#like a messed up terminator 2 ending

[hyrules-warrior]

Mario and Luigi are nightmare free until the third night

When the battle is finished, the excitement calmed and a tiny Bowser taken back to the mushroom kingdom by Peach and the others, the brothers stumble home with the rest of their family. They do little more then clean themselves up, eat some food and then curl up together to sleep.

They sleep and sleep and sleep. Awakening late the next day to do little more then eat again and reassure their family before sleep claims them again for the rest of the evening and night.

It’s that third night, after finally feeling rested and more or less physically recovered that the nightmares start.

And it’s Mario, surprisingly enough that has the first one.

And the severity of it scares the shit out of Luigi, who had kinda expected himself to be the one with the nightmares.

[orcelito]

The intersection of no easy food, no clean dishes, and Bad Mood is such a horrid thing

[delphi-shield]

connection buffering . . . ↺

di!leon x reader - long-distance relationship - part 2

previous part

you weren't bluffing.

you'd made the sign. wrote his name in big block letters, too confident in how you wrote the first half of his name. the 'EDY' crowds together at the end. 'E' shoves 'D' close to the end, 'Y' drawn paper thin and cocked to the side, threatening to topple off the edge of the paper. leon finds he's not too tired to laugh.

he had the whole goddamn flight to figure out what to say to you, but when he sees you standing there with that sign in your hand, scanning the crowd for a man you expect to be two inches taller, it all flushes out of him to make room for the queasy feeling in his gut. when you finally spot him (thank god; the words had gotten lodged in his throat, your name running around his mind again, again, again, lodged so deep in the crevices that he couldn't pry it free and force it out his mouth) your smile nearly blinds him. he shields his eyes with a hand, watches you bounce on the balls of your feet.

he flicks your sign with a finger. the only words that make it past the lump in his throat are, "messed up the kerning, huh?"

you tip your head, puppy-dog cute. more adorable in person. "the what?"

"kerning." silence. you shake your head a little, blank look in your eye. leon tries to swallow, feels barbs jab into his throat. ten minutes on the ground and he's fucking up already. his gut turns. he tries to blame it on airplane peanuts. "the space between the letters."

he should get back on the plane. if he flashes his badge and declares it official business they have to let him on, right? brass wouldn't be happy with him, but what are they going to do? he's leon fucking kenn--

you laugh and his thoughts screech to a halt, plane crash on the concourse. footsteps pound past him - or maybe that's his heartbeat in his ears. your laugh is prettier in person, too.

"okay, all right." your face lights up, eyes squished to make room for your smile. "why do you know that?"

mentally, he flips through a rolodex of excuses. he moonlighted as a graphic designer (false), he was really into fonts (no strong opinions, really), it's classified (outright lie). he settles for the truth, shrugging.

"late night wikipedia dive."

you laugh again. his heart is a bird, fluttering in his chest, battering itself against his ribs to get to you. what the hell is wrong with him? he hadn't felt like this in years, thought he wasn't supposed to feel like this anymore. when you were an adult you grew out of this sort of giddiness. he'd choked it down every time he'd checked his phone under the table at an intelligence meeting, dismissed it as heartburn. he's supposed to want. it's supposed to be a blaze that swallows him up. confident and bold and all-consuming. not fidgety and desperate.

he's not anxious. he's a grown man. he's met presidents, plural. he doesn't get nervous meeting people, even if they're stunning, even if his hands twitch to hold theirs.

does he hug you? kiss you? slip his hand into your back pocket and guide you out of the terminal, lead you blindly to a car that isn't his, take you to an apartment he's only ever seen portions of on a 15 inch screen, ask what he can make you for dinner in your own home? that's what he wants. skip over all of this and slide right into familiarity, fly right past all the work it takes to get there. you've done the leg work, right? you know how you feel about each other. he's here. that says enough, doesn't it?

he's eternally grateful that you reach through his thoughts and pull him into a hug. your face stuffs into his shoulder, words muffled. "i'm so glad you're here."

you inhale deeply and he swears his heart does a backflip. jesus, he needs to get a physical. this can't be normal.

it's you who loops your arm with his, you who tugs him into motion. you rattle off questions that he answers as best he can. it feels like drowning, like he can barely keep his head above water. his flight was fine, thanks for asking. no, he didn't get any sleep. he never sleeps on planes. it's a long story. he didn't need a nap, but yeah, he could go for a coffee.

you know this great place, you reassure him. really low-key. he treads water in the parking garage while you dig for your keys. you drop them - twice - and he wonders if you're struggling to stay at the surface, too.

as a last act before sinking into the passenger seat, he rescues your sign from the trash, folding it neatly and tucking it into his pocket.

he looks up from buckling his seat belt, beckoned by the way you call his name. he's still smiling when you cup his cheeks and kiss him.

by day two, he's decided you need a new apartment. he hasn't told you that yet, figures it comes off too pushy, but he would fly back down to help you move if you wanted. (if he thinks it hard enough, won't you ask him to?)

don't misunderstand - he likes what you've done with the place. honest to god, you're a miracle worker with decor. you could really shape his place up.

it's just that your front door is less than secure. your locks are ran through. it would take him less than a minute to break in. he doesn't even want to think about your windows. other than being drafty, they're just another completely unsecured access point.

you'd invited him to sleep in your bed the first night, and he had every intention of doing so. he'd just passed out on the couch before he had the chance. leon had woken with a pillow stuffed under his head, thick, handmade blanket tucked over him. it was sweet. really.

but it wasn't the same as sleeping next to you.

leon has every intention of sleeping in your bed that night. you'd filled the day with a tour of your city, pointing out your favorite and least favorite spots, telling stories that let him imagine the streets as a stage, you as the star, top billing as far as he's concerned. everything had been optional, as you'd feverishly reassured him after every stop. he could change the itinerary with one word. the only mandatory stop had been lunch with your friends. a good sign, he thinks. if you're confident enough to introduce him to the people in your life, then you see this going somewhere, right?

by the time you hit your last stop, it feels like he's emerged from a war zone. leon would know. he's been run ragged on back to back operations before, but this - the pressure of trying to be right for you, to show you who he is, waiting on pins and needles for you to sour on him and push back from the closeness he craves - this is truly exhausting.

you must feel it too, offering to pick up dinner on your way home in lieu of cooking. he waves away apologies, reaches past you to hand the cashier at taco bell his card when you try to pay. the food is gone by the time you pull your car into the parking lot.

both of you have the same idea. you're just as worn out as he is (makes him wonder if you're doing the same thing, all anxious energy, making sure to put your best foot forward, always stumbling and falling into a better impression than the one you set out to make) and bed comes naturally to mind. he slips into the side closest to the door and you stop him immediately, voice teasing.

"uh, that's my side." you poke at his ribs. the awkwardness had melted over the course of the day together. you were playful, eyes bright and laugh loud. touch came easy between you now, both playful and lingering. the comfort that had been stirred up and tossed into disarray by physical proximity had settled back in.

leon's eyes flit to the door over your shoulder. it's not a big deal, he tells himself. the odds of something happening were astronomically low.

but he knows his luck with astronomically low odds. one in a million is too risky. he's got to be closer to the door, won't be able to sleep if he's not. his hands wrap around your waist, urging you on top of him. he doesn't miss the way you stiffen, the momentary hitch of your breath, but you let yourself get swept along all the same, drape yourself over him as he guides you to.

"just sleep like this." leon shifts lower to make more space for you. he presses a kiss to your head.

it takes longer than he expected for you to relax. slowly, when his hands still at your back and his breathing evens out, your limbs loosen. your weight thickens atop him, pressing him further into the mattress. it's all he can do to remind himself that he's tired, that starting something now would lead nowhere fast.

leon stays awake until he's certain you're out cold. the door remains unbreached, your home still safe. he can't bring himself to regret his caution.

when he's finally able to sleep, he sleeps hard. he wakes to your fingers carding through his hair, his cheek cushioned against your chest, completely flipped around during the night. it's the best night he's had in years.

on day three, leon wonders if he should be more obvious.

he's been putting out all the signs, carefully curated his touch to be lingering, to make you burn for more, but each time you settle against him and offer up a contented "this is nice."

does there need to be a neon sign draped around his neck that says "take me for a spin", arrow blinking down toward his crotch? you'd let him press against your back during an afternoon nap, knee wedged between your legs, arm curled around your stomach to keep you next to him. he woke from dreams where he was bolder, where he wasn't afraid of losing you with that lingering confidence, pressed kisses to the back of your neck until that gauzy empowerment lifted.

hell, he'd woken up that morning laying half on top of you, his head nestled in the valley of your chest. you'd pet his hair til he woke from nuzzling your tits in his sleep.

he abandons subtlety during the credit crawl of eight-legged freaks, a 'classic' you had insisted on making him watch. (you'd laughed when he had commented he could keep you safe in the event of giant spiders. he hadn't been joking, but he still hasn't grown tired of hearing you laugh.)

"hey," he asks, hand curling around your thigh. his thumb smooths an arc across your skin, traces the path again and again. "do you wanna..?"

smooth, kennedy.

you look over at him with that same puppy-dog confusion that he's growing familiar with. instead of moving his hand, you draw your legs up and lay them over his lap. how the fuck is he supposed to interpret that?

"do i wanna..?" you parrot back, drawing the words out into the form of a question.

leon hates himself. he wishes he could back out of this. he clears his throat. how the hell do people broach this topic smoothly? he searches for the words, the silence stretching a little too long for comfort. finally, he says the first thing he can.

"like, sex."

real mature, kennedy, he thinks. he wishes he could backpedal, take it all back. he's certain your face warms. before he can issue a take down for his words, (maybe cut out his stupid goddamn vocal cords, if he has the time) you fumble out, "oh. like- right now? uh, i mean, do you want to?"

continuing with the maturity, he turns it back on you.

"i asked you first."

"i don't not want to."

leon shakes his head. his hand cups your ankle. "i really only take 'yeah' or 'hell yeah'."

"i just didn't think giant spiders got you in the mood."

"hey, the more legs the better."

leon knows deflection when he hears it. he's the reigning champ, after all, could play this game with you all day. but he has mercy; he chuckles, lets you get away with it and grabs the remote, declaring it's his turn to pick another movie since your choice was a mood killer.

later that night, curled up in bed with a video playing mindlessly from your tablet, you turn around to face him. he widens his arms to accommodate the movement, circles them tighter once you settle in.

"you're not mad?" you ask, pressing your face into his chest, already hiding from the answer.

"about what?"

"y'know."

"spell it out for me, sweetheart."

he can feel your breath puff against his chest, an exasperated huff. people have done this same thing to him time and time again. he always hated it, being forced to be forthcoming and earnest. (vulnerable, some people call it, but that always made him feel like a wounded bird.) now that he's on the other side, he sort of sees the appeal.

"'cause i don't wanna have sex yet."

there's a 'yet'. that's promising. he saves that little victory for later. his hand rubs slowly, reverently across the planes of your back.

he knows what he's got to say. he knows that he means it. putting the words to it is different. he needs you to understand, has to do this right.

"i didn't come all this way just to hook up."

you hum. "but you still want to."

christ, he's got to man up and say it.

"of course i do." you burrow closer to him, hands fisting against his side. he taps your back firmly. "hey. i'm not finished. i'm attracted to you, okay? like, really attracted to you. it's not- it's not just physical. i want to see if we can make this work. if what we had on the phone was real."

"is it?"

"yeah. i think so."

"sex isn't important to you?"

"it is. it's just not more important to me than you."

you pull your face from his chest, look up at him with big wet eyes. he brushes the backs of his fingers against your cheek tenderly, afraid you'll splinter and those tears will cascade down if he's anything but gentle.

"i think so, too."

you curl back into him, your touch melting from desperate to serene. leon can't help but feel accomplished - as though he's threaded the needle perfectly, cut the right wire just before the clock hit zero. gradually, his breathing falls into step with yours.

"besides," he murmurs, half-asleep. he drops a kiss against the top of your head. "your walls are thin. i don't want you catching a noise complaint."

day four is a glimpse of the life he could have, but it makes him realize what he needs to do to obtain it. the sickly feeling pools in his stomach, leaves him picking at the dinner you made. it's good, he swears. then the lie - just all the travel catching up to him.

he knows by day five that he's got to tell you everything. it's no longer a want - he needs you in his life. he's resolved to come clean.

he nearly does it over breakfast. you set his coffee in front of him, muss his hair before you take your own seat, and it almost comes spilling out onto the table.

i work in national security. i'm a federal agent. there's so much i can't tell you, but it's dangerous. god, it's dangerous. there's so much blood on my hands. it doesn't scrub off but i'm worried it will stain your skin. i think i could love you, if you'll let me. please don't say it back.

"plans today?" he says instead, sipping his coffee.

maybe tomorrow.

day six leaves him melancholy.

you'd insisted that today was for him. whatever he wanted, you would accommodate.

leon worries that his answer is boring. he wants a day in with you. an imitation of what it could be like to come home to this. the idle sounds of you milling about the house could lull him to sleep if it weren't for the words lodged in his throat.

you were doing the laundry. not yours, not his, but the, the definite article that's never felt intimate until that very moment. it silenced him to hear you refer to it that way. he's so tired of reading into every word you say, clinging onto every nuance. he'd forgotten how exhausting this stage of a relationship is. you couldn't send him home with dirty clothes, you explained, and he had no argument against that. his eyes traced after you as you puttered around, busying yourself with tidying. you're so at home. of course you are. it's your apartment. but he wants that. he wants to lift you from this place and into his own home, to watch you make yourself at home and busy yourself with the mundane.

he's got to tell you today. he can't do it over text. it's wrong.

when you finally settle down next to him on the couch, drawing a blanket into your lap, you breach the topic gently, give him a chance to do it himself. leon doesn't realize how obvious he is when he gets that look on his face, all forlorn as if he'd collapsed onto a fainting couch, hand over the back of his forehead. drama queen.

"what's up?" you ask, sitting close - but infuriatingly distant, not quite touching him yet.

"nothing. just looking at you."

bless you for trying to make it easy on him. it's always been like pulling teeth to get him to talk. he's trained to resist torture and coercion, should know better than to melt under a gentle hand or the way your body fits against his side.

you hum softly, disbelieving. so that's it, then. the silence, the 'i'm respecting your distance until you break' tactics. damn, you're good. leon takes a deep breath, chest aching with the weight of what he has to say. now or never.

"look- i'm not who you think i am."

you don't miss a beat. "in what way?"

he has to force the words out. he's acutely aware that this could ruin everything. you could kick him out. block his number, never speak to him again. good. it was safer that way. you deserved a normal life.

"i lied to you. about my work."

"yeah, i know."

"i work in security. national security."

"leon. i know."

his brain reels back a few steps, trying to process your words.

"you know?" he repeats, almost offended. how could you know? was this a set up?

you pull your phone from your pocket, tapping a quick query in. you turn the phone to him. article after article, a few interviews pinned to the top. every link is purple, clicked on and read through. the one that draws his eye is tucked at the bottom of the screen, makes his skin crawl to remember.

KENNEDY, HARPER CLEARED OF CHARGES

"i googled you." you set your phone down on the coffee table.

"and you still let me into your house?" he was serious, but you laugh. leon's brow pinches. "how long?"

you shrug, as if this conversation is about the laundry. "a couple months. ever since you told me your last name."

"months? why didn't you say anything?"

"i was hoping you'd tell me yourself. and you did, sort of."

his mind is still reeling. the drama of it all had his wound up tight. where does he put that energy?

he must look as thrown-off as he feels, because you chuckle, sweep the hair from his eyes and press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

"i get why you don't tell people upfront. just don't hide stuff like that from me again, okay? seriously. i'll be mad."

it's more grace than he deserves. your acceptance churns his stomach. is there another meaning behind your words, a resentment coiling in the pit of your stomach?

you crack open your book and lean against his side. he settles his arm around you, moving slow, scared to frighten you away. only one chapter in, you pass him your phone, a take-out app order, asking what he wants. if you're mad, you hide it well.

day seven is a funerary procession. you help him scour your apartment for things he may have left behind, packing them neatly in his suitcase-shaped coffin. it's amazing how his things had flooded into your apartment during the short course of his visit. he had spread out, made himself comfortable. part of it had been testing how his belongings felt next to yours, how it all fit - the final test he had constructed in his mind. you'd passed that with flying colors, clearly. he's lost track of a shirt somewhere along the way, but he isn't concerned about it. he'll be back. he can look for it another time.

both of you linger at your front door. excuses are myriad, flowing from both sides. reasons to double back, reasons to keep his hand on your waist, your fingers in his hair, your lips on his.

but eventually the time becomes too urgent, the threat of missing his flight too real. he'd joked in the car that if he didn't turn up for work they might just send a helicopter to pick him up instead, expecting a laugh. you only smile, a wry twist of your lips that fades too quickly. you reach for your sunglasses and shove them on. the air is tense by the time you pull into the parking garage, cherry scented car freshener cloying.

“you gonna cry?” he teases.

you sniffle.

“oh my god.” he is such a jackass. “don't cry. i'm sorry, sweetheart. it's okay. jesus.”

“i just don't want you to go,” you squeak. your hands fist the steering wheel tight, knuckles turning white.

leon leans over the center console, wrapping his arm around your shoulder. he shrugs you closer to him, hushing you gently.

"let's plan another trip, okay?" he murmurs against your head, placing apologetic kisses there over and over. "c'mon. it's not forever. it's okay. i'm gonna call you when i land. we'll text, like we always do. it's my turn to pick the movie, so-"

fuck. his voice cracks. he clears his throat, blinks quickly to keep his composure.

"so, i'll pick a good one. wednesday night, okay? you, me, and a really good movie."

steadily, his promises slow your tears. the pressure of time detaches you from his hold. you're with him as far as you can go, waving him off to his gate. his heart sinks like a stone. he hates flights, never gets comfortable on them, but the way home feels longer than usual.

made it home he texts the second he's through the door. you're probably asleep. he hopes you are, at least. it's late for you, and--

yay

before he can bother telling you to go to bed, another message pushes through. his house felt empty before, but your message only deepens the feeling, hollows out the hallways and leaves his bed feeling too big, too cold.

i miss you already. call me tomorrow if you can.

leon squints at the screen.

"is that my shirt?"

you stop mid-sentence. caught red-handed - or, rather, grey-shirted.

it's your movie night since he made it back home. you're curled up in bed, your popcorn off to the side. he can fill in the gaps of your room now, knows what extends beyond the screen - and he knows that shirt. an old work tee of his that had mysteriously gone missing after you did the laundry. well-worn and soft. his name stamped on the back in big, block letters. possessive pride stirs in his chest to imagine you wearing his name.

sheepish, you promise, "i'll bring it back to you. how about next month?"

leon shakes his head. he pulls open his calendar, skimming through the busy weeks to clear the time for you.

