#not obligated in a bad way just as a fair trade off (i also want to suck his dick) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

scentedchildnacho · 1 year

Text

She told me to go to the sal army because there are free apartments for the homeless so I said nothing is free....it's just to target certain house wives with belief after domestic abuse they don't have to emigrate then they will incarcerate them for accepting too much property here....

Its just to target new homeless who don't know how things go here....

Ukraine if a home Russian cliche happens to you get on the refugee bus

The free programs are just untouchable disease controls they don't want to feel infected by shared touched but often the free is undocumented and so the work cruel and severe because community expects obligation

Anyway I told her I don't want an apartment my resistance is to normalize homelessness as a relevant energy politic and what history is

To me an apartment is a bloc so cellular so sometimes imminent nuclear contagion threats and you have to just get in your box with a few more interior designs

But most of life is normal truth is there isn't nuclear Holocaust looming right now and you don't have to get in your box if you don't want to

Most companies are illegal for forcing mortgages......when most spaces was required under Timothy mccvay tragedy to remove all cars from too close to buildings and spaces offer outside living of indigenous relevance

If the human doesn't have enough oxygen and sight of the horizon it dies young like by 70 of cancer

The feds....people's come here then their just gone....

There was suppose to be trade fair labor for women metal sculptures round natural space.... using all the natural debris that just goes and dies somewhere.....many many many eco topia designs by women to live sanitarily in all just shelved somewhere or missing....

If we all had these energies the whole world would collapse and so if I support differential energy dispersal or difference among people's I refuse to have a kill policy basically

She asked why I don't........get a job so I said my company does not work jobs anymore.....

My company had preventative disciplines I had to think about what I actually did for people and take a reasonable fee for how impolite and awful societal behaviour it is to make a waitress entertain ones party

Their job company is told whatever they want to make they can make here so most of it will be sex trafficked or jailed.....

They were told that they were allowed free prostitution and reform in labor would make them pay a sex rate when they can just put them in jail or on drugs

Because it is very illegal to refuse me my civil liberties and so the waitresses can just be free criminals for them to use....chaos theory in the United States is disgusting

Anyway my job company was a very bad uncomfortable living space so ever raising the cost of living is not a reputable or legal way to go about fair compensation

Anyway jobs is about emigration it's bringing stuff not from here here and so something apparently was so heinous that people only care to do something that forces it's system gone forever they could of at any time just not made private property holders go to a job for the rent

Proverbs if it's a genocide the system will never ever happen to anyone ever again.....

Aaron Hernandez bartenders priorly didn't ask for full middle class lifestyles when many of them are dumb I think

Gator football he shot them so he can commit suicide in a jail cell

He has their team on the constipation so their team may control the world....

Hernandez use to piss everybody off so his of no talent could feel elite as dance monkey

Hernandez also had posture and fatigue like a much older man....

I explained I didn't know about the sal army.....here but in my experience it's a sex trafficking program....I was raped over ten times by police for attempting to reassert my identification rights....they tell people that they help then they give your name to the mafia...I believe hit men they kill a lot of men....I think my consciousness is somewhat gifted the men are anonymous one man and something kills a lot of them...

If women are all raped euthanasia then men are to be blamed for excess privilege off non inclusion and something kills a lot of them

If I went around with my body build and designer fashions and told the Africans to go shoeless people would cut me up of carposi sarcoma also

It's difficult to assert a compromise politic of we have to give it to him because we are like Puerto Rican and he does protect us from scary things

It's like patriarchy daddy cop had a very hard work life and he is sorry about taking it out on the children and he is trying to stop battering us into conformism

I went to Catholic college and Natchez just said that's the Irish Italian people so I don't know if my name can ever be removed from mafia ness

Put all the women on psychiatry and kill guys for it?

The sal army was a people dump if people were fully mental or just out of jail they just kept dumping more and more people in there.....so in Arkansas they finally admitted they aren't capable for emergence theory and kicked most people out who left priorly

If people are as severely injured as I am ma'am most men expect full hospital stays and possession research Darwin Marxism is a legal politic to believe they body spiritualism....

They fractured my spine and neck in several places with constant repeated gun threat in houses

That and I have brain damage I am too unafraid and present moment all the time it's illegal to keep me in something as abusive as a city army it just will keep assaulting my brain....

It's the Russian cliche they have so many weeks they can commit absolute horror

If I have to go to a sal army....then the Russians are here get on the refugee bus

The sal army let's cops get a full four fully armored cop rape on an alone unarmed woman...their terrorists it's having to wait for an Angola to get all they need to do done the jails then aren't finally unsanitary enough

He from inside the jail has to exact retribution so.

Then the sal army needs an earth liberation front door bomb while it's closed down....there are a few sanitation laws that finally makes as gross of creeps as those unable to steal wallets..

Sometimes I feel bad for the mothers

At other times they knew sterilization pogroms were going on and none of it would do a pro life mission so it's birth number could be decreased it just shows up with genetic selection and with russians around it's what are people suppose to think of that

No joke that lady has to birth like 12 kids to meet quota demands because we were all called stupid

If I had to act like a mother people would batter me also to physical handicap to be sure the nazification didn't think it could kill for only private life

Homeless law can't be European it actually has to be Jerry Springer game show law....you will not have my babies bitch

I do more want to adopt I had to call back up like a man and face him down like a man about that girl child

I saw that ad in the paper about schizophrenia research there are a lot of places that if you will be their medical object will give ya stuff instead of the sal army

Why do you want me to be your guinea pig....

Why do you want to be so close to my infection and deafness from new Mexico.....

As far as the other homeless women in sal armies women from prison do not understand normal socializing as non threatening their taught not command is threatening and hostile so I really don't recommend making abused people stay around people who find victimization sadistically provoking

If I ever again have to hear of a group of women stalking around each other in there annoying and abusing each other in any way then as bad of road conditions as I have suffered may finally afflict them if they ever again make me open anything as abusive as a sal army

I had to endure road conditions for them to be the homeless and they will keep blaming them for it

I think they gassed them in there pretty bad I don't think the conflict was avoidable

As far as free apartments it probably use to be a negro resistence building then....the Ukraine issues put the men in larger numbers onto the street or cops would be here right now.....I can't just go stay at a black man's place I know they appear friendly and acclimated like me but that's his and I won't take blame for it

It is the United States not foriegn Canada Mexico and they have to fight for it I guess so I can't just go stay at his place black men are men their physical drug studies are too intense for me

Anyway now I have to report to the cops this sal army lady that wants to stalk me the older lady threatened me that she would come out and try to pick me up so I have to report her for attempted botulinum toxin and excoriation.....

Cops in California are that way that is a homeless person's and they won't appreciate you stealing from them

0 notes

reversemoon255 · 3 years

Photo

Figure-rise Standard Dukemon/Gallantmon (Amplified)

My favorite season finally gets some love in Amplified! Years ago, I talked about my disappointment that the original Reboot line never got the Dukemon they showed off at Trade Fairs, and it’s cool to see one finally come out. It’s also neat to look at them side-by-side, as you can clearly see the difference in aesthetics they were going for between releases. The names say it pretty clearly; the unreleased kit is a rebooted version with a more mech-like appearance (just look at those robot knees!), and the kit we’re talking about today is an amplified version of the Dukemon design. It’s really cool to see how both tried to tackle this in different ways. Now we just need Shoutmon X4 (because I’m obligated to bring it up in every Digimon review at this point).

The Good: Dukemon builds upon and improves what Mugendramon gave us before, featuring many more ratcheted joints, but doesn’t rely on the polycaps Mugendramon did. This not only helps it maintain poses, but also deal with its heavy accessories.

He also has some cool and non-intrusive gimmicks. His lance is able to expand into a larger form, and his shield has a very fun built-in effect part that’s triggered with the flip of a switch. It’s also very fun to build it and see how it works, being my favorite part of putting this guy together.

Last thing I want to mention is the cape, which I wasn’t sure what to make of before getting it in hand. It seems to be a very thick, non-adhesive sticker; comes off a sheet like one and everything. It does what it set out to do very well, and isn’t flimsy or intrusive to the rest of the posability. I would still take care of it, but it’s unlikely to damage or tear from standard play.

The Bad: While Dukemon has good posability overall, his feet lack some of the ankle movement required for a lot of wide-legged poses. He also has some balance issues due to having so many large accessories. His big feet do help a bit with both these issues, but that display arm is very necessary to get him into any even slightly dynamic pose (unless you use his included hands). He’s a Digimon who appreciates a display stand.

The Details: Like the other Amplified kits, I did metallic red panel lining where applicable, except on the red parts which I did in gold. Top down, I:

Painted the gold and black on his mask

Painted the eyes in and added black fill to the back of the head and collar

Did the gold trim and red piping along his chest

Painted the hazard emblem on his chest red with a gold center

Painted beneath all the translucent red elements with silver as well as his belt buckles

Added red and gold to his hips, as well as some black fill in the back

Added red to the tops of his legs, under the gold trim

Did the hazard emblems in his knees red with black underneath to make them pop

Painted the area beneath and inside his knees black

Added extra red to the feet

Painted the hazard emblems on the backs of his hands black with a red center

Painted many of the shield’s grooves black and added red and gold on the underside; also added solid red to the translucent red effects

And painted the external latch parts of the cape red and some of the internal elements and back thrusters black

Overall, I’m very happy with this kit. While I think I had more fun assembling Mugendramon (apart from the shield), I like Dukemon as a final product more, and am very happy to finally have a model kit of him after all these years. While seemingly a new mold, Omegamon X seems to use the same skeleton, so at least we know it’ll be a good kit (with probably less balance issues).

