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a-simp-named-slickback · 3 months

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Star-Crossed | Basim x OC | Chapter 5

The jinni's continues to torture Basim, and so are his feelings for Nashira.

TW: mental health issues. I wanted to try portray what I thought Basim’s visions would look like from a different person’s perspective.

The stars twinkled in the night sky over Anbar. At this time of night, most people had retreated into their homes, gathering around a fire and a meal with their loved ones. The smells of spices wafted through the air and took to the rooftops, where Basim and Nashira sat together.

Between them they shared a bowl of tebit, a canister of water, and of course, a pouch full of sweet juicy dates as they gazed at the stars together.

Over the course of a few months, they’d find time to share a meal and talk, much like how they’d do as youths. Though instead of studying, they spent their time talking about life. Asking and answering questions they had never considered as teenagers.

Tonight, Basim’s mind wandered away from conversation. He yawned, not having gotten much sleep in the nights before. The jinni continued its torment, both in sleep and in his waking moments. What was worse, he still had little answers for it.

Every now and again Nehal presented him with some strange tome or symbol that reminded them of the artifact they found at the Caliph’s Winter palace. Each of these strangely familiar findings left Basim with more questions than answers, and the jinni’s torment continued to take its toll every time.

He wasn’t sure how much longer he could deal with this. He needed answers soon.

“Basim?”

Hearing Nashira say his name brought him out of his thoughts.

She furrowed her brows, “Is everything alright with you?”

He nodded, “Everything’s fine.” He answered.

She placed a hand on his shoulder, “If there is something wrong, you can tell me. I’m right here.”

His eyes softened. For a moment, he contemplated telling her about the jinni, how it kept him up at night, how it haunted him in his dreams and his waking hours, and how it had done this for the majority of his life. How could he explain such a thing to her? Nashira was a woman of science, she didn’t believe in the supernatural. She’d probably write him off as crazy and have him admitted to the Bimaristan if she could.

He waved her off, “I’m fine, really,” He said, “I was just thinking.”

“About?” She pressed, giving him all her attention.

He chuckled, “I was thinking about something you had asked me before, about whether the stars controlled our fates. I realized, I never heard your answer for it.”

Nashira blinked, “You’re right,” She tapped her chin, “I suppose never did answer the question now that I think about it.”

She thought for a moment, “I think perhaps I misunderstood my father’s point of view on the subject.”

Basim tilted his head, “Explain?”

“When he said the stars controlled our fate, I assumed he meant we didn’t have free will to make our own choices in life. Naturally, I disagreed with that notion. Whether or not our actions have the intended consequences, we made those choices. Not every choice is equal, sometimes the consequences are minor, some major, but regardless we have the choice to go down a certain path or another. A parent can tell a child not to eat sweets before dinner. The child ultimately makes the decision to listen to the parent and not get what they want, or disobey them to get what they want at the expense of being punished. The parent can not control what that child does, only the child can do that for themselves.”

Basim listened intently to her as she spoke. She was making a good point.

“However, there are things that happen outside of our control,” She continued, “A natural disaster, a corrupt government, illness, death, and our paths become altered by these events. Our choices are limited to what is available to us from that point onward, though the choices presented may not be the ones we desire to have. Those events limit our free will, and it doesn’t stop there! You could be a child born to cruel parents, a person born into a poor family-”

She paused for a moment. “Or a young woman forced to marry when she does not want to…We may have the free will to choose how we act, but fate is often the determinant of the circumstances in which we make our choices. I think that is what he meant.”

Basim nodded, “I think that is quite insightful.”

She shrugged him off, “I’ve had a lot of time to think it over.”

They sat in silence as a question gnawed at Basim’s mind. Something he had wondered in his youth. Something he felt with unshakable conviction.

“Do you think certain things are meant to be?” He asked, “Like, are some things inevitable? Bound to happen regardless of circumstances?”

She raised a brow, “How do you mean?”

He leaned back on his hands, “I’m sure I was always bound to join the Hidden One’s. I was so eager to join them as a boy, that I don’t think anything could have stopped me. Or you. You’ve always been smart, and your father was a brilliant scholar. You were always meant to be an astronomer.”

Nashira hummed, “There’s a possibility but I don’t think anything is as simple as meant to be, Basim. At least, not as simple as you make it sound.”

“Oh?” He asked, “Care to argue your point?” He had a glint of mischief in his eyes, enjoying their debates.

A corner of Nashira’s mouth turned up, “Who are we to decide what is and isn’t meant to be? We aren’t omniscient beings, our viewpoint is limited to our own lives.”

“Didn’t you just say we have free will to make our own choices?” He smirked, thinking he got her.

“I also said some things are out of our control,” She held up a finger to his face, unable to stop herself from grinning as well, “Case in point, how we-”

Nashira’s grin faded suddenly.

Basim raised an eyebrow, “What is it?” he pressed, “Don’t hold your tongue, Nashira, I want to know what you think.”

“You’ll think it’s stupid.” She protested.

“If you are stupid, then I am completely hopeless,” He laughed, “Just tell me.”

“Are you sure?” She asked, still sounding unsure, “You won’t get upset?”

“I promise,” He said, waiting for her to continue.

Nashira sighed out a breath and took a moment before speaking again, “...There’s us, for example. You told me once you thought we were meant to be. Regardless if you or I believed it, that does not make it true."

Basim, taken aback at her moment of vulnerability and honesty, sat with that notion for a bit. Their once lively debate turned quiet as they sat under the stars. It was then that the feelings he kept at bay for months came bubbling to the surface. There they were, on a rooftop in Anbar, looking at the night sky together. Almost identical to the night they shared their first kiss together.

He looked at her, “I meant that, back then.” He said, holding her gaze.

His sincerity warmed her heart, “And I believed you. But if we were meant to be, well, we’d be together now.”

Basim nodded, “We are here now. That has to mean something, right?” He felt himself grow bolder as he went on, feeling himself drawn to her.

Nashira let out a shaky breath, still holding Basim’s gaze, not noticing how close they were getting to each other, “We are.” She whispered, her breath ghosting his lips that were only inches away from hers.

Slowly, hesitantly, they leaned into one another until their lips pressed in a shy kiss. The first one only lasted a few seconds, but the next one and the ones after that increased in vigor. They're hands started out locked at their sides until Basim snaked one to caress her jaw, and Nashira crept hers to the base of his neck. Their movements knocked off their respective head coverings, baring themselves to each other and the stars above.

Soon, the need for air became too much for them to ignore and they pulled away. Resting their foreheads on each other, satisfying their need to remain close to one another as they caught their breaths.

Nashira let out a shaky breath, “We can’t do this, Basim.”

Basim breathed out of his nose, “We can’t or we shouldn’t?” Those were very different things after all.

An ache grew in Nashira’s chest, “Omar will return soon.” She whispered.

“And I will go back to Alamut when my work here is done.” He sighed.

They pulled away from each other, adjusting their hood and head scarf. He should have known better; it seems, like always, Nashira was right again. He was a fool to think he could leave his feelings in the past while still maintaining a relationship with her. He was even more of a fool to think fate was on their side.

After a long silence, Basim stood up, “I should go.”

The sniffle he made almost went unnoticed by Nashira. If there were tears in his eyes, she wouldn’t know. His hood obscured any emotion he might have felt in that moment.

Her eyes blinked back tears, “Please,” She whispered, “Stay.”

He shook his head. He wanted to stay. He wanted to so badly. He knew if he did, he wouldn’t have the resolve to leave before they both did something unforgivable. Who knows what the outcome of that would be? His oath to the Hidden Ones was absolute, he’d have to uphold it. If they needed him to leave Baghdad, he’d have to do it, leaving Nashira to suffer the fallout of their actions.

He swallowed hard, “Good bye Nashira.” He said, not facing her.

Without another word, he was gone.

____________________________________________________________

Weeks later

It was dark again.

And cold.

Basim had been here before, too many times before.

The jinni used to haunt him in his sleep only, but lately…

Over these last few months, as Basim eliminated his targets, visions of the jinni haunted him while he was awake. Sometimes these manic episodes would last a few minutes, others a few hours.

This time was no different.

Basim’s eyes darted around, trying to keep his eyes on the jinni, or perhaps trying to wrest the visions away. He felt like had been walking forever, but to where he couldn’t tell.

His heart raced. His palms sweat. He clutched the front of his robes. He needed to be strong. He needed to sever his ties to the past like Master Roshan told him he needed to. He needed to let go of his life before the Hidden Ones. His father, Nehal, Jasib-

Nashira’s face flashed in his mind. Her soft eyes, her dark curls, her melodic voice whispering in his ear.

Curse him, why couldn’t he just let go of the past!

He would not be weak.

He would not be-

“Basim?”

______________________________________________________________

Nashira furrowed her brows, looking upon Basim.

She couldn't make sense of his expression. There was a wild look in his eyes as they darted everywhere, never seeming to focus on anything. He was covered in sweat and, in some places, blood, though she was confident it wasn’t his. Still, his jerky movements worried her.

He stumbled in here not too long ago, a great surprise to her who hadn’t seen him in weeks. She doubted she would see him again after that night in Anbar.

She stepped forward, “Basim?” She said his name again, hoping it would get his attention. Still, he looked around, not seeing her there right in front of him.

She tilted her head. How could he not see her?

He began hyperventilating, “Nehal?” he called out, sounding pathetic. His breath quickened like he was struggling for air. Now she was growing worried.

Nashira shook her head, “No…no it’s Nashira.” She reached out to touch him on the shoulder, only to quickly find out what a terrible idea that was when he roughly shoved her hand away.

“Stay away!” he shouted, backing away from her.

“Okay, okay!” She reassured, jumping back. Basim was much stronger than her. That made him dangerous in his current state of mind. She needed to be careful.

He grunted, clutching his head in his hands, falling to his knees, “It’s just the jinni again….just the jinni…” He said it over and over again but he wasn’t speaking to her. He was talking to himself.

What is this jinni, Nashira wondered. Was this what Basim was seeing and talking to? Was this what was making him act so erratically?

Nashira had heard stories of jinnis as a child, the same as any child in Baghdad. None of the stories spoke of jinni’s tormenting people in this way. Her father, a man of science, largely brushed off such supernatural notions as this, and she learned to do the same. Once again, Basim seemed to challenge everything she thought she understood.

Nashira crouched down, getting on his level and did what any good scientist would do. She observed him, to better understand.

“She’s not here…it’s not her…not ya habibti….” Basim choked back a cry, “I am….alone….”

Nashira had never seen Basim like this. For as long as she knew him, she never saw him break down like this. Never saw him look so…timid. His voice, usually deep and baritone, sounded so impossibly small.

How long had these spells….this jinni…been tormenting her sweet Basim?

Without thinking she reached a hand out towards him, but pulled back. What could she do? Could she really help in out of this state?

On second thought, why was she even thinking so hard about this? The longer she thought the more he’d suffer this spell. She needed to act now.

Nashira moved closer to him, carefully reaching a hand out to him. Her hand rested on his back, and relief washed over her when he did not shove her away.

Gently, she rubbed circles in his back, “It’s okay ya habibi,” She whispered, “I’m right here…you’re not alone.”

His breathing calmed down a bit. Slowly, Basim sat up from his hunched over position, coming face to face with Nashira. This time, he seemed to focus on her, at least in her direction because his stare looked as thorough as it was focused on something far away. In his vision, there was still darkness, but now there was a light shimmering in the distance. A light where her voice came pulled him to.

“Nashira?” He whimpered, praying she wasn’t just another illusion.

He sucked in a breath, feeling a soft palm cradle his face, “I’m right here, ya habibi.”

Basim leaned into her touch, the hair of his beard tickling her palm. She pushed the hood off his face so she could see him better. The dark circles under his eyes grew bigger since the last time she saw him, meaning he’d hardly slept. Or at least, his lack of sleep was growing worse than before. She assumed his lack of sleep was because of his Hidden One duties. Now she wondered if this jinni had something to do with it.

She ran her thumb along his cheek, giving him a comforting look as she did, “I’m right here, Basim. You don’t have to be scared.” Their foreheads were just inches away from each other, as if she had to show him she was right there with him.

Basim’s hand crept towards his face to cover her hand with his own, sighing at how soft it felt. She was real and in front of him, right within his reach.

His breathing slowed, the smoke cleared, and his eyes filled with light again and there she was. Her golden brown eyes staring back at him, seeing him. That both calmed and terrified him.

He crumbled into her, clutching her robes, afraid if he let go she’d vanish like smoke. He dug his face into her neck, forgetting himself around her. He felt his nerves calm when her hands carefully ran up and down his back in response.

They sat there, her holding him, him holding her, for what felt like an eternity. They had hoped as much, at least.