"keep it. wear it to the airport for me so i know who to look for."

"you're not gonna make me a sign?"

"the shirt is the sign, sweetheart."

"are you gonna wear a matching one with my name on it?"

"i might." he opens another tab, googling how to make custom t-shirts. "you'll have to get here and find out."

connection restored -`♡´-

dividers from @/adornedwithlight

[fictional-orphan-smackdown]

ROUND 3, MATCH 5!

All propaganda and what each competitor is from under the cut

Trafalgar D. Water Law (Once Piece)

Law is a genocide survivor who saw his parents' dead bodies along with experiencing a whole bunch of other messed up stuff (his sister burning to death, the people of his country being shot for being poisoned by their own government, being terminally ill, escaping the genocide by hiding under a pile of dead bodies, etc etc). After all this shit, he eventually got forcibly adopted by this one guy and dragged around the world looking for a cure for his illness. Right when Law started to trust and love his new caretaker, he is also brutally murdered in front of him. Law's life goal for the next decade is to get revenge on the person who killed his adoptive father. Vote for him bc he needs a goddamn win for once in his life. He is the people's princess and the narrative's favorite punching bag. Also, his depressed, PTSD-ridden autistic swag and scoliosis realness have captivated me body and soul

His biological parents were killed (before his eyes, by the governement) when he was 10(?). He then joined a bunch of pirates, knowing he wouldn't have much time (and will) left to live anyway. There he was sort of adopted by the Big Bad Pirate's brother, who managed to save his life, only for said brother to be killed (more or less before Law's eyes, by the Big Bad Pirate), when he was 13. You could say he was orphaned twice.

He’s literally got the double orphan special (Parents died and then the guy who took him in after them died too) that’s a 50% increase in orphannedness above your standard orphan. He’s also cool as fuck.

Law's parents were already on death row along with him and his younger sister due to a disease that shortens the life span of a person. The disease can only be passed down genetically and has afflicted everyone in the town that he has grown up in. Due to the sudden outbreak and unknown nature of the disease to the rest of the world panicked and the government closed off his city, killing everyone there. That is how his first set of parents died when he was 10, I think. Still then Law would later join a pirate crew where he would eventually be taken away 2-3 years later by Corazon, marine working undercover as a pirate in order to take down this brother, who is the captain of crew Law joined. Corazon took him in order to cure Law's disease which he still had and to get him away from Doflamingo, his brother. Over the course of 6 months the two became close with Corazon essentially becoming a father figure to Law. I am simplify this but at some point of Doflamingo catches on to Corazon being a double agent and finds him. Doflamingo then proceeds to find Corazon and shoot him in front of a chest that Law was hiding in.

Law has faced many hardships since he was a child, but used his experiences to become an extremely powerful doctor. His pirate crew theme and his Devil Fruit ability are all owed to his adoptive father. Law acts really gruff and serious most of the time, initially seeming like a cool, calculating character and feared swordsman… but one second around the Straw Hats and you quickly see just how silly he really is. He hates bread. He collects coins. He is obsessed with ninjas and superhero comic books. In one arc he just fucked around with his powers and INVENTED harpies and centaurs. Oh, and his First Mate is a polar bear. What could be better than that?

The government ordered to kill everyone in Law's country due to everyone getting "fantasy lead poisoning" disease, which was wrongfully thought to be contagious stroked. Law's family was living at the hospital when they got attacked, his parents (who were doctors) got killed and the hospital got set on fire with his little sister inside. He managed to fled the country hiding in a pile of corpses and ended up joining a pirate crew lead by Doflamingo. Law knew he had the disease and it was going to kill him in three years. Doflamingo's brother, Rosinante took Law hospital to hospital to find a cure but they always rejected him thinking the disease was contagious. Then they learned that someone had offered Doflamingo a devil fruit that could grant him immortality. The fruit could also cure Law so Rosinante stole it and made Law eat it. He then made sure Law could escape Doflamingo and got killed by his brother.

dude spent his childhood getting thrown out of windows, while dying from a deadly disease (that was eventually cured) but while he was still showing symptoms of the disease no one would go near him out of fear and disgust, save for his father figure.

nothing can ever go right for this man. its fucking hilarious in the series and makes for some wonderful angst content. i want everyone who has not watched or read One Piece to know that, for half of his 'main' arc, he's carried around like a potato sack by MULTIPLE people. he is a damsel in despair. he didn't even need to be carried, he honestly could've walked, but he had to save that energy so he could take the like 17 lead bullets out of him. he's always getting shot or thrown out a window and he's severely injured more often than not. he's also a doctor/surgeon, one that should be able to cure incurable diseases, yet his pathetic loserboy ass is too busy being emo to worry about the several gunshot wounds and internal bleeding. god help this man but also don't because honestly it's really fucking funny

Ok, FIRST, when he was a tiny frog-disecting little kid, him and his family and island contacted a disease equivalent to cancer BUT his fam didn't die from that. No, no, his parents got gunned down by the military and his little sis was burned alive with the rest of his house, so, yeah, very traumatic, horrific in a way that makes you very angry at yourself and life and want to oh I don't know, kill everyone and everything possible until the day you die, which won't be long because you have cancer after all. Later, after joining a mafia/cult/gang, Law meets Corazon who after like 2 years kidnaps him to try and get him healed and so they spend the next 6 months bonding, WEEEEEE!! Wait, no, NOT weeee because Cora who is now his father-figure DIES having protected and saved him, and thus bruv becomes orphaned not once, not thrice, but TWO very traumatic times! If this isn't an orphan, idk what is……

Anthony Lockwood (Lockwood and Co)

Lockwood (he's known by his surname mostly) is the mysterious, daredevil and charming founder of Lockwood and Co., a detective agency specialised in protecting people from angry -and sometimes sort of hungry- ghosts in a world where they're rampant. His agency is starting small despite Lockwood bragging it's the best in London but get more and more recognition as the series progress and the agents composing them meet success (when they're not on the verge of dying). Lockwood has open manners but hid his painful past from his coworkers to protect himself. He and George, the first teenager he recruited, are quite stunned by Lucy, a country girl who fled to London after disaster striked in her hometown. Thanks to her talent, she quickly becomes known as one of the best ghost fighter in London and finds her place in the small team despite having the same determination to hide her past than Lockwood, which draws him close to her, making George jealous, but Lockwood's manifest good skills in leadership and the three of them become fast friends while unravelling secret truths and risking their lives repeatedly

He has a lot of trauma and a lot of pain but he always smiles and always has a warm and polite attitude; he’s so protective of the ones he loves that it overrides his suicidal tendencies; at the end of the series he starts to heal from his past; he’s hot but has only two braincells.

[hugejk]

2 years

pablo gavi x singer!yn

cw: mentions of drug usage, smoking, drinking, addiction.

quick a/n: sorry i’ve been VERY inactive lately, i do want to write more so i’ll accept any footballer reqs!!! :-)

||_________________________||

“it’s been 2 years since we’ve seen or heard from y/n, where could she be? Most people assume she decided to quit making music, some assume she gained too much weight and is too ashamed to step out in public. But i guess we won’t know for a long time now, leave a comment below on what you think about this.”

you sigh and put down your phone. It’s been 2 years since you’ve even been in the studio at all. A 2 year hiatus from the world. Flashbacks start to play in your head on how you even ended up here.

. . .

sitting out on the edge of balcony watching all the glowing stars surrounded by the darkness of the night. You life was a mess. Parties every other night, surrounded by people who didn’t care if they ruined their life. Taking random drugs whenever you could. Drinking most of the day. The joint inbetween your fingers burning into ash. You couldn’t stand it anymore.

You were just tired of everything, and the comments on every little thing you did made everything more worse.

“maybe y/n should take a break from all the parties..”

“look at her eyes, they look dead.”

“she’s just a drug addicted psychopath. Hope she stops soon and gets some treatment.”

you were tired of all eyes on you. Biting the inside of your bottom lip, the tears started to accumulate in your eyes. Taking a big hit of the joint, feeling the burn but not feeling anything anymore. You knew there was only one way to stop getting so much attention.

Putting out the joint and heading into your apartment and opening up your laptop. You log into the device and search for flights to Barcelona. Little did you know, this small decision would change your life forever.

you didn’t tell anyone about this. You packed your bags, reset your phone, and went to bed. The next morning you had ordered and uber. Covering your face with a hat, mask, and sunglasses. You didn’t want the spotlight anymore. It took a good 30 minutes to get to the nearest airport. You wonder if anyone will even care if you disappeared, stopped making music, stopped replying to texts, stopped calling, stopped everything.

you didn’t want to live the life you had anymore. what you once thought was a blessed now had transformed into a curse right in front of your eyes. Becoming something far more evil than you thought. You remember a little y/n looking up to famous singers, wanting what they wanted. Wanting the light, wanting the eyes, wanting what they had.

but now that you had finally grasped it after years of putting everything into it, it felt like a living hell. You look up from your lap, and you were at the airport. The driver looking back at you to let you know that you had arrived, taking out your wallet fast and tipping him 15 bucks, you scurried out the black SUV, grabbing your bags from the back and trying to avoid eye contact with anyone.

A new start. You walked into the front doors of the airport, not ready to start the tedious process just to get checked in. You sighed and headed straight for check in. You just wanted to get it done and over with, but unfortunately you were in america and going to another country. They needed to identify who you were.

“trip to barcelona? can i see a passport please?”

the blonde headed lady behind the counter asked, you handed her the passport and leaned in to whisper into her ear,

“you didn’t see me here.”

as you lifted the glasses and took down the mask, a serious look on your face. You could see her eyes light up as she saw the world’s most known singer standing in front of her. But she obliged to your words and wished you a good flight as she handed the passport back.

after the whole process was over, you sat in those uncomfortable waiting seats in your terminal. Tapping your finger on your already shaking leg. You didn’t have a plan for barcelona. Fuck. Do you go seek professional help like all the comments had said? Do you stop making music? Do you take the time to heal and finally find yourself? Your mind running at a pace you couldn’t keep up with. You took a deep breath.

After a few hours of waiting they finally started calling for your flight. You couldn’t even feel nervous or excited, you were just so numb on the inside, dissociated from the world you stand on. time was flying by, one second you were waiting to be called, the next second you were in your seat, and in the blink of an eye…you were in barcelona.

Stepping off the plane, going through another tedious journey just to hit the streets of barcelona—and cry. You didn’t know what the fuck you were doing in that city. You had no house, barely enough money to hold you over for a few nights, because when you packed you thought it would be smart to only pack a little bit of your funds. Fuck. You had nothing and nobody.

Walking around the streets like a lost child, luckily for you, you knew spanish, most of it. Your mom’s side was hispanic. So from a young age she made it her duty to teach you. Thanks mom.

you manage to find a hotel, you walk in puffy eyed. Thank god for those glasses.

“do you have any available rooms?..”

you said silently, the poor lady who was working that night nodded. it looked like she needed a break more than you did. she asked for how many nights,

“uhm…just like…just a few nights.”

“im gonna need an exact number honey this hotel is going to be booked by fc barcelona soon. we need all the rooms we can take.”

you knew some stuff about football, when you were younger you would watch matches with your dad. You were even on your towns small team, hoping one day you could make it big. Other things got in the way of that.

“uhm..just 3 nights is good..”

“that’s better, that’ll be about 400. do you want room service?”

“no thank you.”

she nodded, as you handed her your card, she charged it and slid you your key. Now you were on your own. you had taken your sim card out your phone so nobody could contact you. But now you were staring to regret it. You sat on the edge of the hotel bed. You knew you had to take some time to reset, it started now.

||______________________||

a/n: plsplsplspls let me know if i should make a part 2, this was kinda just like a starting point, also inbox is very very VERY open for ideas ;-) also this is a little bit darker than what i usually write, but for what i have in mind it does get fluffier the more it goes on.

[valaenatargaryensdragon]

Queen, may I ask for stepdaughter reader BUT she runs to aemond when she’s pregnant and they tell their mothers it’s aemond child so they both get married instantly ? Imagine daemon all smug he had her then he returns to the keep to find her married and his child claimed as the guy who stole her away.

A/N: I hope you like it!

pairing: Dark!Daemon Targaryen x Stepdaughter!Reader x Aemond Targaryen

summary: Stepdaughter runs to aemond when she’s pregnant and they tell their mothers it’s aemond child so they both get married instantly ? Imagine daemon all smug he had her then he returns to the keep to find her married and his child claimed as the guy who stole her away.

Word count: 1,9K

Warnings: Angst, mention of rape, fluff

Masterlist 1

Masterlist 2

You did not know what to do, this was a disaster, you were in trouble. Daemon had left you the day after getting his way with you four hours on end, he left to solve some problem in the Reach- that was a moon ago and now you were going through your supposed moon's blood without bleeding.

Your maids were surely catching on and soon will be telling your mother. You had three choices running through your head, one was to tell your mother the truth where there was a possibility she would not believe you. Two was to try and terminate the pregnancy which terrified you. Three find a respectable man who will care for you and try and help you and there was only one man that came to mind, Aemond.

He has not spoken to you ever since Daemon found you two and beat him. He kept his distance but kept a watchful eye on you. You knew there was a possibility he would refuse to help you and even spread your secret but that was a risk you were willing to take. So with a raised head and bruised ego you made your way to his chambers. The guard let you in, eyes staring straight forward and hard.

"Aemond" Your voice came out weaker than you planned making you wince. You did not want to seem weak especially during your explanation. Aemond raised his head from the book he was reading and looked you over. His singular eye was glaring hard through you, as he always did to everyone else.

"Niece, what is it you want?" He slammed the book shut making you jump. He threw the book on the table by his side and stood up. Even with several feet between you two he looked taller and scary.

"I need your help" You whimpered. Your heart was in your throat. Your hands began shaking with nerves so you clasped them in a sweaty mess in front of you. Aemond raised an eyebrow and stepped closer to you.

"What do you want? How dare you even come here? You left me beaten on the floor and did not even bother to visit me after" He hissed. His harsh words were like a dagger that popped the bubble that held you together and a sob slipped through your lips. Your head bowed down in shame, you knew that you should have visited him to at least explain but you could not. You felt ashamed, you felt dirty with Daemon's touch still making your skin crawl even after weeks, his seed still felt hot inside of you, it was all in your head you knew but still you felt so dirty.

"I am sorry- please I am sorry" You sobbed. Your raised your hands to cover your face. The tears running down your cheeks felt like lava leaving your face burning and red.

"Do not cower" Aemond grabbed your wrists and pulled them off your face. The second his skin touched yours it was like a snap and your whole body began shaking.

"Do not touch me!" Your screamed pulling away from him. Your stumbled back almost tripping over your skirt. Your clambered back until your back hit the wall. Your whole body was shivering uncontrollably at this point.

"Do not touch please- no more, no more touching" You were gasping for air but nothing was coming into your lungs. The mere feel of another man's touch reminded you of Daemon's touch.

The pain of him slapping your face and behind with his rings on and full of force. The pain of his cock pushing inside of your pure and never used before cunt that was dry. The pain of his hand circled around your throat to cut off your air way and screams for help. The smirk he had on his face as he redressed leaving you a sobbing and bruised mess on your bed was still imprinted in your head.

"Calm down, please calm down- shhhhh" Aemond raised his hands in surrender. He approached you slowly trying to show that he was no threat to you. Your eyes raised from the ground to look at him, his heart broke at the pain he saw behind the tears.

"What did he do to you?" Aemond asked. Furry made his blood boil. He wanted to reach over and hug you, hold you close and calm you down. He wanted to find Daemon and strangle him to death for what he did.

"He t-touched me. I d-did not w-want to" You sobbed. You pulled your knees up to your chest and buried your face between your knees.

"Touched you?" Aemond asked, he wanted a confirmation that he did not mishear. He wanted proof that his uncle was the monster he always knew him to be.

"He touched my flower" You whispered. Flower was a code you and Aemond used for private parts, Aemond and you were not mere innocent lovers, you did get dirty when writing letters to one another but it was mere words, now this was serious.

"Does anyone know?" Aemond asked. He wanted to mount Vaghar and find Daemon in whatever whole he hid in.

"No but they will" Your body slowly relaxed when you noticed that Aemond did not make a move to hurt you, when he did not start yelling at you, when he did not belittle you. His eye widened when you placed a hand over your stomach.

"Right- uh we will fix this" Aemond ran a hand through his ties hair undoing the tie. He paced back to the sitting area.

"Help me Aemond, please" You begged. You pushed yourself on shaking legs to stand back up. He watched you as you moved over to him slowly. Hands shaking and eyes watery, his heart broke at the sight. He promised to protect you and failed. He promised to keep you happy and failed.

"We will say it is mine and they will marry us" Aemond stood up from the chair. You nodded your head and looked down.

"I am sorry, you deserve a better wife, a pure wife who was not tainted by anyone else. You will be stuck with a dirty woman. I will be your slave in exchange-" Aemond raised his hand making you stop. Your eyes snapped up to look at his face, it was almost as red as a ruby and his one eye wide with anger.

"Never belittle yourself like this, you have no faults, sweet angel- may I?" he pointed at your hands. You took a deep breath and held them out to him. He was very gentle with his touch as he took your hands into his bigger ones. He raised them up slowly to not startle you and kissed your knuckles one after the other.

"You are perfect, you are all I want" He whispered. One of his hands slowly reached to touch your cheek. You flinched but did not pull away from him.

"I am sorry I was not there sweet angel" With that said you two went to your mother's chambers requesting to meet her and the queen.

Both women were horrified by the fake story of you two coupling and conceiving a child so by the end of the moon you and Aemond were married to one another. Aemond refused the bedding ceremony and did not touch you on that night or any other night after. He suggested sleeping on the ground but you refused and let him share your bed but with at least three pillows in between you, not even your feet touched.

By the end of your eighth moon of pregnancy things were calming down and the pillows were gone from your marriage bed, cuddles were almost a must at night jut no intercourse and Aemond seemed content. But of course the gods were cruel and Daemon returned. He had a smug look on his face as he walked into the throne room with Dark Sister strapped by his side.

Instinctively you stepped back into Aemond who wrapped his arm around your waist to keep you calm. Daemon kept his eyes on his brother bowing his head in respect.

"Daemon you have been missed" Viserys spoke first. Daemon raised his head smirking.

"I have missed you all as well my king" Daemon said smugly, his eyes trailed to your mother on the other side of the room. She smiled at him naively not knowing of the devil she was married to.

"You have missed your daughter's wedding brother" Your grandsire said. Daemon's head snapped up to look at the king before his eyes moved in search of you only to find you swollen with child and holding onto Aemond who was glaring at him.

