#most of the planet is filled with good people living good lives trying to bring good into their little corner of the world.

[shannonallaround]

the world has puppies in it. and kittens. and cake. and wildflowers. and starry skies. and cool inventions like cars and rollerblades and the printing press. it also has soft pillows. and pillow forts. and airplanes. and incredible books. and art. and cool clouds and phases of the moon. and the beauty of the changing seasons. and scientific discoveries that have eradicated diseases. and kind people who help you pick up your fallen groceries or give you directions or jump your car just because they're genuinely kind. and good people who are just living their lives in small towns or cities raising loving families all around the world. and all of these things that a loving Father in Heaven made to help bring you joy because He loves you.

let yourself remember how much good there is in the world. hope this brightens someone's day today. :)

[lizzyk137]

I'll Be There for You - A Spencer Reid Fanfic (Spencer Reid X Reader)

Description: You and Spencer had become friends since he moved into your building. Slowly you fell for him only for him to find someone else. Warnings: Mentions of- death, depression. Angst and jealousy.

Part Two! Want to read more, visit my Masterlist!

Perfection.

That's what you thought every time you saw your next-door neighbor. Pure perfection.

You knew who he was exactly. A FBI agent, part of the BAU, one of the greatest minds on the planet and he was your next-door neighbor.

He had just moved in a few months ago and ever since then, you'd catch yourself looking through your windows to see him walking off the bus and then running to the door to hear him walk up the stairs, only to open your door just as he was fumbling with his keys to do some mysterious tasks just so you could talk to him.

The first time you ever saw him was when he was unloading his stuff out of a moving van with a few friends, who you've come to know were his co-workers and practically his family. You were pulling up on your bike after a quick morning ride, to see the most gorgeous man turn to look at you as you braked the closer you got.

"Hello!" A cheerful blonde called out as you locked your bike near the entrance of your apartment building.

"Hi!" You had said quietly, suddenly getting nervous as four people, including the supermodel of a man, turned to look at you. You felt like they were looking you all over, analyzing you, which you had come to find out that they naturally do to everyone since it's their job.

"I'm Penelope! This is my friend Spencer; he's moving into the building!" The blonde said with the biggest smile plastered on her face. She was bubbly and confident which made you nervous since you were neither of those things.

"I'm Y/n, I live in 13B. It's nice to meet you." You briefly made eye contact with Spencer's sunglasses covered eyes before looking back down at your hands nervously.

"Did you know in most cultures 13 is considered an unlucky number and the bringer of bad luck? Most buildings skip the 13th floor entirely and most places don't number a house or apartment as the number 13 since it could bring bad luck to the area?" Spencer stated, looking at you.

"Um, I did know that actually. 13 is one of my favourite numbers and I also own a black cat too. So hopefully you don't have to be my neighbor." You chuckled trying to make a joke. The others laughed but Spencer just stood there looking at you.

"Actually, my apartment is number 11, and with how the building is organized with odd numbers on the left and even numbers on the right, I am more than likely your neighbor. Plus, I also don't believe in superstitions since there is no scientific proof that they harbor any bad luck."

You nodded. "Oh... well, um did you guys need any help with your stuff?" You motioned with your head to the van filled with boxes labeled books. "There is a service elevator just on the other side of the building that we can use to bring in the larger stuff."

"Thanks, that would be a big help." A handsome-looking gentleman said. "The name's Morgan." He said winking at you.

A dark-haired woman shook her head at Morgan, then said, "Why don't we pull out what we can and do an assembly line to the apartment then we can use the elevator for the larger furniture?"

"Sounds good!" Penelope said and everyone broke away from the huddle to start pulling boxes out.

After that day, the apartment next to yours was quiet. The front door never opened or closed, and you worried that your new neighbor was dead. Worried after the fifth day of not hearing anything you knocked on the door to no reply.

You had called your landlord and asked him if the next door was vacant since you were certain that no living soul was in there. He said Spencer was still renting and gave you his number to call.

You sent out a text two days later, hoping that he wasn't dead next door.

'Hi, this is Y/N from unlucky apartment 13. I just wanted to make sure you were okay since there's been no noise for the past week. I hope my bad luck didn't reach you!'

You tried keeping it light and friendly, hoping that your worrying didn't lead to the real thing happening.

You received a reply a day later to your surprise and relief.

'Hi, unlucky number thirteen. No, the bad luck has not caught up with me. I've been away on a case and have yet to be home. Thanks for checking up on me!'

You chuckled at the message and from then on you and Spencer exchanged texts every hour cracking small jokes.

It wasn't until you heard the keys jingle outside the door a few days later that you bolted out of your window seat and opened the door to find an exhausted Spencer trying to unlock his door.

He was so tired he didn't even realize you had been standing there watching him struggle for a few minutes until you cleared your throat making him jump, dropping his keys in the process.

You reached down to pick them up, and your hair flipped out of your face giving him the best view to see your beautiful smile light up your face as you handed him his keys back. He cleared his throat, hoping his face wasn't red even though it felt like it was burning. "Thanks." He mumbled and opened the door quickly only for it to open a foot.

Inside you could see boxes piled up blocking any sort of passage through.

Spencer tried to shimmy his way in but eventually had to put his back to the door, bracing himself as he pushed it open with his body.

"Did you want any help unpacking?" You ask chuckling as the maze of boxes piled up.

Spencer tilted his head to look at you then let out a tired breath. "Honestly, I'd love that, but I'm exhausted. I haven't slept in the past couple of days. If the offer still stands in the next couple of days, I'll take you up on it." He put on a small smile for you to show he appreciated your offer.

You nodded lightly, "Let me know when you're all set, I'd be more than glad to set a few hours aside to help you!"

And he did let you know a few days later. You heard a soft knock on the door and could hear him pace back and forth for a second while you pulled a blanket over your thin tank top and short shorts.

"Spencer?" You said surprised as you pulled open the door to reveal a very nervous man.

He wiped his hands on his pants and cleared his throat. "Does the offer still stand to help unpack? I tried unpacking myself and it is not going that well." His voice was barely a whisper at the end, and you ended up laughing a bit at how nervous he was.

He gulped at the sight of you laughing at what he said, hoping he didn't seem inadequate at something so simple as packing.

"I told you the offer would still stand so there is no need to be nervous, plus packing always goes better when you do it with someone. " You chuckled and closed your apartment door behind him.

He didn't move from where he was, so you ended up knocking into him a little bit. "Whoops, sorry!" You said trying to take a step back but there was nowhere to go with how close Spencer was to you.

He just continued to stare at you and then cleared his throat taking a step back. He headed back to his apartment as you followed behind in your fuzzy slippers. He opened the door as much as he could and held it open for you to shimmy inside. Your chest moving as you nudged your way inside made his face instantly heat up and his eyes go wide as he tore his eyes away from your thin top.

'Get it together Spencer. She's helping you out, it's not time to check her out.' He thought to himself shaking his head as the image flashed back into his head.

"So where do you want to start?" Your voice rang out to him, making the thought of your chest disappear.

"Um," his voice cracked a bit as he tried to control it, "I think we should start in the kitchen since it has the most breakable stuff."

He led the way to the kitchen and you both started tearing through boxes and pulling out items, asking him where he would want things to which he was clueless on what would go better where so he left it up to you. In fact, he left every part of his house up to you on how it should be arranged. He just followed your orders and moved items to where they needed to go, his face turning bright red when you'd catch him staring at you making you blush slightly.

After that, Spencer and you became close friends and frequented each other's apartments often for movie night, to play games, to talk or just to read each other's massive collection of books. After a while, you both had a key to each other's house and you'd often find Spencer in your reading corner, which you had put a special chair just for him in, and he would find you making something delicious in his kitchen as you sang along to some k-pop song off-key.

You both grew to be best friends, closer than he and JJ were, and he'd often take you to team functions as his plus one. You were slowly falling in love with the tall nerdy genius, and you thought he felt the same way until one day he mentioned a girl that he was talking to.

Maeve.

Movie nights turned into Maeve nights. Nightly walks were only to phone booths where you would sit outside on the curb waiting for Spencer to be done, and weekly bookstore trips were only to look for a book Maeve suggested in her nightly phone calls.

Soon everything you once did together started going away and Spencer wasn't the same guy you first fell for.

You'd make him dinners for when he'd come back home from cases only for none of it to be touched. Books you bought that you knew he was waiting to be released would be left untouched and piling up on the table by the door.

The team would fill you in and let you know he was okay at least once a week since you never saw or heard from him anymore.

Sure, you were happy that Spencer found someone, it broke your heart that it wasn't you, but you were still happy for your friend. But soon, Spencer didn't want your company as he used to want it. Everything slowly was crumbling, and you were left in the dark from him.

It lasted for ten months before it all stopped. No noise, no movement, not even a breath was heard in the apartment next to yours. The team would come by, and he wouldn't open up his door to any of them.

Maeve died and Spencer was broken.

It lasted like that for months. You tried not to linger by his door on your way to and from work. You tried not to care too deeply for someone that dropped you months ago. You tried your hardest not to think about Spencer Reid. And it almost worked.

You were putting on your heels for a night out with the girls. In the last few months, the girls of the BAU team became super close even with Emily flying in every so often to meet up. Penelope had suggested a girl's night out with dinner, drinking and dancing. The three D's as she liked to call it. And for someone lucky they got the fourth D at the end of the night, and in PG terms she called it dessert.

Looking into the mirror, you looked back at yourself checking every part of your outfit over. A tight, sparkly black over the shoulder sleeved mini dress with black strappy heels. You had gone all out on your makeup, something one of your friends from college taught you how to do to get extra money on the weekends, and you had curled your hair in loose waves.

You sighed, fidgeting with the hem of your dress, a bit uncomfortable with how much skin was showing. You had been slowly building your confidence up the last few months you spent with Spencer since he showed you that it was okay to be you and that you didn't have to hide it, and you were trying to keep building confidence up even though he wasn't there anymore.

Your phone buzzed and you saw that it was Penelope messaging you that they were there. Grabbing your bag and stuffing your phone inside you headed out and stopped to look at Spencer's door, littered with baskets of self-care stuff and dead flowers. You missed him, but the door was a reflection of what he wanted, to close everyone out and drown out the world.

Dinner went by in a flash, full of laughter and drinks, and you were headed to the club when Penelope shrieked besides you.

"You okay, hun?" You asked chuckling at the girl next to you that was practically hyperventilating.

Instead of giving you an answer she just waved her phone around until JJ grabbed it and looked at what was pulled up. "Wow..." JJ mumbled. She showed you and Emily what seemed to be a picture. Emily blew it up and there all the guys from the BAU including Will were lined up on the wall dressed up in suits with stern expressions on their face.

"Daddy Morgan is looking so fine." Penelope whispered causing you to laugh loudly.

"Oh my god, is that Spencer?" Emily gasped.

All four of you leaned closer in to look at the line up of men. Morgan, Rossi, Hotch, Will and Spencer. Morgan had his best smolder on, Rossi did not look pleased to be there, Hotch looked tired, Will stood there like a deer in headlights and Spencer looked so tired that it broke your heart a little.

"I know, I know I said it was a girl's night but the boys were getting Spencer out of the house and at least out doing normal human things so I said they could tag along. Please don't be mad." Giving you her best pleading look.

"I think it's a good idea to get Spencer out of the house. Y/N is that okay with you?" JJ asked you concerned. She could see you tense up after Penelope said she invited them.

Nodding your head as a reply you looked back at the picture on Penelope's phone staring a hole into Spencer's digital self until you had to see the real thing.

You made it through the club's line quicker than expected, all thanks to Emily flirting with the female bouncer, and you headed inside, music blaring, to find the table the guys reserved for you. Emily could see you fidgeting with your bag, so she pulled you over to the bar and ordered a round of shots. "Liquid courage." She said as she handed you a glass. You ended up downing five shots and one mixed drink until Emily pulled you over to the table to drop your bags off to dance.

"Damn, princess, you are looking good." Morgan whistled to you, winking as you shrugged playfully.

"I see you girls are dressed up nicely, did we interrupt girls' night?" Rossi asked, taking a sip of his drink.

"Kind of, but we can still pull in our catch." Emily winked as she replied back.

Your eyed slowly drifted around the table as everyone engaged in conversations with each other until your eyes landed on Spencer who was staring at you with his jaw locked. You stared at each other for a few minutes before you felt a light touch on your shoulder. Looking up, you saw a handsome man smiling down at you.

"Hi, Y/N, right? I'm Jesse, we met at the bookstore last week."

"Oh, hi!" The table growing silent as they eyed the newcomer at the table, and you knew they were unintentionally profiling him. You could feel Spencer's eyes drilled into your back.

"I just saw you and was hoping it was you. I wanted to thank you for that book recommendation for my class! Surprisingly the sixth graders enjoyed it."

"I'm so glad to hear that! I read it to my class not too long ago and they loved it!"

Jesse nodded and looked up at the table. "Oh, I'm being rude. I'll leave ya be to your friends!"

"No, no! That's okay!" Penelope practically screamed out. "Y/N was looking for someone to dance with, if you want to dance." You swerved in your seat to give her a death glare before politely smiling back up at Jesse.

Jesse chuckled, "Um, if you want to dance, I'd like to accompany you." He extended his hand out and you gently took it letting him lead you to the dance floor.

Spencer scoffed, as he watched you two walked away. Rossi eyed him and shook his head. "What?" He asked the older man. "The guy was obviously into her. He was practically eyeing her body the entire time. And the excuse of coming over here to thank her for recommending a book! Lame."

"I never thought I'd hear Reid use the word lame before." Morgan muttered to Hotch.

"I thought the guy was nice. I see him come into the station to help out with the toy drives and I hear he helps out at all the shelters around town." Will commented causing Spencer to roll he eyes.

The table grew silent for a few minutes and the girls went off the dance, Will in tow, and Reid was left with three men who knew him the best looking at him.

Spencer took a sip of his water, trying not to let on that he was suddenly uncomfortable with all three men staring at him.

"I think we have a jealous Reid." Rossi finally said, breaking the silence.

Hotch laughed, "I think you're right. Maybe you should just tell her you like her."

Spencer shook his head confused and took another sip of his drink. "I just got out a relationship, which did not end well. How could I suddenly be jealous of her? She just met the guy for a second time."

All three men laughed at Spencer's remarks making him more puzzled at what they were saying.

Morgan cleared his throat, "No, not jealous of her in that way. Jealous of the guy she's with. As soon as she walked in you have been eyeing her, and when Jesse showed up you got mad at her for giving her attention to another guy. Even now your eyes have been following her around." Morgan explained.

"And don't say it's for her safety. She's quite safe surrounded by two fully trained agents and one police officer." Rossi chimed in.

"You like her, just tell her that." Hotch spoke up next, "What you had with Maeve was meaningful and real, but it was also mostly through a phone and there was so many secrets she kept from you. You should be with someone that you don't have to hide from. Someone that can be your best friend when you need it and is always there for you."

Spencer just nodded and turned his gaze towards you, watching as you drunkenly swayed your body to the music.

"Maybe I will, but I also don't know what to feel, and she means too much to me to use to figure out my own feelings." He starred at you as you laughed and danced. He was happy you were having fun, but he always wished his arms were wrapped around you as you both danced the night away.

[geekywritings]

“You see me... for me.”

I got a lovely request from @christinaatyourservice92​ for a Cal Kestis x reader story. So here we go :D

You are a shy cartographer with a love for art, having travelled with Cal and the Mantis crew for quite a while now. Your feelings for the red-haired Jedi are a secret you have kept tightly, just as the little collection of sketches you have of him. Well, time for some secrets to be revealed. 

(If you also wanna send me requests and prompts, please do! I’m always happy to read them!)

____________

You all had different reasons for being part of the crew, but what brought you all together, made you a family almost, was the shared hope for a better future. You were all fighting an overly powerful enemy for a slither of a chance to live a normal life, each in your own way.

To be fair, Cal was doing most of the fighting. You weren’t a bad shot, but your talents lay elsewhere. You wanted to map out all the planets of the Outer-Rim, especially those the Empire had not completely overrun yet. Until then, you also put your talents to good use to forge maps for the rebel alliance, highlighting safe routes and the locations of enemy bases on the various planets the Mantis crew visited. A small job, some would argue, but nevertheless vital.

Four years had passed since you literally ran into Cal Kestis on Nar Shadaa, both of you trying to outrun some Stormtroopers, albeit for different offenses. Your knowledge of the intricate underground tunnels of the capital city had saved both your lives and the Jedi had offered you a place on the Mantis without hesitation in gratitude. Apparently, the ship’s doors were open to anyone willing to help.

After living and working alone for almost all your life, being part of a crew was difficult to get used to. Especially since you weren’t exactly an extrovert. Lucky for you, most of the crew wasn’t either. Cere always respected your privacy, almost as if sensing when you needed to retreat and Merrin herself seemed to prefer solitude a lot of times. Greeze was often trying to get you to loosen up with varying degrees of success, but even he never pushed too far.

And then there was Cal. Friendly, gentle and understanding Cal Kestis. He did his best to make you feel at home, testing the waters with each careful word and gesture. Especially at the beginning, he was fumbling with words as much as you were. But unlike you, he had grown more confident in the last few years. You were still a blushing mess when he spoke in that special low tone of his or placed a hand on your shoulder.

Not because you were still nervous… but because the Jedi had managed to work himself into your heart. You admired him for his optimism and drive, shared his hopes for a better future, and trusted him completely. And you were pining for him. Badly. So much so that even Merrin remarked on it one evening, asking why you didn’t say anything.

But you couldn’t. You knew little of the Jedi Order, having grown up in a very rural setting on a Mid-Rim planet, but you did know that love was forbidden for its members. Cal was still following the old lifestyle in many ways and you just assumed he would turn you down because of it.

So months went by and you soaked up every kind word and gesture, as if they were water in a desert, trying to convince yourself that it was enough. Eventually, you found another way to wrangle your emotions back into place: drawing.

Although your cartography skills were almost unmatched, you also had a talent for sketching. Landscapes, creatures and even people filled the pages of the small notebook that was constantly attached to your belt. Recently, however, your fingers automatically traced the features of only one person over and over again.

The new notebook you had started was full of Cal Kestis only. Pensive looking, determined, calm and smiling. You tried to catch every expression possible, burning it into your memory to then bring it back to life on the slightly yellow paper. It was your secret. Or at least had been… until now.

You had landed on a desert planet in the Outer-Rim to refuel and the crew had split up for provisions. Cere accompanied Greeze to find a spare part for the Mantis and replenish your food rations, while Merrin decided to explore the area. It left Cal and you alone on the ship with the task of cleaning up a bit.

“Why do we always get cleaning duty?”, the Jedi grumbled, as he collected the dishes from your last meal off the table, bringing them over to you at the sink.

“Maybe because we are good at it?”, you offered, unable to think of anything cleverer to say.

Cal raised an eyebrow at you, standing so close that your shoulders were touching. “I think you highly overestimate us.”, he replied with a tiny smile.

While you took care of the dishes, Cal busied himself with picking up the various items flying all over the living room area. At least five people shared this space and it showed. Somewhere in the back, you could hear BD-1 and Kip beeping merrily, making you wonder what the droids were up to.

“Y/N?”

The call of your name had you turn, ready to ask what was up, but when you saw Cal with your notebook – your OPEN notebook – you almost dropped the plate you had been holding. He was flicking through the pages, eyes wide in wonder.

Your entire face went hot, the color probably matching the red of his hair, as you watched in horror. Nobody was ever supposed to see these sketches. HE was never supposed to see them.

Stars, he was going to hate you. Or think you some sort of creep. Either way, things would never be the same between you.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to… I was cleaning the table and it fell down.”, he excused himself, obviously noticing your discomfort.

“N-no… I… it’s fine…”, you began to stutter. “I should be the one to say sorry…. Sorry.”

The Jedi raised an eyebrow at you again, coming closer, but still holding the notebook in his hands. “Why? These are good. Certainly better than the Wanted bulletins of me.”

His humor never failed to make you smile, even now, but still. There was a tight knot in your stomach and all you wanted was to grab the notebook and run. Silence fell, as you were unable to find anything to say.

Cal saw the clear discomfort in your eyes, the blush on your cheeks and the nervous fumbling of your hands. Usually, your shy demeanor was cute. Endearing even. But at this very moment, it made him feel guilty for having brought you into this situation.

“Here.”, he said, holding your sketchbook out to you. “Next time you draw a new one, can I see it?”

Your eyes snapped to his, taking in the intense green. How could he be so perfect? Didn’t he know how hard it was to stop falling for him more and more? Was it even possible to love him more than you already did?

“Y-yes… sure…”, you said slowly, reaching for the item, fingers brushing against Cal’s in the process.

“I am honored that you pick me as your model.”, he continued. “Though I am not sure how I deserve the privilege.”

“You’re fascinating.”, you blurt before you can stop yourself. Oh stars, what have you done? Cal’s asking you silently to elaborate, while your fumbling hands are turning your sketchbook round and round, as you try to hold the man’s gaze.

“Your face… it’s handsome… and it reflects so many emotions in different ways. Your jaw clenches when you are concentrating. And your lip twitches upwards ever so slightly when you have a good hand while playing cards. And…” As if a dam had broken, you kept going on and on, revealing more tiny details that nobody but you had probably noticed.

“I-I… I just wanted to memorize them all.”

Cal was overwhelmed, but not in a bad way. People usually saw the Jedi in him. The survivor. The traitor if you asked on the other side. But you… you saw him. Every detail of him, inside and out. He saw you too, even though you preferred to blend into the shadows. You were quiet, but your actions spoke volumes. You were shy, often fumbling with words and he saw much of his younger self in that. Most of all, you were warm. Not in the physical sense, but emotionally. Your presence settled around him like a blanket, offering comfort and calmness. No matter how hard a fight had been, with you close, Cal could always ground himself again.

“Thank you, Y/N.”

“For what?”, you asked, confused. This wasn’t the reaction you had anticipated after your awkward monologue.

“For being you. For seeing me…as me.” He had stepped even closer, barely leaving any distance between you now. Your hands suddenly stilled and you looked down to see why. He had grasped them in his, holding them gently, but firmly.

Slowly, your gaze wandered back to his face, being rewarded with an expression you had not seen before. His eyes were locked to you, as if searching for something. He looked both hesitant and determined and you noticed his lips parting and closing several times, as if he tried and failed to find the right thing to say.

“Listen, Y/N…”, he finally did begin, his grip around your hands tightening ever so slightly. “I have been thinking…” Again a pause, trying to sort himself. “The Order is gone… and while I respect Cere’s mission to rebuild it… I am not sure if I can be a part of it anymore…”

Where was he going with this? And why tell you?

“So much has happened… I don’t think I can call myself Jedi anymore.”

Your lips parted to protest, but you didn’t get a chance to even begin, as Cal continued.

“A lot of the Order’s rules don’t feel right anymore… I… I think I know what I want now.”

Slowly, one of his hands came up, brushing a stray strand of hair away from your face. “I’ve been thinking a lot… about you.”

This confession sucked the air right out your lungs and you felt your heart clench in the best way possible. Was this really happening? Had you heard correctly? Or was this a dream and you’d find yourself waking up in the cabin you shared with Merrin?

No, the feeling of your hand in his and the soft brush of his fingers against your cheek was real.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d feel the same… But after seeing the sketchbook…”

“I love you.”, you blurted right between whatever kind of confession he was trying to get out. The words had tumbled out without your permission and instantly you lowered your head to hide the blush that had certainly intensified a thousandfold.

Seconds ticked by and you wondered if the admission of your feelings had been too much. Fingers under your chin turned your face upward again. You were hesitant to look at him, but he didn’t leave you the chance anyway. Instead, Cal leaned down, pressing his lips against yours.

Slowly, and gently at first. Again, testing the waters with you and going only as far as you were comfortable. It was the sweetest sensation you had ever felt. The sketchbook fell to the ground again, as your hands came to grasp his blue vest instead, while his arms pulled you closer against his form.

How long did you stand there, lips locking over and over again, finally giving way to the longing you had both felt?

“I love you too…”, Cal finally voiced what the kiss had already made perfectly clear. You would remember that look in his eyes forever. So full of love and happiness. The next moment you got, you’d have to immortalize it in your little sketchbook again.

“That’s… That’s not what I expected.”, you admitted shyly.

“I didn’t see it coming either… but life has a funny way of taking unexpected turns… And I am glad to follow this new path with you. If you will have me.”

Of course, you would have him! And to prove it you rose to your toes again for another kiss, absolutely ready for a new kind of territory to chart together with him.

[astroariska]

THE LESSON FROM 12TH HOUSE PROFECTION YEAR (AS A CAPRICORN RISING)

I've got my own karma.