Before long, Nashira helped him up as best as she could. Despite his episode seeming to be over, his body was still stiff. That coupled with the dense amount of muscle he owned made it difficult for Nashira to aid him though she did so nonetheless.

“Come,” She straightened them both up, “You must rest. You look so tired…”

All Basim could do was nod in agreement, slowly making his way to the seating area Nashira led him to. There were several pillows scattered around the colorful rugs, and Basim suddenly became aware of how exhausted he was.

Nashira helped him lay down, as Basim was still shaken from what happened. She smoothed a hand over his heart, feeling it slow from her touch.

“Rest, Basim.” She said just above a whisper. Above him, glowing in the dim moonlight, Nashira looked so angelic to him. He wanted to remember every part of her face like this, bathed in moonlight under stars. That tender look in her eyes as they crinkled in the corners from her smile. The mark just above her eyebrow that danced with her expressions. He never wanted to forget her face.

When she moved to stand up, Basim wouldn’t let go of her hand, “Stay with me? Please?”

Nashira’s eyes widened, then softened, and she wordlessly laid down next to him. She wrapped her arms around his torso, laying her cheek on his back. She felt him place his hands over hers as he slowed his breathing, feeling sleep take over.

They lulled each other to sleep with their shallow breaths.

_____________________________________________________________

Basim awoke before Nashira.

It was morning, the sun just beginning to break above the minarets. The call to worship rang out in the distance. He blinked a few times from the sunlight breaking through the window, memories of the night before flooded his mind again.

He remembered the jinni, he remembered the nightmares, he remembered Nashira’s words and her touch.

I’m here, ya habibi.

His heart fluttered remembering those words. He looked down, seeing Nashira’s head resting on his chest as the sunlight shone on her hair and face. Her shallow breaths coming in and out of her nose brought a smile to his face. With his fingertips he inched his hand close to her hair to move a fallen lock awake from her forehead.

It terrified him that she knew now, about the jinni, about the nightmares…he still dreaded having to explain the extent of them. Despite seeing him in his worst state, she still just saw Basim. That alone made him feel safe being vulnerable. He hadn’t felt that in so long, not with the life he led now. Such a thing would usually see his demise.

Then he remembered where he was: laying in the arms of a married woman. A married woman whose entire life would go to ruin if she were caught in such a situation with a man other than her husband, regardless of the innocence of their interaction.

He slithered out of her grasp, hoping to make it to the window without waking her. He quickly pulled up his hood and began gathering his things.

He swallowed hard. What on earth was he thinking? He knew better than to come her. Pursuing this, pursuing her again would only cause more trouble for her. She had a life, a husband, and her passion to think of. He couldn’t risk ruining that for her. He wouldn’t. She deserved all the world had to offer and he wouldn’t get in the way of that.

As he made his way to the window, he heard a shuffle on the rug behind him.

"You're leaving?"

He gasped, looking back to see Nashira fully awake on the rug where they slept.

He hung his head, "...Yes." He muttered, memories of the night before flashing in his mind. He did not want to see the look of pity on her face.

Nashira shook her head, "No, please. Stay." She pleaded with him, "I don't want you to leave. Not again."

She got up from where she lay and slowly made her way to him, trying to get him to look at her, though his eyes seemed glued to the ground when she stood in front of him.

She took one of his hands in hers, "Do you remember what happened?"

Basim reluctantly nodded.

"How long has this been going on for?" She asked again.

He sighed, "As long as I can remember."

Nashira's eyes widened, "You have been suffering with these nightmares for that long?"

He finally looked up from the ground, nodding.

He didn't see pity in her eyes, instead, there was a deep sense of compassion there, and he suddenly felt stupid for thinking she'd be judgmental.

She furrowed her brows, "I knew there was something wrong but I never wanted to push you to say anything." she hung her head, remembering how torn up he looked when he arrived to her observatory, "Perhaps I should have..."

He shook his head, "No, no, I didn't want you to find out this way," He lifted her chin up, "Please do not blame yourself."

"Why didn't you want me to know?" She asked?

Basim shrugged his shoulders, "How could I expect you to understand something I can not even make sense of?"

Nashira's eyes grew sad as she listened to him speak.

"Ana majnun. A madman." he continued, "I've tried so hard to deal with them, to let go of the past, but I can't...I am sorry I burdened you with all of this...I'm sorry I never told you."

Nashira squeezed his hand, "Do not apologize. Being there for you has never felt like a burden.” She caressed his beard in her hand, “And you are not the only one who can't let go of the past."

Basim’s eyes softened as he held her gaze. He pulled her in for a hug, holding tight as if she’d go up in smoke if he let go. But she wouldn’t. She was real, and she was right there with him.

"No more secrets between us, ya habibi." she whispered in his ear, “You asked me once before if I loved Omar. I don’t. I love you, Basim.”

Basim swallowed hard as they pulled away, deciding to throw caution to the wind, "I love you too, Nashira. I never stopped."

Nashira's heart fluttered from his words. Regardless of what fate had in mind for them, she made the decision right then and there: She would chose Basim one hundred times over. Madman or not, nothing would stop her from loving him wholeheartedly.

Her hand gently guided him to her, pressing their lips together. His arms snakes around her waist. His kiss was as sweet and tender as she remembered, and all the others that followed after. Basim kissed her back like he couldn’t get close enough to her, like he’d wake up and realize this was all a dream.

They pulled apart, resting their foreheads together.

“Turqburni, Nashira.” His thumbs drew circles in the fabric of her robes on her back.

Nashira brought her arms around his shoulders, pulling him in for another deep kiss.

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Author’s Note: Tuqburni is an endearment phrase in Arabic that roughly translates to “you bury me.” According to my research, the idea behind the phrase is that the person loves someone so much, they’d rather die and be buried than live without their partner.

#assassins creed mirage #assassins creed #basim ibn ishaq #ac mirage #basim #basim ibn is’haq #basim x oc #assassins creed fanfiction

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seoness · 11 months

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hey!! so i had a request: if the idea is interesting to you, how would the hound feel about falling for a powerful nobleman/monarch (maybe essosi?) who's chronically ill & has facial/body disfigurements from a birth defect?

sorry if this is too specific!! i've just been wondering how the hound would feel about essos & royalty and that big cultural gap, and i'm a self-indulgent (and disabled) hag who wants to hear about him having a disabled man as a partner, lol. whether you take this request or not, i love your writing, especially your characterization of sandor! keep up the good work!!

(Sandor Clegane x male!reader) Hi, if this was meant as a request for a fic then just holler at me again and I'll add you to the waiting list. Planning on plowing through them on my vacation. 🤗 Otherwise, here are my thoughts and rambles. Thank you for your kind words! Apologies for any spelling or grammatical errors, I'm trying to be less pedantic.

I just had to draw him acclimated to his new home. Relaxing and having a snack. I dunno what the dude's eating. A large plum? A red onion?

Let's begin with the setting:

We alter his canon. The Hound never became the Hound... well, not Joffrey's. Let the Lannisters have Gregor, there is gold to be had elsewhere. He's heard the tales. Listened as sailors regaled of spice merchants that could rival the riches within Casterly Rock, of princes, magistrates, and emperors worshiped as gods beyond the Jade Sea. One of them will have the need for good steel. As long as his master can point and his purse is full, they need not share the same tongue, Sandor's sword will speak for him. One of those many spice merchants, princes, magistrates, and emperors will be you.

How would it start?

Slowly. Regardless if he's aware and accepting of his bisexuality, he's not some fool desperate to lose his maidenhead. Especially if you're in control of the coin that pays for his wants and needs. His view of you will not be one that is kind. His world is a cruel one, and the life he's lived has been no different. In canon, Sandor tells Sansa (while joking about a traumatized and raped Lollys Stokeworth):

"...if you can't protect yourself, die and get out of the way of those who can..."

This is not a man that is considerate or empathetic by nature, which can be refreshing in its own right. He'll not eagerly bite the hands that feed him, but neither will he lie and say you didn't avoid his views on a technicality. It isn't your strong arms and steel that protect you. It is gold, and that gold has bought you his. This mindset applies to a wide spectrum of illnesses, ailments, disfigurement (that hinder physical performance), and disabilities. Sandor will wonder if you wanted his services because of his burn, that you see it like some sort of brotherhood. He'll not be completely open to the notion that you are clever enough to not pass on a good swordsman based on appearance. That you can see what more there is to Sandor Clegane than his scar and perhaps you hope he can show the same courtesy.

He won't.

Not at first. Your collaboration together will surround work and only work. You point, and the Hound goes. Sandor will start to pick up words here and there in your tongue. He knows and understands more than he lets on, but dislikes the chuckles whenever he speaks with a heavy Westerosi accent. The armor of dark plate will slowly switch to layered fabrics, chainmail, and pieces of plating (rather than a full set of plate). The once pale skin will darken under the Eastern sun. In Westeros, Sandor despised the showmanship of knights, but there is an honesty to how the Essosi deal with their gold and silk. It's not to boast of valor or honor, it is simple. Wealth. Gone are the comparing of lineages and legends of long-dead men, in Essos gold is everything.

As Sandor begins to adapt to his new surroundings, it won't be lost on the man that it's mostly due to you. You put down the time to explain your customs to him, you are the one ordering the many learned men to tutor your sellsword and you are the one that teaches the Hound what rules can be broken and which will cost him his head. Sandor isn't blind and he isn't ungrateful. His work is no longer a means to pay for his enjoyment, but something that brings him fulfillment in and of itself. He starts to devote time to learning more about you, your interests, and your past.

A good shield knows the one it guards.

That excuse will serve him well for a time. It's when his concern starts to shift that the man no longer can lie to himself. He can protect you from any danger heading your way. A madman with an axe, some assassins here and there, but the struggles that are your own? He knows shit about it. If the gods were true they sure as hells had no intention for him to be a maester.

Sod off

Sandor won't ask about it. He still doesn't want the reason for your friendship to be the brotherhood of the scarred and maimed. Your struggles are yours, his are his. There's no help in stealing the others. His growing care for you will show as the opposite, he'll ask less and seem more distant as you talk. The Hound will become more solitary overall, your servants tell you that he's stopped his usual route to the brothels. Sandor knows he should leave Essos. Gregor has lived for far too long. He'll pack once or twice, try and muster the will to tell you that he's leaving.

More excuses. The rest of your guard is too weak. Didn't that merchant give you an odd look at the last feast? Best stay a little longer, just until you're safe. If pressed too much during this period, the Hound might very well bite the hand that feeds him. He'd like the excuse of being sent away.

Sparks and relationship

When this strange friendship changes to romance is hard to say. He'll not be sober when he makes any deeper feelings known. A blunder. Something Sandor planned to keep his mouth shut about until he died. As a relationship begins to form between you, his support will grow into new areas. If someone rubs you the wrong way, he'll make a note and whisper an insult in your ear. He'll do that too many that trouble you. It's not a brotherhood, but he knows just how annoying it is to be surrounded by whispers and fleeting looks.

Sandor would have found joy in Essos, in your service, and unlike in his homeland, he would have been open that you were the man that he loved... you would have protected him from the hardships that await him.

#sandor clegane #sandor clegane x reader

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farfromstrange · 5 months

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Foreigner's God: Chapter 55

Main Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Pairing: Matt Murdock x OFC

Chapter Summary: She moves back in with Tony, Pepper and Happy at Avengers Compound. Her decision to prioritize her recovery over the man she loves weighs heavy on her shoulders, and now she has to push through. The question is just, will it help or will it further break her (and possibly Matt, too)?

Warnings: ANGST, mentions of addiction, mental illness, therapy, lots of crying, Eliza's POV

Word Count: 5.8k

A/n: And I am back! I am so sorry for the long ass hiatus and irregular updates, but I have really struggled with this series. It took me longer than usual to write this chapter, so the next ones will also be coming very irregularly until I've figured out how to make my vision come to life. I just wanted to set the scene for this new storyline with this chapter. There's going to be more plot in the future. I just had to start somewhere.

Read Chapter 55: Why am I like this? here on AO3!

The Avengers Compound had become a foreign place to her. She never thought she would move back to where it all began. The most defining years of her life held their roots in those four walls.

When Eliza first stepped through the door, she contemplated whether or not she had made the right choice. Leaving Matt had left a gaping hole in her chest.

Things weren’t moving forward and she was losing herself. She couldn’t risk hurting him again the same way she had before. Her last relapse had to remain the last. Her heart was heavy, but sometimes, she remembered Natasha telling her, it is necessary to choose yourself.

“Ah,” Tony greeted her with open arms when she arrived, “The prodigal daughter returns!”