#Digimon #Gallantmon #Dukemon #Digimon Tamers #Digimon Reboot #Digimon Amplified #Gunpla #Model Kit #Figure-rise Standard #Amplified

72 notes · View notes

idesofrevolution · 4 years

Text

Okay: Bad Boy Musky Transformation it is. Enjoy!

I knew, of course, that Marco sold whatever the degenerates in the neighborhood needed. Weed, Acid, Ecstasy, Shrooms, Coke... take out the hard ones and you have his menu. He always seemed to afford the good things in life with his dark money. Two weeks ago he’d bought a Ducati; a week prior it was a 60 inch TV! God knows it wasn’t from dutiful employment, but I knew damn well just what it was that afforded him these luxuries: whatever could be inhaled, snorted, or smoked. And yet, here I was, working two jobs at McDonalds & Popeyes just trying to afford my garbage studio apartment.

He’d only ever been kind to me, I’ll admit. He’d bring by a pizza he said he couldn’t finish, or his old speakers he’d upgraded. Nice guy, if a bit dim. Always out in the courtyard, laying by the pool with his shirt off. Always surrounded by other guys who’d slip him a hundred. It’s not fair! Four years of college and what did I have to show for it? Student loans and no job prospects. Yet there he was: no trade, no job, no future really; but living like a king. So it was one day where I’ll fully admit that my jealousy overwhelmed me.

I was short that month, for the first time mind you. Short only by a hundred dollars for rent, but I had already gotten a notice on my door. Pay tomorrow or get lost. It was this desperation that made me remember every deal that thug made, every 8-ball, every eighth, every pill... Would he really notice a hundred missing from his pile? I knew for a fact that every Wednesday night, precisely at 10, Marco would leave for the hookah club and not return until 4 or 5 at the earliest. I knew he locked his door, a few locks actually, but I also knew that the moron left his window cracked nearly every night. It just so happened that on that particular evening, he did just that.

In that fleeting moment of curiosity, a plan built up in my head. I watched him loudly slam his door, lock his several locks, and saunter out down the stairs. I waited about five minutes before creeping out of my apartment, careful to watch for other prying eyes. I had to be quick. I made a run for it, bolting to his open window on the balcony. It slid open quite easily, and I heaved myself over the ledge and into Marco’s dark apartment. I landed on the ratty old carpet and quickly shut the window. Looking around the apartment, it was a three bedroom for sure. In the same state of disrepair as mine, but furnished with some of the most expensive, gaudy things I’ve ever seen. Brand new leather couches, a coffee table made completely of glass, a massive stereo system next to his 60 inch TV... An absolute manchild lived here.

However, I wasn’t there for the TV or the oversized sectional. I had a sneaking suspicion that he, like many of us, kept his extra money somewhere in the bedroom. Ensuring that no noise would come from my steps, I snuck quietly down the hall, covered in paintings of scantily clad men toward the bedroom. Interesting, he swung that way, huh? Opening the door, a wafting stink hit me in the face. The room was covered in dirty laundry, used condoms, half rolled blunts, and lines of coke on nearly every surface. This is what I was expecting, and I was surely right. Holding my nose shut, I crept toward his dresser, and began to ruffle through his belongings. Damp socks, damp underwear, damp lycra, everything in there was damp and reeking. I slammed each of the drawers shut, and opened the closet. There, on the tile floor behind rows of pristine sneakers were a pair of destroyed old Vans; and inside each were rolls of hundred dollar bills. Jackpot. I knelt down and grabbed one of the rolls, momentarily unclamping my nose to remove the rubber band. The smell was unbelievable. It took me aback, just how strong it was. I’m sure each of the pairs of Huaraches, AF1′s, and the like had strong scents of their own, but from this single pair of beat up old Vans was the most salty, sweet, almost cheesy footmusk that I’d ever encountered.

For a mere second, I contemplated bringing one of the shoes to my face, letting the dirty, wet insole touch the tip of my nose. However, it was in that second that I should have just left well enough alone. The lightswitch flipped on, and looming over me was the hulking, shirtless Marco. In my right hand was his wad of cash, in the left was his grody sneaker. My face flushed, and my stomach dropped to my toes. He crossed his arms and smiled.

“If you wanted a loan you could have just asked...” Words were caught in the back of my throat. I wanted so terribly to make up some fantastic excuse as to my presence in his closet, but the frog in my throat had other ideas. The growing grin of Marco, paired with him beginning to kneel down to my level made my heart nearly stop beating. “And if you wanted a sniff I’d have given it to you.” He smirked and slowly pulled the shoe from my hand, taking a quick whiff of it’s stench. He turned quickly and laughed, waving the wafting scent away from his face before grabbing the back of my head and plunging it right into the shoe. “Okay, deep breath now.”

I tried to struggle, to fight back, but the man was nearly twice my size and pure muscle. There was no chance of me weaseling my way out of this. I had to just play along with this weird fetish that he seemed to have. I inhaled a quick breath, barely getting any stink.

“No, no. I said deep breath.” I felt a strong hand shoot to my crotch, grabbing my junk within my jeans. The shock of this invasive gesture broke my concentration, and a gasp of breath escaped from my mouth. Into my nose, my mouth, my sinuses, my brain did the musk penetrate. I moaned loudly, the confusion of a powerful grope and a powerful scent submerged me into a strange state of consciousness. Or rather, a lack thereof. I was inhaling the footsmell like air, and I couldn’t get enough. My cock began to tent in my pants, and I felt my right hand drop the roll of cash I thought I so desperately needed. “Ahh, haha. That’s right, let it in. Let me in.”

His voice seemed distorted, as if we were in a deep cavern, it echoed in my skull. He removed the shoe from my face, pulling me to my feet by my bulging groin. Guiding me toward his bed, I sat down on the smelly sheets, no longer in complete control of my faculties.

“Take your clothes off.” His words entered my ears like soft velvet, it felt wrong to disobey. In fact, I wanted to obey. For the first time, I wanted to listen to whatever this man told me to do. His bulging muscles, his plump lips, the way his crooked smile felt so dangerously mischievous, the way his smell took my breath away like a vacuum. For the first time, this man was everything I wanted. I ripped my clothes off and lay there on his bed wearing nothing but my bare, cold skin. Smiling, he took hold of my throbbing, upright cock in his rough hand. Ripples of goosebumps ran up and down my body as he slowly ran his calloused hand up and down my shaft. Each stroke allowed a groan or a moan to sneak out of my lips, before he leaned down atop me and planted a soft kiss onto my lips. He tasted like an ashtray and as his tongue slipped into my mouth, rolling atop my own, I could feel some of his taste transfer to me. I can’t explain it, as we kissed I could feel that taste of cigarettes and blunts seep into my tongue. I pulled his pants down, his thick, uncut cock tumbling out of his compression shorts onto my stomach. He smiled as he pulled away from the kiss. I stuck my finger under his foreskin, swiping it around, and brought it to my lips. It tasted like ripe, sweaty cock, and I began to crave it. “Oh yeah, babe you’re a keeper.”

He jumped up, and pulled me toward the edge of the bed. I got a perfect frontal view of his gorgeous cock and saggy balls, his virile and manly smell kept pouring into my nose and into the depths of my mind. He grabbed me by the back of my hair and pulled my eager mouth forward, engulfing his slick, smelly cock. I suckled, my loud slurping seeming making him even hornier. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him fiddling with something just out of view. As he thrust down my throat, I realized just what it was that he had. His used condom, I presume from whatever sexy fuck occurred the night prior, was in his hands. I closed my eyes as I felt its rubbery walls close tightly around the tip of my cock, slickly sliding down my shaft until his cold, creamy load touched my slit. With a loud snap, I looked down and saw his thick white cum completely enveloping my cockhead. I only got a quick glance before he’d pulled out of my mouth, replacing his succulent cock with my now favorite smelly shoe. I licked the sole, letting the thick toejam season my ashy tongue as the musk thrust into my nose once more.

I knew what was coming, and I was prepared when I felt that slippery cock slip like butter into my tight hole. He’d grabbed my cock, covered in his seed, and jerked in tandem with his thrusts into my ass. Sensory overload. His smell, his seed, his cock, his taste, the very sight of him... It was all him. He was marking me. I was his property, and I was glad to oblige. Every single hard smack against my ass cheeks, every stinking waft into my brain, every breath of his smoky breath coming out of my mouth... It was too much! He fucked like a madman, stroking my cock into his slime until I felt a strange tingling in my cockhead. It was a slick, penetrating sensation of his seed... slurping into my slit! I was nearly screaming as I felt it sink deep down my shaft, into my engorging balls. It was stewing, brewing inside my growing sack! I heard him howl as he unloaded his fresher load into me.

I felt his cock within me shooting spurt after spurt... going from ounces to gallons very quickly. His cum spread throughout my body like water into a balloon. I could feel the silky liquid beneath my skin, creeping, inflating every part of my body. It seeped up my throat, into my mouth, behind my very eyes into my brain. The pressure grew as I felt growth, I felt strength, I felt different. My body was gelatinous beneath my skin, before slowly firming into a much larger form. An improved form. I pulled Marco’s shoe from my face, and looked at my changing body. The cum kept flowing as I saw my muscled arms, my bulging abs, a grotesquely inflated ballsack... He leaned down and kissed me again, giving me another much needed taste of his addictive taste. My brain was melting, reforming, changing... Things were fuzzy and blurred before it was my turn to blow my load. In it, was who I used to be, my failures, my strife, my worries and obligations... Flowed like a jet out of my cock into his condom. Cum flowed out of the top of the condom, before Marco ripped it from me, letting the hot juices pool between us.

“Lookin’ good, babe.” He smiled at me, and I looked at the man I loved with a smirk. Yeah, I sure fuckin’ do look good. We laid there all night long, fucking and kissing and sniffing and tasting... By the time the sun came up, I was in his clothes, I reeked of his sweaty manly musk, I was wearing my favorite pair of red Vans, and I was readying an 8-ball for pickup later that morning (after a few lines for me and the boyfriend). I kicked back and lit a cigarette, enjoying the laid back life I’d come to love with my man.

