from machines, from labs, from the life she never asked for. You press kisses to each one. “This one means you survived,” you say. “This one too. All of them.” And for the first time, they feel beautiful.

She plans a future with you—but can’t say it out loud. She thinks about what it would mean to build a life, not just survive one. She pictures a little apartment with books you leave open on the couch, toothbrushes side-by-side, you dancing in her hoodie to awful music while coffee brews. She can’t say it yet—but she wants it. God, she wants it.

You tell her she's not broken—and she almost believes you. You say it like a promise: “You are not your pain, Ava. You are not a weapon. You are a woman who lived through hell and still chose to love.” She closes her eyes and leans into your shoulder. “I don’t know if I believe that yet.” “That’s okay,” you whisper. “I believe it enough for both of us.”

🥀 phase 

You wake to the hum of the quantum static. Ava’s back is arched, breath ragged, hands clenching the edge of the mattress like she’s barely holding herself together. Light pulses under her skin—white-hot and wrong—as she phases in and out of reality.

You don’t scream. Don’t flinch. You sit up slowly, crawl to her side, and whisper: “You’re okay. I’m here.”

She tries to pull away. “No—get out—get away from me—I can’t control—” You wrap your arms around her waist and press your face to her spine.

“I trust you,” you say. She lets out a sob like a wounded animal. Her body shakes. Her phasing slows. The light dims. Your warmth seeps into her chest, and she slumps back against you like it’s all she’s been waiting for.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she mumbles brokenly.

“I don’t care,” you whisper. “You’re not alone.”

She clutches your hand, fingers trembling, and for the first time in weeks, her body stays whole.

Bucky Barnes thinks you have the smile he will always chase…

He does not understand why you care about him. Not really. Not yet. Bucky Barnes is used to people fearing him or needing him. Used to being either a weapon or a tragedy. When you show up with that light in your eyes and a handmade lunch in your bag for him, smiling like he’s something good, he can’t compute it. “You always bring me stuff,” he mutters, picking at the corner of your container. “Even when I’m an asshole.” “And you always eat it,” you tease. “Even when you’re trying not to smile.” The corner of his mouth twitches. He doesn’t smile, not really. Not yet. But his hands stop shaking.

He never grew up learning how to deal with gentleness. Bucky knows how to take a punch. Knows how to survive brainwashing, torture, decades of guilt. But he doesn’t know what to do when you crawl into his lap, pepper kisses along his stubbled jaw, and whisper, “Hi, handsome.” He freezes. Every time. You can feel the tension running through him like a high-tension wire. Not fear. Just disbelief. Like he thinks he’ll wake up and you’ll be gone. “Relax, Buck,” you say, pressing your hand to his chest. “I’m here.” He’ll press his forehead against yours like it’s a prayer. And breathe, slow and shaky.

He’s gentle in ways he doesn’t even realize. He stands on the street side when you walk. Sleeps closest to the door in hotels. Keeps his vibranium hand curled behind your back in public, silently shielding you. It’s in the way he opens your car door and then pretends he didn’t. In how he silently memorizes your coffee order after you say it once. In private? He touches you like you're porcelain and he’s still learning how to use his hands again. You make him slow down. Let him feel. Let him choose.

 He’s scared to sleep next to you at first. Not because he doesn’t want to. But because he’s had too many nights waking up in cold sweats, fists clenched, not knowing where—or who—he is. The idea of hurting you, even by accident, keeps him curled on the couch for weeks. But one night, you find him mid-nightmare. He’s on his knees, breathing ragged, eyes wild with Winter Soldier panic. You kneel in front of him, press your hand to his cheek. “You’re here. You’re safe. You’re Bucky. And I love you.” He crumbles. Arms around your waist, face buried in your chest like he’s five seconds from shattering. After that, he sleeps in your bed every night.

 He’s constantly looking at you like you’re not real. In the morning light, when you’re brushing your teeth in his t-shirt. When you fall asleep in his lap while watching reruns. When you kiss his shoulder absentmindedly while reading a book. There’s a look he gets—faraway, reverent. Like he’s staring at something too good for him. Like he’s waiting for the day you realize you deserve better. You catch him one day. “You okay?” He shakes his head slowly, voice a rasp: “I’ve never been this okay.”

 He’s terrified of how much he needs you. You’re light. Ease. A sunrise he never thought he’d live to see again. And that terrifies him. Because he’s lived in shadow so long, it feels like the sun might burn him. When he pulls away sometimes, disappears into his own head, you don’t chase. You wait. You sit close. You remind him: “You’re allowed to need things.” Eventually, he whispers back, “I need you.”

He starts learning softness from you. Slowly. Clumsily. You teach him that he’s allowed to laugh. That he can tease, flirt, tickle. You start to see a version of Bucky who’s silly.Who hides your snacks just to watch you pout. Who writes terrible sticky notes and leaves them on your mirror. Who starts humming in the kitchen when he thinks you’re asleep. He’s awkward with it. But so proud when he makes you laugh. “That wasn’t even that funny,” you giggle one day. Bucky shrugs, smug. “Made you snort, sunshine.”

He lets you touch his vibranium arm—and it undoes him. No one ever touches it. Not like that. Not with tenderness. But you’ll grab his hand with zero hesitation, press your cheek to the cool metal, trace the Wakandan etchings like they’re something beautiful. “Even this part of you deserves love,” you whisper once. He doesn’t respond. Just pulls you into his arms and holds you like you’re the only thing tethering him to the ground.

 He learns to want a future with you. It’s small things at first. Sharing a toothbrush holder. Bringing home flowers. Letting you paint that little spare room whatever ridiculous color you picked. Then it’s bigger. A key to his place. Matching mugs. You in his dog tags. He doesn’t say it out loud. But the way he looks at you when you fall asleep beside him? That is his vow.

You’re the reason he stays. There are still hard nights. Still days when he wonders if he’s worth saving. But you don’t flinch. You never leave. You just pull him close, press your lips to his temple, and remind him again: “You’re not broken. You’re becoming.” And he holds on to you like a lifeline.Because you are.

🥀 the quiet place 

Bucky wakes before the sun finishes rising. The room is bathed in the soft gray haze of morning, curtains drawn halfway, just enough to let the light pool across the floor in long, golden ribbons. The world outside hasn’t woken yet—no cars, no birds, no sound. Just the gentle, rhythmic hum of your breathing beside him.

His body’s still tense when he stirs, like it always is when sleep lets go of him. For one awful second, his brain jolts into the habit of survival. He doesn’t know where he is. Doesn’t know who’s next to him. The phantom buzz of a trigger word rattles behind his eyes. Then you murmur something, half-asleep. A soft, incoherent noise. And you burrow closer.

Your arm, draped over his stomach, flexes just slightly as you pull yourself tighter to him. Your leg’s hooked over his hip like you’ve claimed him. There’s a faint line of drool at the corner of your mouth, and your cheek is pressed to his bare chest. Your hair is a mess. He can feel the heat of your breath fan over the curve of his ribs. It anchors him.

He exhales slowly through his nose, the panic ebbing. His heartbeat evens out. He lets his eyes flick open, just enough to look at you. Really look at you. You’re here. You’re still here. He doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t try to. Not right now.

Instead, Bucky stays still. Motionless. Reverent.

The weight of you on him is everything. A reminder. A heartbeat. Proof. He watches you sleep for minutes that feel like hours. His eyes trace your features—your lashes fluttering, the softness of your mouth, the curve of your jaw. Your hand twitches against his stomach like you’re dreaming something good.

You never look at him like you’re afraid. Even when he flinches in the dark. Even when his nightmares crack him open at 3am and he curls into himself like a wounded dog, shaking from the echo of memories he never asked for. Even when he forgets how to speak without guilt heavy in his throat.

You look at him like he’s home. He swallows around the ache building in his chest. Carefully—so carefully—he raises his vibranium hand, fingers shaking just a little, and brushes a strand of hair out of your face. The tips of his fingers linger at your temple. You don’t wake. But you sigh. Soft, pleased, safe. Bucky’s eyes sting suddenly. He blinks up at the ceiling.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve this,” he whispers.

It’s a prayer. It’s a confession. It’s all he can say. But you stir then, just barely, and mumble sleepily without opening your eyes: “You lived.”

He doesn’t cry. Not really. But something inside him cracks, slow and aching and full of light. He closes his eyes again. Not because he’s tired. Not because he’s slipping into a nightmare. But because, for the first time in a long, long time, Bucky Barnes is allowed to rest. And this time, he does. Wrapped in you. Wrapped in peace.

[rosemaryhoney27]

Dont mess with our daughter

Wrath of the Fentons

Jason Todd had seen a lot of weird things in Gotham. Lazarus pits, immortal assassins, fear gas-induced nightmares—hell, he'd been one of the weird things, once upon a time. But watching a bunch of black-market meta traffickers haul a very pissed-off redhead into an unmarked van in broad daylight was quickly climbing the ranks of what the fuck moments.

She wasn't screaming. That was the first sign that something was wrong. Most metas—or normal people—would be terrified. Instead, this girl looked annoyed.

Jason had been tracking this particular ring for weeks. They specialized in kidnapping metas with "unique features"—horns, glowing eyes, animal traits, things that marked them as different. The bastards made a killing selling them off to the highest bidder.

The girl—Jazz, he caught one of the thugs saying—fit their usual type. Her hands, bound behind her, had faint green veins pulsing under her skin, as if something otherworldly coursed through her. Her eyes flickered a ghostly green before settling back into a sharp, human blue.

Jason knew that look. It was the look someone got when they were waiting.

For what? Backup? Did she have a tracker? A hidden weapon?

He was about to interfere when Jazz sighed dramatically and muttered, "You poor, poor idiots."

Jason didn't have time to wonder what she meant before his comms flared to life with a frantic Oracle.

"Red Hood, stand down—I repeat, do not engage—the girl's parents are en route, and—holy shit—these guys have no idea what they just did."

Jason frowned. "Parents? Who—"

And then he saw the tank.

It barreled down the street, mounted with weapons that absolutely should not be street legal, glowing green with ominous energy. The side of the vehicle had a logo painted in jagged white letters:

FENTON WORKS

The doors flew open, and a massive man in an orange jumpsuit leaped out, wielding what could only be described as an anti-aircraft cannon converted into a rifle. His wife followed, a visor covering her eyes, her sleek blue bodysuit glowing with strange symbols.

"JAZZ!" the man bellowed, aiming the cannon at the traffickers as if they were just another ghost to blast into oblivion.

"Hey, Dad!" Jazz called, still completely unbothered as one of the thugs tried to hold a knife to her throat. "You might want to be careful. They think I'm a meta."

"Oh, honey," her mom said, pulling out a gun that looked like it belonged in a sci-fi horror movie. "They won't be thinking anything in a few minutes."

Jason took a slow step back.

He'd seen Bruce handle hostage situations with surgical precision. He'd seen Dick talk down armed criminals with nothing but charm and a smile.

He had never seen two civilians go full scorched earth on a meta trafficking ring without so much as a plan beyond "rescue daughter, destroy everything."

The traffickers barely had time to react before green energy blasts tore through their van, their weapons, and the street around them. The sheer destructive enthusiasm was a sight to behold.

One thug made the mistake of aiming a gun at Maddie Fenton. She shot him with a glowing net that phased through his skin before electrifying him into unconsciousness. Another tried to run—Jack Fenton threw what looked like a modified bear trap, which snapped shut around the guy’s legs and dragged him back, screaming.

Jazz, still tied up, sighed as one guy tried to use her as a human shield. "You do realize that you're standing between me and them, right?"

The thug barely had time to consider his life choices before Maddie calmly shot him in the leg.

Jason, crouched on a nearby rooftop, slowly exhaled.

Well. The ring was definitely out of commission.

As the Fentons loaded the unconscious criminals into their highly illegal ghost-proof containment units, Jazz finally noticed Jason watching. She arched a brow.

"Hey, Red Hood, right?"

Jason, still processing, just nodded.

Jazz smirked. "You look like you're having a what the fuck moment."

Jason stared at the still-smoking wreckage of what used to be a human trafficking operation and then at the grinning, trigger-happy Fenton parents.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that about sums it up."

[globaloppaaa]

but there was you ─── ⋆˚࿔

⋆˚꩜｡ you’re my only target

riki nishimura x fem!reader wc: 4k [angst, smut, fluff]

based off events from mr. and mrs. smith - 2000

makeup smut ⊹ not too graphic bc i don’t got that experience ⊹ mentions of weapons ⊹ killing ⊹ themes with emotional trauma ⊹ crying ⊹ p in v (characters are married and both over 21) which means hubby riki :))) ⊹ swearing ⊹ mentions of weapons ⊹ petnames

library 𓂃۶ৎ reblog for a big kiss!

You should’ve known.

The years of silence, those lingering feelings pressed between soft words that ached you to your core, now felt so evident before you could even open the door of your home. It’s too quiet, not in the rhythm you swore to follow all this time as protocol, but in the kind that tells you he knows. 

You aren’t sure what ignites you even more, the fact he knew before you, or the fact that he chose to play along.