Eliza rolled her eyes, but a soft, exhausted smile still found its way to her lips regardless. “Hey,” she greeted him back.

Pepper stood next to him. She looked almost relieved to see her again, and unlike Tony, she didn’t care much about her personal space. Her arms wrapped around her, engulfing her in a bone-crushing hug.

“Welcome back,” her breath tickled her ear, her voice remaining barely above a whisper. “We missed you around here,” she said.

She expected to hear that. Nothing was the same without you. That sentence alone felt too much like standard practice for her to take it seriously, but Eliza forced a smile nonetheless. Pepper never did anything wrong. She couldn’t help who she was, and she didn’t want her to change either. It offered a welcome distraction.

It was only a temporary fix, she kept telling herself. A temporary solution to resolve a bigger problem. She had a disease and her own fair share of trauma, but it could be managed. She had to be open. She had to allow others to help her. And she had to put herself first for once in her life.

Setting foot into her old room for the first time proved to be… strange, to say the least. She walked right into a wall of nostalgia. It twisted in her chest, wrapping its greedy claws around her heart and pulling—hard.

The bed had been neatly made by someone who cared about her and her comfort, most probably Pepper. The clothes she had left before she moved out lay on the mattress. Neatly folded with a few of her favorite chocolates on top. She let out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding.

She remembered all the tears she shed in that very bed. The times she had laughed with Natasha by her side, painting her nails and hoping, praying, that it would last. It didn’t. It was never meant to last. The family she’d once had broke apart and she found herself standing in the ashes of what once had been with bare feet and broken glass.

Eliza's fingertips grazed the surface of the dresser, tracing over the faint marks she'd left behind—signs of a past that was simultaneously too distant and painfully recent. Tattoos of a life she had long left behind.

She carried the reminders of her past on her skin every day, but skin isn’t the only organ capable of holding scars. A home can suffer and inflict scars the same way the human body does, it’s just never as obvious.

Her eyes lingered on the framed photo of her friends—her family—their faces frozen in a moment when they believed they could conquer anything. They won once; back then, they believed if they could save New York City from an army of aliens, they could do anything. They could survive anything. Tony formed and shaped an amazing team of misfits who had never considered working together before. One day, one unfortunate event, and they became a family.

Eliza hesitated before unfolding the pile of clothes. She ran her fingers over the familiar texture of the fabric. She didn’t remember the last time she consciously thought about what she was going to wear or what impression she would make on the people around her. It had been a while since she cared about anything other than surviving—a while since family had still somewhat mattered.

It had all turned into a scrambled mess where priorities no longer remained straight.

The door creaked open. “Hey,” Happy poked his head in, “Need anything?” he asked.

She wasn’t sure how to answer that. “Just… time,” she said, offering a small, appreciative smile. Happy nodded, but he didn’t move from his spot in the doorframe.

He took a deep breath. A beat of silence followed, and then, “In case I haven’t told you before, I’m really glad you’re here, kid.”

“Thank you.”

He had told her that before, but it didn’t hurt to hear it again.

“I know it wasn’t an easy choice to make, but I think… I think you made the right one. You deserve a break. And this place is your home. You’re always welcome here. We love you,” he said.

His words sounded distant. She could hear him, but she struggled to believe him. If she’d truly made the right choice, why was it hurting so much? It was her choice. She knew what she was getting herself into. Or maybe, just maybe, she didn’t.

This time, when she didn’t answer, Happy pushed himself off the door frame. He left her without another word. He told her everything he could, and she was well aware that there was nothing Happy wouldn’t do for her. Right now though, she needed peace. Nothing more.

Once the door shut behind him, she inhaled a deep breath.

Eliza had packed her bags with what little belonged to her. It wasn’t much. She left more of her heart behind than her belongings, and perhaps her scent that still lingered in the walls of Matt’s apartment.

While packing, she had made sure to sneak one of Matt’s shirts into her luggage. It smelled like him, and she needed something to remind her that he was still real. That he was still there, even if he wasn’t directly by her side.

Being wise, making the right choice—being a human being with feelings proved to be so much harder than she expected.

The need to make her guilt so much worse rose from the ashes of her tendency to self-destruct. That tendency was a phoenix, and it would never truly die, no matter how many times she set it on fire to get rid of it. There was no way out of the spiral except for her to play along with it.

As she stared out of the windows of her room in the now-empty Avengers Compound, the tears relentlessly began to burn their way out of her eyes.

She clung to the necklace around her neck, Matt’s initial on the puzzle piece that represented their love. She never took it off, not even to shower. She promised him as much when he gifted it to her. He was a part of her, and the necklace was proof of that.

Her fingers traced the delicate Braille on the pendant. Thanks to him, she knew what it meant. She knew a few things now. She remembered the alphabet, but reading it was different. He had tried to teach her once, but she got distracted by his fingers stroking over the paper, and then they never continued.

Thanks to Matt, the world started looking differently. She started viewing it differently. She no longer only relied on her sight but on the other four senses as well, sometimes even more than that. He taught her what it was like to laugh again, to smile, and to actually mean it. He made everything a little lighter. He made her forget.

But, and she had to remind herself of that, forgetting isn’t dealing with the problem at hand, and she could no longer just forget. She had to work through her issues. Matt made life and the suffering linked to it a little easier, but she had taken the bliss that came with it for granted. The bliss of ignorance, so to speak. She ignored the warning signs, and she might have caused permanent damage to herself.

There was no time, she kept telling herself. There was no time to focus on herself with everything going on around her. After meeting Matt, she found a piece of herself that had long gotten lost. She found the thrill in the chase again. In the process, she found herself and who she truly was. She found her past. She pushed through it. Perhaps she pushed a little too much.

Recovery is a process that the affected person needs to be okay with, something they need to want, but Eliza pushed it all aside in the hopes that Matt’s love would magically turn her okay, that it would turn her normal; she had been foolish to think that love could heal all her emotional wounds, and that just a little therapy that she way too often neglected could fix her, and now her foolishness was coming to bite her in the ass.

Leaving Matt behind though was one of the hardest things she ever had to do.

It all happened so fast yet passed by in slow-motion. Only a few hours ago, she had still been in his arms. Now, she was alone. And the moment she stepped through the door of his apartment and left remained ingrained in her mind, probably forever. She wasn’t sure if she would ever not feel guilty about it. She shattered his heart. It had been so obvious even though he tried to hide it, and she blamed herself for doing it. The pain was eating her alive.

Her eyes closed and the last minutes at Matt’s apartment replayed over and over again like a bad movie.

Eliza woke up with him by her side, but that very feeling of relief washed over into emptiness. She was exhausted, tired beyond compare, while Matt’s chest had never felt more alive with the pain that seemed to burn through every muscle and every fiber of his being. He had to listen to her heavy breaths as she packed everything she kept in his apartment, and the sound alone made him want to scratch his eyes out.

It tainted his heart and his mind. Hell seemed so close yet so far away. This had to be a cruel cycle concocted by God himself to make him suffer for all that he did because it wasn’t fair. The world wasn’t fair.

Eliza dropped her bags on the dining table. The nagging feeling she harbored inside was a mixture of guilt and shame. She only hesitantly looked up to meet his eyes. She wished to be able to take back what she said or what they did the night before, but she couldn’t.

They both knew that giving in for the sake of not being apart was no way to approach this. In the end, they were both masochists.

He cleared his throat into the thick silence that hung over their heads, ready to bring the knife down on them. “Uh, did you pack your hairbrush?” Matt swallowed the lump in his throat. “It’s just that… well, you always forget your hairbrush,” he said.

She nodded. “First thing I packed.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah,” she said.

He reached for the orange capsule on the fridge. “Don’t forget your pills.”

Their fingers brushed when Matt handed the medication to her. Electricity coursed through her veins. She took the capsule only to set it down and take his hand in hers. “I’m sorry,” was all Eliza could whisper back to him.

“Stop apologizing,” he said.

“I feel like I have to.”

“No, you have nothing to apologize for.”

Matt tugged her closer, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. She squeezed his hand. He could feel her pulse drumming against his sensitive skin.

“I love you,” he leaned down, his lips ghosting over her forehead, “and that won’t ever change.”

She leaned into the kiss. “I love you too.”

He held her steady with his hand on the back of her head. The world didn’t have anything on her. She couldn’t deny that she was safest in his arms and that anything beyond that seemed impossible to master without him, but that was precisely the problem.

She was dependent on him and by doing so, she forced him into a state of co-dependency because he felt responsible for her. He cared, sometimes too much. She couldn’t blame him. She had often enough posed a danger to herself in the past. Their relationship was anything but healthy. They kept continuously hurting each other. Eliza couldn’t do that to him anymore. Matt deserved a chance to heal just as much as she did, possibly even more. She wasn’t doing this to be selfish; she was doing it for him.

The ringing of the doorbell broke them apart, followed by a soft knock. With a heavy heart, Eliza grabbed her bags. Happy greeted them at the door. He looked happy, relieved almost. She was coming home, something he had never thought possible ever since she first moved out of the compound into her apartment.

The second her name had popped up on Tony’s phone, they knew something was wrong. She had told them that she needed a place to stay, a support system, a chance to work through all that happened, rekindle old relationships, and simply get the therapy she needed in a secluded space that was far away from the mess she came out of. She couldn’t control everything at once, no matter how hard she tried. The chaos she used to control became a distraction.

Tony saw it as an opportunity to fix their relationship in person, and Happy was simply happy that she chose to ask for help instead of running herself to the ground again. He couldn’t bear losing her.

When he saw Matt’s pained expression though, he felt bad. He had become somewhat of a friend to him, someone he talked to from time to time, someone who loved Eliza even more dearly than anyone else in her life, it seemed, and Happy was endlessly grateful to him.

But Eliza made her decision and she usually got what she wanted, even though this time her decision was a plausible one and the people around her had never been more willing to get her what she wanted.

Happy took the bags from her. He took a few steps back, leaving the couple room to say goodbye. It was the least he could do.

Standing in the doorway, Eliza took Matt’s hand again. His grip grew impossibly tight. He snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her flush against his chest. There was a hickey on her throat that pulsated from the night before. He had marked her up well enough to last for a few days, but it was only a small victory that felt less like something positive now than something he dreaded.

The blood rushed under her skin. Her heart thudded relentlessly against her ribs. The hesitation in her eyes was evident even to him, and he wanted nothing more than to pull her back into the apartment and lock the door.

“I’ll come back,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She tried to convince them both, it seemed. “I promise, I’ll come back.”

He sniffled, pressing his forehead against hers. He breathed her in. She showered with his body wash again, and even washed her hair with his shampoo. The clothes were undoubtedly hers, but the scents that mixed on her skin with the memory of the intimacy of the night before overwhelmed him.

“You have to let me go, Matt.”

“I know,” he choked out, “I just don’t want to.”

She caught one of his tears with her finger. “I’m gonna miss you.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”

“I wish things weren’t as fucked up as they are so I could stay, but I can’t…”

“I know,” he shushed her. “I know, sweetheart. It’s okay. I’m not blaming you.”

Eliza swallowed the sob that lay on her tongue. She stood on her tiptoes and captured his lips in a bruising kiss.

She pulled away after a moment. As she caught her breath, she looked into his teary eyes with tears of her own. “You have to let me go, Matt,” Eliza repeated.

His head dropped into the crook of her neck. Matt made a sound of disapproval.

The sniffle didn’t go unnoticed, and he smelled the salt in the air. “Please, baby,” she said again. “Don’t make it harder than it already is.”

Her words fell on deaf ears. Ears that were overwhelmed along with his other senses. Matt was tied to the stake and being burned alive. At least that was how it felt to him. Letting her go, his mind told him, was a death sentence to everything he had grown to hold so dear. He was afraid of losing her.

The sob rolling off of Matt’s lips got muffled through the fabric of her shirt.

“Let me go,” she stroked a hand through his hair, trying to pull him back, “Please.”

His grip tightened around her waist. “I can’t,” he said.

“You have to,” she repeated. “You have to let me go, Matthew.” Her voice grew more stern, even though the softness remained. She tried her hardest not to let the tears win.

Matt continued hiding his face in her neck. He wasn’t sure what he expected his pathetic attempt to stop her from leaving would bring him, but there was something about her warmth that made him feel like he couldn’t live without it, so he could not, for the life of him, let her go. It was impossible.

He was paralyzed, his fingers stiff as they dug into her hips through the shirt she was wearing. Her heart heaved with sobs and he wanted nothing more than to make her feel better. He could fix her, he just needed her to stay. The thought kept rolling like a defective movie tape, and it drove him further into the river of insanity. Or, it felt like insanity, anyway.