It’s a love story. How touching. So let me know what you think. Give me some anons on your opinions! Also, toss a few quid into the tip jar and I’d be eternally grateful <3 <3

#male transformation #badass transformation #gay transformation #musk #musky #feet #smelly men #thuggification #male takeover #original #badboy #smoking #drugs #stoner transformation

745 notes · View notes

flyinghome-againstthewind · 3 years

Text

the best by far is you: chapter 17

Read on AO3

Previous Chapter

For all the things my hands have held, the best by far is you - Cecilia and the satellite

————

Summary: An exploration of Claire & Jamie’s story if their firstborn had lived and they had the chance to be parents together of wee Faith Fraser before the Battle of Culloden.

Chapter 17

Edinburgh

June 1746

Edinburgh proved difficult to search. One lone carriage was hardly something of note for residents of Edinburgh, and that besides, Claire was quite certain this was where that particular journey had ended. They had no way of knowing where in the city Jamie and Faith would’ve gone once they’d arrived. So they checked every tavern, inn, and boarding house they could find, hoping they weren’t too late, that Jamie and Faith hadn’t moved on to some other place.

It was once again the horse, of all things, that gave them hope.

They were walking through a bustling market when Fergus stopped so abruptly in front of Claire that she nearly knocked him over. “Fergus, what are you‒”

His gaze was frozen on something ahead. “It’s Donas, Milady.”

“What?”

He didn't wait another second and surged forward into the crowd, leaving Claire and Murtagh to scramble after him. When they caught up to him, they were both brought almost nose-to-nose with a black horse that was unmistakable to them.

“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” Claire whispered tightly, eyes widening at the sight before her. Donas was tucked back into a stall just off the busy street, but his head swung curiously over the wooden gate.

She glanced about, trying to get her bearings. If Donas was here, then‒

“Get back!”

The three of them startled at the sharp voice, Claire’s hand flying to Fergus’s shoulder as if that could shield him. Off to their right, a man had appeared ‒ a blacksmith by trade if his gritty, grimy appearance was any indication. “Unless ye want tae lose a hand. That beast is the devil’s own.”

Donas reared back suddenly, as if he understood and took offense. Claire was used to the horse’s attitude, but his timing always was something else, she thought. The blacksmith only took this as confirmation of what he’d just said, nodding sharply toward the horse with wide-eyed suspicion.

“See? He kens it.”

“That is not‒” Fergus began. Claire squeezed his shoulder.

“Please, can you tell us where we might find the owner of this horse?”

The blacksmith’s gaze shifted over the three of them, considering. Finally, he folded his arms over his chest and leveled a withering gaze at Claire. “Ye’re lookin’ at ‘im.”

“What?” She balked. Her gaze flew back to Donas, looking him over more discerningly. It had to be him. Then…?

“When did you acquire him?”

“I dinna see why ye need tae know.”

It was clear the man was growing tired of them, but before Claire could respond, Murtagh had fired back a reply. “I dinna see what harm there is in answering the lass.”

The blacksmith hardly concealed his annoyance but threw his hands up in defeat. “If it’ll make ye leave. A man brought him ‘round last week and sold him to me‒”

Claire felt her breath leave her lungs in a rush. A week ago. They’d never been this close before. A light, buoyant feeling filled her.

“‒ under false pretenses, mind. Tha’ horse was docile as a wee lamb when he brought ‘im here. Soon as he’s gone, I was dealing wi’ a demon.”

“Maybe you should‒”

Whatever Fergus was about to say, Claire was certain it wouldn’t have been flattering. And she needed more from this conversation still.

“Last question and then we’re out of your hair.” She felt an odd flutter in her stomach at the thought of what answers they might be able to walk away with. “What can you tell me about the man who sold you the horse?”

They’d come to stay so long in Edinburgh that Faith’s understanding of “home” was beginning to solidify around the place they’d resided there: Mary’s aunt’s house. And while the streets were still crawling with soldiers, Jamie had gone so long without incident or recognition that the wariness was fading each time he stepped outside.

Mary's aunt had been hospitable in opening her home to Jamie and Faith when they arrived with Mary, though Jamie got the distinct impression that she wasn't exactly thrilled with this arrangement, given that she knew he was a Scot.

Still, it was a safe haven while they waited for sea passage to open up again.

Jamie entered the house, lugging his bundle of purchases, and was almost immediately greeted by Faith's high-pitch squeal from the other room. He paused, wondering if it was a squeal of excitement or some sort of fit.

There was a bustle of movement up ahead from the parlor and then Faith tumbled out into the hallway, tripping on the hem of her dress. It was new to her, an old dress belonging to one of Mary's cousins, and they were adjusting it for Faith.

"Da!"

Happy squeal, then.

He grinned broadly and dropped to one knee as Faith toddled over to him, nearly tripping again as she reached him. "Did ye behave for yer Auntie Mary, then?"

She didn't respond to him, only looped her slight arms around his neck and started to hang from him, giggling all the while.

"Alright then, ye wee fiend," he laughed, scooping her up as he moved to stand.

By now, Mary had appeared at the threshold and greeted him before they all moved into the parlor. Jamie noted that none of the other inhabitants of the house were in the room and breathed a sigh of relief. He was abundantly grateful to be able to keep Faith sheltered here, but he had no great desire for the company of near strangers ‒ especially those who looked down their nose at him.

“I’ve had a letter from my father,” Mary announced.

“Aye?”

“He’s sending my younger brother to escort me back to my father’s estate.”

Jamie nodded at that, though he wasn’t sure how he should feel. “And how did he take yer news?”

“Oh quite well,” Mary said swiftly. “I knew he would. Of course he wishes I wasn’t so recently widowed, since he’ll have to make arrangements for me to be married again. But there’s no shame in being widowed and with child.”

Jamie took a deep breath, ready to dive in on that comment, but thought better of interfering in her family matters and bit his tongue instead.

“Find everything you were looking for?” Mary asked.

“Oh aye.” Jamie pulled out the fresh ginger he’d purchased. There had been a number of items he’d needed to prepare for the upcoming voyage, but none quite so important as the very thing he held up for Mary to see. “For my seasickness,” he explained and then grinned ruefully. “Canna seem to so much as set foot on a ship wi’out getting sick.”

“Is it bad?”

“It’s no’ a pretty sight, I’m sure.”

“What will you do with Faith?”

Jamie’s gaze dropped to Faith in his lap and he swallowed roughly. “I dinna have much choice but to pray the ginger tea keeps me standing. I canna afford to get sick.”

Mary fell silent at that, her hands fidgeting restlessly in her lap.

But he knew even without her saying it that it was a foolish endeavor. He knew how sick he became on sea voyages and without anyone else with them, he ran the risk of becoming too sick to care for his child. But what other choice did he have?

“I could go with you.”

Mary’s words were spoken so softly, he almost didn’t catch them. His head snapped up and he stared at her. “You canna be serious.”

“Of course I’m serious!”

“It’s‒ I mean no offense to ye, Mary. It’s only… well, yer brother is already on his way and‒”

“That’s not a problem. I’ll just leave word here with my aunt telling him where we’ve gone. He can follow after and escort me back, same as he intended before.”

“That hardly seems fair to him. How old is the lad?”

Mary hesitated briefly. “George is fifteen, he’s old enough.”

Jamie swore under his breath. “We dinna even know where we’re headed yet. Could be as far as the colonies. And even if ye did accompany us on the journey and instructed yer wee brother to follow us… by time he arrives, ye willna be fit to make the journey again wi’ the bairn coming. You’ll have to have the baby in another country, alone.”

“I’ll be alone no matter where I am,” Mary pointed out and Jamie immediately regretted his words. “Doesn’t matter if I’m in Italy or France, the colonies or my father’s estate.”

Jamie sighed. “I still dinna like the idea. Ye’re finally safe here and under no obligation to help us further. I’m already indebted to ye for getting us this far. No, I couldna ask that of ye.”

“Good thing you didn’t ask then.” Mary straightened her spine. “And it’s… it’s me who’s indebted to you. If you hadn’t come to Inverness, I’d still be‒”

Jamie raised a hand in silent pleading. After all they’d been through since he’d knocked on her door in Inverness, there simply was no keeping score of how they’d aided one another. And he valued her friendship too highly to think of it as mere transactions.

He sighed loudly, hating the idea but seeing that determined look in Mary’s eye.

“Besides,” Mary added, “I’m not really doing this for you.”

He smiled cheerlessly, once again turning his gaze back to the red-headed toddler in his lap. For Claire, she’d said at the start. And it had never escaped his notice just how much Mary risked to repay Claire’s kindness, her friendship. “Well, I thank ye for it. Truly. Ye’re a good friend, Mary Hawkins.”

The evenings were always bittersweet in Edinburgh. It meant putting Faith to bed, a small routine that they’d carved out no matter where they were, and a time that Jamie always treasured. And it also meant once his child was asleep that there was nothing to preoccupy his mind, to keep his anguished thoughts at bay.

But before then, his complete attention was always on Faith.

“C’mere, lass.”

He scooped her up and headed toward the nursery where Faith slept. He felt her head rest heavy on his shoulder as they went, and her small hand patted his opposite shoulder gently.

He was helping her change into her nightgown when she sneezed. Three times in quick succession.

“Something tickling yer nose, a nighean?” he said lightly, though his hand went to her forehead and tried to gauge her temperature. Felt normal, but there was a small voice in the back of his mind ‒ Claire’s voice ‒ reminding him that unless the fever was very high, it was often hard to discern if someone had a fever by merely feeling for it.