When i was a school students, i was getting bullied by my teacher because my rebellion issue. I did that because i experienced some abandonment and neglect from my parents (and also physical harm). My parents were young, broke and unskilled on parenting. So, i was growing up as a troublemaker.

It's not like i was being a troublemaker because i did teenager shit like smoking, drinking, underage sex, or etc. I was being a troublemaker because i was a smart kid back then who couldn't stop myself to questioning things and when people had no idea or any answer that satisfy me. i consider that are incompetence. It turns me into someone who ironically acted as "holier than thou" person and it made me a horrible monster that hurt other people because they didn't meet my expectation or standard that was so incredibly hard, suffocating and sometimes way too unrealistic.

So, you guess it right. I become a lonely, depressed, sad, ambitious, melancholic bastard who doesn't have that many friends. Although i could loose up a little bit and finally get lot of friends and acquintances in the last year of high school and university, but karma still coming anyway.

12th house profection is a karmic profection. It will bring up the most karmic event in your life. The sign of your karmic 12th house profection will tell you where you accumulate the most karma and the planet there will tell you what kind of karma you get.

I have Sagittarius 12th house with Mars in 16 degrees there. So you could name it. My biggest karmic event come from my experience in school as social and educational government institution (Sagittarius). And Mars is about violence, anger, drive and action. So in my 12th house profection year, i got my own karma because what i have done when i was in school and university.

Let's cut it into the lesson because this post will be hell damn long if i continue to tell you what was happened during my 12th house profection year.

THE BIGGEST VILLAIN OF THE STORY ACTUALLY DOESN'T REALIZE THAT HE IS VILLAIN. No bully thinks that they have done a bullying to their victim even if they actually did it. No r4pist thinks that they have done a rape to their victim even if they did it. No murder thinks that they have done a murder to their victim, too. Their narrative story in their had always have the excuse that prohibit them to see the reality because they are wrapped up in their own delusion (notice that delusion and inability is a focus of 12th house theme)

IN THE REALITY, THE BIGGEST VILLAIN OF A STORY IS SOMEONE WHO THINKS THAT THEY ARE THE HOLY MESSIAH, THE SAVER, THE HERO OR THE REVOLUTIONARIST THAT COULD CHANGE THE WORLD. Think about the biggest war criminal in any world war. They never thought that what had he done to the people was a crime or a mistake. They simply thought that what has they done made them as a hero. That's why there will be always a phrase like "You'll die and become a hero or you'll see yourself end up live too long until you become a villain"

SOMEONE WHO THOUGHT THAT THEY NEVER DID ANYTHING WRONG, END UP HURT PEOPLE MORE THAN ANYBODY WHO THOUGHT THEY ALWAYS MAKE A MISTAKE. It's not like i want you to self doubt yourself and second-guessing yourself into making kindness. It's just that instead of doubting yourself when trying to do good to other people, question your motive first and make it clear that you did it without any hidden purpose or agenda back in your subconscious mind. You can make a good couse and end up hurting people when you did not realize what was the motivation and the thought that makes you decided like that.

(FOR CAPRICORN RISING ONLY) MAKE SURE YOU FILL YOUR OWN CUPS BEFORE FILL OTHER PEOPLE'S CUP. Capricorn Rising tend to feel like "Okay, if nobody is doing it then I WILL DO IT" thanks to their 4th house Aries. This is good because it force you to be assertive, but when it comes to service, you need to understand that the first things to do in the middle of chaos is not becoming a hero that saves people, but yourself.

(FOR CAPRICORN RISING ONLY) LET YOURSELF GRIEVE. GRIEVE IS A SIGN THAT YOU ARE FULLY ALIVE AND STILL NEED TO CONNECT YOURSELF WITH YOUR OWN SOUL. YOU ARE ALLOWED TO GRIEVE, CRIED AND BE UNPRODUCTIVE AS YOU TRY TO SHED YOUR SORROW.

(FOR CAPRICORN RISING AND LIBRA SUN ONLY) A KARMA IS SIMPLY LESSON IS SOMETHING THAT TEACH YOU WHAT YOU SUPPOSED TO DO. NOT SOMETHING THAT IMPRISONED YOU WITH THE FOREVER SENTENCE. LESSON IS A GIFT, NOT A PUNISHMENT. Saturn is the ruler of Capricorn Rising and exalt in Libra. When Saturn is giving you a lesson, consider that was a gift. Because when Saturn doesn't love you anymore, he would punish you with death as the "villain", "sinner" without any ability to have salvation and forgiving.

THE MOST SELF UNDOING WE DID IS NOT WHEN WE DECIDED TO NOT DO SOMETHING, BUT WHEN WE DECIDED TO DO SOMETHING OPPOSITE FROM WHAT WE ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. Self-undoing concept is kinda hard to grasp. When you look at 12th house sign, ask yourself about what kind of thing that you think you need to do buy you did the opposite anyway just because it felt so uncomfortable. Cancer 12th house do thinks that they need to be vulnerable, but they just to self-guard themselves so hard that nobody knows their emotion anyway just because vulnerability feels like suffering and being vulnerable is suffocating them.

This is maybe the longest take of Astrology Observation that i made, but i might consider to write more about 12th house next time. Ciao!

[thirdrootwriting]

Staring at the Sun

The absolute worst thing - the thing Nicholas can't bring himself to even think about unless he's so drunk he can't even stand - is that Vash isn't actually naïve.

Of course he isn't. For all that fucker likes to whine and cry and put on a show of acting like the dumbass 20-something fool he looks like on the outside, Vash the Stampede has spent a hundred and fifty years on this hell-like dust hole of a planet with people trying to kill him on the regular. The guy is well aware what pieces of shit most humans are.

(Vash has even seen worse that what humans will do to each other. He's seen what humans would do to him.)

So no, despite what Nicholas, every gun-slinger, bounty hunter, and even Million Knives himself liked to spit at Vash in accusation, the guy isn't some naïve, sheltered little brat. It's just easier to think that than to acknowledge a guy could get filled with lead and greeted with betrayal near daily and still think all  lives were worth saving.

Nicholas gives a drunken, uncoordinated roll on the dirty floor of their motel room so that he's staring at Vash, who might be equally drunk. Even after several instances of them getting sloshed liked this, he still can't tell if Vash is really good at faking being drunk or really good at faking being sober, given how he'll seemingly snaps out of his woozy cheer the second it becomes convenient.  

Nicholas really hopes it's the first one, just for his own piece of mind.

"Hey, Spikey, you still awake?" His own voice is rough and quiet. Nicholas knows he's usually a pretty happy drunk, though he's got a tendency to get maudlin and dreary as the party winds down and the alcohol relaxes him enough to start thinking thoughts he usually knows better than to consider.

Vash, also laid out on the dirty floor, gives a little hum of acknowledgement, strangely melodic. He actually hums a lot, usually under his breath so quiet Nicholas - with his enhanced ears - is probably the only one that can hear. Sometimes it's something incomplete sounding, like a harmony missing its melody, sometimes it's a haunting but simple swooping, up-and-down rhythm, and sometimes just whatever crap they've been hearing over the radio lately.

He's never asked about that either, mostly cause Nicholas doesn’t want Vash to stop. Not so much a problem for tonight's alcohol fueled question, which is, "Why do you bother with all this crap anyway?"

He doesn't specify what crap exactly he means, cause Nicholas gives Vash  enough shit for all the stupid stunts he pulls that the guy oughta know what he's getting at - getting himself beat half to death to save some stranger, standing up to his terrifying brother, playing at being buddies with a spy and a traitor. It's a conversation they pick up and put down often, whittling away at each other trying to reach an understanding.

Vash actually sits up for  to stare at Nicholas for this question. His dumb sunglasses are who-knows-were, and his eyes are doing that stupid, faintly glowing thing in the badly lit room. Too bright, just like his teeth are too sharp and the way he moves is justly slightly wrong. Idiot.

Seeing that he's just being stared at, Nicholas clarifies, "You could just stop. You know most humans are awful if given half a chance, and we'll likely run out of resources and die in a couple more generations anyway."

Did it really matter if Knives killed them all in the next decade or so, or if humanity offed itself as they ran the Plants into the ground then starved on this planet that wasn't meant for them?

Did it really matter if Vash took his constant pitstops on their journey to save every murder, fool, and bystander that he happened to cross paths with? They'd all die someday, and the vast majority would deserve it.

Instead of answering right away, Vash scooches slightly across the floor then leans over so he's got his long lanky arms on either side of Nicholas's head.

There's a little voice in Nicholas's drunken head that whispers the best way to kill someone at close range like this is with his bare hands, to snatch one of the empty bottles from their early drinking and smash it against his target’s temple. It's easier than usual to ignore that urge, cause the person leaning over him is Vash. No need to kill him, and something like that probably wouldn’t do the job on what he is anyway. Twin comforts.

Far more pressing is whether Vash is about the kiss him. Nicholas would let him. Putting aside his own want, Nicholas would let Vash do just about anything he wants to him.

More than let actually, sometimes he'll look a Vash and the words, "What do you want? Can I give it to you",  will sit heavy behind his teeth. Nicholas's not sure if that urge is guilt, love, or a kind of pathetic thankfulness for the way Vash says, "Wolfwood”, like he's a person and a friend, even knowing what Nicholas is and how every moment of their acquaintance has been the lead-up to a betrayal.

So, no Nicholas would not mind being kissed right now. In fact, he thinks he's guessed right as Vash leans further over him, his eyes still too bright and everything about him just slightly to the left of human except for the scent of cheap alcohol they already share on their breaths.

Vash leans over and blows a raspberry on his neck, like a little kid trying to get a rise out of playmate. It sounds ridiculous in the heavy, expectant silence, and it makes Nicholas jolt with a ungraceful snort because it is goddamn ticklish.

Nicholas shoves Vash off him, and he falls back onto the motel floor with a quiet laugh. Seeing his pleased expression, Nicholas can't help thwacking him on the head, "Answer my question, don't play around, dumbass."

Still snickering softly, Vash responds, "I just did."

"Your answer is tat you bother with this pacifism crap because you like messing around?" Nicholas grumbles. He's too drunk to get angry, so the words come out more petulant than he meant them too stained by his disappointment Vash apparently won’t give him an answer -or a kiss- tonight.

Nicholas glances to his side at Vash, and instantly regrets it. Instead of snickering, he's relaxed his face into one of those devastatingly gentle smiles that he gets when he's truly happy. Being the sole focus is even worse than it felt to have Vash leaning over him, cocooning him from the rest of the world.

"I got to drink with you and hear you laugh, why wouldn’t I bother?"

Vash says with that with the same gut-deep sincerity he has that makes what should be cheesy platitudes sound like gospel truth on his lips, like several lifetimes of suffering are worth it to end up spending what is probably right near the end of his life drinking bottom shelf booze he probably can't actually get drunk on and hearing Nicholas laugh.

"Shut up and go to sleep."

Nicholas isn't drunk enough for this.

[mr-geargrinder]

Star Trek Rewatch Thoughts

Finished my rewatch of DS9, Voyager, and TNG. I've lost count of how many times I've rewatched TNG and DS9, but this was only my second time going through Voyager, because it just didn't click with me the first time through. Anyways, here's some thoughts.

TNG is fascinating to me because you can see them assembling the show as they go. They change plans pretty drastically, remove and bring back characters, and try to salvage others with a few last minute episodes. That left a permanent mark on the way I think about storytelling.

TNG is a pretty goofy show, but it takes itself seriously and there's a lot to be said about how dedication to the bit and some really charming actors doing their best can totally overshadow cheap sets and silly technobabble... and even when it doesn't, those goofy moments are still very charming too.

I only skipped a handful of episodes and most of them were Troi or Wesley episodes, for obvious reasons. Troi got a lot of bad episodes and Wesley is... Wesley. Someone who kind of embodied all the worst parts of Gene Roddenberry's silly utopian wish fulfillment fantasies. One of the things that I never noticed before was how the last season was filled with so many bad episodes, followed by one of the best series finales ever made.

Voyager was less bad than I remember. I found myself liking certain characters a lot more and hating others much more intensely. Janeway, Tuvok, and Neelix really clicked with me this time. I recall Neelix being hated for being the silly comic relief character, but he's got some depth! He's a sincerely, genuinely good person who is trying his hardest for the people around him and that really resonated with me this time around. Especially his interactions with Tuvok (minus the Tuvix episode).

Tom Paris ended up being the guy I liked the least because his three traits are "pilot", being a general shithead, and reminding Harry about every single time he messed up romantically in a list, over and over, and none of that really helped them sell him as a roguish hotshot with a heart of gold, or whatever. He's just a shithead.

Skipping episodes helped me to enjoy Voyage a lot more. Almost anything to do with Chakotay was skipped immediately. His bullshit tribal mysticism, literally made up by a con-artist who convinced Hollywood he was a Native American and an expert cultural consultant, did not endear him to me in any way. Robert Beltran did his best to portray the character with dignity and wisdom, but Chakotay just suuuuucks. The inclusion of the Maquis subplot was also a pretty big waste of effort, but the fact that it gets ignored for most of the series makes it easy for me to ignore.

Anything to do with the Kazon got skipped too. They're just lamer, dumber, more irrational Klingons and they have nothing of value to add to any story they're featured in. That also meant skipping a lot of the Seska plot, which was Chakotay heavy anyways, and I don't regret that. Seska was not compelling at all.

Likewise, the Vidiians got skipped without hesitation. Not only do I hate the body horror aspect, but they were an attempt to create a sympathetic monster faction in Trek, but they're just.... irredeemably bad. There's no reason for anyone to allow the Vidiians to keep living. Not because of their disease, but because they are organ stealing monsters who hack random people to bits to extend their lifespans a tiny bit, so they can keep stealing more organs. No thank you. Fuck off. Go away. There's a reason no one talks about you.

DS9 remains my favorite Star Trek. It's got some rough episodes, and it struggles at time between being a planet/anomaly/random-space-threat of the week and a smaller scale, single-location focused kind of story, but the entire cast does a fantastic job of switching between the two without skipping a beat.

I don't think there's a single character on DS9 that I can say I dislike and the few I could complain about are mostly ones who were there for a single episode or just didn't have the benefit of a few more seasons to develop them as much as we got with characters like Jake and Nog. Speaking of which, Jake and Nog are such a perfect example of how you can have kid characters in a trek show and have them work and develop naturally and feel like a natural part of the story.

One of the things that struck me that never occurred to me before is that DS9 is a show that is very, very much about the concept of "home" and all the complex ways the character interpret and grapple with that concept. Quark and Garak have a fantastic scene towards the end of the series where they both commiserate about how their home planets are changing rapidly and how they'll never be able to return to the planets they once knew. It's kinda there in nearly every character and plot and it's really fascinating.

I think the only episodes I skipped were a few of the "It's time to make O'Brien suffer!" episodes, and that one specific episode where they meet that insane lady who forces her anti-technology beliefs on everyone by lying to them and abusing them, and the moral of the story is "actual this is good and she's right!" -- Fuck that episode. I'd rather watch the board game episode.

The last stretch of the Dominion War is a little uneven, but it's still a strong arc overall. Could've maybe done without the Pah-Wraith stuff, and the Ezri and Bashir subplot is a little weak, but those are nitpicks.

Anyways, go watch Star Trek.

[sithskywalkerr]

please remain calm, the end has arrived.

Summary: Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka arrive in an Ewok village to scope out the undead virus terrorizing the planet. As they speak with locals and understand the situation, they only have minutes to escape after the infected attack. They manage to evacuate the survivors and return to Coruscant, where matters only worsen as the Jedi Temple is filled with chaos as the Diseased break in. Characters: Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka Tano, Padmé Amidala, Rex &. Cody (brief, mentioned), Chief Chirpa, 3-PO & R2 (brief) Ships: Anidala Word Count: 4.1k A/N: In this AU, the galaxy is an earth-like planet with spaceship-like vehicles to get around to the different regions/territories (such as Hoth, Coruscant, Endor, etc.). However, there are no alien species, only the living & the Diseased -- individuals who contracted the undead "virus" that spreads fast with many casualties. I'm NOT great at action scenes, but I will definitely try to improve! I know this chapter is rough as it's the set up, but I hope it's at least good enough to capture interest in this AU. read on ao3!

Separatists had begun to bring further divide into the regions, and tensions ran higher than usual. It started to get more attention from the Jedi, who were still trying to pick the pieces up around the globe, especially the attempt to take over Naboo. After saving the wealthy region, Anakin started his Jedi training, even if he had half-assed it. Eventually, he did grow more serious, showing development in his saber skills that nearly rivaled Yoda himself.

Now knighted, he worked with Ahsoka and Obi-Wan to assess the situation of the dead rising and taking down what they could before it became a crisis. As the attacks grew in numbers, the newer generations of the Diseased seemed to have evolutionary traits that made them more deadly than the last.

They were currently stationed in the forest moon of Endor, making peace with the locals to understand the situation as 3-PO translated for them. At least this time, they would interact better with the locals who noticed how things had changed drastically. The Ewok village had dwindled drastically, and the Chief had sent word to Coruscant for aid in the crisis. As Anakin came off the transport, Ahsoka wasn’t far behind as she looked around curiously.

“Wow, this place is beautiful.” Her blue eyes were wide in wonder, absently putting sunscreen on her vitiligo-marked skin. Gathering her twists loosely braided into two sections, she looked back to Anakin with a sharp grin.

Loosely crossing his arms, Anakin watched her momentarily in amusement. He opted to take the bottle when she offered it this time, working it into his tanned face and organic arm. “Until you’re nearly sacrificed by the natives … and I’m not being dramatic this time. It nearly happened to Master Quin. You should ask him when we see him next time.”

Her blue eyes widened as the Ewok chief came out, the tribe near him as he warmly smiled at the approaching Jedi. Finally, his people would have peace now. His dark brass skin held paint marks to help him camouflage into the environment as he stepped forward. He gave a slight bow, even with his short stature, as the Jedi soon returned it.

“Greetings, Chief Chirpa. We understand that there are some of the Diseased threatening your land?” Obi-Wan straightened up, looking down at the leader.

3-PO translated as the villagers were in awe of him, eyes wide as they motioned at his golden plating. There was a momentary distraction before the Chief nodded, speaking to 3-PO as he held his head higher to show the inch-wide gold disk beneath his bottom lip. “They have been coming from West. Attacking at night, they have taken many of our family members. It seems like they favor women and children the most.”

After translating, Obi-Wan looked between Ahsoka and Anakin,” Oh, dear. That is indeed difficult for a village. We also got word that you had managed to trap one?”

The Chief solemnly nodded after translation, adjusting his cloak around his shoulders as he motioned for them to follow along to the back outer border of the Bright Tree village.

They weaved through branches and plants before the cage was soon presented to them. The Diseased locked away was one of their own, and it was clear that multiple repairs had to be made to the enclosure due to the more primitive materials the village had. Obi-Wan turned back to Ahsoka,” Can you retrieve the cuffs from the ship? We need to be able to keep them appropriately restrained. We can’t risk this spreading during our investigation.”

She nodded, slightly bowing to the Chief,” Yes, Master.” Moving away, Anakin watched a moment before he looked back to the Chief, who listened as 3-PO explained what they would do to the captured. Chief Chirpa looked to the older general,” I do not want harm to her. She’s essential to our village for medicine.”

Obi-Wan nodded as he let his fingers brush through his beard in thought and let out a slow exhale in review of the situation. “I’m sure there is a way we can cure this, but we will unfortunately take a while to find one that is effective. Until then, we must keep her fed and cared for. We’ll scout the area to see where they reside before they decide to attack the village.” He moved closer to the enclosure as Ahsoka returned with the restraints in hand, showing them to the Chief to let him know it was just to keep everyone safe as 3-PO explained it to Chirpa.

Decorated locs swayed as he slightly nodded and took it from her to see the cuffs more closely. Eyes scanned over the design, ensuring there wasn’t anything damaging where the cuffs touched skin. “You may use these on her. I do not know how we would feed her. Those who are taken by the curse eat human flesh.”

“Chief Chirpa, perhaps there are those already lost that you can… use? I know it’s not the ideal situation, but we don’t have many options to keep her alive,” Anakin said, internally wincing at even asking the Chief to desecrate a corpse. However, these were strange times … if the Chief wanted her alive, breaks in tradition would have to happen.

Giving the restraints back to Ahsoka, Chirpa thought momentarily,” I would like to try other meats. If we destroy the body of the dead before the earth takes what she needs, their soul will not travel to be with our ancestors.”

Obi-Wan nodded,” we’ll start with the typical meats from this region. No one will dishonor your tradition, Chief Chirpa… I believe the next step now is to restrain her. Any volunteers?” He turned to Anakin and Ahsoka as they looked at each other before looking back at him with a nod.

“There have been reports of these Diseased having higher strength than even the Jedi, Master. It will be difficult to do while trying to not be attacked,” Anakin motioned to the woman as she was pressed against the branches, starting to try to break free already. “There is no safe way to do it with her awake.”

Turning to Rex and Cody, Obi-Wan motioned to her,” One of you use your tranquilizer darts to subdue her. 3-PO, explain what we will do to the Chief, so he knows we will not harm her.” The protocol droid looked at Obi-Wan momentarily before returning to the Chief,” Ta jedi will use e sleep dart ota make her sleep while we use ta cuffs ota safely restrain her. This ta ota keep all of us safe from her trying ota chesl harm.”

Chirpa nodded, stepping out of the way as Rex loaded a dart into the gun; he crouched down and aimed, hitting her leg through a gap in the branches used. It was minutes until she succumbed to the drowsiness, and Obi-Wan unlocked the cuffs. Giving a tentative nudge to her, he opened the enclosure and swiftly got the restraints on as Ahsoka and Anakin were ready to fight if needed.

“She’ll be asleep for a while, but I imagine she’ll need it,” Obi-Wan mused as he stood back up, looking at the Chief. “Is there somewhere else we can place her?”

“Hold on, Obi-Wan. Since the infected are stronger, she can break out.” Anakin moved closer, crouching down to look her over. “There’s been some physical changes from the last wave. Around the eyes is darker, and her eyes weren’t a typical color — they were almost Sith-like. Even with the restraints, we could deal with something we’re unprepared for.”

“He’s right,” Ahsoka nodded, looking up to Obi-Wan. “The village is far from this area, so Chief Chirpa must know about the risks of keeping her alive.”

Looking between them, Obi-Wan nodded,” I agree. We must figure out what can hold her without subduing her too much. 3-PO, ask the Chief if he can communicate with her.”

Shaking his head, the Chief seemed to deflate at the question, head bowing. Obi-Wan glanced at Anakin,” That does bring a new issue then. What does the Council know of this outbreak?”

“Not many details, just that the dead are returning and want to eat our flesh. If communication is no longer with the affected, it could alter their brain.”

“A decline in cognition into a destructive, hungry killer with improved physical strength. To think that the droids were troublesome before. We must try to understand more, but I fear it won’t go how we want it to. Ahsoka, go back to the transport and send a com to the Council that it has also affected this region. If it’s spread this far into remote locations, we will have an outbreak in the urban areas.”

Nodding, she headed off swiftly to get to the transport, and Anakin couldn’t look away from the asleep Ewok. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Try to stay positive, Anakin. We have to try to help the village regardless.” He reassured, letting his gaze return to him. “We will do what we can.”

“I know we will, but other infected people could be in the forest. We have to be careful.”

“I agree. This could become far more dangerous quicker than we want it to.” Looking around, Obi-Wan glanced at the darkening skies. “We should head into the village, and if we have to fight off the other Diseased, it will be a long night.” Nodding, Anakin motioned the clones to follow back into the village as 3-PO followed him.

R2 was still by the transport when Ahsoka returned, absently beeping as he followed her inside. “I know, R2. I have a bad feeling about this, too.” She got to the front of the ship, logging in the communication code to get to Coruscant as she settled into a chair for the time being. Ahsoka looked around the village and thick trees, a deep worry settling in her belly. She did want to help the village. After all, everyone deserved to have hope, but as she saw the undead grow more aggressive, the worry never lessened. Her eyes stayed constant on the horizon, hoping they could eat dinner before anything happened within the night.

The village hosted a feast of what they could gather under the protection of the clones as they foraged, and Anakin still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to happen. He glanced at Obi-Wan, using his fingers to eat the food provided,” I still feel uneasy, Master.” Obi-Wan paused his eating to look at him, voice soft,” Keep your eyes on the trees - above and below.”

“I would expect they would attack from above if possible. As well as below.” Glancing up momentarily at the branches, he watched Ahsoka use her sharp teeth to tear into a large leg of a deer, snorting as she brought her plate up higher to catch the juice. “Nice one, Snips.”

She used her leg to smack against his with a side eye at him before starting to chew the bite. “Shut up.”

