#maybe less grief but absolutely more trauma

[etoilesombre]

[hyperfixiation-station]

Hi!!

I am totally obsessed with your fics!!! Your writing 🤌💕

I just wanted to request a fic where the reader is new to the task force but she's experienced and tough. Vibez similar to Ghost to elaborate she's more scary than Ghost cuz of her past maybe she was experimented on or trained brutally....

Reader is working hard to prove herself even if everyone knows she's the most lethal person. So one time she gets injured badly while protecting someone from the 141( probably Ghost 👉👈) and she wakes up has an emotional moment Ghost comes know about her Trauma . More like hurt/comfort....

Happy Writing 💝

Guilt-Tripped

CW: Mentions/references of kidnapping, torture, canon typical violenece Part 2, Part 3 Hiii Anon!! First off, thank you! Secondly, I am so, so, so sorry for how long this took😭 I did make this a two parter, the first part is kinda like backstoryish and the second part will be the actual story. I was gonna wait until I finished both to post but you have been waiting for way to long so I'll give you the first part now instead of waiting, again I am so sorry! I hope you like it :)) Summary: F!Reader was a part of a special program(LMK if you can guess what it is) and once she was released she joined the military.

WC: 1467 As always, I didn't proof read so lmk if there are any mistakes :3

Life had not been kind to you. Ripped from your family at a very young age, you had never known the type of love and safety a nurturing home could provide. Instead, you grew up in the confines of a Russian base, with cruel instructors and a dwindling group of girls as your only companions.

From the moment you could walk, you had been told you were a weapon. A lethal force to be honed and trained, nothing more than a tool for others to use to further their games. Brainwashed, tortured, and trained into submission, a perfect puppet. Both your brain and body were sculpted into absolute perfection, a rigorous process most people did not survive. By day, they trained to be a lethal force, an unstoppable, unnoticeable, killing machine. At night, you were handcuffed to your bed, listening to the screams of students who did not make the cut.(to this day you sleep handcuffed)

You watched, at first in horror, then with a sense of detachment, as your friendsrivals bit the dust, unable to keep up with what the program demanded of them. It got better as you got older, less girls died from their tasks. But in some ways it got worse. It was a competition now, a fight to see who would remain victorious, to see who would come out on top. It was not a place for friendship and comradery, and you learned that quickly.

You stopped trying to make friends with the other students when you were forced to shoot your best friend in the head after giving her some of your dinner when she was being punished. You were 8. And you stopped trying to even just be friendly with the other girls at 10 years old, when the instructor broke every bone in your hands after your bunkmate framed you for something you didn't do. To this day your hands are not the same, always hurting and forever scarred.

Your world was kill or be killed, and you'd be dammed if you didn't come out on top.

And come out on top you did. You graduated top of your class, a position you had fought and killed for, won through bloodshed and pain. If you had a conscience, it would have been screaming at you for the things you had done to get to the top(You laid awake every night consumed by guilt and grief)

The program was disbanded(re: destroyed) when you hit 18, just two weeks after your 'graduation'. You were given two options: Join the American military, or face a life sentence in prison. 

You had a lifetime of sins to atone for, and knew there was only one way to even begin to ease your guilt. Two days later your background was sealed up and you were shipped off to boot camp. 

And you excelled. This was nothing to you. What was a six mile run when you used to run until you passed out, then wake up and keep going? What was surviving on four hours of sleep when sleep deprivation had been the norm your whole life? What was any of this compared to what you had been forced to do everyday since you were five? 

You scared your instructors. And the other recruits. And everyone else you came into contact with. And you were fine with that. You didn't like when people got close to you anyhow.

Love got you nowhere in the world. It was a lesson you learned hard and fast. You did not care for others, they did not care for you. And you liked it that way. Until you met the 141.

A woman named General Laswell came to you one day with a job offer. Well, not a job offer exactly, but more of a…transfer of positions. A small, (mostly)four-man team that she oversaw.

You had gotten disciplined for beating the ever-loving shit out of a recruit the week before, and Laswell had watched it all unfold. She went back to her office, read your full file, and decided you would make a good fit for John's team.

You took a look at your bunk, at the trunk that held zero worldly possessions, realized there is nothing for you here, and said yes. 

Price had not wanted a new recruit, and told Laswell as much. She simply said he had a penchant for picking up strays and left your file on his desk. It took him a week to actually get curious enough to read it. A paper copy, the only one in existence that had your full, undisclosed background. He pretended he didn’t see her smug grin when he hit accept on your transfer application. 

You had been trained since youth to fight and to kill, yes, but your true purpose was espionage. You were trained to study those around you, to lie, to mold yourself to the expectations of those around you. You excelled at fitting into your surroundings, at assimilating perfectly with your peers. It was all you were good for, in your opinion. So you asked Laswell for files on your new teammates. And she gave them to you. They were full of gaping holes and redacted information, but there was enough there for you to profile them. 

Soap would be the most receptive to you. He most likely would also be the one to not give up in trying to get you to be open with them. Gaz would be receptive as well, but you know that your sealed background would put him on edge, Ghost, well…Ghost was a lot like you from what you could piece together. Yet another person who learned that the world was cruel and unforgiving, who had learned the lesson that love does nothing but hurt. And because he was like you, you knew he would trust you the least.

You felt a small pang in your chest when looking at this masked photo that you hadn’t felt in years. Not quite sadness, but…pity? No. It was different, it was sympathy. It weirded you out. 

It was hard at first, joining the 141. You had court-mandated therapy you had had to attend, and you had slowly come to realize that some trust was good, necessary even, for life. You knew you wouldn’t be able to open yourself up to them, that you would never be able to feel the sense of brotherhood you had seen amongst other soldiers, but you wanted to try. 

It was harder than you thought it would be. Hard joining men who already had comradery, who had a bond that had been forged with blood, sweat, and tears. men who weren't sure how to fit another person, much less a female, into their group. 

As you suspected, Soap was the most receptive. He was fun, you thought. His Scottish accent and affinity for filling the silence made him a very pleasant conversationalist. You didn’t have to do any of the talking.

Gaz was wary of you, but did a good job of not showing it. As you suspected, he stopped inviting you out after you said ‘no thanks’ for the third time. 

Ghost didn’t like you. You could see it in the slight tensing of his muscles when you walked in the room, the way his eyes pinched when you spoke. 

It was a rough, rocky start, full of distrust and misunderstandings. Everything about you set his senses on high alert. They way you could sneak up on him completely silent, the way you could hold your own when you sparred with him, even the way you moved had his hair standing on end. It wasn’t until a mission that would have ended with Soap's death if you hadn’t risked your life to shove him out of the way that Ghost began to trust you. 

And then he began to notice something else about you. And the more he noticed, the more concerned he grew. He noticed the way you threw yourself into battle, what little regard you held for your own life. He noticed how you never instigated conversation, never gave away the slightest bit of information that could be used against you. Noticed that you always wore gloves. In fact, he's never once seen your hands.

His constant observations of you had an unintended side effect. The longer he watched you, the more he realized you were a lot like him, the more he was drawn to you. And vice-versa. 

You found yourself willfully seeking Ghost out, willingly sharing information with him. Nothing about your past, no, you would never tell anyone the things you had done. But little things, how you liked the food served this week, how your mission went, that your new pants were really itchy. And he told you things too. Told you really bad jokes, told you Soaps stupid Scottish saying of the week. And slowly you branched out, agreeing to go to the bar the next time Soap asked you, telling Gaz that you liked his new sunglasses. 

It was nice, having people who looked at you like you meant something to them. Having people who didn’t know what you’d done, people who didn’t look at you with disgust and distrust. It was nice to have…friends. 

So of course everything had to go downhill from there.

End scene :3 let me know what you think!!6 and be on the look out for pt.2, I hope you're ready for a buttload of angst >:) Also requests are open <3

[eff4freddie]

Touch | Part Six

Words: 5.8k

Just as you approach something resembling contentment, this broken world will exact its toll.

Warnings: smutty smut, trauma, grief, Joel hasn't come to terms with what happened in Salt Lake, Joel is bad at feelings, but pretty good with his hands. Minors DNI.

Part Five | Series Masterlist | Part Seven

You were busy again, the new table earning its keep almost immediately, and the ease that you moved around your treatment room, the way that you could bend without reaching over, push with your weight rather than your wrists, meant that you could concentrate more, heal more effectively. You hadn’t realised how much the clumsiness of the old dining table had been holding you back. Every day that you used it, you wanted to find a new way to thank Joel. Maybe even sometimes, with all of your clothes on.

Except that the idea also terrified you, in a way that you were struggling to really understand. The idea of him, of being naked with him, not that you really fully had been, of kissing him even, no that you had, was enough to send an absolute riot of butterflies careening through your guts and down into your legs, into your knees. The idea of him scared you, his reputation proceeded him, and you kept thinking of how wary Maria was, how protective Ellie seemed to be, how sweetly oblivious Tommy was most of the time which you were beginning to suspect was actually a choice. You wanted to pull them all into a room and forensically map out who the fuck Joel Miller actually was. You were aware you were thinking like a crazy person. You didn’t care.

Because then when he was with you, when you fell into his orbit, looked into his eyes, there was something heavier and realer and more tangible than your stupid, flighty, squawking fears. It worried you, that he made you into a different person when he was around you. You weren’t sure what that person was capable of getting up to, left to her own devices, but you had an inkling.

You knew that you were pushing him away, pushing it all away, because it scared you, but also it felt like the only sane thing to do, had kept you alive for years and years, had meant that when you lost people it hurt less, maybe. Being busy again, and fairly invested in maintaining your denial for as long as you could manage it, you got back to your usual routine of seeing the broken and weary people of Jackson early, before the work hours, and then steadily throughout the day. It afforded you the illusion of being sociable, of contributing to the community, without having to actually be in it. Without Ray and Marla, with Maria and Tommy wrapped up in the baby, with Joel being…Joel, you had collected a long list of clients and a dwindling list of friends. It could have made you sad if you thought about it, so you didn’t, and you were too busy anyway, and how could you be lonely with all these people in your house?

Besides which, in the quiet moments you could feel the tension in people, the uneasiness woven tight into the musculature of most of the residents you now saw. Not everyone knew Marla or Jacob or the others personally, not everyone even necessarily liked them, especially not fucking Jacob, but everyone had an investment in their safe and hopefully bountiful return.

To escape it, you went for long walks along the foreshore of Jackon’s lake at the bottom of the township, until the dying light forced you back. You were there, hands in the freezing water feeling out for flat stones you could warm in hot water and press into particularly assertive muscle knots, when you heard the yelling. You were up and sprinting, the twisty and icy path underneath you occasionally threatening to boot you into the snow, and if you’d had time to think about it you have marvelled at the difference in your reaction from Joel and Ellie’s homecoming to this one. The elation you felt at their return, the relief of it, not just for you and Marla and Ray, but for Jackon. For what it meant for this community. For your community.

Trying not to knock yourself out on the way to the gate meant that you didn’t initially notice the quiet. There was a smattering of people still out despite the cold, the encroaching darkness, but they weren’t rushing forward, weren’t really helping the returned residents, were in fact milling around, some just standing in quiet observance, and it occurred to you for a second that they were like onlookers at a funeral. You pushed forward into the crowd, trying to see past unmoving shoulders, past still bodies, moving towards the sounds of horses, of panting breaths you weren’t sure belonged to whom.