He couldn’t fix her. There was nothing to fix, only to heal, and he wasn’t strong enough for the both of them. He was broken too, and that was no place for her to get better. He would drive her into doing things she wasn’t stable enough for over and over again, and then he would lose her. Permanently.

She pressed her lips against his ear. “I’m gonna be okay, I promise. We’re gonna be okay, but I have to go. You know I have to go. So please, let me go. Just let me go.”

The pleading tone of her voice gave him the last push and he fell off the cliff to his certain death. He pulled away, his hands still resting on her waist, but he wasn’t holding onto her anymore.

Eliza reached out to wipe his tears. “I love you, Matthew,” she breathed.

“Yeah,” he sniffled, “I love you too.”

She chose not to say much more. Their hands remained entwined until she was too far away for their arms to keep up, and then their connection faded away.

Her heartbeat disappeared into the distance. She took his heart with her, leaving him with a gaping hole in his chest, but the pain was nothing compared to the weight of the world on his shoulders. She left and as the door closed, his colorful world soon turned to gray.

Eliza threw one last look over her shoulder, then got into the car. Happy asked her if she was okay, but she waved him off. “Just drive,” she said.

And he drove away.

Eliza sniffled. The memory was like a fresh wound that kept reopening every time she as much as thought about him. The tears cascaded down her cheeks with no intention of stopping.

She slid the pendant back into the cleavage of her shirt, making sure it would stay hidden from curious eyes. “No,” she whispered to herself. It hurt too much to think even more about it.

She needed hope. Hope kept her going. Even if it was slowly dying, it gave her a purpose. It gave her something to look forward to—something worth fighting for. Matt was worth fighting for. She left him when he needed her the most, so now she had to get better to take that role back as soon as she could. The way she had been before, she was of no use to him or Daredevil.

Daredevil needed his Angel, after all, but she was in no shape to be her alter ego right now. Loss of control, in her case, could prove fatal. She wasn’t going to risk that either.

The agreement she made with Tony for her recovery was clear. She would move back into the compound, she would work for him, and let him keep her occupied, and she had to go to therapy two times a week for two full hours at the compound with Mrs. Darcy.

Eliza wasn’t allowed to leave the premises without an escort. It brought her back to her first relapse all those years ago after she had gotten clean. This time, she only came terrifyingly close, but that was enough to require drastic measures. She was unstable, that much was true. She brought this isolation upon herself by agreeing to forego inpatient treatment for someplace that felt a little more like home.

She was starting to regret that decision now.

No contact with Matt, no vigilante duties, and besides the occasional training sessions, she wasn’t allowed to use her powers in any capacity to protect both herself and the people around her until she was more in control of her mind again.

Her fingers itched, but Eliza knew she was in no place to do anything with it without seriously putting the people around her at risk. While her mental health deteriorated, her powers grew stronger, which made them unpredictable. She used what little common sense she had left to justify the decisions and make it easier—to no avail.

She thought back to when Stephen Strange tried to lock her away in his castle to control what she was born with. He hadn’t come back since, but she didn’t trust the peace. He let her go. For someone so afraid of what she could do, he was awfully quiet now. At least at the compound, she was safe. No one other than Matt and Foggy needed to know about the encounter.

Her mind felt scrambled with all the different thoughts and memories that started to come back up in the quiet of her old room. The nostalgia threatened to suffocate her. She agreed to a treatment plan that was almost the same as if she had taken herself to the psych ward; somehow the familiar space turned into a noose in the few hours she had already been there, and Eliza slowly began to worry about whether or not she had made the right decision by upending her life and coming here.

How was she supposed to stay away from the man she loved? How was she supposed to go without a phone call or a text now that her electronic devices had been sophisticated? And how was she supposed to learn how to live a normal life if she found herself secluded from that life? She knew that she needed control to stay sober, but it didn’t seem fair that everyone agreed to keep her away from civilization on her own until two weeks had passed, at least.

But she was in a bad place, she could admit that. And people in a bad place don’t always know what is best for them.

Looking down at her shaking fingers, she balled them into a fist. Her lips pursed. The cravings didn’t stop with a change of scenery. They didn’t even fully go away with sex. They were relentless little bastards.

She went to Josie’s that night, and she didn’t take the drink she ordered because she remembered what she promised when she first went clean weeks ago, but she was so close—too close. And the cravings remained. They were there and they were painfully prominent.

She could still feel Viktor’s blood on her skin. She could hear the shots in the back of her head. She could feel the air leaving her lungs, the panic attack, and the sirens of the ambulance as she was taken away. She almost got justice for what had been done to her and so many other little girls and the Punisher took that opportunity away from her.

Viktor had deserved to suffer. In the end, he died, and death was too kind for a man like him.

Part of Eliza wondered if her powers could turn back time. Stephen Strange had the time stone. She felt connected to it, most likely because of her blood, but maybe she could manipulate reality in a way that would bring Viktor back and finally allow her to do what she had wanted to do all along.

She couldn’t go there. She couldn’t allow herself to lose control after admitting that she needed help to regain the very control she had lost before. She was losing herself, and it was starting to catch up with her. It made her bitter. It made her dangerous.

Eliza found herself at a crossroads with no sense of direction. Not anymore.

“You’re shaking,” Mrs. Darcy observed.

Almost a full day had passed since she arrived back home, and she had already lost all track of time. This appointment with Mrs. Darcy felt like torture of the highest order.

She felt so alone, so isolated, so misunderstood—all because the one person who knew her better than anyone in this world wasn’t around.

“I know you’ve been through a lot. And this decision surely wasn’t easy. Leaving the man you love, coming back here, deciding to focus on you,” she said. “I mean, for someone who’s been through hell and back without ever actively asking for help yourself, this was a brave first step toward full recovery. But I also know why you did it.”

Eliza’s nostrils flared as she took a deep breath in. Her lungs felt so heavy. Every muscle in her body was straining against nothing at all. She didn’t want to see it because withdrawal happens after a relapse and she hadn’t relapsed, but this was as close to withdrawal as it could get. She felt humiliated by her own body, which, in turn, made her mind turn on herself.

Mrs. Darcy sighed, scuffling her notes around. She was just about to say something when Eliza opened her dry lips to speak.

“I was ready to throw it all away for that one shot of tequila,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Because… because I felt so stuck. I feel… I am stuck. Nothing was going the way I wanted it to. I couldn’t find answers. I couldn’t… I couldn’t find the person that took my chance at getting justice and now… I made it impossible for myself ‘cause I’m stuck here. I… I’m just so stuck.”

Her arms wrapped around her legs and she hugged them tight to her chest.

Mrs. Darcy nodded, putting her notebook aside for a moment. “Are you having cravings right now?” she asked. “For drugs? For a drink?”

In response, she only shrugged, but her shaky hands were already a big indication of the truth. “I wanted to feel nothing, even if just for a moment,” Eliza admitted. “I guess I still do. A bit.”

“I take that as a yes.”

“So what if I am?” That came out snappier than she intended. She squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, I just…”

She was having a hard time adjusting to a life she had been so used to before. A life that wasn’t a life but a mere existence. All of her life, she had been on the run, and now that she was stuck, it somehow still felt like it, with the only difference being that she was running in one place now with nowhere else to go. And that was significantly worse than being on the run from her past.

Facing it meant pain, and she hated what it did to her. She hated this godforsaken mess that she had become. Would it ever end in anything other than a disaster?

Mrs. Darcy silently reached into her bag. She was always so understanding. She didn’t judge, she simply took her word for it and tried to help while still being honest.

Eliza watched as her therapist pulled out a small package she knew all too well, and she placed it before her on the conference table. Sunlight fell on it. She met her eyes.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“A little something to help with the cravings,” said Mrs. Darcy.

“Revia?”

She nodded. “Revia.”

Naltrexone.

Eliza's eyes lingered on the small package. “Revia,” she repeated. She knew it was a tool, a means to an end. The internal conflict raged on, and at that moment, the wariness in her eyes spoke volumes.

Mrs. Darcy slid the package closer. “Now, it’s not a cure. You know that as well as I do. It's an addition to your support system. And it will take some of the strain off your body that your mind is putting on you.”

She traced the outline of the medication with trembling fingers. “I know that,” she whispered.

“I know we’ve been down this road before, but since you want to get better now…” Mrs. Darcy gave her a supportive smile. “I think we’re on a good path here, and a little help can’t hurt. I need you present if you want to do this. I need you alive.”

She had a choice: to confront the demons within or succumb to the numbing embrace of substances. The weight of that decision weighed heavily on her shoulders.

“I’m not weak,” Eliza whispered again, more to herself than to the woman before her.

She wasn’t weak. The words repeated like a mantra in the screen of her brain.

“No one said you were,” Mrs. Darcy answered. “Strength lies in acknowledging your vulnerabilities. I told you that before.”

After a moment of silence, Eliza took a deep breath. She hesitantly reached for the package. It was a silent agreement. She didn’t have the words to say it out loud.

A bitter chuckle passed her lips. “I feel like I'm running in circles,” she said.

“You’re breaking unhealthy patterns that became your survival instinct. No one said that doing this over and over again would be easy, but eventually, you will heal. Trauma is cruel, addiction is cruel, and your circumstances pose a whole ‘nother obstacle we’ve found ourselves faced with time and time again. No one is pressuring you into doing this other than yourself; that is what it takes.” Mrs. Darcy finished by filling her a glass of water. “Now, take your pills,” she told her. “We will go from there.”

Eliza sighed. “You’re very bossy, you know that, right?”

“It’s my job.”

“Is that why you never gave up on me? Or is it the money?”

“Believe it or not, I like you, Eliza,” Mrs. Darcy said. “It’s that easy. You deserve to have someone take a chance on you. Or two. Or how many more you might need.”

The words felt like a thousand needles drilling through her skin into her most sensitive nerves. Her head ached a little at the prospect of this woman wanting to help her simply because she believed in her. Tony paid her good money. It was easier to blame it on that than think, just for a moment, that she was worth it. Worth taking a chance on. Worth more than what she told herself she was.

Matt loved her and he cared, but his feelings made him feel obligated to be there for her. Mrs. Darcy had no personal connection to her and yet, she stuck around for years. It was a lot to wrap her head around.

A tear slid down her cheek. Eliza furiously wiped it away, angry at herself for letting this get to her. “I…” Her mind was in shambles. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

“Just accept it,” the woman said.

She made it sound so simple, but accepting love and care and not turning it into unwanted pity was hard for her. She never trusted peace, she never trusted love because, in the past, it had always been bound to conditions. Who was to say that it wasn’t the case with the people in her life now?

She was overthinking. Her body burned brighter than the sun. This feeling of vulnerability kept eating her alive. Almost as if in a rush, Eliza reached for the package. She tried to take it slow, but her hands shook in the process of getting the pills out. She took one, not more, and popped it into her mouth. She downed it with the glass of water Mrs. Darcy offered her.

Part of her imagined that it was Oxy she was taking and that the shaking would go away as soon as this flesh-eating pain in her soul went away, but she knew better. Revia tricks the body, not the mind.

Mrs. Darcy’s smile turned triumphant. She picked her notebook back up, clicking the pen a few times. “Are you ready to talk now?” she asked. “Really talk?”

Eliza opened her mouth to object, but she quickly changed the course of her thinking. She let out a heavy sigh. “What do you wanna know?” she retorted.

“How about everything?”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

She wasn’t sure if she liked what that insinuated, considering she had shared her life story with her before, but Eliza had no choice.

If Mrs. Darcy wanted to know everything, she had to tell her everything. There was no more use in lying now, anyway. Her soul lay open, bleeding out. That was her only way to survive. And she promised Matt to fight, so she would fight. For him.

For herself.

But mostly for him.

Tag List: @acharliecoxedfan @gpenguin666 @linamarr @mattkinsella @norestfortheshelbywicked @schneeflocky @yarrystyleeza @merlinbtch

#matt murdock #daredevil #matt murdock x ofc #matt murdock x original character #matt murdock angst #matt murdock x original female character #matt murdock x oc #matt murdock fic #daredevil fic #original female character #foreigner's god #matt murdock imagines #charlie cox

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myel-stress-wd · 7 months

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Hello, I want to discuss something with you regarding your post about Spain being a “father figure” to your Mexico and how this is not a very good take.

- You do realize that Cortez’s brief stay in Tenochtitlán, while “pacifist” was the beginning of what would be one of the most disgusting acts of violence against the Mexica peoples and later lead to the colonization of Mexico? Cortez and his men where later ran out during “Noche Triste” where they had to retreat and join forces with the Tlaxcalans, Otomi and several other tribes who where on bad terms with the Mexica just to sack and burn Tenochtitlán.