Beginning to finally eat again, Anakin stayed acutely aware of the shifts in the Force. He tried to shake that feeling as he ate, humming along with the singing Ewoks as they tried to have their solstice celebration still despite so many fallen. He paused when he sensed a shift, moving his plate to the side as he looked around. Obi-Wan felt the change shortly after, moving to stand,” Ahsoka, stay near the clones. Protect the villagers.”

Finishing off the bite she had taken, she stood and ignited her sabers as she asked 3-PO to guide the villagers back inside their houses. They luckily didn’t waste too long before starting to get inside, but Anakin turned to see one of the Diseased trying to attack from above with a spear at the ready. He blocked the attack as he shouted, and chaos soon enveloped the village. As they wanted to protect themselves and the villagers, only more fell to the virus. Horrified cries echoed out as those bitten developed an insatiable hunger.

Anakin had narrowly missed a few attacks, but the clones had dwindled significantly within the attack as they fought to keep everyone safe. Since this wasn’t territory they could traverse, it was harder to fight back. Accepting defeat momentarily, they rounded up those unaffected to get to the transports.

Obi-Wan loaded the villagers inside, shouting for Anakin and Ahsoka to get on as Rex and Cody got the ship ready to launch. Anakin moved before Ahsoka as she picked up some children struggling before getting onto the ship. Reuniting them with their mothers, she watched Anakin use his saber to ward off the infected Ewoks before using the Force to jump onto the ramp before looking down as the Diseased watched from below.

As the ramp closed fully, he turned to look at the others, breath labored from the fight. “I’m sure they will be able to find refuge on Coruscant.”

“Resources are thin, but it’s doable,” Obi-Wan said as he moved to sit down. “Did you harm any?”

“No. Just used my saber to frighten them back,” Anakin plopped beside him as Ahsoka moved to Anakin’s other side.

“This only brings more questions than answers. The Council and Chancellor won’t be too pleased.” Obi-Wan mused a moment, legs crossing absently.

“They should be happy we saved the village,” Anakin grumbled before Obi-Wan only gave him a look that made him grow quiet momentarily before speaking again. “I’m just saying that we don’t know this enemy well, and with more generations being changed, it seems to grow stronger.”

“We still must do our duty and protect those we can, Anakin. When we get to Coruscant, we must report to the Council immediately and see if others have made any progress on their missions. We’re lucky we got out without as many casualties as we did.”

“Still, the situation is worse than we anticipated,” Ahsoka leaned over to look at Obi-Wan,” I fear it will only grow worse unless we can find a cure.”

“First, we need to find a weakness, but I did not want to fight them in front of their Chief,” Obi-Wan said simply,” we were invited by him, and I did not want to break that trust.”

“Hopefully, one of the other Masters has found something,” she softly sighed, settling back as her arms loosely crossed beneath her chest.

Upon arriving at Coruscant, they swiftly had to get inside the Temple with the refugees to avoid any Diseased lurking on the capital city’s streets. Once inside, Ahsoka stayed with the refugees and R2 and 3-PO as Anakin and Obi-Wan headed to the Council chambers. Entering, Anakin glanced around at the other members to see a few were missing. Hopefully, they would be joined by their familiar holograms as he and Obi-Wan stood in the center of the decorated room. Yoda stayed settled on his chair, skin weathered from the years, as his hand held onto his staff a moment before placing it to the side to be able to sign to them.

Windu had sustained an arm injury from his mission, but luckily, it had not infected him as he nodded to the duo. “Was Endor infected?”

Obi-Wan straightened as his eyes scanned the members,” Yes, unfortunately, most of the inhabitants in the village were changed. Chief Chirpa graciously let us see the medicine woman they had managed to bind, but we lost her within the attack from the other Diseased. It seems they have strength in numbers, but we did not harm any in hopes we can return and cure them.” Yoda nodded, looking to Anakin, then as he signed to the younger,” Skywalker, observations you see?”

“They seem frightened of the sabers, or at least know they can cause damage. We didn’t actively fight the villagers in the presence of the Chief, but I expect weakness to be our weapons.”

Thinking a moment, Yoda looked as Windu spoke up,” Clones fired at a few when we were attacked, but it seemed to do only minimal damage before they healed. Luminara reported that when she had removed an arm of one, there was no healing or regeneration of the limb. Our kyber crystals could have unique properties against their genetic code.”

“Perhaps we can tune our clone’s weapons to fit the crystal’s makeup,” Obi-Wan hummed,” it won’t be pretty, but we have to step out of our usual methods of peace for this until we can get it under control. There’s no possible way we can save all of those turned.”

He turned as the doors opened to show a disheveled Luminara, her saber in hand,” Diseased have infiltrated the Temple’s lower levels. We need to evacuate.” The meeting abruptly ended as the members followed her, to begin with the first few moving to protect the younglings and let them escape to the lower, more secure levels. Igniting his saber, Anakin glanced at Obi-Wan,” Guess it’s time to test a few theories, Master.”

“Worry about keeping everyone safe,” Obi-Wan moved to the hallway, heading to the elevators as he got his com-link out,” R2, gather the refugees with 3PO and Ahsoka and meet us in the archives. We’ve had a breach.”

“I don’t understand how they even got in here,” Anakin huffed a moment before eyes widened at the sight of the Diseased beginning to pour into the hallway.

“We don’t have time to wonder. We need to escape,” Obi-Wan said as he started to fight one of the Diseased.

Anakin dealt another stabbing through the heart as she lunged at him. Blue eyes were wide as he recognized her as one of the cleaners as she slumped and collapsed. Looking at Obi-Wan, he swallowed hard as tightness gathered in his chest. “Any other plan before we get eaten?”

“Just keep going to the elevator to get to the rendezvous point. We’ll think of everything else later,” Obi-Wan avoided the snapping jaws of another Diseased, blue-gray eyes watching the movement before pressing his back against Anakin’s. “This is worse than any of us have imagined. How is it spreading so fast?”

“We’ll have to figure that out after we survive this,” a swipe of the blade caused a head to roll as Anakin watched it in satisfaction momentarily. Slashing through the bodies, they made their way to the elevators, and Anakin got his com-link up,” R2, open the doors to elevator… 28234.” He kept his back to the doors as he held his saber up to the Diseased that followed them. He strikes another one down as the doors open, and he grabs Obi-Wan’s robes, dragging him into the elevator. Shutting the doors, he kept his saber lit as he looked at his former Master.

Obi-Wan’s uneven breath filled the space as he looked at Anakin, trying to suppress the growing dread in his chest. “We can only hope the others made it below.”

“Hopefully, none of the Diseased got further than this level.”

“They shouldn’t with the lockdown initiated.”

Deactivating his saber, Obi-Wan kept it in hand as he watched the changing level numbers,” we have to figure out where they have been coming from. What area did it begin again?”

Anakin looked to him again, “Mustafar. The locals reported seeing the Diseased along the lava banks. Mustafarians used the lava banks to isolate themselves from it, but eventually were still wiped out.”

“Then it spread to Coruscant.”

“And the Hoth region before getting to Endor.”

“All in months time,” Obi-Wan pondered, straightening when the doors opened to show the survivors taking care of the injured as they stepped off the elevator.

Ahsoka ran over, relieved to see them,” We lost two Masters. Windu was able to help get the remaining younglings out of the training areas. Everyone is at this level.”

Nodding, Obi-Wan moved past her to find the other Council members,” good. We need to figure out how they had managed to break into the Temple.” Windu came over, displeased looking,” They had to have help to get inside with that many.”

“Someone who knows the Temple security or can view it,” Anakin said simply, glancing between them. “Until we know who it is, we must be more careful with the knowledge we find on the Diseased. This outbreak is spreading too quickly through the regions. I fear we could have a full collapse of society if we can’t get it under control.” He motioned them to follow the computer systems they had in place, logging in.

Anakin and Obi-Wan watched as he pulled live footage of the Diseased making their way through the Temple. Wakes of destruction were in their path as they watched helplessly as a statue of Qui-Gon was knocked over and shattered.

Obi-Wan pointed to a figure lingering in the back,” Who is that?”

Windu looked to where he pointed, humming as fingers tapped along the keyboard to isolate the figure. As he approached the shadowy figure, the image grew distorted. “Can’t get a full picture, but it looks like someone.”

“Do you think it could be a Sith?” Obi-Wan looked down at Windu, hoping that it could have

“It could be, especially to use the Diseased to enter the Temple.” They watched as the figure ghosted from the camera’s sight as Anakin motioned to a side hall,” Try the camera there.”

Windu pulled it up to show the cloaked figure better, the glint of a lightsaber visible before they ducked out of view. “This could have been the work of the Sith. We’ll have to figure out how to clear out the Temple first. That’s our priority. We’ll have to work on getting the clones set up with better weapons so we can push back better.”

Obi-Wan nodded,” I agree. Anakin, can you think of how the kyber crystal can be used in a blaster?”

“A few ideas come to mind, but I can try it out,” he said as he moved away, getting himself hidden first to get a hololink between Padmé and himself ready. She answered almost immediately, relaxing at the sight of him. “I heard the Temple was attacked.”

“It was. We’re in the lower levels. We think this was a Sith attack,” he glanced around, ducking down when clones passed.

Her voice came out quieter then, watching him in concern. “Stay safe, Ani. If you need to evacuate Coruscant, we have resources for refugees.”

“We’re hoping it won’t come to that, but we will try to regain control of the Temple. Stay safe, okay? Tell the other regions that it isn’t safe here.”

Nodding, Padmé softened as she watched him, voice soft,” Please be safe. Don’t go rushing into battle, Ani.”

“I won’t. I know I can’t,” Anakin softened, eyes going over his wife’s softened frame as her hand absently touched her belly. “Keep the two of you safe. Don’t think you can blast your way out of it,” he teased with a grin, and she hid a soft laugh.

“My staff won’t allow it anyways… I have to go to the Senate call soon. Call me when you can again.”

He softened as a hand brushed through the holo, wanting to be able to hold her and keep her safe. “I will.” He glanced up and abruptly ended the call when he saw Ahsoka making her way to the crates he hid behind.

“Master, what are you doing?”

“Thinking, Snips. How would you do it if you had to make a blaster with a crystal as ammo?” He hid the hololink in his robes as she thought,” You would have to make sure the crystal’s energy doesn’t make the blaster explode.”

“Exactly. We need to make a lightsaber with a trigger.”

She watched him momentarily, sighing as she looked away. The dread began to creep in her chest, and she swore she could have felt a cold chill on her skin. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

[thegirlwhorideslikeasamurai]

Today, it's been one year since I almost quit writing. I thought I was done for. The only thing that kept me going was this keen survival instinct that told me that quitting writing would be like killing an inherent part of myself. All those universes that come into being and fill me with life when I write would be gone, leaving nothing but a void. I would be dead inside.

So, I kept writing, trying to find my love for writing again. I told myself, if other people don't love my writing, I can at least try to love it for myself. It worked - to an extent and as long as I completely withdraw from the world.

Now, one year later, not much has changed except for the fandom. The change of fandom coincided with my crisis and I got increasingly frustrated where I was, and I took it as a chance to start all over again. I was hoping it would change things, but it didn't. I'm fighting to have faith in my writing but find myself constantly failing. It's an ongoing rollercoaster of being overjoyed someone appreciates my writing, the fear of them leaving and the awful conviction that my writing is in truth utter rubbish. Just thinking of sharing my stories, revives the awful feeling that my writing will never be good enough. Hello darkness, my old friend. Every revision of a new story feels oh so tedious and I can't honestly tell if that's whether I'm burnt out, or the draft is just that bad, or I'm trying too hard to turn this pile of rubbish into a tale that just one other person on this planet will love when I can bring myself to share it. I have no blueprint to combat this feeling. I know I'm not a good writer, and probably will never be no matter how hard I try. My ideas aren't ingenious. I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that most people will keep overlooking my stories. I just keep writing out of stubbornness. To breathe life into the ideas living in my head.

There are days on which I wonder whether I can only find joy in my writing when I stop sharing my works. But that's almost as bad as not writing at all because there is this strong drive in me to share my stories with the world, and hopefully find people who love it as much as I do and want to discuss it with me.

Writers of Tumblr, do you have ever felt like you're the worst writer on the planet? What are your coping strategies? How do you get out of the slump?

[nation-of-bros]

Shit like this makes me explode. This Brit is a typical example of total ignorance.

As one of the few Germans who are still self-aware, I don't give a shit about any alleged guilt. If anyone thinks that I should fall into deep humility because my ancestors were sexy Nazis, then I say to them: Fick dich alter!

I really try to show compassion and understanding for everyone, but I react absolutely allergic to people trying to lecture me about my own nation's past with their rather distorted and patchy knowledge about history.

All Western pop culture is geared towards calling the Third Reich the worst thing in human history, always portraying the Germans as the greatest evildoers of humanity. Masses of shoddy films in which German has to function as the language of super villains. I don't know if I should be upset or flattered that we Germans are treated as so special. Honestly, it fills me with pride and makes my cock hard just thinking about it. Yes, I like being given the role of evil. And that's why I love to say: You guys are a pathetic bunch of shit.

German Aggression

The Germans were obviously too much competition for the West. They were smart, stylish and technologically many years ahead. Fuck, I think they were just awesome. Is that what you want to hear? Finally a confession to satisfy your dumb Nazi neurosis?!

You seriously expect me to be held accountable for something that was fucking long years before my time? Pay your fat useless ass? The only thing Poland or anyone else can get from me is a good kick in their inferior useless balls with my freshly polished boots.

You will hear no remorse from me, no regrets, no humility. Any of your demands for reparation payment will only make my cock harder since you are just trash whose ancestors should have been run over by German tanks so that the cracking of bones would have been the only thing left, along with the blood squirted in all directions. You like that, don't you? To be crushed by something so much greater and more precious.

For every predator there will eventually be an antipredator. The Allies even preferred to ally with the mass murderer Stalin to defeat that German antipredator. Communism in Europe would not have survived without massive rearmament by Americans. How strong and threatening must the Germans have been for capitalists and Bolsheviks to fraternize?

British Morality

What does British people think why the whole world speaks English today? Because Britain peacefully convinced the world of their broken language; because their cuisine is so great; or because half the world just said "Hey, you Brit guys are so kind and great, let's adopt your weird language!". No, Britain was the most warlike nation on this planet. They have enslaved entire continents, destroyed entire civilizations and exterminated entire peoples. And when a nation was too big to subdue, they drugged the entire country to weaken it. The opium wars against China prepared the breeding ground for the communists and Mao ultimately. Indirectly, the mass murders in China can also be blamed on the British nation.

Keinerlei Schuldgefühle

Has Britain already paid reparations to India, or to the many African states they ruthlessly subdued and colonized? Also, what about the native North American people who were nearly wiped out by British settlers? However, it is estimated that 50 to 100 million indigenous people lived on the American continent. Add in the millions of Africans or Indians killed by the British nation, then all that quickly sums up to several hundred millions in the face of several centuries of world wide British colonialism. Has Britain ever paid for it in any way, or at least made an apology, shown sincere remorse?

Keinerlei Besserung

Has the British nation learned anything? Did they get wiser? Absolutely no, because together with France and the US they bombed Libya in 2011 to bring them "democracy and peace" after their secret services and NGOs had already instigated popular uprisings to plunge the country into chaos. They set the fire themselves to pose as the extinguishing heroes. All they did was transform Libya from the most modern and prosperous country in North Africa to the most unstable and poorest. They call this western democratization. Given these policies, is it surprising that all of Africa today welcomes the Russians with open arms as an antidote to Western imperialism?

Nothing but shards

Besides the intention to exploit foreign raw materials, there was a second decisive reason why the Allies wanted to overthrow the Libyan government: In 2009, the Libyan ruler Gaddafi, who was also President of the African Union, proposed to the states of the African continent to convert to a new currency independent of the US dollar, called dinar gold. Consequently, Gadaffi intended to set up an alternative system to the dollar for Africa to limit Western post-colonial exploitation, where corporations replaced the role of colonial masters. However, the International Monetary Fund/IMF sitting in Washington would not let this happen and prompted its slave nations like the US and UK to overthrow Gaddafi and bomb his country to the ground. Anyone who doubts the power of the IMF, and is not strong enough like Russia will be destroyed. Syria would have suffered the same fate as Libya had the Russians not intervened to eliminate the "Islamic State" created by American and Israeli intelligence.

To this day, rival warlords and extremists backed by Western intelligence services fight for dominance in Libya, while Western corporations are able to covertly exploit the country's natural resources. Meanwhile, Libya became the gateway for refugee flows to Italy and Germany. The bloody shards left behind by the Allies must be cleared up by others! But instead of taking in at least a few refugees to make amends, the UK left the EU like rats abandoning the sinking ship.

Caught up by the own past

Radical Islam is a product of the West, like pretty much everything evil, which they later declare their enemy to have a reason to start wars. Even the laws in the Middle East and other Muslim countries criminalizing homosexuality date back to British colonial times. Such persecutions did not exist in the original Islamic jurisprudence. Men just fucked. It was the West that spread its primitive morality around the world along with its languages. The fact that they present themselves as the good guys today and promote LGBTQ shit so vehemently is a bad joke of history that cannot be surpassed in absurdity.

Evolution never stops

The German antipretator was higher justice, which the West refused to accept. This justice was only postponed with the sacrifice of the Germans. Just as the West continue to bomb down everything that seems to threaten their small democratic world, one day they will once again encounter an antipretator who may not be defeatable with any help.

[deflare]

Day 19 brings us the last of the loyalist First Founding legions,* so everyone give it up for the XIX Legion, Raven Guard!

The XIX Legion were the Rogues of the early Space Marine legions. They specialized in stealth actions, infiltration, and reconnaissance, quickly and quietly murdering key opponents of the Imperial regime. They developed a pretty dread reputation in the process, mirroring their flesh-flaying cousins in the VIII Legion. They acted as support for the other legions, providing intelligence and wreaking havoc on enemy supply lines and HQs.

Meanwhile, their father Corvus Corax was saying “fuck you” to the prison industrial complex. He’d landed on the moon of Lycaeus, a prison colony whose people were used as slave labor by the tech guilds who lived on the planet Lycaeus orbited. The prisoners took in baby Corax and taught him how to be real sneaky, with the help of his ability to cloud people’s minds and render himself effectively invisible. He rallied the prisoners and launched a guerrilla war against their captors, eventually driving the slavers off the moon. He then went a bit Dark Side, using nuclear weapons to finally defeat the tech guilds and renaming the moon Deliverance.

Right as his work was done, Corax was swept up by the Emperor, and after a training period, he took over his legion. One the one hand, the newly-dubbed Raven Guard (yes, Raven Raven leads the Raven Guard, the names are bad) fit into his vibe in terms of being a bunch of sneaky bastards. On the other hand, he wasn’t really on board with the terror tactics side of things. Corax quietly split off a lot of the more unseemly elements of the legion--mostly the older Terran veterans who he didn’t think were worth saving--and sent them off on a long crusade at the edges of the galaxy; these are the likely ancestors of the Carcharadons. The remainder, he reformed into the premier covert operation forces of the Space Marines, specializing in sabotage, assassination, and backline disruption.

At the start of the Horus Heresy, the Raven Guard were one of the legions sent into the initial battle against the traitor legions, where they got backstabbed and devastated (along with the Iron Hands and Salamanders). The Raven Guard spent the rest the war scrambling to recover. There was a whole thing with trying to quickly recruit some new Space Marines, only for the geneseed to be sabotaged and turn the new recruits into bird monsters. They didn’t have much impact on the rest of the war, though they managed to do some Raven Guard stuff to the traitor supply lines. They went along with the subsequent division of the legions, becoming the modern chapter. Corax himself was filled with guilt for what he had to do during the Heresy, and as penance, he wandered off into the Warp to try to assassinate one of the traitor Primarchs. He may be a weird mutated bird-monster now?

The modern Raven Guard continue to be a bunch of sneaky bastards, relying on skilled scouts to identify key points to hit. In other words, they operate the way that a unit of 1,000 supersoldiers SHOULD work, rather than having them try to stand as a phalanx in the middle of nowhere like a bunch of dinguses. Militarily, they’re iconically associated with jet-packs, lightning claws, and beak-shaped helmets. They’re known for being grim and brooding, with the chapter being full of Edgar Allen Poe references. Their geneseed makes their skin bleached-white, and gives them black eyes, making them even spookier. But they do also retain a core of compassion for non-supersoldiers from Corax’s days championing the oppressed, even as they become enforcers for the most brutal and oppressive regime in human history. They’re not... good at being the Good Guys. Especially since right now, they’re fighting the actual good guys, the Tau**.

The Raven Guard! They’re the Reasonable Marines, but they’re also easy to overlook. Honestly, I find them deeply disappointing; Corax had the potential to be one of the Primarchs who looked at the Imperial project and went, “Hey what the fuck,” but he got roped in just like everyone else. There’s some commentary in there, maybe.

*There’s a non-zero chance that GW has a very funny surprise in store for me tomorrow.

**The Tau are not the good guys.

The Tau are one of the newest rising powers in the galaxy. They’re blue humanoid aliens who live out on the eastern edge of the Milky Way. Not too long ago, they had stone age technology and were fighting internecine battles that threatened to wipe themselves out. Then some prophets rose up and rallied the Tau together under a new philosophy, that of suppressing their individual wants and needs to instead serve the Greater Good. Since then the Tau have developed new technology at a truly astounding pace, carving out their own space-faring empire.

The Tau are split into five different castes. The Air Caste act as their pilots and spaceship crew. The Water Caste are traders, administrators, and diplomats. The Earth Caste are scientists, engineers, and farmers. The Fire Caste are soldiers and police forces. And the Ethereals are descendants of those prophets; they’re the leadership and clergy, guiding the other Tau toward the Greater Good. (The Ethereals may be aided in their leadership by mind-influencing pheromones; it’s not clear.)

One of the things that makes the Tau unique in the galaxy is that they don’t kill every new alien they come across. When they encounter a new species, or one of the bazillion human-controlled worlds, the Tau will patiently build up trade relationships with them and try to incorporate them into the Tau Empire. Several alien species have accepted the deal, most notably the Kroot, bird-like hunters who can incorporate the DNA of things they eat into their genetics, and who thus serve as frontline melee combatants in exchange for first pick of enemy corpses. A number of human worlds have also voluntarily joined the Tau, seeing a much better deal there than in the Imperium.

The Tau have developed sophisticated weapons systems, including high-powered railguns and plasma weapons significantly better than what the Imperium uses, and an ever-more-complex array of battlesuits (effectively, mecha). A mix of good luck and unexpected tenacity have kept the Tau alive against Imperial assaults; while the Tau Empire could obviously never stand against the full weight of the Imperium, there are always bigger fish to fry.

Like I said, the Tau are not the good guys. They are, however, maybe the least evil faction in the 40k setting. They’re imperialistic, culturally chauvinistic, and strictly theocratic. They employ mind-control technology on their own people and on their alien auxiliaries (most notably the insect-like Vespids), and subject rebellious worlds to cruel punishments. They’re also growing increasingly erratic as their leadership struggles to handle the outside-context problem of Chaos and the Warp. But, they’re not genocidal fascists, and that makes them good guys compared to the bastards in the Imperium.

Master post here

[atomicpolicebox]

The Mega Genesis Chronicles Introduction/Prologue

Hello Everyone! I'm going to talk about my WIP series called "The Mega Genesis Chronicles"

This series is formatted similarly to SMG4, with episodes focused on comedies yet having arcs with serious tones in them from time to time. This series takes place in an alternate Sonic universe, with Sonic being replaced by "Christopher Cycon"

The planet they live on is called Suibom (Mobius backwards) and the planet is divided into three distinct sections: -Grassy Hills (Based on "Sonic's world") -Nevadian (Based kinda on the world of "Madness Combat") -Overworld (Based on "Minecraft's Overworld") The main villain of the series is an alternate Eggman/Robotnik called "Dr. Eggnog" (based on a joke from an old plush series I did in the past):

The story before the series actually will begin: Christopher Cycon was fighting Eggnog and Christopher was cornered at an edge and a flash of red flashed behind Christopher, it distracted Eggnog enough for Christopher to destroy his mech. Eggnog swiftly escaped. Christopher then went down to check what that flash was and found a rift that was on the verge of closing, while they are looking around they find a humanoid with red hair out cold nearby the rift and bring them to his home nearby after the portal collapses. Christopher contacts his longtime friend "Peter Daniel" (Who is a villager and a scientific engineer) and they get a new house built over the chasm (which was filled in) to make sure they can protect it, who knows if it will open again and what power lies within it. After the house was built, the redhead wakes up, they have complete amnesia and don't remember anything of where they were before the rift or who they are or even their own gender, all they have is the first letter of their first name, and their last name. N. Karbara. Peter and Chirstopher suggest the name Nat for them, and the red head takes the name.