There’s no music, no static from the television, barely a hum from the kitchen. Just the hush of your house and night echoing the click of your key in the lock. He always leaves something on; he always makes noise, like too much silence might swallow him whole if he lets it. Your grip tightens on the doorknob as you make your way inside. Cautiously you kick off your heels and place your duffel onto the couch. The lights are dim, the kitchen is left untouched, and a half-full glass of water sits on the counter like a ghost. It’s proof that he was here but left in a hurry. Or maybe he didn’t finish what he started.

Your mission itself was short and down to the point. In and out, minimal interference. But it still clings to you like the scent of smoke in your clothes. You only found out what enemy had challenged your assignment after it had all crashed and burned, disappointment enraging your instincts. Those same instincts you’ve spent years sharpening couldn't settle as you came to learn that very enemy lived in your own home.

Your heart is thudding in your chest, not from the strain of the day, but from the dishonesty he held inside like it was nothing.

“You’re back early Sweetheart,” comes a voice from the hallway. It’s low and welcoming, scripted per usual.

You turn.

Niki leans against the doorframe of your bedroom, toned shoulders supporting his weight.  He’s wearing a tight black shirt, the one he knows you can’t stand. His jaw clenches with something you don’t want to get into, but feel the conversation bubbling in the pit of your stomach. His eyes are the only feature you can’t seem to read. They’re glossy, not quite guilty. Not quite tense. But not calm.

“So are you, baby,” you say.

He shrugs. Doesn’t move, Doesn’t smile, even after hearing his pet name from your soft lips. That always makes him quirk a grin at the very least.

“I got reassigned.” He says as if his measly cover-up for a job even allows for such a kind of action. You raise your brow, stepping closer to his frame still unbothered. His chin angles as he looks down at you, like if you just moved a little closer you could-

“That doesn’t happen to you.” You whisper, watching the way his eyes dart between yours.

He gives you another shrug, and you know he’s lying. Not just in what he says, but in the way he says it like his body is braced for something, so now he’s trying too hard to look like he’s not.

“How was your day?” he asks, voice soft.

You nod.

“It was fine. They wanted confirmation on a secondary issue, so now I suppose I’ll have to do a write-up.”

Not necessarily a lie, only a fraction of the truth like always. You leave out the part where you were assigned to protect the “Secondary issue”, but let it all fall apart after feeling watched the entire time, eventually piecing together that it was his eyes on you. That silhouette on the rooftop across from yours, just a shadow of a lean body you almost wanted to run to, was his.

Niki watches you like he knows.

You move past him toward the bedroom without touching him, noses dangerously close to grazing, and somehow it feels more intimate than if you had.

The water of the shower scalds your skin. You want it that way.

You scrub the mission off you, but the edge in your bones doesn’t fade away, it scars like the shadows of his touch from the last time he felt comfortable enough to. Was that on your wedding night? You don’t even bother to remember. It’s still there when you dry off, slip into one of his shirts, and drop into bed with your favorite book. You expect him to join you, check a few emails before mustering ‘goodnight’ and turn his back to you like he always does. Most of the time his eyes stay open for a few minutes, pondering thoughts about who knows what, maybe work, maybe you. You know his routine even if you can’t see it, because you do the same thing. Tonight however, he doesn’t even join you in your bed. He’s in the living room. You can hear his steps, pacing back and forth.

You stare out at the wall, trying to focus on today's mission, and it's backfires. Frame by frame you pick apart what went smoothly, how it could’ve gone better, and who in particular interfered. You remember your entry point. How it was secure, the target visible with his ID confirmed. Your position was set. No order to kill this time, only to protect. You then remember the call, unannounced and urgent, demanding to place the mission on hold, standby at a time as dangerous as this. You caught a shape moving across the building beside you, not enough to get a good look, but enough to get a feeling. A shadow that knew exactly where to stand so that you couldn't shoot. Someone just as trained as you.

Someone like him.

It makes your blood run cold.

You shift the covers off you only ten minutes later, moving quietly down the hall. The office approaches and you scan it briskly. There's nothing out of the ordinary, but a feeling pulls at you. Something's off and you're not sure if that tug is in your heart or your gut. The bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, his drawer. It isn’t fully shut, and lawfully as his wedded wife you have access to your shared spaces in your home. You crouch down and slowly open the drawer, knowing the hinges squeak if you move too carelessly.

A folder sits at the top of the pile. Not hidden, but not left out either. It is suspiciously normal like he had no point in even hiding anything from you anymore after the events of today.

It’s stamped with a red seal, CLASSIFIED: INTER-AGENCY OPERATIVE MISSION. You open the folder, and Your breath hitches even though your suspicions were proven true hours ago.

Target Name: CONFIRMED MATCH.

Assigned Operative: Riki Nishimura

Objective: TERMINATION.

Your heart hammers. Same target, but different orders. You were sent to protect, and he was sent to kill the damn bastard.

“Looking for something?” you hear from behind you, but you don’t turn.

“You knew.” You whisper, almost viciously.

“So did you.”

“For how long?” you snap. Finally standing, facing him. You stomp over to his figure, noticing how it grows as you approach. He doesn’t answer. His jaw clenches, and that’s all you need to know.

“So what was the plan?” you ask. “Wait until I step in front of him? Take the shot anyway? Or were you going to shoot me too?”

“Don’t be stupid,” he growls. “I wouldn’t hurt you.”

You laugh dry, humorless as your gaze changes to the floor for a split second, before you find your way back to him. Somehow you can’t seem to look away from him for too long, and you hate it.

“You already did.”

He steps forward, slowly. Like approaching a wounded animal. Or something just as dangerous.

“It must’ve been a test,” he says. “They wanted to see what we’d do.”

“So you lied.”

“So did you,” he says again, a little harder this time. “You didn’t tell me what your mission was either.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.” You sarcastically apologize. “I wasn’t expecting to be protecting the same man you were assigned to kill.” Your fists clench. He’s closer now, and you want to scream at yourself for the way it still does something to you. The way his voice sounds when it’s low, the way his gaze drops to your mouth, then snaps back up like it never left.

You visibly lean back as your head falls into your hands, bordering on an emotional breakdown.

“What do we do now?” you whisper, face still held by your palms.

He only takes another step toward you. Close enough to feel the heat of him.

“We finish what we started.”

Your breath catches as his fingers brush your wrist. It’s barely a touch, but it sends goosebumps down your body. 

“And what is that?” you ask, your voice quieter now, wondering if he’s even talking about the mission anymore. You know him well enough to predict his thoughts at this point.

His eyes flick down, then meet yours again.

“You. Me. This.”

You fight his grip even as he removes your hands from your face so gently, leaning down just a little so that his face is leveled with yours. His eyes are half-lidded, but there's emotion behind it. It almost looks as if he’s looking at you with something deeper than insincerity. He takes his fingers and tugs your chin to look at him, to look at him. You hate this, hate that even though he's taller, more muscular, whenever something serious between you two occurs he always brings himself to the same level as you, to speak, to fight on an even battleground. It makes your blood boil, it aches you deep in your heart.

It’s rare for Riki to sound so sentimental, so you’ve come to understand that when moments like this arise, he must mean it with the entirety of his heart. 

“We do this together.” And as he looks between your eyes for approval, you don’t stop him as he leans in. You let him. Because for the first time in years, Riki says it like he’s been holding it in. Like it’s the only thing in the world that matters. He finally sounds like this is exactly where he wants to be. His eyes search your face as your lips come apart, waiting for you to push him away or call him a liar again. Spit something venomous and final that would make this whole thing easier to walk away from. But he knows you, knows how deep down you don’t want him to leave either. And when you don't push him away, from being so tired of pretending you don't want this anymore, he confirms it.

You’re tired of the anger hiding what’s underneath. His hand grazes your hip, slow and deliberate, but like it belongs there. You don’t stop him, but your breath catches. Lips parting just barely, and his eyes flick down again, eyebrows furrowing with what looks almost like care. Before his eyes glare with irrevocable emotion.

His mouth crashes against yours like a dam breaking, flooding out everything he’s been holding this in for too long. He hasn't felt this alive in years. Maybe since the first time you met, he thinks, when you loaded your gun hidden on the side of your garter as you shook his hand.

Your fingers fist the fabric of his shirt as he backs you into the wall, hands on your hips, sliding up under the hem of his shirt you’re wearing. He smirks into the kiss, almost proud that after all this, you're still his. Your teeth hit, his tongue finding its way to yours, followed by gasps from broken emotion. You feel every inch of him pressed against you, but it still doesn’t feel close enough.

“You’re still mad,” he mutters into your mouth, breath ragged.

“You’re still a liar,” you whisper back, tugging his shirt off over his head.

His lips brush the corner of your jaw down to your neck. Hot, open-mouthed kisses like he’s mapping the places that might still forgive him.

“Say you hate me,” he dares, dragging his mouth back up to yours. “I know you want to.”

His forehead pressed against yours, and you should, You really should say it to him. But tonight he’s much more controlled, like his heart cares for how you feel and he’s afraid to mess things up.

Instead, you breathe, eyes glaring up to meet him. “Shut up.” You kiss him again, he doesn’t refuse. How could he ever?

This time it’s slower, hungrier. You grip the back of his neck like you’re afraid he’ll disappear if you let go, threading your fingers through the base of his hair. He groans as he presses you harder into the wall like it’s the only way to keep his own hands steady, to keep his mind still from every thought dizzying him at the moment. There’s heat now, you feel it in the way his hips press against you, not aggressively, but enough to make you want more. It builds fast between your bodies, a low ache curling in your stomach. His hands roam beneath the fabric you’re drowning in, and every brush of his fingertips feels like a match struck on your skin.

He lifts you, quite effortlessly, and you wrap your legs around his waist without thinking. It makes him growl into your mouth as your lips find a shared rhythm. He carries you through the hallway like he’s done it before in all the dreams he swore he’d forget. You barely even process that you reach your bed until the door slams behind you. Riki’s hands glide down your thighs, placing you on the bed like it’s your last safe place in the world. Then he stares.

He takes a long good look at you, face a bit flushed, hair unkempt from his grip. The fabric of his shirt silhouetting your figure perfectly. You're so gorgeous and he couldn't stand it, he couldn't not mark you up with every raw emotion pent up inside. 

He leans over you, pressing both arms beside your head as his nose touches yours, “You’re not just a fucking mission to me,” he says. It’s sudden, hoarse from the way his breath is still caught in his throat, and it catches you off guard.

You sit up a little, heart in your throat. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

He swallows. His voice cracks.

“If I told you… you might’ve left.”

“You thought this was safer?”

“No,” he breathes. “But at least if you didn’t know the truth, you’d still come back to me every night.”

That does it. The fight drains out of you, not because you forgive him, not yet. But because no one has ever admitted to needing you like that. You’re so over being the one who feels more, so you reach for him again, not holding back.

Your shirt is gone within seconds, or his you should say. His hands are careful, but feverish, as if he’s memorizing the way your skin feels beneath his palms. You lie back against the pillows as he leans over you, and for a second, everything is quiet again. You can’t remember the last time you felt this comfortable in silence. Just the sound of your breathing and his thumb brushing along your cheekbone.

“You’re so beautiful when you’re pissed off,” he murmurs. His fingers hook around the band of your underwear as he lowers them down your leg, but his eyes don’t budge from your face.

“And you’re so handsome when you’re not talking,” you counter, voice rough. His grin breaks through then. It’s a real one, crooked and tired, and only for you. Then his mouth is on yours again. The kiss deepens fast. Hips aligned, fingers tangled, heat thrumming through your veins. He kisses down your throat, over your collarbone, lower. His lashes are damp as they brush your skin. And it brings tears to your own eyes as you ponder just how strong he's been all this time. Every kiss feels like a question he’s begging for an answer to: Are you still mine? Can I still touch you like this? Will you let me stay?

You answer without words, nails in his back, lips at his ear, your whole body arching to meet him like it’s answering instinctively. He makes you feel undone, but not weak. Wanted, not owned. You wonder just how Riki’s able to make you come undone every time.

He makes every second count, true to his agent upbringing. The rhythm of your bodies are messy at first. You’re both too desperate while trying to let go of the pent-up anger you’re both still holding onto. But then it syncs, the kind of rhythm only two people with unwavering passion and overlapping scars could ever find. His fingers lace with yours above your head, holding your hands to the mattress as he moves inside you, and the way he looks at you at that moment is almost unbearable. Like he never wants to forget the way you look when you let go.

“I should hate you,” you whisper against his jaw.

“I know,” he breathes, moving his face from your collarbone back up to the sensitive spot behind your ear.

“But I don’t.” You manage to muster between soft moans.

He kisses after every place he sucks, eyes still watching, observing just how stunning you look for him. “I don’t think I ever could.”

His rhythm quickens as he starts to lose himself, moving into you at an unsteady pace. And it’s when he grabs your jaw, directing your face to look right at him that you break together. Breathless, shaking, your names tangled in the love you knew was still roaming in the air. And you think for a second that maybe this war between you has finally surrendered.

You aren’t sure if It’s late at night or early in the morning. The clock on your nightstand blinks red, but you can’t exactly make out the time. You lie tangled in the sheets, back against his chest with his arm slung over your waist like a lock. He’s holding your hand, and it dampens your eyelashes once again. His skin is warm and steady, breathing deeply like he hasn’t slept in days.