- Making your Mexico Spain’s kid (regardless of whether or not they’re biologically related) is unintentionally romanticizing the colonization and brutality the Spanish committed against the Mexica peoples. I’m not denying the Spanish influence Mexico has, I’m Mexican myself. I’m simply saying that colonialism shouldn’t be romanticized.

If you want me to elaborate on any of these points I will do so gladly. I mean no ill towards you, I simply want you to maybe take another look at how you write these character’s relationship.

I don't know why it won't let me publish it in Spanish… but here I'm going to put images of what it says in Spanish and if you want, you can read the English translation at the end!

~~~~~~

Here is the English translation!

I'm not a fluent English speaker but I try to use it for the community on Tumblr! <3

Hello buddy from Mexico, I'm from Mexico too! I totally understand everything you are saying, but I wanted to make the explanation in Spanish so you could understand me in the best way.

Luis at the time of the conquest, he was less than 200 years old when he was born/appeared in the territory of Tenochtitlan, but his presence was important for the consolidation of what would later become "New Spain". Well, I take Antonio/Spain, to be the father figure of my Mexico because to begin with Luis was physically and mentally between 5 - 7 years old when the territory was taken, he was present at the murder of Moctezuma's offspring, but as you may notice he was just a little boy, what he did was to suppress the terrible and bloody memories about the bad times during the Spanish occupation of Mexico.

There are children who do not remember parts of their childhood, partly because as you get older your memory goes through a process of erasure from an early age, but with Luis he blocked out the experiences in reaction to prevent such a traumatic event from driving him mad. Antonio sheltered him in his arms and obviously he, not having overcome the mourning of his first father figure, sought desperately to cling to a new one with whom he would associate all the good and his new care.

In my interpretation I have 2 more Mexicans! Teresa is the South of Mexico and Mateo plays the North. None of the 3 share the same age nor the same experience of the invasion.

Luis would have been between 5-7 years old, Teresa between 9 -11 and Mateo is the youngest as the northern territory itself was not very populated, he had physical and mental years between 2 - 4 years old. Teresa was the most "mature" of the three and she and Mateo share the idea that Antonio was an invader, someone who took away their original home, but all three were born to be the representation of New Spain and later of the Mexican territory!

And as I have said before, Luis represents the centre of Mexico, the part with much more European influence than the north or south of the same country (not to say that there is no European influence in these parts. There are many cathedrals and government buildings in the centres of our states that have a colonial style!), but historically, Mexico did not stop pursuing the idea of "being like Europe" until 1921, a little more than 100 years ago.

A piece of information I heard in a podcast called "the true history of Mexico", by a Mexican historian and psychologist called Francisco Mendoza, he talked about the American invasion, in one of the chapters he explained that there was a president of Mexico who was so terrified by the idea of Mexico disappearing and decided to make a proposal to send a letter to Spain and ask them to send a prince, Obviously this person was removed from power, but I don't doubt that Luis could have been someone who supported the idea, because he lived all that time with the father figure attachment he gave to Antonio/Spain. His brothers later gave him a good beating for that, but he could have been the one behind the idea.

Even later, when the Austrian emperor arrived from France some time later, Luis received him with enormous affection and affection, and how could he not? He did a lot of good things for the Mexican people even though they didn't know about it because they couldn't read or write, and later the Ministry of Public Education (SEP in Mexico) itself had to take some of the many writings that Maximilian of Habsburg was going to propose to form the educational system that we have!

Also, in the Porfiriato itself, there were many buildings influenced by French architecture, such as the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Historically speaking, Mexico did not stop chasing Europe until after the Mexican Revolution, and nowadays the city centre still has a lot of European influence. We ourselves are the product of years of miscegenation.

I never meant to imply that the actions taken by the Spanish Empire in Mexico Tenochtitlan were good! I just want to make it clear that Luis was a child when all this happened and his attachment to Antonio came from the trauma of a loss at an early age. If you want me to explain more about my interpretation of my children you can ask me again and I will answer calmly! ✨

#hetalia #aph mexico #latin hetalia #hws mexico #oc #aph spain #hws spain #antonio fernandez carriedo #luis hernández

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voidspacecowboy · 3 months

Text

15 Questions + 15 Friends

Thanks @shinraalpha for the tag :)

Are you named after anyone?

According to my mum, I share a name with a character in an Australian soap opera, who she thought was cool and took no shit and was the type of person she wanted her daughter to grow up to be. (Which is good, because if my dad had had his way I'd have been named Siobhan, after Siobhan Fahey from Bananarama)

When was the last time you cried?

It's actually been like three whole days! Which is my longest streak of not-crying so far in 2024. It's a real bad time rn folks.

Do you have kids?

God no. Respect to those who do but it is literally my worst nightmare

What sports do you play/have you played?

I ride horses, and I used to be a total jock in school (before all the chronic illnesses happened). I played tennis, rounders, hockey, netball, football, occasionally cricket when the mood arose. I also rock climb sometimes, though arguably that's mostly to hang out with friends. I wish I had the capacity to play more sports, but the universe said no

Do you use sarcasm?

Arguably I don't use anything but

What is the first thing you notice about people?

It varies, but I'm somewhat faceblind and also not a particularly observant person, so usually just whatever is most distinctive - a cool hat, snazzy glasses, an interesting voice, fun hair.

What's your eye color?

Green, that can look grey in some lights and then REALLY green in others.

Scary movies or happy endings?

I'm a sucker for a happy ending and I'm not sorry

Any talents?

Arguably I'm a talented writer, though I am less convinced by that with every passing month ;_____; I'm also pretty decent with horses. I probably have other talents, but mostly I'm too tired to cultivate any of them these days.

Where were you born?

This feels like a data-mining question. But I have zero emotional attachment to the city I was born in, and have only visited a handful of times.

What are your hobbies?

Does an ongoing existential crisis count as a hobby? Other than that, horses, reading, writing, watching a lot of Youtube and TV. I'm learning to crochet right now which is pretty fun, and I used to cosplay, though I haven't in a few years and I miss sewing, so I'd like to get back into making clothes somehow.

Do you have any pets

Not currently. Our family dog passed back in October, and we aren't quite ready for a new one yet. But it is my dream to have an absolute menagerie one day.

How tall are you?

5ft6 or thereabouts

Favorite subject in school?

I was a maths/physics nerd in school, though I wasn't really 'in school' for most of my school career.

Dream job?

I have a thousand dream jobs for a thousand opportunities I never took, but right now my dream job would be for someone to pay me so much money to write my silly little stories that I never need to worry about whether I can support myself without the help of my parents. Or to live in a society that supports people regardless of their contribution to this capitalist hellhole we reside in. Just let me sleep I'm so tired.

Tagging?

@youreonmyrunway, @aceraleigh, @mitchway, @galadriel1010, anyone else who wants to answer questions, go nuts <3

#tag game #personal

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cf56 · 1 year

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Hi again, I’m the previous anon. Thanks for the reply. I didn’t mean to cause any negative emotions. I think it’s as simple as I disagree and our views are very different. Which is fine! No ill will to you or anyone else who interprets them similarly. When I see lines like “worst sibling” in WARner Games, or other interactions that come off mean (like Yakko straight up smacking Wakko in Suspended Animation after Wakko tries to open the water tower with his head) to me it all boils down to not taking them that seriously. We’re not meant to take the two self proclaimed “best siblings” at face value when they say that. In fact I feel like you could take it a step further into ironic territory because Wakko seems to be the favorite Warner sibling amongst a majority of fans (at least newer fans). But regardless. The show is meant to be silly, fun, and full of banter. I feel confident when I say it is not meant to cause intensely negative feelings to those highly invested. I say this as someone who is also extremely invested. That’s why the WARner Games segment dialogue doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb to me. I don’t listen to that and think that they mean “worst sibling” with their whole chests and want Wakko to feel bad. And Dot’s unenthused remark about Wakko being alive is exactly the same. It’s not meant to be taken that seriously. Of course she wouldn’t wish death on him. It would be extremely out of left field for her to say it and mean it. But it’s very clear that she doesn’t. I know not all siblings share this dynamic as you said, but that is very textbook sibling banter in my opinion, especially for them in the reboot. On the note of Wakko taking everything literally and the dialogue being mean spirited because of that, I don’t believe we’re meant to analyze their dialogue that way. I do not believe the writers would go out of their way to write an exchange that is meant to subliminally be malicious to Wakko and the way he thinks. Nor would they expect fans to analyze the show that way. This is a largely surface-level comedy show. Looking into things too deeply isn’t the intent. (Again, I say this as someone who likes to do exactly that) I feel like the point about Yakko being the oldest and having responsibilities to his siblings strays closer to popular fanon interpretations. It doesn’t really reflect his actions in the reboot, save for maybe some lines of dialogue? And certainly not to the extent that we see in Wakko’s Wish (which is where I assume a large portion of the fanon inerpretation comes from). I feel like the simplest explanation is likely the right one. That it was just sibling banter that didn’t land right with some people. I don’t believe anything malicious was meant towards Wakko with it. You bringing up dynamics where this is typical, and how siblings within it would know you’re joking, I feel like that is what’s going on. And that is what we’re supposed to read out of the way the Warners interact with one another. We have no reason to believe the couch discussion is a serious one, or that they didn’t mean what they were saying. Anything aside from that would seem uncharacteristically convoluted by this show’s standards. Thanks for taking the time to read and talk about this, have a good day/night

Hello again! I'll start by saying that I don't hold any ill-will towards you and I never believed you held any towards me. I always welcome healthy debate, and I know it takes courage to go up to someone with a platform and try to challenge them on something. Almost like walking into the lion's den. That said, I obviously feel very passionate about this subject, and I'm going to defend my viewpoint on it just as passionately.

"We’re not meant to take the two self proclaimed 'best siblings' at face value when they say that."

Do you know how the original show avoided provoking any such debate about whether we're supposed to take it at face value? They didn't write such lines in at all, sarcastic or not.

"I feel confident when I say it is not meant to cause intensely negative feelings to those highly invested."

I don't actually believe that these lines were intentionally written to cause negative feelings in the fans. I think what they were going for is what you're saying- I just think it was executed spectacularly poorly, to the point that it does come off as more meanspirited than silly.

"I don’t listen to that and think that they mean 'worst sibling' with their whole chests and want Wakko to feel bad."

What puts it over the top for me is the wording and the tone. How Yakko hesitates at first before casually proclaiming Wakko to be the worst sibling, as if these are his actual true thoughts that he had been hiding this whole time. How he says he's "always" thought this would work better as a two-hander, again, casually.

"It would be extremely out of left field for her to say it and mean it."

I agree.

"But it’s very clear that she doesn’t."

I disagree. I don't think she was intended to come off as meaning it. However, I think the way she said it, through a double-layer of sarcasm, doesn't serve to make her true feelings very clear. Keep in mind that, for them, the prospect of suddenly losing animation and being written out of the show is an actual real way you can die.

The way she so readily fantasized about Wakko being gone from their group doesn't sit well with me either. Such a thing should literally be impossible to imagine for a Warner.

"that is very textbook sibling banter in my opinion, especially for them in the reboot."

I can't really think of any other dialogue in the reboot that matches this. If there was, I would have freaked out about it a long time ago.

"On the note of Wakko taking everything literally and the dialogue being mean spirited because of that, I don’t believe we’re meant to analyze their dialogue that way."

It doesn't take very deep analysis to be aware of one of Wakko's primary character traits. He's always relied on his siblings to do a little of his thinking for him. This is true in the reboot, too. Even though he's technically the middle child, to me it doesn't feel much different than if two older siblings were teasing their much younger little sibling. They have a responsibility to know better.

Another of Wakko's character traits is that he's insecure about his popularity compared to his siblings. This is something that was shown on-screen in the original. You can say I'm not supposed to look that deeply into it, but what am I supposed to do? Just forget what I saw and know to be true about Wakko? Animaniacs has always been a fandom that has way-too-deep analysis going on, all the way back to the 90's. When taking on the task of writing a reboot, it was the writers' responsibility to know these things about their characters and expect that the fans wouldn't simply forget about character traits and feelings that had already been explicitly shown.

"I do not believe the writers would go out of their way to write an exchange that is meant to subliminally be malicious to Wakko and the way he thinks."

What they did go out of their way to do is make it so Wakko didn't hear it. Why would they do that unless they were at least subconsciously aware that he logically wouldn't react well to it?

"I feel like the point about Yakko being the oldest and having responsibilities to his siblings strays closer to popular fanon interpretations."

From the official show bible of the original Animaniacs:

"You bringing up dynamics where this is typical, and how siblings within it would know you’re joking, I feel like that is what’s going on. And that is what we’re supposed to read out of the way the Warners interact with one another."

You do realize that, in the very same episode, Wakko actually calls out Yakko for picking on him? So clearly Wakko isn't okay with it, and this isn't what he expects out of his siblings. That call out was only in response to the relatively tame teasing about his scent, not the much worse teasing that he luckily didn't hear at the beginning of the segment.

I'll ask the same question I asked in my first response to you- if this is just what the Warner Siblings expect out of each other, why is all the serious teasing directed at only Wakko? Where's Yakko teasing Dot? Where's Wakko teasing either of his siblings in return?

"We have no reason to believe the couch discussion is a serious one, or that they didn’t mean what they were saying."

Well, one reason is the way they delivered the lines. I hate to go after the voice actors at all for something ultimately on the writers, but I didn't feel like the way they said the lines was particularly sarcastic-sounding. Yakko's apology to Wakko later sounded more sarcastic to me than these lines did.

"Anything aside from that would seem uncharacteristically convoluted by this show’s standards."

It's not really about deep intentions or a hidden agenda by the writers. It's about misunderstanding the intended Warner sibling dynamic so badly that they would write something so horribly out of character that it feels like it violates the relationship the Warners were previously known to have. This isn't something I had to think deeply about and analyze for a day before deciding it wasn't fitting dialogue for the Warners. This is something that shocked me to the core literally the first instant I read it, paraphrased in text in a Tumblr post. I knew instantly that it was wrong.

"Thanks for taking the time to read and talk about this, have a good day/night"

You too. :)

#animaniacs #animaniacs reboot #animaniacs 2020 #animaniacs season 3 #animaniacs episode 8 #animaniacs spoilers #answered ask #the warner siblings #yakko wakko and dot #cfposts

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script-a-world · 1 year

Text

Submitted via Google Form:

How can I create species with varied diets (taking into account both required nutrition and chosen habits, i.e. vegetarian or high protein for a bodybuilder) With food on earth, we know what kind of nutrition is in what food, but what species actually need seem to be all over the place. I can never tell whether other species don't need a certain nutrition or if they get it from non foods. Sure, I can make it all up give them whatever diet/food strikes my fancy including odd stuff, but it would be difficult to include storylines of malnourishment or anything regarding a deep dive into nutrition.

Tex: Before all of our fancy scientific equipment used to measure things like calories and mineral content, we mostly just made educated guesses on what people were craving in various situations - the more people document what, say, a heavily fevered person want to eat (when they do have an appetite), the larger the pool of available data is for physicians and regular people to discuss on what the best course of action is. To follow the example, this is where “feed a fever, starve a cold” comes from; a fevered person is heavily dehydrated so broth with salt in it alleviates that.

To address another point of your concerns, not all nutrition comes from the consumption of organic matter - or at least, humans haven’t optimized everything as such. A lot of minerals are best suited in water rather than some bitter vegetables or even blood (but even that has exceptions based on local adaptation to one’s environment). Vitamin D, which is not necessarily considered a vitamin at all (Wikipedia), is synthesized for use by exposure to sunlight.

I think a nutritional profile is going to require a baseline regardless of what an individual chooses to do with their body, be it medical recommendation, personal desire, or vocational expression, given the assumption that they’re all the same species and thus generally of the same biological requirements (i.e. carbon-based).

How much protein does an adult member of your species need per day based upon a given age range in order to get minimum nutrition? What about carbohydrates? Vitamins, minerals? Fats? How do they metabolize, in general and under desired constraints such as high physical activity versus low physical activity? How much of this is impacted by what’s actually available in terms of flora and fauna in their environment? Do they perform agriculture and sedentarism in their society? Do they trade with others from different ecological niches? What are typical cravings in standardized situations?

Wootzel: Perhaps this is a question you’ve already answered for yourself, but since you didn’t strongly mention it in the ask, I’m going to question your intentions a bit! Friendly-like, of course.

Why is it that you want detailed nutritional needs for your species to show up in your world? Are your plots heavily focused on cuisine? Is it an important plot point for a character to become ill due to a nutritional deficiency, and/or for characters to struggle to share food because they are vastly different species?

I ask because I honestly can’t think of a reason that having all of this information plotted out would improve your story, and I want to offer at least a brief caution against overloading your story with scientific worldbuilding to the point that you lose readers who don’t want to wade through it. Unless you’re writing for a very niche audience who are just fascinated by nutrition in speculative biology (which is fine, if you are!), you’ll probably use, at most, 2% of your nutritional information in your final project without making it feel shoehorned in. You could certainly include a plot about malnourishment and a character falling sick because they’re missing important nutrients, mention what those nutrients are, and have literally zero other nutritional details; most audiences wouldn’t bat an eye about the lack of detailed context.

That aside, here are a few things that might help you get your nutritional variances off the ground.

You mentioned that life on Earth has huge variation in diet but that species’ needs “seem all over the place”, so here’s some information that might help demystify that stuff. This is a tumblr post talking about why pigeons have the dietary needs that they do, and it gets into some general information on why different species need specific diets in order to be able to digest them correctly. It isn’t in depth, but this information might give you a jumping-off point to researching what structures an animal will have if it has a particular diet.

Another major factor is toxins. Earth plants have evolved a huge variety of toxins, and the species that eat them have evolved to avoid those toxins in a variety of ways. On earth, Humans are very good at being able to ignore lots of different toxins, and it’s not unrealistic to expect that sapient species from other planets would evolve to be good at using all kinds of different food sources as well, since food abundance is a huge factor in the evolution of high intelligence. We can eat things like avocados, garlic, and chocolate, which could kill a lot of our pets!

If you have a specific dietary situation in mind and/or more details about your world, feel free to ask again with more details (use the submit feature or the google form linked on our blog if you need extra space for information). We can work best with a narrow idea of what your end goal is.

Wootzel’s wholesale note: Just to note, because you mentioned vegetarians and bodybuilders, that you should avoid insinuating that a character's diet is predictable because of their lifestyle. While those aren't bad examples of lifestyle factors that influence diet choices, remember that there could be dozens of factors in a person's life that could result in different dietary choices. Also, that there are vegetarian bodybuilders.

#google submitted #nutrition #species

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elytrafemme · 1 year

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i’m gonna be real with you, i’ve saw like maybe two or three origins streams ;-; ooo, i would like to hear about them whenever if you’d like!! and if you don’t want them to to public or anything, you can always dm if you want to! gosh, i love headcanons, feel free to come to me and tell me about them anytime you wanna :D

poetry is so nice. i used to write poetry sometimes when i was in really bad moments of mental health stuff, so most of my poetry is really triggering probably. i totally understand you with feeling like characters are living and breathing people, i feel that so much. i had an oc who i adored some years ago and haven’t touched on her since those years ago. unfortunate, i miss her so much (her name is june btw). i miss writing, it’s one of the only things i’ve ever truly shared and created because i used to be good at it, but now i think i’ve lost a lot of that. the last thing i wrote was a short c!ranboo poem that i posted a few months ago (i think). and i completely get you, makes total sense. i think writing in that way is really nice

oh? that’s cool then! i don’t know if you remember, but someone asked you a bit ago what names you’d pick for cs!tubbo if his name wasn’t tubbo, and i can’t remember if that was on anon or not (i think it was, and that was me actually. so we have cs!tubbo and cs!ranboo, haha. mhm, i get you, but i wanted to! because the fic is genuinely so fucking incredible and i wanted to add to the lovely community for it, but turns out it was a guy in my brain. i haven’t seen her in a while…. she’s incredibly mentally ill so she’s weary of being around. but if i see them anytime soon, i’ll let him know you said that. i’m sure they would appreciate that. oh no, she’s fine with it. one of the names he goes by actually is mare, because of you, so i’m very positive they’re comfortable with being associated with you and everything? also please let me know if her using a name of yours makes you uncomfortable, he wouldn’t like to make you uncomfortable :]

HELLO I AM SO SORRY I AM REPLYING SO LATE hope you are well <3

i don't have all the energy atm to explain my full headcanons but basically i had a fic AU set in a modern, non-fantastical universe where the osmp cast lived in this smaller quaint town and eventually o!Ranboo left to move into the city after a natural disaster event happened in the other town and caused her some trauma. her relationships are generally strained but are better with some people than others but inevitably she is able to find her way home. there's more to it than that but that was my idea hehe

poetry is so so so fucking healing seriously, and honestly like! any kind of writing is so important to keep regardless of whether it fits on this metric of "good/bad", like. it's coming from the heart and your experiences and these characters that you connect to (june sounds lovely by the way, <3) and that's what's most important. i've had to give myself a lot of grace with cough syrup about whether or not i was writing it perfectly because, yeah, the first couple of chapters are objectively on the shittier end compared to the rest of the fic. but what matters is that it conveyed what i wanted it to, and it gave me a way to spend that summer, and it meant a lot to me.

i hope this isn't uncomfortable to say but the fact that your csranboo uses the name mare because of me makes me like, tear up a little. and yes, i remember that anon! i find it so interesting how many people have asked me about alternate names i'd give the characters for purposes of fictives because to be entirely honest i am so ungodly shitty with names that every time i flounder LMAO, but it's very sweet that people ask me haha . also tell your cstubbo i say hello as well , there are many brain guys in this community too and i think that's realy neat honestly

#nightmare.ask #nightmare.fave #honestly i used to have issues with people having the same first name as me like. it'd freak me out #but like i feel like in this case that's not really paranoia inducing that's just really sweet #i hope fellow mare is doing well/better

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corelliaxdreaming · 2 years

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Dear Yuletide Author

First of all, thank you for writing something for me! Regardless of whether or not you take into account anything in this letter, I’m bound to love whatever you come up with. (Also, apologies for, as always, taking an age to get this written. :/)

General likes: I’m not super picky it comes to fic: I’ll enjoy anything from the most tooth-rotting fluff to the most soul-rending angst, any rating at all. My number one always is hurt/comfort, especially of the emotional variety. If someone is crying and someone is cuddling them (literally or figuratively), I’m a very happy reader. Being an anxiety sufferer myself, I also have a soft spot for seeing characters dealing with mental illness stuff, anxiety and depression particularly, especially if their partner/partners are there being super supportive and helping them through it, even if they don’t always quite understand or get it right. Any kind of porn with feelings also never goes amiss. I'm aromantic asexual and in a queerplatonic relationship, so any aromantic spectrum and/or asexual spectrum characters and/or characters in qpps make me luminously happy.

DNWs: Pretty much anything goes; I have no real triggers or squicks to speak of. I’d prefer not to see any noncon/cheating/violence/etc between the actual main pairings/relationships, but if you want to include those things elsewhere, that’s fine. Also please steer clear of any amatonormative tropes/compulsory sexuality/aphobia or any kind.

For any of my requests, feel free to use whichever characters you want – you don’t have to include them all – and to bring in any characters that weren’t nominated (by me or in general). In a few of these, I'm going to mention characters not nominated for Yuletide at all, and I know I can't officially request those, so it's more of pie-in-the-sky, if you happen to be interested thing. Crossovers are also welcome.

As for the fandoms specifically…

Fire & Blood - George R. R. Martin Requested characters - Aegon III Targaryen, Jaehaera Targaryen, Rhaenys Targaryen (Sister of Aegon I), Rhaena Targaryen (Daughter of Aenys I)

I went hard on the ASOIAF background stuff after I started watching HOTD. Anything that expands on any of these less-seen characters would be great, and I'll give a few ideas. (I'm also totally down with any incest you want to write here, since that's the norm. Also canon age difference, but please keep anything with underage characters non-explicit.) Feel free to include any canon from the ASOIAF series proper, The Worlds of Ice and Fire, but I'd prefer you stick to book canon rather than including any HOTD/GOT exclusive stuff/changes.

Aegon III and Jaehaera. These children have been through so much and been so screwed up by it at such a young age! I'd love anything that addresses this, especially if it's them getting to know each other and sharing and kind of working through their trauma together. Jaehaera lies AUs welcome! Romantic or gen.

(TW: suicide) On the other hand, feel free to hit the angst hard with these two. They are super messed up, after all. If you touch on Jaehaera's death, I prefer it is a suicide rather than a murder. I dunno how, but it just seems somehow nominally less awful and tragic that way.

Rhaenys. More about her please! Maybe details on what exactly happened with her death in Dorne? Maybe she did survive the initial fall, and what happened afterward? I'm a big fan of mutual poly Aegon/Visenya/Rhaenys. Also Rhaenys lives AU would be good!