And then you arrived at the front, and you had a clear view. And you realised the panting breaths were your own.

There were only two horses, and only three riders. Marla at the reigns of one, Jacob slung over the back of her saddle, slumping over at an odd angle, his head rolled back in a way that you thought would really strain his cervical spine, until you realised he was tied to the horse, had been roped around Marla’s midsection, that he was nearly as pale as the snow around you, that he was very dead. The other rider stared, unblinking, into the distance and was eventually helped down and led to the infirmary, not ever having said a word.

Marla had seen you, had watched you fight your way to the front of the crowd, had searched you out. She was shivering, a splatter of blood across her chest and under her neck, and you couldn’t tell if it was hers or if it was Jacob’s or someone else’s entirely, and in that moment staring into her eyes you knew that it didn’t matter, that it would never matter, that whatever damage it was it had already been calculated, tallied, on a ledger somewhere none of you would ever be able to balance.

You motioned to a few of the men around you, gesturing to the ropes around Marla’s middle. ‘Cut him loose,’ you said, in a voice you didn’t recognise, and reached your arms up to hold Marla’s hand. You held it, limp and contrite in yours, while Jacob’s body was freed from hers. When he was lifted away she slumped forward, her back having held his weight for god knows how long, and you caught her, pulled her down from the horse on wobbling legs, let her crumple underneath you and set her down onto the pavement. Someone pulled a blanket over her shoulders and you held her in it, gripped her hard and tight and let her shake in your arms. You looked up into the eyes of Ray, who looked like he might throw up or pass out or both, and you pulled him down with you, wrapped him around her while he cried into her hairline, and you watched as the horses were led away.

‘Did you bring anything?’ someone asked from the crowd, quiet but hopeful, and you wanted to reach up and slap them for every moronic word they had dared speak into existence, had thought to utter in this sacred space of abject loss.

Marla never answered, and you squeezed her. She twisted in your arms to look up at you, an angry purple and yellow bruise forming having formed under her eye. You turned to Ray. ‘Help me get her to mine,’ you said.

--

You had the fire going, and you pushed your old armchair right up to it, folding Marla into it under a sea of blankets. Ray went to get something to bring her from the mess hall, something warming but easy to chew, and you perched beside her, slid down until her knees were in your lap and she was resting her head against the wing of the chair, and you stared, together, into the fire.

‘We barely made it back,’ she whispered, her voice dry, her lips chapped and windburned. You stayed still, not wanting to shake her, not wanting to do anything that might stop her from talking. ‘Rode through, all night. I wanted to bring him back, bring them all but I could only get him.’

‘Was it raiders?’ you asked, and she shook her head.

‘Both,’ she said, and you didn’t understand. ‘Raiders that had…kept a few clickers, had them locked up, had them uhhh…weaponised.’

You shuddered. ‘Like pets?’ you asked.

‘Like torture devices,’ she simply replied. You contemplated this for a second, couldn’t imagine it, the terror of being faced with that choice: raider or runner.

‘We got within a few hours of where we thought the pharmacy was,’ she went on, her voice catching. She continued to shake, her hands tremoring underneath the blanket, and you tried to tuck her in tighter, tried to warm her up. ‘We’d gone through a valley, ended up on the other side of a glade, it would have been so beautiful in the before times. We found a farmhouse, looked abandoned. Wasn’t.’

She was jiggling her foot and you put your hand out to hold it, feeling that her socks were wet. ‘By the time we realised they were already on us, were ready, had seen us coming.’

She looked at you, tears forming in her eyes. ‘They tried to lock us in the cage with them,’ she swallowed. ‘Jacob was really brave, fought them hard, stopped them from putting us in.’

If cold had gotten into her boots she must have been freezing, was risking losing a toe. You lifted the blankets to pull at her sock, putting your hand on her bare skin to warm it.

‘But one of them, two of them maybe, they got out,’ she continued. You held the ball of her foot in your hand, rubbing your thumb over the top of her foot in what you hoped were comforting little circles.

‘I just wanted to get him back here,’ she said, just as you felt it, a raised, rough ridge on her ankle, tendrils of heat snaking up her shin. You threw the blankets back, saw the bite there, the way the ropes of twisting fungus had already started their march up to her heart. You froze, your terrified eyes snapping to her wet, sorry, scared ones.

‘Don’t let Ray do it,’ she said.

--

It didn’t matter that you hadn’t been there before, you knew where it was. You wrapped on the door so hard you would later discover the skin on your knuckles had split. All you could hear was the ringing in your ears, your vision narrowed down to a pinprick, the look on Marla’s face so drawn, so scared, so resolute, imprinted on the inside of your eyelids. You kept wrapping, hopping from side to side, your tears mingling with the frigid air. You called for him on his front porch, your voice high and choking on the fear, on the grief in it.

He'd wrenched the door open, having pulled his boots on but not yet done up the laces, the furrow in his brow deep, his eyes wild when he clocked you, when he checked your six.

‘Jesus, are you? What is it?’ he spluttered, and you couldn’t let him finish, had to get the words out in case they poisoned you.

‘She’s bit, Joel,’ you spat out, watching his face fall.

‘Who, Ellie?’ he asked, panic rising in his voice, and you choked out a sob, shaking your head fiercely. He grabbed you by both shoulders, bending down to look you in the eye. You shook underneath him, wanted to launch yourself into his chest and bury yourself in it.

‘Marla,’ you said, shivering so hard your jaw was barely cooperating. ‘She came back bit.’

‘Where is she?’ he asked, and you told him. You’d locked her in your treatment room. She hadn’t turned yet, and you figured there was still an hour or two, maybe. The tremors you’d thought were the cold, shock.

‘Please, Joel,’ you said, and he was already heading back into the house to grab his rifle. Tears were streaming down your face now, your knees threatening to give. ‘Please be kind about it.’

He pulled you in, off his porch and into his living room. Set you down on the rug beside the fire.

‘I’ve got you,’ he said. ‘You stay here, you stay warm. You wait for me. You don’t come lookin’, you hear me?’

You nodded, and he shook his head at you. ‘Repeat it,’ he said.

‘I won’t come looking,’ you said, quiet and desperate like a child. He nodded, then, his rifle slung over his shoulder. You took a long breath in, felt the burn of it down your chest and into your lungs. Felt the electricity crackle between the two of you, arcing from his chest to yours through the air, let it fuel you for the next part.

--

The three of you had just left Chicago, two or so days into your trek towards Wyoming, to maybe find something better, to maybe find more of the same. Ray and Marla were ahead of you by about four paces, you deciding to hang back to let them chat. You could hear their murmurs, Ray’s giggle high and giddy when Marla made him laugh. You could imagine the two of them strolling down a sidewalk together, one hand holding their coffees with the other hand holding each other’s. You could see the golden light of the late afternoon in the trees, backlighting them as they chatted about their work, about their friends, about what movie they wanted to see on the weekend. You could imagine them going out for dinner of an evening, Marla resting her head on Ray’s shoulder as the sun set over the water, the two of them intertwined and suburban and blissfully, delightfully bored.

You were so lost in this reverie that you hadn’t realised they were talking to you until you nearly rammed into them, and you stopped to see them smiling, warmly at you.

‘You were a million miles away,’ Marla observed, and she reached out to pinch your arm.

‘Years,’ you said. ‘I was a million years away.’

--

 You sat with your legs folded underneath you on Joel’s floor, the fire warming your skin enough to remind you that you were alive. Your stomach ached, your chest burned, you rocked backwards and forwards and tucked your chin into your chest and sobbed, alternating between wiping your tears with the top of your shirt and just letting them fall onto the carpet.

You saw yourself as if you were floating outside your body, observed yourself get up on all fours and keen into the carpet, unleashing a wail unlike anything you’d ever heard. You thought, for a second, that this woman on the floor was unrecognisable, was barely human, scratching at the rug and trying to breathe through the sobs.

The night grew darker. The fire died down. You collapsed in on yourself, felt the last guide rope tethering you to the ground fail, and you slipped under, crouched on the floor with your forehead resting on your arms, your knees numb from the weight of pressing into the rug, your mind empty, time having stopped, the world having fallen off its axis. A small part of you observed in wonder at how much grief you could carry. A larger part, a wiser part, a part that had taken a back seat to let the banshee take the wheel for a while, knew that this was so much more than Marla. Knew that it was all of them, a ledger steeped in red.

In the darkness you became vaguely aware of footsteps, the sound of the fire being stoked, logs being added. Felt a blanket thrown over your shoulders, then warm hands on the small of your back guiding you, pulling you up and over to sit astride a warm body, a strong pair of legs. You wrapped your arms around him, clung to him like a koala to a Eucalypt, snuffled your tear-streaked face into his neck, into his shirt. He held you to him, a hand buried in your hair and cradling your skull in his palm, the other wrapped around your back, easing the fabric away and tucking under, to touch you, skin to skin. You heard whispers of words, mixed with your own sobs, your own gasps. He held you through all of it, on aching bones on the hard floor, until the crashing waves settled, until you finally washed ashore.

‘You don’t have a couch,’ you said, after a while, pulling your head up to observe the oddly sparse furniture arrangement. He snickered, leaning you back to brush the hair out of your eyes, away from your wet face.

You realised, after a moment, heat on your cheeks. ‘Oh,’ you said, simply. He gazed at you, watched you put two and two together, stood unshaken in all that he had sacrificed for you.

‘But where do you sit?’ you asked, and he nodded towards the old rocking chair he’d pulled in from the porch outside. You nodded your head, because it was perfect really, and because it made sense, and because you needed it to.

‘Is she gone?’ you asked, shifting on his lap to watch his face. He blinked slowly, nodded. You felt your face crumple, felt him tighten his hold on you. ‘Was it bad?’ you choked out, and he shook his head.

‘She was so brave,’ he said, gravelly voice just above a whisper. He reached out and cupped your face, wiped a tear away, held your gaze to him. ‘She was ready. She said when it was time.’

‘She didn’t…turn?’ you asked, clinging to his forearms now, letting him anchor you. He shook his head once more.

‘No, baby,’ he said, and you wanted to wrap yourself up in the sound of it, let it blanket you in warmth and quiet, burrow down into it and hibernate for the winter.

‘Thank you,’ you said, simply. He hummed in response, collecting a tear on his thumb and raising it to his lips, licking it clean. You gasped at the sight of it, his eyes never leaving yours, squirming on his lap, the sudden heat in your cunt catching you off guard. ‘Joel?’ you whispered, and he raised his eyebrows at you. ‘Are your legs numb?’ and he laughed then, because you had managed to surprise him, and after he caught his breath he sheepishly nodded. ‘Take me to bed, then,’ you said, climbing off him and extending a hand. You hauled him up, his knees creaking. For a moment the both of you stood, staring at each other in the light of the fire. You felt breathless with need for him, your head swimming, the sadness shifting just enough to let the heat in, the want. ‘Up the stairs,’ he told you. You slipped your hand into his paw.

--

Joel’s bedroom was sparse, the walnut oak bed pressed up against the wall, a stack of books on the floor beneath a bare lamp, a guitar in the corner. His scent was all over the sheets, all over the clothes strewn around the floor. You pressed yourself against him in the hope that you would absorb some of it into your cotton.

The moment you crossed the threshold his hands were on you, pulling your clothes from you like they had personally insulted him, shucking your jeans off your hips and pulling your panties down with them until you were bare, standing before him at the foot of his bed. He took a step back and you watched his face as his gaze devoured you, the heat of it so scorching that you could swear you could feel his fingers on you even standing three feet away. You trembled from the cold air and the intensity of it, and he saw in your face, read in you that you wanted to turn away from it, from the intimacy of it.