After settling, Peter gets Nat to go to a college to learn about the new world they reside in, that's when they meet "Ophelia Martin" who works at a Nuclear facility, not too long after they meet Nat, they end up in a meltdown situation and become mutated giving them the appearance they have in the series.

Afterwards they would meet Jay, a mechanic who Christopher and Peter met in Middle School, Jay is a good friend of the other two and decides to join them and help work on vehicles and such. (He does not have a ref sheet yet) During the first ever mission where all of them are together they go to an abandoned facility and learn about the creation of creatures known as "Dream Catchers", overpowered artificial creatures, who connect to a specific person to gain energy. The most powerful one 01/The Essence has broken out taking 02/The Kuriou with them. The team comes across The Essence trying to kill The Kuriou, in which the team stops The Essence and traps him in a pocket dimension, with an ability they all gain during this fight known as "MEMORI"

MEMORI - You can summon anything that you have seen in your life (that isn't living or food), as long as you can remember it, but only for a max time of 5 minutes. People who have this ability will be seen having a glowing light blue ring around their dominant hand's wrist.

After The Kuriou connects with Nat Karbara.

The actual series takes place 2 years after these events. EXTRA INFO: There is an organization called "The C of The Arctic" which is owned by a man named "Arctic Bohemian" He might look like a rich douche evil wolf, but in reality he is a kind and caring person.

The C of The Arctic focuses on anomaly and alternate dimension research. They try to dissociate themselves from the SCP foundation since they do not trap the anomalies unless absaloutley necessary. The dimensions they research are as follows: "The Backrooms (and it's other versions) (This is what they primarily research out of any of these dimensions), The Nether, The End, and the mysterious middle afterlife known as The Nine. I have still yet to finish all the reference sheets needed to even consider looking for people to commission to make the 3d models of these characters so the series is probably a year or two away. I do hope to make a video about the characters in detail and release it on the series that predates this one's (The Genesis Of Reality (This is a whole other can of worms and isn't needed to understand this series) anniversary: January 3rd 2023. When this series comes out, I do hope you guys enjoy it .w.

[starrystrawb]

Meet Sky Mother Nature! She is the embodiment of the sky, obviously. Her body represents clouds. Her mane and tail are the sunrise and the night sky! I kept her eyes grey and simple so most of the attention is on her hair!

Sky is one of the oldest epithets. It's often argued that Water is older, but when asked, Sky and Water will tell you they are the same age. Despite her ties to the air, Sky prefers walking. She is often seen flirting and dancing with Water. Though, when pressed, both deny having a relationship.

I just wanna clear up real fast that the Epithets are NOT related unless explicitly stated! Magma and Volcano are sisters, and Wetlands and Water are siblings. Peaceful also has a sibling we have yet to meet! Also, while I use mainly She/Her pronouns for the the Mother Nature Epithets, you can also use they/them! I really have fallen in love with this series and really enjoy making each little pony! Now for our eco-tips!

Many people have probably heard that being vegetarian or vegan is good for the planet. It is (as far as I know)! But there are lots of reasons you may not want to, or be unable to change your diet. And know you don't have to change your whole life to help! You can do one day a week with out meat, like doing meatless Mondays, tofu Tuesdays, etc. You can also buy your meet from small, local farms if you're able! And remember, friends! YOU eating a hamburger is NOT the big issue. The meat industry is.

Speaking of food, lets talk about bulk buying! If you have jars, bags, or containers, you can take them to a bulk-buy store, or to a grocery with bulk buy options, and fill them! Some stores have things like dried fruits, nuts, candy, or granola! Others have things like flour, pasta, sugar, and seasonings. There are also refill stores! Where you can bring your own container and refill it with beauty products like lotion or soap. Of course, not everyone has this option. For me, there aren't stores near me that offer these options, for others the cross-contamination can be deadly, and sometimes these stores can be expensive compared to their regular groceries. Do not feel bad!

If you don't really do the bulk-buy or refill thing, thats fine! When you're doing your regular shopping, try to avoid plastic when you can! Buy pasta in cardboard boxes, look for packaging that can be recycled, or just try to cut back on your plastic bags! There is no reason to feel shame about not keeping up with the bulk-buying insta girlies. They are on their journey, and you are on yours. Both are valid and important!

Speaking of grocery stores, if you don't have reusable bags, ask for paper if you can! Where I live, I often bag my own groceries. So if I ever forget my reusable bags, I ask for paper! Paper is compostable, curb-side recyclable, and is super easy to reuse in your every day life! Sometimes, companies that have recyclable packaging can up their prices just because they're "greener". Other times, plastic is just unavoidable. You are never the villain just for providing for yourself!

You know who the villains are? Politicians! I (very obviously) don't like or trust politicians. Even the "good" ones have their secrets and their own agendas. So contact them! Phone numbers, emails, fax numbers, and other communication pathways are often public information for public offices! So absolutely blast their inbox! Call them! Email them! Write them a letter! DM them online! Fax them! Make yourself clear and be direct. To be VERY clear, do not send threats, harass, or harm these people. They are still people, at the end of the day. I just want everyone to know, there are several ways to make your voices heard. Talking to each other online is amazing. But we must talk to our lawmakers too.

Base

[understandableparadox]

old passage speculating the straw hats

Monkey D. Luffy: Page of breath

Luffy is what I think Tavros could have been. Someone full of life, joy, happiness of such an infectious degree that it inspires everyone around him to become better people, it inspires them to caste away chains that have just lived with out of convenience because tavros, someone who would certainly live a more comfortable life with their chains has caste them away and instead of being horribly punished, they are like a goddamn bird, free.

Land of Blaze and Gold

A massive burning planet, devastated mostly on the surface by the horrifying fire giants that roamed the planet. Spreading nothing but flames and devastation throughout. But once you go underground you find that there are multiple underground oases filled with Beaded lizard constructs who have found ways to use the heat on the surface to make life pretty great. They speak of a way to see the sun again by going to the Capital of the fire giants, El Dorado. The city of burning gold to defeat the denizen Totec

Luffy has a land based mostly on Aztec myths because el dorado is one of the classic treasure hunt destinations. It's the game trying to fit luffy into a track that they recognize. My thoughts are that luffy will immediately ignore this kind of quest because the game expects him to be where tavros is, but he’s pretty much already ready to god tier. Maybe he ends up accidently radiclizing the lizards because again, he could probs just beat the fire giants on the surface and create a pretty damn good town where ever the fuck he wants. 

Luffy more likely than not won't see the point in god tiering and again, ignore it. Immortality is not Luffy's main quest. It's him trying to have fun, it's him trying to live a life that he will be constantly happy with, alongside friends that he can support and will support him in kind. He brings in his crew to fight the denizen and winds pretty handedly

Roronoa Zoro: Prince of Rage

Zoro works a lot as the quartermaster of the strawhat crew. He is the one that enforces a lot of the rules of the ship, wither it's not questioning the captains final decision or ensuring a proper code of conduct is set. Rage is the aspect of negative, fear, rage and importantly,truth. Zoro cuts through some of the toughest opponents set in the crews way, allowing them to work without fear. Like luffy he is a reassuring entity that allows members to work without fear.

Land of Prayer and Passing. 

A solemn land where dead mantis make their death march towards the ever consuming maw of their denizen, a nameless monolithic creature within a massive tower. The sides of this tower displaying an endless list of names appear, the closer they get to the bottom, the closer they are to being eaten by the denizen. If a mantis attempts to escape the denizen and doesn't make their death march, they are dragged by countless hands towards the tower. 

The land is a lot more barebones then some of the others for the sole reason that zoro won't pay attention to it. The game knows zoro has no interest in a lot of weird things and will just blindly hit the problem with a sword like a coked out orangutan with a stick and attitude problem. And it will fucking work. If I had to name the denizen, then it most likely would be enma. Zoro killing their denizen would just be more emblematic of him taking his position then abandoning it out of a slight uncaringness that the mantis may or may not appreciate. It's just a new truth being laid out to them to follow. They are no longer bound by death because the weird guy killed the god of it so they just kinda have to… deal with it

Nami: Mage of Light. 

Nami is a coward but only because she is a relativly normal person within a crew of utter fucking monsters. Monsters that get them in the news every other day because they kicked the king of who caresia in the dick and now the entirety of the royal navy wants them dead. Nami suffers from being perceived and known. But she also manages to profit off of her own fortune, luck and notoriety. 

Land of Vaults and Bars

A massive prison world that contains what could be easily millions of gecko consorts, seemingly born into and raised as prisoners for perceived slights of their ancestors generations ago. But the kicker here is that each tear shed by the gecko becomes solid gold… gold that gets collected and transported to the denizens private vault. Lakes worth of gold and gems ripe for the taking…All you have to do is get past the watchful gaze of Nokken. 

So, the planet is meant to tempt nami to get off track and try to make a profit off the gold and suffering of the geckos (also commentary on the industrialized prison complex but i'll move my ham hock fists out of the way). Nokken was the denizen of choice because it works as the Swedish version of a siren, beautiful men playing music that tempts women into drowning. Again, temptation, lakes, water and gold are the main themes of the world.

Usopp: Rogue of hope

Usopp is an unapologetic coward and opportunist. He’s also insanely negative, everything is the worst possible thing that can happen and he is always ready for death to be right on top of him. But he doesn't let that overcome him. Despite being fucking terrified of the things around him, he finds ways to create opportunity. His entire sthick is finding the perfect shot. The single strike that can turn the tide. Wither its on judgement island, hitting the perfect shot for fucking hundreds of yards away to save his crew, or the insane shot he made up hill from miles away in dressorose, freeing people from someones curse. He finds ways to steal hope from the baddies and give it back to the crew and those around him. 

Land of Mirages and Pyrite. 

A world seemingly made completely out of gold, with sparkling cities run by rather accommodating meerkats. Literally everything seems fine as long as the sun is up, when it starts to dip, the land turns a sickly greenish bronze color. A massive wolf stalks the world, easily eating up the cities it comes across throughout the night. By morning, everything is fine and dandy. Even the cities that were eaten seem to have no memories of being eaten…

A more mystery focused planet because right behind nami, usopp is one of the smartest strawhats on the ship. It's meant to get him trying to figure out what's going on, slowly becoming brave enough to face the denizen head on. Also, yes, it's fenrir. Usopp likes vikings with an intense passion.

Sanji: Knight of heart

Sanji is a professional simp. Someone who under no circumstances will hit a woman, even if their fucking evil as hell. I think out of all the straw hats, he’s the one who gets into the least arguments with everyone. The only real person he ever actually has a problem with is zoro.  Thus my idea is that he is someone who underwent the trials of the knight and just kinda… failed? Instead of using desire and personality to exploit, he allowed it to exploit him. Which honestly isn't so bad. 

Land of pillars and fish. 

A massive ocean dotted along with small dots of civilization atop massive stone towers. Down below the ocean froths kicks up with  a vibrant blue ocean that doesnt seem to have an end. It merely goes down and down and down… each of the villages focus on different needs, like trees or metals. The bravest of em being the fishermen. Brave otters that descend into the depths to try and get a large enough haul to feed everyone before they are fed on by the terror of the depths. 

The denizen of this world is calypso, mostly because the game is going to try and get sanji to fight his denizen and give him a challenge. But again, he fails his quest and is happy about it. He is genuinely happier as the failed knight of heart that stuck to his ideals.

Tony Tony Chopper: Bard of doom

Tony is someone whose life is plagued by doom and gloom. Abandoned by his herd, accidentally killed his own mentor, had to live in semi isolation due to their appearance, but they are someone who manages to get past it. They don't let the sadness of their life get the best of them. They do their best to do what their mentors did and heal people the best they can. Thus I think the god tier of bard of doom would be the best choice.

Land of Plagues and loss

A massive haunted village, something straight gothic. The entire joint is wrapped with this horrid illness that is slowly killing the stork inhabitants, hospitals have sprouted up in certain spots but there's never enough room. The graves are slowly becoming the most populous place. The denizen of the planet Faust, is feverously working on a cure to this hell. 

Chopper being a kid is going to be having a really fucking bad time through out all of this, the game obviously wont give a shit but yeah, his world is meant to really pray on his sense of duty when it comes to healing the sick. And as bards are meant to break, it wants to break him with the despair of the ever coming line of dead consorts. I think he powers through because he is a medical genius.

Chopper more likely than not would god tier once he understands it, again, he has an intense sense of duty when it comes to taking care of people, gaining powers specifically about that would only be on the surface of that.

Nico Robin: Seer of time. 

Robin may have the most dichotmaic themeings throughout the story. She is the woman who brings death yet all her attacks are based on flowers blooming. She is the demonic child cursed with knowledge yet she can sprout almost angelic wings at the drop of a hat. But the one thing that she is consistently associated with is the idea of history and the future. She learns about it in order to apply what she knows to plans the straw hats make. She suffered greatly because of it, learning how to read the ponegraphs ensured the destruction of her family. It nearly ensured the destruction of her crew but she is adamant that she continues learning it. 

Land of dunes and tombs

A sprawling land of deserts dotted occasionally by pyramids, the base of which seems to be an oasis. With fresh clear water flowing from the top of each of them down. Yet the consorts, hawks, seem to avoid it. Content to living near the rocky outcroppings and flying maybe once a day to gather gallons at a time towards the village.  The denizen, Isis is said to already be dead. That this place is due to become non-existant without the spell she was supposed to weave…

The land is supposed to encourage time travel bullshit as well as a tiny bit of archeology, for fun. As a treat. Anyways you go back and forth in time gathering info on WHERE the denizen was when she died and trying to either get the spell out of her or at the very least make sure she never dies. The scratch panel here is a massive harp with glowing red strings that requires thousands of hands to play

She would more likely than not god tier because she has those aradia "oooh, lets see what death feels like!" vibes

Franky:Heir of void

Surprisingly, franky is a lot like equius if he just grew out of his fetish faze and stopped caring.stop me when i'm off base but imagine a genius robotist that kinda creeps people out or actively annoys them when they talk to him. They are known for building prosthetics or complete robot bodies. 

See what I mean? The only difference is that Franky is a lot further along on the path of an heir then equius, already rendering himself into nothing but the personality given his insistence of making himself the perfect war machine. 

Land of ponds and reflection. 

A semi swamp-esque planet filled with snakes waiting at the side of their own personal ponds. Staring intensely at their own reflections within the water. Only leaving in abject frustration to eat or rest. If asked, they will say that they are trying to get a wish from the creature on the other side of the water. The thing that has no reflection. If you can reach the same state as it, it can give you something that will cure all your worries.

The denizen here is supposed to be narcissus, someone that demands to be unchanging because it feels as though it has finally reached a point of perfection, going up someone that can always find something to change about itself. 

Franky would god tier in a heartbeat because it's just what he does on the daily.

the franky-equius think is my hottest homestuck take by the by

Brook: Sylph of life

Brooks overall is a tragic character who has died trying to fulfill both a legacy and promise, but given a second chance to finish it. Everyone he used to know died around him. He sailed with their bones. The only thing he has left of them is the final song they sang together. Brooks is someone who understands the finality of death and understands that life is wonderful, beautiful, precious and rare beyond exception. Thus will help anyone he can not squander it. Singing wonderful songs to  brighten the mood of those around him. He is a sylph of life solely because he has died enough times to keep it sacred. 

Land of notes and ivory. 

A prehistoric land that is filled with hummingbird consorts.here the skeletons of massive ancient creatures roam, animated by some odd magic… rendering only small parts of the forest safe from the boney march of the behemoths. The hummingbirds know when they are close, given the harsh wind that sweeps through the jungle blows through their hollow bones, forcing them to sing in a discordant cacophony. 

Brooks would not god tier, he wants to make the most of his second life and understands that there is a certain beauty in knowing that one day it will end. Immortality is not something he has any interest in.

the denizen more likely than not would be ihy, as he is one of the first gods of music, and childhood. He's just a kid playing with their favorite dino toys and making music (badly) because that's how they know to play.

Jinbei: Witch of mind

it seems a little bit werid but my logic here is that witches are defined by some sort of accident, mistake or whatever that relates to their aspect. the death of jades grandpa through teleportation, the death of the trollian race by feferis lusus, and for jinbei his inability to make the logical decision of putting down arlong and allowing him to cause that much distruction.

aside from that, jinbei is always cooking up plan after fucking plan, disappering to set things into motion months ahead of time to ensure the prospairity of the things he deems important, such as fishman island and whole cake island.

Land of rips and tides

a massive underwater planet, seemingly from the moment you make the initial plunge you are stuck in a massive sprawling labrynth of tunnals that delve deeper and deeper into the planets core, occasionally these tunnals will create currents that will rip through, dragging anything living through them until their dead, slammed and cut on the walls of the tunnels.

the denizen the laviathan, an abstract concept of the oceans blind rage, something that holds the unstoppable power of the ocean that must be subverted and coareced through the most carefull of planning.

[or-something-better]

Sam’s Story Corner

August 30, 2022

🔮✏️🚨🔮✏️🚨🔮✏️🚨🔮✏️🚨🔮✏️🚨🔮✏️🚨

Hello Darlings, This is your King speaking. Moose has asked me to be your special guest here in his cozy little corner. This week your prompt is What is your biggest regret, and how it impacted your future. It can either tie into something from the show or be completely original to your character. Try to have it posted by Sunday, or my lovely hounds will perhaps pay you a visit.

.........................................................................................................

Ruby

My Biggest Regret

You tend to have a few regrets in life when you have lived a long time. Having said that, the length of my life is in proportion to my regrets as well.

Let’s face it. Demons aren’t nice. Our whole existence is to bring misery to mankind. The world is one big yin and yang. Good vs Evil. At least I used to think so. That is until I found out a long time ago that I’m broken.

After losing my soul, I did my time in Hell. That wasn’t my regret, I knew when I signed on the dotted line or sealed it with a kiss as is required, that I willingly gave up my soul. I’d do it again. That’s probably been the only thing I haven’t regretted in my life. Becoming a witch saved a lot of people.

No. I think my biggest regret, through no fault of my own, has been that little sliver of my humanity that remained after my transformation. That piece in me that remembers being human. I don’t know if it’s a part of me because of my witchcraft connection to the powers of the living world, but it makes my life as a demon more hellish than it should be. It allows me (is that the right word? Because sometimes it’s more like forces me) to think of the consequences of my actions. And demons do a lot of shit. It’s what we do!

Not that it’s been all bad. I traveled, I learned languages, and customs, met lots of people, (killed lots of people), and saw things you wouldn’t believe. But it’s also a lonely life. While other demons can join cliques, I just couldn’t bring myself to spend 24/7 with them. I didn’t fit in. I never have. Friendships, if you can call them that, are just short periods where demons use each other for their own purposes.

I was destined to be alone. At least I thought so before HE showed up. Sam Winchester. What started out as a simple job, turned into a complicated mess that’s been with me ever since. It was so simple until that spark of humanity showed up, as it always does, and fucks with my life and makes up my mind for me.

Now I’m an enemy of the state with everyone. Sort of a ‘Heaven doesn’t want me and Hell wants to kill me.’ Isn’t that lovely? And my only haven of peace is Sam.

…………………………...............................................................................

Sam

In the Kitchen of the Bunker, I empty an old bucket from the supply room, rinse it out and fill it with beers and ice. Then taking the stairs to the roof two at a time, I step out into the open air and look up at the bright night sky.

“Awesome”

After taking in a few deep breaths, I settle myself into one of the lawn chairs left up here and reach for a beer. Sometimes this little rooftop get away was just the thing needed to relax or recharge, depending on what was happening. Tonight I’d have to say I was most likely in need of a little of both.

Gazing upwards, Mars is visible right away. It’s almost orange glow made it one of the first planets I’d ever been able to find. Because of the late hour, I’d already missed being able to see Mercury, but Venus should be visible, if the sky stayed clear, in just over an hour.

Drinking my beer in the blissful silence, I laid my head back and just let my mind wander. Evenings like this under the stars, were some of the fondest memories I had of times growing up with Dean. Sometimes we’d talk, sometimes we’d just watch the sky in silent togetherness. Both were balm to my soul, when I had one anyway.

Setting down my now empty beer bottle, I took another from the bucket and twisted off the top. Someone earlier today, I couldn’t remember who, had made an offhand comment in the Bunker about having regrets and several others had then shared what some of their biggest regrets had been. I didn’t join in the with the conversation, God knows enough is already known about my own short comings and missteps, there wasn’t a need to highlight any of them.

Shifting on the chair, I had to admit that participating or not, the entire subject had dogged me. Kept coming back up in my own mind throughout the rest of the day and still this evening. What was it about this that I just couldn’t let go? I had a list of regrets a mile long and no trouble admitting that choices I’d made hurt others as well as myself. Hell, all laid out together it sort of seemed like my whole life had been one big regret about something or other. Running over a few of those things in my mind, trying not to force it, but just allowing my own thoughts to come and go wherever they took me… it really didn’t take long to come up with what I guess I consider to be my greatest regret. Jessica.

But not for the reason everyone would think. Yes… becoming involved with me had ended her young life way before her time. All of the hopes and dreams she’d looked forward to were stolen by the evil that I’d always known was out there. I used to think that If only I’d told her everything, If only I’d listened to what the dreams I had were telling me, things would have been different.

Well, with two decades of hindsight and a lot more experience, I know that isn’t true. It wouldn’t have mattered what we knew, or what we did or didn’t do. Even if I hadn’t gone with Dean that night he came for me, nothing would have been different. The wheels of my destiny had been set in motion the night Azazal had bled over me in my crib. Nothing was going to change that. Cosmic forces were involved and it was a whole lot bigger than just two dumb college kids who mistakenly thought they were in love.

And THAT was the real regret. My relationship with Jess had been a lie and doomed from the beginning. Even if there was no demon blood or my being Lucifer’s perfect vessel, I would have still destroyed her. Maybe not her physical life, but certainly her loving spirit. Oh, I believe Jess loved me. She’d fallen hard for the shy, goofy kid from Kansas, with the good grades and soon-to-be Lawyer shingle. The one who shared her expectation of careers, that ended in a house with a white picket fence in a good neighborhood.

That kid wasn’t the real me. Jessica didn’t know the first thing about me and would have hated the life I’d led and the things I’d done. She only knew the façade I painted, the story I was telling everyone even myself. And I needed her. I needed her to believe that the person I was portraying to everyone was real, because her belief in that made me real. For the first time in my life, I felt normal, like I had value. Like I could fit in and had been right in my decision to leave my brother behind. I loved that Jessica loved me. A small distinction that would have eventually hurt us both.

It had taken a long time for me to understand the dynamics of everything that happened at Stanford. Pretty easy to see now that they were the driving force behind all of my half-lived relationships since then. Funny how regrets are… I think approaching 40 had been a real decision point for me. Not a lot of old Hunters out there, probably even less that find any contentment with their lives. It’s hard to share your true self with someone after the horrors of this life.

I start to reach for another beer just as I notice that Venus has begun to rise in the night sky. Venus, the planet of love. The one emotion that everyone seems to quest for their whole lives, and the one thing Jess and I never really understood. It took a Demon to show me that there are greater things out there. Ruby is the only one I’ve ever met who understands all the parts of who I am, Demon and Human. I don’t have to hide a single thought or anything about my past. She’s seen that darkness firsthand and even participated in some of it. I’m not expected to be anything except exactly who I am. I’m okay with that.

…………………………...................................................................................

Gabe

I’ve heard the questions asked numerous times as to what happened to “Jesse the Demon Boy” and I think it’s a story that needs to be told. It’s been a long time now, but the memory is still sharp in my mind and it’s one of those ones that will always stay there .

There’s ZERO love lost for him after what he did, but I’ll give him this, he was born into a shitty situation , and  tried to fight his demons so to speak, joining the military and becoming the strongest weapon and fiercest killer they ever had. He tried assimilating into normal Soviet and that as you can imagine, didn’t end very well. It was then that he set his sights on team free will, and more specifically, my wife and children.

At the time belle and I hadn’t been married very long, and our girls, our miracle babies Missy and Cassie were only a few months old. We’d already been through hell bringing them into existence. I was still an archangel and archangels and humans were never meant to be together, to create children, Archnephilim. When the forces of Lucifer found out, and heaven found out it was a war that took place with us in the middle and at a human hospital (this was in archaic times before doctor Charlie). A story for another day, but spoiler, one sec survived.

With that out of the way we thought we were home free to raise our family as we saw fit. That’s when Jack decided to become best buddies with Jesse.

Now jack was a sweet kid. Innocent, naïve and grew up before his time meaning he was also easily manipulated. All that power, in a young man’s body with a baby’s brain. I don’t blame him fully, but it’s his nativity that brought Jesse into our lives.