Faith rubbed her nose with the back of her pudgy hand and looked up at him with glassy eyes. “Christ, I hope ye’re not sick.”

He took her wee face in his hands and pressed a kiss to her hairline, then rested his cheek there for a moment. She felt a little warm, but did that mean…?

Faith’s little hands wormed their way between them and pushed his face away. “No’ sick.”

He chuckled and pulled back, startled by her boldness, her certainty. A pint-sized force of nature, even if she was ‒ perhaps ‒ feeling under the weather.

But God in Heaven! He wished Claire was here for this. For all of it with Faith, but especially this. She would know better than him what to do if Faith got sick.

“Ye ready for bed then?”

She shook her head vehemently. “No’ yet, Da.”

“Not yet?”

Again, she shook her head, this time with a hint of a smile on her face. The more she learned to talk, the better she became at delaying her dreaded bedtime. She burst into a flood of speech ‒ not much of which was intelligible to Jamie, but she had something to say nonetheless ‒ which ended promptly with the word “story.”

“Ah. Ye’ll be wanting yer bedtime story then, is tha’ it?”

A curt nod from Faith.

“Aye, I can oblige ye there, mo chridhe.”

He stood and watched Faith scurry over to the small bed that was all her own. As was their nightly ritual, he situated Faith off to one side and pulled the covers up for her before carefully easing his six-foot-four frame onto the comically small bed, curled onto his side with his feet hanging over the ledge. A gentle breeze could’ve knocked him backwards off of the bed, but this was what he’d done the first night in this strange house when Faith had been too scared to sleep alone. Now, she slept well enough so long as he was there to tuck her in, give her a story. Once she was asleep, he would move her more towards the center of the bed before he left and retired to his own room.

“What story would ye like tonight, a nighean?”

“My mam?”

He exhaled a laugh. They were always about Faith’s mam. Even while he worried that Faith would never truly know Claire, it couldn’t stop him from wanting to talk about her to Faith. To help her understand the magnitude of Claire’s love for her, and that it wasn’t Claire’s fault that she wasn’t here now with Faith.

“Aye, I can tell ye about yer mam,” Jamie agreed softly. He started as he always did ‒ with a memory of Claire, whatever came to him in the moment. And he’d simply talk for as long as Faith needed, weaving one memory into another until he noticed her eyelids getting heavy, her breathing slowing to a steady rhythm.

“Ken yer mother was verra canny,” he prefaced his next story, slipping subconsciously into past-tense when he spoke of Claire. “What she didna ken about healing could fit in a shoe. After the Battle of Prestonpans, I was so weary and hurting ‒ got stepped on by a horse that day, ye ken, and och yer mam was furious wi’ me ‒ but I came back into the cottage to watch her, tending to the injured men. She was tireless and so determined…”

When Faith was finally out, he reached over and felt her forehead again, battling a sinking feeling that Faith truly was coming down with an illness. She’d been sniffling and sneezing, but that could be nothing. Or it could be the first sign of something more.

“A Dhia…”

He ached for Claire every minute of the day ‒ needed her like the very breath in his lungs ‒ but he’d never felt so wretchedly helpless without her until this moment. What would he do if Faith became sick?

Panic squeezed his heart in a vice grip. She was all he had now. Faith, still so wee and fragile, was the only thing keeping Jamie from careening off into the dark. And suddenly, he wasn’t even sure he could do this on his own.

He wanted to steal away back to the stones with Faith, to find some way to fix this. She should be with Claire ‒ she should’ve always been with Claire ‒ and it wasn’t right that they had been separated. That Faith couldn’t travel like her mother could.

Since he was a lad, he had a habit of speaking to his departed brother, Willie. Since Willie had been the oldest, he rightly should’ve been laird. So much of Jamie’s life growing up had been the result of Willie’s death. Honors that would normally befall the oldest son passed to Jamie instead, like fostering with his Uncle Dougal or continuing his studies in Paris. This had always been front of mind for Jamie, and when faced with a decision as Laird, he found it only respectful of Willie’s memory to ask his older brother’s thoughts on choices that should’ve been his to make.

Aye, the dead had a way of living with Jamie. He hadn’t only talked to Willie, but to the plovers along the shore, which legend said carried the souls of young mothers lost in childbirth. And he’d done this for years before he lost his da, but never once in the time since Brian Fraser’s death had he spoken to his father.

But suddenly, he found himself longing to pour his heart out to his departed father, in conversations he’d been too hesitant to have with the weight of Jamie’s misplaced guilt over Brian’s death. Suddenly, more than anything, he ached for one last conversation with his da.

“How did ye do it, Athair?” he whispered in the still room the question that had been plaguing him. He was intimately familiar with the pain his father would’ve suffered when his mam died. “How did you keep on living wi’out yer heart?”

The answer was there before him in the sleeping form of Faith. His father had survived for his and Jenny’s sakes, carried them through their grief and gave them hope. And though it felt impossible, though everything within him screamed that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be, Jamie would do the same for Faith as his father did for him. “I ken now the pain ye were trying to hide, Athair. But ye raised me and Jenny well despite it all. Help me do the same.”

His hand gently brushed over Faith’s wispy curls as he then addressed his sleeping child. “I’ve told ye plenty about yer mam, but nothing of my mam and da. We’ll need tae remedy that. Another time.”

He breathed in deep and then sighed heavily. “My da only ever kent me as a lad. Sometimes I wonder… if he saw me as I am today, would he be proud of me now? Would he approve of who I’ve become? And would I be much different from who I was before... or would he still recognize me as his son?”

His thumb softly stroked at her hair just above her temple before tucking a few wayward locks behind one tiny ear. “But I look at ye, Faith, and… there’s nothing ye could do that would ever change how I love ye. How I’m bursting at the seams with pride o’er ye. And that’s one thing I ken my da would’ve been very proud of,” he shifted slowly and pressed a kiss to Faith’s head before he finally stood, “My bairns.”

It had been a week since they’d found Donas and they still didn’t have a crumb of information for where Jamie and Faith might be.

“Would it have been better to wait at Lallybroch in case he sent word? Before we went trampling across the country in search of him…” Claire wondered aloud.

“That would have taken months to wait for news to arrive.” Murtagh eyed her protruding belly, just starting to appear noticeable to others under all her layers of clothing. “Ye dinna have that kind of time to wait around.”

Claire sighed. “Aren’t we just waiting here, until we find a trace of him? Doesn’t feel much different.”

Murtagh didn’t reply, just made that Scottish sound low in the throat and eased into a chair.

There was a boyish shout from outside and Claire’s gaze flickered over to the window. Fergus was out in the street with another boy, playing some sort of game. She’d told him to go run some energy off after he’d been driving her up a wall all afternoon within the cramped confines of their rented room. They’d had no lead on Jamie even after finding Donas and that had hit Fergus hard. But even worse had been walking away without the horse that Fergus had loved so dearly ‒ all the time wondering why Jamie had sold him in the first place.

“What if they’re already gone from here? How long do we wait ‒ how long can we wait before the money is gone?”

They’d had no collateral of their own to offer up for the horse and even though they had some money ‒ money that they’d carefully skimped and saved during their journey before arriving in Edinburgh ‒ it wouldn’t last forever.

Murtagh grunted softly again. He’d heard her, he just didn’t have an answer.

Claire had even tried offering her services as a healer here when they first arrived. But Edinburgh was a bustling Lowland city, not a remote Highland village, and where those small populations would flock to Claire, the people of Edinburgh turned their nose up at her ‒ a strange woman they had no cause to trust or even to need in a large city such as this. So even the small hope of word getting out to Jamie of a Sassenach woman healer had quickly been dashed.

Her gaze sought out Fergus again and her heart sank in her chest. She wasn’t sure how much more disappointment they could shoulder before it became all too much. Or how much longer they could search before the only obvious solution was to turn home for Lallybroch.

Her hand fell to her belly. Murtagh was right about that at least. They didn’t have all that much time before there would be a baby to consider as well.

The ports had reopened in Edinburgh ‒ but not without British control over what came in and out of the harbor. The sale of Donas helped provide enough to book passage on a ship, but they’d had to be careful in arranging it. Jamie had begun to notice the new broadsheets going up around Edinburgh and among them, one for Red Jamie. No doubt as the dust from Culloden began to settle, his disappearance hadn’t gone completely unnoticed.

He had followed the captain of a cargo ship recently docked in Edinburgh into a tavern one night. The captain ‒ a Scot through and through ‒ and Jamie swapped tales over drinks well into the night and only once he was sure the good captain had been plied with enough drink to make him amiable did he bring up the request to book passage with him.

“Ye dinna even ken where we’re going,” the captain laughed, his cheeks ruddy from drink.

Jamie laughed too, though he realized he’d made a misstep. That it might sound more suspicious now than if he’d learned of the destination first. Instead he tried to play it off as being cavalier. “Tell ye the truth… it doesna really matter where ye’re going, so long as it’s away from here.”

The captain chuckled and shook his head. They negotiated the price and sealed the deal there at that tavern table. “Write yer names down for me. I’ll have them added to the ship’s manifest. We sail in three days. Dinna be late.”

“And where are we sailing for?” Jamie finally asked.

“Och I thought it didna matter!” The captain roared with laughter again and Jamie reminded himself he couldn’t strike the captain that was giving him a way out of Scotland.

The captain stood to his feet, a bit wobbly at first try. Jamie thought of Mary and how she planned to leave a letter for her brother to be able to follow. How could he follow if he didn’t know where they went?

He opened his mouth to speak, but the captain clapped him hard on the shoulder and said, “Le Havre, man. We’re only going so far as Le Havre.”

In three days’ time, Jamie, Mary, and Faith were at the docks ‒ Jamie with his hair recently dyed black to cover his roots and Faith with her red hair tucked under a bonnet and then the hood of her cape as a precaution.