‘Don’t,’ he all but whispered, coming towards you and running his hands up on the outside of your arms. ‘Don’t be shy, not now,’ he said. He slipped a hand behind your back and his knees between yours, pushing you gently onto the bed behind you, laid his body over you and nipped at the skin behind your ear. You pulled at his flannel, trying to claw it from him without even unbuttoning it, groaning in frustration when the garment held fast. He snickered, his little lopsided grin, as he pulled it away.

You lifted yourself up on one arm, bringing the other to cradle him to you, licks and nibbles to his collar bone, to the patches of hair on his chin. His brought his hands to your breasts, pebbled the nipple with his fingers while he pushed and rolled them, squeezed them together just to watch them bounce. He was hard and heavy between your legs, still covered in his jeans, and you lifted shaking fingers to his belt buckle. He froze, a sharp intake of breath between his teeth, as he watched you. You faltered, worried for a second you had read it all wrong, that he was going to push you from him, that he had seen something in you, that you had revealed something wrong and gnarled.

‘Do you…should I?’ you stuttered, and he came to his senses again, his brow creasing when he saw you were floundering.

‘Oh, my sweet girl,’ he said, and you thought it would be kinder if he just set you on fire at that point, ‘darlin’ I was just awed for a second, that somethin’ as gorgeous as you would want a man like me. An old man like me.’

You felt the relief wash over you, your pulse quickening now but not from fear. ‘Seasoned,’ you grinned, bringing him back down to you, pulling him on top of you as his hands helped yours to free him, push his jeans over his hips. ‘Worn in,’ you went on, and he grinned at your little game. ‘Fine wine,’ you finished, and he snickered again.

‘Vinegar,’ he said, and you pushed his head down to your chest, fed him your breast, let him lave at your nipple while you gasped and clutched at his hair.

‘Experienced,’ you whimpered, and he huffed out a warm laugh into your breastbone. You wanted to unlock your ribs, swing them open like an ancient garden gate, and capture it there for safe keeping.

Free, now, the two of you naked and lying together on top of his blanket, the sheets rumpling underneath you as you rutted against each other. He reached a hand down to cup your sex, groaning when he felt how wet he had made you, how you were dripping for him. You gasped as he ran his fingers up and over your slit, gently teasing your lips apart, testing you, teasing you. You rolled your hips, trying to snare him, trying to slide him inside, but he worked against you, zigged when you zagged, and your frustrated little gasps delighted him.

‘Joel,’ you groaned, your voice tight across your chest, not enough air in your lungs to properly scold him. He ignored you, instead lifting his lips to his fingers and sampling a little taste. You watched him, eyes wide as his fell shut at the taste of you.

‘So sweet,’ he said, almost to himself, before he opened his eyes as if he just remembered you were there. ‘Here, baby,’ he said, and he fed yourself to you, his fingers sliding over your tongue as you suckled at them, his hot breath on your face as he watched you, pupils dark in the half-light of his lamp, sweat forming on his brow.

When you had sucked them clean he lowered them again, slipped them inside you, bending down to rest his ear on your mouth when you began to pant, to whimper.

‘Show me,’ he said, pulling your hand to your cunt and watching as you began slow, lazy circles around your clit. He furrowed his brow, pushed off you and down to watch properly, lifted a leg to prop you open, planting your foot on the mattress beneath you to open you wide and obscene in front of him. You blushed, moved to cover your face with your hands, but he stopped and caught you, brought your fingers back to your core before he slipped inside again. You raised your head to look at him beneath you and you realised he was learning you, studying your movements to replicate them later, letting you teach him how to touch you so that you’d never have to do it alone again.

Your first orgasm hit you hard. Under his careful, studious gaze you felt yourself unravel, your legs shaking where he held you open, his hand grasping at your ankle to keep you from slamming shut. So lost in the feeling of it, of the blooming heat expanding out and into your belly, of the undulations of your cunt around his fingers, that you barely noticed him slip his fingers from you and slide to the ground beside the bed, pushing your legs into your chest and holding them there, pressing you in half all the better to ease his tongue into your cunt and lick up your spend, kitten licks at your sensitive clit before plunging his tongue into your hole, breathing hard through his nose and groaning, uttering filth in the base of his throat as he devoured you, wrung your second orgasm from you in a matter of minutes, rolling from side to side and head thrown back, hands tangled in his hair as his mouth rode you, as he stayed with you up to your peak and then over it, savouring and lapping at your come, rutting into the side of the bed as he let your thighs down to rest on his shoulders, your breath ragged and rippling with pleasure, hands clutching to the blanket to steady himself, to catch his breath.

He gazed at you in repose, ran his eyes over your sopping cunt up to your heaving belly, to the curve of the underside of your breast, the nipples straining into the cold air, and then up to your face, your head thrown back as you came down, as you squirmed from the overstimulation still coursing through you, as you let your hands drop beside you, sated and glorious in his worship of you.

You swallowed, your mouth, lips, throat dry. With shaky hands you reached for him, grabbed at the air above his shoulders, felt him shift and rise up to meet you, felt his weight blanketing you as you came back to yourself. With one hand in your hair and the other tracing your cheek, your jaw, you opened your eyes to stare into his, the desire carved hard and deep into his features.

‘Take it,’ you whispered, watching as his bottom lip quivered with need. ‘Please, Joel.’

He shifted his weight to one arm, reached down between you as you lifted your legs to bracket his hips, crossing your feet at the ankles behind his back. You felt him guide his cock to the weeping maw of your cunt.

‘Please,’ you whispered again, as you felt him slip inside you, the burn and the stretch and the force of him, so hard and pulsing as he parted you. He dropped his head, sighing, and you planted your lips to his brow, whimpered at the weight of his cock inside you, at the weight of the two of you finally, finally joined.

‘She’s tight, baby,’ he said, his brow creasing. He moved his hips, shoving further into you in one shot, and you gasped, grabbed at his shoulders, brought his eyes back to yours. He paused, gazing into your eyes, read the trepidation in them. ‘S’ok baby,’ he cooed, leaning down to place a kiss on your cheekbone. ‘You can do it,’ he encouraged, and you felt the warmth of his reassurance radiate down your thighs. ‘We can take our time,’ he said, languidly pulling back from you before gently, achingly, taking his place again. ‘Got all night for ya,’ he said, and you realised he had started to ramble, and that under his hot breath, on top of his blanket in his sparse bedroom lit only by his bedside lamp, in the cold Jackson night where the snow dampened all the noise, all the loss, all the sharp edges down, you never wanted him to stop whispering his filthy encouragement to you, never wanted him to stop easing his way into you, to the core of you, marking you where only he belonged.

‘Doin’ so good for me,’ he went on, his eyes closing on their own, lost in the grip of your cunt around him, in the heat of you. Finally he was fully seated, the warmth of his belly coming to rest upon yours. He settled there, reluctant to move, until you squirmed underneath him, caged whimpers escaping your throat. He opened his eyes, his lopsided grin appearing above you, as he planted a kiss on your hairline, gazed down at you as you stretched around him. He brought his hand down to cup your jaw again, held you there under his stare, as he withdrew his hips and eased back in again, pushing deeper into you that you gasped when he bottomed out, his eyes never leaving yours as your mouth dropped open in surprise at the feeling he was pulling from you, at the need and the ache of your cunt spread so open and wanting for him, at the way he was so effortlessly taking you apart, so calmly and so warmly unravelling you.

‘Too good,’ you complained, your brow saddling and jaw clenching, as you felt your cunt grip and release, grip and release. He cooed at you, revelling in your whimpers, gasped as you did, shared in your breath, made you submit to the divinity he was pushing you towards. This was how your third orgasm found you.

Locked in his gaze you could only lie beneath him, holding him to you by the shoulders and groaning as he pistoned in and out, watching his eyes slam shut as he was dragged under, submitted to the pull, his come washing the fear and the stress and the grief out of you, replacing it only with scorching heat, with a kind of pleasure indistinguishable from a greedy, pernicious want, with something that, in another life, you could have shaped into love. 

--

You lay, entwined together, under his blanket. Your head on his chest, ear to his heartbeat, you felt your body rise and fall as he breathed underneath you. You hadn’t wanted the night to end, hadn’t wanted to close your eyes and wake to the aftermath. Together you lay and watched the sunrise. Occasionally Joel ran his fingers up and down your arm to let you know he was still there.

‘Joel?’ you whispered, and he hummed in response. You kept your head down, listening to his pulse quicken as you spoke. ‘Canna ask you something?’ you said, jaw resting on his ribs.

‘Uhhuh,’ he said, but his fingers were stopped now, frozen in place on your shoulder.

‘Before, when we were…’ you trailed off, because even though hours before he had been eyelevel with your swollen, puffy cunt, now suddenly talking about it felt too intimate. ‘Before,’ you started again, ‘you said you didn’t think I’d want a man like you.’

‘An old man,’ he corrected, and you smiled.

‘Seasoned,’ you corrected, and he groaned, theatrically. ‘But you said a man like you, then an old man like you,’ you reminded him. He wasn’t laughing anymore, and you could feel the temperature in the room drop. ‘What did you mean?’ you ploughed on, because you were in it now.

He thought for a moment, swallowing hard. You shifted in his arms, looked up at him, saw the flicker of panic there, before he reset his features in stone. You pulled away from him in surprise, not having seen that look directed at you in weeks, not since the first time he had appeared reticent and sore at your door. Your stomach dropped.

‘I gotta check on the horses,’ he said, rolling you out of the way and moving to get up. You sat up with him, grabbing at his arm.

‘Joel,’ you said, trying to pull him back towards you, but so easily overpowered. He rolled his shoulder, shaking you off.

‘The two that came back, they need to be checked over. Waited for first light.’

‘Joel, I don’t understand what’s happening.’ He was standing, pacing around the room pulling his clothes back together, gathering yours and dropping them on the end of the bed. He stared at you, expectant, but you refused to move.

‘What kind of man did you mean, Joel?’ you pressed him, and he scoffed, pulling his jeans on and hastily doing up his shirt. He missed a few buttons, and in that moment you didn’t feel like helping him.

‘You know exactly what kind of man,’ he said.

You saw Maria’s tense shoulders when he came into her kitchen, bleeding. You saw her sitting in your kitchen as you held her feet to your chest, explaining how Tommy was different, how he had only wanted to impress his big brother.

Sort of dressed, he was now pacing, the morning light turning his skin a ghostly pale, and you thought for a moment he was haunting you. ‘You know exactly,’ he repeated. ‘Same reason you came running to me the second your friend needed killin’.’

You flinched like he’d slapped you, would have preferred if he had.

‘What kind of man, Joel?’ you asked, and he looked at you, then, tortured for a second before he wiped it away with his hand on his face.

‘A fuckin killer,’ he said, quiet and deathly in the chill of the morning.

You stared at him, heart racing. You were surprised and you also weren’t. You knew what this world demanded of people, the toll you had all paid for survival.

‘Infected?’ you asked, and he sighed, frustrated.

‘Don’t be so fuckin’ naïve,’ he said.

You remembered you were naked, but this was the first time he had really made you feel it, and you held the blanket to your chest, tight.

He wouldn’t look at you, staring instead out the window as Jackson woke.