Jesse had decided he wanted what I had, what the team had, family, love, respect, and that the only way to get it was by getting me out of the way, and I have to admit he did it well. (this is also why there’s no jack around) He used jack. Sending jack to our house where he laid me unconscious so he could kidnap Belle and the girls.

Coming too I found myself in a ring of holy fire, trapped as Jesse told me what his plans were and they made my skin crawl.

His dad land were to forcibly breed my belle, raising our children to age before taking them as brides and creating creatures of power beyond anything the world had ever seen.

That was enough for me, as Jack was tortured by Jesse he freed me with his last breath and it was on . I’ve never felt rage or fury like that before, and I hope to never feel it again.

The things I did to Jesse, the torture I inflicted upon him would have made Lucifer think I had gone too far and I only stopped because Belle begged me to just kill him. The things I did to him are things I’m ashamed to write down and not meant for the eyes of humans or children. I can tell you that there is a ZERO chance that he could ever be brought back.

I’d do anything to protect the ones I love, even if it means releasing a vengeance on the world again that Lucifer and my father had no idea existed.

………………………………..............................................................................

Dean

My biggest regret

Here I am laid back on the hood of Baby, drinking straight from a bottle of whiskey, thinking about this question. Where the hell do I begin? There are many things i truly regret in my life but if I had to choose one...

It all started as a one night stand in 1998. I thought about her from time to time, wondering where she was, what she was up to. I couldn't get her off my mind.

8 years later I had to go see her. I felt I needed to see her, with the intent to sleep with her one more time. We had a connection like no other. It was weird, different, but felt right. I thought if i could get her in bed just one more time I might know. But when I did, everything was so different.  

When I knocked on the door, I said I was just passing through and decided to stop and see her. She said it was a bad time. She had a party going on but then invited me in anyway. We walked outside that’s when I saw him. This 8 year old boy, dark hair, black leather jacket, eyeballing all the ladies. He reminded me so much of myself.

She walks away to talk to somebody, I'm watching this boy and noticing everything about him even down to his style of music based off the AC/DC shirt he's wearing. I go catch up with her and we talk about him. We hit things off fairly well I would say.  

Well, we ended up saving the two of them fighting off a changeling. She thanked me for saving them, turns out this boy isn't mine, his father died in a power saw accident. She ends up kissing me and asking me to stay. I told her that her life wasn’t mine. That’s the first regret when I walked away that day.

One night I suddenly has a dream about her and Ben. She was late to his ball game and she told me she loved me.... What a trip... This time I had to go see her for what I thought would be the last time before I said yes to Michael. Was I once again stupid for walking away then yet again after telling her that I could only see myself happy with her and Ben? I would say YES

After we locked lucifer in the cage, I spent a year with Lisa and Ben. A normal life as a normal family. I had a normal job, came home to dinner with them. Things were great. Until I started seeing signs of something nearby...sulfur. I knew something bad was coming. So I left. She was pissed as I tried to protect them to the extent of making them stay with Bobby while i took care of a case. She shared how happy she had been and how good of a father I had been to Ben. I once again left. Only to return again shortly after.

We moved into a new house, but the hunting life called me once again. I ended up a vamp, went to say goodbye basically, she tried to get close to me but all I could do is hear her blood pumping through her veins so I pushed her away then shoved Ben as he tried to see if I was ok. And that again pissed her off because I wasn't myself. I couldn't hurt them. I had to walk away to keep them safe.

I ended up returning again because demons attacked them. Long story short a demon possessed her, then stabbed her as I started to exorcise it from her. She was going to die. I rushed her to the hospital with Ben by my side killing monsters that were after us. Shit! Now he knows about the life! At the hospital I made the decision that was my biggest regret... Cass healed her and I had him erase their memory so they wouldn't even remember me. I never stopped thinking or dreaming about them.

I considered going back and trying again. Sometimes still wish I would or could. I drive past her house on occasion. I sat outside her house many days during my drinking binge. But I just can't bring myself to actually walking up to the door.

This hunting life is who I am. However. I regret walking out of her life, out of their lives. I could have kept that happy apple pie life had I not walked the fuck away!

Drinking the bottle I started thinking about them more, I look at the bottle then back up to the sky. I slide off the car Lisa and Ben and that scene at the hospital going through my head. I throw the bottle as I watch it shatter across the hood of the car. Pissed at myself but at the same time knowing this is truly where I need to be and where I belong with my brother and my family!

……………………….........................................................................................

Crowley

I pace my mansion glancing at the demon’s stationed around the room. The angel had been watching me seal a deal earlier, which meant the Winchester’s had finally caught my scent. Moving to sit behind my desk, I open the drawer where I was keeping the Colt and sigh. My eyes close as I think back to the day I could have prevented all of this.......

I walk behind Lilith, watching the bustle of her shirt as I straighten the high collar of my shirt and check my tied cravat. Scanning the theater I notice many armed individuals and search the memories of the man I’m inhabiting and find he was the one that had placed the police there. My gaze follows Lilith as she splits off towards the stage. “Attention whore.” I grumble recalling that her host is a prissy prima donna, disgraced if this Raoul fellow is to be believed.

Sitting in Box 5 of the theater, I look down at the stage and my eyes follow Lilith with disdain as she shrieks and dances. While plunging through the weak blondes memories I’m confused by the plan I find inside. This whole show was a façade to draw out some rival lover? I rub the man’s head, attempting to fight off the growing headache caused by this Carlotta woman that my boss was inside. My eyes close trying to ignore her, like usual, until a siren song captures my attention.

The weak willed fop in the back of my mind starts raging, this woman clearly special to him. I started paying attention, my vessels drama was much more entertaining than whatever game Lilith was playing. It seemed like she was doing this just to show off, I could see no benefit for Hell, no deal being made. Though as the new performer comes onto the stage I do see a warped soul. Raoul is screaming within me and I gather the performer is the rival he’s so threatened by.

Laughing, I stand and watch a seductive performance concluded, and morphs into a slow, pathetic plea. The police look towards my box and I realize they’re waiting on my word. I hold off and gasp softly as the mask is removed, seeing the face as warped as the soul within. At my hesitation, and the unmasking, everything erupts into chaos and I hear the scream of Lilith’s meatsuit. The man on the stage drops the chandelier which ignites a fire. Taking this opportunity, I join the fray and insight further chaos when I notice bodies dropping.

As I wade through the bodies, I catch sight of a slight blonde dancer. When she turns, her eyes are pure white and I realize Lilith had jumped bodies during the show. Reaching into my jacket, I wrap my hand around a knife that could supposedly kill our kind that I’d swiped off Lilith earlier. Moving closer, I consider taking my shot. If I kill Lilith, maybe I could ascend the ranks faster. I raise the knife to stab her in the back, only to sigh and tuck it back away. A demon killing knife? That just begs to be a trap. Instead I tapped her shoulder and followed her instruction that the party was over for us.

............................

 If I just followed through that day we wouldn’t be here right now. The final seal would have already been dead. Since that one had to be activated last, the plans for the seals being broken would have been void. Lucifer wouldn’t be out. Hell, my dad might even still be alive. The last one was clearly wishful thinking, but still, the apocalypse wouldn’t be going ahead right now. Instead, my life and everyone else’s were staked on some backwoods Kansas boys. How the mighty have truly fallen.

[roshsblogs333]

describe happiness to someone who has never experienced it. 

Happiness is, I believe, unique to each individual. Everyone has things that make them happy, or things that make them happy to do, or people who make them glad to be around. It can be anything as long as you enjoy it and it gives you a unique feeling about yourself. 

It's a feeling that no one can explain; it can only be expressed via your feelings. You have a beautiful glow on your face when you laugh, and smile brightly. That is what it means to be happy; you don't always have to display it via your emotions; it may also be inside, but it is what offers you joy and a nice sensation.

As I previously stated, happiness is unique to each individual, and it will undoubtedly be unique to you. To me, happiness consists of eating delicious food that satisfies my stomach and cravings, or listening to music late at night when no one else is awake and I feel like I am the only person in the planet at that time, and no one can stop me from living the life I desire. Staying alone, having time to yourself, healing, reading books, and sleeping, among other things, can bring happiness. Hanging out with the people you adore can bring you happiness, whether they be friends, pets, relatives, or anybody else. 

But happiness isn't always with us; it's a sensation that everyone wants more and more of, and it's also a feeling that some people can't seem to obtain. It's a pity, but happiness does not last for everyone; it's just the way life is, but amongst hardships you also experience happiness. so if you believe you'll never be happy, trust me, no matter how bad life is. You will have your own moments, and they will be the most beautiful times of your life, filled with euphoria and a sparkling sensation that only you and your mind can express. We all have the potential to create happiness or a cheerful mindset for ourselves as individuals. No one can make us happy until we first make ourselves happy.

People may certainly support you, motivate you, and assist you in finding a path to happiness, but ultimately, it is up to you to determine what makes you happy. You are not compelled to do what other people are doing to make themselves happy; you are free to do whatever you want and enjoy. Any person who claims they have never experienced happiness is someone I doubt; yes, life is full of difficult and terrible moments, but I am confident that if someone recalls their experiences, there must be at least one that makes them happy or makes them smile, no matter how small or large the incident. For instance, I recall a time when my friends family was going through a difficult time and was financially unstable and they had not much to eat, an elder women who used to live near them offered them  food everyday. 

You can create an environment or opportunity that can make someone happy but at the end of the day it depends on them. In the end all of us have to feel happiness personally. But if you think there is no way I am ever achieving happiness, that is not true. There is something out there for you to do or someone out there for you who will bring you happiness. You will find happiness in that person or doing a certain kind of activity. So do not worry, whoever you are I am very sure there will be a moment in life where you think “ ah this is how happiness feels “ . Even as I am writing this down I feel happiness cause I am remembering all the moments in my life where I felt genuinely good and happy. And the most important thing what makes you happy does not needs to make sense to others. You can do anything. 

Sometimes a person can simply provide you with so much serotonin, or simply doing something nice for someone can provide you with so much more. I read a story of someone on a website who was going through a difficult time and decided to try cannabis to help them get through it, but they came across an ice cream vendor. Three children asked their mother to purchase them ice cream, but because they appeared to be homeless and lacked the required money, the mother declined. They decided to go out and buy it for the man who was suffering. And the youngsters gave him the largest, brightest, and greatest smile they could muster. He added that seeing those tiny kids grin made him feel better and happy than he had ever felt before.Hence this just proves happiness always does not have to be something big but as little as this can bring you so much smile. So this also teaches us to help whoever is in need and always support them. As humans we all should encourage ourselves and each other and always support each other and ourselves. 

If you are someone who cannot and have not experienced happiness yet try and learn more about yourself, do more activities, indoor or outdoor does not matter, go out with ur parents and friends, travel around more. Make happiness a priority and in the process be gentle with yourself and treat urself good. Sometimes be selfish, take care of yourself, separate yourself from others if that brings you peace it is not selfish to take care of yourself and being detached from others from awhile if it brings you happiness. 

And to whoever is reading this I can already imagine you have a beautiful smile,  and a beautiful personality, a beautiful mind and health. Happiness is directly linked with positivity and love. Slowly and take your time and find love and positivity, do not give up, you have a whole life ahead of you that you can enjoy. Do not be afraid because everyone is with you. But first start being nice with your own self, treat  yourself, heal, so self care, sleep. And accept who you are because you are a lovely person and you are beautiful when you are being yourself. 

In conclusion happiness differs for everyone but you will definitely experience it and when you do cherish it. 

[no-droids]

Home

gif credit: @javier-pena

Part Eighteen of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 19.5K

Warnings: SMUT, religion kink (maybe?), squirting, consensual stalking/pursuing, canon-typical violence, mention of underage drinking, uhh I believe that’s it but as always, let me know if I’ve forgotten anything please!

A/N: Hey yall!!!  So I know this chapter has been a long time coming and though I’m not completely satisfied with it, I hope it brings a little happiness to you for an hour or two while you read!  School has been kicking my ass and I’ve been in a bit of an emotional slump recently, but I pulled a few all-nighters to post this on time and it’s finally finished!  Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me and sent me encouraging words over the past month or so, I hope you enjoy the end of the Sanctuary arc💕

Also like last time, part 2 of my collaboration with @followwhereshegoes will be posted after the chapter!!  As a reminder, sweet girl is a reader insert and every imagining of her will be different—this is Lisa’s interpretation of her and her artwork is absolutely gorgeous, so please go give her a follow!

Day 5–11:13am:

You zone out again in the early morning, but that happens a lot.  Din always keeps you up so late, all the time, and without any caf here, the rising sun just makes your eyes droop instead of flutter brighter and wider.  You helped a bunch of younglings find their way into their robes when it was still dark out, tying sashes and fitting masks while holding back your yawns.  The walk into Nariss is close to three hours, probably more with all these tiny little legs, and you almost forget to change into your new digs before everyone grabs breakfast.

Even though your ragtag entourage leaves for Nariss just as soon as everyone finishes eating, you don’t reach the city until nearly lunchtime.  Mostly because the kids walk about as fast as the elderly holy women chaperoning the trip.  You and Naydee lag behind the group, forcing yourself to meander slow as fuck when you nearly sprinted this same exact path just a few days ago.  On the way there, you listen to children of all sorts sing happily as they walk, chatter about their excitement for the parade, complain about wearing the fabric mask they made themselves, and more than once, somebody takes a tumble onto the ground and is left in teary sniffles and dirt stained clothes.  Likely for this reason, the robes are designed to be two pieces—a long tunic with a hood and a separate pants portion to prevent tripping instead of a draping skirt, but the smallest ones are clumsy and find a way to fall anyways.

It’s a colorful bunch—a chaotic rainbow of babies running around, and you share easy conversation with your new friend about the plans for the day until she asks something that makes you nearly trip and join the dirty robe club.

“Sister Drya said your family is meeting you in the city,” she tells you, ignoring your immediate subtle toe stub and the awkward shuffle you have to do to make up for it.  “There’s going to be lots of people downtown, I’m worried it might be hard for them to find you.”

Your heart thuds in your chest and you feel a bit short of breath at being abruptly confronted with the need to lie, but at the same time, you kind of love it.  Having a secret, hiding the truth from others, and just the reminder that you’re almost guaranteed to see Din and the baby before midnight pours warmth and tingles through your tummy.  Everything together is a hit of spice, filling you with a kind of excitement that used to be foreign to you.  Having fun, experiencing new things isn’t quite over yet, but home is calling and you miss it with every fiber of your being.

“I don’t think so,” you eventually respond, hoping she can see your kind smile and the sentiment it carries even as light, shimmery fabric wraps right around your mouth.  “If I disappear, you’ll know why.”

Naydee’s eyes crinkle in the corners to match yours.  “Hopefully you’ll be able to see the fireworks first,” she nudges you, her skin glowing against the pale cream fabric she has wrapped around her own mouth and the hood laying delicately over her braids.  “They start at eight.”

The fireworks, you almost forgot.  You know what?  Today is a good day.  You hear yourself think the full sentence multiple times, and the words put a spring in your step after every single one.  The road gradually becomes wider and filled with more travelers, and you feel safe in the back.  Like some kind of sheepdog bringing up the rear of this migrating cluster of children, making sure none of them drift off by themselves and start eating grass or something.

Surprisingly, the kids manage to be relatively patient and well-behaved once they’re in line at the gates.  The Sisters shuffle them along one by one as everyone moves up slowly, taking even longer to get into the city than it did a few days ago.  The entrance is packed already—so many people visiting for the festival, and they’re all dressed in costumes or robes of sorts, or at least a mask.  Most are beautifully crafted, but some manage to look slightly scary even with the soft springtime color schemes.  It’s a completely different world, a different life for each person as you pass them by.  Your stomach is starting to growl by the time you finally make it to the front, and luckily the guards just let the kids through without any ceremony.  Just you and the rest of the caretakers in light robes need to hold still for the retinal scan, matching each other perfectly except for differing shades of fabric, skin, and eye color.  Once the gates open for you and you step through, though… it’s… Maker.

Extravagant, magnificent are both words.  Floral is another.

It’s like they hung up bouquets wherever they could think to fit them, and this is just the edge of the city.  As the group moves through the streets and closer to downtown, it becomes more and more overwhelming.  The air itself is a warm fragrance wafting all around you, sunshiney and breezy and perfect, flowers of all kinds lining the modern buildings and archways like they were planted there from the very beginning and it just took this long to bloom between the cracks in the concrete.  You wish you had names for all of them so you could list them—the only thing you can offer is the color and vague descriptions of the ones that stick out to you.  Tiny yellow ones that are so small, they need to be bunched all together in massive quantities to even resemble normal flowers.  Up overhead, elaborate arrangements of enormous blue and purple and pink ones, wrapping around each other and hanging down from rooftops.  Some don’t even have petals, it’s like they’re big green cups that are big enough to hold things inside them.  You’re fascinated by every single one, wanting to stop and smell them all individually but needing to keep up with the large group and not allow any stragglers to be left behind, including yourself.

About an hour later, when you’re almost in the middle of the city and there are people everywhere, it’s time to eat lunch.  There isn’t much to it because of how expensive it is, and you’d normally feel bad for accepting the small meal each one of the children gets, but you donated all of your credits to the Keja and left absolutely zero for yourself.  Good intentions, terrible idea.  Still, you pull your mask down and snack on some deliciously fried food, trying not to eye anyone else’s platter after you finish yours.  It’s so good and it’s gone in an instant; you couldn’t even say what exactly it was besides which stall you got it at.  Whether it’s just the brilliant atmosphere or if the food on this moon is really just that good, you’re not really sure, but you’re still slightly hungry afterwards with no extra money to sneak a snack.

Soon after, the kids all line up to get their faces painted, or whatever portion of their face is visible behind the cloth masks and hoods they’ve got on, and music blares from at least four different directions and none of the songs are even in the same language.  Depending on the part of town, it seems like the celebrations are all different.  It makes sense, considering most if not all of these individuals were victims of the Empire’s wrath, spread far and wide across the galaxy.  Here, they’re free, and they want everyone to know it.  Spring festivals of some sort are likely common for most cultures, at least those from planets with seasons, not like Arvala-7 where it was arid and hot year-round, and you’re assuming there are multiple things being celebrated today depending on which street you live on.  There’s chanting in different tongues, dancing and drums, outfits and masks from different cultures every single time you look.

At some point, the children spot a crowded street with flowery rails set up all along them, and you stand behind the tiny heads while everyone waits for the parade to begin.  You think your heart has just been beating slightly faster than normal all day today, but when you finally hear the sound of sirens blaring in the distance and cheers begin to pour out from the gathered crowd, it kicks up and you feel like you’re just as wide eyed at the spectacle as the waist-high babies all huddled together up against the railing.

A flurry of people and things pass in slow succession.  First, New Republic officers with their blaring holobikes, bright orange as always.  Then come large groups of people walking behind banners in languages you can’t read, some of them waving, some of them making different sounds and songs.  Bands marching in formation, dancers in dresses and masks and gorgeous flowers in their hair like crowns, and then brilliant hovering vehicles decorated in bright colors and festive depictions.  The craftsmanship and cultural significance is stunning to witness, it’s so insanely loud, there’s so much going on, and yet…

Through it all, you think of Din.  No matter the faces, the sights you see.  There’s someone juggling.  There’s either a very tall man and woman walking together or they’re both on stilts.  There are enormous balloons being led through the air, people are riding atop an assortment of animals you’ve never seen before, there are traditional costumes and spectacular stunts being performed.  Stalls with games and prizes line the stretches of concrete on the cross streets, people are laughing and celebrating and drinking in equal parts, everything is so lively and festive and fun, and yet, though it all, you think of Din.  Him and the baby, they’re always in the forefront of your mind, occupying your thoughts and making your tummy stir more and more as the time passes like the parade in front of you.  You don’t think this environment would ever be his favorite, and in some far away galaxy, perhaps if you lived other lives together and called a beautiful moon exactly like this home, then you might have to drag him out to see all the with you and the kid every year.  You’d have to bat your eyelashes and kiss his cheek and snuggle up to him all nice and pretty like, and he’d probably grumble and complain about it while wrapping his arms around you—all the people and the noise, sweet girl—but he’d go.  For you, he’d go.

Your thoughts suddenly stop short and you blink for a second.  Why… Why was that scene so vivid?  So wistful?  You used to preoccupy yourself with fantasies about Din all the time, back before you even knew him as Din.  But in every single one, it was sexual and likely came from a place of boredom, a lack of external stimulation.  Here you are amidst bustling surroundings, and you’re daydreaming about domesticity with him.  Why?  You want to travel the galaxy, right?  You want to see things you’ve never seen before, right?

For some reason, you think of the floor, and you miss it.

***

Day 5—5:04pm:

It’s late afternoon at this point and nobody can find the teens.

More people have made their way into the city and it’s starting to get extremely fucking crowded, especially where you are downtown, and the handful of them must’ve slipped away with all the excitement happening and how difficult it is to keep the young ones together now that the parade is over.  You don’t know how long they’ve been gone—one second they were walking around just slightly detached from the rest of you, you assumed because the boisterous younglings fucked with their cool vibe, and then the next Naydee is gasping out to you that they’re gone.

“Sister Drya is going to kill me,” she hisses, her dark eyebrows furrowed in self-admonishment and stress.  So many fucking people here, you know her pain.  “I was supposed to be chaperoning them, they were just here—”

She shakes her head under the loose, cream-colored hood, groaning and then speeding up her gait to catch up with the woman in charge, but you decide to grab her wrist before she can relay the bad news.  

“I can go find them,” you offer, speaking as low as you can with the blaring noise surrounding you.  “Before anyone knows they’re missing.  Is there a way to convince everybody to stay in one spot for a little while?  You won’t get in trouble, but I need to know how to find you again.”

Naydee’s eyes widen in surprise, and even though it’s likely a bit out of character for you, you have a feeling it’ll be a deceptively easy task.  Even with the masses right now and how atrociously big this city is, you already have a general idea of where they’re likely to be.  Besides, you’re not even sure your absence will be noticed if Naydee is the only one who figured out the teens were gone—the other Sisters can thrive without you while missing anyone else would be noticeable, and you owe your new friend a thousand favors for helping you out these past few days.  The least you can do is save her from the scolding of one of the scariest old ladies you've ever met.

“Be as quick as you can,” she finally agrees.  It’s a lot of trust to put into you, but you’ve had experience in reading the most unreadable man in the entire galaxy, some teenagers shouldn’t pose too much of a problem.  “If you’re not back in thirty minutes or somebody notices, I’ll have to say something.”

You nod, silently breaking away from the group without another word.  You think you can hear her announce to everyone that it might be best to eat dinner now to skip any long lines later—smart—but you’re out of their hearing range and line of sight almost immediately.

***

Day 5–5:17pm:

“Really?”  You raise an eyebrow since they won’t be able to see the way your mouth is twisted up underneath your mask, crossing your arms and tapping your foot against the ground to further illustrate just how not fucking impressed you are.

Seven teenagers freeze, and slowly—depending on how much bravery they can individually muster—they turn around on their stools to face you.  The atmosphere in the tavern is bustling and cheery, booze being passed around a large crowd that laughs and mingles, but your vibe is stone cold and quiet.  The contrast doesn’t feel wrong on you like it normally would; the negative and disapproving energy you’re emitting makes you feel powerful, untouchable, armored and strong.

“How did you find us so fast?”  One of the twin boys squeaks out behind a light blue robe, sounding worried.

“Had a hunch,” you grumble, glaring sternly at each of them in turn.  Your tone is dry, your voice sits lower in your throat when you’re pissed off.  All you had to do was look for the closest bar that doesn’t have any orange jumpsuits poking around waiting to card underage younglings, it wasn’t that difficult.  “You’re not exactly unpredictable.”

“Are you gonna rat us out?”  The other twin asks you, in a voice that’s oddly deep compared to his brother.

“I should,” you snap, quickly reaching out to push their drinks away.  “I should let Sister Drya rain down her holy fury on your asses, got good people all twisted up over you for nothing and I’m missing dinn—”

You don’t know why, but you suddenly cut yourself off and jerk upright, spinning around.

The sounds of glasses clinking and boisterous voices fill the bar, but they seem to fade out for a second.  Your eyes fly around the crowded space, your heart lodged in your throat and looking for anything reflective.  Every flash you see is a false alarm—belt buckle, wristwatch, cocktail shaker—

He’s here… isn’t he?

Only, there’s nothing.  Nothing is out of place, nothing jumps out at you the way you’re assuming it will.  You’re braced taut and ready to bolt at the first sign of a chase, but it never comes.