"My nephew seemed to not waste anytime at all" Daemon hissed. His eyes trailed down to your stomach, too big to be a new pregnancy. Aemond did something he has never done before, his hand trailed down protectively to your belly.

Aemond was not cruel he never hurt you or the babe, he just decided not to acknowledge the fact much. He made sure all your cravings were met, he made sure you were taken care of as well. He held you carefully but never did he look at the belly or touch it even when cuddling in bed.

"Yes their wedding night was fruitful seven moons ago" Your grandsire said proudly. He looked at you with pride, you usually would have basked into it but not this time.

"I can see that" Daemon hissed. Your mother gasped shocked at his behaviour.

"You must be tired brother, how about you go rest and we will meet again later" Viserys attempted to defuse the tension that filled the room. Your family started filtering out one after the other leaving the room.

You and Aemond followed after Alicent who was whispering with Helaena about gods' know what. Your mother long gone after hearing that your brother Aegon had woken up screaming, probably hungry or something. A gasp tore through your throat when a hand wrapped around your arm pulling back harshly. Aemond turned around faster than you thought possible and pulled out his dagger. You turned to find Dameon holding your arm with Aemond's dagger under his chin.

"You think you can deceive the others? Well you cannot deceive me, I know this is my child" Daemon whispered, his eyes glaring down at you. Aemond pressed his dagger harder into Daemon's neck.

"Let go of my wife" Aemond hissed. Daemon's eyes snapped to look at Aemond with a smirk.

"Your used wife, nephew" Daemon smirked. Aemond's eyebrow ticked and before you could even blink Daemon was shoved off of you with Aemond holding up against the wall with the dagger now drawing blood from Daemon.

"Come near my wife and child again and I will personally cut your head off" Aemond did not wait for an answer before turning around to face you, he wrapped his arm around your and pulled you away from the hallway.

That same night your precious daughter came into the world screaming and crying. A skinny little baby feeding into the lie of her being born two moons too early. Her face scrunched in discomfort as she was pulled out of your womb into the world. You named her Jacaella in honour of your older brother Jace, Aemond frowned at the name but let it go for your sake. Your heart filled with even more love for him when the baby was placed into his arms, he swayed her from side to side successfully calming her down and putting her to sleep.

Aemond's taglist:@mihrimahsultan03, @fullmoonworshipper, @papichulo120627, @seulbeomie, @melaena-the-reborn, @k4marina, @fullmoonworshipper, @axelsagewrites

Daemon's taglist: @luanasrta, @papichulo120627, @seulbeomie, @melaena-the-reborn, @k4marina, @fullmoonworshipper, @axelsagewrites

[hotchs-big-hands]

The Slaughterhouse

Part 1|Part 2|Part 3|Part 4

Aaron Hotchner x plus-size fem!reader

8.1k words

Minors dni please

Warning(s): VERY DARK, injury detail, medical descriptions, hospitals, gore, injury, blood, extreme angst, sort-of enemies to lovers, flashbacks, reader and Aaron be going THROUGH IT

Please heed the warnings, although the worst of it is over it's still a heavy series.

An escalating string of gruesomely murdered fat women begin to stack up with no end in sight. What started as an unfortunate routine case for the BAU team, takes a disturbing turn as you become entangled in the unsub's web, danger approaching closer and closer. It's only a matter of time before it's too late to bring the madness to an end.

BESTIES I'M FINALLY BACK WITH THIS SERIES OMG IT'S BEEN TOO LONG. I really hope people enjoy, there's still one more part after this which I hope to work on soon!!! Thank you for sticking by me!

Another hour passed by. Another wave of agony tore through Aaron Hotchner. It was like limbo. Everything was still, unable to move and continue on. It was only the intense pain in his chest that reminded him he was actually alive, but his very soul- his heart- was torn away the moment those ambulance doors closed behind you. He barely remembered much after that, although he was wearing different clothes now. A navy tee shirt under a zip-up black hoodie. Some sweatpants. Even his shoes were not his original ones. What he wore before was gone, the fibres so entwined with your blood they were completely unsalvageable.

All he could do was stare at the floor, head hanging low as he propped his arms up on his knees. Sometimes the spotted linoleum floor would blur into a haze of grey and tears would drop onto his clasped together hands. He'd stopped screaming hours ago, whenever that was. And now he could feel how raw his throat was whenever he swallowed, which caused him to press his lips together tightly to prevent a sob from bubbling over. A part of him knew he wasn't alone in the waiting room, but at this point he really didn't care. He said nothing whenever anyone else in the room tried to talk to him, ask him if he needed anything, to just say something. What was the point? You weren't there.

There was a sigh.

“Aaron, you need to drink something. You'll become dehydrated like this.” He heard Rossi’s voice, but he didn't respond. “(Y/n) wouldn't want you to close yourself off like this and not take care of yourself.”

This time, Aaron sat bolt upright and sneered.

“Don't speak on behalf of her. You have no idea what she would have wanted.” He snapped, glaring at the older man. It was rare for Rossi to lose his calm and carefree self, but now he was staring the unit chief down, nostrils flaring and his hands curling into tight fists.

“Actually, I do know. Do you seriously think she doesn't care about your wellbeing, huh? You think she wants you to torture yourself, to shut down and give up? Come on, you know deep down that's not the case at all.” His voice was sharp, cutting through the haze that had shrouded Aaron.

No one in the room moved, staring at the altercation between the two oldest members of the team with bated breaths.

Aaron couldn't speak, opening his mouth and closing it over and over. Why should he be kind to himself? He got you into this mess, he made the decision to close himself off from you in an attempt to put a stop to the blooming feelings he’d immediately developed for you when you first walked through the doors for your interview. He couldn't have you, Strauss would have his head triumphantly or, far worse, she would terminate you and force you to leave the BAU in shame. He was damned from the start, and by trying to keep you from being damned too he had pushed you straight into the grasp of a monster. He gritted his teeth as fresh tears pooled in his deep, brown eyes and his shoulders slumped defeatedly.

There was a knock at the door.

Before anyone could say or do anything, Aaron shot up and strided across the room to pull the door open. An unfamiliar medical practitioner stood in the doorway patiently, not even phased by the rapidness of the door swinging open. They cleared their throat.

“May I come in? I want to discuss Miss (L/n)’s condition with you all.”

Aaron moved to the side wordlessly, allowing them to walk in and he closed the door quietly. He tucked his right arm under the other whilst his left hand curled into a soft fist, running his thumb over the second knuckle of each of the fingers.

Everyone waited. The doctor shoved their hands into their pockets and their eyes flicked from one face to the next.

“To put your minds at ease, she's alive and stable.” They began. Alive? You were alive?? Aaron’s chest heaved with relief. “However, she lost a considerable amount of blood from the injury and while we were stitching the different layers back together. We are giving her a transfusion, and while we did manage to resuscitate her as quickly as we could each time she coded, we will have to wait until she is brought back around from the induced coma she's in to see if there's any lasting neurological issues.”

“Can we see her?” Spencer croaked, eyes glassy as he studied doctor. They smiled apologetically.

“For now it would be best if there's only one visitor, just in case.”

All eyes were on Aaron then, and he swallowed.

“I don't..”

“Go. You need to go to her.” Emily said softly. There was a mutual sound of agreement and it made his face scrunch up a little as a few tears rolled down his face. With a choked out ‘thank you’, Aaron followed the doctor out of the waiting room and down the corridor. They stopped at a private recovery room, the last coherent thing he had demanded for you to have, and he drew in a shaky breath.

“Here we are. I'll give you some privacy.” He heard the doctor say and he shakily reached for the door handle, turned it and pushed it open.

“Oh…” his voice cracked and he stepped into the room, closing the door behind him and shutting out the chaos of the outside world.

Laying still looking ashen on the crisp white bed sheets, was you. You were connected to several machines, at least one of them beeping periodically and accompanying the only other sign you were alive; the soft rise and fall of your diaphragm. You looked so frail, so easily shattered by the smallest touch. As he tentatively stepped closer he spotted your injured thigh sticking out from under the sheet with a large dressing covering it. He swallowed back a sob and stopped at your bedside. He didn't know what to say. And so he reached down and took hold of your hand, the one without an intravenous line in it, and cradled it in his own. The tips of your fingers were a little cold.

“God… I'm so, so sorry, sweetheart. I-” Aaron whimpered when he felt tears dribble down his chin and drip onto his hoodie. “This is all my fault.”

He wanted you to open your eyes, much like people always did in movies and TV shows, to reassure him that it was okay; you were okay. But he was met with the beeps of the monitoring machines helping you to breathe in your coma. He fucking hated this.

Carefully, he grazed his thumb over the back of your hand and gazed at your peaceful face. He would never forget the look on your face back in that wretched slaughterhouse. The fear, the absolute agony… He began to cry again.

“I-I-, fuck! I do like you, okay? I know I've done the worst job at showing this. No, I did it intentionally. I-” he scrunched his eyes shut and he breathed shakily. “I have feelings for you, feelings I shouldn't have as your boss and yet I have always had them. I thought I was…. I thought if I kept you at a distance it would save you from getting into trouble with Strauss.” He said softly.

As gently as he could, Aaron lifted your hand up, meeting it half way by bending down, and pressed a soft kiss to the back of it.

“I'll make this right, okay? I need you to rest and recover, sweetheart. And then I'm going to do whatever I can to make it up to you.”

For a while he stood beside you, admiring your beauty. Even in the fragile state you were in, you were beautiful. He'd always known and thought you were beautiful.

And then the moment he dreaded came to be when he heard a knock on the door behind him. His lower lip wobbled and he squeezed your hand a little, desperately.

“Mr Hotchner? I'm very sorry, but visiting hours across the hospital just ended.” It was a different voice this time, a feminine voice. He didn't pull his eyes away from your unconscious form.

“I want to stay. Please.”

“I-”

He finally turned his head to the doorway and he sniffled sharply.

“Please, I need to- I can't leave her.”

He didn't care if the nurse pitied him, nothing mattered except staying with you now.

She nodded slightly.

“Alright, I'll ask someone to bring a cot in for you.” She said and closed the door behind her as she left. Aaron turned back to you and pressed another kiss to the back of your hand, but this time his mouth lingered for a little longer.

At first there were shadows. Simultaneously the blur was both burningly bright and too dull to make out refined shapes. Then came the sound. It was garbled, an indecipherable mess until one sound cut through the rest.

A beep. A constant, irritating beep. It grew faster when frustration swelled through this place of limbo, only to fade into the void when unconsciousness cloaked everything once more.

It was a continuous dance between mild awareness and nothingness, feeling infinite and tiring and confusing. There was no such thing as time. It didn't exist in this place.

Then finally, finally everything began to slide into place, piece by piece.

And yet, that fucking beeping would not stop.

Your eyelids slightly scrunched tightly; the beep, the light that was now trying to force it's way through the cracks hurt your brain. Angered you. You wanted to yell.

A hiss escaped you, a low noise that coiled warm air back over your face. What the fuck..?

“Oh my god.” Someone spoke. Someone was there. You wanted to reach out to them, to tell them to switch off whatever was beeping incessantly at you. But your body felt like stone, too sluggish to move.

Now, you realised something was on your face. Constricting your mouth and nose. You tried to reach up and push off whatever it was but all you could manage was a twitch of your finger. Slowly though, your sense of awareness returned to you and mustering all your strength you finally began to open your eyes.

The world was blindingly bright. It burned and you snapped your eyes shut again.

“....hh…” you breathed against the restriction on your face; you needed it off as soon as possible.

“She’s doing her best, just give her a moment.”

You forced your eyes to stay open this time, finding the world to be a blur of colours melting together.

“C… s….”

A blur of dark colours filled her vision, blocking the overhead light from hurting so much.

“What was that? Try saying it again.” Definitely a familiar woman's voice. You blinked a few times to try clearing your vision but it didn't work.

“Can't see… blurry….”

The blur moved slightly.

“Oh, has anyone got some tissues? Her eyes are full of gunk.”

There was movement in your peripheral and then something soft pressed lightly down on your eyelids.

“I'm going to clean your eyes, okay? Just try to stay relaxed.” The voice said. The tissue felt ticklish on your skin and your face twitched whenever it brushed over a particularly sensitive area. Eventually, you were able to make out proper shapes, albeit still slightly blurry but enough to tell what it or who it was.

“E-Emily?” You rasped, throat as raw as sandpaper. It made you cough, only adding to the pain.

“Easy now, your throat is gonna be sore.” Your dear, dark haired friend Emily murmured. “You want some water?”

You nodded slightly, but it was enough for her to understand. She turned her head to address someone else in the room, and you struggled to see who else was there.

“You lift the mask, I'll bring the straw to her mouth.” Her eyes flicked back to you and she smiled gently.

“JJ’s gonna lift the mask up now, okay? Just hold still.”

On your other side JJ approached and beamed down at you, her eyes shining with tears.

“Hey.” She managed to choke out at the same time as her fingers carefully pried the mask off your face. Ah, so it was an oxygen mask then.

Emily pressed the straw to your lips and you accepted it gratefully, slowly sipping mouthfuls of the cool water. God, in that moment it was the most delicious and refreshing thing you'd ever had. You could only have a bit at a time, too big of a gulp hurt your throat, but the smaller sips were manageable. With the added hydration to your body you were able to clear your throat enough to speak a bit better.

“P-please help me sit up…” you whispered.

Emily smoothed her hand over your forehead comfortingly as her smile turned more apologetic.

“Sorry, (Y/n). Gotta wait for the medical staff. Morgan and Reid went to go fetch them.”

You nodded in understanding and closed your eyes for a moment.

“Wh…where's…”

“Ah! Miss (L/n)! It's so nice to see you awake.” A clear, cheery voice said. Your eyes opened again and you were met with the sight of an older woman, most likely in her late forties dressed in a nurse’s uniform standing at the foot of your bed. “My name is Kelly! How are you feeling?”

“Like shit.” Emily choked, bug-eyed along with JJ and you could have sworn you heard Derek chuckle nearby. You winced a little. “Sorry, that was rude.”

Luckily, Kelly laughed lightly and shook her head.

“No you're fine, sounds about right. Do you know where you are, Miss (L/n)?”

Your brows furrowed slightly as you tried to recall anything from before.

“I know I’m in a hospital, but that’s all.”

The nurse nodded and came over to you to take your vitals. Emily and JJ stepped back out of the way but they kept their eyes on you, the other members of the team, minus one came to stand nearby.

“Are you in any pain?” Kelly asked you as she pulled the blood pressure monitor over to your bedside and carefully applied the cuff around your upper arm, then pressed the button to start the cycle off. You sighed.

“I…I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?” She raised her brow at you. Whilst she continued making observations, making a note of them as she went.

“I haven’t moved so far, so I’m okay.”

“We’ll help you sit up if you’d like in a moment. I’ll ask again after that.”

Your eyes drifted around the room with every passing moment bringing out the clarity of everything. Where…where was he?

The machine beeped to signify the cycle was complete and the tight grip of the cuff released, letting you relax better. Kelly took note of it and smiled at you.

“Well, so far I have no worries about your condition aside from some confusion, which is understandable. But let’s try and sit you up now.” She turned to the others then. “Do any of you want to help? I’ll tell you where to hold her and when to lift.”

Derek approached your bedside with his usual charismatic grin that even in the state you were in right now, you couldn’t help but smile in response.

“C’mon, sugar. Let’s get you upright and comfy.”

The nurse made quick work of guiding him where to hold you, and when she took hold of your other side she turned her attention to you.

“This may cause your stitches to feel like they are being pulled when we move you now, okay? We’ll be as swift as possible though and I’ll assess what to do next, depending on how it goes. Does that sound okay?”

You nodded, just wanting it to be over with.

“Okay… In three, we are going to lift her upper body up and pull her back. Someone please grab the pillows and hold them further up to support her back.”

Emily rushed over and smiled at you reassuringly, and at the count of three you were hauled upwards and adjusted to sit upright.

Oh, how your thigh screamed pure pain. It was only when you noticed the horrified expressions on your friends’ faces that you realised you had screamed. But in that moment you hardly cared, curling over in agony as tears immediately sprung up in your eyes. The nurse sprung into action immediately, pressing the support button and ushering everyone away from the bedside.

It was like fire, like knives, like claws. Tearing and ripping and destroying the nerves on the entire left side of your body. You couldn't stop crying, wailing when hands reached at you to stop your thrashing. And then it was as though a switch was flipped and you calmed, laid still and Kelly appeared into view.

“We've injected a sedative in you to help you relax and we'll give you some strong pain relief now.” She said and took hold of your hand gently. “You may feel sleepy though, is that okay?”

All you could do was nod as stray tears dribbled down the sides of your face and soaked into the pillow below your head.

There was a moment longer of the blinding pain, then it slowly began to ease a little and your eyes felt a little droopy. You weren't sure what was going on for a while, only hearing snippets of conversation further away from your bed which made your brows furrow.

“...not leaving until we at least keep her updated...”

“...staying here with her until she's ready…”

Your eyes flicked to the side when you spotted the oldest member of the team sidling over, and he laid his hand on the side of your head carefully. He offered a tired smile.

“Hey kid.”

Your lower lip wobbled.

“It was bad, wasn't it? Whatever happened.” You croaked. The man leaned down and pressed a kiss to your forehead and sighed.

“Do you remember anything at all?”

You scrunched up your brows as you tried to remember back. The dull ache in your thigh brought it all to the forefront of your mind and your chest heaved with a quiet sob.

“What the fuck,” you cried softly as you gazed up at Rossi tearfully. The man brushed his hand over your head and allowed you to grab onto his arm for comfort as you let out everything you were feeling.

“I know. You’re gonna be okay, kid.” he soothed. You couldn’t remember it all, only flashes. But it was enough to leave you feeling like you had been shattered into a thousand pieces.

At one point Rossi produced a handkerchief for you to use, refusing when you tried to give it back instead of using it. And so you cleared your face with it, breathing deeply in and out to calm yourself down again. When you finally reached a point where you wouldn’t immediately break down again you noted the nurse was gone and your friends stood around your bed.

“We asked for a little more time, and one of us is gonna stay overnight with you.” you heard Derek explain but you sniffled as your eyes darted from face to the next.

“Wh…where is he? Where’s Hotch?”

There was a shared glance; the absence of the BAU’s leader was uncomfortably prominent. Rossi spoke again.

“Strauss called him in. Actually, he had been staying here up until just a day ago.”

Huh?

“What…?”

You were confused.

“Yeah, slept in the little bed over there since you came out of surgery.” Spencer said. But it didn’t make sense to you.

“W-why? That’s-”

Emily raised her brow at you as she folded her arms across her chest.

“That’s what?”

“Weird as hell.” You finished, frowning as your eyes flitted to the bed that lay closer to the ground than the one you were in. He had stayed there?