Neither of you has moved in almost an hour, haven’t spoken since the moans that escaped both your lips. And still, Riki hasn’t let go.

You could say something. You should, but it’s easier to stay like this, caught in the in-between where the past doesn’t matter and the future doesn’t exist. Where your hearts are slow enough to beat in sync. Your teeth clench, uncomfortable in the passion you missed so dearly. Quietly, you feel his body shift, it makes your breath hitch, and you realize then that you don’t want him to let go. 

“You’re shaking,” hei whispers.

You stiffen. You didn’t realize you were.

“I’m fine,” you lie.

His hand slides along your side, slow, grounding.

“Don’t do that.” But he doesn’t say it angrily, it’s more broken.

“Do what?”

“Lie to me like we’re still pretending.”

You inhale through your nose. Exhale out your mouth. His fingers settle over yours again, gentle but protective.

“We can’t stay here forever,” you whisper.

“I know.”

“They’ll come looking.”

He shifts his face closer. Lips brushing the back of your neck as his words tingle through your body. 

“Let them.”

His hand comes up to turn your chin, leading you to roll over and face him again. Just yesterday looking him in the eye would’ve been no problem, but tonight you’re seeing the real him, the vulnerable man you fell for so long ago. It makes you nervous just to face his direction.

“Don’t shy away from me now baby. Not after you came undone for me like that.” He chuckles, not making fun of you,but with admiration.

It’s too dark to see him clearly, but you can feel the shape of him. His broad shoulders, messy hair over his forehead, and lashes fanned low. He looks younger like this. A little wrecked. Like the version of himself, no one else ever gets to see.

“You disobeyed a direct order,” you murmur.

“So did you.”

“We’re both burned now.”

He nods slowly. Don’t look away. “We’ll deal with it.”

“You say that like it’s easy.”

“No,” he says. “I say it like I’ll do it with you.”

Your chest tightens.

You want to believe him. God, you do. But all of this feels like standing on the edge of a cliff too high. And if you fall, it won’t just be your position at the agency on the line this time. It’ll be your heart.

“Why didn’t you kill him?” you ask softly, eyes searching for him.

Riki doesn’t answer right away, but he lets out the truth when he does.

“Because I knew you were watching.”

“That didn’t stop you before,” you comment.

“It wasn’t the same before.” His voice cracks. You hate that it hits you so deep in your heart.

“You’re not a weakness,” he says suddenly, like he’s trying to convince himself just as much. “They think you are. I let them think that. But you’re not. You’re the reason I still know who I am.”

Your breath catches. “Riki,” you whisper.

He leans forward, forehead pressed against yours. He repeats his words quieter than a bullet in the dark.

“You’re not a weakness. You’re the one thing I don’t regret, I swear.”

You close your eyes. A tear slides down your cheek, and he catches it with his thumb like he knew it was coming.

You should pull away, but Instead, you whisper “Stay.”

His breath hitches. A small, tender smile grew on his face. “I wasn’t planning on leaving.”

“Not just tonight. I mean…” You swallow hard like you’ve swallowed poisonous words that still feel unfamiliar to your tongue. “Stay. With me.”

You feel him go still.

Then his hand slides up and rests over your heart.

“Again,” he murmurs.

“Stay, please.”

And this time, when you say it, you mean everything. Not just your bed. Not just your home. Not just this brief, stolen moment of safety. You mean the chaos and the consequences. The fallout and the parts that don’t make sense. You mean all of you.

He doesn’t answer with words, he answers with the only way he’s learned to show you just how much you affect him. The way he knows you understand on a level no one else can. He kisses you softly this time. Slow and tired and full of every unsaid feeling he can’t quite express. And when you finally fall asleep in his arms, for the first time in years, you don't dream of running anymore.

[sapphirexsolarium]

You Were Meant For The Ocean

tw: angst, hurt/no comfort (kinda), non-mc!reader x Rafayel, couldn't proof read through the tears :')

wc: 1.1k "You were meant for the ocean." He smiles, watching you lay out on the patio with a book in hand. The warm sea breeze washing over you the salty air carrying into his studio.

"I think so too." You smile looking over at him as he paints. He gets up and lays out beside you, squishing the two of you together on the lounge chair. "Raf-"

"I'm tired and I want to take a nap." He lays on top of you, nuzzling into your chest.

"You're such a pain." You roll your eyes but you smile, fingers gently caressing his hair as you continue to read under the warm sun.

What warmth you felt that day. In your hubris you assumed there were many warm days to come. How wrong you were.

-

Watching Rafayel fall head over heels in love with his bride all over again ached your heart in a way that could only be described as soul crushing.

How could you compare to her? Tied by destiny and blessed with the ocean's love. How could you ever compare?

Did you have any right to him? Whatever the two of you shared, it wasn't in any official capacity. But some part of you thought that maybe… Well, it doesn't matter now does it?

It was far too easy how you slipped out of his world. You took quiet steps out the door. Who were you to interfere with destiny? What's the point of making a fuss when you won't be heard? Why fight what has already been written?

-

Rafayel didn't notice your absence for a long while. He was so wistfully in love it blinded him to the rest of the world. It was perhaps months until he realized you hadn't stopped by his studio in ages. There was a time he would come home to his studio and find you lounging on the patio, reading your book and waiting for his return.

When he pulls out his phone to text you he's struck with the painful realization of just how much he's neglected you.

"We should get lunch soon. That cafe by the beach is opening this weekend! c:"

"The arcade just restocked with a bunch of cute plushies we should try to get them~!"

"I heard from Thomas that your art exhibition is happening in 2 weeks. Why didn't you tell me?? I wanna come!"

"Are you alright? You haven't been answering my texts or calls lately.."

"Are you busy? We should meet up!"

"Raf this is getting a bit ridiculous.."

"Can we talk?"

"Lose my number."

He quickly tries calling your number but its sent directly to an automated voicemail. He starts texting you but they remain unsent. He pulls open his social media to check on you but he finds himself blocked from all your accounts. Panic starts to settle in his chest. When was the last time he saw you? Or even spoke to you? He can't remember. In no time he reaches your apartment but when the door opens its a complete stranger that had just moved in a week ago. What the hell?

He's desperate now and rushes to your job. Surely you'll be there right? He's told by your coworker that you were transferred to Skyhaven. You had put in the request yourself. Your co-worker was surprised that he wasn't at the farewell party.

Your departure was sudden for everyone. Every person he calls has no idea why you made the move. Until Thomas.

"Listen… I kind of figured something was up when she didn't show up for your last 2 exhibitions. I thought you were going to bring her when you asked for the tickets but then you brought that other girl around. I didn't want to pry so I left it alone, I figured you were in one of those hyper-fixation phases but then that other girl kept showing up wherever you were and she stopped coming around. I only heard about her leaving because her coworkers called me to invite us to her farewell party. I wasn't sure if you two were on bad terms so I just sent the invite via email. To be honest I was also surprised when you didn't show up but she didn't look surprised at all…"

Rafayel was shaking where he stood. Text messages, calls, emails all went unseen because he was too preoccupied with his beloved bride.

It felt like the world was collapsing in on him and to make matters worse the clouds parted to show Skyhaven floating high above him.

-

You look down at Linkon. The city seems so quiet from high above. Far off in the distance you can see the beautiful hue of ocean blue peeking through the skyline. Your heart longs for it.

"You were meant for the ocean…"

You close your eyes as that dull ache spreads across your chest. "Not anymore."

-

Months pass and Rafayel is in the throws of an artistic frenzy. Painting after painting of raging seas, stormy oceans and bleak, desolate islands. His beloved bride was his only solace but every time he sees her now, he thinks of you and the guilt rages on in his chest.

He's back out on the beach, searching for shells to mix into paint when he sees you for the first in what felt like ages. But you're not alone.

"Caleb! It's freezing!"

"Come on~ You said you used to love the ocean!"

"Used to, Caleb. Used to!" You're bundled up in a warm coat standing in front of a tall man with deep brown hair. He laughs as he helps you bundle up more. "Plus who goes to the beach during the winter?"

"It's the only time I had off. Besides…" He pulls you in closer, nuzzling your red nose, "You look kinda cute when you're freezing." He teases, making you pout more. "Ah, just too cute." He leans in to gently kiss you.

Does he have any right to feel the jealousy in his chest? In a twisted turn of events he finds himself longing for you. Is that even fair? He has his beloved bride. The only one to ever have his heart. So why does his heart ache for you? What is this soul crushing feeling?

He wants to run to you. Hold you again. Feel your warmth. Breathe in your scent. He wants to go back to the days where you lounged on his patio and he could sink into your arms. He wants what he's lost, selfishly so.

You don't even notice him in the distance. Your fingers intertwined with Caleb's as you both walk further down the beach. Away from Rafayel.

"You were meant for the ocean…" He quietly murmurs, the sounds of the crashing waves drowning out his cries.

"I really thought you'd like the ocean, baby." Caleb muses, keeping your cold fingers warm in his pocket.

"Not anymore…" You softly sigh, looking out at the waters that no longer held your heart.

[chiara8104]

echoes of us | OP81

———————————————————————————

a/n: hey loves! i am hoping to be more active since school is coming to an end for me! lmk what u want to see!! xo

summary: y/n just broke up with her toxic ex and alexandra and kika try to cheer her up. unexpectedly she bumps into a certain someone.

oscar piastri x fem! reader

warnings: swearing, alcohol, some mentions of franco colapinto , franco being a perv, not proof read, lowercase (im lazy ), fluff, suggestive

———————————————————————————

you stare at the club from the outside, kika and alexandra walking beside you. you hesitate a bit, maybe it was too early to get back out there. your hands slide down the wrinkles on your black dress. kika quickly notices, you and her have been best friends since you met her though a mutual friend. “y/n, i promise it’s going to be fineeee!” she drags out the ‘e.’ alexandra nodded quickly, humming in agreement. “just have fun!” alexandra smiled. but it was difficult for you, your ex had really messed you up. he never let you have a girls night. it was so foreign for you.

you walk through the doors and the smell of alcohol, sweat and cigarettes hit you quickly. you start to squirm next to kika. “i’ll get us some drinks,” alexandra smiled, while you and kika went to go sit in a booth. you quickly sit down, melting into the plush cushions. “i don’t know kika,” you sigh, putting your head on the table. “i’m not ready yet. owen really fucked me up.” kika stared at you contently. “trust me, you are. remember the other day? you were complaining about how you miss being out there. you need this.” you sigh at her comment, it’s true. you missed being single, free, not relying on owen’s choices anymore. alexandra came back with three shots. “okay guys!” she smiled, “we better get on the dance floor!” she quickly took her shot and ran to the dance floor. kika trailing behind her. they turn around looking at you and the shot. “you guys go on without me, i need to get some air.” you put on the best smile you could and get out of the booth, heading to the exit.

the fresh air hit you quickly, a sigh of relief hit your lips. it was so refreshing after the heaviness that filled the club, something you didn’t miss when you used to be single. you pressed your back against the cold stone, looking around at the quiet streets, the lampposts being the only source of light. you thought you were alone, until something unexpected happened. “hola mami,” the thick accent came from behind, his lips feeding at the cigarette. you roll your eyes. “hey.” you scoff, not wanting to deal with someone right now. “you look lonely, want some company?” his words sounded thick, aggressive. his grey fingers from the cigarette bud lightly touching your hair. you quickly get away from his figure, “ i’m good, thanks.” you put your hands up defensively. the man quickly grabs your arm and pulling himself back to his grasp “cmon amor, no woman can resist me, don’t play a hard to get,” the man pins you to the stone wall, his arms on either side of you. the man starts to kiss your neck slowly, you try to push him away from you, but it’s no use. he is too strong. “stop it now,” you cry, but the man wasn’t listening to you. you feel your body slowly starting to get numb, starting to give up. until a voice interferes “hey man, she said stop. so get the fuck off her.” a voice that was new, another person you didn’t know. but it didn’t matter. you push yourself off the man. and run quickly to the new voice. the man walks off, rolling his eyes “whatever man, we were just having fun.” he mumbles.

“hey, are you okay?” his brown eyes look down at you. you smile at him, “yeah, just a bit startled. thank you so much uhm-“ you wondered what his name was “oscar,” he said. “ thank you, oscar.” you smile. “what are you doing out here?” he questions. “oh, i got dragged by some friends and left to get some fresh air. how about you?” “same.” he said, brushing a hand through his hair, his accent clear, a soft australian drawl that stood out against the chaos from inside the club. you weren’t sure if it was the shock or the relief, but something about hearing his voice made your chest loosen.

“you okay?” he asked again, more gently this time.

you nodded, even if it was mostly a lie. “yeah. just… needed some air.”

“didn’t look like that guy was giving you much choice.” he leaned back against the wall next to you, keeping a little distance. respectful. like he was making it obvious he wasn’t here for anything other than to make sure you were alright.

“he wasn’t,” you muttered, crossing your arms. your skin still felt gross where the man had touched you. you rubbed it without thinking. oscar noticed, but didn’t comment. instead, he offered a small nod.