It’s so… unexpected, this feeling.  It’s not like you’re being hunted anymore, but instead, you’re the hunter.  You’re feeling the weight of him from this far away and it’s like he’s calling for you to come find him, teasing the wild adrenaline rush you get from just feeling his presence, as if he absolutely knows it happens.  Whispering soft in your ear and then vanishing the second you’re able to turn around, like he’s here but he’s not.  Playing with you from so far away.

This… this is a taunt.  

The whole thing at the inn was leagues below this, that was rudimentary.  Teasing, getting even, having fun with each other, whatever you want to call that, that’s what it was.  This is scarily sophisticated.  Fluid and practiced and the best kind of frightening, stark and dangerous compared to the carefree and upbeat setting surrounding you.  You’re not making it up, it’s not just you being paranoid.  You know him with your eyes closed.  You know he’s here somewhere watching you, just like you know the starlight that streaks across the pitch black horizon of hyperspace.  Not because you can see it, not really, not directly.  But because by it, even in the vastest and darkest and emptiest of voids, you’re suddenly able to see everything else.

“You okay, Nerida?”

The volume gradually comes back up and you blink, suddenly remembering where you are, who else is with you.  The chatter becomes slightly louder than it seemed before.

“Yeah,” you eventually say, slightly airy while continuing to stare emptily at the crowded room.  He’s not here, you don’t think, not anymore at least.  But you’re not stupid, you know what this means.  You’re already caught, there’s nothing you can conceivably do that will delay the reunion for the next—you look down and pull the loose sleeve up to check your communicator—seven fucking hours, there’s no way.  He’ll pull back and follow you, keep up with you from a distance and then snatch you away right when you let your guard down.  You at least need to get the kids back to their guardians before that can happen, though.

“Let’s go,” you quietly tell the group of foundlings, grabbing elbows and hauling them out of their stools.  “Naydee was the only one who knew that you were gone when I left.  Here’s to hoping she managed to keep it that way.”

***

Day 5–5:32pm:

Against all odds, you’re able to rally the wayward teens and successfully lead them through shoulders that are beginning to move closer together as the crowd grows and grows.  You stay towards the back and don’t look behind you once—not only do you not want to give the younglings an unnecessary reason to become paranoid or to question your actions, but you can still feel Din lingering.  Moving like a shadow, probably fitting in perfectly with the masked festival-goers, nothing drawing any attention to him with all the spectacular sights and noise occurring.

Soon you return to the same spot from before, and you and the teenagers seamlessly integrate yourselves back into the rest of the group without anyone noticing a thing is out of place.  When you move to stand beside her, Naydee’s bone-deep sigh of relief is palpable even behind the concealing fabric; she squeezes your hand incredibly tight in a silent gesture of thanks, and then pulls something from the deep pockets of her robe and passes it to you sneakily.  A purple fruit.  She must’ve saved it for you.

Maker, fuck yes.  It’s not much but it’s more dinner than any of the seven troublemakers get, but Naydee quietly assures you they’ll be able to eat something once they return to the Keja around midnight, just not the tasty expensive treats they’re selling at the vendors.  As the sun goes down, you try not to stain your pretty fabric a deep maroon as you chomp and feel your lips start to curl upwards.  It sounds so fucking stupid when you put it like this, but you keep going back to Din and revelling in knowing that he’s so close, like you’re just mentally checking in on him.  You don’t get the sensation by thinking, though—more like you just focus really hard on your heart and feel him there just a second afterwards.

Is that how pure, stupid, shameless love feels when you’re completely entrenched in it?  It’s not like it’s surrounding you, it’s not suffocating you or making you float.  It’s just a thing.  Like… a thing inside your chest, a physical thing you can search for and find, something you can point to on your body and say it’s right here, this is where my love for him lives.  Right at the bottom of your heart, right where it curves and beats strong when other hearts meet flat at sharp angles.  You do it over and over again, reconfirming its existence every single time.  You don’t know what else you’d call it.  Love is the only word.  To love, to know.  To hold in the heart.

Soon, you start to notice that people are slowly moving around your stationary group.  You look up and watch the crowd begin to walk, some of them giving soft smiles to the cute children as they pass by, but all of them following the same unspoken direction.

“Where is everyone going?”  You ask Naydee, standing on your tiptoes to watch the crowd migrate like a giant system, an organism or mechanism of thousands (or tens of thousands?) of smaller moving parts all traveling in tandem.  It’s fascinating—you’ve been to crowded places, you know what it looks like when a lot of people are packed into one area, but you’ve never seen what it looks like when they all move together.  They would normally be bumping into each other, slipping in between, fighting and never really getting anywhere, interacting individually and thinking separately.  Now they’re progressing in one single direction, so many with the same mindset and understanding of what comes next.  A second parade, almost, with New Republic officers directing the flow of pedestrians as they pass.

“The eastern part of the city!”  Naydee yells over the noise and points, and beyond her extended finger, you can barely see the light of a dusky body of water in the distance beyond the buildings.  “The fireworks are going to go off over the bay, but it takes awhile to get there!”

“Is…”  You blink for a second, suddenly caught off guard, trying to think back to the holomap the concierge pulled up at the front desk of the inn.  Surely you would’ve noticed it, but your sudden childlike hope makes you ask anyway.  “Is it part of an ocean?”

Naydee shakes her head.  “A really big lake!”

Your shoulders drop just the slightest bit in disappointment but still, you ache to see it.  You can’t even imagine—the fireworks are likely going to reflect across the water, giving everyone double the view.  And luckily, after all the children and caretakers are individually accounted for, you start to behind the slow-moving crowd towards the docks you know lie beyond.  

Naydee scurries ahead to keep the kids together, ushering them forward and preventing any drunk passer-bys from accidentally stepping on them, and you quietly bring up the very rear of the entourage.  You take the time to observe more than anything, walk in the back and experience instead of trailblaze.  So many people, so many stories to be told, so many differences and diversity around you.  Your face is partially concealed and you don’t move your head too much, just your eyes.  They flick around to take in everything, the crowd thinning little by little as you make it out of the confined space downtown.  You’re able to make out full bodies and outfits again instead of just heads and shoulders, allowing you to breathe just a bit easier under your mask.

And then at one point—and it’s almost a little startling because it happens all at once—the organizers must decide that the sun has officially gone down, because the lights come on.  All of a sudden, paper lanterns and bulbs flicker into existence all around you and the world decides it wants to glow, glint and twinkle from the inside out.  They’re everywhere, draping across rooftops and tangled around street signs and stuffed into the flower bouquets overhead, raining soft colors down on everything.  You’re in complete awe, trying to keep walking but also needing to look at as much as fucking possible in the suddenly luminescent city.  It’s so colorful, so vernal and warm and you feel like you’re… Like when you took a shower on the Crest for the first time and spent a few happy moments just playing with the water and soap for your own enjoyment, it’s as if all the brilliant rainbow of colors the bubbles would make under the fluorescent light decided to surround you at the same time.  You’re inside stained glass, blinking at the flowers and wondering if Din can even smell the air or if it’s filtered, processed and reduced to nothing under the helmet.

And that’s when you see him.

But with the way your chest rapidly constricts and you can count your heart beats as they pound, blaring white noise through your ears and adrenaline through your veins, it’s like he's just allowing it to happen.  You immediately understand that you don’t have fucking anything the second your eyes land on him; this isn’t a heads up that you caught wind of early, it’s not a gift or an advantage you’ve incidentally gained over him that you should be thankful for.  Being able to see him directly like this, being able to make out all these fucking details from this far away…  This just feels like you’re being informed of the endgame right before it comes.  If you were anyone else, if you were a real bounty and this was a real hunt, his armor glinting and reflecting the lanterns overhead would feel like a knife you're about to be on the wrong side of.

You have a decision to make, very quickly.  Either keep in this same direction, head straight towards him and just pretend like you are who you’re dressed as, a random caretaker for a bunch of rowdy foundlings during a spring festival on Nariss, or disappear.  Drop back, move through the crowd and use the distance you have between you right now as your only hope of getting away in time.  Neither one gives you a particular advantage—your chances of being caught have already skyrocketed exponentially just being able to see the reflection in his armor, the hovering shield at his side with big black eyes… staring directly at you.

You almost trip over your pantlegs, gasping.  Baby.  He beams at you and you think he calls out through the passing crowd, his tiny arms extending out, and your chest feels like you’re pulling organs as if they were muscles, cramping up and seizing with emotion.  You want to run to them even though you’re meant to be running from them, call out over the noise and wave even though you’re not supposed to.  You want to hold the kid again, squish his little forehead with kisses, walk around with Din’s hand pressed against your lower back and see the fireworks with him.

Your hands clutch at the draping fabric covering your chest, pulling and twisting it uncertainly.  What do you do, what do you do?

No matter what, you know it’s over.  Keep your head down and try to move past him, or break away from your group and try to escape—both are different paths that lead to the same result.  What’s the point of running when he’s the one chasing you?  The heart-pounding thrill is the only reason you’re even considering it, but his body stands so tall amongst the crowd, not moving while people ebb and flow like a river passing around him.

Except then you can hear his voice repeat the last thing he said to you in person as if he says it directly into the comm in your ear.  When you do see me… try to outrun.

You should run—run, it’s better than just hoping he doesn’t see you when you already know he does.

Unless…

Out of a trillion different possibilities, you soon realize that there is exactly one situation in which this could turn out in your favor.  You can immediately picture the scenario in your mind, but there’s just too many variables to conceivably rely on getting them all right.  This maybe has a… two percent chance of working?  Maybe?  Everything would have to go perfectly, just fucking flawlessly, but what other choice do you have?  Two percent is better than whatever odds you’re dealing with now.

You walk silently behind the group of foundlings as you approach closer and closer, keeping your head purposefully down as they skip and giggle and dance ahead.  He knows you’re here—he has to know, you’re counting on him knowing.  Walk right in front of him, pretend like you don’t see, make sure you keep left.  Keep left, keep left, keep your head down, keep your head down—

A leather glove suddenly catches hold of your wrist hard enough to tug you backwards.

Your gasp is audible over the sound of the crowd and you spin around, jerking your head up to look at him in fear.  Your heart slams as the beskar reflects your mask and hood back at you—you’re terrified and it shows, you can see it in your eyes.

You quickly try to yank your hand away, even as your index finger stretches up towards the communicator around his wrist.

“Miss Nerida?”  A child’s voice cries, and then small hands grab at you from behind as you bury the urge to actually fight him.  Your instincts are demanding you attack when his grip is this strong, but you just whine and struggle, slapping weakly at him with your free hand and feeling more of the younglings begin to pull at you, their high pitched voices calling more and more attention to the scene.

Your gaze flicks to the side, suddenly landing on a pair of New Republic officers helping direct the thousands of moving bodies from the closest street corner.  They’re looking at you, pointing and beginning to speak into their own comm units.  Din’s helmet snaps sideways to follow your gaze, and then he’s immediately dropping your wrist and stepping back, retreating as quickly as he caught you.  Though you don’t want to—though you don’t want to give yourself away even more, you want to pretend fully that he was a complete stranger and the children were right to try to help you get away—your eyes fall to your son in the hovering crib by his side and you feel yourself crumble just a bit.

Just a few more hours, kid.  A few more hours.

Children pull you away while your pursuers both disappear into the crowd, and you quickly turn to soothe the tiny babies instead of chasing after the one you miss so terribly.

“I’m alright,” you tell them, scooting them up and encouraging them to continue walking.  Blend in, blend in, don’t let anybody think anything is wrong.  “Come on, we’re fine, come on, we have to catch up.”

They take your lead as soon as one of the caretakers turns around and sees the small group crowding around you.  You think she asks what happened, but you just tell her a man mistook you for someone else and nothing more comes of it.  She’s able to settle the chaos better than you are, and by the time you’re continuing to travel forwards once more like nothing happened, the communicator suddenly flicks on in your ear.

“What did you do?”  He breathes out, his footsteps moving fast through his voice.  He’s traveling much quicker than you expected—is he still being followed?  The officers are gone from your sight, they might be going after him right now, weaving between bodies and calling out to the perpetually vanishing glint of armor as he navigates his way out of danger.

You look down at the comm on your wrist and your heart nearly soars with victory.  It worked.  It worked.  You just have to outlast a bit longer, don’t draw any extra attention to it—he’s preoccupied and he certainly doesn’t sound happy, but you hope that’ll be enough to make him slip.  Use his frustration to your advantage, let him think the only thing you were successful at was momentarily escaping him.

“The cops weren’t part of the plan,” you admit quietly, keeping your head down as your loose hood billows in the twilight breeze.  “Don’t get caught.”

There’s a few moments of just his breathing, his footsteps, and the noise floor humming through the comm, before he finally responds.  “You look beautiful.”

You stare unseeingly down at the concrete under your feet, still feeling your hand tingle from where he caught you.  The line abruptly mutes on his end and you just keep moving forward, onward, wanting to look back but knowing he’s already long gone.

***

Day 5–5:24pm:

Din is fucking furious.

He had you.  You were right there, right in front of him, and even if he hadn’t been subtly trailing you all day, seeing the red footsteps get covered and flicker out of existence just a few moments after you make them, he would’ve recognized you anywhere.  In black and white, in the fading light, with your face covered, children calling you by a different name and attaching themselves to you like they’ve known you forever—doesn’t matter, he would’ve known you.  Your eyes have always given you away, always so expressive and starry and soft, but able to see right through solid steel whenever you look at him.

But then you slipped from his grasp, and then more guards pushed him further and further away from you.  They must all be in constant communication, because every single jumpsuit he sees immediately spots him and starts following.  It’s fucking exhausting, and he thinks of you the whole time.

He waits in a dark alley with the kid and taps the side of the helmet a few times to bring up the time on his comm, but then relaxes just slightly when he sees the hour.  It’s earlier than he thought it was, he’ll be able to find you again.

Though, something tugs at him while he’s looking at the clock ticking away in front of his eyes, counting down each second that passes.  There was… a moment.  Back in the square, when he was holding onto you again, when you were looking directly into his once more—everything in his helmet— 

No, he shakes his head while the kid looks up at him curiously, it can’t be.  It was just a split second, it was gone so fast.

But he can’t get rid of it.  Though there’s no explanation, he thinks the display screen flickered.  The sky behind you looked different for a single frame, your footsteps weren’t bright red and visible anymore, your eyes weren’t grey and he stopped wondering what shade of fabric you and your friend decided to choose for you to wear.  It was silvery, he’s almost certain.  Like his armor, it only reflected the color of everything around it.

Color.  Everywhere.  Bursting for a blink of an eye, and then gone just as quick, before he could actually figure out what it really meant.

***

Day 5–6:59pm:

This water is quiet here, but it sparkles.

It doesn’t ever really get truly dark thanks to the enormous hanging moon and ringed gas giant dancing with Sanctuary II, constantly reflecting light back onto the surface and reacting with some of the trace chemicals up above the atmosphere, and you think the sky just might be the prettiest you’ve ever seen it.  Must have something to do with the equinox, the glimmering angles of light being played with by celestial bodies in this stunning system, but it’s a dream.  The Maker apparently couldn’t decide which colors he wanted tonight so he just splashed all of them together all at once, let them run and blend like ink in the gentle water below, like the various people who call this moon home.

That view in front of you, coupled with all the flowers and lanterns lining the streets behind you, and you’ve lost track of time the exact same way you hoped Din would.  You think you’ve stood for about an hour or so in this one spot, half-listening to excited chatter from the babies, mostly just gazing across the stretch of water and being able to just barely spot the docks in the distance, but it feels like it’s only been minutes.

You check your watch—the fireworks should be starting any second now.  You don’t know what to expect, just that in your experience, explosions tend to be loud.  You've decided you’re not going to plug your ears, though.  Tummy twisting with nerves and another inexplicable feeling you can’t quite put your finger on, you resolve to experience the unknown exactly the way it’s meant to be.  Fully, without worry or fear.

Then, lacking any warning or ceremony whatsoever, a single flare launches silent and high from one of the small boats skimming the bay, and the crowd seems to hold its collective breath as the dim light disappears into thin air for a split second, before—

It’s… quite possibly the most dazzling thing you think you’ve ever seen.  So shamelessly decorative just for the sake of it, not serving any other practical purpose besides celebration and visual spectacle, and you’ll probably never know another extravagance like it.  You grew up with dust pelting against tired eyes, you never thought they’d get to reflect such gorgeous bursts of color back up at the sky, glassy and childlike amongst a group of equally wide-eyed children.

As expected, a deafening boom follows closely behind the singular display, but just witnessing it is incredible enough to make you forget to brace yourself for the sound and you jump almost violently in response.  There comes a loud cheer from the people standing around you, a few delighted gasps and children who decide now is the best time to start crying, but then more flares begin to launch from the boats and the subsequent show will sear itself into your memory to replay over and over again.

Still, you think the endless sky and dark water below would have to light on fire to stop him from coming to mind.

Din.

You click the comm on, continuing to stare in stunned awe but wanting nothing more than to hear his voice right now, feel his hand rest on your lower back and the kid’s three fingers squeezing one of yours while the stars rain down from above.  You’re only continuing to run from him because it’s expected of you, that’s the reason you’re here, but it’s becoming harder and harder to argue with yourself.  “Do you always see in black and white?”

It takes him just a few seconds to respond, but he always does.  “Only when I’m tracking someone.”

The loud booms can be heard over the earpiece, happening maybe a second after they crack and sparkle above you.  You can’t tell if the latency is due to the electronics or if he’s just that far away from the source of the sound itself, but… you don’t think he is.  He feels close again, like he could just walk up right next to you any second, or maybe that’s just how he always feels now.

“Does that mean you haven’t seen the sky here?”  You ask after a moment.  This whole time, everything has been grey for him?

“I saw it,” Din murmurs, and even though it’s quiet and explosions are thundering loud enough to deafen more sensitive ears, his quiet voice somehow breaks through it all.  “When you left the Crest, I saw it behind you.”

For some reason, you suddenly feel like crying.  Whether it’s the way he phrases it or the sentiment in the words, you’re close to tears without even knowing why, looking up at the sky illuminating spectacularly.  He says it like he wasn’t the one who parked on this moon and told you to go on without him.  “Can you… turn it off for just a second?”

He takes a second, before clarifying for you.  “I turn it off and I lose your footprints.”

So that was the ultimatum.  He doesn’t want to turn it off until you’re back with him again.  Does he not understand?  Does he not know what you know?  Maybe you just happened to feel it first, this overwhelming physical sensation inside you whenever you think about him.  It’s like the exact opposite of a hole in your chest.  And it’s so odd, so counterintuitive.  Being comforted in his absence, feeling him with you when he isn’t.  Falling in love in the dark, knowing him without ever seeing him.

“You never needed them,” you say, reaching up to pull your mask down under your jaw and chin for a moment, wanting to freely breathe the freshwater and flowers while stars explode and fracture across the sky.  It’s a truth you’re acknowledging, something you’ll carry with you, something you fundamentally own at this point.  “You’d find me without the helmet.  And I’d find you.”

The fireworks continue to bleed into the water beneath them, multicolor splashes rippling into existence and disappearing just as quick.  You could’ve never imagined a more colorful, magnificent landscape—besides your waterfall on Naboo, of course.  That was a pure product of nature though, a place hidden away and untouched by people, completely sacred.  Light refracting against mist, natural glass that would shatter under your weight.  This is a celebration of life and family.  Loud in a different way, affecting you in a different way, but just as wonderful and touching.  A cultivated paradise, designed to be beautiful and safe only because they wanted it to be.

“Think so?”  He asks softly.  He sounds so deep and warm, but… a little distant.  You’re able to hear it in his words.  You don’t know why, though.  Doesn’t he believe you?  Perhaps… perhaps this isn’t The Way.  Perhaps this is part of a completely different oath, one where knowing and loving somebody isn’t the same thing as looking at their face, not at all.  Where you can have them exist entirely separate from each other, because this is love.  This is real, enduring, bone-deep love, and you haven’t ever seen his face, so how would he explain that?  How would the Mandalorians reconcile that?  You bear the mark of the mudhorn, you’ve moved through time and space with him, you’re a mother to his son, and you’ve never seen his face.  It defies both the Mandalorian oath and traditional understandings of love, or it meets them right in the middle, depending on how you look at it.

“I know so.”  For the first time, you think you might sound more confident and certain than he does.  Maybe he doesn’t fully get it yet, but then you suppose he’ll just have to trust you.  “Will you look at the sky?”

“I see it,” Din tells you, but you know he doesn’t.  Not the way you want him to.  And stars, you just want so many things for him, don’t you?  The sky, fresh air, water, light, food, rest.  You want him to see the galaxy the way you do—have a new appreciation for the gifts that are given just because you’re alive to experience them.  All the physics and mathematics aligned perfectly for it to happen—all the chemistry, the systems, the dynamics that dictate the universe, they all got together and crafted a world where you, him, and the kid all exist together at the same time.  You want him to know the significance of that.

“With color?”  You ask, knowing his answer before he seems to.

“I…”  Din wants to argue, or at least say it again.  He can’t or he’ll lose you, he already told you he doesn’t want to turn the setting off.  It’s such an unnecessary conflict, but you want to respect it so much that you’re willing to give up things of your own to make it happen.

“How do I fix it then?”  You whisper, so desperately wanting this one thing for him, this one grandeur to behold.  How do you fix this problem?  How do you convince him to look with you?  You’d offer to just go and find him instead of continuing to run away for the next few hours, but you know the show will be over soon and you don’t have much time left.  “Do you want me to come look for you?  It’ll be too late by then, you’re too far away.  Look at the sky.”

It’s silent for a moment—truly silent, even though colorful bombs are going off above the bay.  You don’t know why you’ve attached yourself to this so strongly, but it’s almost devastating when you don’t get a response.  You look away from the spectacle for the first time in an eternity, gazing unseeingly into the crowd of onlookers with a sudden sadness taking hold of you.  He won’t look, he’s too stubborn, he holds onto things too tightly.

But then, a flurry of flares start launching in rapid succession from the distant boats, screaming and crying on their way up and then igniting into showers of light, and the abrupt increase in activity manages to catch your attention once again.  This must be the end, they saved the best for last.  Every corner of the horizon flashes and sparks, and you’re mesmerized at how bright it is, how many colors they’ve managed to fit into one single frame.

“It’s beautiful,” comes his voice, and the smile that you break into feels just right for the brilliance of the view above you.  Maker, it is, isn’t it?  Now you can hear it—he sounds like he’s looking at it too, with color, in all its breathtaking glory, and you feel like you’re flying.  Like he picked you up and let you watch up close, like you can feel his armor under your fingers right now as he carries you through the sky.

It swells up inside you, a rising wave similar to the ones you can see in the distance, and you know you probably shouldn’t say it because it’s not in your best interest to say it right now, but you have to say it anyways.  It’s an unknowable compulsion, a need to connect and communicate directly with him but for your sake, not presently, not at this exact moment in time.

Luckily, you mute your comm just in time and simply give the words to him from very far away.

“Hurry up,” you say, sending the sentiment into the sky with all your love, and the conflicting hope that he won’t take the advice until a bit later on.  “Come and find me.”

***

Day 5–7:37pm:

After the fireworks are over, people start to drift off in separate directions, clearing the traffic and congestion from the streets around you.  Someone puts their hand on your shoulder and you blink a few times, spinning around and almost stepping on a bunch of tiny little feet by accident.

Stars, that’s a lot of children.  They’re all crowded around Naydee, who pats a few heads and almost buckles under the younglings clinging to her leg.

“Figured you would be long gone by now,” she grins at you from behind her mask, and you’re reminded to pull yours up over your face just from looking at her.  “It’s late—we’re going back to the Keja.”

“Oh, shit,” you breathe in surprise, but the noise of the gradually dispersing crowd manages to cover it up.  At least from younger, more easily distracted ears, but you think Naydee hears you.  Her dark eyes roll good-naturedly, looking happy but exhausted from the long day.  You’re going to have to say goodbye now.

“What happened to your family?”  She asks after a moment, and you think she’s being careful with the way she says it, likely because family is a difficult topic to navigate in general around some of the children hanging on her and begging for her attention.  “Have you been in touch with them?  If not, I’m sure you can come back with us.  It’ll be late by the time we get there, but at least you’ll be safe.”

You open your mouth to automatically decline her offer, knowing Din is still in the crowded city looking for you and wanting to stay where there’s lots of people.

But then… well, he would expect you to do that, wouldn’t he?

There’s more people here.  More danger, but better places to hide.  It’s the obvious choice, it’s the one that makes the most logical sense.  But you’d also be completely alone and you’re assuming the only reason he hasn’t snatched you up yet—which you know he could’ve done multiple times by now, is likely because you’re with a group of innocent foundlings, moody teenagers, and very stern older women.  He probably doesn’t realize you’ve told them about him and the kid, though you were slightly vague on the details.