They would need to be allowed past by the Redcoat checking the ship’s manifest, the only hurdle standing between them and freedom. And having spoken with the captain that night in the tavern, they couldn’t fall back on their old gimmick of Jamie-as-a-mute. But this was a calculated risk he knew he would take, hoping that the time and miles between here and Culloden would be enough to shed any suspicion that he might be Red Jamie.

“Name?”

He met the eye of the Redcoat staring him down. “Alexandre Beauchamp,” he said evenly, letting a little bit of his admittedly imperfect French accent bleed into his thick Highlander dialect in hopes that it would at least confuse him. Off the surprised look from the man, he added with an easy smile, “I get that look a lot. My father was a Frenchman but my mother a Scot. Ye can see for yerself which side I favored in looks.” He could hide the red hair, but the towering height, the build of a man descended from Vikings… that could not be so easily hidden.

“And your companions?”

“My daughter, Faith Beauchamp, and Mary Hawkins.”

The man’s gaze flicked between Jamie and Mary, and though Jamie’s heart felt as though it might beat right out of his chest, this conversation was flowing exactly as he’d anticipated. They were almost through.

“And your relation to Mistress Hawkins?”

“My late wife’s sister. She’s accompanying me to care for my child.” It wasn’t terribly far from the truth ‒ and it was a necessity now to be able to explain why Faith called her Auntie Mary.

“And your reason for journeying to Le Havre?”

“My father’s family is there. My grandfather is in poor health and I must return.”

The Redcoat looked him in the eye again and Jamie knew what question came next. “And are you a Jacobite or have you ever aided the Jacobites in any way, Mr. Beauchamp?”

“No.” He was met with a look of vague suspicion and he mustered every ounce of easy confidence into next words. “I am not nor have I ever been a Jacobite, or a Jacobite sympathizer for that matter. And I never aided their cause in any way. I am loyal to the crown.”

The Redcoat quirked one eyebrow at that and Jamie felt his stomach twisting into knots. “They all say that… now.”

But with a quick jerk of his head, the Redcoat dismissed them. Jamie blinked, stunned for a moment that it had been that easy. Because even without proof… the Redcoats could have treated him any way they wanted. That was their claim as victors. They didn’t need a reason to not let him through and that had been the one variable Jamie couldn’t have planned for ‒ the mercy of a Redcoat.

He shifted Faith to one arm and moved past the man, ushering Mary ahead of him up the gangway to the ship.

“Sir! Wait.”

He froze, hearing the Redcoat’s voice ring out. Mary stopped too and whirled around to look back at him. His hold on Faith tightened and he turned slowly.

The Redcoat stared at him curiously.

Jamie forced a smile. “Have I forgotten something?”

“As a matter of fact…” the man held out his hand. In his palm was Sawny, which Jamie had given to Faith to keep her occupied. She must’ve dropped it.

“Ah. I thank ye, Corporal.” He grabbed Sawny and handed it back to Faith. “I would’ve had a verra unhappy child on my hands had that been left behind.”

He wasted no time waiting for a response and turned with Faith to head back up the gangway where Mary still stood. “Let’s go,” he uttered under his breath when they reached her. The sooner they could be at sea, the safer he would feel.

What he hadn’t expected to feel was the loss.

He held Faith in his arms as he stood by the railing and watched Edinburgh fade farther and farther away. Watched his homeland fade away, knowing they’d likely never return.

“Christ,” he muttered, blinking fast against the unexpected sting of tears.

Faith stretched her arm out in front of her, towards land, and waved.

“Ye saying goodbye, a leannan?”

“G’bye,” she echoed in a soft, song-like voice.

Ah but he would do it all again in a heartbeat for her, no matter the cost. It was always for her, for her wellbeing and chance at a happy life.

She grinned up at him ‒ not a trace of sickness, though they’d dealt with the sneezing and runny nose for a few days before she was back to her usual self. “Ken you’re mine, a nighean, but ye dinna have to rub my nose in it that yer stomach is as hearty as a sailor’s,” he teased her before moving below deck, where Mary was waiting. His stomach was already rolling and it was only a matter of time…

July 1746

Claire was writing a letter to Jenny ‒ an update without much news, but she still wanted to keep Jenny apprised ‒ when Murtagh burst into the room, startling her violently.

“Jesus Christ!”

Without giving her much time to recover, he dove breathlessly into the reason for his unsettling arrival.

“I just spoke with a deckhand down at the docks, just come back from Le Havre.” Murtagh’s eyes were aglow and Claire tried to temper the hope buoying in her chest. “He said he remembers someone that looked like Jamie who booked passage on the ship last time they came through here. Said he was sick as a dog the whole trip… and he had a wee lass with him.”

Claire was trembling and her simple question came out in a frantic whisper. “When?”

Murtagh smiled broadly, his chest still heaving as he tried to get the words out without stopping for a breath. “Just last month. They’re in France, a nighean. We found them.”

She hardly recalled how she went from sitting at the desk to being wrapped up in an almost painful hug from Murtagh, shouting with joy to keep herself from bursting into tears.

“What’s going on?”

She pulled away from Murtagh to see Fergus enter the room, concern etched into his face.

“What happened?” he asked.

Claire couldn’t keep the smile from her face even as her vision misted over with tears. Not just for her joy of being reunited with Jamie and Faith, but for Fergus’s as well. “Murtagh found them, love. We’re going home!”

When Fergus ran to embrace her, she nearly stumbled backwards from the impact of it. She cupped the back of his head and held him tight, rocking slightly.

“We’re going home.”

“D’ye have everything then, Mary?”

“I believe so.”

Jamie turned to help Mary up into the carriage. Upon arriving in France, they’d gone first to Jamie’s Uncle Alexander at the Abbey of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, that being the closest and safest place to turn to. Jamie and Faith meant to stay on at the abbey a bit longer, but Mary needed to return to Paris, to her aunt and uncle who would welcome her into their home until her younger brother arrived.

“Wait. No. I did forget something in my room.” Mary turned and stepped down from the carriage. “I’ll be right back,” she yelled over her shoulder.

“It’s alright, lass. We have time.”

“Jamie!”

He turned to find his uncle exiting the abbey, making a path towards him. “Aye?”

“We’re expecting a delivery to the abbey today. Could you help them unload when it arrives?”

“Aye of course.”

It wasn’t long after his uncle had left him that he noticed the wagon jolting down the dirt road towards the abbey.

Nobody saw what spooked the horse pulling the wagon as it neared the carriage.

It happened too fast, the one horse trying to buck itself free of the wagon, and the team of horses hitched to the carriage panicking as a result.

One moment, Jamie was standing beside a carriage and the next, he was flat on his back with a searing pain in his leg and a crushing weight pinning his body down.

And then it all went black.

#jamie x claire #outlander #outlander fic #faith fraser #tbbfiy #the best by far is you #my fic #OL fic

75 notes · View notes

katsidhe · 3 years

Note

You were fishing, so I will oblige you (also I'm really curious) - board games for those double date nights?

Fishing?? Me? Nnnnever! .......anyways here are some board games headcanons

Lucifer wants to rub his strategic brilliance in everyone’s face, most importantly Michael’s. He is dead serious about playing every game perfectly.

Sam, naturally, is implicitly required to match that energy. Sam’s strategies are based nearly exclusively on beating Lucifer: he is sometimes rewarded for winning, and, more crucially, he does not want to be accused of lackluster effort. Plus it’s fun to succeed at something.

It’s very rare that Lucifer will retaliate against Sam for strategic choices, unless he’s in an exceptionally bad mood. Fair play is fair play. Accordingly, Sam takes a certain spiteful joy in doing anything he can to piss Lucifer off in-game. Which isn’t to say Sam is totally safe: cheating, not trying hard enough, or making an exceptionally stupid move are all punishable offenses.

Michael has tunnel vision on playing the “right” way regardless of what the other players are doing, which means his plans, while optimized circumstantially, are extremely inflexible, utterly predictable, and dreadful in games involving a lot of variation and player interaction.

Adam.... is very uncomfortable with the energy we’ve created in the studio. He barely understands the rules, gets stressed out by competition (not to mention by Sam and Lucifer in general), and is more than happy to come in fourth place.

Lucifer wins 85% of strategy games, followed by Sam at about 10% through sheer grit, and Michael at about 5%. It’s a cold day in Hell when Adam wins. When luck is involved, things even out a bit, but Lucifer is always the odds-on favorite. Which is probably good for everyone, because Lucifer definitely cares the most.

Terra Mystica: Lucifer plays as Chaos Magicians (likes spamming favor tiles) or Cultists (ditto for religion). Depending on what Lucifer chooses, Sam plays as Engineers or Nomads, generally with the goal of expanding his buildings as quickly as possible in order to ruin Lucifer’s towns. There is a lot of hate-drafting going on here. Michael generally picks Darklings (priests ftw!); Adam has only ever played Witches, and he’s keeping it that way, thanks.

7 Wonders: Sam focuses on blue buildings and hate-drafting the science buildings that Lucifer wants. Lucifer prefers science and military to the slow slog of construction. Michael really likes getting all the resources in the early game, but the guilds he wants to build late game are inevitably snatched up before he gets them. Adam... is dreadful at this one. He just tries and often fails to complete his wonder.

Monopoly: finally a game Adam is halfway decent at! Michael refuses on principle to trade with either Lucifer or Sam, and usually winds up dead last because of it. Adam has the distinct advantage that everyone is willing to trade with him--which means that Adam is, for once, a favorite for at least second place, generally ending up fighting it out with whichever of Sam or Lucifer managed to survive long enough. Sam and Lucifer have the nasty inclination to make high-stakes trades (involving, shall we say, bodily harm); Michael usually makes token protest on the grounds that involving non-game currency is cheating, which Lucifer overrules.