“some people think no means maybe. it’s bullshit.”

you glanced at him. he was quiet, watching the street like he didn’t want to pressure you. tall, kind of scruffy in a good way. his shirt was slightly wrinkled like he didn’t really care how he looked, but somehow still managed to pull it off.

“thank you for stepping in,” you said after a moment.

he shrugged. “wasn’t gonna just walk past.”

you smiled. it was small, but real. “still. i owe you.”

he glanced down at you, a little smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. “if you’re serious, you could start by telling me your name.”

you laughed, surprising yourself. “y/n.”

“nice to meet you, y/n. i’m oscar.”

after that night, things shifted.

you didn’t mean to run into him again, but you did. a week later at the same club. you weren’t even planning on going, but kika had dragged you out. your eyes met across the room. his lips twitched like he recognized you immediately.

“you okay this time?” he asked when he came over.

“so far.”

you ended up talking outside again. longer this time. turns out he’d moved here a few months ago. you had more small talk and in the end exchanges numbers.

you started texting. not constantly, but enough to feel like he was becoming part of your day.

then came the first real date. not a club. not a party. a quiet bar, with music low enough to talk over and lighting soft enough to hide how nervous you were. he smelled like clean laundry and something warm you couldn’t name.

you drank slowly. shared fries. laughed. he asked questions. real ones. not just about your favorite color or where you went to school. but what made you you. what scared you. what made you stay up at night.

you hadn’t opened up to anyone like that in so long.

then came the kiss. not rushed. not expected. just… right. you didn’t go home with him that night. you didn’t need to.but a week later, you did. and it wasn’t messy or desperate,it was slow. careful. intense. he touched you like he wanted to learn you, not take from you.

you woke up in his bed wrapped in his sheets, his arm over your waist, his voice raspy when he said, “morning.” you told kika and alexandra a few days later. they blinked at you like you’d just admitted something scandalous. “wait, oscar? like… that guy from outside the club?”kika raised her brows.

“the one who saved you?” alexandra added, sipping her drink. “yeah.” you said, maybe a little defensive. “i mean, he seems nice,” kika said slowly, “but do you even know him?” she was being protective. a trait you noticed in her whenever you or alexandra talked about guys you were taking to.

“he’s not owen,” you swallowed, trying to stear away from this uncomfortable topic “no,” alexandra agreed. “he’s definitely not owen. just… be careful, okay? we don’t want you getting hurt again.”

but that was the thing.

with oscar it didn’t feel like you were going to get hurt.

you felt like you were healing.

like someone finally saw the version of you that owen tried to erase.

and every time he looked at you, every time he pulled you close, fingers in your hair, mouth against your collarbone, whispering your name like it was something fragile, you started to believe maybe you were allowed to feel whole again. maybe even more than that. maybe you were allowed to feel wanted.

———————————————————————————

“what do you want?” oscar asked, staring at the menu like it was written in another language.

you leaned into him, your cheek brushing his shoulder. “you dragged me here. you pick.”

he scoffed, bumping his hip into yours. “i dragged you here? i distinctly remember you saying, and i quote, ‘i need pancakes or i will literally collapse.’”

you grinned. “i don’t recall.”

he looked at you, amused. “of course you don’t.”

you ended up splitting a massive stack of blueberry pancakes and a side of bacon. oscar stole half your whipped cream and you kicked him under the table.

“childish,” he mumbled around a mouthful.

“greedy,” you shot back.

his eyes sparkled when he smiled at you, all dimples and soft teasing. it still caught you off guard sometimes, how safe you felt in the simplicity of mornings like this.

later, you were curled up on his couch, your legs thrown over his, some dumb movie playing in the background. he ran his fingers up and down your arm absently, half watching the screen, half watching you.

“you always do that,” you whispered.

“do what?”

“touch me like you’re memorizing me.”

he paused, eyes on you now. “maybe i am.”

your breath caught for a second. it was always like that with oscar. one moment you’re laughing, the next he’s saying something that makes your stomach flip.

he leaned in, brushing his nose against yours.

“you always do that,” he said quietly.

“what?”

“look at me like i’m something good.”

you smiled against his lips. “maybe you are.”

you spent nights at his place more often now. your stuff started to quietly migrate over. a hair tie on his bathroom counter. your favorite hoodie on the back of his chair. a half-used bottle of your shampoo in his shower.

“so are we… like, dating?” you asked one night, tucked into his side, voice soft.

he tilted his head down to look at you. “babe. i literally made you pancakes, folded your laundry, and picked out a movie you like even though it sucks. what do you think this is?”

you giggled, hiding your face in his shirt.

“hey,” he pulled you closer, kissing the top of your head. “yes. i’m your boyfriend. obviously.”

the next day, he changed your name in his phone to princess 🙄 and texted you miss u already two minutes after you left.

hed send you pictures of himself, in his hoodies with his cat curled up against him (yes i made oscar a cat guy, he’ll never beat the polite cat allegations.) “me thinking about u.”

when you got overwhelmed or quiet, he never pushed. just held your hand. played with your fingers. waited until you were ready.

“you make it easy to breathe,” you told him once.

he kissed your temple. “that’s the whole point.”

———————————————————————————

“babe, do i look like i’m trying too hard?”

you turned in the mirror, eyeing your outfit for the fifth time. oscar, stretched out across your bed with his arms behind his head, didn’t even glance up.

“you always look hot,” he said casually.

“you didn’t even look.”

“don’t need to. i’ve memorized you.”

you rolled your eyes, but you were smiling.

you grabbed your purse, heart racing a little. you’d done dinners with kika and alexandra a million times, but this was different. this time oscar was coming. and so were pierre and charles, two guys you’d heard about but hadn’t spent much time with. it felt official now. real.

“don’t be weird, these are my best friends. i need to have a good first impression.” you warned oscar as you stepped into your heels.

“wow,” he laughed. “so little faith in me.”

you stood up on your tip-toes and kissed him. “just… try to be charming.”

“i’m always charming,” he said, grabbing your hand as you both headed out.

⸻

the restaurant was a cozy rooftop bar, all string lights and open air. kika was already there with pierre, her head on his shoulder, both of them laughing over something on her phone. alexandra and charles arrived a few minutes later, dressed like they were coming straight from a fashion shoot.

“y/n!” kika squealed, pulling you into a hug. “and you must be the famous oscar.”

oscar smiled, polite but cool. “guilty.”

“you’re taller than i imagined,” alexandra said, looking him up and down like she was inspecting him for faults.

“he’s not a criminal, alexandra,” you muttered.

pierre and charles dapped him. the guys seemed to get along easily, talking about sports, music, whatever guys talk about when they’re trying to act casual.

at one point, kika leaned across the table.

“so… how’s he doing?” she asked with a smirk, nodding at oscar.

“he hasn’t embarrassed me yet,” you whispered back.

“give it time,” alexandra added with a grin.

through dinner, oscar kept his hand on your thigh under the table. just resting there, thumb tracing lazy circles on your skin. every time you looked at him, he was already looking at you.

at one point, you excused yourself to the restroom, and when you came back, kika leaned in dramatically.

“okay so… we like him,” she whispered.

“he’s quiet,” alexandra said, “but he’s observant. and the way he looks at you? girl. yeah. we’re sold.” you smiled and started reapplying your lip liner. “thank god. your opinions are the only ones that matter.” you quickly finished doing your lip combo before walking back with the two of them. you eyes immediately caught oscars.

oscar, noticing your red cheeks, raised a brow. “what’d i miss?”

“nothing important,” you said quickly.

the night ended with a slow walk back to the car, oscar’s arm around your waist.

“see?” he said softly. “i can behave.”

you smiled. “barely.”

“yeah,” he murmured, pulling you a little closer. “but you like me like this.”

you did. god, you really did.

and watching your friends laugh with him, watching him fold so naturally into your world, you felt it settle in your chest:

this wasn’t just a fling.

this was something real.

———————————————————————————

a/n: ahhh i’m feeling so active! lmk what u think. i am maybe thinking of making multiple parts to this story but pls lmk!! requests r always open! xoxo chia.

[ponderingmoonlight]

Getting caught while checking Sanemi out

„Well…y’know…I…“

Fuck. You stumble over your own words like an idiot. But that view…Your eyes are literally glued to his exposed chest, how his muscle strands move with each and every minor movement of his arms. Of course, entering the elite troop of the demon slayer corps meant surrounding yourself with fit people. After all, it’s a fact that they are very disciplined, training day in and out just like you did those past months.

But the sight of the wind hashira sitting in front of you, his exposed chest so well-lit by the moonlight while his arm rests on his lap so casually. Fuck, this man is way too attractive.

“Stop staring at me like that, idiot”, the wind hashira barks at you.

Fuck. You feel your cheeks heating up in an instant, eyes now focused on the dirt underneath your feet. If there’s one thing that’s worse than staring at someone so shamelessly, it’s getting caught by that exact person. Damn, you’re a grown woman, you’ve seen countless men when fighting for the demon slayer corps. Why did you get so distracted by him?

“I-I’m so s-sorry”, you stutter like the idiot you are.

“I-I didn’t m-mean to-“

“She was just checking you out”, the serpent hashira interferes with his voice dripping in boredom.

“Why would you check me out, brat?”

“I-I didn’t mean to!”

“Get lost now…”, Sanemi mumbles while turning his back on you.

“Oh…yeah…I-I should get going.”

He doesn’t have to tell you twice. In the matter of seconds you’re gone in the wind with only your scent remaining in the air as a proof of your existence.

“What do you think about (y/n)? I heard she’s quite a good combat fighter”, Obanai comments dryly while staring into the woods.

Urgh. Sanemi hates to even think about the way you made fighting look so effortlessly and how perfect your hair frames your gorgeous face. Always watching you from afar, not even daring to show himself to your eyes. Did you really just check him out just because of his loose-fitting uniform? There’s no way you’d actually choose him out of all people. Haven’t you seen Tengen, Gyomei, even Giyu? Compared to them, he’s definitely nothing special.

And maybe even a little mean.

“So what? She’ll die like the others.”

“Irritated because she was checking you out?”

“Stop talking bullshit, she wasn’t even looking my way”, Sanemi barks at the man sitting next to him in an instant.

“Why are you blushing, then?”

Him, blushing? Out of instinct, Sanemi smacks his already hot cheek. Why the hell does he feel so hot now? Just because you looked his way? Just because your eyes darkened when you gazed at his chest, leaving you so flustered that he didn’t know how to act?

Fuck. Just thinking about the way you blushed and tried to stutter your way out while looking at him with doe eyes…

“I’m literally seeing you fall.”

“You start sounding like Kanroji-“

“Don’t dare to drag her into this”, Obanai hisses through gritted teeth.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The true, tactical significance of Project 2025

TODAY (July 14), I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! NEXT SATURDAY (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

Like you, I have heard a lot about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's roadmap for the actions that Trump should take if he wins the presidency. Given the Heritage Foundation's centrality to the American authoritarian project, it's about as awful and frightening as you might expect:

https://www.project2025.org/

But (nearly) all the reporting and commentary on Project 2025 badly misses the point. I've only read a single writer who immediately grasped the true significance of Project 2025: The American Prospect's Rick Perlstein, which is unsurprising, given Perlstein's stature as one of the left's most important historians of right wing movements:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-10-project-2025-republican-presidencies-tradition/

As Perlstein points out, Project 2025 isn't new. The Heritage Foundation and its allies have prepared documents like this, with many identical policy prescriptions, in the run-up to many presidential elections. Perlstein argues that Warren G Harding's 1921 inaugural address captures much of its spirit, as did the Nixon campaign's 1973 vow to "move the country so far to the right 'you won’t even recognize it.'"

The threats to democracy and its institutions aren't new. The right has been bent on their destruction for more than a century. As Perlstein says, the point of taking note of this isn't to minimize the danger, rather, it's to contextualize it. The American right has, since the founding of the Republic, been bent on creating a system of hereditary aristocrats, who govern without "interference" from democratic institutions, so that their power to extract wealth from First Nations, working people, and the land itself is checked only by rivalries with other aristocrats. The project of the right is grounded in a belief in Providence: that God's favor shines on His best creations and elevates them to wealth and power. Elite status is proof of merit, and merit is "that which leads to elite status."

When a wealthy person founds an intergenerational dynasty of wealth and power, this is merely a hereditary meritocracy: a bloodline infused with God's favor. Sometimes, this belief is dressed up in caliper-wielding pseudoscience, with the "good bloodline" reflecting superior genetics and not the favor of the Almighty. Of course, a true American aristocrat gussies up his "race realism" with mystical nonsense: "God favored me with superior genes." The corollary, of course, is that you are poor because God doesn't favor you, or because your genes are bad, or because God punished you with bad genes.

So we should be alarmed by the right's agenda. We should be alarmed at how much ground it has gained, and how the right has stolen elections and Supreme Court seats to enshrine antimajoritarianism as a seemingly permanent fact of life, giving extremist minorities the power to impose their will on the rest of us, dooming us to a roasting planet, forced births, racist immiseration, and most expensive, worst-performing health industry in the world.