“Why’s that, sugar?” Derek asked you and you blanched.

“Because he’s Hotch, duh.” Your eyes drifted down to your hands that were now curled into fists in front of you. “Probably was waiting around for me to wake up to tell me off for being reckless.” You muttered dully. The room fell quiet then, aside from that maddening beep.

“You really don’t remember much from what happened, do you?”

Your eyes flicked to JJ, who appeared almost distraught.

“Not really. I-I take it I’m forgetting something important.”

“We should let it wait for now. It isn’t a good idea to overwhelm you with too much information.” Rossi cut in, sending a pointed look to the others. Well, you certainly didn't like that. You swallowed thickly.

“I wanna know what happened.”

Rossi eyed you.

“Not right now. Your priority is resting and recovering.” He said more firmly. You slumped slightly in defeat; there was no point in crossing him. Tiredness washed over you and you sighed, realising you were going to be recovering for a while. Derek took hold of your hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Hey, babygirl’s gonna video call you tomorrow, she’s missed you so much and been crying on the phone to me about it all.” He said, then chuckled. “But don’t tell her I told you that part.” He then winked and you scoffed tiredly.

“I’ve missed her, too.”

Day by day you slowly recovered, getting to the point of using crutches to move around a little bit, and for a week a different member of the team stayed with you overnight in the hospital- something you were very grateful for with the nightmares that had begun to tear through your sleep. But as life goes, they couldn't stay forever and eventually the call came in to summon them all back to Quantico.

“I don't like the idea of leaving you here alone.” Emily said after the text came through. It had been her turn that night to stay with you. You shrugged.

“Criminals aren't going to stop just because we're one member down, Em.”

“I know, but… We're all so worried about you. You- you didn't see what we witnessed when we found you.” She trailed off and you could see her fighting off the urge to cry. You reached out and took her hand gently, rubbing your thumb over the back of it.

“Hey… I'm-I’m okay, yeah? I'm in safe hands. And before you know it I'll be back in town.” you tried to smile at her, which she appreciated but could barely return the gesture.

It had been a week since then, and finally you were being discharged. The idea was to have whoever was available from the team to fly back over to you and stay with you in a hotel for a few days, just to be sure all was stable, then return to the home state together. You had no idea who it would be though, it was highly dependent on the nature of whatever case the team was on at the time.

You sat waiting, perched on the edge of the hospital bed you'd been living in for the past while now, when there was a knock on your room door. You shifted on the bed carefully, keeping your thigh secure as you moved, then called out.

“Come in!”

There was a pause, then the handle turned and the door pushed in. Your breath caught in your throat. Hotch stood in the doorway, just as breathtaking as ever wearing some dark jeans and a dark blue button down shirt underneath a casual jacket. Cautiously, he stepped into the room.

“Hey, (Y/n).” He said. Your hand grabbed the untidy bedsheet tightly.

He had referred to you by your first name.

“S-sir.”

His face twisted into an expression you hadn't seen on him before for a split moment, then it returned to his normal stoicness. He cautiously approached the bed, stuffing his hands into his pockets and his eyes darted around the room. Was he nervous? Why?

“I'm taking you to the hotel, then home.”

You nodded. What were you to say to him? You sniffled loudly.

“I… I’m sorry for what happened, sir. I hope there wasn't too much paperwork.” You mumbled. Hotch looked at you, bewildered.

“What? You don't need to worry about that.”

“But-”

“Please don't stress yourself out over it. I've handled it. Everything is fine.” He cut you off gently. What in the fuck was happening? You expected to be reprimanded, to lose your job, for him to be cold and angry at you. But this?

You sighed gently and the nurse entered the room with your discharge paperwork. She smiled sweetly at the both of you.

“Ah, I see your boyfriend was able to return to take you home!”

The both of you tensed up as your eyes flicked to one another, then as Hotch opened his mouth to speak you beat him to it.

“Oh no, he's not my boyfriend. He's my boss.” You said quickly, returning your gaze to the nurse and immediately a look of horror crossed her face.

“Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to assume.” She handed over the paperwork to you and gave you an awkward smile. “Here's your paperwork, I'm going to get you a wheelchair to take you downstairs, then you can continue on your crutches.”

You nodded and thanked her, then sat quietly avoiding looking at the man opposite you. He shifted from one foot to another whilst you messed with the crutches propped against the side of your bed.

“I wanted to get back sooner instead of making you stay here alone.” You heard Hotch say after a moment. You lifted your head slightly to look at him. The expression on his face struck you, you'd never seen such remorse from him before. Well, at least not aimed at you. You shrugged.

“That's how it goes in this line of work.”

“No, it really doesn’t.”

You stared at him; your brow twitched.

“I…”

The nurse returned then with a wheelchair and the both of you turned your attention to her approaching figure.

“Here we are! Right, let’s get you into the wheelchair now.” The nurse glanced at Hotch. “Are you able to help?” She asked, more cautious this time. He nodded.

“Of course, yes. Tell me what you need me to do.” he responded sincerely. She eyed him for a moment longer, then nodded once.

“We are going to support her from under her armpits and lift her up to stand after I lower the bed.”

She took hold of the remote that controlled the hydraulics of the bed and lowered it to the correct level for you to stand. The both of them prepared to help you then, slinking an arm under your pit and round your back securely. While you were still wary of Hotch, confused by his sudden change of heart, you still had feelings for him and the sensation of his arm around you was something you’d had craved for so, so long. And as you pushed up off the bed to stand you winced at the sharp pain in your thigh, burying your face in Hotch’s chest as you whimpered.

“Easy, you’re okay.” you heard him say softly, his thumb rubbing against your back soothingly.

He didn't let go, not even when you were finally sitting in the wheelchair. Instead moving his hand to your arm comfortingly. The nurse didn't question it.

“Alright, I have a got you your prescription of pain medication here, I'm putting it on top of your discharge papers. You're able to leave when you're ready now, Miss (L/n).” She said and you nodded tiredly.

“Thank you…”

She smiled and moved to the side to allow Hotch to wheel you out.

“You take care now, okay? Call us if there's anything you need.”

You nodded at her and offered a weak smile in return, then Aaron began to wheel you out of the room. You lost track of the many winding corridors you travelled down to reach the exit, but soon you were outside and you breathed in deeply when the air hit your face.

“God… you forget how nice it is when you go outside.” you said softly. Aaron hummed and directed the wheelchair to the car he must have hired- much lower to the ground than an SUV, that you were worried would have been your mode of transport. He locked the wheels in place and took hold of your crutches with one hand while the other hooked around your back to help you stand.

“Squeeze as tight as you need to onto me.” You heard him say, then when you were ready to try you pushed up from the chair painfully, wincing and once again burying your face against his chest.

“F-fuck- hurts-”

“I know, swe- (Y/n), I know. You're doing very well.” Aaron murmured as he passed you your crutches. You thanked him and rested your weight on them, taking it off your poor leg instead. He pushed the chair out of the way and opened the passenger door open for you and helped you lower down onto the chair slowly. It was all so painful still, straining your wound site and sending sparks of pain up and down the side of your body. By the time you were belted in you were exhausted.

Hotch nudged the brakes off the wheelchair and grabbed the handles, then turned to you.

“I'm going to take the chair back. I won't be long, okay?”

You nodded and he bumped the car door with his hip to close it for you. You sighed softly and settled back into the chair. You weren't so sure what to think of feel right now.

“I'm going to order food in, what would you wanna eat?” Hotch asked you hours later. You were sitting up on one of the beds in the twin room you were sharing with him now. It was a different hotel to the one you'd stayed in for the case, more luxurious and you were on a floor much higher than the room you had been staying in at the other hotel.

You sighed softly.

“I'm not really sure. What places are there available in the area?”

The man crossed the room to you and held out his phone, showing the food delivery app to you.

“I think it might actually be easier if you take a look than me reading them out. There's quite a lot.” He said with a barely there smile. He… It made your stomach feel funny and you looked away quickly, taking the phone off him with a quiet ‘thanks’.

“You have any preferences?” You glanced in his general direction, keeping your eyes away from his face.

“I will find something on the menu wherever you choose. Don't worry about it.”

“Alright then…”

You heard Hotch sigh and he moved to sit on his bed, perching on the edge facing you.

“Is something wrong?” He questioned you. You continued scrolling.

“I'm tired and in pain. That's all.” You knew you sounded unconvincing.

“Please don't lie to me.”

You finally turned your head and looked at him, lips pulled downward.

“Well then I don't want to talk about it. Please leave it alone, sir.”

He stared at you and his brows began to furrow deeply. His jaw clenched slightly.

“(Y/n). When I thought you were going to die, I-” He cut himself off, swallowing thickly and his left hand curled into a fist and his thumb began to stroke across his second knuckles. “I was fucking terrified. Seeing you like that, I don't think I'll be able to forget it.”

You stared wide eyed at him for a moment in silence. You didn't expect this, didn't think he cared this much. In the artificial light of the room you could spy the glint of tears threatening to spill from his sad, brown eyes.

“S-sir… I-I didn't realise you felt so strongly about it.”

He sniffled and lifted his hand to wipe his eyes with his thumb and fingers. You bit your lip, trying to stop it from trembling.

“That's also my fault. I kept pushing you away and this is what happened as a result.” He mumbled. The room was quiet for a while, the hum of the AC filled the silence as you stared at the man before you. Far gone was the person you'd come to expect and were used to, the closed off and cold unit chief who would barely do so much as stiffly discuss work with you when he needed to, in his place was a man filled with regrets, with concern and an emotion you couldn’t recognise. Or at least, you didn’t want to. For all you knew you’d be misinterpreting things and your heart just couldn’t take it.

You sighed.

“What happened? I only remember parts, the others won’t budge when I ask them.” You finally settled on, hoping he would be the one to bring you from solitude. He shifted on his bed and you opened your mouth to push for answers, when he spoke.

“The day you were kidnapped, we found another victim’s body- Carla Reynolds- who you’d spoken to a few days prior. Your FBI badge was with the body and- and you blamed yourself.” He paused, letting the words sink in. You remembered her, and you remembered the state her corpse was in when you visited the body dumping site. Hotch noted the tremble of your hands and his brows creased. “If you need me to stop…”

“No. No, I- I need to remember.” You cut him off and curled your hands into fists. He was quiet for a moment, then nodded.

“You- you fell into a dark place of blaming yourself. You tried to remember faces from the day you interviewed her but you couldn’t. Her parents were let in and they confronted you when you were by yourself. I-“ he clenched his hands into fists and dropped his gaze. “I should have said something then, did something. And when you snuck out of our hotel room with the car keys from my jacket that night? My heart sank.”

Oh… it was coming back to you now. Your lower lip trembled.

“He… he had a knife at my back when you called me. That’s why I, um, ended the call.”

“(Y/n)…”

You dipped your head and wrapped your arms around yourself.

“I’m sorry for the stress and grief I put you all through, I just… I didn’t think straight at all. I- I’ll understand if I do lose my job based on my actions during this case.” You mumbled and you clenched your jaw in an attempt to stop yourself from crying. You heard Aaron sigh, then a moment later the mattress dipped under his weight as he sat down beside you.

“Hey, I have no plans on doing such a thing. You’re a valuable member of the team and terminating you would be not only a poor decision, but also hypocritical.” He closed his eyes for a moment and laid his palm against his forehead, breathing deeply. “I think everyone on the team has done something reckless, including myself. And yet we’re all still here in the team.”

He could see you were not entirely convinced from the way you fussed with the hem of your shirt and the wrinkle of your nose. But you were tired and hungry and just wanted to sleep. And so you picked his phone up from where you’d set it down beside you when you curled up earlier, and chose a random restaurant to order from and picked something. You offered his phone back to Hotch and avoided his gaze.

“I chose something. It’s your turn to now.”

His fingers barely brushed against yours as he reluctantly took the phone back and you gritted your teeth a little, trying hard not to show a response to the touch. Hotch sighed again, but didn’t push the unresolved conversation for he could see the exhaustion weighing in on you. You knew he wouldn’t let it slide forever, though.

Little by little, you began letting your guard drop slightly around Hotch. While you still felt uncertain about him, questioning if he really had cared about you all this time, hearing his soft voice as he checked in on you at your apartment and brought you groceries to cook meals for the week for you. It was, frankly, weird. But not an unpleasant weird. It had your feelings for the man in turmoil though, what should you be feeling towards him, if it was perhaps something to still cling onto.

There was always a certain look in his eyes whenever he visited you; a sadness, the look as though he had much to say but not knowing how to, or if he even should say. You never brought it up.

The others would stop by as well, especially Penelope with her being in the area all the time. Sometimes they’d all visit at the same time, having a group dinner and helping you around the apartment- even when you at first protested. Thinking back on it, you weren’t so sure why you were so reluctant to let your friends help you. They’d been so supportive and caring, and you felt as though you were close to being back on your feet in a way. Nightmares plagued you though, tearing through the night mercilessly and leaving you more exhausted than you’d started out. You had yet to make any of them aware of it, not quite ready to talk to them about what you experienced. Sooner or later you would have to if you wanted to return to work smoothly.

It was a few months later when things took a turn. After another round of extensive physical therapy and talking to a psychiatrist, Aaron had brought you back home- as he always did after such appointments if he could- to make sure you were okay. You never asked him to attend any of them, he had took it upon himself to see to it if he wasn’t away with another case. Part of you was curious as to why, but decided against asking. It was… nice having him care about you like this.

He was finishing up washing the dishes (despite your protests) after the two of you had shared a meal again when your phone began to ring. You picked it up and raised a brow at the number; it wasn’t one in your contacts. The area code was for Virginia though and you decided to answer it.

“I’m gonna take this call, s-Aaron.” You murmured softly to him and he nodded.

You swiped to answer and held the phone to your ear as you walked through to the living room.

“Hello?”

“Hello, this is Section Chief Erin Strauss. Is this (Y/n) I’m speaking to?”

A chill shivered through you. What on earth was she calling you for?!

“A-um yes! It is, yes. Uh, how can I help you, ma’am?” You answered quickly.

“Upon your return to work tomorrow, I would like you to report to my office first thing. Is that understood?”

That wasn’t good.

“Y-yes, ma’am. I can do that. Is that all?”

“Yes that is all. I hope you have been recovering well, agent (L/n). I’ll see you tomorrow, good bye.”

The line disconnected before you could say anything else and for a moment you merely stood rooted in place.

“(Y/n)?” You heard from behind you, snapping you out of your trance. Turning to face Aaron, you blinked at him. You noted the front of his shirt had damp patches from where the water in the sink had splashed onto him as he washed up.

“Mm?”

“Who was that on the phone?”

You were quiet, debating what to say to him. His brows creased as he stepped closer, concerned about the extending silence.

“You don’t have to tell me, but I just want to make sure you’re-“

“Strauss!” You blurted, stopping Aaron in his tracks. “It- it was Strauss. Wants me to um, visit her in her office tomorrow when I arrive back.”

Aaron’s brows furrowed now as he folded his arms across his chest, covering up some of the damp splotches on his shirt.

“Do you know what she wants?”

“No… do you?”

He shook his head as you and dropped his gaze.

“Listen, tomorrow… when you return to the office. I want you to come to my office whenever you have the first opportunity to do so. I will issue you your new FBI credentials and your gun.” He said sincerely. You nodded.

“Sure, I can do that.”

“That isn’t all.” He moved closer towards you and laid a hand on your shoulder, causing your breath to catch in your throat. “I have something I need to discuss with you, it’s important. As well as that, I want you to know that if anything becomes too much; come to me and tell me. You’ve been through a hell of a lot, it’s okay if you struggle to find your footing.”

He squeezed your shoulder gently and you finally found the ability to breathe again, nodding quickly as you glanced away bashfully.

“Y-yes. I- I can do that, sir- Aaron.”

A slight smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

“Thank you.” He said softly.

You were almost nauseous with stress and worry as you rode the elevator to the correct floor. It was hard to remember the last time you’d been here. but it wasn’t even just the nerves of returning to work after so long, you were on the way to talk to Strauss. You’d hardly slept that night after Aaron left your home, instead wracking your brain as to what she could possibly want to talk to you about. As the elevator dinged, you knew you didn’t have anymore time to think about it.

Briskly, you walked towards her office, avoiding other people who were at the office as early as you were. You hadn’t looked through the glass doors to the bullpen yet, you weren’t ready.

Standing outside Strauss’ office, you knocked and waited. Every second that ticked by felt like an eternity, then the door swung open to reveal Erin Strauss. She smiled slightly at you.

“Hello agent (L/n). Do come in.” She greeted you and held the door open wider for you.

You stepped inside and listened for the quiet click of the door shutting behind you, followed by the muffled clack of her heels on the carpet as she walked back towards her desk. She gestured to the chair opposite her desk as she settled into her seat and you quickly moved to sit down.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She knitted her fingers together in front of her and studied you for a moment.

“You must be wondering why I called you in today before you headed into the office.” She said. You cleared your throat and drew in a deep breath.

“I am, yes.”

“I want to commend you for your bravery first of all, but also offer my sympathies for what happened to you. If there is anything I can do to help you, you need only ask.”

You shifted in your seat and nodded slightly, keeping your head bowed.

“Thank you.”

“That isn’t the only thing I brought you in to discuss though.” The shift in tone caused you to stiffen and you felt a throb of pain in your thigh.

“Ma’am?” You lifted your head to look at her.

“During your… predicament, James Humphrey had a camera set up recording, just as he had done with his other victims.”

She paused for a moment whilst you processed this information, a coldness settling within your core. She continued after a moment, her face expressionless.

“While I have not watched it, I have read the transcripts and I am concerned with what I have read. So I need you to be honest with me when I ask you something: what feelings do you have for agent Hotchner?” She asked, staring at you. Your entire body froze up, eyes wide in alarm.

What?

“M-ma’am, I don’t understand… what has that got to do with-“

Strauss pulled out a piece of paper from a casefile you hadn’t originally noticed was sitting on her desk and began to read from it.

“James said ‘wearing these cute lil’ frilly panties for your boss?’ And you didn’t respond at first, which urged him to continue and you both argued about it. That is until he says ‘You seriously think no one sees it? It’s pathetic really, you being desperately in love with your boss and craving even an ounce of praise from him.’ And even mentions the two of you had been sharing a bed.”

You stared at her in horror, struggling to comprehend any of this, or even why she was bringing it up in the first place. The pain in your thigh throbbed more intensely, to which you pressed your lips together tightly. She continued, eyes scanning the paper.

“That isn’t all, agent (L/n). Later on, when the team did reach your location, you said to agent Hotchner that you have ‘always liked him more than you should’ which, added to everything that transpired beforehand, leads me to believe you have inappropriate feelings for him.” The woman concluded, returning the piece of paper to the casefile.