‘I ain’t a good man,’ he said, quietly, and you shook your head.

‘I don’t believe that,’ you said, and he sneered at you then, picked up your clothes and threw them at you.

‘You don’t know shit about me,’ he said, and then he was gone. You listened as his heavy footsteps stomped down the stairs, the pause as he pulled his boots on, the slam of the door.

Taglist:

@orcasoul

@archofimagine

@hiroikegawa

@ilovejoel-andjavi

@giggly-otter

@harrysrosetatto

@Hjzghi-blog

@daddy-dins-girl

@kathaaaaaaa

[nordidia]

Do you think CJ and Raph ever talk about their experiences with PTSD/anxiety together or even share advice on coping? Or do you think Raph would rather not? Explain your reasoning in your essay below

(i typed an entire novel and then accidentally closed chrome and it deleted everything let me try doing this again i barely remember what i said ok so. also this is just me blabbering idk guys im not a rise writer im just some opinionated guy online and you can completely disagree with me and i dont say what goes or not ok? ok!)

i dont think raph would go to him with his issues but i think it'd defo get talked about through asking CJ about things and checking up on him etc. and i think CJ would give raph alot of insight and advice on how to deal with anxieties and traumas,, tho alot of their convos would just be one of them saying something vile and the other one going "oh. is that not normal?" and the first one looking at the latter like this

but all in all i think they'd definitely help eachother with dealing with stuff... i think especially raph will assist CJ in just taking the blow on how much there is to unpack... his entire life has been a big traumatic event, i imagine suddenly living a sustained life without having to fight for survival every day would be a lot for him to deal with, especially the confusion and grief over what he has lost (maybe what he has lost feels a bit like pointless grief to him now? which is a trauma in itself) and also grieving what he never had. as we know, grief is also things we shouldve had but never got, and i think all the hamatos would be really helpful in dealing with that.

tho CJ seems to be a bit of a hardass on stuff like this which is incredibly understandable when you've had to fight for everything with zero stability at all anywhere you went. i could see him confiding in raph about it, but not only him if im honest. but there is an undeniable security about raph i think that the characters i the show feel, and i think CJ would seek the stability and consistent reliability that raph provides.

i also like that CJ doesnt seem too scared about calling out people when they do wrong, i can defo see CJ bluntly telling raph that bad coping mechanisms is stupid and makes things worse and worries everyone around. (this is ofc hand in hand with the good ol' HC that raph bottles shit up/avoids talking abt things. personally i think he never shuts up and frequently rants about stuff and lets his family know whenever shit is up but he avoids going too deep so his family thinks he's being fully transparent when actually he's just not voicing the worst shit. this is so real to me no i do not need therapy shut u)

i definitely think raph would confide in CJ about the krang thing. CJ is the one who knows the most about it, i can see raph going to him to just get a bit more information about what was going on, and also a bit of relief hearing that it didnt go as bad as it couldve gone... CJ being experienced with krangification would absolutely soothe worries and make him feel less alone about knowing what he knows and having gone through something thats a step further than his brothers

IS THIS A GOOD ENOUGH ESSAY i have academic anxiety dont grade me please its 4am i have taken melatonin pills im on my last leg help m *ficking dies*

edit: GOODNIGHT LOL

[runespoor7]

If WWX knocked up cis girl!JC, what do you think would happen if JC didn't abort/the baby was carried to full term? How would that change things?

Two thoughts. One, “that depends when.” Two, “oh, this is bad.”

cut for length

the start:

The version that’s most different from canon is this: what I mean by “this is bad” is that if JC gets pregnant before WWX breaks away from the sect and she keeps it, she tells him. And then they get married. WWX is super duper unwell! It shows! It’s constant whiplash between WWX being all over her + whispering promises to her belly and WWX seemingly barely standing to be in the same room as her, much less look at her or sleep in her bed. Not to mention he’s still doing exactly as little as before they got married and is if possible getting even drunker. 

And then shit goes down - and there’s absolutely no way JYL and JZX got married in this timeline, not with JC marrying WWX, so here shit 100% does not involve WWX being thought not to be part of YMJ anymore. The chances of WWX getting killed in a Jin ambush because he’s made himself an issue to them are pretty high. If that happens, no way YMJ gets away from WWX’s death without at least being painted as accomplices; at best they’d have to pay reparations. Depending on how JGS makes his move, maybe YMJ gets straight up cornered with demands that they give up the Seal/the Wens WWX might have broken out, and there’s a war. Basically it’s a very bad time all around.

The least-bad possibility is the most-like-canon-one, which is that WWX and JC hooked up miserably when WWX was in the Burial Mounds, after WWX had dumped JC– I mean after WWX left Lotus Pier.

JC learns she’s pregnant only around/after Zixuan’s death, maybe even after JYL’s death! Not a good time to tell WWX about it! Ideally she only realizes she’s pregnant after WWX’s death. Denial of pregnancy doing us a solid amidst the months of trauma and getting us to the end point of JC having a kid. This is the ideal time for JC to be pregnant with WWX’s child because the outer conflict is minimal. All the conflict is internal, it’s about her feelings. 

In this scenario, she hides the pregnancy for a few months, secludes herself for a few months more - maybe she has to use her grief for her sister’s death as an excuse. I think in this case Madam Jin probably comes over to Lotus Pier with baby Jin Ling, to take care of JC. I don’t think JC can successfully hide from Madam Jin that she’s pregnant, despite her disciples and her doctors doing their best. I also think it’s *pretty damn unavoidable* that Madam Jin guesses who the father is.

JC is proud, so proud; but she’s not proud enough not to beg when the truth would ruin her sect. There’s probably JL asleep in someone’s arms. Madam Jin agrees to keep the secret.

JC won’t marry but she also cannot be having a child on her own, so her child is introduced as an orphan taken in by the sect; probably the child of a disciple killed during the Siege. YunmengJiang ends up taking in roughly half a dozen children, from newborn to children almost old enough to start training as disciples, in the aftermath, their mothers insisting the fathers were disciples of the Jiang. It might even be true. It’s not such a light cost that the sect’s budget doesn’t need to be reworked to accommodate for these new expenses, but it’s such a good cover for JC’s child that she shoulders the rumors of her soft heart gladly.

A consequence of this choice: JGY is, in fact, very well-disposed toward JC, personally. JC still faces shades of rebuke and ridicule at the first conference after she starts taking in “disciple orphans”, but she bites out that she’s honoring her disciples’ debts and making certain her disciples will be honored by their children. That gets NMJ pretty firmly looking at her with new eyes. That *is* an honorable, brave decision from Sect Leader Jiang. So the Jiang Sect is less isolated shortly after WWX’s death than in canon. 

I don’t think this changes anything to NMJ’s death, and JGY himself is careful not to seem overly close to an unmarried woman for fear of any hint of scandal, but in the longer term YMJ probably enjoys more cordial bonds with GusuLan. (LXC too looks kindly upon taking in war orphans! and he does have a brother, at home, who brought one back…)*

*(you could seamlessly weave in timeskip zhancheng through the honored means of LWJ hating on JC for daring to parade around as though she was an honorable sect leader, when she turned her back on her shixiong, and the equally honored means of bonding over children. LXC would totally be up to meddling by organizing playdates between A-Yuan and the YMJ kids. LWJ would be scaldingly angry at him once he finds out, though, so it would be up to A-Yuan to ask to see JL and the others again. LWJ would insist on being there; JC would look at LWJ as though judging him for his anger. I’m not saying they’d have to fuck but they might. Even if they don't, bonding over being left with children by WWX’s death. No way LWJ would get to know whose kid JC’s heir apparent is, though.

But I don't think I want to bring in LWJ for this one.)

the timeskip:

What I want to do is focus on JC and how complicated the situation wrt the kids would be for her. And while I'm at it, I'm tired of playing hide the gender with the kid, so let's say she has a daughter, because mdzs “male by default” stance on the juniors was really annoying to me.

JC’s daughter is almost the same age as JC’s nephew, so it makes sense for JC to single that one child out; people think it’s so the Jins won’t hope for JL to also inherit the Jiang, or that it’s so JL will have a friend among the Jiang. She lets those rumors run, as well. For once, let gossip work for her.

It's complicated, for JC, handling her daughter, in a way handling JL isn't. Her daughter isn't quite hers in the eyes of the world (JC didn't adopt her so soon, afraid someone would work the truth out). And she’s not merely hers; she’s WWX’s.

JC isn’t really more okay with WWX’s legacy than in canon because WWX orphaned JL. She’s still sharp-tongued and sharp-tempered. 

here’s a handful of facts:

She tells JL to think of JC’s foster daughter as the sister his parents would have given him. 

JC's daughter hates WWX because she knows he killed her father at the Siege. That's as hard on JC as hearing her daughter cackle WWX’s childhood laughter.

Sometimes it's hard for JC to look at her daughter.

There are scenes of heart wrenching conflict between her kid and her. “You're not even my real mother!” gets yelled once at the apex of a horrible fight, JC's face changes, the kid bursts into tears and runs to her room. The scene is only settled with JC entering the kid’s room (her daughter is hugging herself as hard as if JC had taken puppies away) and telling her stories about her parents. The kid goes from hugging herself to clinging to JC and sobbing. (JC cries when she returns to her room.)

It's also hard because as her daughter grows up sometimes JC thinks her daughter wants to leave. That she'd rather be a rogue cultivator, not the heir to the Jiang. Too much of her father on her, perhaps.

All this to say that JC isn't a perfect foster mom to her child.

the kids are very close. nobody is scared of JC in this household. JC’s daughter giggled and squealed as a baby/toddler when she heard JC shouting at other people. (Mama being shouty was very funny to the baby.) 

JC formally adopts her daughter at some point between Rusong’s birth and JL getting his sword, I’m not sure when exactly. 

JC develops a longstanding grudge against JGY for giving JL Fairy, for the following reasons: 1)like in canon, she can’t be the one giving JL a dog. 2)her daughter wants a dog. so JC is cast in the position of refusing, and she does refuse, because - when her daughter shouts and laugh, when her daughter cackles after JC’s shouted from afar at both children to be careful in the water, it’s like WWX never quite left. She can’t close that door. She can’t pretend she thinks he’s never going to return. She can’t choose not to be haunted. 

In place of a dog, she gets her daughter a pony. 

(Her daughter is prompt to decide this is much cooler than a dog. Later JC will dourly regret gifting her adventurous child the means with which to gallop all over the place. The pony’s saving grace is that you can’t put a pony on a flying sword, at least.) 

The children bicker endlessly about the merits of their respective animals. JC’s daughter calls her pony Thunder Vengeance. Everybody but her calls her Thunder for short. (because she makes a lot of comparisons to Leigong and Dianmu and her mother, and she casts herself as the little boy driving Leigong’s cart.) 

Daughter’s name contains a reference to Yanli because JC was not done feeling guilty for not being able to hate WWX even after he caused JYL’s death.

changes after WWX’s resurrection:

When WWX gets resurrected in this timeline, both kids are on Phoenix Mountain. I’m not sure how exactly close to canon WWX’s meeting with JL (and JC’s daughter) is, I want to say very close - maybe JL says “my aunt” and WWX goes “your *aunt*?” and JC’s daughter stands as tall as she can and says “yeah, my *mother*” - anyway I want JC’s daughter here and identified as soon as possible. 

This changes two things:

WWX’s brain is running blank because what JC kid. JC had a kid. JC. a CHILD??? it cannot go uninvestigated.