But for all that the right has bombed so many of the roads to a prosperous, humane future, it's a huge mistake to think of the right as a stable, unified force, marching to victory after inevitable victory. The American right is a brittle coalition led by a handful of plutocrats who have convinced a large number of turkeys to vote for Christmas.

The right wing coalition needs to pander to forced-birth extremists, racist extremist, Christian Dominionist extremists (of several types), frothing anti-Communist cranks, vicious homophobes and transphobes, etc, etc. Pandering to all these groups isn't easy: for one thing, they often want opposite things – the post-Roe forced birth policies that followed the Dobbs decision are wildly unpopular among conservatives, with the exception of a clutch of totally unhinged maniacs that the party relies on as part of a much larger coalition. Even more unpopular are policies banning birth control, like the ones laid out in Project 2025. Less popular still: the proposed ban on no-fault divorce. Each of these policies have different constituencies to whom they are very popular, but when you put them together, you get Dan Savage's "Husbands you can't leave, pregnancies you can't prevent or terminate, politicians you can't vote out of office":

https://twitter.com/fakedansavage/status/1805680183065854083

The constituency for "husbands you can't leave, pregnancies you can't prevent or terminate, politicians you can't vote out of office" is very small. Almost no one in the GOP coalition is voting for all of this, they're voting for one or two of these things and holding their noses when it comes to the rest.

Take the "libertarian" wing of the GOP: its members do favor personal liberty…it's just that they favor low taxes for them more than personal liberty for you. The kind of lunatic who'd vote for a dead gopher if it would knock a quarter off his tax bill will happily allow his coalition partners to rape pregnant women with unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds and force them to carry unwanted fetuses to term if that's the price he has to pay to save a nickel in taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/29/jubilance/#tolerable-racism

And, of course, the religious maniacs who profess a total commitment to Biblical virtue but worship Trump, Gaetz, Limbaugh, Gingrich, Reagan, and the whole panoply of cheating, lying, kid-fiddling, dope-addled refugees from a Jack Chick tract know that these men never gave a shit about Jesus, the Apostles or the Ten Commandments – but they'll vote for 'em because it will get them school prayer, total abortion bans, and unregulated "home schooling" so they can brainwash a generation of Biblical literalists who think the Earth is 5,000 years old and that Jesus was white and super into rich people.

Time and again, the leaders of the conservative movement prove themselves capable of acts of breathtaking cruelty, and undoubtedly many of them are depraved sadists who genuinely enjoy the suffering of their enemies (think of Trump lickspittle Steven Miller's undisguised glee at the thought of parents who would never be reunited with children after being separated at the border). But it's a mistake to think that "the cruelty is the point." The point of the cruelty is to assemble and maintain the coalition. Cruelty is the tactic. Power is the point:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/09/turkeys-voting-for-christmas/#culture-wars

The right has assembled a lot of power. They did so by maintaining unity among people who have irreconcilable ethics and goals. Think of the pro-genocide coalition that includes far-right Jewish ethno-nationalists, antisemitic apocalyptic Christians who believe they are hastening the end-times, and Islamophobes of every description, from War On Terror relics to Hindu nationalists.

This is quite an improbable coalition, and while I deplore its goals, I can't help but be impressed by its cohesion. Can you imagine the kind of behind-the-scenes work it takes to get antisemites who think Jews secretly control the world to lobby with Zionists? Or to get Zionists to work alongside of Holocaust-denying pencilneck Hitler wannabes whose biggest regret is not bringing their armbands to Charlottesville?

Which brings me back to Project 2025 and its true significance. As Perlstein writes, Project 2025 is a mess. Clocking in an 900 pages, large sections of Project 2025 flatly contradict each other, while other sections contain subtle contradictions that you wouldn't notice unless you were schooled in the specialized argot of the far right's jargon and history.

For example, Project 2025 calls for defunding government agencies and repurposing the same agencies to carry out various spectacular atrocities. Both actions are deplorable, but they're also mutually exclusive. Project 2025 demands four different, completely irreconcilable versions of US trade policy. But at least that's better than Project 2025's chapter on monetary policy, which simply lays out every right wing theory of money and then throws up its hands and recommends none of them.

Perlstein says that these conflicts, blank spots and contradictions are the most important parts of Project 2025. They are the fracture lines in the coalition: the conflicting ideas that have enough support that neither side can triumph over the other. These are the conflicts that are so central to the priorities of blocs that are so important to the coalition that they must be included, even though that inclusion constitutes a blinking "LOOK AT ME" sign telling us where the right is ready to split apart.

The right is really good at this. Perlstein points to Nixon's expansion of affirmative action, undertaken to sow division between Black and white workers. We need to get better at it.

So far, we've lavished attention on the clearest and most emphatic proposals in Project 2025 – for understandable reasons. These are the things they say they want to do. It would be reckless to ignore them. But they've been saying things like this for a century. These demands constitute a compelling argument for fighting them as a matter of urgency, with the intention of winning. And to win, we need to split apart their coalition.

Perlstein calls on us to dissect Project 2025, to cleave it at its joints. To do so, he says we need to understand its antecedents, like Nixon's "Malek Manual," a roadmap for destroying the lives of civil servants who failed to show sufficient loyalty to Nixon. For example, the Malek Manual lays out a "Traveling Salesman Technique" whereby a government employee would be given duties "criss-crossing him across the country to towns (hopefully with the worst accommodations possible) of a population of 20,000 or under. Until his wife threatens him with divorce unless he quits, you have him out of town and out of the way":

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Final_Report_on_Violations_and_Abuses_of/0dRLO9vzQF0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22organization+of+a+political+personnel+office+and+program%22&pg=PA161&printsec=frontcover

It's no coincidence that leftist historians of the right are getting a lot of attention. Trumpism didn't come out of nowhere – Trump is way too stupid and undisciplined to be a cause – he's an effect. In his excellent, bestselling new history of the right in the early 1990s, When the Clock Broke, Josh Ganz shows us the swamp that bred Trump, with such main characters as the fascist eugenicist Sam Francis:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374605445/whentheclockbroke

Ganz joins the likes of the Know Your Enemy podcast, an indispensable history of reactionary movements that does excellent work in tracing the fracture lines in the right coalition:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/when-clock-broke-106803105

Progressives are also an uneasy coalition that is easily splintered. As Naomi Klein argues in her essential Doppelganger, the liberal-left coalition is inherently unstable and contains the seeds of its own destruction:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

Liberals have been the senior partner in that coalition, and their commitment to preserving institutions for their own sake (rather than because of what they can do to advance human thriving) has produced generations of weak and ineffectual responses to the crises of terminal-stage capitalism, like the idea that student-debt cancellation should be means-tested:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/03/utopia-of-rules/#in-triplicate

The last bid for an American aristocracy was repelled by rejecting institutions, not preserving them. When the Supreme Court thwarted the New Deal, FDR announced his intention to pack the court, and then began the process of doing so (which included no-holds-barred attacks on foot-draggers in his own party). Not for nothing, this is more-or-less what Lincoln did when SCOTUS blocked Reconstruction:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/20/judicial-equilibria/#pack-the-court

But the liberals who lead the progressive movement dismiss packing the court as unserious and impractical – notwithstanding the fact that they have no plan for rescuing America from the bribe-taking extremists, the credibly accused rapist, and the three who stole their robes. Ultimately, liberals defend SCOTUS because it is the Supreme Court. I defended SCOTUS, too – while it was still a vestigial organ of the rights revolution, which improved the lives of millions of Americans. Human rights are worth defending, SCOTUS isn't. If SCOTUS gets in the way of human rights, then screw SCOTUS. Sideline it. Pack it. Make it a joke.

Fuck it.

This isn't to argue for left seccession from the progressive coalition. As we just saw in France, splitting at this moment is an invitation to literal fascist takeover:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/melenchon-macron-france-left-winner

But if there's one thing that the rise of Trumpism has proven, it's that parties are not immune to being wrestled away from their establishment leaderships by radical groups:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

What's more, there's a much stronger natural coalition that the left can mobilize: workers. Being a worker – that is, paying your bills from wages, instead of profits – isn't an ideology you can change, it's a fact. A Christian nationalist can change their beliefs and then they will no longer be a Christian nationalist. But no matter what a worker believes, they are still a worker – they still have a irreconcilable conflict with people whose money comes from profits, speculation, or rents. There is no objectively fair way to divide the profits a worker's labor generates – your boss will always pay you as little of that surplus as he can. The more wages you take home, the less profit there is for your boss, the fewer dividends there are for his shareholders, and the less there is to pay to rentiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

Reviving the role of workers in their unions, and of unions in the Democratic party, is the key to building the in-party power we need to drag the party to real solutions – strong antimonopoly action, urgent climate action, protections for gender, racial and sexual minorities, and decent housing, education and health care.

The alternative to a worker-led Democratic Party is a Democratic Party run by its elites, whose dictates and policies are inescapably illegitimate. As Hamilton Nolan writes, the completely reasonable (and extremely urgent) discussion about Biden's capacity to defeat Trump has been derailed by the Democrats' undemocratic structure. Ultimately, the decision to have an open convention or to double down on a candidate whose campaign has been marred by significant deficits is down to a clutch of party officials who operate without any formal limits or authority:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-hole-at-the-heart-of-the-democratic

Jettisoning Biden because George Clooney (or Nancy Pelosi) told us to is never going to feel legitimate to his supporters in the party. But if the movement for an open convention came from grassroots-dominated unions who themselves dominated the party – as was the case, until the Reagan revolution – then there'd be a sense that the party had constituents, and it was acting on its behalf.

Reviving the labor movement after 40 years of Reaganomic war on workers may sound like a tall order, but we are living through a labor renaissance, and the long-banked embers of labor radicalism are reigniting. What's more, repelling fascism is what workers' movements do. The business community will always sell you out to the Nazis in exchange for low taxes, cheap labor and loose regulation.

But workers, organized around their class interests, stand strong. Last week, we lost one of labor's brightest flames. Jane McAlevey, a virtuoso labor organizer and trainer of labor organizers, died of cancer at 57:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/jane-mcalevey-strategy-organizing-obituary

McAlevey fought to win. She was skeptical of platitudes like "speaking truth to power," always demanding an explanation for how the speech would become action. In her classic book A Collective Bargain, she describes how she built worker power:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

McAlevey helped organize a string of successful strikes, including the 2019 LA teachers' strike. Her method was straightforward: all you have to do to win a strike or a union drive is figure out how to convince every single worker in the shop to back the union. That's all.

Of course, it's harder than it sounds. All the problems that plague every coalition – especially the progressive liberal/left coalition – are present on the shop floor. Some workers don't like each other. Some don't see their interests aligned with others. Some are ornery. Some are convinced that victory is impossible.

McAlevey laid out a program for organizing that involved figuring out how to reach every single worker, to converse with them, listen to them, understand them, and win them over. I've never read or heard anyone speak more clearly, practically and inspirationally about coalition building.

Biden was never my candidate. I supported three other candidates ahead of him in 2020. When he got into office and started doing a small number of things I really liked, it didn't make me like him. I knew who he was: the Senator from MBNA, whose long political career was full of bills, votes and speeches that proved that while we might have some common goals, we didn't want the same America or the same world.

My interest in Biden over the past four years has had two areas of focus: how can I get him to do more of the things that will make us all better off, and do less of the things that make the world worse. When I think about the next four years, I'm thinking about the same things. A Trump presidency will contain far more bad things and far fewer good ones.

Many people I like and trust have pointed out that they don't like Biden and think he will be a bad president, but they think Trump will be much worse. To limit Biden's harms, leftists have to take over the Democratic Party and the progressive movement, so that he's hemmed in by his power base. To limit Trump's harms, leftists have to identify the fracture lines in the right coalition and drive deep wedges into them, shattering his power base.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/14/fracture-lines/#disassembly-manual

[ballsandbabes]

Bleed through love: Geum Seong-jae x Reader

Authors Note: I normally dont write about other things than Sports, BUT...I started with Weak Hero and find the story really exciting. While reading, I found Geum Seong-ja's character very exciting. Y/n = your name// not proof read// GIF not mine // Have fun <3

Summary: Love is never easy, but it is difficult when you fall in love with Seongje. But what happens if he's interested in you too?

Genre: Universe of Weak Hero, slow-burn romance, character drama, fluff with grit, slightly toxic depiciton of a relationship.

Life wasn't fair. Not for you. Your parents were once respected doctors at a good clinic. But even there, corruption flowed through every vein of the institution. That is, until Kim De-Uhn, the director of the clinic, died. And therefore the only person who had protected this secret. As soon as the new director was in office, all employees were fired, including your parents. They had done nothing wrong, but the director wanted to get rid of all old employees in order to be able to completely rebuild and improve the clinic's reputation. With everything that came to light afterward, it made it difficult for your parents to find work again.

And that's how you ended up at Eunjang High School. A cruel, brutal and unrelenting chaos of a school life. You had once had dreams. Dreams of a good, carefree life as a graphic designer. But now it was about surviving this cruel and terrible place.