It’s also a little over three hours to get back, but you’re banking on it being closer to four with how whiney and tired some of the small voices sound, others sounding like they’re an enormous sugar rush contained into a tiny little capsule.  Would he have the gall to try and get you right from under their noses?  Will he even know you left the city, or will he assume you made the smartest decision possible and simply account for it ahead of time?  No, you're overthinking it, just make a decision and stick with it.

“There’s also free food,” Naydee shrugs while you’re still considering, but… well, that settles that.  Almost three days of friendship and she already knows exactly how to win you over in the end.  Sustenance for your empty tummy, an escort the entire way there, and heavily guarded walls beyond.  Din will have to get creative in response—you flaunted your imagination for days, coming up with dozens of evasion tactics to outlast him, but this one just seems… incredibly practical.  Exploiting a weakness of his—isolating it, having it be reinforced by precedent, and then taking advantage of it.  You bet he’ll catch on, but still, it’ll make it more difficult for him, and you’re grasping at straws to hang on just a little longer.

“I…”  Quick, come up with something.  You clear your throat.  “The city is too crowded, I haven’t been able to find them.  I could just… tell them where I’m headed and see if they can find me along the way?”

Naydee smiles and nods.  “Sounds perfect.”

Yet, the entire walk back… you keep thinking you’re going to feel Din trailing behind you, waiting to feel the nerves twist in your tummy and your palms to sweat, but you don’t.  You keep glancing over your shoulder and then down at your wrist, needing to talk yourself out of addressing him through the comm to let him know exactly what the plan is.  You like maintaining a sense of secrecy from the new characters you’ve met on your adventures—Naydee, Karga, Peli—almost everyone you’ve been introduced to, you found a way to find a subtle enjoyment in hiding certain things from them.  But with Din, you don’t have any walls.  They crumbled nearly a full year ago when he silently pushed a cauterizer in your hand and took his armor off for you, and you’ve felt the inexplicable need to bare yourself to him in return ever since.  It would be to your extreme detriment to do it now, but you still have to fight the urge.

Even if you don’t feel him following, you still find yourself acting like he is.  Constantly turning back to double check the road behind you, drifting off in the middle of shallow, distant conversations with tiny foundlings who can’t tell the difference, keeping towards the middle of the pack this time to avoid being picked off towards the back.  The belltower at the orphanage is loud and will ring for quite a distance, so your timing has to be utterly pristine for this to all work out.  You eye your comm the entire way there, trying to stall just the right amount to avoid any realizations or fall into any traps he may be setting for you.

You eventually leave the city walls far behind you, and now you have no clue where he is.  You lost him, and maybe that’s why you feel your heart beat insanely fast the whole time.  He could be anywhere now.  Behind you, adjacent, parallel—you can’t decide where to look, but it keeps you wide awake and focused while the group tiredly travels back to the temple.

***

Day 5–11:32pm:

You can see it in the distance, the brick buildings slowly coming into view.  One might think your stress would have worked itself out by now, been brought back to a manageable level after four hours of walking, but you’ve been on red alert for the past hour or so.  Any movement or rustle that doesn’t come from the sleepy children or exhausted caretakers, you’re on top of it, snapping your attention to the offending tree or animal and not being able to relax even after affirming it’s just nature, it’s not shiny metal bounding after you in the darkness, ready to take you down.

The infants are all likely snoozing away in the nursery, and the Sister who volunteered to stay behind and look after them comes to greet the group at the gate as you approach.  Like always, two Brothers open the iron bars to allow you inside, and you feel the anxiety dig its claws into your tummy.  If Din is going to get you, this is the very last moment to do it.  These walls are guarded and you’re nervous for him, you’re nervous for yourself—you’re just fucking nervous.  Jumpy and worried, not being able to pinpoint him anymore and feeling all the more anxious because of it.

It doesn’t feel right.  Nothing feels right about this, but you can’t figure out specifically what’s wrong.  This was the exact plan, this was a way for you to just survive these last few hours and yet, it doesn’t feel right that you actually succeeded in doing so.  It doesn’t make sense that he’d allow you to return all the way here, especially when he was close enough to touch you earlier.  Din has had so much time to snatch you up, so many opportunities to lure you away, confront you—anything to catch you, and he hasn’t done it yet.  Why?  Either you truly did escape and he has no idea where you are, which doesn’t feel right, or he’s choosing not to get you for whatever reason, which also doesn’t feel right.  What’s he waiting for?  You can’t have won.  It was all too fucking easy, you’re expecting to see him around every single corner because he should be there, he shouldn’t have allowed this to happen.

When someone gently touches your elbow, you’re so on edge that you nearly whip around in surprise.

“Sorry!”  Naydee immediately apologizes, taking her hand back to lift her hood and remove the mask covering her face.  “Didn’t mean to scare you!  I was just going to say that the commissary is still open,” she offers, and you watch the small group of hungry teenagers break off from the group to make their way there.  “It’s going to take awhile to get the children ready for bed, so we’ll be in the dormitories if you need to sleep.  Otherwise, I’m not sure I’ll see you again.”

You stare at her and blink a few times, trying to readjust your focus.  She’s your new friend, she just said this was likely the last time you’ll see each other, but you can’t stop thinking about Din.  Imagine he’s hours away in the city right now, still looking for you.  You’re trying to evaluate your priorities here, but you truthfully never expected to get this far.  Inside the gates, surrounded by brick buildings and silent guards.  You know your way around here, you know hiding spots, you know how to outlast—it’s incredibly advantageous for you to be inside these walls.  What is he doing?

Shaking your head to clear your thoughts, you give Naydee a quick hug and she happily accepts it.  “I’m sure we’ll meet again at some point.”

She smiles and nods, pulling back and letting a couple grumpy foundlings catch her robes and yank on them impatiently.  The loud group eventually disappears into the dorms, and the door shutting behind them cuts off the tired crying and chatty voices determined to stay awake, leaving you in silence that feels slightly unfamiliar after going without it for so long.

Fuck, you just need to breathe.  As soon as the dead quiet grips the air around you, you realize you need to relax.  You’re way too fucking wound up; you want to bolt at the smallest thing and the sudden silence of being alone multiplies it to the point where you have to remind yourself of its importance.  Breathe.  Focus.  There’s about fifteen minutes before the bells ring, fifteen more minutes and the chase will be all over.

Can you eat?  You thought you’d want to, but you think you’re too fucking antsy.  You can’t stay here alone, that’s for sure, but you also don’t want to be around all the children right now.  The commissary will have a handful of people wandering around, teens snacking and maybe a Brother or two standing guard.  It’s the best place to wait the clock out, so you make your way there.  The gentle breeze billows around your loose robes, your pantlegs swishing as you walk.

A few minutes later, you’ve got a plate of food in front of you but your mask is still up, and you’re just sitting there.  Towards the back of the large room, sitting by yourself at one of the tables and staring down at your communicator.  Five minutes.  You have five fucking minutes left before he finds you.  Can you feel him?  Is he closing in?

You sit up a bit straighter, taking a deep breath.  Focus on that feeling from earlier.  The presence in your chest, the weight that didn’t used to be there months ago—focus on that feeling and branch it outwards.  Can you feel him?

Something catches your eye.

Or no… it doesn’t, does it?  Nothing is out of place here, nothing is visibly wrong or amiss.  The only thing that’s changed from all the times before is how dark it is through the windows, and how there are only a few kids in here grabbing a midnight snack instead of being packed like usual.  Nothing else.

But there’s… there’s an acolyte in the far corner, standing guard with his back to the wall.  It’s not his presence that gives you pause—you expected him to be here, there’s always been at least one present whenever you’ve sat down to eat.  He doesn’t look any different from the rest of the Brothers you’ve passed by this evening or the days before—tall, silent, dark brown robes, hooded and mysterious—so why do you suddenly feel yourself break out into a cold sweat as soon as your eyes land on him?

Bubbling laughter and chatter echoes through the large room from one of the tables near the entrance—seven teenagers stuffing their faces with food and sharing animated conversation with each other now that it’s late and they’re alone—but your stomach twists and your fingers start to tremble as you slowly rise from your seat in the back.  You want to keep your head down and be casual but it’s impossible, you desperately need to keep looking at that silent guard in particular and your heart kicks up in your chest—

—and then it wrenches sideways when you’re carefully backing away from the table and the offending acolyte takes a single step forwards.

Run.  Everything in you screams for you to run, and it’s rarely done that before, but you can’t.  Not yet, you don’t want to draw attention, and the logical part of your mind rages against your gut instinct to haul ass.  He’s here—of course he is, the thought screams through your veins as you try to weave quickly in between tables, feeling light on your toes and readying yourself to run as soon as you can.  The dark figure seems to find a careful pace behind you, staying just far enough behind and walking in perfect silence, and you have so many fucking questions but you can’t even think a single thing beyond run away, run away.  Where’s the kid?  How did he get those robes?  Did he actually take his helmet off just to get to you in a room where anyone could confront him?

Your feet propel you forward as soon as you make it out of the door, you break out into a sprint—just flat out bolting because you know how fucking fast he is and you need as big a headstart as you can get.

You race down the stairs and through the courtyard, the beautiful surroundings contrasting drastically with the way you’re running for your fucking life through them.  It’s not beautiful to you right now; you feel clumsy and physically unable to move fast enough no matter how quick you go, your eyes are wide and every nerve is on fire and you can’t even tell if he’s behind you anymore with how silently he moves, but you just trust that he is and keep barreling forward.  Your breath puffs against the clinging fabric of your mask as you keep sprinting, willing your legs to pump faster.  Get to the belltower at least, get to where you have the smallest chance of being caught by the people who guard this place.

As soon as you allow yourself to even conceive the possibility, two Brothers in dark hooded robes suddenly turn the corner a little ways in front of you and your reaction time is perfect—you jerk to a halt and take a single step forward as soon as they spot you.  Since your momentum already committed you to it, you just have to walk, keep your head down, move directly past them and hope Din disappeared from behind you in time.

Step, step, step—keep going, control your breathing, you’re okay, you’re allowed to be up late tonight and they shouldn’t stop you.  Walk right by…  Stars, you feel their silent stares as you casually pass, and it just feels so cold and analytical compared to the kind of danger Din is gives off when dressed in the exact same clothing.  He’s hard and tangible and an unrelenting force, where they just feel like ghosts that haunt this place.  The threat they present is impersonal and detached, but the terror currently chasing after you is so real that he can read your mind.

You wipe the sweat from your brow as soon as you turn the corner, and your feet are already starting to speed up on their own knowing you’re out of their sight.  Run, get to the belltower before Din does, you can see it standing tall about a hundred feet away.  The stairs leading to the door come closer and closer, but you hear something behind you and it propels you faster.  It’s like you can feel him right at your heels even though you haven’t seen him, snapping at your ankles even though your footsteps are the only ones you can hear anymore.

You scramble up the stairs and close the door behind you, spinning around and facing it even as you slowly retreat backwards into the moonlit tower, trying to stay quiet.  Breathing through your nose, eyes shifting around the enclosed space, continuing to back up and away from the door.  Where is he?  There are so many windows that allow you to look outside, but why can’t you spot his movement through them?  Wasn’t he right behind you?

Behind you.

There’s no reason or logic at all to it; you just react.  Spinning around and throwing a mean punch.

Din jerks back just in time to miss it, twisting and dodging at the very last second to avoid your next few hits—but… things seem to slow down, even if they’re happening so fast.  The moonlight cascades through the dozens of windows lining the circular walls and it shines just enough to reveal small glimpses of him.  With every aggressive strike from you, you see something else—you see a flash of his chin when you try to uppercut, you aim for his chest and you see a bit of his jaw.  When you go for his jaw, he steps sideways and catches your wrist, and you see the bend of his nose catch the light this time.

But then it’s like he finally figures out that you’re actually fighting him, and now he’s coming for you.  Trained and ruthless, not weighed down by any armor and lightning quick, launching perfectly aimed attacks that you’re only able to avoid from reaction and muscle memory alone.  You block or move whenever he strikes, you attack whenever you see an opening, you sidestep at the same time he does—

Until you land a spin kick directly to the center of his chest and snap your leg to shove him back, your heel smashing into that soft spot right above his stomach with dead precision and brute force.  He exhales sharply and takes a few more steps back to steady himself while you pause to catch your breath.

Din abruptly comes back and you fall into it with him again, keeping a sharp rhythm with each other that’s faster, harder, and way more real than any sparring match you’ve ever shared.  The hours and days in hyperspace you spent practicing with him are but a fraction of what he’s throwing at you right now, the combinations so rapid and blurred that you just have to trust your knowledge of him and his movement through the dark.

But then, your downfall.  Bells begin ringing an earsplittingly familiar melody above you, and it shatters your concentration—you falter just as he grabs you and sweeps your feet out, and though you know how to get out of that, you’re not quick enough on the jump nor counterswing to prevent it.  He takes you to the ground, hard, and then your wrists are being pinned together above your head and your mask is being tugged down.

Din’s mouth on yours makes you want to cry.

The whole thing is like coming home.  You spent a week surrounded by strangers and having them call you by a name not given to you, fending for yourself, and now here he is.  Someone who knows who you really are, someone that wants to care for you.  Tears come to your eyes even as they're pressed tightly shut, and Din kisses you like he’s never known anything else.  His mouth fits to yours as if the Maker made your lips before ever considering the rest of you, his bare hand clutching your jaw and forcing you to open for him, letting him lick deep inside after going so many days without it.  It might feel dominant and overwhelming if it happened to any other person, but through it, you can also taste his desperation and weakness, how soft he is even when he’s squeezing your jaw and squishing your wrists together too tightly.

Rigid steel that bends only for your touch.

He pulls back and your heart throbs at how moonlight continues to bathe just the smallest glimpses of him under the hood—never the full thing, never the whole face, but enough.  The quiet light that brushes the arch of his nose, how it bathes the hard line of his jaw so that you can barely see his scruff when he turns his head the right way.  His eyes are hidden in near darkness but there’s the faintest glimmer where they should be, and it’s the closest you’ve ever been to looking at him without the helmet.  You can see him, you can see shadows of his chin, his neck—dear stars, his fucking neck.  You’re pinned and paralyzed under him and the ringing bells, yet you feel like you just might float if he wasn’t holding you so tight to the floor.

“Where’s the baby?”  You finally lift your chin and ask, needing to raise your voice over the melody clanging loud throughout the tower.

“Making friends,” Din pants back down at you, and… stars, then you just start giggling.  Adrenaline turning into pure joy, imagining the kid wreaking havoc with all the other babies in the nursery right now.  It feels more light and airy than anything your body should know.

“What are you so happy about?” He asks, swallowing and then continuing on with the same quick gasps.  “You lost, I caught you in time.”

“Did you?”  You drop your head to the brick floor and ask, biting your lip as he stares back down at you.  Suddenly—

—Bong—

Din holds utterly still over you while you take a quick breath and wait for the next eleven bells… 

…but then break into a slow grin up at him when nothing but utter silence follows.

There’s a moment.  Just a single moment where the cogs turn rapidly under that shadowy hood, one where the faint reflection of light in his eyes flickers down to the communicator on your wrist that says midnight and back to you, one that solidifies the longer it takes for another bell to ring.  It’s not going to.

One o’clock.

You think he puts it together.  The one moment he was never able to figure you out—when you tried reprogramming the comms just a few days ago.  The one trick up your sleeve that you resigned to throw away and almost forget about because the circumstances for pulling it off were never realistic.  Fuck with the electronics and set the clock back just one hour—all you’d need to do is reset his communicator, the timecode is synced together.  He told you before that it’s connected to his helmet, but all the buttons still work.  Rapid, panicky thinking and a wild surge of bravery in the face of certain downfall is the only reason you were able to pull it off, and you’re perfectly willing to admit you just got lucky… especially when he’s still holding dead still over you.

But then Din moves so suddenly.  You can’t account for it because there’s no build-up whatsoever—it’s so fast, you yelp while he grabs your knees and throws them both to one side.  You flop over sideways and large hands reach up under the draping length of your tunic to yank your pants down over the curve of your ass, before he’s fitting his palm up between your legs and pushing two thick fingers inside you.

Your head thunks back against brick with how unexpected and merciless it is, but his other hand is grabbing your jaw and twisting, forcing you to look up, stare right into the dark shadow under the loose cowl.  The whole thing is too overwhelming—you’re trying to keep quiet but your breathing feels like thunder crashing inside this tall, echoing chamber.  He’s touched you so many times, he knows exactly how to do it by now, but it feels like so much more than that.  Probably because you can see the way Din’s mouth silently falls open as he feels you, stretching his fingers up and hooking them tight inside.  You can tell when he closes his eyes, the smallest glint slowly disappearing into nothingness while the hand around your jaw blindly moves up.  It catches your chin and lips, and then two fingers push over the bottom edge of your teeth to slip into your mouth.

Your entire leg twitches and jerks while you lay sideways on the ground and open up for him, your neck twisted at a sharp angle to keep your eyes on him and his fingers in your mouth, giving you something to bite to stop making noise.  Din makes room for himself inside you two different ways, and you just choke on his fingers and try to stay quiet, praying he’ll go deeper.

But then you’re not expecting his whole fucking arm to start moving the way it does—oh fuck, what is that?  First you just feel jostled and displaced, but then suddenly a wicked, deep, burning pleasure starts to roar through you, radiating outwards from the rapid motion of just two fingers inside you.  It’s not in and out, it’s up and down so hard and quick against your g-spot that your eyes cross and your hands go numb.

You think you grab at him, clutch onto his arm or chest and open your mouth to moan at the new and overwhelming sensation, but his hand pushes up against your chin and closes it for you, the bend of his fingers caught hard between your teeth but you don’t think he cares.

“Quiet,” Din hisses the word down at you while his arm continues to work, your toes starting to curl as the feeling overwhelms you.  Fuck, what is happening, what is happening?  It’s like he’s just shoving unfamiliar sensation at you so forcefully that you can’t even think straight anymore, not even ten seconds in.  You can only feel the pleasure, fire blurring hot and shapeless through your entire body as your eyes clamp shut, his fingers isolating that perfect spot and stimulating it directly, relentlessly.

Something dull and white hot presses up tight against all the muscles you have down there and you’re almost afraid of how strong it is.  You gasp and choke and he has to take his fingers out of your mouth and just clamp down around your entire jaw, sealing the whole thing shut with his large hand.  And then Din’s fingers leave your pussy too—and stars, you should be embarrassed by how desperately it clamps around nothing for as long as it does.  He’s not even inside you anymore but your body is on such a delay from the hot, twisting pleasure, and he doesn’t put them back in until your muscles are finished spasming.

Everything comes back full force as soon as he starts moving again.  Noise starts to come from your throat, humming in your vocal cords to deal with the arcing, swirling build, and so Din just moves his hand there instead.  He finds where it’s vibrating from your neck and he pushes up against it, trapping the sound right at the source.  He’s fucking perfect at it for some reason… how many times must he have done this to know how to cut noise out without stopping airflow?  You clutch at his wrist and silently mouth his name, feeling his arm work between your legs—faster, faster, harder, pushing you higher, higher—

Din pulls his fingers out again and this time, one of your thighs suddenly feels warm and wet while you spasm and you hear him growl out a ragged, “Fuck yes.”  Everything is sparks zapping through you long after his touch is gone, you cry out but it’s all trapped under Din’s expert grip.  His fingers soon push back inside you and you dig your nails into his forearm, your sounds muffled and quiet enough to hear his raspy groan.  

“Let me see it again,” Din breathes, his arm starting to work up and down once more, and you don’t even know what he’s talking about anymore.  What does he want to see?  You losing your mind again?  Being reduced to an utter mess in front of his shadowy but unobstructed gaze just because you managed to pull one over on him?

Fucking… apparently.  It’s what happens, after all.  You’ve never seen him like this before; whenever he’s worked up and taking it out on you, there was always something in it for him, too.  He’d hammer into you and rock your world until his eventually shattered, and then you’d both lay exhausted afterwards, equally affected and satisfied.  This isn’t like that—this is just cruel, targeted retribution on his behalf, coaxing the molten pleasure out of you with his fingers and keeping his other hand locked around your throat.  You blink helplessly up at him, your vision starting to blur by the time he leans down to whisper to you.

“I missed you, sweet girl.  Did you miss me?”  It’s so soft and quiet compared to the strength and relentlessness of his movements.  You can’t speak even if you wanted to, but when he finally pulls away to yank his hand out and you feel all your muscles automatically flex outwards and push against the sudden emptiness inside you, his voice groans long and satisfied while your thighs get wet again  “Yeah you did,” he breathes, pushing your shaky legs to the brick with his hand and watching you struggle through the aftershocks.

Did you just cum?  You don’t even know, that’s how fucked up you are right now.  The whole thing felt like an orgasm from the very beginning, just a boiling hot tornado ripping through every single cell in your body, never really having a peak.  If you didn’t cum, then why do you feel so weak?  You feel heavy, your limbs don’t work properly, and you barely even register Din pulling at the fabric of his own robes until he fits himself up against your entrance.

When you do realize it, though… your body burns with it, wrecked already but wanting him to take what he wants from you.

“Oh, plea—” you gasp but you don’t even have enough time to get the full sentence out.  He’s already pushing his hips forward, pressing you tight into the ground and opening you up after what feels like a fucking eternity without him.  It’s the hottest, slickest welcome you could give him, you hear it in the whispered curse his lips brush up under your ear, the wet noises your body makes that get louder the longer you hold the moan in your throat and bury your head into his shoulder.  He throbs thick and perfect inside your tight, spasming cunt, stretching you and smacking the rough ground near your head with how fucking good it is to be back, finally, finally—

Your hands grab uselessly at his chest while you try to acclimate, try to breathe while you’re blind with sensation.  It’s so fitting for him, isn’t it?  That your reunion should be just as physically debilitating as it is mentally.  Din’s voice scrapes on a groan like he’s dragging it across the brick ground as quiet as he can, catching when you clamp down on him and shuddering when you clamp down harder.  That’s just it—you don’t ever loosen, you just keep tightening and tightening around him, threatening to break and cum again.

This feels different from before, though.  It’s deep, purposefully so.  His hand reaches up to push the fabric of your hood back, lifting himself up over your body and wanting to start as deep as he can.  You feel him in a place you’d never be able to reach and that’s just the beginning—that’s before he starts thrusting into you, hitting a dull sensation at the apex of each movement so hard that it becomes sharp.  His hips don’t make practically any sound smacking into you because they don’t really smack, they just rock downwards and fuck you into the floor without needing to pull out really at all.  You know he’s just trying to keep it as quiet as possible, but what he lacks in speed and agility he makes up in power.

You don’t even realize you’re making too much noise until a palm wraps tight around your mouth and the room gets a little emptier.  Din keeps you all to himself on the floor, silencing as much as he’s working you up, smothering as much as he’s freeing you.  There’s no easing up, no dragging it out, no gradual build or climb—it’s just there all of a sudden, pleasure and pain pummeling you all at once, engulfing you in flames.

You reach up to grab at the loose fabric of the hood over his face, catching a fistful of it before his hand suddenly snatches your shaky wrist and pins it back to the ground.

Maker, you forgot—oh, you completely forgot about how many people could find you right now if they ever decided to look in the right place.  You’re not in hyperspace; your body is rocking against rough brick, you’re probably going to have a lump on the back of your head from how terrible you are at trying to map out heaven while holding still.  He’s pinned down what he can with one hand; your fingers are the only things that can move besides how tight you can curl your toes, but you feel your moans turn into words against his palm.  They garble indistinctly and you’re not really even sure what you’re saying, but Din decides it’s worth hearing.

“Shh,” he whispers, slowly lifting his hand from your mouth.  “Shh, tell me—”

“W-wanna look,” you hear yourself whimper, trying your best to keep quiet but wanting to scream it while he fucks you hard and slow on the ground, “—I wanna see, I wanna look at you—”

“Fuck,” Din gasps, and though his grip tightens on your wrist and you know he can’t do it right this second, the words seem like they shatter something inside him, “Keep—oh fuck, please, k-keep saying…”

“I want to marry you,” you nearly whine for him, feeling his hips kick up rapidly and start hammering in and out, in and out, in and—“I want to see your face, I wanna be yours, I don’t want anyone else to know you the way I-I—”

You think he drops his head into your neck to muffle his own sounds.  Though they start out rough and quiet and indiscernible, but they gradually become louder as he repeats himself over and over again, growling and fucking you rough.  You only catch it on the peak, when he pulls his mouth away from your skin and gasps them raggedly one last time.