JC does not shout about WWX when she arrives, because her child is there and that's her other parent. She’ll be angry at herself later for trying to preserve something that isn't, but it's incredibly important for her that her child doesn't fight her father. It would be awful and wrong. JC’s lie about her daughter’s dead father was always going to have consequences but it shouldn't have this one. JL was orphaned by WWX.

So JC is more controlled, and WWX isn’t immediately convinced that he's been recognized and needs to gtfo before his ex murders him, and he very badly wants/needs to know what's up with JC and her kid.

When JC claims “MXY” must be dragged back to YMJ, he goes very willingly. This is what he wanted! He's still a bit apprehensive, but he's too curious not to go.

He chats with the kids, mostly, on the way back. JC isn't very talkative. It's enough for him to get the piece of information that JC’s daughter is her adoptive daughter, and the heir to YMJ. (It's weirdly reassuring to hear for some reason. It's JC taking a decision for the sect but there’s not, like, an entire husband and family and moving-on, it's still JC. And at the same time, he feels unmoored. JC adopted a child? Just like that. YMJ’s heir is adopted. She and JL are bickering and talking over one another and calling each other brother and sister.)

In LP, JC sends the kids swiftly to bed (there are protests), and WWX is starting to remember that oh yeah he'll have to do some quick thinking probably, when JC reveals she knows who he is. He denies. She pulls out Zidian - did you really think you could fool her, WWX? How dare you! Why did you return now? What do you want?

(I think they fuck. Or, at least: he very much feels like going to her like he once did, his hand wants to cup her cheek, he wants to smooth away the furrow on her brow.)

“Is it so hard to believe I just wanted to see more about the children?”

JC’s lips twist.

She doesn't throw him out or in a torture dungeon. Might drag him to the altars and make him apologize.

Most likely, they get to cogitate about The Plot. 

The pattern of the story is public lies and secret truths, so that's how it happens here too. WWX stays incognito in LP, and they fall into bed - like when they were younger, they have to be discreet. The vibe here is very much they're having a affair and they have to hide it.

The affair vibe includes the plot-relevant investigation. There's a little less JC and WWX travelling together than LWJ and WWX in canon, but there’s WWX sneaking back into LP in order to keep JC aware of his latest findings (and to have a fight about WWX inviting WN into LP) and Sect Leader Jiang stopping back from a night-hunt at an inn to meet an informant (WWX). 

This features things like WWX walking off the road because he’s daydreaming about the intimacy of seeing JC before bed, with a damp lock of her hair sticking to her neck and snaking down between her tits, and the ancient xianxia equivalent of a negligee that might be a little see-through. 

Also featured: WWX rolling his shoulders trying to feel the bruises she left (she still scratches but MXY’s core is only good for getting rid of those, which seems the worst of both worlds to WWX! He liked feeling the scratches a couple days down the line!!!). WWX is down bad for milf JC. (Also features JC staring at the strewn papers that fell on the ground last night when she and WWX started making out before she could put them away. She’s determinedly Not Thinking about it, especially when her daughter is raising her eyebrows at her.)

I think JC’s tempted to tell him the truth about their daughter right after Yi City/the Yi City equivalent, but she can't break the habit of keeping it a secret. And she can't know for sure if WWX will–she can't just tell WWX on a whim just because some stuck-in-the-past part of her wants to tell him!

WWX-investigating-Jinlintai this time involves WWX wondering how to infiltrate Jinlintai, and running into JC in Jinlintai. JC has good access to Jinlintai, so if he pretends to be part of her retinue it’ll hold out for all of two minutes until people recognize MXY. JC is not delighted with the idea but she likes JGY pulling shady stuff which endangers JL even less. 

The investigation does not result in WWX being uncovered in front of the entire Jianghu (Qin Su doesn't kill herself), but possibly only because JC and WWX end up pulling the oldest undercover move in the book: making out against a door. Afterwards JC is pissed because that's her reputation. WWX is a little flippant when he says that he knows how important her reputation is to her, but– do you, WWX? JC retorts. Do you?? Do you think I would have the raising of my nephew if the cultivation world didn’t think me above personal desires, above feelings and manipulation?

So the truth about the kid comes out when they confront JGY (how does that happen, given that there’s no Guanyin Temple scene? not my problem! all I know is that JGY’s gotta be the one to say it. Amidst the sea of bullshit JGY spouts as he tries to distract them/drive a wedge between them, like in canon, the one true thing he chances on is that JC’s daughter is WWX’s and she never told him. (JGY isn't an idiot. He worked it out. There was no reason for him to do anything about it, but now there is!)

I think WWX makes a run for it. WN finds him basically brooding in the dark in the cave in Yiling, and (gently) pokes him in the direction of returning to LP. At least for an explanation. WWX should get one, WN says. WWX kind of laughs hysterically. What’s JC going to explain? How babies are made? WWX knows how, he was there for it, WN!

(for maximum drama, the kids were there when JGY pulled out that tidbit, so another reason JC isn’t here herself is also because she’s busy with that.)

I’m also thinking that given WN finding WWX and convincing him to return must have taken at least a few hours, WWX finds his daughter out of LP and on her way to look for WWX (on her pony; she didn’t want to be alone for this - and she didn’t want to take JL because JL really did have both his parents dead because of WWX), so he brings her back (and saves JC a heart attack).

They work it out.

[whiteladyofithilien]

Legolas' Cave Trauma

So it occurred to me that it seemed a bit weird that Legolas, who arguably has spent hundreds of years in a freaking cave palace, would be as anti-cave as he is in the books when Gimli goes off about the wonder of the Glittering Caves in Helm's Deep. So I had to reconcile these two facts. I consulted with the council of Elrond (aka my Tolkien friends) and one of them was like "just cause he lived in the caves doesn't mean he liked it. Thranduil had made the cave palace as a stronghold against the evils of the world outside his realm" while my thoughts was just "Legolas has cave trauma after Moria".

Because as we all know Legolas absolutely loses his shit when he sees the Balrog, like full on screaming Elvish meltdown.

So I combined the two theories to run along this line... Legolas was never a fan of caves, growing up on stories of the evil things that dwelt under the mountains he probably was not a huge fan when that's where his dad decided to repair to as the world grew more perilous. I picture little Leggy being especially scared of the Balrogs in stories told to him as a child. We gotta remember Balrogs are an extremely ancient and distant myth for even a lot of the elves, especially the "less wise" elves of Thranduil's folk. Most peoples are convinced that the last of the Balrogs perished in the War of Wrath, heck even people like Elrond may think this. So for Legolas this is his childhood monster under the bed, the Elvish Boogeyman. Balrogs shouldn't exist. They're just a scary story you tell kids to make them behave or to exemplify the valor of the elves of old who slew them. Some legends may say that some survived in deep places of the world but no one believes them any more, except maybe for little elven princelings but they grow up and grow out of it and after hundreds of years living in their dad's cave palace they're just an embarrassing memory of childhood fears.

But then Moria happens and it's his nightmares coming and standing before him more terrifying than he even imagined as a child and then striking down the most powerful being he's ever known. And it's just terrorizing and traumatizing and while the time in Lorien helps to settle his nerves he's none too eager to ever step foot underground again.

Especially to unknown caves.

Especially to a place underground that Gimli is a excited about.

The last time this happened he saw the terror of tales of long ago come to living reality in front of his eyes.

This may even be part of the reason why Legolas won't repeat the laments for Gandalf. "The grief is too near" and so is the terror. He doesn't wanna think about his living nightmare again, especially so soon. Of course he heals somewhat from his Cave Trauma and his friendship with Gimli helps I'm sure, after all they probably talked about it while they were hanging in Lorien becoming besties. And in turn seeing Legolas willingly go underground to take the Paths of the Dead encourages him to follow. He's just seen his bestie face his fears and now he must do the same.

[occasionaloneshots]

I want a female (or fem presenting) animal character from the Dead Boy Detectives universe. I want a character who has magic but in a more controlled and less exciting way than TCK or Esther.

Give me an emotional support animal who got humanized like Monty, give her powers like Jasper Hale from Twilight. She’s absolutely stone faced but there’s so much love that pours out of her that she’s damn near intoxicating to the characters we already know. Make her an analogy for addiction or for learning to overcome trauma for all I care but make her comforting with something unknown under her skin. Have her always deadpan, cozy but off putting.

I want her to feel so entwined to their emotions, to them, that she’s step in front of a gun (or witch, or iron object) for them just so she doesn’t have to feel it with them. So used to making them happier that she can’t handle letting it slip. She can’t let them slip.

Make her a love interest to a character like Jenny or Niko who obviously we have but we haven’t gotten to explore like our main three. Someone who knows grief and loneliness and meets this force with a gentleness and understanding that just feels otherworldly to them.

Give me Charles being attached at her hip because when she’s around he can’t FEEL his anger that bubbles under the surface (she’s upped his dopamine, being around him and feeling everything festering under his smile makes her recoil, not that it’s as strong as he thinks, just that it feels awful to harbor someone else’s bottled up anger). Have him chase her like a high, begging for her to join them so he can keep feeling better.

Give me Edwin hating her until he realizes he’s just a little less scared of himself when talking to her. Who when he understands her magic he genuinely wants to add her to their group because she’s got the same calming ability as Death without the threat of Death herself. Their relationship becoming softer and almost sibling like as they grow to understand each other.

Give me Crystal finally being relaxed if she’s around. Going to her begging for just a little comfort when she thinks too much about David or herself from before the possession, Crystal who later realizes that it was never the girl’s (dog’s perhaps?) powers soothing her but just feeling seen. That she never truly lost the emotional support animal training she was given as a child (pup?, major dog girl to rival the cat boy brain rot)

Monty having someone who understands what it’s like to be torn apart and have to learn to understand emotion. She’s become nearly maternal to him because her powers pick him up the same way they do a toddler’s feelings. She can feel him trying to understand himself and through her own experience she just wants to help. Giving him the gentle affection and care Esther never cared to, like someone finally wants to love him in any form without having something to gain.

Give her an on going and unexplained rivalry with The Cat King that can fall apart the second one of them is in trouble. She can’t stand feeling his fear or pain and despite swearing to hate her, he hates seeing her give way to her own emotions when she does so much to make others feel better (including the lonely cat himself, not that she’ll admit to it). Give me them getting into an argument and getting some sort of “Cat King” collar as punishment, making people think she’s in the same situation as Edwin (not that he wants her -or maybe he does idgaf- but that the humiliation of it gives him a leg up)

I want to see an animal character who has grown past their animal instincts to something not quite human but not primal. A character decked out in fur and animal motifs but they come off so real you’d never see the magic under the surface. So attached to her last life through magic and so detached from her instincts that if she saw her animal form she wouldn’t know it.

Honestly I could turn this into a fic but idk if anyone would ever want that (and I just want more animal characters and comfort for those very very sad teenagers and magic creatures)

[snowangeldotmp3]

tw: internalized homophobia dedicated to @figthefruitfaeth bc zoey and i were talking abt comp het and femme4butch nancy and then this was born.

Something is wrong with Nancy.

This was her third failed date since her breakup with Jonathan.

She doesn’t know what it is, why this was her third failed date. Nancy doesn’t do failed dates, much less three of them within the span of a few weeks. She’s not gonna call him—James or Jasper or whatever his name was—the date was awkward and suffocating and Nancy really just wanted to leave, but, manners and all that. To make things worse, Nancy just, couldn’t find him attractive. It felt like a pity date on his part, mostly. And to make things worse, they had absolutely nothing in common. He kept talking about what he expects from a woman; a stay at home wife and kids and everything that Nancy detested. Everything she actively wanted to avoid.