If you didn't belong to one of the thug squads or knew a member, you could actually get through everyday school life just fine. And that's exactly what you did. You were quiet, reserved and didn't attract attention. Which doesn't mean that you didn't have your reputation at school. The classmates who knew you knew how good you were. Smart, well-read, intelligent, one or two boys would also say that you were very beautiful.

“Omg, I heard Yeon Sieun got into a fight with someone again,” said Daehyun, your best friend. "Oh come on, let's not interfere. That happens every day," you said as you prepared for the next lesson.

You first met Geum Seong-jae after a math test.

You were sitting alone in the hallway, reading glasses slipping down your nose, notebook open across your lap as you reviewed formulas for fun — because yes, that’s the kind of person you were. You liked rules. You liked logic to a degree. You liked knowing that hard work, in school at least, led to clear answers.

He walked by bleeding from the lip.

And you didn’t look away.

“You....you okay?” you asked, calm and straightforward. At that moment you didn't even know why you had spoken to him. Actually, it was against all your rules, but you did it anyway. How reckless.

He slowed. Stared. He was used to flinches, whispers, or forced politeness. Not concern. Especially not from a girl in a sporty zip-up Hoodie with ink on her fingers. He scoffed. “Do I look okay?”

“You look like you got your face slammed into a locker. Twice,” You said while adjusting your glasses. Why did you say that?

That pulled a sharp laugh from him—surprised and short. Then he turned to leave, but not before shooting you a sideways glance.

“Don’t get involved,, stupid girl” he muttered.

But you were involved, in the way that people like you always were — because you believed people and their actions could be understood, even when they didn’t believe it themselves. You would know what he was like. He had shown this often enough when his bloody knuckles had slammed into his opponent's jawline until it was brimming with blood. That's why you knew you couldn't change him. You didn't want that either, but you wanted to be able to understand him, understand why he did what he did.

___ _ _ _

You saw each other every now and then, especially on the way home. When you had to move, the neighborhood you lived in, was different, more unsafe.

It had started with the conversation in the hallway of the school, that Seongje found himself thinking about you. What was the point of this stupid girl to just babble at him like that? Was she crazy?

You hadn't cared who he was, you had just wanted to make sure he was okay and he couldn't quite understand that. He had told himself he was here purely by chance as he waited outside the shabby little art room. Movement. He looked into the room through the tiny, dusty window. You helped a classmate with her picture. Your eyes focused and full of helpfulness. Your body language inviting and sisterly.

Another time you stopped at the sports field on your way from the entrance hall across the courtyard. You had actually never seen him play sports before, that was more Hoo-min Park's thing. Also a bully at your school. It was where you realized how strong and athletic Seongje actually was.

So it went back and forth. You noticed each other. However, without anyone else noticing.

The next time, he found you.

A kid from another class had tried to cheat off your quiz, and when you refused, he pushed you against a locker and called you a stuck-up nobody. You didn’t cry. You stared him down and told the teacher. He got detention.

You got called names. By lunch, your books had been tossed in the hallway. Again.

And Seongje saw it happen.

You didn’t saw him, therefor thinking he wouldnt bat an eye — he didn’t exactly have a reputation for defending nerdy girls with moral backbones. But then, at the end of the day, the kid who shoved you left school with a bloody nose and a limp. What had happened?

You and your friends sat on the wall of the schoolyard as you discussed in whispers what had happened to the guy who had been so mean to you. "Maybe this is all just a stupid coincidence," Mia said, her voice low and wavering. "I don't think so, the boys may be brutal, but that doesn't mean they can't think," Jiun said.

And then you would have seen him. Just early enough to see him put his bloody hand in his pocket. While you were still running, you said goodbye to your friends as you ran after him.

“Don’t thank me,” Seongje told you when you caught up to him later. “I didn’t do it for you.”

“Then why?” you challenged him to answer you, arms crossed, refusing to let him brush it off.

His eyes lingered on your face. "...Because you didn’t flinch. You even have the guts to talk to me like that."

___ _ _ _

He started showing up more after that. Not obviously. Just… nearby. Lingering. He'd stand outside the library and pretend to scroll through his phone. Sit behind you during lunch and pretend to sleep. Glance your way in class and immediately look away when you noticed.

You first didnt notice, but when you did, you never called him out. You just let him hover — because you knew that for someone like him, proximity was connection.

He asked you once, late in the hallway after everyone had left: “Why are you always trying to do the right thing? Even when it sucks for you?”

You closed your locker and smiled at him. “Because someone has to. I don't know, but maybe it will help someone. Maybe it will help someone if I point out to the teacher that we cannot move the date forward. And maybe if I do it enough, someone else will too.”

“…That’s so stupid,” he said quietly, laughing at you.

But the next week, he returned a lost wallet to a first-year without taking the cash inside. Even if he had thought about taking it.

Geum Seong-jae wasn’t gentle. Not in the slightest. To be honest, he was brutal, crazy and arrogant. Despising people who are or act weak, people like you. He wasn’t patient. His anger lived just under his skin, hot and volatile.

But with you?

He showed a very strange side of his, in ways you couldnt really describe. And explain even less.

He "walked" you home but never admitted it, basically he followed you from a few meters away. He "asked", more like teased or bullied you with questions about your favorite books and pretended to be bored....then he would steal them from you. He tried to fix your broken calculator once. Failed. Replaced it in your bag without saying a word. Which got you into massive trouble. Because the guy sitting next to you had lost his calculator, which was also new, and simply accused you of stealing his calculator. What was that about? Did Seungje want to bully you?

And when you asked him, one day, why he hung around you at all, he shrugged and said,“Because you entertain me with you "good morals".” “What do you mean,” you asked him, confused. He explained to you that you weren't an angel either. You lent your study materials to a classmate so that she could copy and not fail. Actually, you weren't allowed to do that. And unfortunately he is right. In an attempt to do something good, you had done something forbidden. An interesting thought came to you during this conversation…maybe it was the same with him?

___ _ _ _

It started like any other day — quiet, normal, deceptive. But you could tell something was off the moment Seongje stepped into school. His eyes were darker, shoulders tense, fists already curled like he’d been in a fight before first period even began. You didn’t ask — not yet — but you stayed close.

When the news spread through the halls that some guys from a nearby school had jumped one of Seongje’s friends outside the gates, everything unraveled fast. By the time you found him, he was already throwing punches. It wasn’t a fight — it was an explosion. Raw, furious, unstoppable. One of the boys lay curled on the concrete, bleeding from the mouth, teeth lose, while Seong-jae slammed the other into a wall, again and again, knuckles cracking with every hit.

“Seongje!” you shouted, running toward him. He didn’t hear you.

“Omg...Stop—please!” You grabbed his arm, your voice trembling but strong. “He understood, but if you continue you could kill him.”

He shoved you back without looking. Not hard — just to get you out of the way. But your foot caught the curb. And you fell. Hard. The third boy gripping you by your wrist, twisting it. You let out a cry of pain. The sound of your body crying for help, in pain, was louder than his fists.

That’s when everything stopped.

His fist hovered mid-air. His head turned. And when he saw you — clutching your wrist, eyes wide in stunned silence — his entire body locked. He let go of the boy he’d been pummeling, who collapsed with a groan. Then Seongje stumbled toward you, color draining from his face. Freeing you from the clutches of the third boy, while hitting him with his fist.

“Y/N…”

You sat up slowly, wincing. Your wrist throbbed, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the look on his face — pure devastation, like he was watching everything he built crumble in real time.

“I didn’t—” His voice cracked. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know it was you, I just—”

You looked at him, really looked. Tears in your eyes, caused by through pain inflicted by him. His hands were shaking. Blood was on his knuckles, and you didn’t know whose. His breath came fast and shallow. But his eyes — his eyes were breaking.

“I told you,” you whispered, “you’re more than your anger.” He sank to the ground beside you, knees drawn up, hands buried in his hair like he wanted to tear it out.

“I’m not,” he muttered. “I hurt you. I did hurt you.”

You reached out gently, laying your uninjured hand on his.

“I’m still here,” you said. “That has to mean something, doesn’t it?”

He looked at you like he didn’t deserve to. Like he’d already accepted that you’d walk away. Like they always did. But you, for what ever reason, didn’t. So if you wouldnt walk away, he had to. He didn't want to see you, being hurt by him ever again.

And so time passed. Time when it felt as if all the moments of stares, anger, closeness and acquaintance had never existed. You became strangers.

___ _ _ _

Time passed. Like it always did. Slow, awkward, cruel.

You and Geum Seongje drifted, the way people do, when things go unsaid — not out of hate, but out of history too heavy to carry. After the fight, after your wrist healed, after he stopped meeting your eyes in the hallway... things just broke.

Now, you were strangers again. You started dating someone a few months later — a boy from the year above, pretty handsome, tall and smart. He was kind, on paper. Well-dressed. Smiled when teachers looked. And most importantly, he wasn't complicated. He didn’t throw punches. He didn’t carry the weight of anger behind his eyes.

But Seongje noticed the difference right away. You didn’t light up when you talked about him. Your smile didn’t quite reach your eyes. And when Seongje saw you walking with the guy, hand-in-hand but looking at the ground — he knew.

And then, some afternoon that week, he saw him. Behind the convenience store, Seong-jae caught him — your perfect boyfriend — with his arm wrapped around girl. A girl that wasnt you. The boy was grinning like he hadn’t just lied to you with every kiss.

That was the moment he snapped. No hesitation. No warning. Fist met jaw. Shoulder hit wall. The guy screamed, fought back, but Seong-jae was fire — wild and wordless. His only thoughts were: How dare you. How dare you touch her, lie to her, ruin her happy smile like that.

By the time it ended, Seongje stood panting over the guy’s crumpled body, fists bloodied, eyes burning. He didn’t even run.

He wanted you to know. You did find out. And you were furious.

You showed up at the nurse’s office where they were patching up his busted lip.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” you snapped, your voice shaking — not from fear, but something deeper. “You can’t just fight everyone who looks at you the wrong way, Seongje!” There it was. At such times, you showed a fire equal to his. Anger, disappointment and the urge to fight. It fascinated him how you could be so loving, caring and so spirited at the same time.

He stared up at you, eyes shadowed, like he’d already accepted your rage before you even arrived.

“I saw him,” he said quietly. “Cheating on you...with that dumb blonde from the second year. I couldn’t… I couldn’t let it slide.”

Your anger deflated. You blinked, stunned.“…What?”

He looked away. “He doesn’t deserve you. No one like that does.”

Silence hung heavy between you. And in it, something softened.

“I’m not....yours.... to protect anymore. I never needed that kind of protection...so whats up with this shit of yours??,” you whispered. Not cold. Just… honest.

“I know,” he murmured. “But I still want to.”

After that, things began to shift. Slow. Careful. You started saying hi again in the halls. He started waiting just a little longer near your classroom. One day, he handed you a drink — your favorite, the one you hadn’t told him you still liked. You took it without a word.

One night, you caught him waiting for you outside the library.

“Thought I’d walk you home,” he said. “Old habits die hard.”

You smiled. “Maybe they don’t have to die. and maybe you walk home with me, instead of behind me?”

From then on, it was the little things. Your hand brushing his on the bus, neither of you pulling away. Him walking on the outside of the sidewalk. You fixing the cut on his knuckle or cheek after another scuffle — gently, like touching something sacred. Him pretending not to look at you or care about it. You pretending not to notice.

You waited. Because if there was one thing you learned about Geum Seongje, it’s that he didn’t need someone to rescue him — he needed someone to stay.

___ _ _ _

It started on a late spring afternoon, the sky grey and heavy. You were leaving school when the downpour hit. You didn’t have an umbrella.

Of course, he found you just at the right time (he had probably followed you again) — running, hair soaked, backpack clutched to your chest. He didn’t say anything. Just walked up and stood in the rain beside you.

Soaked. Still. Silent.

You looked at him, laughter bubbling from your chest.

“This is stupid,” you said, smiling. “We’re going to get sick.”

“Probably,” he replied. You shook your head. “Why do you always show up?”

His voice was low, sincere. “Because you make me want to be someone who doesn’t run away.”

Your breath hitched. Rain clung to your lashes, little droplets haning on for their dear life. His hair stuck to his forehead., soaked and wet He looked at you like you were the only solid thing left in a world that never gave him a place to rest. This time his eyes only show the madness of letting you into his life. The madness of believing that a stupid girl couldn't hurt him. But you could. Whenever you weren't there, he couldn't see you. The fear that something would happen to you cut through him like a sharp knife.

You stepped closer. He didn’t move. “You’re not a bad person, Seong-jae,” you said, voice barely louder than the rain. “You’re just scared someone might understand you... believe that even you have good intentions...sometimes.”

“…You believe that?”

“I do,” you said quietly. Unsure if these words wouldn't make him angry. And then, he leaned in — slowly, softly — and you met him there, in the middle of the storm.

The kiss was everything it shouldn’t have been. Wet. Clumsy. Honest. Madness.

His hands gripped the sides of your face like he was terrified you'd disappear. Yours found his chest, feeling the heartbeat under bruises and bandages and broken pasts.

When you pulled away, breathless, you smiled.

He did too. Not wide. Not perfect. But real.