“—ve you—I l-love y—”

He kisses you to stop himself.  But it’s not really a kiss, it’s more desperate than that.  Though it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful in a different light.  It’s not rejoicing at having you back with him once again; it’s a last prayer begging you to stay by his side forever.  He loves you.  He gives it everything—it feels even more concrete and simple than taking the hood off him and revealing his face would.  You told you that you'd know him without ever seeing him, and you did.  You picked him out and found him when absolutely nothing was giving him away, and this feels like a manifestation of that.  Even if you’re not in a place where he can show you his face, his beautiful brown eyes, something still feels like it changes.  He loves you.  You gasp into his mouth and his tongue sinks deep into yours, tenacious and brave and unyielding.  

When you finally cum, you almost bite him on accident.  

Everything surges hot and molten while he pulls back and keeps fucking you through it, and you can’t tell where you’re touching him anymore, just that his skin is blazing hot under your hand and he feels like everything the armor isn’t.  He loves you.  You’re looking into his eyes right now.  You can’t see any of the details, not really, but the moonlight flickers like silent stars moving through dark depths, staring right back at you and giving you an anchor for the euphoria rocketing through you.  He loves you.  Your nails dig in sharp and slowly drag downwards, scratching hard red lines into whatever thick muscle that is—

The back of his neck, making his hips stutter and when he cums for you, he does bite.

You lift your head just in time to feel his teeth catch your chin instead of your mouth, and his entire body shakes while you keep dragging your nails down the side of his neck and his throat.  Din fucking lives for it, he releases you and arches into the pain and owns your marks like he wishes you made them deeper, stretching his neck and lifting his chin into the moonlight and—

Maker.  You can see it, with direct light, you can see more of it than ever before.  You can see his soft lips and white teeth gritting the sound of your name as quietly as he can, the dark facial hair dusting across the lower half of his face.  A fucking gorgeous jawline and throat extended long over you, flexing hard with his cock pulsing inside you.  You can just barely see the bottom of his nose from under the brown hood, the dark curls brushing up under his ears.

Stars, you still never see his eyes, the fabric of his hood acts like a blindfold draped over them, but you think you cum again.  Even if it’s on accident, it’s mean—Din tries to keep from squishing you and his hand pushes down hard against your lower tummy while he shoves his hips deep one last time, and you cum while staring at half of his face in the moonlight.  Completely lovestruck.

How can he be this beautiful when you’ve only seen fractions of him?  You have everything but the eyes now, everything but the most mysterious thing about him, the reflection into his deepest self, but you feel like you’re hypnotized by every single feature you do see.  His tongue coming out to wet his lips, the vein pulling under his sharp jaw—he’s gorgeous, he’s gorgeous, and your body agrees.  It shakes and shudders under him and eventually, Din finishes and you keep looking as his chin slowly lowers, face disappearing into the shadow once more.

Stars.  He’s so handsome and no one has ever told him, fucking dreamy and the biggest grump you’ve ever met.  Without being able to see him, you already want to reach your hands out and touch him, drag your nails through his scruff and force him to extend outwards into the moonlight again for you.  Whenever he does end up showing you his face, you know right fucking now that you’ll never be able to look away.  For the rest of your life, you’ll be staring at him, apologizing blankly for your rudeness but not feeling sorry at all.

Din leans down and gives you a slow, gentle kiss, finally relaxing into a slouch and breathing hard with the effort it took to shatter you with pleasure.

“The kid is with the other foundlings,” he whispers against your lips.  “You… you’ll have to go get him, I need to grab my armor.”

You squeeze around his cock, pulling at the fabric of his robes and ignoring him for just a second.  He fucked you in robes belonging to one of the guards and nobody has mentioned it, you need to say something.  “Where did you get this?”

“I found it,” he tells you after a moment, kissing up under your jaw.  Oh fucking Maker, he feels so good and perfect inside you, shoulders so broad and crowding you on the floor, and his lips are plush and hot, brushing and fitting your skin like it’s just an extension of his own.  “Some guy was wearing it.”

It takes you a second.

“Mando,” you suddenly gasp in quiet horror, pushing at his chest and trying your best to detach his mouth from your throat.  It’s so much more difficult than it needs to be, but you eventually succeed.  “What did you do to him?  Where is he?”

He lifts his neck up just the tiniest bit, turning his face towards yours under the hood and holding still for way too fucking long.  He’s too close to see the expression he’s making, but you know the tone of his silence.  He’s in trouble and he knows it before you do.

“Ma—”

“They’re in a closet,” he admits at the very same time, completely monotone.

You don’t know which word to emphasize.  A fucking closet?  They’re?  Plural?  Instead of stressing any particular word, you decide not to do it at all and it ends up just coming out in the same exact blank tone as him.  “They're in a closet.”

“Inside the Temple,” Din continues on when you lay still as a statue underneath him.  His head slowly dips down once more, pushing his hips against you just the slightest bit to make you remember the cock still inside you instead.  Your eyelashes flutter with it—fuck, focus—“I didn’t know there’d be more than two.”  He kisses your neck so gently.  “It was an accident.”

You don’t say anything at all, your mouth pinching down at the corners because it should but your heartbeat galloping with how… fucking sexy he is.  You shouldn’t encourage this, this horrible behavior just to get close enough to catch you, but your curiosity overtakes you and you ask a question you’ve asked yourself before.  “Did they put up a fight?”

“Mm,” he whispers noncommittally, rocking his hips down once more.  “You did.”  Your nails dig into his chest, making him falter just slightly before slowly kissing your neck again.  “Did so good.  Fought hard, outsmarted me.  Pretty fucking girl.”

And then your eyes pop open as you feel it.  His cock suddenly beginning to harden once again inside you, twitching and gradually gaining a thicker shape, and for a moment, you actually fucking consider it.  He’s the only one in this galaxy that could not only ruin you on these sacred grounds, but then coax you into doing it more than once—stars, are you actually considering it?

“We can’t,” you automatically tell him, but it’s fucking pitiful.  Zero effort, absolutely no umph behind it, leaving it entirely up to him and how much he wants it.  Your logic reminds you that the kid is probably wreaking havoc in the nursery and there are tied up guards in the fucking temple that could be discovered any second.  You shouldn’t have even let him fuck you here in the first place, but…  “Mando, we can’t—”

His mouth opens against the crook of your neck and his tongue brushes velvet hot on your skin, tasting the glistening sweat there and not moving his broad figure a single inch over you besides getting closer, deeper.  Your nails dig into his collarbone, aiming for reason one last time.  It’s apparent that you’d be better off rephrasing, knowing the challenging streak in him and how much telling him what to do doesn't help.

“It’s not a good idea,” you attempt instead, breathless and trying not to move under his mouth and lazy hips.  “Not smart.  Bad idea to fuck again.”

Din’s body stops moving, even though he keeps getting harder.  His jaw opens and then his teeth scrape softly against your flesh, making you tilt your neck back and gasp.

“Later,” he lifts his head to state aloud, committing it to truth now that it’s been spoken and heard by another person.  “Later, I’ll fuck you on the ship, in our bed, when I can get you naked and have your taste in my mouth.”

Tingles rock through your body and you squeeze around his cock just as he pulls it out and tucks it back into his pants.  Your lungs quiver when you inhale—it’s shaky, but it reminds you of how long it’s been since you’ve been able to breathe correctly.

“Later,” you finally agree, combing your fingers through your hair and glad you have this hood to cover your freshly fucked dishevelment.  He came inside you and you don’t want to be leaking and getting your nice pretty robes all wet and stained, but then of course, without any prompting, Din quickly scoots back on his knees and drops his head down to take care of it for you.

***

Commotion.

After Din helped you clean up the way he sometimes likes and then disappeared to change back into his armor, you put your mask and hood back on and tried to look as casual as possible walking to the nursery.  Your knees wobbled slightly and you couldn’t stop smiling under the mask the entire walk there, but when you arrived, you just saw a dim room with sleeping infants—not what you were expecting.  Soon, however, you hear it: down the hall, distant and coming from the dormitories, you hear a loud commotion.

Fuck, you’re nearly wincing with every step you take now, and not because you’re sore.  Well, you… are, a little bit, but in a great way.  No, you’re just dreading the ridiculous shinanigans you already know are well underway, wondering if Din actually dropped the kid off in the dorms from the beginning or if he somehow migrated his way there to cause trouble.

When you walk inside, the first thing you see is a handful of crying and shouting toddlers, and while you can’t immediately spot your favorite floppy-eared monster, you don’t have to see him to know he’s probably standing tiny directly in the middle of this tense showdown.  Automatically, you’re taking a few steps forward to rescue him, but then you stop as soon as you see what the other babies are so mad about.  A large piece of chocolate leftover from the festival levitating just beyond their pitiful little reaches.

Hm.  Who could possibly be responsible for using demon powers to steal snacks and hold them hostage from a sizeable group of hostile children.  A mystery that may never be solved.

It makes you take a second.  The sheer… the… stars, you can’t even think straight—how fucking typical it is just hits you right in the chest, sends your heart into orbit.  Of course.  Of course this is what he’s gotten himself into without immediate supervision, of course this is the shipwreck you’d walk into, and you’re holding back a chuckle before making a single move to intervene.  In the midst of everything, you can hear adults approaching distantly from behind you.

“—don’t know where it came from, I was helping the younglings into bed when I heard the ruckus and I—”

The voices gradually grow louder, and you snatch the floating piece of candy out of thin air and whip around right before Sister Drya and Naydee walk in.  Their hushed, concerned conversation is cut to an abrupt end, and you clear your throat as they take you in, standing in front of chaos central continuing to go off behind you.  Do you… look as freshly disheveled as you are?  You’re not supposed to be here, you know, but hopefully the only strange thing is your presence itself and not anything concerning your appearance.

“Nerida,” the older lady suddenly announces, the name alone holding so much expectation, and the younglings missing their candy have now turned their ire towards you and the crinkly food wrapper hidden in your fist.  “What is the meaning of this?”

“Ah, yeah,” you stand up a little straighter, letting the chocolate casually fall out of your grip behind you, and a stampede of feet suddenly kick up to recover it.  It’s fine, nobody will know, it’s fine.  “It’s just…”  Your head tips behind you to the cause of the uproar, feeling a bit sheepish yet so incredibly fond.  “My… kid.”

Sister Drya stares at you for a few seconds, before tipping sideways and staring at the culprit.  “That is your child?”

You turn around just in time to see him, now abandoned by the angry mob of children, finally notice you.  All of a sudden, his pitch black eyes light up something bright and sunshiney, and you just start beaming in return.  What an adorable little creature, apple of your eye and pain of your ass.

“Yep,” you sigh, dropping into a squat and watching him barrel towards you, catching him right before he can trip over his brown potato sack and scooping him up into your arms.  “Hiya, bug,” you murmur with a grin, lifting back up and plopping him in his favorite spot in the universe—your left hip.  “You making friends?”

He giggles and it’s like sparkles and bubbles fill the room instead, wrapping tiny arms around the largest surface area he can get and clinging.  He laughs with a tiny open mouth, bless him, clearly not understanding the sarcasm, and suddenly your eyes feel just the slightest bit wet.  No, you’re not crying, don’t be fucking ridiculous, but you missed him like hell and he’s just the cutest fucking thing—why do you feel like crying?

“Sorry about that,” you apologize to the two women while slowly turning around, brushing your thumb over one of his cheeks and smiling as it squishes.  “He’s… uh.  Not great at sharing.  We’ll work on it.”

Takes after his dad, you purposefully leave out, just a different kind of sharing.  Din hasn’t shown you his full face yet and the kid performs magic tricks to taunt a roomful of children a fraction of his age for a single piece of chocolate, completely different kind of sharing.

Sister Drya says something in response, but when you look up to address her, all you see is Din standing silently behind her and Naydee, slowly dropping his hand from his helmet to his side.  They don’t seem to notice he’s there and you automatically try your best to pay attention to the Sister speaking to you, but your eyes get caught on the silver reflecting in the dim light beyond.  Fuck, he’s a presence.  An immediate distraction, taking all your focus with a single glimpse.  Seeing him fully armored again, staring at you from the silent shadows behind everything… you melt a little bit, knowing that you’ve seen more of what’s underneath than anyone.  Your shoulders settle and your entire body burns warm, wobbly like the air around a fire, and one of the kid’s hands leaves you to reach out towards his dad.

You watch the metallic helmet tilt sideways after a moment, saying everything without saying anything.  Come on, make up an excuse, let’s get out of here.

Looking at him in the quiet shadows, you’re reminded once again about how much you love him, how much softness you have inside you for a man so hard, so guarded.  And, for the first time, a voice in your head finishes a poem you didn’t realize you were writing, adding its own verse and bringing everything back around to the beginning.  He loves you, too.  How much he lets his guard down for you, the way he’s revealed more of his face to you than not.  You love each other.  You’re family.

So, all at once, you decide to mess with him, because that’s what family does best.

“Don’t be shy, come say hello,” you suddenly urge his silent figure, taking a step forward and speaking directly to him.  “Sister Drya, Naydee, I’d like to introduce you to my—”

It’s remarkable, you see it happen in front of you.  Like he has powers of his own, Din just literally fucking disappears.  Like magic, he’s nowhere to be found within a blink of an eye.  You know he’s capable of it; he’s done it plenty of times during the chase just to fuck with your head, but you’re staring straight at him when it happens this time and it might just be the funniest fucking thing you’ve ever seen him do.

Sister Drya and Naydee both turn around to an empty hallway bathed in shadows and you laugh.  A deep, shameless, loud belly laugh.  Where the fuck did he go so quick?  You were staring straight at him and you have no fucking clue.  He’s just out, and you’re left alone with his child and the unspoken understanding that he’ll just catch up with you later.

You’re giggling even as you shake your head and give the women your genuine thanks for keeping you and feeding you these past few days, grabbing your backpack with all your belongings and eventually using three green fingers to wave goodbye to them.  The very first thing Din says when he seamlessly joins you outside the Keja later is, “That wasn’t funny,” which just makes you laugh harder.

***

About a half hour has passed, and you’re walking along a dirt road, cradling a very happy baby in your arms and giving the grown man next to you an incredibly hard time.

“You’re unbelievable,” you mutter, your back twinging slightly at the way you’re leaning about as sideways as you can get without falling over.  You think you’re basically just the hypotenuse between the ground and Din, who easily supports almost your entire weight with your backpack slung around his far shoulder and readily allows you to rest against him.

“They’re fine,” he grumbles in response, squeezing you tight to his side.  You just have to focus on moving your feet; it’s like he’s practically carrying your upper-half anyways.  “I gave them the night off.”

“You stuffed them in a closet,” you hiss, feeling his shoulder shrug under your cheek.

“I gave them the robe back,” he says, not really defending himself and more just throwing it out there to see if it helps any.  “I’m sure someone’s found them by now, they’re fine.”

Your eyes suddenly go wide, absolutely mortified at the thought.  “Wait.  What do you mean you gave the robe back?”

He shrugs once more, apparently not seeing the problem yet.  “I borrowed it, so I gave it back after I put my armor back on.”

If you could plant your feet on the dirt road and screech to a halt, you would, but all your weight is already resting on him and you’re working solely off his forward movement.  You just hope your tone holds the same amount of shocked disapproval your body language would’ve conveyed if you weren’t so completely attached to his hip like a parasite he adores.

“You fucked me wearing it, though.”  Your voice is strangely flat, so fucking confused and horrified by the mental image of him just tossing the soiled garments haphazardly somewhere in the temple behind you, or even worse, leaving them somewhere respectful, and Din soon stops in the middle of the deserted road.

“Oh,” is all he says, emotionless and blank through the modulator.  Did he not even consider this?

“I had to promise them I was a virgin just to sleep there, you know,” you admit, and you can tell that’s brand new information to him with how still he goes as you continue to lean against him.  You’re getting the feeling that he probably knows a lot more about your experiences on this moon than you think he does, but can tell that this is brand new information to him.  “And you locked three of their holy men in a closet, chased me across the temple grounds, fucked me in one of their robes, and then.  You gave it.  Back.”

Din stays perfectly silent for quite some time.  You can never go back to that place, you know this for a fact.  You’re banned forever now, it’s what you deserve.

Never one to be outdone but not actually having anything to say for himself, Din suddenly decides to just scoop you into his arms and boost up into the sky without a single word like an actual fucking maniac.

You squeal and damn near drop the baby because of it, but he cinches you tight to his chest and refuses to loosen with your struggle.  Eventually, after you realize he’s completely locked you in and you won’t fall to your death with this poor innocent child in your arms, you glance over the shiny pauldron on his shoulder and watch the kid’s crib disappear by the abandoned road as Din takes you higher and higher.

The crib—he forgot the crib—

“D-Din,” you stammer out through the whistling air, stiff as a board.  Stars, you have such a different sense of adventure than him; an explorer and a daredevil, one who gets a thrill from discovering the existence of the edge of a cliff and one who’ll take a running dive off of it without thinking twice.  He’s hit with blaster fire some days, he faces down death completely fearless like it owes him one every single time, and you’re stiff as a fucking board while he carries you through the sky.  It’s stunning up here, it’s exciting and wonderful, but you’re so scared that you can barely even look.  He’s giving you the most fantastical view, everything your budding adventurous streak could ever ask for, and your terror is crushing.  It would be different if you could hold on, but you’re responsible for not letting the baby slip through your arms and you just have to trust that he won’t let you slip through his.

You raise your voice.  “Din?!”

“I won’t drop you,” he automatically reassures, and well you sure as fuck hope not, but there’s something else.

“What about the crib?”  You call out over the wind whipping, tucking the baby tight to your chest and settling your hands over his ears to avoid them flapping and whacking you repeatedly in the chin.

“We’ll come back for it,” he responds, just as easily.  Maker, you wish decision-making came that easy to you, that commitment and choice should be so simple as to just fly away from things on the ground and promise out loud to come back for them.  You know he will, but still, his spontaneity shocks you after spending the past week thinking every decision through meticulously, and you’re taken aback by the casualness of it all while soaring through the sky, committing such spectacular feats without a single thought beyond it.

Soon—incredibly soon, which honestly kind of blows your mind—you spot Nariss glowing in the distance and then you’re flying overtop of the city, slowly dropping altitude in the middle of a quiet little side street.

Din carefully allows your feet to settle on the ground before letting go, but you still stumble a bit stupidly after flying so high without any sort of safety measure besides him, prioritizing the steadiness of the baby in your arms instead of your feet underneath you.  His gloves catch at your clumsy body and pull you along with him without another word, leading you out of the quiet alley and into the middle of a beautiful, luminescent street.

What’s he doing?  He seems slightly hurried, and you’re clueless but you go with it, clamoring along behind him to wherever he’s leading you.

Though, you suddenly remember one of the very last things you told him last night right before he steps up in front of a vendor.

“Caf,” Din grunts, sliding a few credits towards the man standing behind the counter. “The… biggest one you have.”

Okay, well.  You could just about fucking cry.

“Y’sure?” The vendor asks skeptically, jerking his head at the large thermos behind him.  He’s balding, wearing a white outfit with his eyes scrunched up and forehead sweaty, likely working all day.  “It ain’t fresh.  Closin’ up soon, was just about to trash it and go home.”

The helmet turns to gauge your response to the news, the sharp angles and contours looking so sleek and dangerous as they reflect the colorful lamplights, but just filling you with comfort beyond anything in the entire galaxy.  He’ll take that armor off for you tonight and you’ll sleep next to him.  He’ll call you by your given name, or the fond name he’s given you, and you’ll cuddle your baby on a metal floor in hyperspace with him, and all will be well.  Even if he needs to leave again soon—even if you don’t get to go with him, you’ll always have these small eternities with each other, and that’s more enough for you now.

You’re completely zoned out while staring at him, and Din turns back to the vendor before you can even remember the conflict he was attempting to defer to you.

“Yeah, just empty the whole thing in there for her,” he mutters, and you want to marry him.  It’s been a long week, and in your haze and delight of being with him in this gorgeous setting, your brain turns to cavewoman mush.  Big man, makes me happy.  Strong man, loves me, knows me.  Provider, makes me feel good, protector, loves me.

Din hands you the large cup of steaming caffeine, clueless to your grunted inner monologue but knowing better than to reach out and grab the kid from your other arm.  You’re just fine like this, hands full, the little frog snuggled up against your side and blinking up at your face instead of any of the shiny or glowing things around you.  When you look down at him, you can see the world through his eyes—quite literally, they’re reflective and gigantic—and his father’s hand quickly finds its preferred spot on your lower back.

“Try to drink it quick,” Din advises you gruffly, pulling you snug into his side and sloshing the big cupful of piping hot liquid in your hand.

“It’s a thousand degrees,” you protest, trying to balance your three favorite things in the universe all begging for your direct attention at once.  “It has to cool down.”

He gives a dismissive hm in response, and you frown even as your heart soars with how tightly he’s gripping you, how little leeway you have to even move without him.  Part of you is so thrilled at being reunited with him that you consider snarking something back at him, excitement making you brave.  He could probably chug boiling hot liquid in thirty seconds and doesn’t see the point in letting it sit any longer, and you could make some stupid joke about filtering it through his helmet or having a built in bendy straw but you decide to keep it to yourself.

So then you just stand there together, under stringed lights and flowers everywhere, and he waits.  Holding you glued to his side, completely silent and clearly just waiting for your caf to stop steaming so threateningly in your hand so you can drink it.  For some reason, the fact that he’s wanted by the New Republic doesn’t really register at this second—you’re not looking for cops, though he may be.  You’re just lost in this beautiful, fancy city that’s on the edge of finally quieting down after a long day, and you’d like to see more of it with him next to you.

“Well, do you wanna just…”  You ask, tilting your head around at all the vendors.  “Shop around for a bit?”

“Shop… around,” Din repeats slowly, sounding the words out like they’re not common Basic.  Admittedly, they do sit a bit awkward in his voice when put together like that, describing a phenomena he’s likely never even considered a thing before, but it’s so fucking pretty here and you’d like to show him something this time instead of the other way around.

“Yeah, like,” you shrug a shoulder, tipping your head in a random direction.  Anywhere, you’ll go literally anywhere with him, the three of you can go explore.  “Just wander around, and look at all the pretty things.”

From where you’re standing right now, you can already see glittering crystals and jewels being sold at the tent across the street, there’s a booth dedicated entirely to floral arrangements and crowns next to it, you can hear a distant quartet playing melodically in the distance and a couple is being painted by an artist on the corner.  Bars are in full swing at this point, as if they weren’t all day, and even though the merchandise is all different, the multicolored tents look slightly similar when they’re underlit with multicolored lights.  It’s less slightly lively than it was in the daytime, but also… more beautiful, in a sense.  Muted, softer, more romantic.

“I don’t have any more credits,” Din admits casually, finally turning to look around at everything.  You get the feeling that he’s just now seeing it, even after spending the entire day here.  “That stale caf was the last of it.”

Money well fucking spent, you can assure him of that.

“It’s okay,” you tell him automatically, gently bumping your hip into his.  “We don’t need credits, we can just look.”

So that’s what you do.  Even though it’s completely not his fucking style, for the next hour or so, you just walk around downtown with him and sip your caf, looking at anything and everything new and experiencing it with him.  At first, you think he’s just entertaining you, following you while you discover new streets and attractions, but then he points out different things and you know he's looking, too.  There are large animals harnessed up and pulling carts for people to ride, there's an enormous spinning wheel set up in the distance, its colorful lights flickering out as soon as you ask what the fuck that is and why anyone would ever get inside one.

You eventually end up finishing your caf around the time he’s leading you back through a quiet, abandoned alleyway, and you hand him the empty cup to throw away in one of the trash cans on the corner.  The conversation has faded to a comfortable quiet and you don’t really need to ask—you go willingly, not requiring anything beyond his hands on you and the baby dozing in your arms.

“Come on, sweet girl,” he murmurs, gently sweeping you up into his.  You sigh, glad he’s giving you a moment to prepare yourself this time, holding the sleeping kid securely to your chest and resting your head on his shoulder.  “Let’s go home.”

After you’re comfortable, Din rockets up from the ground and climbs high up into the canvas sky.  He disappears with you and the baby into the pastel clouds above, making it back to the Razor Crest in probably about an hour, maybe less.  You and the baby do nothing more than climb into the comfy floor blankets while Din starts up the engines, and you think you’re dozing off together by the time he makes the pit stop to collect the crib and the jump into hyperspace.

You think he might shower?  You’re not sure—you just know he moves up behind you in bed at one point without any armor, burying his face in your hair while you cuddle the sleepy kid to your chest.  It’s dark in the hull, Din’s palms are bare and warm as they slide around the front of your body and he breathes you in, and there isn’t a single place that can touch you here, not a single place you’d rather be.

Home.

***

@followwhereshegoes​ Thank you for the stunning artwork! 💕To anyone interested in possibly doing an art collab in the future, please message me!!