And all you could do was stare at her.

Was she truly more concerned about this over the fact you had been tortured and almost died?! Besides, you had no memory of-

Your heart lurched in your chest and your hand trembled slightly. It had all come flooding back, the memories of it all, the realisation you had practically confessed to Aaron Hotchner on what you believed to be your deathbed. You swallowed thickly.

“I…”

“So I will ask you again, agent (L/n). What feelings do you have for agent Hotchner?” Strauss asked impatiently now and you felt as though you were on the brink of throwing up.

“M-ma’am, I-“ you closed your eyes for a moment and exhaled. “I- I do have feelings for him. B-but I have never and will never let that interfere with mine or his job-“

“That is not what I asked.” The woman cut you off and you closed your mouth quickly. “You do know about the policies surrounding fraternizing with colleagues, especially that of your superior, yes?”

You nodded and clenched your hands into fists in your lap, fighting the urge to look away.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then you’ll know it is not acceptable to have feelings for agent Hotchner, your superior, nor would it be acceptable to engage in relations with him.”

Your jaw clenched.

“I understand, ma’am.” You gritted. Strauss clasped her hands together firmly as she tilted her head at you.

“You have two options: if you do not wish to lose your job, I will assign you to a new position in a different state. You will no longer have contact with agent Hotchner, nor the BAU unit as a whole.” Your chest heaved with utter shock, but she wasn’t finished. “Either that or you hand in your resignation. You will still not be able to have contact with agent Hotchner.”

All you could do was stare at her, unable to say anything. Never see Aaron again? Or talk to him? Even acknowledge his existence ever again? You felt your heart shattering to pieces, the coldness within spreading throughout your body. All of this time slowly building a positive relationship with him during your recovery, your feelings growing stronger for him, would all have been for naught. This was a worse agony than everything you��d been through, entirely heartbroken.

Strauss cleared her throat to bring your attention back to her and she handed you two envelopes.

“One of these is a form to fill in if you wish to transfer, and the other is for resigning. You have until the end of the day to make your decision, agent (L/n). That is all.”

You didn’t remember walking out of her office after that, nor finding your way back to the main precinct where the glass doors were to the bullpen. But as you heard your name being called and you turned to see Emily and the others approaching the doorway, you returned to your senses and quickly made your way into the elevator to leave. You couldn’t bear to face any of them now, especially him.

Just when we thought things were gonna get better for them too 😔😔😔😔 maybe next chapter it'll be different >:3 thank you for reading this far!! It means a lot to me 💖💖💖💖💖

[rappaccini]

okay. i've already autopsied tua but a final overview may be in order. i'll do it one more time.

season one was the only good season of umbrella academy. it had issues, but those issues didn't yet compromise the story or the themes. season one had a stylized production, great cast who at that point were still playing their characters instead of themselves, strong story that mostly carried (though there was some filler), and fantastically coherent themes. the cracks in the foundation were always there. but they could have been fixed.

season two was bad, but entertaining enough to hide its flaws. it had a bigger budget, glossier production value, more action, a cool new setting, more Fun Moments, enough momentum from the source material to mostly fill up the season, and the character assassination didn't have time to reach its consequences yet so everyone acting like the fandomified version of themselves worked for the people who were just here for the fun. it also dropped in the summer of 2020, when people were desperate for escapist entertainment, and there was little superhero fare to compete with (and when the protests happening that summer had people wanting to Say Something about civil rights without actually wanting to change anything). the bar was lower, and season 2 cleared it. but season 2's story broke. look back at the actual story, and you'll see it.

season three was bad, and not entertaining enough to hide its flaws. it had some interesting ideas and good moments, but the whole thing was a slog. the pacing was terrible, the character assassination couldn't be denied anymore, and the momentum from the comics ran out and left the writers to their own devices, which revealed they had no plan, no substantive creative backbone, and no understanding of what they were making. season three could have saved the show with a hail mary of tight writing to pick up the slack, but quadrupled down on the problems and guaranteed it was past the point of no return.

season four was terrible. somehow with a reduced episode count it still dragged, every single character has no growth, the basic logic of the story is missing and the continuity is a mess. and ending the story about abuse victims trying to heal on them concluding that they should all just kill themselves makes the story both pointless and rotten. at this point it was a given. you can't recover from two bad seasons back to back. season two shot the show in the gut, season three let it bleed out instead of healing it, and season four kicked its corpse a few times for a couple klaus jokes, then confirmed that its very existence was a mistake. very meta.

so. what were the cracks in the foundation.

the lack of respect for the source material. as soon as they tried a plot that had no connection to the original comics, they were fucked. but even before season four, they were all over the place. in fact they still haven't adapted most of the comics. john perseus, calhoun, deever, dr terminal, the academy at war with each other in the 1960s, the actual purpose of hotel oblivion, the chimpanzees everywhere, the 1980s period setting, clarissa and oscar, the coming of the squid monster, carla the sparrow, grace having her own secret agenda, the actual character of jennifer? just not here. even the raygun gothic aesthetic is watered down and eventually barely even present.

the spinelessness of the creative team. as early as season 2, they were throwing character arcs and themes in the trash to beg the fans to love them. they had no plan and just wanted cheap thrills.

the lack of internal rules. the time travel mechanics don't make sense. viktor's powers just do whatever. lila's powers eventually just do whatever. the central reveal that vanya's medication had been repressing her powers, set up by klaus using drugs to do the same, is undone by season 2's climax revolving around vanya somehow using her powers despite being drugged. the 'marigold' reveal about their powers makes no sense (why does luther get his body back? we don't know.). there are no stakes with no clear world limitations.

the good victim bad victiming. as early as season 1, the show was arguing that harold jenkins is irredeemable for killing his abusive dad. that should've been your first warning that they were going to try to redeem reginald and have the academy basically kill themselves in the end.

the lack of continuity. as early as season 1, the writers forgot number five had a time travel briefcase sitting in the library, or that helen cho's body was in harold's house when he, allison and diego search it. then they forget when luther got disfigured in season 2. then they forgot how the powers work. then they forget literally everything about the story.

the racism. all the characters of color get the worst plotlines in season 1. allison loses her narrative in season 2 and gets it replaced with a civil rights plotline that concludes that 'hey, there's a black president someday!' diego and lila prance through the jim crow south without dealing with segregation as allison is hatecrimed every episode.

the sexism. look back at how all the female characters are treated. look back at how allison's mistreatment of patrick and claire is glossed over, and lila fully gets away with manipulating diego. look at how vanya's 'redemption' is all about finding maternal instincts she never had until season 2. look at how allison's assault of luther is dismissed the way it never would have been if the genders were swapped. look at how sloane is juxtaposed against allison.

the homophobia. the queer characters were either stereotyped or used as glaad award bait. the queerbait of ben and klaus's entire dynamic.

the ableism. in the comics, luther has mobility aids and his disfigurement is treated like a debilitating condition, not a punchline. his eating disorder isn't mocked. vanya's in a wheelchair after she's shot and goes through months of physical therapy and is still never the same. allison is an amputee. diego has one eye and severe ptsd. everyone's mental illness is taken seriously, including and especially klaus's addiction. in the show these elements are downplayed, absent or fuel for quirky moments.

the show is full of filler. the murder mystery plot, the meritech plot, allison following leonard around, the day that was/wasn’t…. even in season 1, there wasn't enough material to make ten episodes. there was never enough for a ten episode run for any season. and yet somehow the one season with the right runtime still drags.

the spectacle. in season 2 they fully lean into it over substance. case in point: the dance sequence.

actually i'll go into that in detail because the dance sequence sums up the whole show and its downfall.

in season one, the pilot's iconic i-think-we're-alone-now dance sequence was an emotional moment that symbolized how all the characters feel isolated and disconnected from each other, but are secretly interconnected and far more in sync than they realize. the song was catchy, but "i think we're alone now" is literally a commentary on the story it's playing over: now that the academy's abuser is dead, they can finally unwind and love each other, and they can fix their problems by literally "running as fast as they can, holding onto one another's hands." -- and how does the season end? by them doing just that.

in season two, allison, klaus and vanya's salon dance is meaningless because vanya has no clue who these people are, klaus has never given a shit about vanya before (watch season one. he doesn't care.), and allison should hate her at this point in the story. it's just there for fun... but if you swapped vanya with ben it would work as a joyful reunion between these three people. the concept of the dance is fine, but the decision to make it a fanservice moment throws it off.

in season three, the dance sequence comes out of nowhere as a ~wacky random fun moment~ to call back to the first season. the footloose song has nothing to do with the story, it's just fun and catchy. there is no substance to the spectacle anymore. it's just dumb fun.

and season four ends in 'i think we're alone now' for no reason other than to ask the viewer to remember when the show was good. no fun, just dumb.

... let's look back at the themes season one sets up.

the road to recovery takes a very long time, and you will fall off it and have to climb back on.

corporations don’t have your back. they’re soulless and they want to suck the life out of you.

abuse does not make nice people. abuse does not make happy people. there are no good victims or bad victims. (except leonard, i guess.)

it’s difficult to tell where programming stops and free will starts; toxic behavior begets toxic behavior, and we have to own up to it, stop it, and resolve to be better.

redemption is possible. the bad things you did in the past don’t define your future.

you're better together than apart. 

time. changes. everything. it isn’t too late to have the life and the love you wanted. it isn’t too late to realize your talents, or become a better person, or free yourself from a bad situation. it isn’t too late to get together, or to make up or to change your mind. there are no lost causes. the world is worth saving. your enemies are worth showing mercy to. your relationships and friendships and broken families can be salvaged and reshaped into something new and better.

things are fucked, but if we give it everything we have, we can save it, and it’s worth taking up that fight, because nothing is set in stone.

fuck it, be happy. 

remember those?

i'm gonna get into it character by character:

luther.

his entire plotline was meant to be about realizing he was abused, disavowing his abuser and finding his confidence to become the leader he never got to be and go after the love he lost with allison and make a family with her and claire. that was his starting point.

and the fandom hated him rabidly. they said he was just as bad as his father, insisted that he had no redeemable qualities, made fun of his body and his traumas, took the situation with vanya and removed all the moral grays to call him evil over it, and insisted that he was Somehow Abusing Allison.

in season 2, luther has conveniently disowned and confronted reginald offscreen before the plot starts.

he immediately apologizes to vanya, who is an amnesiac and can't actually hold him accountable for hurting her, and the situation is never mentioned again.

his body dysmorphia is played for laughs.

his intelligence and leadership qualities are gone and he's just a bumbling idiot. remember when luther was an astronaut who effectively kept up a faulty space station for four years on his own? could you believe this dumbass was that guy?

he's a punching bag for the fans who hated him.

and season 3 seals the deal. he's still an idiot, he's still hideous.

his romance with allison is destroyed as offensively as possible to reassure the fans who hated alluther.

his romance with sloane is a clumsy attempt to keep the payoff he and allison should have had into the story as they're placating the fans who hate them.

and in season 4, he's... a stripper. he never finds a way to love his body, he just conveniently doesn't have it anymore, and he's still treated like a joke for it.

he never meaningfully takes command of the academy, he just stops trying to.

the wife season 3 insists he loves so much is gone and he doesn't give a shit.

he never even confronts allison for assaulting him, or reconciles with her and has a significant relationship with claire.

he decides to just die.

his entire character trajectory was aborted after only one season. he spent 75% of the runtime with nothing to do, because the fandom hated him and the writers were too cowardly to follow through with his character.

diego.

his entire plotline was meant to be about letting go of his aggression issues by finding his place in the family, reforming his rivalry with luther into a deep friendship based on mutual support and unpacking his 30 year history with vanya in order to finally be happy and in love with her after facilitating her redemption.

and his character's arc is dependent on others....

so in season 2 when luther's arc was canned, so was diego's journey towards letting go of his ego and finding a way to support luther after spending his whole life being pitting against him.

in season 2, when allison's arc was canned, diego ended up with the commission / jfk assassination plot that was never meant to be his. his entire dynamic with number five was hers.

in season 2, because klaus took his vietnam plot in season 1, diego doesn't have one anymore, so there's no way to meaningfully unpack how he feels like his only purpose is violence. instead, his anger issues are totally ignored.

and in season 2, when vanya was split into elliot-page-playing-himself and lila, the romance went out the window too. yes, diego falls in love with lila, but he barely knows her, and all she's done is manipulate, drug, kidnap and hurt him and the academy... yet all that bad behavior is totally ignored in the Show About Abuse And Trauma, because they have chemistry. there's no deep, complex history between them that could have anchored the relationship. the redemption arc itself is rushed and undeserved.

oh, also, he doesn't feel upset about eudora anymore. never mentions how he got her killed, or that he loved her.

then in season 3, diego has nowhere to go but deeper into his romance arc. he has no tension with luther to resolve (and with the show assassinating alluther, there's no 'we both love our girlfriends and want to make it home to tell them that, so let's get over our bullshit and help each other get there' revelation like in the comics). his relationship with lila gets even weirder, with her... deciding to babytrap him, getting a kid killed in the process, and it being framed as quirky and hot. and no eudora again.

and in season 4, diego is a family man who doesn't give a shit when his kids are wiped from existence, whose marriage is about to implode. who decides to just die.

there's just... nothing. he's just himbo #2.

allison.

her entire plotline was meant to be about realizing how culpable she is in the abuse of her family, unlearning those manipulative tendencies and figuring out how to exist authentically, making amends with the people she hurt-- especially vanya and her ex-husband and daughter-- and restarting her life with someone she can love: luther.

allison isn't formally character assassinated until season 3, but she was wrong from the start.

because in season 1, they had her be already past all those things in the pilot episode because they're too sexist to let women be messy. allison is conveniently totally in control of her behavior and has already decided not to use her rumor anymore. she already accepts responsibility for hurting her ex and daughter.

and the writers refused to let her and vanya be angry at each other because ~we don't believe in girl hate~. leading to allison forgiving her for slitting her throat and leaving her to die.

in season 2, the writers wouldn't give her the commission plotline from the comics. allison was the protagonist of the dallas arc, who had a complex story about being willing to alienate her loved ones in order to save them, being ruthless enough to belong at the commission, making deals with the devil to get her powers back and save her the academy.... and unknowingly creating a paradox where she is responsible for the traumatizing incident of watching someone be killed when she was a girl.

instead, allison is saddled with a c-plot about how you have to be nice when you protest, and how fighting back violently against the racist who tried to literally hatecrime you yesterday makes you just as bad as him. rewatch that scene. look at how it’s framed. that’s the takeaway.

and throughout allison's time in dallas, none of the academy check in with her on how she's doing. no one cares. even when she was attacked at a protest they all know she was at, no one asks her if she's okay.

instead of showcasing allison's ruthlessness and dedication to her family, we meet her having conveniently moved on after her daughter was killed, happily settled into dallas with a new relationship, and having given up on ever finding a way home.

instead of showing allison learn to adapt to life without her rumor, we meet her having already figured out how to get a job, make friends, and have a relationship without it. she doesn’t even have to find the courage to join the activists because she did already.

instead of allison learning how to live without a physical voice, she can just talk again. her power's just... back.

instead of allison being rightfully furious at vanya for disabling her, depowering her, stranding her alone in the jim crow south for years, and killing her child... she instantly forgives her. dance party! no girl hate here!

her romance with luther is intact, but the writers know you hate it, so they're trying to please you by giving her a romance with a man who she doesn't trust with any information about her, who doesn't trust her, and who allison doesn't hesitate to abandon five days after luther shows up. but hey they have chemistry, so they were Truly In Love, apparently. no seriously, the raymond romance is bad.

season 3 tries to do the heavy lifting with the messier aspects of allison, but this happens too late, and it mostly functions as a way to assassinate her character to turn her into an angry black woman stereotype so they can kill her romance with luther as meanly as possible, and set sloane up to take her place.

she suddenly cares that her daughter is dead and that viktor technically killed her after an entire season of not caring. and her decision to alienate the academy to save her rings false because she spent two years not caring. why now.

her romance with luther implodes when the writers decide to just do what the fandom wants and make it Toxic All Along, after two seasons of framing it in the most positive light possible. and allison sits front row at his wedding to a woman he barely knows, smiling through it like that wasn't supposed to be her, or like she didn't just assault him.

because viktor and allison have had such an artificially nice relationship, there's no payoff to them learning to love each other again, like viktor encouraging the group to sympathize with allison afterher betrayal.

the effect of this is that at the end of season 3, allison has regressed into the person she was before season 1, but do you even want to see her get better or get along with the academy after she tried to assault luther, killed viktor's stepson, and sold everyone down the river to live in a fantasy world?

good news! all that doesn't matter in season 4! luther and viktor never confront allison for doing that to them. the whole family's over her betraying them. raymond? oh, he's just gone. yeah, he left between seasons. we won't even unpack the implications, or that allison's right back to being a divorcee whose husband abandoned her after learning what she did with her rumor, trying to live without that power. oh and don't worry, she isn't dependent on her power anymore. yeah, we just solved that offscreen again.

claire's here, but is there even a point.

allison and klaus's relationship is intact, but because the show won't seriously examine klaus's addiction, we can't discuss how they enable each other, or how allison's manipulative tendencies or klaus's flightiness and addiction might be affecting claire. no more intergenerational trauma discussion here.

allison has nothing to do because slowly learning how to admit how much harm she inflicted on her loved ones, live without her power, and earn vanya/viktor's trust back was her arc and it's... all over the fucking place.

then, she decides to just die.

klaus.

his entire plotline was meant to be about realizing how much damage his addiction has done to himself and his family, getting clean and conquering the crippling fear of his power that made him an addict in the first place.

then in season 2, he's clean offscreen. no exploration of klaus trying to stay on the wagon for the first time in decades. we're just three years into him being totally fine sober. no complications.

and his relapse is played for laughs instead of treated like a devastating moment.

in season 2, his grief over dave is glossed over. yes, we see dave for five minutes, which is more than the three minutes he got in season 1, but klaus is Moved On Already. no discussion of what this relationship meant to him (... or how ben was affected, being the third wheel). no rumination. just a quick 'here's dave to shut the fans up' and on we go.

in season 2, klaus's excitement about exploring his powers' potential is gone already. yeah, he figured them out offscreen.

his cult plotline replaces his comics story of being a clubkeeper in vietnam and becoming a father (yes, klaus has a baby in vietnam), and the entire plotline is a mean-spirited metanarrative about how dumb the writers think his fangirls are. like. fucking look at the narrative. they're making fun of you.

and yet there are no serious consequences to the implications of klaus immediately turning into his dad the second he gets a little power. he isolated a bunch of people from the outside world, derailed their lives, tattooed them, got them hooked on the idea that The End Is Nigh and Only He Can Save Them, got them to have sex with him, and only stopped manipulating them because he was bored. not even because he realized it was wrong.

his relationship with ben is queerbaited to hell, and has no resolution.

he spends the entire season deliberately keeping ben isolated from the rest of the academy, and this is never meaningfully examined. klaus is an absolute bastard in season 2, and the writers don't acknowledge it.

by season 3, he's just a joke machine and a flamboyant stereotype. he never has a substantive interaction with sparrow ben, or struggles with his sobriety or his addiction in a way that takes it seriously. even his meeting with his mother feels empty.

and in season 4, the mothers of agony plotline from the comics is so disjointed that it's meaningless. in the comics, this is his lowest low, that ben helps him come back from.

any depth to the implications of his immortality is gone. it's just funny that he's a germophobe.