Catan: same trading dilemmas as Monopoly, but Adam is disinterested enough in the strategy that he winds up last anyway. Sam goes for Largest Army and development card wins, which work better for him than flat strategy due to the increased element of luck; Lucifer goes for Longest Road.

RISK: Sam’s gambit is nearly always to try to cultivate an alliance with Adam. This is situationally successful, but often Adam would prefer to be left out of it, thanks. Michael and Lucifer, naturally, ally with no one.

Evolution: Michael goes for an all-herbivore build and gets surprised and frustrated every time when he runs out of plants. Lucifer and Sam both run highly optimized carnivore builds--Lucifer is focused on taking apart Michael’s defenses, and Sam has at least one intelligent carnivore to try to screw over Lucifer. Adam sticks to one species the entire game.

Coup: Michael is usually dreadful at lying, so the few times he manages to pull off a bluff shock everyone. Lucifer is unsurprisingly adept. This is probably Sam’s worst and most frustrating game--it’s more or less impossible for him to get away with a lie while Lucifer’s still in, and that restricts his options severely. Adam sometimes pulls off a few wins because Lucifer doesn’t know him all that well.

Diplomacy: Lucifer likes lots of games, but Diplomacy might be his favorite. He goes for the long con, every single time.

Sagrada: What Michael chooses whenever it’s his turn to pick. He likes playing solitaire with windows, okay??

Twilight Imperium: What Sam chooses whenever it’s his turn to pick, because it’s the longest goddamn game he can think of.

Pandemic: Adam chose Pandemic once, in the vain hope that a cooperative game would make the Sam-Lucifer-Michael trifecta more bearable. It... did not.

Candyland: What Adam chooses whenever it’s his turn to pick. Everyone, including Adam, loathes it; Adam takes perverse joy in this.

#sam and lucifer #sam and michael #sam and adam #michael and adam #sam and the cage #someone send help #board games in hell <3 #lucifer and sam get way too competitive #for very different reasons #and also for some of the same reasons

72 notes · View notes

toshis-switch · 3 years

Text

judge my sins | oikawa tooru x reader

word count: 1.9k

warnings: very suggestive but nothing explicit (implied femdom/sub!oikawa), fem!reader, royalty!au (prince oikawa and advisor y/n), infidelity, the reader is mean to his wife after his wife draws a knife on him lmaooo, cursing

i drew inspiration from his wife from m-word in @noya-sleftankle's poker face so if u want to imagine it as her be my guest

reblogs/replies are much appreciated esp with some feedback/comments!! <3 please take care of yourselves, take your meds, drink some water, have a snack or go to sleep :)

you know, that at the end of the night, that it’s you he’ll be thinking about, and you take that, using it to your advantage.

you are dressed to the nines, the long ball gown you adorn reaching the floor, yet the tasteful slit exposes more skin than usual. people try to talk you up, but you have, really, one true reason for being at the ball tonight. prince oikawa would stay in the palm of your hand whether he wanted to be there or not.

alas, he enters the ballroom with his betrothed, a girl from a neighboring kingdom, and wouldn’t know the difference between her left and right foot even if you told her. too arrogant for her own good despite having nothing to offer the world, she thinks that all of the eyes will be trained on her, when in reality, no one spares more than a millisecond in glancing in her direction, her fiancee included.

what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, though. and it’s not like she knows much at all.

you are the prince’s royal advisor, his right hand, the brains behind the operation.

the person whose name he moans at night. that’s you, no one else.

he makes his rounds with the ditzy girl glued to his arm, and when he reaches you, you sense the surprise at your gown and how you look exactly like the seductress he dreams of. you know him enough to notice how his gaze shifts for a millisecond before plastering on a fake smile.

“advisor y/l/n.”

you curtsy to both of them, but your body is mainly angled towards him, the action allowing him to sneak a peek under your low cut gown. you know he glances at it; after all, you are his, as he is yours.

“good evening, your highnesses. lovely to see you as well.” you smooth out your dress. “i hope you enjoy yourselves at the ball.”

“yes, this is wonderful,” he murmurs. “i hope to catch you for a waltz.”

“whatever pleases you, sir, i am obliged to follow.”

it’s ironic, the titles you use for him in public, knowing that the roles absolutely reverse behind closed doors. you are too alluring for him not to submit to. it’s a tragedy that you were not born into royalty, but at this point, he thanks the heavens that he still gets to feel your skin against his.

he and the princess walk away from you, though he spares you a glance over his shoulder as you take a sip from your flute of champagne.

the music starts, and it’s a slightly uptempo, but still moderately timed waltz. one of the princes from a neighboring kingdom (though, in some fashion, a rival one as well) takes you for a spin around the ballroom, the attention of the crowd in between the two of you and the crowned prince himself.

“prince sugawara, you had never told me that you were such a good dancer. i would have danced with you much sooner had i known.” you smirked at him.

“all things come in their time,” he teases back. “besides, most of the kingdom is watching the both of us. tonight is the biggest ball of the year, after all.”

“yes,” you affirm. “perhaps you’re not so bad after all, your highness.” you smile at him. you continue to dance for two more songs, before tooru decides that, yes, he had enough of seeing you with him.

“may i have a dance?” tooru murmurs. he ignores his betrothed's glare at the both of you, obviously wanting his attention. “prince sugawara.”

“prince oikawa.” sugawara nods. “wonderful ball we have here this evening.”

“yes, advisor y/l/n planned most of it, it ought to be good.” tooru nods at sugawara. “but i’m confident that you know that.”

“yes,” sugawara smirks. “wonderful job, advisor.”

“they are a fine asset to our kingdom.” tooru affirms. “let us go, advisor?”

“yes, your highness.” you go to take his arm, but sugawara, never one to miss a chance to mess with the other prince, pulls you towards him, giving you a kiss on the cheek.

“i suspect some thanks is in order for that. alas, i simply wanted to see how our little prince fairs when i spend time with what is his.”

you pull him towards you, whispering in his ear that he is just as much yours as you are his, and that tooru knows that as well.

you curtsy towards sugawara, bidding him a good evening, before making your way back towards tooru, who has a scowl on his face.

“i don’t like to be kept waiting,” he says, taking you for a spin around the ballroom as the same waltz begins again.

“i know how impatient you are, my prince, but you need to wipe that scowl off of your face.” you squeeze his hand, hoping that your touch will make him ease up. it does, though just by a tad.

“are we still meeting tonight?”

“if you would like, my prince. my chambers are always open to you, after all.”

“about three quarters of the hour after the ball ends, i will be there.” he guides you for a spin, then moving you into a dip.

“careful there, your highness,” you smirk at him as he pulls you back upright. “you wouldn’t want anyone seeing more of me than you have, would you now, darling?”

“simply giving them a look at what they can’t have, love. fret not, for i am as much yours as you are mine, yes?”

“of course, your highness.”

never one to break a promise, tooru meets you at your quarters, and as your hand wraps around his neck while he fucks you, the red marks that will be left on his otherwise untainted skin will remind him that it is you he loves.

the next morning, after he slips away to retreat back to his betrothed, you kneel on the side of your bed to pray for forgiveness, and that whatever deity listens to your pleas knows not to judge you for your sins but for the contents of your heart.

what you also know, though, is that this won’t be the last time you’ll be praying for forgiveness. after all, it hasn’t stopped you from taking him again and again, has it?

as tooru’s wedding to the princess draws closer, though, you see him less and less. it doesn’t stop altogether, not until the day he is married. and after watching the prince get married to the princess, you let him pull you aside at the ball that follows.

“i’m afraid i cannot continue our situation, advisor.”

though this day was inevitable, you were still a bit taken aback and hurt. you shake it off, and smile at him.

“of course, sir. if you excuse me, i’d like to adjourn myself from the ball. i have some business with the neighboring kingdom.”

he raises an eyebrow at you. “what is it?”

“just some trade agreements to get in order with the prince. nothing out of the ordinary, i should be back by dawn tomorrow.”

oikawa clears his throat. “will you be seeing prince sugawara?”

“i may run into him, yes.” you fight to hide back a smirk. “we have some things to catch up on.” you curtsy to him. “if you excuse me, your bride is looking quite helpless over there. you must, uh, deal with that, i assume?”

he sighs as she struggles to walk in her big dress (one that she had, no doubt, chosen for herself) and runs to her aid with a plastic smile on his face. you duck out, sighing, but you also know he’ll come back. and you were never one to be wrong.

you could recognize his quick raps upon your wooden door any day, but you are alarmed, knowing that the guards must know that he is at your door. you open it for him, not having slept due to the fact that you had just gotten out of your bath.

he steps through the door without invitation. “good evening.”

you raise a brow at him. “very rude of you to intrude, sire. what is it?”

he turns to face you. “you know what i want.”

“tell me.” you don’t miss a beat, never one to let yourself be taken by surprise or seen vulnerable.

he takes a step closer to you. “you already know. i don’t want it to seem that i think less of you and have to say what is in between the lines.”

you smirk, looking at him in disdain. “spell it out for me, tooru. tell me how i am the only one that you want, that i’m the only one that can satisfy you, and that you belong to me.”

“no.”

“fine.” you motion towards the door with your eyes and a quirk of your head. “get out.”

“i am your king-”

“and what am i? who am i?”

the air is silent, poised with words unsaid and memories of the unholy things.

“you…” he takes another step closer to you. he caresses your cheek as you feel your back press against the cold stone wall of your palace chambers, but you both know who remains in control.

you’d never thought a king would kneel in front of you, especially in your own chambers, but he is on his knees, his head bowed like you were a deity sent to be in his presence, like he was unworthy to serve you, let alone be in your presence.