At least her and Jonathan had shared trauma, and a genuine connection—even if it was as just friends.

That’s why they’d broken up, actually. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him, she did! She loved him more than she ever thought about loving Steve, but it wasn’t in the way that she knew he ought to be loved; he deserved better than that. She couldn’t love him more than that. There was something wrong with her.

She just doesn’t know what.

Nancy sighs, rubbing her face and staring back at the ceiling. The ceiling stares back, and Nancy knows, despite the downpour outside, that she will not be sleeping tonight. At least, not for a little while, anyway.

She tosses to one side, arm curled under the pillow, now staring at her bubblegum pink walls, and recalls the events of all three failed dates, trying to see where they all went wrong. And all three come back the same; Nancy just... didn’t like them.

If she’s honest, she would’ve rather spent time with Robin at Family Video, unofficially stocking tapes and goofing off, making a ranking list of best to worst Molly Ringwald movies. Or listening to Robin ramble about whatever book she’s reading, or about her nerves for college.

Now that she thinks about it, she doesn’t even know why she went on those dates in the first place.

That’s a lie. She does know why. She needed a distraction. A distraction from a certain dirty blonde who works at the video store.

Nancy doesn’t know why she can’t stop thinking about Robin. She should be thinking about Jeremiah or Jacob or whoever the hell she saw tonight, but, no matter what, she keeps going back to Robin.

Her and Robin’s friendship had come easy after spring break. Both of them too afraid to be alone for too long, and Nancy specifically, wanted to make sure nothing bad would happen to Robin. She almost lost her in the Upside Down and she was not going to lose another person to that godforsaken place.

And maybe that’s why Nancy can’t stop thinking about Robin, because she reminded Nancy so much of Barbara. Down to Robin’s nerdy little interests, so close to Barb’s own nerdy interests—stuff that Barb was always so passionate about that Nancy always wanted to listen to her. Couldn’t help but listen to her. Nancy was never sure what it was with Barb, why she always felt this magnetic air around her, an electricity that Nancy constantly tried to ignore when Barb would accidentally brush her pinkie walking side by side in the hallways. She always wanted to be around Barb, and she could never figure out why.

Why Nancy loved it when she made Barb laugh with her stupid jokes; why she thought seeing Barb smile—she could be a little serious, much more serious than Nancy, so making Barb smile was usually the highlight of Nancy’s day—was like winning the lottery. Why their sleepovers always ended with Nancy curled up into Barb’s side, trying to get warm, and an arm slung over her waist, pulling her closer.

Why her death destroyed Nancy. A mourning that sometimes, Nancy never thinks she'll get over. What happens when you don’t know where to put all of that grief? Where does it go?

Nancy huffs, turning to the other side, where bubblegum walls and Tom Cruise stare back at her, still wide awake.

It was nice to have another friend, too, one that she could call in the middle of the night and talk about anything—everything—and feel like she’s got a real friend again. A best friend, even. She’s not a replacement for Barb by any means--nobody could replace her, but it is nice to have someone to talk to again. Someone who shares her love for stupid little jokes and who never fails to make Nancy laugh, even when she doesn’t want to. Someone who Nancy feels drawn to; this warm, giddy feeling inside when Nancy hangs out with her.

Thinking about Robin now—her laugh, her eyes, her hands—the feeling returns, taking root and blossoming inside of her, warming her inside and out, making her face flush and her stomach flip. Nancy can’t help but smile softly into the darkness.

Isn’t that how she was supposed to feel about Jack? That fluttery nervous feeling?

Wasn’t that how she was supposed to feel about Steve? And Jonathan? And the other two guys she went on a date with?

What was wrong with her?

[alittledizzy]

i think the rule of thumb when writing rpf should always just be to put yourself in a creator’s shoes. if someone were to take YOUR trauma you’ve been candid about and use it as a trope in art/fic, would you not feel incredibly uncomfortable and violated? if so, maybe DONT use it.

it’s just not a censorship debate at all—it’s an extremely low bar of Being A Decent Human Being When Writing About Real Life People. Be Respectful And Don’t Weaponize People’s Real Life Trauma Then Cry Censorship As An Excuse For Your Inability To Respect Others.

I completely disagree. I don't write RPF for the creator. I write it for myself and the community. I also make every effort for the creator to not see it. But the fanworks I make, and most of my friends make, are not for their consumption or approval.

The argument being made here is that writing about basic human concepts like grief and mortality is a moral wrong because it's RPF, and I just disagree. I think it is absolutely a censorship debate. It's one group of people trying to project their own opinions of what is accepted and allowed on other people and attempting to shame and pressure them out of writing/sharing their writing.

I don't know the author of this fic personally, but I hope the fic stays up and they tune this out. The more people just stay in their own lane and don't cow to the pressure, the less confident other people will have trying to bully authors for personal preference, the more peaceful fandom will be.

[bumblesimagines]

i think nettles is going to be replaced by rhaena, bc its gonna take a few seasons for her to have a significant role and they just want to give the poor girl a side plot for some time 😭😭

also ngl been kinda hating thia season, it has GOT s2 energy, it's kind of boring and it doesn't interest me as much

This season has been very drawn out and repetitive for sure which is disappointing cause we left S1 strongly and then after episode 1 of this season it's been the same thing over and over again.

Gonna do some spoilers real quick (including some book spoilers)

Rhaenyra left episode 1 of this season pissed off and wanting Aemond's death and then after her reunion with Jace all her anger?? evaporated?? Yes, she was exhausted and grieving in the last ep of S1 and first ep of S2 but?? It's like she just stopped grieving and being angry??

It feels like she's been reduced to one of the two types of Strong Female Lead written by a man. One of the types is the sexy cool girl who doesn't need no man but still gets saved by a man and has sassy one liners, the second type is the perfect rational woman who has no flaws or bad traits. Rhaenyra is currently the second type and it's annoying because it also fits the rest of the woman (apart from maybe Alys and Alicent).

The men thus far have been allowed to make mistakes, stick their foot in their mouths, be loud and angry and bitter, have complex personalities and arcs while the woman have been reduced to always rational and practical.

Helaena 'accepted' her son's death when she's supposed to be going mad with grief, Rhaenyra is no longer angry when her son was literally murdered, half of Alicent's scenes revolve around Cole, most of Rhaenys scenes pre-battle were just telling people to shut up, Baela and Rhaena are hardly on screen.

All Rhaenyras done these past eps have been dip out of Dragonstone and get dismissed by her council over and over and over again. Literally since she got back it's the same 'oh these men are sexist and won't listen to her' again and again. We could've been seeing her make rash decisions fueled by anger and then regretting them later. We could've seen her realize her anger needed simmering only for it to resurface after witnessing Ser Erryk's death by having Rhaenys fly out to meet Cole and avenge him as well as protecting Rooks Nest.

Just because Rhaenyra is the main protagonist doesn't mean she has to be absolutely perfect and reasonable. Character flaws and negative traits is what made GoT's characters and story compelling. It's what actually makes the Greens interesting. Ryan obviously considers them the big bad villains and as such they have noticeable flaws which makes them fun to watch. The Blacks are noticeably more boring because they lack those bigger flaws.

It's a frequent thing with men writing about women. It feels like they're so nervous and uncomfortable with potentially being called a misogynist that they unintentionally end up creating/using sexist tropes. It's fine for women to be rebellious and angry and bitter and resentful. It's fine for them to be submissive and gentle and motherly. It's fine for them to change over time and to appropriately react to certain things. This fandom also forgets that in their treatment of Rhaenyra and Alicent depending on which side they're on.

Anyways I'm actually annoyed about Nettles 😭 she was the ONLY woman of color in the book and her existence and closeness to Daemon pushed Rhaenyra further into her own downfall and now what? They're going to make her paranoid over an actual father-daughter duo?

I get Rhaena was underused and hardly involved in the battle (since she was more like young Sansa in the book. Not a bad thing at all tbh it might've even been nice if Team Black had a less 'i want to fight' character. You very rarely see poc characters in period era dramas be allowed to have those arcs/personalities without some sort of trauma or mistreatment) but if anything, they could've had her helping Nettles claim Sheepstealer. They could've had them becoming good friends and potentially even doing a call back to the og Rhaena Targ who had a female lover since they've already implied the eggs given to Rhaena are Danys eggs. There were a billion plots to go with and they went with the most simple generic one when there aren't supposed to be any dragons in the Vale. I see why George decided not to be involved anymore.

[thatonebirdwrites]

This is another interlude chapter that covers three different perspectives: Kelly, Kara, and Andrea. Each wrestle with some alarming truths that they are not quite sure how to handle yet.

Act 2 will feature more of these interludes so I can weave all the parts together appropriately. It will also be a little more Kara heavy. In Act 1, I broke Lena down on her identity and who she understood herself to be and then built her back up. Sam mirrors her arc, where a similar thing happens with Sam. Though Sam isn't as angsty as Lena was. Act 2 it's Kara and Andrea's turn! Whee! Time to break them down and build them back up. Alex is also getting some of this as well. P.S. Thank you to the awesome person who said it was okay for me to use their Kelly Headcanon. :) EXCERPT:

Since the war, Kelly found shooting ranges an excellent location to bleed dry her anxiety over things she couldn’t control. The heft of the weapon in her hands, the careful aim, and the click of the trigger — it all served as a harmonious symphony that rattled and roared with the tumult in her spirit.

As a therapist and social worker, some truths she kept close to her vest. To do well at her jobs, she required a clear mind and active listening. It bled into her other relationships, sometimes to the point where she’d forget her own needs. Since James' recovery from Harun-el, Kelly had made it a point to keep a sharp demarcation on the needs of others and her own needs. Hence her growing friendship with Lena, who excelled at such boundaries.

Lena sat on the bench next to her in the women’s locker room. She’d donned the protective gear, and held the headphones in her long fingers, turning it over and over like it was a novelty. “This is more than just you being stir crazy, isn’t it?”

Kelly sighed. “In a way, yes. Alex and I are talking through the whole over-protective bit. But it’s my job that has me worried. We’ve had a massive influx of alien kids, where their parents went missing. Plus, I got offered a part-time gig at Obsidian. A chance to use their software to help treat PTSD.” 

A frown creased Lena’s face. “The gig sounds promising. But missing parents? Is anyone looking into this?”

“They’re aliens.” Kelly stood and walked to the row of firearms. She brought her own, but sometimes playing with the other types gave her a bit of thrill. “I’ve tried to push for it, but I’ve gotten nowhere.”

“Right.” A hint of bitterness coated Lena’s voice. “Xenophobia I take it.” 

“Maybe.” Kelly selected a shotgun. She hefted it and noted it was fairly well balanced. “Kara and you may have exposed Lex's xenophobic plans, but America hasn’t really recovered from the Children of Liberty. Nor their views. There’s still a lot of folks angry that Alien Amnesty was reinstated. Polls claim the nation is split fifty fifty on it.” 

“It’s absolutely necessary though.” Lena walked over to examine the firearms. She chose one of the pistols. “Aliens are here to stay. They deserve the same rights.” 

“And yet the systems that ensnare us fail to catch up to the law.” Kelly shook her head. “It hurts to see all those kids alone, Lena. I wish I could take them in myself, but I can’t. Finding them homes is difficult. Alien children are less likely to be adopted.”