(... immortality? how'd he get killed in the first season apocalypse timeline then. no answer? okay.)

any potential in his relationship with allison and claire is gone.

like luther, his crucial development is skipped over and he spends half the season wandering in circles making jokes.

and he decides to just die.

five.

his entire plotline was meant to be about learning to trust the academy and work within them as a team member rather than running off and doing his own thing. and about slowly learning to be a person instead of a vehicle for the mission.

in season 2, he inexplicably lets the commission go and trusts they're Good Now thanks to new management, after making it clear in season 1 that he can't ever trust them.

in season 2, his antipathy with vanya is transferred to lila. he never accepts responsibility for his role in leading to her isolation.

in season 2, instead of trying to get the family together, he's still working on his own.

in season 3, instead of riding hard for viktor and sympathizing with him, he calmly tells him he'll put him down if he ever steps out of line again and ignores him the rest of the time.

for three straight seasons, he's the plot driver. but three seasons in with no other characters having a coherent arc, the plot driver became all he was. he couldn't slow down or have an emotional moment because he's the only thing moving things forward and all the people who can bring out those emotions are so ooc that it won't work.

then in season 4... oh boy.

he's not the plot driver anymore because there's no plot.

five slowly trying to embrace domesticity could have been interesting... but boy does it fall flat.

five created the commission! no, we won't discuss the nature of him being responsible for his own abuse, or perpetuating the cycle that led to the apocalypse and the academy's misery.

five falls in love... with his brother's wife, who he hates, who hates him because he hog-tied and tortured her parents to death in front of her when she was a little girl. okay.

then he decides to just die.

ben

his entire presence in the story was building to a reveal that he's only staying with klaus because he's in love with him.

in season 2 they queerbait that connection for ten episodes by framing him as a literally possessive boyfriend, give him a 'love interest' in jill that makes no sense, kill him off in a scene that makes no sense because that's not how their powers work, and have the vaguest 'by the way he was in love with you' reveal via vanya that feels like an afterthought.

klaus keeps ben from talking to anyone in the academy for the whole season for no reason. he never mentions why, ben never gets mad at him. there are no emotional consequences. ben spent an entire season able to talk to the academy and inform the world and nothing ever comes of this.

in season 3, ben's a totally different character. none of the umbrella academy have emotional reactions to seeing him alive.

not even klaus.

and he feels nothing for them.

he also feels nothing for the sparrows, who drop like flies around him without him giving a shit.

in season 4 he's a completely different character again.

no interest in reuniting with his sparrow academy mates, or the umbrella academy.

he's a crypto bro for some reason.

the south korea subway ending stinger? idk where that went.

the show does use the comics' likely endgame of ben being the portal through which the final antagonist arrives. but they do it in such a strange, meaningless way.

the romance with jennifer comes out of nowhere and makes no sense. it's unclear why he'd want to become a blob with her. there's no emotion anchoring this plot.

also, jennifer was a large, dark-skinned black woman in the comics and... isn't here. (it's also unclear if jennifer was romantically involved with ben in the comics, or if she might have been one of the kid's mothers. so uh. we'll see how that ends up.)

his tentacles come out of his back sometimes. huh?

the reveal that he was killed by their father and they were all brainwashed makes no sense. especially given that allison has brainwashing powers that are never used to cover this up.

there's never a meaningful payoff for ben as a character.

and vanya/viktor…

to start, seasons 1-2 will call her vanya because that's how the character was written, performed and received. seasons 3-4 will refer to him as viktor. that's why the name/pronouns switch back and forth in this post. those are two different characters.

alright i'm gonna say it: the show basically killed off vanya at the start of s2 and split her into two characters: lila, who's the white violin from the comics-- and has vanya's style, punk musicianship, romance with diego, mutual hate with five, alliance with the commission, status as the most powerful character, and role as the antagonist who needs a redemption arc that rejoins her with the family-- …. and the character that would become viktor, who's just elliot page playing a flattened version of himself for token queer points.

the show literally got rid of its main character one season in, sped past all the conflict with the academy to the part where they're all besties again, and gave all the interesting shit to an oc. and they did it because they cared more about profiting off of elliot page's queerness than trusting him to do his job as a professional actor, and supporting that performance in the face of a fandom that only saw him for his sexuality/gender identity.

season 2 skips over vanya learning to use her power and lose her fear of it. she's just good at it now. also, the character will never use the violin to channel her powers again, and will never again acknowledge her love of music, because elliot page didn't like playing the violin. like, sir. what are you doing playing a character called 'the white violin' then.

season 2 skips over her rage and hatred of the academy. instead of being afraid of them, avoiding them, and being hostile whenever they interact, she's instantly cool with them, dismisses their years of mistreatment and dismissal, and is part of the family with no friction despite trying to kill them, blowing up the world, and killing their niece.

season 2 totally resets her personality. amnesia! she's nice again! we know you hated her when she was angry, so don't worry about that!

season 2 gives her a romance with someone who she has chemistry with, but who fundamentally doesn't understand her. the entire relationship is just fanservice. remember the lesbian vanya truthers who thought elliot page could only play characters who were lesbians because he identified as a lesbian at the time? remember their "give vanya a girlfriend" whining? this entire plotline was for them.

season 2 hands the moment where the academy understands vanya and empathizes with her in a moment of superpower meltdown.... to harlan.

in season 3, diet elliot page just becomes overt. it's great that page's transition was incorporated into the show at his request, and at this point the damage to the character's so massive that at least they're being honest about the character just being a different entity from vanya entirely. like, fuck it. you already gave all of vanya's character to the oc. might as well.

though it's great that the transition is quickly incorporated into the story, it happens so quickly that a very easy plotline for viktor in s3 is just rushed past. he has so little to do, the transition is such an obvious fix, and they just... don't do it.

because viktor magically has full control of his powers, there's no more growth from him. and at this point his powers just do whatever. who even knows what his abilities are. the show sure doesn't.

viktor is a beloved member of the academy with no friction whatsoever, even though they're trapped in an alternate dimension because of him

allison's anger at him is demonized instead of deconstructed.

the harlan plotline certainly exists. very funny that the show casually reveals that vissy ruined sissy's life and never goes into the emotional consequences of this.

in season 4... yeah this character has nothing to do. he never expresses anger at allison over killing his stepson. his powers are even more vague. he's in canada for some reason, just to complete the transformation into elliot page.

then he decides to just die.

the main character of the story was essentially killed off one season in. the whole thing became adrift because without vanya, there's no main character anymore. no central antagonist with history with the academy, no emotional weight to their connection, no payoff to a slow redemption arc that unfolds over multiple seasons. just shenanigans.

lila

took over the vanya storyline in season 2.

lila is vanya from the comics.

vanya's hatred of the umbrella academy and antagonism towards them? it's now lila's.

vanya's alliance with the commission to destroy the world? nope. lila's the commission's ally now.

vanya's status as the most powerful character? now it's lila.

vanya and five's mutual hate? now belongs to lila and five. even the fiveya vibe rubberbanded into That in season 4.

vanya's slow redemption from a hateful villain of the academy into one of its most crucial members is handed to lila. who barely knows these people, has only ever hurt them, and yet is treated with more empathy with them after three days than vanya received in thirty years.

vanya being set up as the character who'll save the umbrellas from the sparrows? nope, that's lila now.

vanya's romance with diego? that's lila's now. no, it doesn't make sense but they have chemistry.

then in season 3... oh god. instead of unpacking lila's severe mommy issues from being abused by the handler, she's just over them now.

the academy immediately trust and embrace her even though all she's ever done is hurt them.

and for some reason, this character who's shown no maternal instincts randomly decides she wants to be a mom because her one night stand with diego, who she knew for a few days, got her pregnant.

and she tries to convince him a little white boy is their kid to test if he'll be a good father and doesn't give a shit when that child turns to dust. what are we doing here.

then in season 4, their romance doesn't even mean anything. neither does their family. they're already on the verge of a divorce. which... yeah, follows, given what their romance actually consisted of.

then she hooks up with number five, who killed her family in front of her when she was a girl. what.

.... and then we die.

the whole thing came apart in season 2. you just didn't notice yet.

and here's where i get cunty and set aside my belief that writers have an inherent responsibility to never kowtow to their fans no matter what, because the fandom is a big part of how things went wrong, and someone has to talk about it.

the umbrella academy begun as a complex metaphor for recovering from abuse, using superheroes in a gothic-adjacent setting. every single character's power is allegorical of an attribute one may take on from living in an abusive home. (and part of the missed potential in lila is the failure to fit her into that metaphor too). and the metaphor is literally in the name: the umbrella academy.

it's an academy. not a family. the characters are only adoptive siblings because reginald needed a legal way to bind them to him. they grew up in a twisted boarding school, which they explain again and again, and call each other siblings out of habit, which they also explain. and they are choosing as adults to overcome the trauma that pitted them against each other to become a found family.

... i'm gonna say it. the pseudoincest is a vital part of the story, the same way it is in the comics. that was how they were going to love each other. their ability to love each other was the sign that the brainwashing failed, and the found family was, like actual found families, going to involve some of those people pairing off romantically. allison and luther. ben and klaus. vanya and diego-or-five. that was the story.

the umbrella academy is both a giant metaphor for healing from a dysfunctional family, and for finding a queer found family (... it's the umbrella academy. that's the part of the allegory that's still unfulfilled. everyone in this story is queercoded, not just klaus and vanya/viktor. the show massively dropped the ball in not exploring this deeper.) and the fandom screamed, whined and harassed their way into having it scribbled out of the story, and the writers were cowardly enough to do it for you. if you're wondering why they kept trying to sneak alluther in through the back in season 2, still had a harcest couple get married in season 3, and pivoted to shipping lila so hard, that's why. it's the most important thing about the story, and you hated it. is it any shock that the story ends with all their relationships stunted, and no love between them.

remember all those themes from season 1? remember how you guys hated them? remember how you concluded that luther is an irredeemable monster, and klaus is an innocent little baby, and vanya is somehow both and neither? remember how you were completely uninterested in watching everyone redeem themselves, and wanted to skip to the Fun Sibling Moments? remember how you immediately dismissed half the characters as lost causes, and directly demanded that the writers not let the characters love each other? congrats, the writers were listening!

the umbrella academy comic is meant for adults. the show was made for a wider audience and the writers were totally unprepared for the fandom of antifan teens they got. and they overhauled the show to make it what that fandom wanted. more fun, less substance. making luther a bumbling idiot and sidestepping his entire arc. making diego a himbo. skipping allison's complexities until it's time to demonize her for them. making klaus into the cartoon version of himself. making vanya into diet elliot page and handing all her storylines to a new character. dismantling the show's core tone to make it a fanservice carnival. creating vissy, allmond and dielila in the first place, and coining the ship names before the fandom even chose them. making alluther toxic all along, and swapping her out with a white-passing replacement. it was all for you.

then when they ended the show, they flipped off the fandom on the way out. of course it was going to end like that. you spent five years playing oppression olympics, making bigotry self-righteous, and declaring you didn't want a transformative ending for these characters. the writers gave the fandom the hopeless, nihilistic, meandering, substanceless, nonsensical ending it was demanding all along.

so. where do we go from here.

first of all, to ao3, for those of you who haven't moved on.

next, to the comics. assuming way ever wants to finish them, now that he's received an overwhelming message that the audience for his story hates it and prefers the bastardized versions of his characters. i get the sense he'll probably leave it unfinished. i don't blame him.

then... the umbrella academy was a massive success. it's going to get a reboot someday. in 10-15 years, we're gonna get it back. my hope is that

whoever has that responsibility has a clear vision and the talent to pull it off, the backbone to stick with it, and more loyalty to the source material. no subverting expectations for the hell of it. no kowtowing to antifandom. make a plan and stick to it and have confidence in it. hopefully, the next showrunner won't be a terrible person.

the next version of tua will be mature. so the adults who will watch will hopefully be old enough to understand what they're seeing. this truly isn't a show for kids. the fandom has proven that. let's not do it again.

that it'll be animated. the incredible visual aesthetic of the show and its edgier elements could never have been captured in live-action. and now that adult animation's starting to arrive, including on netflix, maybe in a decade or two we'll finally get the umbrella academy fully realized.

anyway. that's my piece.

[flower-boi16]

Why didn't Viv just make a pure romance animation instead of throwing away premise for the favor of terminally online shippers?

Probably because she doesn't really know how to stick to the premise of her shows. Like I genuinely think that Viv initially started with the idea of Helluva Boss being about assasins going to the human world to kill people for clients, but over the course of the show's production she slowely started coming up with more plotlines and ideas and slowely put them into the show regardless how many of them there would end up being, and Stolitz was likely the biggest one.

I've seen some people even say that Stolitz is the point of the show. It is not. Stolitz was not the premise of HB. It just eventually took over HB as the series went on. The show completely lost it's focus and PLOT in favor of becoming a melodramitic romance story featuring a horrendously written reletionship that people for SOME REASON insist on trying to defend.

It's genuinely pretty sad how HB went into this direction. Like the show had such an interesting premise that could've made for so many creative ideas but the writers just threw it away in favor of throwing a gizzalion plotlines at the wall because they coulden't decide which one to focus on.

Stolitz is the worst of these not only because the reletionship is just badly written, but also because it warps the show to be about it. The show has now become a shitty romance story intended to cater only to shippers, completely alienating the demographic the first season and pilot attracted. And I'm sick of people defending this shit with "ohhhh but the show's premise would get repetive!" because there are plenty of ways a show could utilize it's premise without it being repetive. I got an ask mentioning BDFI but there's also Penn Zero Part Time Hero; a prime example of a show that utilizes it's premise to it's full creative potiential and makes it into the main appeal of the show.

And that's the thing; the main premise of the show is the APPEAL of it. It's the thing that draws a viewer into checking it out. A show abandoning that is not good writting. Helluva Boss feels like it doesn't know what it wants to even BE anymore. Is it a episodic dark comedy show? A romantic drama show? Just a straight drama show? We don't fucking know anymore and the show certainly doesn't.

There ARE ways to stray from the premise a bit without alienating past viewers, Amphibia's third season moved to earth for the first half but that was because it was a natural way to progress the series. Helluva Boss jams three premises for three different shows into one and what we now have is a completely confused mess of a story that lost it's identity.

And THAT'S why abonding the premise killed HB. It lost any real focus of what it wanted to be and is the sole thing behind most of the show's major issues. It jams too many plotlines into just 1-2 seasons resulting in everything being a completely unfocused mess.

[sprunkrat]

I have some thoughts about Amazon's Fallout TV Show.

The show is of course disrespectful to West Coast Fallout, but in a more insulting way than just having the many iconic elements of the classic games be reused over and over again. You start to really feel as though that Bethesda resents the success and continued interest in New Vegas, and while that may be true, it doesn't explain the mountain of references to both the classic Fallouts and New Vegas.

I assume there was need to appeal to the fans of the West Coast, as the TV show is a large event and they would make a portion of viewership. There's all sorts of things sprinkled in, the Brotherhood is fashioned to be more medieval with monk robes and rituals, one of the props used for a pistol is a recreation of the stupid Hard Boiled magazine-fed revolver from Fallout 1. These references are all just borrowing from the aesthetics from prior games, though. It was probably expected that FNV fans would be happy with this representation alone.

Maybe they didn't see that there would be such a negative reaction to flattening all that has been built up in the West Coast, people would just be happy to see the NCR and New Vegas, even though they were nuked or left in ruin. Maybe people would point at the screen when they saw Robert House, not caring that his inclusion contradicts his ideology and goals in FNV. Why would they change the West Coast so much? Well, maybe they don't know what to do with it after FNV. Or that the fact that the West Coast has actual nations and progress doesn't fit well with Bethesda's view of the series of just being a perpetual apocalypse where you can explode raiders' heads while listening to 50s music. There is another reason I haven't seen discussed, but I need to first write about another part of the show that bothered me.

There's definite anti-capitalist themes in this show, as there is in all of Fallout. The Fallout show is different in the way that they aren't particularly background, just told in old world terminals and other storytelling. They are front and centre to the final few episodes of the series, but told in a very bad way. It's not the general system of capitalism caused America to keep declining to it's eventual fall anymore, it's rather disappointingly been changed to simply a shady cabal of evil capitalists that decided to drop the bomb because it would be profitable. And don't worry, the group trying to fight back against this aren't actual communists, they are rich Hollywood actors, so it's all good, they aren't like actual communists who deserve how they are treated under this America. It's rather a boring way of going about it.

It's the use of the line "War never changes." in the scene where this is all revealed that made me realise a potential reason why the slate in the West Coast was wiped clean. I think they are interpreting "War never changes." as "The world will always be in a state of perpetual war, new societies will arise but they will always fall as violence and cruelty is innate to human existence." rather than "War doesn't change despite how it's fought; no advance of technology or reasoning will change how pointless it is and the end result of suffering and destruction."

To demonstrate this, the NCR must fall. Just have Vault-Tec nuke it like they did for the old world, no matter how unsatisfying of a fall for the NCR that may be.

With the Marvel-esque sequel stinger of New Vegas being a setting of season 2, I'm morbidly curious if they will continue to mess up further, but maybe it's time to just let go and stick to the old games that I actually enjoy.

[pinkpigtailsprincess]

౨ৎ ⁺ . Manifesting Rant.ᐟ 🎀🧁

⊹ ⋆ﾟ꒰ఎ ♡ ໒꒱ ⋆ﾟ⊹ ; first i wanna say i am not targeting this towards one particular person & im not hating on a specific person or group!!

this is just things people in the manifesting community do that i find very weird (ie: loa,subliminals,shifting etc)

No.1 ꒱ 🎀 ! ; Sub-Makers and Toxic Affirmations

omg i while ago i seen the sub makers community post talking about hoe they’re gonna put affirmations in their beauty subliminal to the user make others jealous and hate themselves

uhm what the hell?? that’s honestly so weird and the fact that them and they’re subscribers are sitting laughing at the shit?? like that is honestly so weird and demented get help!