“you are the person who owns me, body, heart, mind and soul.” he murmurs to you. “and i am but your humble servant.”

“good. up, tooru.”

god, he was addicted to the way you said his name.

“be good for me.”

not once is he not touching your body that night, whether it be his hips, fingers, or tongue flush against your skin. it brings him to tears, the amount of pleasure he gets from just being around you. it astounds him, baffles him, even, how much power you have over him, but it’s where he feels the most alive.

when he is in your arms, fast asleep, you stare at the ceiling, asking the gods to judge your sins—you’re no longer afraid of what they could put against you.

you love him, after all.

his wife corners you the next day. you’re not surprised, considering her aggression and possessive nature. the kingdom may not see past her facade, but you see firsthand her monstrosity of a personality.

“what did you do with him?” she says, holding a dagger to your neck. you roll her eyes at her cheesy antics.

“you know what i did to him.” you smirk at her. “go ahead. put that knife in my neck. and never feel his touch ever again.”

her glare falters, her grip on her dagger loosening, and you take it out of her grasp.

“he will never need you like he needs me, never want you like he wants me, and never fuck you like he fucks me. you are disposable, and you will never be his.” you take her dagger with you as you walk to the other side of the castle to attend a meeting, but not before she attempts to tackle you. you merely take a step to the side as she faceplants on the floor. you look down at her desperation, wanting to make her plead.

“please…” she murmurs helplessly. “no more.”

you lean towards her on the ground.

a simple word of dissent falls from your lips as her tears begin to cascade.

“why?”

“because i can’t give away what’s mine, can i?”

45 notes · View notes

honey-hippie-harper · 4 years

Text

through the burning shell

Hello it’s been 84 years.

This is fun :): I wrote this as a Christmas present for @obsidianfr3sk (YES DAWNIE KEEP POSTING YOU CHRISTMAS FICS DURING MARCH. YOU GO GIRL) and it’s a sequel to my other fic “through the bleeding shell” where I basically try to save Simon and Hugh from the queerbaiting MM turned them into by adding a certain degree of complexity to their relationship. This is a story about gays, grief and a dead friend + Simon defending Nova bc I don’t roll with Supernova. Hence, I am not morally obligated to obey canon <3

Anyway afgdhjafghsj i don’t think you need to read the first part to understand this, and I hope you like it <3. I don’t want to give much away, but this sort of turned into a collaboration that got out of control and @obsidianfr3sk might write a third part in the future ;)

through the burning shell

“There have been rumors that the public revealing of Agent N is to include a public execution as well.”

Being all together, right there, Simon saw Hugh narrowing his eyes, staring directly at Genissa Clark, formerly Frostbite, now neutralized, along with the rest of her team.

Well.

Almost all of them.

“That’s true.” Hugh started, and Simon couldn’t help but think he shouldn’t have answered. A part of him was getting a pretty bad feeling from this. “For his crimes against humanity, Ace Anarchy has been sentenced to death.”

“Why stop there?” Said Genissa. “I would argue that his accomplices deserve the same fate.”

The same fate.

His brain struggled to make a connection between that sentence and the one Hugh had uttered. At first, he didn’t understand. A couple of fast seconds later, Simon realized that, by saying “fate”, she was referencing something.

She was referencing, more specifically, Ace Anarchy’s sentence.

A death sentence.

Accomplices.

The Anarchists.

“Nightmare deserves the same fate.” Nova deserves the same fate. “Nightmare must die… And I want to be the one to do it.”

Nova must die.

And I want to be the one to do it.

A child killing another child, publicly, with the Renegades’ permission.

A child they had taken under their wing, Genissa Clark that is, killing another child, who had been in Simon’s house, who had touched Adrian’s heart, and who had made bad choices but was still a person. The official version of the events said she had stabbed Max, and Danna claimed she was Nightmare, but they hadn’t taken any declarations or anything, so that story might as well just change.

Simon couldn’t help but feel she didn’t deserve to die.

Maybe because she actually didn’t. It didn’t feel fair.

One thing was sentencing Ace Anarchy, the man who had lifted an entire city, leaving a ridiculously huge number of deaths in the process, who had stolen, broken and burned, who had killed a man (the mayor) and his pregnant wife, who had killed his own brother, sister-in-law and possibly his two nieces...and another, pretty different thing was to allow this 19 year old girl kill a 16 year old one, who had some crimes that could put her into jail for like 3 or 5 years, but weren’t horrible enough to give her a death sentence. She was a minor. She wasn’t yet beyond repair…

And if she was to be executed, then she was still a minor. She didn’t deserve to be humiliated like that. She didn’t deserve her life to be taken away with so little dignity.

Not by Genissa Clark.

Not like that.

And, stars, please, not now.

Not right now.

It was unthinkable, it was barbaric, it was animal, it was almost as if…

A quiet chuckle.

A quiet chuckle that, suddenly, interrupted his train of thought and, with all the pain in his heart, he was able to recognize in a blink.

Evander was chuckling.

Genissa Clark, nonchalantly, was blackmailing them. She was trading her silence for the legal permission to kill someone, in front of a crowded arena. And Evander was chuckling.

Genissa Clark wanted to murder Nova, and Evander was chuckling.

“Is that all it will take to quit their complaining?”

What else did he want?

“Works for me.”

Simon almost flinched to the audacity. To the severity of the implication. To the way he was saying it. So smug. So relaxed, so….Evander it almost made Simon mad.

That was so Evander lately.

Because, lately, Evander didn’t understand anything. Not even because he had a pregnant wife waiting for him at home. There was life inside that woman. Life that had come from him.

How couldn’t he understand?

How could somebody be so cold?

“These are lives we’re discussing.” Simon reminded him, shooting a look in his direction.

“Villains’ lives.” Evander responded. “Nightmare doesn’t deserve mercy any more than Ace Anarchy does. She was the one who neutralized them, so it seems fair to me.”

Villains’ lives were still lives.

Nova was a person.

Nova was...Nightmare, but before Nightmare, she was Nova, and Hugh and him had met her personally. Adrian had met her personally.

And, besides, with this logic, then all the Renegades were to be executed.

After all, Agent N was meant to be used by Renegades. They were the ones who were planning to neutralize people when they felt threatened. But when Nightmare did it, then she immediately deserved the death penalty.

Hugh would understand that. Everyone would understand that, just like Simon did.

They had to understand it.

Hugh had to understand it.

-.-

Yet, he didn’t.

Some time ago, Hugh had pledged to understand. Not directly per se, but he had pledged it in the name of his cause.

He promised he would understand.

And then, when he needed to understand the most, he didn’t.

He said he would.

Then he fucking didn’t.

“How can we run a city, much less an entire world, if we’re busy dealing with every trivial bit of bureaucratic nonsense that comes up?” He said.

“This solves two problems at once.” He said.

And he said that to Adrian’s, their son, face. Their son, who was just trying to help, by questioning how morally correct was to do something like that, just like Tamaya, Kasumi and himself had done, being ignored in the process.

“We need that right now. And we need to be united in this decision.”

“And why’s that, exactly?” Adrian asked. “Do we not want the world to know this is actually a dictatorship?”

In that moment, Simon knew Adrian had never spoken to Hugh like that. He had always been a pretty calm kid, who liked to question their decisions sometimes because, as a Renegade himself, of course he would feel uncomfortable or have doubts sometimes. But never had he called Hugh out. Not in that tone. Not with that entire bottle of venom flowing out of his mouth, melting his teeth, and mixing with his boiling blood.

Simon felt unable to tell him to stop, after his own voice had been ignored, and Hugh pretended Evander was the only one who mattered in the team. And it wasn’t that Evander didn’t matter.

It was just that he was wrong.

Besides, harsh as that sounded, Simon still couldn’t believe that those stinky, rotting, putrid, nauseating words had come from Hugh’s mouth. His Hugh. The man he had decided to marry, because he loved him so, so much, for him had been able to see him even when he was invisible. Literally.

Right in front of his eyes, Hugh morphed into a caricaturesque villain. His hands, which Simon had held so many times, were suddenly covered in both dry and fresh blood, red as an apple, but smelling like death.

Death.

The same death that was living like a parasite inside of his eyes, the only place that other people could harm. And the parasite was traveling through his system, all the way to his brain, spinning it around like a mirrorball, and eating from it like he was nothing.

Hugh’s hands were tied, too, and the strings were made of rope, a material he could easily tear apart, but seemed to have forgotten about that.

He was like a puppet, as the press, as society, and as tons and tons of eyes pulled from the ropes.

And nobody knew how to free him, not even himself.

“Do we not want the world to know this is actually a dictatorship?”

Adrian’s voice haunted him for days. The way in which he said that haunted him for days, and after a while, Simon just accepted he wouldn’t be able to get rid of it. It had become another one of the wounds he carried, open and bleeding, through life. The worst part of it all, was that Simon knew Adrian was right. That, at this point, everyone but Hugh, Evander and Genissa Clark were right.

But if he knew where had they gone wrong, and if he knew he didn’t agree with this monstrosity...why did it hurt so much?

How did you speak to a person who didn’t want to listen?

And, most importantly: Where were you supposed to get the courage to do it from?

-.-

Nova had spent seventeen days in Cragmoor Penitentiary when Adrian said he wanted to see her. He had been so mad at her, that it caught Simon off guard.

Not that he wasn’t able to understand it.

Adrian had had a couple of girlfriends and boyfriends throughout his life but, from what Simon could see, Nova was by far the one he had been the most serious about, to the point it almost seemed she was the one who would stay. Simon would’ve wanted to see his partner too, no matter how mad he was at said partner, if he knew they had been sentenced to death.

As fast as they could, knowing they were facing an authority (Adrian had asked them to be with him in the room), the wardens brought her right away, in a matter of minutes.