Lena scowled. “Of course. It’s not right. The kid isn’t at fault. They deserve a good life.”

Kelly knew Lena well enough now that her words held an undercurrent of grief, for the fact she’d been denied a loving childhood. Since she’d met Lena at the hospital when she'd saved her brother, Kelly had taken time to talk with the CEO more often. Go to shooting ranges with her. Teach her better firing stances since Lena’s brother had been a shit teacher. 

She supposed in a way the two had bonded over their respective traumas, and being the last two not in on Kara’s secret. “How are you and Kara?”

Lena buckled a belt and slid the pistol into its sheath. “She asked me out finally.”

“Good for her!” Kelly led the way toward the door. “I honestly thought you two were dating until Alex explained you were just best friends a week before you left for Ireland.”

“You too? Nia did as well.” Lena smiled with a slight shake of her head. “I’d wished for it the entire time I’ve known Kara.” She paused with her hand against the door. “I asked Kara to come to therapy with me. She’s… you know? Was that the right tactic? Do therapists know how to deal with alien psychology?”

Kelly slipped on her headphones. “Not all. I can find you one that deals specifically with this, but it’ll be an alien therapist. Most human ones aren’t equipped, and Kara in particular?” She didn’t know how to explain in words.

Lena looked at her expectantly. 

“Kara’s gone through a lot of trauma. Layers. She’s woven a delicate web to keep herself going. Her way of thinking isn't human, so what works for us likely may not for her. Tread gentle with her if you two go together, okay?” Kelly wished for a better way to explain Kara's unique psychology; Kryptonians seemed to have steel-trap minds, Kara far more than her cousin. Likely since she grew up on Krypton when he hadn't.

“Understandable. I want to build a healthy relationship with her. That means going through some of our baggage. It's more for that than to touch on her trauma.” Lena adjusted the headphones on her head. “What of you and Alex? How are you two doing?”

“As well as can be.” Kelly pushed open the door and led Lena down the hallway toward the shooting range itself. “I worry about her though. She works herself ragged. I think not having solid leads on her cases is making her restless and prone to jumping to conclusions. I told her I'd give the hiding three days before I return to work. I'm really needed there.”

“I noticed. Well, I may have a lead for her.” Lena smiled tightly. “I am going to see Florence again this afternoon. She's my Great Aunt apparently. Her sister married into my birth mother’s family. She’s the one teaching me control.” 

[thesunshinecourts]

countdown to tsc: apr 7., 2024, 23:58 pdt

2. digging your fingers into fresh dirt // renee walker, after lazarus

When Renee gets to the garden, her fingers are still stained with blood.

It had taken Abby’s most soothing tone and Wymack doing a passable imitation of Aaron’s impatient candour—the same language as Wymack’s, but less heart-filled bluster, more blunt force trauma—to get Renee to leave the room. She’s still not sure she should have, but Abby’s voice had been gentle when she’d said, this isn’t like Matt. Giving him something to believe in will come later.

Renee doesn’t know if she’s ever seen Abby so angry and horrified. It’s worse than how she looked at Kevin’s injuries, that very first night. It’s worse than how she looked at Neil, both times, after the Nest and after his father. It’s almost as devastated, Renee thinks, as the way she looked when she held Allison tight to her chest that first night after Seth.

Wymack is better at holding his expressions in check, but Renee knows him. There had been a tremor in his knuckles when he opened the passenger car door. He’d gotten it under control fairly quickly, to his credit, but Renee had noticed.

Renee had thought, I am not the only one who must draw on all my reserves to keep steady.

She breathes out, then in, as if the smell of growth in the world around her can flush through her body. When she was a second year, Seth had taken a biology class with Dwayne. It had nothing to do with either of their majors—she remembers Juan making some sort of joke about growing pot, and Seth elbowing him with a sidelong glance at Allison, who had rolled her eyes and told them both that she thought they’d be lucky to keep a fake plant alive in the shithole they called a dorm—but Seth had liked it better than anyone had expected, occasionally offering up things he found interesting from the units on horticulture.

There had been a joke about photosynthesis once, something that had been mostly earnest information, but he hadn’t been able to resist throwing in some teasing at the end, always trying to make Allison laugh. Renee feels a sudden wave of indescribable, quiet grief when she realises she can’t remember how his joke had gone.

There are four plants to her left, still in the plastic pottles you buy them in at the store. Renee remembers Abby talking about a sale a few weeks ago, and wonders if these are those same plants. It’s been a demanding few weeks, she thinks. Life is often unkind to those that cannot move of their own accord.

She’s not really thinking about it when she walks over and picks them up. She puts them together, two by two, and squeezes her fingers around two pottles per hand. There are probably gloves somewhere; a trowel too, maybe.

Renee does not care.

Kneeling down at the edge of the garden, there’s a patch with looser soil than the rest. It is poor behaviour, she thinks, to start messing around with Abby’s things without asking permission first, but Renee does not have the space in her yet to hold back. Abby will forgive her, which is not an acceptable reason to do something, but Renee is so angry. She spent her whole night transforming terrified grief into determination and a plan, and then the six-hours-and-then-some drive from Castle Evermore back home with nothing in her mind but Jean. The impossibiity of him.

The impossibility of him still being alive. The impossibility of her getting there in time, and even that’s still to be determined. The impossibility of how much she aches, looking at him and thinking about him and praying for him. Four hundred miles on the I-77, and all she could do was pray.

It was a very human thing, Renee thinks, to walk into Evermore to get him out. Stephanie had been proud of her, and Abby had called her brave, and Andrew had looked at her with that innate knowledge of someone who understood what it meant to take someone under their wing, and absolutely none of their thoughts and love and understanding change the fact that Renee walked into Castle Evermore with more fear than faith.

She digs. One hand into the soil, then the next. There is blood on her fingers still, beneath the nails. Part of Renee has the uncharitable thought that she hopes it’s Zane’s, stray flecks from when she punched him. More of her accepts that it’s Jean’s. She does not know when it is from: when she first knelt at his side on Riko’s bedroom floor, when he was carefully settled into her car, when she and Wymack lifted him into Abby’s house, when she sat beside him and held his hand as those broken, wounded sounds ripped their way from his throat and drove right into her heart, piercing it through, over and over, just as the way the ugliest part of her, buried beneath therapy and anger management and the most wilful calm she has ever had to cloak her body in, wishes it could do to Riko.

Jean’s blood beneath her fingernails, spattered across her hands, buried into the soil. She’s planting a flower she does not know the name of, and all she hopes for is that Jean will bloom.

Please, she prays, tugging the roots apart with a care and precision she did not feel capable of two hours ago, listening to Jean’s screams. Please, she prays, pressing the plant into the soil, cupping her hands together to scoop the dirt, helping it settle into its new home. Please, she prays, patting down the soil, warm earth meeting her palms like a balm.

Please, she prays. Stephanie says you are not done with him yet. She was right about me. Thank you for getting us this far. Please. Please. Please.

“Renee?”

It’s Abby’s voice, exhausted and haunted and utterly wrecked. She still manages a wan smile when Renee looks up at her. Abby doesn’t seem to notice that Renee has been co-opting her garden, or maybe she’s too raw to care.

“You can come back in now,” she says, like she knows it’s both a gift and punishment at once.

Renee nods, then stands, brushing the dirt off her trousers. She looks at Abby as she approaches, trying to choose her words. To ask how he is would only invite more sadness; to ask if he’ll live betrays how deep her fear has run.

“I’m sorry,” she says in the end, quiet but sincere. “That must have been… very difficult.”

The look Abby gives her is brief, but pained. “He breaks my heart as much as any of you,” she says, quickly, fervently, “but that is never a thing to apologise for.” Abby looks so sad. It makes Renee ache, but this is not the type of thing she can wipe away. “Thank you for bringing him here,” Abby says, and Renee feels rocked with it.

“Thank you for letting me,” she says in return, and neither of those are entirely what they mean, but it is enough. Renee will always walk into Castle Evermore to save Jean, and Wymack and Abby will always open the door when she arrives in South Carolina. There is no version of this story, Renee thinks, where they follow any other script.

This is what it is to be Foxes, after all.

“He’s still not quite himself,” Abby says. There is a part of Renee that finds this sentence amusing; Abby has never met Jean, not truly, only from Kevin’s stories. More of her is somber. She knows what Abby means. “But I think he’ll feel — perhaps only marginally, but I think he’ll feel more at ease having you beside him. I’ve done what I can, for now, and there will be more medication and treatment and dressing of his wounds, much more before the night is through, let alone before he is recovered, but —” She exhales, long and low. “He is alone, and in pain. We can’t do much more about the second one. But he can have you back.”

Renee nods, setting her jaw as Abby steps back to allow her through.

“Then he shall have me until I am no longer needed,” Renee says, and thinks, and perhaps some time longer after that.

Abby gives her a careful look. “That could be a very long while,” she says, but she does not offer any sort of objection.

“That’s okay,” Renee says. “I don’t mind waiting.”

[thepartyresponsible]

Hey there! I've read all the way through your fics masterlist (for the second time this year) and am craving more (who wouldn't?!). I was just wondering, since I'd hate to impose asking for something new, if you'd consider posting a snippet of one of your wips (maybe something with Clint)? Any scrap of material you'd be willing to release into the world again would be like a holy grail, a balm to soothe savage readers. Love your writing so much!!

hello! i'm not working on much right now, but i've been reading something is killing the children, and, naturally, trying to figure out how to write a dc/marvel crossover in that universe.

so here's a little snippet of a something is killing the children dc/marvel au, where jason todd and clint barton are young, feral, and murderous.

warnings for graphic violence, dead parents, and gore.

- - -

The White Masks clean up after a feeding frenzy at a circus, and, afterwards, they bring home a pair of blonde brothers still spotted with blood. Circus kids, just like Dick, but skinnier. The youngest is wearing a costume, bright purple and garish, an embarrassment in the predawn light. He’s clutching a bow like a teddy bear, has that pale, rolling-eyed look of fresh trauma.

The story, when it filters to them, is that a brood of Oscuratypes feasted their way through a late-night performance. The monsters started in the stands, ate their way to the stage. It was a spectacle, Jason hears. A real, once-in-a-lifetime sort of show.

Whole families dismembered and consumed alive. Pieces of acrobats raining down from the trapeze. Blood and guts and sequins and screams.

The baby brother, that five foot nothing bit of dandelion fluff on legs, killed three of the babies with blunted arrows. Three of the damn things.

“I mean,” Jason says, at dinner, “it’s bullshit. Kid shows up with three kills. That’s not fair.”

“Yeah.” Dick looks disappointed in him, which is how he usually looks these days. “That’s absolutely the point here, Jason. That’s what we’re all focusing on. He has more kills than you.”

“He hasn’t been initiated,” Jason continues. “He doesn’t even have a totem. He’s got three kills and--”

“And,” Bruce intones, “twenty-six people are dead.”

It should be more. One adult and five babies, a crowd of hundreds of people. Should be dozens upon dozens. Should be a fucking mess.

A twelve-year-old kid with blunt arrows and a spangly purple leotard. “And,” Jason says, as he shoves to his feet, “he’s too fucking old for this.”

- -

Jason was eleven when he watched a monster rip his mother into meat. He remembers the teeth.

He remembers her high-pitched, dying-rabbit shrieks, remembers that awful wet slurping. He remembers everything, every sound, the arc of blood, angle dropping rapidly, pressure failing. The way she looked at him, the way she stopped.