Rhaena. Basically, let her be happy for five damn minutes! And queer!! I'd prefer to see her written as bi/pan/etc, since she is canonically involved with her brother and seems genuinely interested in him before her later female lovers. Oh! Speaking of that, would adore seeing her get bloody, bloody revenge on Androw Farman rather than him "escaping."

We Are A Picturesque Small Town And We Refuse To Be The Setting For Your RomCom (McSweeney’s)

I just love the aromantic vibes this one gives off with all the townspeople being so fed up with romance. If this in fact a town full of arospecs? Perhaps someone comes there looking for romance and finds about this other way of living. Or perhaps a "couple" (or moresome) from the town follows the steps of one of those stereotypical romance storylines, but they're really in a platonic/queerplatonic relationship?

On the other hand, I can see this turning Twilight Zone-esque. Perhaps there literally can't be romance past the borders of the town. How and why? What happens if someone with romantic feelings enters? (If you choose this, please be careful not to make it arophobic. For example, no insisting/inferring that not having their romance in their live is inherently sad/pathetic/unfulfilling/etc for every single person.)

In either case, it would be super fun to see appearances of some of the little details like the specific businesses (especially the combo ones) and literal holidays mentioned in the piece.

Mystery Flesh Pit National Park - Trevor Roberts This was just brought to my attention by my brother, and I haven't read very much of it. Don't worry about any spoilers, though. (But if you have favorites posts/directly reference any, links would be nice. :) I don't have much specific for this other than that I'm very interested in whatever the big incident was that shut the part down. (No clue how much of this is actually revealed in "canon," so go wild.) I also find the amalgamations fascinating and horrifying. It strikes me that this could easily cross over with SCP (admittedly another fandom I'm not terribly familiar with, but same freedoms as above reply) if that happens to be something you're interesting in. Otherwise, just whatever set in this world!

Sleep No More - Punchdrunk No real specific prompts for this one. Sleep No More is just so unique, and I absolutely love the sort of spooky/mysterious/I dunno exactly how to describe it vibes. If you can manage to capture that, that would be fantastic. As for some ideas...anything meta would be great. The characters actually being caught in loops and in a certain place and knowing it. Maybe an OC that goes into the show (if you want to keep it a literal show, or just wherever it is) and either just observes or actually manages to interact with the character/s and change things? Maybe the characters know the audience is there but just can't actually interact with no, no matter how much they might want to?

Cookie Clicker Nothing specific here either, but I amused it was a choice as I've been playing it a lot lately. Really anything goes. As for some random ideas... Any based on the horror of the Grandmapocalypse. Or maybe something based on one of the headlines? A lot of the upgrade descriptions are food for thought as well.

Unpacking (Video Game) It's been awhile since I played, but I just find the whole thing so delightful. It's just a cute, relaxing, fun game, and I'm amazed by how this format manages to tell a story like it does. Anything goes for fic, though bi/man MC, please, as we see she is involved with both a man and a woman. Bonus points for including any of the actual objects from the game, especially the ones MC carries with her throughout her life like the cup and stuffed pig.

#yuletide #...I did not proofread this

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ghoulpoole · 3 months

Text

My Coming Out Letter

For All Trans People from Abusive Households

CONTENT WARNING: Familial abuse and Transphobia. Abusive situations are described with vague detail. Specific transphobic beliefs are described.

Potentially triggering material is colored red to warn readers. Please be kind to yourself and proceed with care.

One year ago, I came out to my dad as a trans woman. He was one of the last people I came out to. It took a long time because it was clear to me that I couldn't be real with him about my identity without having an honest discussion about abuse and trauma. I also knew that in so doing, I would be cutting ties whether I wanted to or not, because he has a narcissistic personality and feels deeply threatened by people naming and opposing his behavior. This letter is deeply personal. But I am posting it here for other trans people in the virtual void who are ensnared in abuse by a loved one. I was lucky to disentangle myself and have enough physical and psychic distance from my father to make this choice. So reader, regardless of whether you share my trauma, my luck, or my gender, I hope this letter gives you strength. I hope you feel as powerful reading it as I did writing it. I hope you feel the vast fear and relief of overcoming something massive, powerful, and frightening. Like climbing a mountain, or getting out of bed in the morning. To protect the privacy of all involved, names and identifying information have been removed. Because I'm an incurable perfectionist, I have done some editing after that fact. But rest assured, the message and content are the same as the paper letter I mailed one year ago.

Dear Dad,

I am a transgender individual. You already have some ideas about what that means. Here’s what it means to me.

My gender identity doesn't align with the sex that identified me when I was born. I never felt like a man or a boy. The way our culture expects a man to dress, feel, think, talk, and move has never felt like it fit me.

I feel feminine. I use this word carefully because I don't feel like my gender fits neatly in the label ‘man’ or ‘woman’. But I find that the idea of the feminine fits. Feminine clothes feel more comfortable to me. My feelings, thoughts, and speech all feel more woman-like than man-like.

To me, being transgender means existing in the way that feels right for me, instead of pretending to behave like a man to fit in with the dominant, gendered culture.

I know this does not fit your ideas about what it means to be transgender. I have heard you say many times that being transgender is a mental illness. That being trans is unnatural and something that needs to be fixed.

I know what you hear on Fox News. You hear that transgender surgery is genital mutilation. That transgender people are a national epidemic. That “transgenderism” harms women and kids.

I invite you to consider the implications of your beliefs:

If you believe transgender individuals are sick, you think I am sick.

If you believe transgender individuals are unnatural, you think I am unnatural.

If you believe transgender individuals need to be fixed, you think I need to be fixed.

With these implications in mind: do you want to commit to these beliefs? If you do, then it is not safe for me to be in relationship with you. This is why I am coming out to you in a letter - for my own safety.

I hope that you choose not to commit to these beliefs, or at least, to question them. I want to have a relationship with you where I can be honest about who I am.

You claim to value individuality, honesty, and personal integrity. By coming out, I am choosing honesty, integrity, and individuality. By being trans, I am living these values. I hope that you can live these values too by accepting me for who I am.

Now, there are some practicalities.

I prefer different non-gendered third-person pronouns ("they/them") or feminine pronouns ("she/her") to refer to me. I am undergoing Hormone Replacement Therapy and pursuing gender-affirming surgeries to help my body better match the gender I live. And, I have legally changed my first, middle, and last name.

This is where I get to the hardest part of the letter because the decision to change my name are entangled with trauma that I need to share with you.

Since coming out, I have been remembering things I tried to forget. Old memories and feelings from childhood that are every bit as frightening now as they were 15 to 20 years ago.

These experiences were traumatic. I didn’t know have a name for how these times felt as child. But now, I do. It was trauma that came from abuse.

When I was a child, I regularly felt unsafe, trapped and manipulated. So often, I hid in my bedroom trying and failing to block out what you said and did to other members of our family. You would tell me these things had nothing to do with me. I felt helpless. I can’t count how many memories I have of crying my eyes out over the course of eighteen years.

The tragic thing is that somebody who was supposed to give me care and love made me feel so helpless.

I have had so much therapy to process how these experiences impact my mental health and adult relationships. I am still working through it.

I don’t tell you this just because I want you to feel bad, or even necessarily to hold you accountable. I tell you this I want you to know how I feel. We can't have a functional relationship if you don't honest-to-god know where I am coming from and who I really am.

But mostly, I tell you this for my sake. I have tried to rationalize this trauma, to excuse it, to discount it, and even to ignore it. But I can’t ignore it any longer, and I won’t let it go unspoken.

That’s why I changed my name. Changing it liberates me from experiences that did me so much harm. It sets me free.

So what now?

If we are going to be in relationship with each other, it needs to be a relationship where I feel safe and respected.

I tend to think about relationships as agreements. So, if we can agree to the following:

Using my correct name; Using my preferred third-person pronouns; Respecting my transgender identity; and Never raising your voice at me under any circumstances,

then I will maintain a relationship with you.

I invite you to consider these conditions and whether you can accept them. For my part, I will give you the same safety and respect I am asking you to give me.

I'm laying down these strict boundaries because I want to have a relationship with you. To do that, I need our relationship to be safe for me. I will not tolerate any abusive behavior. If you cannot agree to these conditions, I cannot be in contact with you.

I hope that this letter is not an ending of our relationship, but an opportunity for you to to grow and change.

I have spent two years understanding my gender and coming out at various times and places. Each time I came out in a part of my life, that part got so much better. I hope that by coming out in our relationship, it can get so much better, too.

I love you.

ghoulpoole

#transgender #coming out #trauma

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blakkbirde · 2 years

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Epilogue

Last time, I had mentioned a voice. This voice is much like the one that I followed when first beginning my ancestry work. To be honest, this voice I think is me, or my soul. It’s wiser than me, tells me when someone visits, and even has a part in my relationship with The Creator.

This was the voice came after the incident. It was a relief as I had thought everything would be taken from me. Instead, it brought me closer to myself and has helped me stay in tune with myself.

Since the event, I realized that my gift was taken, it was merely tempered. I could not see my house, that stayed true. It was much later when I was visited by my great grandmother, someone I had never met, that it became clear only those associated with my house that could not visit. Since then, friends and family of my house have sent messages from them, providing some comfort.

During this time I’ve also gotten closer to The Creator. I’ve been taught lessons and given visions, stuff that has blown my mind. I’ve gone back to church, lengthened my meditation time, and have continued to improve. I’ve already made peace with the thought that this all might be accidents coinciding together. Luckily due to my illness, my brain get’s checked, so it’s definitely not that. I like to think that regardless of the source of all this, I’m becoming the type of person I’m pretty proud of.

Just as I was told to write all this down and share it, so too have I been told that it must end here. I must say I’m a little sad about it, as writing this all down let me get it off my chest and I feel like I haven’t said nearly enough. I liked it, despite being absolutely embarrassed the whole time. At the very least, I hope you were entertained by my tirades. At most, I hope you might believe that something crazy and extraordinary happened to me, and you know that if it happened to me, something similar can happen to you. Either way, The Creator is behind it all, my wish is for you to see that. The same entity that allowed me the bad trip in front of my housemates so I could move home, where I’ve seen signs I really wish I could share with you, is the same Creator that cares and wants to connect to you. I know the church is the last thing on people’s minds right now (it was the same for me), as well as the religion proclaiming a god that looks only like a certain demographic and seems to care more about how you’ve sinned than how you’re hurting and trying your best. But please listen. If you open yourself and just stop analyzing and thinking about the drudgery of life we’ve all made for ourselves, you will find yourself sitting quietly in a corner of your mind. And you’ll find that there is something bigger, much bigger than even what we think of as the Christian god sitting up in heaven looking down on us. That’s putting The Creator in a box we can understand, thereby cutting off pieces and parts of the being. It’s like only seeing a puppet without thinking about the arm moving the puppet. The Creator is all the things we think, but The Creator is also funny and connected to death and magnificently huge that you breathing is you brushing up against The Creator’s cloak.

Whether or not you believe that something like the end times is coming, I’m sure you've seen how messed up the world has gotten. Why not give what I’m saying a shot? Why not call to that force beyond our comprehension and see if there’s an answer? Everything’s falling apart already.

What is there to lose?

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ihatebnha · 2 years

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There's waayyy too much pressure on people that write for free on here. I won't say it's all from people that only read because a ton of it seems to be self inflicted pressure maybe because as people we want to keep chasing that high we felt when something really popped off OR we only see value in our work if other people do. But like - not everything (even if you do everything "right") is going to pop off. If someone's main focus is to get notes (which seems to be a lot naturally ofc) then yes you want to appeal to the masses. If you veer off then yes there will be a dip *but* at times that dip will go away because new people will have filled in.

It's just unfortunate because so many people joined to express their interest and now what? Holding back?? For what?! People will either read whats in front of them or and go find the content they want in the sea of blogs that is Tumblr and that has nothing to do with you. And not to mention "readers" (in quotes because "readers" and "writers" is such a silly divide when people should be encouraged to do both) change interests too. There will always be someone that wants to read what you write. Numbers can get to people's heads when it comes to followers or interactions but also last time I checked Tumblr isn't sponsoring a single person in this lil community. In cliche words, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. A post gets 100 notes and not 1000? Your boss isn't going to come to you asking why you didn't hit those numbers. Your followers aren't paying you so if you want to switch it up go for it. And again with the pressure thing, just because you write a Dabi piece doesn't mean you have to be a Dabi blog now lol I mean unless you want to. Heck one day you might decide to write something for side character 10 from half a scene (stares in beefy tired cop from mha) in a no name anime just to get it off your chest and that's totally fine. *sigh* That was a lot and idk if it made sense but basically give yourself the grace to express yourself in your own space.