No.2 ꒱ 🧁 ! ; Ruining peoples lives through LOA

this is honestly so fucking weird of people too do especially like over a boy its so unnecessary and its not gonna get you any cool points either it’s weird & hateful and you need to get some help literally just create a new man you don’t have to go out of your way to harm someone

No.3 ꒱ 🐬 ! ; Self-Sabotage in Shifting

i honestly hate seeing people on shiftok say things like “shifting is hard” “only affirming once the going too sleep😝” that is honestly why your not shifting, shifting really isn’t that hard

set intention > method > affirm > persistence in affirming > SHIFTED!! 🌟

please stop setting your self up for failure!!!

No.4 ꒱ 👙 ! ; Sub-Makers and wanting too look European or east asian

i get so sad when i see poc sub users using subliminals to erase their ethnic features like anyone is allowed to live their life as they see fit but damn i really wish some if them would realize they don’t need pin straight hair,light skin,ski slope noses etc. too look beautiful (and it ties into texturism,colorism and its just a mess)

and now they’re certain sub makers that take these gorgeous female celebrities and put filters on them to make them “more beautiful” and they only just end up looking european like thats NOT jessica alba 💀

No.5 ꒱ 🍦 ! ; Sub-Makers and Getting T-worded

okay i feel for you getting ur account terminated but it gets too a point where you have to realize your the problem!

they purposely post stuff like h€ntai,soft p*rn,naked women,th1nsp0 and p@nt!es and they get terminated for it they make another acc and DO THE SAME THING and expect nothing to happen?? like youtube isn’t against sub-makers y’all are just not taking accountability like omg stop saying “snaketube” when you know the stuff your posting is against the guidelines ! REFLECT

[the-real-rain-world-confessions]

HELLO. I am the anon that has stage 2 liver cancer and was gone for about a week to get a liver transplant and doing chemo to make sure I am clear now!

Anyways! As a cancer survivor, I think Pebbles is a very good metaphor for chronically disabled and/or terminally ill people. His rot may be a product of him messing with his genomes but I cannot help but relate to that. He wanted to live and make others live to the fullest while also escaping the Cycle. He wanted to be free from his pain and torment while also living in a way that mattered most to him. He deserved to live with his iterator found family and spend time talking to them till they all finally broke down, either from lack of repairs or from ascension by Saint.

Also the constant debates of if he's a minor or not is interesting but infantilising in the end because of how disabled people and terminally ill people may react to their situations. From my perspective, it's infantilising and ableist as I relate to his anger and struggles. He deserves to be seen in a light that shows he's rightfully angry. Because he is! He deserves to be angry and vent it out. He even gets shut down by Suns and Moon unintentionally because they both acted like they knew him better than himself with his issues. He goes so far as to ruin himself to get anywhere to help himself escape the pain and cycle. His anger is righteous even if aimed incorrectly.

And I am of the opinion that Artificer and Pebbles were a means to an end for each other but grew to be found family due to Artificer being unable to ascend like Pebbles. She would've seen him as family after a while as he protected her and gave her a home, even if unintentionally. She does not have to be bound to her primal urge of Violence only. She obviously craves Companionship and that's what binds her to the cycle as well. Even if Pebbles puts up with her, he would eventually have an attachment, healthy or not.

.

[bambambunny]

Fatui Cat (Segment edition!) pt. 1

Warnings: like 1 swear and some fear of dottore from his segments. Oh and one of them drops the cat, dw its fine. This is more focused on the segment’s perspective but ill do cat POV next time.

Relationships: Platonic segments / cat!reader

Summary: The segments meet the cat. g/n pronouns pls lmk if i missed something.

Wc: 659 cries

Part 2

—-------------------------------------------------

The pursuit of knowledge never ends and thus, neither does the work of the segments. Each one, varying in ages and demeanors, bustles around the expansive lab with their own projects in hand. Of course, all must work to the Tzaritsa’s coup against heaven but such a large goal requires smaller tasks to build it up. 

One of the younger segments, physically he looks to be about 10, is trying to figure out a better healing formula for the hydro skirmishers (Some blond kid keeps causing trouble and their losses have been too great to ignore). That might seem like a rather complicated subject for a 10 year old, but this is a dottore segment we’re talking about, of course he can accomplish this. After all, failure at such a menial task would result in termination and we can't have that. He starts with a flask of hydro, adds some crushed up violet grass, a bit of this chemical, a bit of that, and a dash of –

Crash!

The young segment yelps and drops the vial and its contents. The other segments look up from their tasks at the sudden noise but the boy doesn’t notice. He looks down at the disturbance at his feet and finds a..cat? What in Her Majesty’s name is a cat doing here? He picks it up to the worried protest of an older segment and raises it up. The little thing does naught but blink at him. It has a belled collar so it must belong to somebody, and oh that somebody is going to be in a lot of trouble when Prime finds out it caused such a disturbance. 

“Ahem.”

The sound shoots a wretched cold up the segment’s spine as both he and the cat are shadowed by the imposing figure of Prime Dottore. He drops that cat and immediately turns to attention. He doesn’t hear the thing yelp in surprise.

“P-prime!”, shit. He’s not supposed to stutter, “Prime, sir.” Better.

“Care to explain the mess in your station?” Prime asks with a chilly calm.

“I was interrupted, sir, by that,” He points to the cat who is now rubbing itself, almost aggressively, on Dottore’s pant leg. 

“They just wandered in like they owned the place,” a segment pipes up, drawing Prime’s gaze. He is older and confident enough to insert himself into the conversation, most of the other segments wouldn’t dare. The young segment is relieved at the shift of attention away from him.

Prime chuckles. It isn’t with malice, thank god. 

“They might as well,” He picks up the cat with a surprising gentleness. Honestly, a few of the newer segments were surprised Prime didn't kick the poor thing.

“This is Zapolyarny Palace’s new royal cat - by order of Her Majesty.” Prime says with a flourish and barely restrained glee. Every segment in the room just stares at him, then at the cat, him again..is he serious? Since when was that a thing? If it has a title, does it have a job? Why then did it wander in here? Is it looking for pests? Impossible, the labs are kept meticulously – obsessively – clean (aside from the spill from earlier, must clean that up). A segment near the back raises his finger to ask a question but Prime cuts him off.

“As this cat has been blessed by the Tzaritsa, you will all treat them with respect. They may go where they please and none but the other harbingers and I may interact with it as I am now.” He puts the cat down and shoots a pointed look to the young segment, “You may return to your tasks. Oh and #7?”

“Yes, sir?” The little boy answers, slightly fearful of whatever punishment may come from dropping the cat.

“Do clean up this mess.”

And with that Prime Dottore leaves and all 7 segments stare at the now much more important feline sitting in front of the doorway

—-------------------------------------------------

A/N: hgnghgng sht im so so sorry this took like a month to write. I fell out of genshin and got obsessed with star wars and cries. I know its really short but im working on a part 2, just cant finish it cuz i have to sleep.

Taglist:

@etherisy @franc-1-s @assassinsnek101

(if you wanna be removed or added to the taglist pls comment)

[simplydannie]

Velvet & Veneer Fanfic

"Back to the Underground: Poisoned"

Story Arc || Part 1 || Part 2

@jules0511 It's been two weeks. The twins have now been doing any means necessary to survive. The hunt for them isn't over....but a new problem occurs causing more struggle for Velvet and Veneer. We also learn that a small little Trolls has been held captive in the under city of Rageous.

“Boss… she’s on the other line..” 

Shank sat at the chair center of his base: an underground run down old subway terminal. Huge screen monitors displayed across the walls. 

“Put her on.” He gestured towards the screens. They lit up: her face was shadowed, all you could see was her graceful neck, down to her waist as she sat behind her desk. From what he could see, her hair was long with a deep purple hue. Her skin was like porcelain, light purple porcelain. She wasn’t at all pale as those in the under city, she was definitely from the upper atmosphere…. What was attractive was her voice. He couldn’t put words, but her voice sounded like a friend, loving, someone you can trust… but she wasn’t. Shank yelled for everyone to get out… he was to talk to her alone. 

“Mistress.” He greeted.

“I’m not here to make small talk. Do you have my twins or not?” She asked. Today she wore a black velvet blouse, it tightened her bosom but fell loose around her arms. This was her… the twins old manager. The puppeteer behind the green haired puppets. 

“They decided to make a mess of things and off one of my guys. What do you say to that?” Shank asked her. 

Her smile was cunning, vicious, yet beautiful. 

“Did you know what they would do?” He asked her.

“After whats happened and the amount of Troll essence they absorbed, I had my theory. You’ve seen the effects of Troll poison first hand.” 

“But nothing like this. This is different.” He responded. “It cost me a guy, and a drone?  I expect more compensation.” Shank sat back in his chair, crossing his legs. 

“Oh so you expect me to pay double for your idiot henchman and your stupid machine? Honey, I can easily find someone else to do it in a heartbeat. But because of our past, I decided to give you chance. You haven’t let me down. If I recall, YOU were the one to tell me about them in the first place, am I wrong.” 

Shank began to scowl at her words.

“If you can’t handle this, honey, I’ll gladly take it off your shoulders. But I am not paying you anything for a fallen idiot and robot. You’re dealing with the wrong girl here.” She finished.

“FINE!” Shank groaned in annoyance. “If that will get you to shut up. I don’t understand, why them? Cant you get other loons to fill in their place? The boy basically ratted you out.”

“He ratted themselves out. He knows what would’ve happened if he DARED mention my name. My interest in the twins is none of your business. All you need to know is that they’re special….very special.” Mistress replied. 

“Whatever. You better pay me the amount you had said.” 

She moved closer to the camera revealing her face, her beautiful heart shape face. Her dark purple lips pursed into a smile; her bright green eyes staring intently at him as she rested her chin on her hands. 

“Thank you, hun. I knew you wouldn’t let me down. Now, I can pay you back in other ways as Ive done before.” She winked biting her lips seductively. “Just come up here and pay me a visit when you can.” 

“Well, I can’t deny that form of payment. Can I now?”

Time passed. 

It had been two weeks since their return. Two weeks they spent in the underground subway trying to figure out where they could go.

Word would have spread to Under Rageous already about the infamous Velvet and Veneer: the frauds of Rageous. 

No one would hire them, work with them. No one would trust them and now, they are being hunted down. If there was one way they were going to make ends meet, they would have to revert to how they survived down here before… thieving. 

Velvet had done her share the past week. She stole only the necessities, and now it was Veneer’s turn. Velvet knew her brother was more than capable of handling his own; his innocence would cause people to turn a blind eye, but ever since the encounter they had with those thugs when they first arrived….she worried. Every time Veneer would leave, her heart would stop in anticipation for his return. They gave each other a time limit: if they were not back within the hour, they would go looking for each other.

Velvet sat on the small used up couch in their hideout. She leaned her head back staring up at the ceiling. 

30 minutes. Veneer had 30 minutes to return or else she would go find him. 

She glanced around at their temporary home….How was it that they came back…to this? They were at the top. Their names known throughout ALL of mount Rageous. They were immortal, gods to them. All the young of Mount Rageouns worshipped the path they walked on. They had it all…the money, the fame, the luxary. And now they were back down here.

The images of that day replayed over and over in her head…. and the more they did, the more it fueled her anger. Her anger towards one specific person in general: Veneer. Velvet clenched her fists tightly at her sides. Stupid, stupid idiot! She thought to herself. He ruined everything for both of them, and for what? They weren’t safe. They weren’t better off than they were before. He just sent them back so they could live like rats again. What was he thinking, she began to fume. 

It began feeding on her rage. The voice began to spin and murmer in her head. It’s his fault. Traitor. Coward. Weakling. You sent us back. Traitor. Velvet grasped the side of her head.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” She screamed, but the voices kept talking. You know it’s true. He only thought of himself. Maybe you should have let that thug kill him. You can still go back….Go back….Go back. A pink hue began to glow in her eyes….

Veneer made his way back down into the underground subway, his bag filled with more things than he should have gotten. Before hoping over the tracks, he waited and listened, making sure he wasn’t followed. When all was clear he ran across the tracks in back into their deep hideout. As he got close to the door he did the secret knock he had taught his sister. He listened in carefully….He could hear her voice whisper, as if she were talking to someone. 

“Vels?” He called out as he opened the door. “Vels, I got the necessary stuff. Buuuutt I may have snagged a few “extra” things. I had an idea for that drone and….Vels?” His expression changed from enthusiam to worry....Velvet sat on the couch, hugging her knees, rocking back and forth whispering to herself. He walked closer to her, but stopped as he did….He saw her eyes…Her glowing pink pigmented eyes. Veneer’s heart began to race as he began to slowly walk back towards the enterance.

“….Coward.” He heared her say.

“What was that?” 

“Coward. You’re a coward Veneer!” She clenched her teeth staring at him with anger on her face. 

“Vels please…..” He begant to say. 

“You’re a coward! You’re a traitor! You took everything from me!” She stood up facing him, eyes still glowing pink. Veneer was to stunned for words. What could he say to her? It was his fault, but he didn’t want to be living a lie, he didn’t want to kill Floyd.

“We can finally talk about this. So let’s sit down and talk.” He said calmly.

“I DON’T WANT TO TALK!” She leaped at him, knocking him backwards onto the floor. Talking one fist she punched him across the face causing pain to seer through his left cheek. 

“Velvet! Stop!” He cried. She pinned him down using her knees, taking her other fist she struck him across the face again…and again….and again.

“I HATE YOU! YOU RUINED EVERYTHING! I SHOULD HAVE LET THAT THUG KILL YOU!” 

SMACK….SMACK…SMACK…. She could see blood flying everywhere.

“PLEASE STOP. I’M SORRY!” He cried…. She heard the voice of a child…She heard his voice when HE was a child. Veneer crying and begging for his aunt to stop….and that’s when Velvet paused, the pink glow slowly leaving her eyes, her mind starting to come back, the poison loosing its grip again. 

What did I do?…She blacked out…

The smell of food is what woke her. 

Velvet found herself lying down on the single bed they shared, pillows engulfing her in an embrace. She peered through midway opened eyes to find her brother hovering over a small pot over a fire, heating up whatever food he managed to collect. 

“Ven?” She called out. Her vision was still a blur as she slowly started to wake up. 

“Hey! FInally, you’re up!” He walked over to her with a plate in hand. “Not the best, but it’s something.”

Velvet gasped as soon as he got close to her; she finally saw the damage she had done. His left eye was swollen shut, bruises and cuts filled his face, a gash was on his upper lip. He saw the look of horror on her face.

“Oh! It doesn’t feel as bad as it looks.” He smiled.

“I….I did that….” She stared at her hands, “Oh my god…..I….I could’ve killed you….” 

“But you didnt! Vels it’s…it’s not that bad.”

“Shut up!” She cried. “Just shut up! Look at yourself! I could’ve killed you! I was so angry…I AM angry…but …I don’t know what happened…Ven, I’m so sorry…”

He was speechless; she never apologized…ever. Veneer didn’t know what to say, he didn’t know how to react. All he knew at that moment was that something was wrong with her, that she needed help. Using the Troll left her mad, left her crazy. Maybe the ones who would know about this would be the Trolls, but they were far gone. Even if the twins were able to make it out of Under Rageous, they didn’t where to look or where to even start. The best thing he could think of at the moment was placing a hand over hers, hoping she didn’t push him away….she didn’t. 

“…We’ll figure this out. Using the Troll, it didn’t leave you right Vels. Now you know why I had to stop it? Why I had to says something?….I was loosing you..” Veneer said in almost a whisper. 

“How are we going to figure this out?” She asked as her voice shook. For the very first time, Velvet was afraid, she was completely afraid…only her brother was able to calm her and give her some sense of peace in this hell hole. 

“I don’t know Vels…but we will.” 

Their small little footsteps echoed in the giant empty hallways.

The little Trolls ran as fast as they could. Feeling the ground shake beneath them they knew they were being followed…a Rageoun not to far off. 

“Over here guys!” Branch called out as he neared a vent. Who didn’t know where this lead? But wherever it lead was safer than where they were. He opened the vent signalling them to jump in. One by one, each freed Troll went inside. The last Troll was a Funk Troll about his age.

“What about you?” He asked.

“I’ll distract them. This isn’t my first rodeo with giant goofballs like them.” Branch stated. The voices begant to get closer. The Funk Troll gave him a nod.

“See you on the other side, man.”  He jumped through the vent and was gone. Branch made his way to the center of the hallway as the Rageons grew nearer. He quickly took in his surroundings seeing where he could exit. Whatever he did, he had to try and lead them away. Within moments two Rageons where in his line of view, one male and one female, both sporting the same pale skin and dark blue hair.

“Found one!” Cried the female as she glanced at Branch. 

“You did. But can you catch me!” He ran right towards them. What Branch remembered when he faced the twins on their yacht was that Rageouns were big, but their movements were slow compared to that of a Troll. He moved with ease right underneath them, causing them to trip and stumble over each other. Branch also remembered how long their limbs were, how they could easily reach and grasp with ease, but he was prepared. Using his hair, he wrapped it around the neck of one Rageoun causing her to panic as he swung around her and slingshotted himself towards the forehead of the boy…a move he learned from Viva. 

The male Rageoun fell backwards in a daze, knocking himself out as his head hit the cold floor. Branch continued to swing around the female’s neck. He released and wrapping his hair around a metal pole nearby, he sling shotted himself once more towards the center of the girl’s forehead. The force was greater causing her to fall unconscience that moment. Branch landed with a small THUD at the foot of the two Rageouns. The groaned and moaned in pain. 

“That’s what you get! Morons.” Branch ran back to the vent lifting it up. He could hear more voices grow near as more Rageouns approached. “I’m coming home Poppy.” He jumped into the vent.

He could feel himself twist and turn in the darkness as he fell straight down. Branch reached out to grab something, anything as he felt fear enter him. He let out a small yell as he finally his the floor. The vent had lead to the outside of the building they were in. The small Troll rubbed his elbow as he looked around cautiously. 

“Guys.” Branch called out to the other Trolls who escaped before him…silence. He saw small footprints leading away. Okay, they made it out, but where did they go, he wondered to himself. It was dark, it was muggy, the atmosphere of this place felt eerie and distant. Branch heard the small bustling of music and saw glimpses of lights flash above him. He looked up and his jaw dropped in surprise.

“That’s…..that’s Mount Rageous.” He murmured looking up, up, up towards the upper atmospher of was Mount Rageous. 

“If that’s Mount Rageous…then what the heck is this place.” He walked up the small hill that over looked the under city. Lights also shown down here, but something about the artificial lgihts made it seem dark and sad, unlike the lights and the clouds of Mount Rageous. The city above completely covered any light, any rain, any clouds from entering the city below. And I thought Rock Trolls were gloomy, he thought.