BONUS:

The boxing hall was dimly lit, smelling faintly of sweat, leather, and something weirdly nostalgic. The rain had stopped hours ago, leaving the city hushed outside, the world tucked into sleep. It had been a few weeks now since you two shared that rainy kiss.

Inside, you were wrapping your hands with practiced slowness — or, at least, trying to. You had no idea what you were doing. You had never been in a place like this before and to be honest it scared you a little. On the other hand, you were happy that Seongje took you into his world with him. A sign of his affection towards you.

“You’re doing it backwards,” Seongje muttered, walking up behind you. His fingers brushed yours, fixing the tape with the kind of care that didn’t match his bruised knuckles or the way he usually handled the world. You glanced up at him, teasing. “I didn’t know Mr. Punch-Everything-In-Sight was a hand-wrapping expert.”

He gave you a sharp look, a fire flickering behind his eyes. “If you're gonna fight, you're gonna do it right.”

“Who says I want to fight?,” confusion rose in your voice. Shouldn't this be something like a date? Sure, it had been weird when he asked you to tag along, but when has it ever been normal with him?

His voice dropped. “You're with me now.” That shut you up — not because it was possessive, but because it was protective. His way of saying I won’t always be able to catch them first. The gym was empty but alive with silence. A single bulb flickered above the ring.

“You're not gonna hurt me....,” you asked, better demanded gently, stepping up into the ring.

He hesitated. “I might.”

You smiled, pulling him by the hand. “Then....Then teach me how to hit back.”

He started with stance — guiding your feet, steadying your shoulders. He circled you slowly, correcting posture, nodding when you got it right. But every time his hands touched you — waist, arms, jaw — it lingered just a moment too long.

And you noticed. “Try,” he said, lifting the pads. “Throw one.”

You did. It wasn’t clean. But it had heart.

He smirked. “Again.”

You hit harder. He chuckled lowly, his mad smile starting to appear on his face. “Better. Where’s that fire when you’re doing math equations?”

You dropped your fists and raised a brow. “Well.. its different...wait?You like my fire?”

He stilled — caught off guard for just a second. “...Yeah. A lot.”

Your eyes locked. Then you stepped in — slow, deliberate — sliding your hands up the front of his shirt, fingers curling into the fabric. Dragging him towards you.

His breath hitched. “Y/N…”

You tilted your head. “You gonna stop me?”

“No,” he whispered. “Never.”

And then you kissed him. No hesitation. No buildup this time.

It was all sharp angles and soft mouths, the snap of tension finally breaking. His hands grabbed your waist, pulling you flush against him, teeth clashing in a kiss that tasted like adrenaline and something long overdue. It was wild and demanding.

You tugged at his shirt. He growled — low and real — before lifting you gently and setting you on the edge of the ring.

The contrast between his rough grip and the reverence in his gaze lit every nerve in your body.

“You sure?” he asked, chest heaving.

You nodded, breathless. “I’ve never been more sure.”

And in that old gym, where ghosts of fights past echoed in the walls, you gave yourself to him — not just your body, but every piece of trust he thought he didn’t deserve. And there you saw it, his version of gentleness.

His lips on your neck. Your hands in his hair. The quietest moans swallowed between kisses. Him trying his best, so his strength never bruised you — it only held you steady. And your softness never made him weak — it grounded him.

For once, Seongje had developed a strong respect for will and strength, other than his. His madness faltering, knowing you could understand his being.

For the moment, he just was mad about you.

I hope you liked this special piece. Love Becca <3

[crownedwithstars]

That's kind of the point of the story of Fëanor, though. If it's unacceptable, it's because tragedies usually are. Fëanor's corruption, the way all his potential goes to waste because he won't let go of the Silmarils, tracks with Tolkien's themes of hubris, the Fall, and how power corrupts, and it's so compelling because he could have chosen to save himself but wouldn't. He chooses/prioritises his property over giving back to the society that nurtured him in its darkest hour, his own sons' lives, his family, and the lives of Teleri. Let him be awful! Let him be greedy! Let him go down in a blaze of infamy! Fëanor is nothing if not extra.

Moreover, I'm not sure where the idea comes that, prior to the Kinslaying, Fëanor's property is treated as public or that his right is undermined. What actually happens is that Yavanna declares the Silmarils are the only thing that could still restore the Trees, Fëanor is asked - asked, not demanded - if he would give them up (the only one forceful in this scene is Tulkas but he is redressed by Aulë), he says no, and the Valar accept his decision. As the one who made the Trees in the beginning and thus making it possible for the Silmarils to be made in the first place, Yavanna does have a right to ask, and indeed she does nothing but state what it would take to restore the Trees. Considering the Trees are not only what sustains life in Valinor but are also such powerful cultural and maybe even spiritual symbols that their images continue to be reproduced and adopted as standards even by people who never saw the actual living Trees, and how their loss is mourned even thousands of years later, the Valar have no choice but to at least ask if Fëanor will permit them to be restored, otherwise they are doing wrong against everyone else who lives in Valinor. Obviously, the question about giving up the Silmarils could have been posed in a much kinder way, but considering Fëanor's state of mind at this point, the tone and wording of the question would not have mattered.

Like I said in a previous post, Thingol and the Dwarves (and of course Morgoth) fall prey to that same spell of lust for the Silmarils, and I think this also proves that possessing even one of them is more than anyone except maybe Eärendil can handle. I'd wager at this point the Valar know this too, because what do they do when a Silmaril comes to Valinor? They set it up in the sky, where it will be forever beyond everyone's reach but can still be seen and appreciated as a memory of the Light that was before. (Also I don't think they ever lost interest in Middle-earth or that it was restored specifically by the Silmaril: their hands were tied by the Oath and the Doom of the Noldor. They can't and won't interfere with free will or its consequences, which the Exile and all following events is. I think they are allowed finally to intervene because Eärendil was built in as a fail-safe by Ilúvatar, as an anti-Fëanor so to speak.)

I also have to disagree with the idea that the narrative associates power with morality. If anything, Tolkien's message is about how power corrupts. Also stuff could be said whether one can ever satisfactorily apply modern day morals or property law to a text supposedly describing difficult moral questions of a very ancient, hierarchical and alien society where divine and satanic powers are not only proven facts but actual active forces and the nature of the world is recognised as fundamentally Marred.

As for what is the payoff for Fëanor giving up the Silmarils, if restoring the Trees is not good enough? Saving his soul.

Not going to lie, I find it weird and off-putting when people characterize Feanor (& sons) desire to reclaim the silmarils as 'greed'. Like.

Is it greedy to want your own shit back? Like is it outrageous to try to reclaim your own property that has been stolen AT MINIMUM once, and in one case twice, and in the ultimate end stolen and then subsequently taken as war booty by a neglegent if not outright hostile force? Is 'greed' the word you really want to use? Is that a word you would use you you translated the situation into something of your own? If someone stole your bike, or your wallet, or a piece of art that you made, and you expected it to be returned to you... would you want to be called 'greedy' for that?

idk there's just something weird about wanting to reclaim objects that are both a) important representations of calaquendi noldor culture and craft and b) a literal embodiment of the divine light that recalls better being described as excessive and unreasonable that rubs me the wrong way.

Just to be clear: I am not endorsing acts of violence to meet the above goals! But 'greed' does not denote excessive force or unjust means! It denotes unjust desire. Characterizing Feanor's drive to reclaim the silmarils as greed means that the desire itself is unjustifiable or unreasonable.

[fanfictionismyaddiction]

A Surprise Visitor

Word count: 2.1k

Pairing: Lando Norris x reader

Summary: After two years of watching from afar, Y/n surprises her boyfriend, Lando Norris, at the Monza Grand Prix, creating a buzz in the paddock and revealing their private relationship.

Requests are open

______________________________________________________________

The hum of the jet engines thrummed through the cabin, but I was too excited to care. This was finally happening. After two years of watching Lando's races from my cramped little apartment, I was on my way to my first Grand Prix. It had taken a miracle—or more precisely, a break in my grueling medical school schedule—to make it happen, and now I was on a plane bound for Monza. Lando had no idea I was coming.

For two years, we had been each other's biggest supporters, but always from afar. With my studies and his relentless racing schedule, we made it work through late-night FaceTime calls, stolen weekends, and text messages sent across different time zones. Lando understood how much becoming a doctor meant to me, and I understood how much racing meant to him. It wasn't always easy, but it was worth it. And now, finally, I was going to surprise him at one of the biggest races of the season.

The plan was simple: get to Monza, navigate through the labyrinth of the paddock area, and find Lando. But of course, it wasn't going to be that easy. After all, Lando had kept our relationship very private—mostly because of my request. I had wanted to avoid any extra scrutiny or attention that could interfere with my studies. So, not many people knew who I was. That anonymity had always been a blessing, but today, it might turn into a curse.

As I approached the entrance to the paddock, the reality of the situation hit me. The security was tight, and without a pass, there was no easy way in. I tried to remain calm and confident as I approached the guard at the gate, a stern-looking man. I put on my most winning smile.

"Hi, I’m here for Lando Norris. I'm his girlfriend," I said, hoping my nerves didn’t show in my voice.

The guard didn’t even flinch. He glanced at me. “Do you have a pass, ma’am?”

“Uh, no, I don’t. I’m surprising him. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

He raised an eyebrow. “If you don’t have a pass, I can’t let you in. Anyone could say they're someone’s girlfriend.”

I felt my face flush. Of course, he was right. I had counted on my story being enough, but without any proof, I was just another face in the crowd. My mind raced, trying to think of something, anything, that would convince him. I pulled out my phone, scrolling frantically through my photos to find one of Lando and me that wasn’t overly intimate but still proved I knew him. Finally, I found one from his last birthday—a picture of us at a quiet dinner, his arm wrapped around my shoulder, both of us smiling like idiots.

“Look, this is us,” I said, holding the phone up to the guard.

He squinted at it, but it still didn’t seem to sway him. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but without clearance, I can’t let you in.”

I bit my lip, starting to panic. Would I really come all this way just to be turned away at the gate? Just then, I heard a familiar voice from behind the guard.

“Hey, is there a problem here?”

It was Charlotte, one of Lando’s closest friends who often accompanied him to races. Relief washed over me. She knew who I was, thank goodness. The guard turned to her, explaining the situation, and Charlotte’s eyes lit up when she saw me.

“Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re here!” she exclaimed, pulling me into a quick hug. “She’s with Lando. She’s legit,” she assured the guard, who seemed to visibly relax.

“Alright, you’re good to go,” he said, opening the gate for me. I breathed out a sigh of relief, thanking Charlotte profusely.

“Lando’s going to flip when he sees you,”

Charlotte led me through the bustling paddock, weaving between crew members, engineers, and the odd driver. My heart pounded with every step. I couldn’t believe I was finally here, in the thick of it, about to see Lando. I’d spent so many weekends watching him on TV, wishing I could be there to support him in person. Now, I was just moments away from making that a reality.

As we rounded a corner, I saw the familiar McLaren colors and a group of people crowded around, busy with last-minute preparations. And there he was, standing near his car, deep in conversation with his race engineer. I paused, taking him in. Lando looked focused, his brow furrowed as he listened intently. He was in his element, and seeing him like this—so determined, so alive—made my heart swell with pride.

Charlotte gave me a nudge and a wink. “Go on.”

Taking a deep breath, I walked toward him, trying to keep my emotions in check. With each step, my excitement grew, and I couldn't help but smile. When I was just a few feet away, Lando turned around, still half-listening to his engineer. His eyes skimmed over me at first, not really registering who I was, but then they widened. His mouth fell open in shock.

“Y/N?” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “What… what are you doing here?”

The smile on my face grew wider. “Surprise!”

For a moment, he just stood there, frozen, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Then, in a heartbeat, his face broke into the biggest grin I’d ever seen. He closed the distance between us in two strides, wrapping me in a tight hug and lifting me off the ground. I laughed, burying my face in his shoulder, his familiar scent wrapping around me like a comforting blanket.

“I can’t believe this,” he said, his voice muffled against my hair. He set me down gently but kept his arms around me as if afraid I might disappear if he let go. “You’re really here?”

“Yeah, I am,” I said, my own eyes brimming with happy tears. “I finally managed to get a break from school. I wanted to surprise you.”

“You did more than surprise me,” he said, pulling back to look at me. His eyes were bright with joy, his cheeks flushed with excitement. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”

I felt a warmth spread through my chest, seeing just how much my presence meant to him. “I’m so proud of you, Lando. I’ve been watching every race from my apartment, but I’m finally here to cheer you on in person.”

His face softened, and for a moment, it was just the two of us, standing in the middle of the chaotic paddock, wrapped up in our little world. “I’ve missed you so much,” he said softly, his thumb brushing against my cheek. “I wish you could be here all the time.”

“I wish I could too,” I replied. “But I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere.”

He chuckled, the sound warm and full of relief. “I have to admit, this is the best surprise ever. But how did you even get in? Did anyone recognize you?”

“Not exactly,” I laughed. “It was a bit of a challenge. Charlotte saved the day.”

He glanced over my shoulder and waved a grateful hand at Charlotte, who gave him a thumbs-up and a knowing smile. “Remind me to thank her later,” he said with a grin before turning his attention back to me. “But seriously, Y/N, you being here… it just makes everything better.”