A lot going on here so I apologize if I don't address it all. Also apologies because I was out when you sent this and couldn't respond.

I think... for the most part, you're right on the mark about most things. Writers sharing any content at all is such a good, good thing, right? But like you said, there's also tons of self-inflicted pressure to do well as well as a shift in views... so even though I agree that people shouldn't base their work's worth on notes... what's being talked about here is how people are craving the old amount of interaction vs. new amount of interaction.

(And not just for singular pieces, but overall. Even if someone is chasing the high of one specific thing that popped off... there is still a noticeable difference between how that occurs now in comparison to when the community was "booming" per se.)

I actually wrote a lot more in response to this that I ended up deleting... but basically the distinction here is just between craving notes specifically... and craving the appreciation of those like-minded to you... similar to how much easier it was to find them a year ago.

Besides, though I don't want to invalidate what you said, much of the making content process DOES rely on talking to other people... so creating a space (a blog, such as mine) for both writers + readers means both honoring that dynamic by creating some form of interaction between sides. Not just through notes... which niche stuff does get, but also... comments, reblobs + asks... which is much rarer when it comes to what isn't popular (Bakugo) and are what people are talking about when they complain about topics like this.

Combine that with the fact that the sea of tumblr blogs is now HARDER to use and more concentrated with people who don't use it the same way WE use it/used to use it (AKA, the people who just want one specific thing)... it's not even the lack of notes that people struggle with, but rather, just the fact that, in a way, things are a lot different now. Before, there were places you could go to celebrate broad niches (such as DC, villains + etc)... now it's just... be popular already or post Bakugo or flop as a blog.

And if you want blogs to survive... for readers to BECOME writers... for there to be more than just ten popular people at a time... this is a problem.

(And I could talk about how the self-inflicted pressure comes from feeling like there's still a chance to go back to how it was before, blah blah blah, which makes it harder + etc because we CAN'T)

But I think what I'm just trying to express is that, when we talk about this switch, many writers and readers are just in mourning of what once was.

#sorry im too tired to add more on #but i really respect and admire ur honesty #i actually agree with a lot of what u said but there were some fundamentals missing #'just post what u want and people will find it' sorta ignores the whole reason blogs exists #like ill write what i want to regardless of whether i share it or not #i post it bc i want to talk abt it with ppl #and thats how blogs function #it takes a lot of work to run one too... so for that not to be acknowledged is rough #idk what else to put in the tags #im lost at this point and dk if what im saying makes sense #im just gonna play wordle shower and go to bed #but thank u for ur input anon #i do think we need to say f*ck it and just post what we want #but we also have to establish like.... there is value in that too #even if what u want is just bakugo corn #idkkkkk #i really miss how it was at the height of the pandemic #there were niches everywhere #now its hard for small blogs to do ANYTHING #and at that point why try to have a blog at all #when ur gonna write ur sh*t anyway #idk #thank u again but wordle now #ask #anon #caitie chats #drama tw

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animeomegas · 3 years

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MY FELLOW ANON ARE VIOLATING MY EMOTIONS TODAY 😂 god I’m acc crying. Your writing is amazing. I’m gonna combat the sadness with a wholesome thing of them finding a pup in a bin (or something) a few months after the loss of the first pup (Neji is currently shut down entirely) is like “lol gimme”. Proceeds to take the pup home, put it in his nest scent the lil bean (gender is your choice) and just be like “yeah this mine now”. Any nay sayers are ignored bc it’s still his baby (maybe almost like his pup reincarnated 👀👀) regardless of how baby was obtained. Idk I just think my guy needs some positivity after life kicking the ever loving shit out of him

This is beautiful and you’re right, Neji deserves the world, but I’ll settle with a quiet life and some happiness for my boy!

Okay, so things haven’t been…good with Neji since you had to let your pup die to save him.

It has been two months and still he lays in his nest every day, sometimes crying, sometimes whining, but mostly just staring at nothing. He had incorporated a bunch of baby stuff (blankets, toys etc.) into his nest before he went to the hospital, in order to make his pup feel more at home in the nest when he was supposed to bring them back. You had tried to take them out to stop him having to be confronted with what happened in his safe space, but Neji almost attacked you for doing so, so you let him keep them.

But it’s very concerning when he spends hours at a time just stroking the pup's blankets and staring at nothing.

So, you decide to take Neji on a walk to get him out of the house. It would be his first time leaving the house since the funeral.

You go at night time, because Neji is still refusing any contact with anyone he knows and this way he’s less likely to be confronted when he isn’t ready for it. To make extra sure that you can be alone, you decide to walk around the edge of the woods around one of the quieter training grounds.

Neji doesn’t speak much, but he doesn’t whine or cry either, and the night air brings a little colour to his cheeks, and you’re so happy at the small improvements. It doesn’t matter how long it ends up taking him to feel better, you’ll be here with him the whole way.

…

“I was thinking about cooking something special next week,” you make idle conversation, not expecting Neji to reply. “It’s our anniversary after all, do you have any preference?”

Neji stops walking suddenly. His shoulders are tense.

“Neji?”

He hushes you harshly.

“I can hear…”

Without another word of warning, Neji makes his way a little further into the trees. You follow him, confused and worried.

“Byakugan!” he calls, scanning the area. He gasps as he scans over a nearby bush and immediately he drops to his knees beside it.

“Neji?” you ask, now more than a little concerned. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

You watch as Neji pulls something out of the bush. He turns around with a bundle in his arms.

“It’s a pup,” Neji says, obviously shocked. You can’t blame him, you’re feeling more than a little shocked yourself. What on earth was a pup doing out here? “They’re freezing. Give me your jacket.”

Without hesitance, you quickly slip your jacket of and hand it to Neji who promptly bundles up the pup in it and brings them to his chest. The pup is making small whimpering noises that had been almost impossible to hear over the wind. Neji must have hear them, thank goodness.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” Neji coos to the pup. “You’re safe now, I'll take you home and make it better, I promise.”

“We need to get them to the hospital asap," you say, shaking your head. "They must be freezing and they look underweight as well. We’re not mednin, Neji.”

“Our home is closer.”

“Neji…”

“We need to make sure they’re warm,” he argues. “We can bring them home and alert a medic to make a home visit.”

You look at the earnest look on his face and know that he won’t back down, and now isn’t a time for arguments anyway.

“Okay,” you swallow nervously. “We’ll bring them home.”

…

You bring the pup back to your home and before you can protest, Neji brings them into his nest with a mumbled ‘they’ll be warm in there’.

Neji bundles himself and the pup up in the corner of the nest, turning on a little heater beside him, and tucking the pup into his shirt to share body warmth.

“We’ll get you nice and warm, it’s okay, you’re safe, I won’t let anyone harm you,” he whispers while stroking their cheek with a finger. The pup wriggles around, already looking more energetic, and starts mouthing at Neji’s chest.

“Are you hungry?” Neji laughs softly before turning to you. “Go and heat up a bottle for the pup, all the supplies are in the… the nursery.”

You nod dumbly and do as you’re asked, astounded at how much life is in Neji’s eyes. It’s the most life you’ve seen from him in months. But you can’t help but worry. What if Neji gets attached and you can’t keep the pup? Of course, you want nothing more than to keep the baby, it almost seems too good to be true that she literally fell into both your lives at this trying time, but what if it is too good to be true? What if they’re sick? Or their parents are looking for them? Or… something else. Neji doesn’t deserve another heartbreak, and you don’t want to destroy the small amount of progress he’s made in the last month.

But for now, all you can do is heat up the bottle.

…

“Here, it’s a good temperature, I already checked,” you pass Neji the bottle. He checks it again anyway and you can’t help but smile at how overprotective and parental he's being. It's so bittersweet to see him like this.

“Here you go sweetheart, just for you,” Neji smiles, cradling the pup as they latch onto the bottle with fervour. “Shh, shh, shh, slow down, it’s not going anywhere.”

Neji feeds the pup and then burps them, and you pretend you can’t see him smiling when he notices that they are starting to smell like him. You need to know you can keep her before you let him get even more attached.

“I’m going to send a clone for a medic, now.”

The room became tense all at once.

“They’re fine, I’m looking after them,” Neji protests.

“I know, and you’re doing a good job, but we still need a medic, Neji.”

Neji holds the pup more tightly to his chest, tucking an extra blanket around them. He's using the special blanket you had got commissioned for your pup. You can feel your heart break at the sight. He's already attached. Now you just have to hope you can keep them. For his sake.

“I don’t want them to take the pup away like last time,” Neji admits softly. "I can look after them, I won't let anything happen like last time, I promise. They'll be safe, we don't need a medic."

“We need to know their primary and secondary gender, omega, and we need to make sure they aren’t sick after being left in the woods…”

Neji hesitates but nods his consent in the end after you explain that your pup could become ill if left untreated. You don’t tell him that you are also sending a clone to the Hokage. Naruto will be able to grant you and Neji the right to keep the pup, and you hope that as Neji’s friend, he’ll be able to see how much he needs this.

…

You have to move Neji and the pup downstairs to wait for the medic, because Neji would not appreciate someone unknown seeing his nest he made for his pup. He’s not expecting Naruto to show up as well so you go to the door to intercept and prep them both.

“Thank you so much for coming, Naruto, I can’t tell you how much this means to me and Neji,” you say, hugging him as he walks through the door.

“I’m going to do everything I can,” he promises. “If the medic finds signs of long-term neglect, I can take the parental rights away from the biological parents straight away, even if I don't know who they are, and transfer you the rights.”

Your face visibly brightens, but Naruto continues.

“But if the only injuries are from laying in the forest for a few hours, I’ll have to try and find the parents first, because the child may have been taken from them by force, when the pup was otherwise a healthy baby being looked after sufficiently. In that circumstance, I’ll have to take the child back with me and put them in foster care until a three-month window has passed. And if the parents are found…”

“I know,” you sigh. “Let’s just get this done as soon as possible.”

The three of you walk into the living to see Neji cradling the pup tightly against his chest.

“Hey Neji,” Naruto greets softly with a sad smile. “I haven’t seen you around for a while.”

Neji tenses upon seeing Naruto.

“Naruto? Why are you here?” Neji clearly misinterprets the situation, holding the pup even more tightly and turning accusatory eyes against you. “Why did you bring him here?”

“I’m here to determine whether the pup was abandoned or kidnapped to the best of my abilities, once we have that done, we can decide how things are going to happen, okay?”

“How do you decide that?” Neji asks with distrustful eyes.

“The medic will give them a check-up, completely routine, I promise,” Naruto speaks with a soft voice like he’s talking to a cornered animal. Well, you look at Neji for a moment who is coiled as tightly as spring, he’s not far off.

It takes about five minutes for you to convince Neji to let go of the pup and hand them to the mednin, and then the next fifteen minutes involve you holding him in your arms to stop him wrestling the pup back from the mednin.

And then, rather ominously, the mednin pulls Naruto aside to talk.

Neji is shaking in your arms.

“It’s okay, calm down, Neji,” you try to comfort him.

“I can’t-“ Neji chokes, hands fisting in your shirt. “He has our pup, you let them take our pup.”

You don’t bother to correct him on his use of ‘our’, knowing it would only upset him more.

“I know baby, but they need to see that they’re healthy, nothing’s wrong, just breathe.”

Neji doesn’t take your advice.

"Last time they took them-"

"This isn't like last time, omega. Come one, try and settle down a little, that's it."

...

Naruto eventually walks back in, holding the pup securely, the mednin nowhere to be seen.

“So,” Naruto says seriously. And then his face breaks out into a wide grin. “Am I right in thinking you want to adopt?”

You can almost feel your relief in the air. Thanking every power that be for this stroke of luck. Losing this pup could have easily meant losing your mate, and the gravity of the situation all comes crashing down at once. Neji looks as though he is feeling much the same.

“Give me them,” he orders, arms out.

“Her,” Naruto corrects. “The mednin said she’s a female alpha.”

Tears start welling up in Neji’s eyes as he takes her. Their bio pup was a female alpha, too.

“Thank you,” he whispers to no one, holding his new pup as tightly as he dared. “I’ve got you now, you’re safe and sound with me, I won’t let anything hurt you ever again.”

Naruto slips out of the house without a fuss, dropping the mednin’s recommendations for feeding the underweight pup on the coffee table.

...

You and Neji take your new pup upstairs and bundle her back into the nest. Neji lays down with her, stroking her cheek as he watches her sleep.

“You need to get some rest too, omega,” you suggest, running a hand down Neji’s back.

“Guard?” he asks in response.

“Yes," you smile at his protective instincts. "I’ll guard the nest while you sleep, I promise.”

“Okay, alpha…” Neji settles down, still with one hand resting on the pup. “But if I don’t wake up when she cries, wake me… I want to be the one to feed her.”

You laugh gently, “Of course, now get some sleep. I’ll guard you both.”

#neji x reader #omega!neji #alpha!reader #alpha reader #a/b/o #omegaverse #tw:grief #reader insert #headcanons #naruto #alpha x omega #gn reader #gender neutral reader

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