This was unknown territory, he had to tread care fully. He hopes he can meet up with the other escaped Trolls somewhere, but his main goal was to find a way out and get back home….get back to Poppy. 

[fictional-orphan-smackdown]

Once again I have no similarities. They should still fight tho

All propaganda and what each competitor is from under the cut

Trafalgar D. Water Law (Once Piece)

Law is a genocide survivor who saw his parents' dead bodies along with experiencing a whole bunch of other messed up stuff (his sister burning to death, the people of his country being shot for being poisoned by their own government, being terminally ill, escaping the genocide by hiding under a pile of dead bodies, etc etc). After all this shit, he eventually got forcibly adopted by this one guy and dragged around the world looking for a cure for his illness. Right when Law started to trust and love his new caretaker, he is also brutally murdered in front of him. Law's life goal for the next decade is to get revenge on the person who killed his adoptive father. Vote for him bc he needs a goddamn win for once in his life. He is the people's princess and the narrative's favorite punching bag. Also, his depressed, PTSD-ridden autistic swag and scoliosis realness have captivated me body and soul

His biological parents were killed (before his eyes, by the governement) when he was 10(?). He then joined a bunch of pirates, knowing he wouldn't have much time (and will) left to live anyway. There he was sort of adopted by the Big Bad Pirate's brother, who managed to save his life, only for said brother to be killed (more or less before Law's eyes, by the Big Bad Pirate), when he was 13. You could say he was orphaned twice.

He’s literally got the double orphan special (Parents died and then the guy who took him in after them died too) that’s a 50% increase in orphannedness above your standard orphan. He’s also cool as fuck.

Law's parents were already on death row along with him and his younger sister due to a disease that shortens the life span of a person. The disease can only be passed down genetically and has afflicted everyone in the town that he has grown up in. Due to the sudden outbreak and unknown nature of the disease to the rest of the world panicked and the government closed off his city, killing everyone there. That is how his first set of parents died when he was 10, I think. Still then Law would later join a pirate crew where he would eventually be taken away 2-3 years later by Corazon, marine working undercover as a pirate in order to take down this brother, who is the captain of crew Law joined. Corazon took him in order to cure Law's disease which he still had and to get him away from Doflamingo, his brother. Over the course of 6 months the two became close with Corazon essentially becoming a father figure to Law. I am simplify this but at some point of Doflamingo catches on to Corazon being a double agent and finds him. Doflamingo then proceeds to find Corazon and shoot him in front of a chest that Law was hiding in.

Law has faced many hardships since he was a child, but used his experiences to become an extremely powerful doctor. His pirate crew theme and his Devil Fruit ability are all owed to his adoptive father. Law acts really gruff and serious most of the time, initially seeming like a cool, calculating character and feared swordsman… but one second around the Straw Hats and you quickly see just how silly he really is. He hates bread. He collects coins. He is obsessed with ninjas and superhero comic books. In one arc he just fucked around with his powers and INVENTED harpies and centaurs. Oh, and his First Mate is a polar bear. What could be better than that?

The government ordered to kill everyone in Law's country due to everyone getting "fantasy lead poisoning" disease, which was wrongfully thought to be contagious stroked. Law's family was living at the hospital when they got attacked, his parents (who were doctors) got killed and the hospital got set on fire with his little sister inside. He managed to fled the country hiding in a pile of corpses and ended up joining a pirate crew lead by Doflamingo. Law knew he had the disease and it was going to kill him in three years. Doflamingo's brother, Rosinante took Law hospital to hospital to find a cure but they always rejected him thinking the disease was contagious. Then they learned that someone had offered Doflamingo a devil fruit that could grant him immortality. The fruit could also cure Law so Rosinante stole it and made Law eat it. He then made sure Law could escape Doflamingo and got killed by his brother.

dude spent his childhood getting thrown out of windows, while dying from a deadly disease (that was eventually cured) but while he was still showing symptoms of the disease no one would go near him out of fear and disgust, save for his father figure.

nothing can ever go right for this man. its fucking hilarious in the series and makes for some wonderful angst content. i want everyone who has not watched or read One Piece to know that, for half of his 'main' arc, he's carried around like a potato sack by MULTIPLE people. he is a damsel in despair. he didn't even need to be carried, he honestly could've walked, but he had to save that energy so he could take the like 17 lead bullets out of him. he's always getting shot or thrown out a window and he's severely injured more often than not. he's also a doctor/surgeon, one that should be able to cure incurable diseases, yet his pathetic loserboy ass is too busy being emo to worry about the several gunshot wounds and internal bleeding. god help this man but also don't because honestly it's really fucking funny

Ok, FIRST, when he was a tiny frog-disecting little kid, him and his family and island contacted a disease equivalent to cancer BUT his fam didn't die from that. No, no, his parents got gunned down by the military and his little sis was burned alive with the rest of his house, so, yeah, very traumatic, horrific in a way that makes you very angry at yourself and life and want to oh I don't know, kill everyone and everything possible until the day you die, which won't be long because you have cancer after all. Later, after joining a mafia/cult/gang, Law meets Corazon who after like 2 years kidnaps him to try and get him healed and so they spend the next 6 months bonding, WEEEEEE!! Wait, no, NOT weeee because Cora who is now his father-figure DIES having protected and saved him, and thus bruv becomes orphaned not once, not thrice, but TWO very traumatic times! If this isn't an orphan, idk what is……

Adrien Agreste (Miraculous Ladybug)

[Putting on a creepy white mask as I prepare to unleash the most insane lore ever written] Once upon a time…

Okay so not only is Adrien an orphan, but he's an orphan who unintentionally and unknowingly was partially responsible for their own orphaning. Adrien was created via the Peacock Miraculous, since his mom was infertile. But since the Peacock Miraculous was broken at the time, using it caused her to slowly become sick, until she "died" (mostly. Probably. She might have been on life support), just afew months before the show began. Later on, Ladybug had a plan to take down the Big Bad, Monarch (who, unbeknownst to the heroes, is actually Adrien's father), via putting him in a position where Chat Noir (Adrien's superhero alter ego) could threaten him with his Cataclysm, a superpower that destroys everything it touches. Monarch willingly took the Cataclysm, actually forcing Chat's hand onto himself, which infected him with that Cataclysm, meaning that he was slowly dying throughout the rest of the season. When the season 5 finale happened and Gabriel sacrificed his life to heal his assistant, and the closest person Adrien had had to an actual parent since Emilie died, he only had a few hours left to live anyway. Adrien is still unaware of how his parents died, he has no clue that either death involved him at all.

BIG MIRACULOUS LADYBUG SEASON 5 SPOILERS AHEAD Sooo first his mom went into a magical coma as the result of him being born through magical means and was considered dead/missing by everyone. They had a funeral for her and everything. Adrien dealt with it pretty well, but his father did not and decided to become a supervillain to get his wish, recreate the world and bring his wife back. Which he almost does! He ends up trading his life for (I assume) the life of his secretary/former crime partner/Adrien's mother figure and joining his wife in death. (We see wife's comatose body ascend with him so I guess she's dead? Sokka voice You know, it was really unclear) But anyway, yeah, our babyboy is a full orphan now! Also in an alternate timeline he accidentally created an apocalyptic event and killed everyone so it's not even the first time he was orphaned. So there's that

Adrien is the superhero Chat Noir, who had to fight his father as the supervillain Hawkmoth alongside his superhero partner Ladybug, neither Adrien nor Gabriel had any idea they were fighting each other, and Adrien still doesn't know his father was a supervillain, or how exactly he died, but Marinette does and is keeping it from him. Adrien's father is abusive towards him, having kept him effectively locked inside the house for the first 13 years of his life, and forcing him to model for his company. But still, Adrien is the sweetest boy ever to exist, he's endlessly kind to people, sometimes to his own detriment.

I am no good at infodumping I just love this little guy. However, Harrowhark Nonagesimus is such a close second, but I chose Adrien because he's from my current hyperfixation… ily Harrow. Listen, Adrien is the most guy and catgirl ever. If anything happens to him I will go nuts. Unfortunately, so much happens to him. I am not normal. Give my baby some hugs and some real parenting. Did I mention he was not even born as a real human being? Born at the cost of other's life? Oh my god that's actually so Harrow of him and this is so funny I can't do this anymore

[sashaisready]

The Blood Pact: Chapter 2 - Will it hurt?

Bucky Barnes Vampire AU x Female Reader

Reeling from a bad break-up, you're desperately trying to find a new place to live but the Brooklyn rental market is a complete nightmare. You take a chance on an intriguing newspaper ad and enquire about a room in a shared house, where you'd be living with two mysterious men. The catch is that they want something other than your money for you to pay the rent...the one thing they don't have

Warnings for details of vampire biting/drinking blood in this chapter

Series Masterlist

Chapter 3

“So here’s the deal” Bucky started. “We only need to feed every 1-2 days. We can alternate so you don’t get two feedings in the same day. If you ever don’t want to, or you’re sick, you can refuse - but if you refuse too much we’ll need to terminate the arrangement as you’re not holding up your end of the deal”.

You nodded, watching them from your sanctuary on the sofa. You could barely believe you were still here, talking contract details for your potential new life as a human blood bank for supernatural beings. 

“You’re free to come and go as you please in the house, decorate your room however you like. The place is all yours in the daytime as that’s when we sleep. All we ask is that we feed in the evenings at a pre-arranged time. And you’re not a prisoner of course, if you want to go out or have plans we can be flexible and arrange an alternative”.

“How much blood will you take?” You ask shyly. 

“Enough to satiate us, but not enough for you to struggle or get sick” Steve replied. “The worst you’d feel is a little tired right after”.

“Would…would it be through here?” You asked, your fingers ghosting along your neck. 

Steve shook his head. “Neck is a pretty intimate area. This is a business arrangement so we tend to stick to wrist, or a thigh”.

“Neck is too intimate, but thigh isn’t?” You scoffed. You seemed to be doing that a lot tonight. 

They both laughed at that. 

“It’s a good spot” Bucky interjected. “Lots of veins, not too sensitive for you, no marks left visible to the outside world”.

Christ. You hadn’t thought about the marks they’d leave. 

“That’s why you asked about drugs and my medical stuff, right? To make sure my blood was clean?”

They nodded. 

“Intoxicated blood is a no no. We avoid drug users” Steve explained. “It messes us up, it tastes bad. Alcoholic blood isn’t great either, but it’s doable once in a while”.

“So we just ask that if you wanna get wine wasted or drink your little cocktails or whatever - that you do it after dinner” Bucky mocked.

You seethed internally, but didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

“And I guess you only want healthy blood, nothing with disease or illness?” 

“That’s the optimum, yes” replied Steve. 

“Do…do you…I mean, what about if you don’t want my blood? What if it’s not what…you like?” You asked hesitantly, almost laughing out loud at the fact you’re feeling insecure about how your blood might taste.

They looked at each other, then back at you again. 

“That won’t be a problem” Steve said confidently.

“How can you be sure?” You pressed. “What if I agree to this and you hate the taste of my blood and I have to move out?”

“We can smell you, Doll” Bucky grinned. “You know how you can tell a meal is going to be good based on how it smells in the oven?” 

You were embarrassed, completely caught off guard by his admission. As horrified as you were, a small part of you felt a pang of lust as you listened to him talk about you like that. You clenched your thighs together and felt your face heat up at the very idea. 

“And…that” Bucky said breathily, his expression twisting into something resembling desire as he pointed at your face. Steve was looking at you in the exact same way. 

It took you a moment but you realised he meant you feeling flushed. They must have advanced eyesight to have caught it.

“Oh…” you replied quietly, unsure of what to say. 

“We can’t do that like you can, obviously” Bucky explained. “Something about seeing a hint of your blood under the surface like that…it drives us wild. It’s almost like a tease, yknow?”

He looked slightly wild with hunger. You pressed your hands to your cheeks, self-consciously trying to cool them down. You felt both their gazes on you. 

Another tiny thrill soared through you.

“How do I know you won’t lose it and kill me?” You asked. “I’ve seen the movies. Vampires lose their shit at a bit of blood and go wild. What if you get carried away and drink too much?”

They both laugh as if you’ve told the world’s funniest joke.

“First thing to know is that it’s not like the movies” Steve tells you kindly. “I mean yeah the general stuff is there - blood drinking, no sunlight yada yada yada. But a lot is thrown in just to make movies more interesting. We’re not feral. We can control ourselves. Bucky and I don’t like to hunt humans, we think it’s uncivilised. We feed in other ways that don’t harm people - like this arrangement”.

You nod, suddenly fascinated. 

“Amongst our community and friends there are a network of human familiars, vampire enthusiasts if you like, who donate blood to our kind. That gets traded around and stops us killing people. A lot of us feel the same way. We don’t need that much blood to be fed.  So there’s no need for an animalistic display where we get carried away and kill.” Steve explained. “As long as we are feeding regularly, we are docile and harmless. Practically human”.

“No offence Doll but I doubt your blood is so good that it makes us lose all civility” Bucky added smugly, his tone mocking. 

You glared at him indignantly.

“What Bucky means is…” Steve, ever the peacekeeper, interjected. “You’re safe with us”.

You eyed them both suspiciously. 

“So you and your friends don’t hurt people…but does that mean there are vampires out there who do?”

They looked at one another.

“Yes” Steve said reluctantly. “There are less of them out there than there used to be. Most vampires understand that killing isn’t the only way. But there are some who…prefer the older traditions, shall we say”.

You flinched, the horror of that revelation sinking in.

“Hunting and killing also puts us at risk” Bucky added. “These days everyone has a high spec camera in their pocket at all times. Unless you’re somewhere very remote there’s a risk of being spotted or exposed. If you’re caught on film then the police might start asking questions, and you have to move and start over. And then you never know what kinda blood you’re drinking, if they’re sick or on drugs or something. You might underestimate their strength and get hurt in the struggle. Feeding this way is safer for us, and more reliable. Sometimes it’s better to eat at home than risk a new restaurant when you don’t know their hygiene rating”.

You grimaced at his metaphor.

“How do I know this isn’t all an elaborate ruse to keep me calm and you’re moments away from draining and killing me?”

“Well, you don’t” Bucky fired back. “You don’t know us. Don’t trust us yet. You just have to take our word for it. Or you’re free to leave”. His eyes were cold, examining you with a hint of contempt. 

You just glared right back again. Bucky was really starting to get on your nerves with that tone of his.

“Think of it this way” added Steve. “It’s a much more valuable arrangement for us to keep you alive and feed from you regularly, than feed from you once and kill you. That’s just not logical”.

You swallowed slightly, chilled at how casually he talked about the prospect of killing you. “Yeah. That’s…pragmatic I guess”.

“Do you have any more questions?” asked Steve. 

You thought for a moment, the heat from the fire making you feel a bit lightheaded. You had thousandsof questions of course. Your head was spinning with all of this information. But you couldn’t stay there all night, so you asked the most important one.

“Will…it hurt?” You asked weakly. 

Your eyes found Bucky who once again was smirking at you. God, he did that a lot. Such an ugly look for such a beautiful man. Or…not man as the case may be. You wanted to smack that patronising little smirk off his face. 

“A little” said Steve. “We won’t lie, it can be a bit painful. But it doesn’t last long. And it can be…nice”.

“Nice??” You choked. “How could sharp teeth biting into my skin possibly feel nice?”

“I can show you” Bucky purred. 

He got up from his seat and stalked towards you. You suddenly felt very small, the weak antelope who had strayed from the herd and been left in the path of a lion. His eyes glowed in the light of the fire as he made his way over to you. You could really see how tall he was now. How much bigger than you. You gulped silently, practically trembling. 

And you had never felt a thrill like it. 

“May I?” Bucky asked, gesturing you your wrist. 

You nodded dumbly, unable to believe this was really happening. Were you really willingly handing yourself over to this vampire? Were you insane? Had you suffered some sort of brain injury during the house tour?

But you didn’t feel fear. Not really. You were anxious, your stomach flipped with anticipation - but mainly you were…excited. You were drawn to Bucky like a moth to a flame in a way you couldn’t explain. It felt instinctive, base. You’d felt a similar tug towards Steve, but nothing quite like this. 

Bucky gently gripped your hand, his icy fingertips digging into your palm as he turned your wrist to face him. He pulled your sleeve down to your forearm and traced a frigid fingertip over your veins. You shuddered slightly at both the coolness and the intimacy of the act. 

He leaned over, his lips brushing your skin tenderly as he found his spot. You felt goosebumps ripple across your flesh.

“You ready?” He asked, turning to face you and check for your consent. Once again his eyes seemed to cut through you entirely, as if they were too strong for you to look directly into. 

You nodded hesitantly, then stared back down at your wrist as you waited.

Bucky moved back into position and once again his mouth rubbed along the inside of your wrist as he found where he wanted to be. His fingers wrapped around your arm, holding you in place. You realised you were holding your breath. 

And then - a sharp sting. 

Your face contorted in pain as you felt his fangs sink into your flesh. And you could really feel them. You could feel each of them as they broke the skin and forced their way into your vein below the surface. You gasped and inhaled as you tried to steady yourself, your eyes watering at the pain. It was like an electric shock through your body, pain radiated through every nerve. Bucky must’ve noticed your discomfort but didn’t stop, he just held onto your arm tighter, not letting you pull back. You'd made a terrible mistake, this was how you were going to die. You should never have trusted them...

You were just about to scream at him to get off and push him away when the strangest thing happened…

The pain was gone. There were slight aftershocks from the sting, but they were becoming fainter by the second. You could only hear a gentle suckling sound. You began to feel lightheaded and dazed, but it wasn’t unpleasant. A soft haze overcame you as you felt your eyelids droop and the rest of you go slack. Bucky’s other arm jumped up and steadied your shoulders as your body began to go limp. You slumped your head back against the couch, lost in the fog. Your mind was suddenly empty, you had no thoughts - no anxieties. You just sat there dreamily, giving yourself over. You hadn’t felt peace like it in years. You peered down at Bucky, a mass of dark hair crouched over your arm as the suckling noises continued. You looked up at Steve who just smiled at you, so you drunkenly smiled back.

“Not so bad, huh?” Steve grinned.

You couldn’t form a reply. Your eyes were so heavy now, you closed them just for a moment. 

“Doll? Doll? You still with us?” Came a voice, so rudely interrupting you. 

Your eyes flung open and you were greeted by Bucky who was watching you carefully. Your vision was bleary but you could see a tiny trail of red at the corner of his mouth. 

You looked down at your wrist, the same as it always was except now with the addition of two small puncture wounds. You stared at them with fascination before Bucky wiped at them with some of antiseptic and covered the area with a small bandage. The strange haze had now lifted and you met his eyeline once again. 

“Where do I sign?” You whispered.