I felt my heart flutter at his words. “Well, I’m glad I could make your day a little brighter. Now, you better go out there and win, okay? I didn’t come all this way for nothing.”

Lando’s grin widened, and he nodded with determination. “With you here, I feel like I can do anything.”

He leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to my forehead, and I felt a rush of warmth spread from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. “Stay close, alright? After the race, we’re celebrating. Just you and me.”

“Deal,” I said, squeezing his hand. “Now go be amazing.”

Lando jogged back to his team, but not before throwing a final, beaming smile my way. My heart swelled seeing how happy he was. I lingered by the McLaren garage, watching him fall back into his pre-race routine. As I waited, Charlotte stayed with me, giving me a quick rundown of the paddock scene. The energy was buzzing, filled with engineers shouting, journalists hunting for stories, and drivers moving from garage to garage.

As Lando chatted with his team, I noticed a few heads turning in my direction, whispers circulating among the crew. It wasn’t long before Daniel Ricciardo, Lando’s former teammate, appeared with his trademark grin, clearly having caught wind of the new face in the paddock.

“Oi, Norris!” Daniel called out, his voice cutting through the noise. “You’ve been holding out on us, mate! Who’s this lovely lady?”

Lando looked up, a sheepish yet proud grin spreading across his face. He glanced at me, then back at Daniel. “This is Y/N, my girlfriend. She’s finally here to see me race.”

I felt my cheeks flush as all eyes turned toward me. Daniel's grin widened, his playful nature kicking in immediately. “Girlfriend, huh? And you kept her hidden all this time? Smart move, mate.”

He walked over, extending a hand to me. “Daniel, nice to meet you. I’ve gotta say, we all wondered if Lando had someone special cheering him on from the shadows. Now I see why he’s been driving so fast. Gotta impress the missus, eh?”

I laughed, shaking his hand. “Nice to meet you too, Daniel. And yeah, I’ve been watching all the races from home. I’m finally getting a front-row seat.”

Before I knew it, more drivers began to gather around, curious to meet Lando’s mystery girl. George Russell approached with a friendly smile. “So, you’re the one who’s been keeping Norris in line? Good job,” he said, giving Lando a teasing nudge. “Didn’t know you had it in you, mate.”

Lando rolled his eyes but couldn’t hide his smile. “Oh, shut up. Just because you guys didn’t know doesn’t mean I was keeping secrets.”

Charles Leclerc joined the group, his charming smile lighting up his face. “Y/N, right? I’m Charles. It’s nice to meet you. I have to say, Lando’s been very quiet about you, but now I see why. He was trying to keep you away from us.”

“Not a bad idea,” Lando chimed in, trying to sound casual, but I could sense a slight edge to his tone. “You lot can be a bit much sometimes.”

Charles chuckled, clearly enjoying the opportunity to tease Lando. “Come on, we’re not that bad! Besides, now that she’s here, we can all get to know her better.”

As the group chatted, I could feel Lando's arm subtly wrap around my waist, a gentle but possessive gesture. I couldn’t help but smile to myself; he was clearly proud to show me off but also keen to make sure everyone knew I was his.

Max Verstappen wandered over next, always one to enjoy a bit of friendly banter. “Lando, man, you’ve been hiding her from us because you knew we’d try to steal her away, huh?” he said with a playful smirk.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Lando shot back, his tone light but his grip on my waist tightening ever so slightly.

As we continued to chat, I noticed Carlos Sainz giving me a slightly lingering look. He flashed me a charming smile. “You know, if you ever get tired of this guy, you could always come cheer for Ferrari,” he joked, winking.

I laughed, enjoying the light-hearted teasing, but I felt Lando tense beside me. He tried to play it off with a chuckle, but I could tell the idea of me getting attention from his friends—even if it was in jest—was stirring a little jealousy.

“Alright, alright,” Lando cut in, his voice a mix of amusement and a hint of possessiveness. “I see what you’re all trying to do, and it’s not going to work. Y/N is here with me, and that’s how it’s staying.”

Daniel, always quick to pick up on vibes, grinned broadly. “Look at him getting all protective! I think we’ve found Lando’s kryptonite, boys.”

Lando rolled his eyes, but his cheeks turned a slight shade of pink. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. At least I have someone to protect,” he shot back, which earned a chorus of “ooohs” from the group.

I squeezed his hand reassuringly, leaning in close to whisper, “You know they’re just messing with you, right?”

He nodded, his expression softening as he looked at me. “Yeah, I know. But I still don’t like the idea of anyone hitting on you—even as a joke.”

I smiled, feeling a warmth spread through me at his protectiveness. “Well, you don’t have to worry. I’m exactly where I want to be.”

[skywalkoverme]

"𝐂𝐞𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐧" 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 1

Series Masterlist

𐙚 Anakin Skywalker x Fem! Reader 𐙚 18+ MDNI

Summary: A republic ship crashes on your planet.

Warnings/contains: dom! male, dom! fem, Enemies to lovers, anakin does not like you, more to come as the series goes on etc, not proof read-- english is not my first language!

Word Count: 1.6k // More on my Master list! + follow & reblog pls

You lay on the shore, your body stretched between the waves and the wet sand; Beach curls filled with grains of the shore and flower petals from the tropical trees behind you; The warm breeze blew sand over your damp skin. The light from the center star embraced your skin then was swiftly hidden by what you figured to be a cloud.

Your eyes shut, your fingernails packed with wet sand, you ignored the sound of the waves crashing more fiercely than before; the tide changed when it so pleased.

The sound of an explosion, almost deafening, shattered the once serene environment. You quickly rose to your feet, holding your palms over your ears. “A- AH!” Piercing whines filled your eardrums as you tried to focus on the colossal ship that now rests on the shore.

The men in white filed out of the ship, guns held to their torsos. When the whining of the tinnitus in your ears finally stopped, you stepped back from the shore. Two men who dressed differently stood up top the wrecked ship; exposed pipes, torn metal and the occasional fire scattered across the ship. Crystals and sharp ice from the atmosphere were wedged in the sides of the ship. “Excuse me!” You yelled and slipped on your robes. “Excuse me!” Your screams eventually caught the attention of the younger man, however your rage flared, drawing the eyes of the older one. “Hello?”

The younger man jumped off a post and onto the sand, soon after, he was joined by his master. “I do apologize for this mess.” The older man said softly in an attempt to calm you. You watched as clones went past you and began to set up camp on the shore. “Are you hurt in any way?” The young man squinted at you.

“No, I am fine. W- What is going on?”

“We are Jedi.” He motioned between him and the man beside him. “Those are our troops. Your planet is currently occupied by Separatists, whether they have made themselves known or not. In order to maintain peace, we must interfere.”

You looked over their shoulders as you tied a white and purple robe on your body. “I’m supposed to entrust my planet to men who can’t fly a ship.” The young man looked you up and down, your skin a flesh tone of blue.

“Miss, unfortunately, that isn’t your decision to make.”

“I would say it is.”

“And who might you be?” The younger man spoke up, his arms folded.

You looked him over and reached for your comms. “I need a squadron down by Keele beach, south shore.” You walked away from the two confused men and to your beach bag. “And on my day off.” You groaned as a ship approached from the coast and another from above.

“Are you one of the royals? If so, we need to speak with you! I am General Obi-wan Kenobi! This is my padawan Anakin Skywalker!” The man ran after you as you approached the aircraft. “There seems to be a misunderstanding.”

“There is no misunderstanding on our end, Jedi. Take them into custody send someone here to watch their troops. No weapons.” You opened both palms out to them.

The younger man turned to his Master, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” He protectively held the hilt of his lightsaber and stared at your eyes. “I. Refuse.” He said bitterly, the cut over his eyes pressed further together. Although his tone offended you, the man caught your interest. A quiet intensity boiled within him and so plainly spilled over into his words.

“Anakin.” His master passed over their lightsabers. Anakin quickly tried to reach for his, but you closed your hands and walked onto the aircraft. Your soldiers stripped the clones of their weapons. “We are here to maintain peace, don’t argue with her. Whoever she is.” Obi-wan whispered to his padawan as they went on board with you.

“Take us to the palace.” You said to the pilot as you stood across from the men; Anakin’s eyes switched from his weapon in your netted bag to your eyes.

“Would you be so kind as to tell us your name?” Obi-wan asked as you clipped your holster belt on your hips.

“Head of Defense; [Y/N] [L/N].”

“[L/N]?” Obi-wan bowed; his padawan hesitated before following suit. “You’re the new Queen...” Obi-wan noted, his eyes on the large aquamarine ring on your left hand. The jewel decorated your body, a large pendant around your neck; it filled your bracelets and even the piercing on your cheek.

“You did your research.”

“Why aren’t there any photos or visuals of you in our database?” Anakin interrogated.

“Should I pose for you now?” You squinted at him, a smile on your lips. Your hand rests on your gun when Anakin turned from the conversation. “Hands need to be visible, Anakin.”

“It’s General Skywalker, and they are.” He retorted.

“This is your apprentice…uh, Padawan?”

Obi-wan agreed rather embarrassed, “Yes.”

“Hm.” At the sound of your disapproving sigh, Anakin’s nostrils flared, his expression faltered into irritation.

The ship slowly approached the large palace, washed in a pale blue from the oxidation; the vines and trees around the palace was the same way, darker shades of blue as well as pale greens. When the ship landed, Anakin turned to his Master. “Don’t look at me like that. If we get into a sticky situation, It’s because of your attitude.” The man said, his accent grew thicker when he lectured.

“I’ve got a plan.”

“I’ve got a better one.” Obi-wan stopped his Padawan. “You do nothing, say nothing and—” He raised his finger when Anakin started to interrupt. “And! Don’t look at her! Since you don’t have people skills, stay quiet.” Anakin smiled toothlessly and raised his eyebrows. ‘Better?’ “Much better.”

“Are you both done?” You asked, your head tilted. Obi-wan straightened out his robes and followed you inside; Anakin kept close by.

As you walked through the halls, you were met by servants who dressed you in proper attire and took your gun from the holster and replaced it a silver sword inside its sheath. The two Jedi stood behind you as you took a breath. Finally, you pushed open the doors to the throne room. “Good morning.” You smiled at the young girl who sat beside the throne; your sister quickly ran into your arms. “How’d you sleep?” You asked, taking a seat on the throne.

The girl’s smile slowly faded upon seeing the men beyond you. They rose from their bow, “Jedi?”

“Yes. I need to speak to them because they broke the law.” The girl covered her mouth with a giggle, “Could you go with the help for a few minutes? I’ll come get you later.” The girl kissed your cheek and hopped down. Your sweet smile left your face when you turned to the Jedi. “…do you have documentation, clearance for this mission from your Chancellor?”

Obi-wan took a hologram token from his sleeve and brought it to you. “Clearance and evidence of separatist droids occupying your planet.” You went through the documents and nodded. “We do not know exactly where but with your guidance through these terrains, your resources…we could rid this planet of them.”

You glanced from one man to the other. “Continue.”

“We understand that your planet is loyal to the republic---"

“You and your Chancellor believe that we will betray you for the separatists.” You stood from your throne, circling the two, “You came here to spy initially. It wasn’t your intention to crash but you put your trust in a weak pilot.” You whispered by Anakin’s ear, “Or perhaps they didn’t know of the crystal fragments in our atmosphere...” His right eye twitched as you passed him. “You came here…to fight a war, Jedi.”

Anakin’s chest heaved at your audacity. You as well as his Master could feel his anger overflow, the energy rilled you up.

“There are more ships in the atmosphere, aren’t there?” You asked and stood in front of Obi-wan.

“There are.”

The refraction from your jewels created rainbows over your unreadable expression, blue-tinted skin. “Did I miss anything?”

“No.”

“Jedi.” You sighed, “You are no longer welcome here. We can fight our own wars. You went behind our backs as a people, as a unit, and brought chaos.” Obi-wan shook his head in defeat. Anakin’s eye twitched. ‘This isn’t true! The separatists brought the war to your planet, not us!’ He thought. “Our treaties and alliance with the Republic will be brought to our court to discuss.”

“Wait a minute!” Anakin scoffed, “Do you have any idea how many droids are on your planet? You think we brought a calvary for fun?”

“Anakin, stop.” His master sighed.

“They are slowly occupying your land. They are likely killing your people! What? Did you expect us to send you a full essay on why we should send in troops?!”

“I need not hear this.” You waved your hand to dismiss them.

“You, yourself weren’t even aware they are here! You didn’t know they entered your atmosphere.” He stepped to you, “You need us! There are tens of thousands of droids! They make hundreds by the hour!” His hand raised towards the open balconies overlooking the city. “Whether you like it or not, until your alliance with the republic is no longer valid, until your senator leaves Coruscant, we are not leaving Erden.”

“Who do you think you are?” You unsheathed your sword and held it to his neck. “You, your troops, and your master…need to leave immediately.”

“Make me.”

As his blue eyes stared down at you, you began to rethink what he had said. If what they are saying is true, you’ll need him--- unfortunately. You lowered your sword and looked at his Master. “Get your Beast under control. His pride will kill him.” You sheathed your sword.

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