He remembers the weight of the knife from the kitchen, shitty and dull like everything they owned. The useless dredge of terror in his chest, all that stupid, howling grief.

Twelve’s too fucking old. A younger brain’s more malleable, sieves that shit right out of you, kicks it to the backburner of your subconscious mind. Jason knows plenty of White Masks who showed up when they were six or seven, and he almost wouldn’t clock them as Knights if he never saw them work.

But he can always tell the older ones. The cracks never quite fuse up right.

Black Masks are different, but they always are.

The point is, the kid had a chance. It’s just too damn bad his monsters showed up so late.

- -

“They’re gonna kill you,” Jason tells him. Out after curfew, unmasked with an uninitiated stray. Rules are for breaking, like laws and promises and necks.

If Bruce didn’t want him here, he should’ve nailed his bedroom window shut.

If the house didn’t want him talking to the stray, they should’ve nailed his window shut too.

“Loose ends,” Jason says.

The blonde shrugs. His name is Clint. His brother disappeared less than six hours after they brought him here, stole out sometime during lunch, and everybody’s shocked as hell except the brother he left behind. “Seems like,” he says, slow and kinda rambling, picking through his words, “everything’s been trying. But nothing’s done it yet.”

That white mask looks terrible on him, covers him from cheekbones to jaw, washes him out. He’d look better in black, but God knows Bruce wasn’t going to risk going to another circus. Look what happened last time.

Bruce Wayne, the so-called last of the Dark Knights, all his good, solitary intentions shattered apart at the feet of the bloodily orphaned Dick Grayson. And then Jason, and then Steph, and then Tim. Maybe Bruce will be the last in the end, but he has some graves to dig first.

“Take that stupid thing off,” Jason says, reaching for the mask.

Clint dodges away from his hand. Not like a flinch, like a habit. “Supposed to keep it on,” he says. “They told me. Coulson said. Whenever we’re out of our rooms, mask on.”

“Fucking Coulson,” Jason sneers. “What the fuck would he know? He’s new to being in charge. Yesterday, he was just one of us.”

“Hey,” Clint says, finally looking him in the eyes. “He’s nice.”

He says it soft, but those blunted arrows were soft too. He killed three monsters, saved dozens, and there was Jason, at damn near the same age, and he saved nobody, killed nothing.

Jason’s fourteen now. Sometimes he can feel the hunt like a shiver behind his eyes. He remembers, always, forever. The way his mother looked at him, the pathetic stretch of his open hand, the time he wasted screaming when he should’ve been going for a knife.

He keeps that monster caged in a stuffed bat, identical to Dick’s except for the red stitching. The first gift Bruce Wayne ever gave him.

Well, the second, if you count his life.

“That monster you couldn’t kill,” Jason says, “that big one. The mother. They’re gonna tell you they want you tame it. But it’s a lie. You’re too old. You’re an outsider. That’s not how the White Knights work. They’re gonna let it eat you.”

The Dark Knights are different, always have been. But White Knights fall in line. White Knights turn inward.

Clint looks at him, white mask blank and toothless against his face, erasing him until he’s just a pair of bloodshot blue eyes and hair so blonde that patches of it are still dyed faintly red. Three dead monsters, and a skinny wide-eyed kid. Just bait, Jason thought. Just a corpse still walking.

Looking at him now, there’s no bait, there’s no corpse. There’s a killer, staring back. The hunt that hums in Jason’s chest is an itch in his teeth. He feels like it’s humming in Clint, too. Not quite an echo, but a harmony, maybe.

Three dead monsters. It could be so many more.

“I want you to live,” Jason says. “We could kill so many of those bastards.”

Clint tilts his head. “I thought,” he says, still drawling through his vowels like he’s got time to waste, “that we were trying to save people.”

“Yeah,” Jason says, “sure. Whatever.”

That’s probably how the White Knights spin it. But Jason’s mask is black, and he doesn’t care how many people they save. The only person who mattered is already dead.

“C’mon,” Jason says, and this time, when he grabs Clint by the arm, he doesn’t dodge away. “I’m gonna teach you how to live.”

[pendulumstarway]

Meet Blythe Denton, an Ancient Gear user set in the 5D's universe. He's a shady, sly man who relies on fear tactics and manipulation to survive in the slums.

Backstory stuff under cut!

Content warnings:

Motorcycle accident

Loss of limbs

Eye trauma

Attempted murder?

Not the most detailed or fleshed out, but for what I do have:

Blythe was born in Satellite, and ended up becoming one of its many orphaned children. Less because of his parents died, more because they abandoned him due to financial reasoning. Blythe ends up staying at an orphanage for a good portion of his life. Once he's a teenager, he starts dealing in shady business and makes some money by smuggling in high-demand high-priced items. It's a dog eat dog world out there, he has to do what he has to do.

Eventually Blythe got all buddy-buddy with a guy from Sector Security, ended up getting some really high-priced and rare items smuggled into Satellite. They were decently close friends, 'til his buddy went MIA for a week. Turns out his cop friend ratted him out due to pressure. He backstabbed Blythe and tried to be a coward and run off, not wanting to face the consequences. Absolutely infuriated, Blythe tracked down and chased his ex-friend on his motorcycle, ready to beat him down.

They duel and other sector security gang up on him. Blythe's d-wheel is slammed against a wall and spins out, sending him flying off violently. His arm gets mangled by his own machine and becomes unsalvageable. Blythes helmet is destroyed, and the impact breaks the right side of his face. He's transported to a hospital in Neo Domino, his arm is amputated, and he needs surgery and stitches in various places. Alongisde that, his left leg is rendered permanently injured from said accident, and Blythe lost his right eye.

After he's stable, Blythe's arrested and thrown into jail. He get his first marker, which is the tear-streak line under his right eye. [Not including the broken line marker.] His buddies have to gather up everything to pay his bail, and he's taken back to Satellite.

Wracked with anger and grief, Blythe dedicates himself to seeking revenge. With nothing but his mouth and his other working arm, he manages to build himself a working prosthetic, and then a fully functional cybernetic eye. Since his leg didn't need amputation, and therefore cannot be replaced by a cybernetic device, Blythe designs himself a sword-cane. It's a great way to defend himself, while also accommodating his chronic injury. He ends becoming part of a mafia/hitman situation, since that's the only other way he can think of making proper money- and acting out his revenge. He's got people to pay back and take care of anyways.

Until the reformation of Neo Domino and Satellite, Blythe takes the lives of anyone, really. Money's money, and he's making a decent living off of it. Once full access is open to Neo Domino, he's given his biggest job. Yusei Fudo.

This happens Pre-WRGP, before Bruno's arrival/addition. Assuming it's another team wanting the win, Blythe's initially hesitant, but with the sum offered he'd be able to move from Satellite and maybe even quit this gig altogether.

Unfortunately with the rest of Team 5D's present, Blythe's caught, and gets the snot beat out of him. He's given another chance to finish the job, and fails miserably once more. It's argued he did so on purpose, but nobody can be sure. In a twisted manner, he ends up becoming a contact of the teams. He's got connections in the shadows, and he proves to be useful.

Although, he does camp out to hide from authorities, and steal the teams snacks. Much to their dismay.

[weebsinstash]

Not to be a huge nerd about Miguel again but I was listening the the ATSV soundtrack and I actually had no idea that, besides the main track that has That One Specific Soundbite That's A Meme Now, Miguel actually has another song, one that even has his voicelines in it as part of the track

It just has such a melancholy feel to it? A lot of the lyrics are confident, such as 21 Savage's entire verse about breaking chains, building a house starting from just a brick, having a family to feed, being a leader, having goals everyone isnt built for, but this is also repeatedly contrasted with the chorus, which, when paired in context of the movie, becomes almost remorseful, burdened. In the presence of the chorus, many of these lines, to me at least, seem less like genuine confidence and swagger and more of a self soothing reassurance

I can't be the one here givin' up ((because he feels he has absolutely no choice but to keep working and moving forward at all costs. Like he said, he's given up too much to stop now))

I'm not the one here givin' up ((no other option but to make his enemies submit. Any anomalies or obstacles have to be the one to submit, because he doesn't have that option, there is too much at stake))

Time heals all, but I can't feel what it was ((he has to numb himself not just to his current actions, but the memories and longing of his past. He had to let go of his desire to have his family again and went completely in the opposite direction, becoming laser focused on his mission and less on being human, also just ouch, this line actually kind of feels like it's being sarcastic or ironic or something. Miguel is obviously still going through stages of grief and acting out of trauma but he's convinced himself he's moved on and all of his actions are logical and mechanical when he's actually significantly suffering mentally and emotionally))

If you were me, you wouldn't give up ((he's really one of those "burdened with great purpose" characters. When you think about it, what would be happening if Miguel and Lyla hadn't developed the dimensional watches and started going around helping people and forming this network? How many more people and lifeforms would be gone? Not only is he at least in the film's own canon one of the only people who could have accomplished this sort of thing, but his own emotional investments and past actions and the consequences he suffered also cement his dedication to his mission. 'If you were me, if you knew what I knew and felt what I felt, you would understand'))

Anyways maybe I'm overanalyzing, and art as a medium is absolutely interpretive, but I was surprised I hadn't really heard or seen anything around specifically about this being his actual true theme or the messaging or whatever. I'm just practically observing this man like a specimen in the wild at this point. He loves his family. He loved them so much he literally stole someone else's and lied to them and accidentally got them killed with his selfishness. He's consumed with grief and compensates by being a workaholic desperately trying to fix things. He's got a temper and throws trashcans at teens and swears and gets huffy. He (at least in concept art) has slippers that a kid he rescued drew bunnies on and he actually wears them. He manhandled and chokeslammed a teenage boy and held onto him so hard he tore his suit and left actual claw gouges in the kid's shoulder while literally leaning down to tell him directly in his ear that he was a mistake, because if physical force wasn't going to make this kid stop the next option was to literally break his spirit, like, truly Miguel is a complex individual but ALSO he's my poor little meow meow that I would have sex with

[patchodraws]

20, 26, and 33 for writing asks!

20: Do you work on a single project or many at the same time? How does that work for you?

nah, i absolutely gotta work on multiple projects at once or my brain EXPLODES. usually, the different ones i'm working on are all for different fandoms and also some original works, because i'll always be getting ideas for different stories or be feeling like writing a different style or type of story than another one of my wips, so it is nice to have all these options to keep me from burning out on one single project!

26: What would you describe as OOC?

hmm that's tricky, especially in fandom spaces where people can read characters differently. i'm not the type of person to condemn anything that deviates from my interpretation of a character as OOC, but i do think most instances of OOC writing are less about different interpretations of the character in canon and much more about just not interpreting the character at all. if the character could literally be replaced by some random character from another franchise and still be written the same way, that's OOC

33: Give your writing a compliment.

(how dare you put me through this)

uhhhhhh i guess if there's one thing I will willingly compliment my writing on (other than original concepts), it's how well i write grief/sadness/angst. i feel like all of my best works involve characters internally struggling with some kind of pain or conflict, or involve them facing grief and dealing with it in different ways. they've always been things i like to write about because there's so much to dig into and sink my teeth into, and no two characters will ever deal with this the same way. i think Flickers and Snapshots are both maybe some of my best work and they both involve grief and trauma, and every time i reread them i'm reminded i kinda rock at this kinda stuff !!

Writing asks!