Through the glass, Simon saw her, on the metal platform, with her arms and legs being held, tightly, by braces, which were equally made of metal. For the look in her eye, Simon could almost hear her desperate begs for her visitor not to be Adrian. Yet, he had been, and he wasn’t alone, which, if anything, only made it worse.

Simon, from his part, was staring at two different glasses at the time. The one that divided them from Nova, and Adrian’s glasses, which revealed the pain he was penetrating Nova’s soul with, and also the rage he was entitled to feel.

But Nova looked small.

She, in fact, looked as small as she actually was.

She was almost a kid. She hadn’t yet started living. Yet, she was locked up here, and would only be taken out to be killed.

Nova’s body was shaking, just like Adrian’s. Her chin was quivering so much it almost seemed like she was cold, and Simon felt a twinge in his stomach. He felt nauseous and dizzy. And so evil and so guilty.

For some reason, he pictured a child, because Nova had been a younger child once, full of joy and innocence.

He pictured a child. Just like that.

Maybe she was wearing pigtails, had a gap between two of her teeth, and bruised legs, because she liked to play outside with her friends. Maybe, before she became Nightmare, she had something else to hold on to. Maybe she, like many people out there, had hoped for the Renegades to come, and when they didn’t do it, something became numb, and cold, and she started freezing to death, just like she would remain freezing, suspended in History, as the interrupted life who was the proof the Renegades had become the one thing they promised they would never be.

And Simon didn’t want to be part of that, yet he was still here.

He was still here, thinking about how fortunate he was that Nova wasn’t staring back at him, but at Adrian instead, as selfish as that might’ve sounded.

Simon felt he had lost the right to look her in the eye, having been the one who promised her, on several occasions, that she could look into theirs.

With each one of his limbs becoming tense, Simon took a deep breath. His mouth tasted like bile, and his whole body was pounding along with this heart. It felt like one of those times when you were almost a hundred percent sure you were having a heart attack, despite knowing that, if that was the case, you would already be on the floor crying for help.

Next thing he felt was the sudden and strong urge to speak.

He would’ve liked to talk to Nova, but through this glass, she couldn’t hear anything.

Besides, Simon knew that this moment wasn’t about him, or Hugh. They were involved in it. They were carrying it in their backs like a cross, but it wasn’t about them. It was about Nova and Adrian. There was glass between the two. They could press their hands together through it, but they couldn’t touch the other’s skin. They couldn’t feel the air the other breathed in the short distance. They couldn’t kiss. It was scary. It was sad. And it wasn’t awfully familiar.

But it wasn’t about Simon or Hugh.

“Do you need some privacy?” Simon asked, perhaps to both of them, knowing one wouldn’t be able to hear him, even if she tried.

In response, Adrian turned his gaze away from Nova, staring at Simon instead, nodding.

“I think that would be nice.”

Before Simon could say anything else, Hugh reached for his son’s shoulder, and once he touched it, he caressed the fabric, and the skin beneath the fabric, briefly.

“We’ll be in the lobby.”

Adrian nodded again and then, after gulping, he said:

“I love you, okay?”

The weird thing was, he didn’t look them in the eye for much. He did, but he turned his gaze away pretty fast, barely leaving time to process his own words. For that reason, nor Hugh or him responded.

They left right after that, leaving Adrian alone inside the room.

With Nova, but alone.

-.-

They dropped Adrian at the hospital once they left Cragmoon. There was barely any sound throughout the whole ride, except when Hugh asked if they wanted something from the store, and when they said goodbye to Adrian.

Obviously, Adrian couldn’t get close to Max. Not if he wanted to avoid being neutralized by him, but sometimes, according to Adrian himself, he liked to stay in the waiting room, and help the staff with whatever they needed, for he liked Max to know he came to visit often, and that he wasn’t alone, even if he couldn’t touch, or be in the same room with him. So they just allowed him to stay in the hospital as much as he needed. After all, it’s not like he was hurting anybody.

After that, everything was silent, all the way home, because, instead of driving towards the Headquarters, Hugh drove towards the mansion, leaving Tamaya in charge, under the excuse they would take a two hour break to have lunch together at home. She wasn’t so happy about it, but agreed anyway, because it’s not like Hugh had given her an option in the first place. He had just notified her. At this point, Hugh’s volume was getting the tiniest bit loud. And Simon wasn’t talking about his voice.

Upon arriving into the house, Hugh threw the keys by the entrance’s table and proceeded to walk all the way towards the living room, to lay on the couch, one arm covering his eyes, without even taking his costume off. He didn’t have a reason to, because they were supposed to be back at the Headquarters in two hours and, besides, the elephant in the room was making it cold. Maybe he felt his armor would protect him from what they were doing, and from what they were still doing.

Sadly, the fabric of Simon’s costume wasn’t as warm. And as he took his mask off and placed it next to keys, he felt nothing but cold wind. He was back again at being Simon, and Simon only, without anything protecting him, in the same room as the husband who rarely ever kissed him anymore.

There was an elephant in the room, and it was killing both of them, though Hugh looked like he was already dead.

Simon tried not to pay attention to him, but when he was crossing to the kitchen, he couldn’t help but ask, in an unintentionally harsh tone:

“Are we going to have lunch or did you just want to make Tamaya more stressed?”

Hugh lowered his arm, staring at him with an arched eyebrow, lifting his neck just a little, to have a clearer view. Simon was starting to feel bad for having snapped at him, but not enough to take it back.

Sometimes you had to do the right thing, and sometimes the right thing was not taking it back.

His husband, from his part, looked rather confused, as if he couldn’t recognize the person in front of him.

“Are you feeling okay?” He asked.

The question caught him off guard.

Was he okay? Simon wasn’t sure, nor did he want to answer. In times like these, Hugh wanted people to answer him what he wanted to hear and, sadly, this time Simon didn’t have any answer he would like.

“Did you take your pills, Si?”

Something inside of his body turned into a tight knot, and Simon turned his gaze towards him, in a violent act. He frowned so deeply he felt his skin itching, and though he knew that, under normal circumstances, he would’ve just interpreted this as a routinary question, this time it wasn’t the case at all. This time it felt like an attack. Like something Hugh had to take back immediately because it was not his place to ask it, that is: a question he always asked anyway.

But not this time.

Because ,this time, he wasn’t okay.

“Don’t pull the anxiety card on me, Hugh.” Saying that left a bitter, disgusting firm on his mouth, right under his tongue, which was dry. He felt like he had just chewed on a pill.

“The anxie--” Hugh narrowed his eyes, shifting into a sitting position. “I’m not pulling that card on you. I’m just asking a question.”

“Then don’t ask that question.” Simon snapped again, heading towards the kitchen to get a class of water. His feet were making too much noise when in contact with the floor, and his mouth was too dry. It was making him crazy.

It was only then that he realized they still had something else pending, and for some reason that was enough to make him stay. Simon spun on his toes, facing him. Hugh was breathing heavily, and his brows were almost touching each other.

“You didn’t answer my question, though.” He told him, in a dry tone. “Did you want to have lunch with me or did you just think taking a break while Tamaya loses her mind would be fun?”

“If Tamaya didn’t want to be in charge, she would’ve told me, and you know that.”

“Tamaya talks back when she is given a chance to.”

An empty feeling of freedom filled Simon’s body, pushing his way into the hollow all his mixed feelings had been carving at the center of his stomach.

And it wasn’t just about Tamaya, really. It wasn’t just about how lately none of her ideas were taken into consideration. Rather, it was about how nor were Kasumi’s, or his own ideas, when they tried to speak up. It was about how things were getting weirder and weirder as time went by, to the point where Simon would see a very pregnant Tamaya in the hallway, apparently fine, but stating she didn’t know if her water was breaking or if she just really needed to use the restroom (the restroom where she didn’t fit in); it was about how everyone knew damn well that Kasumi wasn’t good at public speaking and that, if anything, it just worsened her selective mutism, and yet many important speeches were given to her; it was about how Simon felt like he was talking to a wall, and how that made him feel, suspect, even, that Hugh was back to being trapped in a closet he was already too big for.

It wasn’t just about that, in conclusion.

It was just the tip of a bigger and more messed up problem.

“Well, if you want Tamaya to go bathe in her Greek goddess shower-pool-whatever that thing is, then fine. I’ll call her, I’ll tell her to take the day off, and we go back to the Headquarters.”

“That would be great, actually!” Simon laughed sarcastically. “But you know what would be even better?”

“I don’t, Si. You tell me.”

It was a rhetorical question.

The nerve.

“That we would act like a team. That we would stop lollygagging around and take realistic turns to have our breaks, because each one of us have lives, and we’re not the only ones who have needs.” And that was about Kasumi feeling like she couldn’t do it today but having to anyway; it was about Tamaya crying in the BBQ Sunday, explaining to her husband how she wanted her baby to be with her, as a baby bawled into her arms, trying to reach for his father, because she spent so little time at home her youngest son wouldn’t recognize her sometimes; it was about Evander claiming Sandy didn’t feel like being alone with her baby bump today, but showing up at work anyway.

And yes, they had pledged to do this, but they were supposed to be in it together.

“But how should I know?” Simon hissed. “It’s not like we’re a Council or anything.”

The bile was all over his mouth now, and Simon felt possessed. He didn’t know how to stop it, and the words just kept coming, and coming and coming, as Hugh stared, half-startled, half mad.

Simon felt like he was a loaded gun that was ready to kill everything that moved, for a reason and a cause.

All those repressed feelings. All those things he desperately wanted to say but never could. The anxiety. The desperate, insatiable craving for a touch that never came. For a kiss. For anything. For a sign. A sign of whatever. One single sign, that would just let him know Hugh was still here.

“It’s not like you needed the majority of us to agree to sentence that minor to death.” He let it go, and all the air, along with his soul, left Simon’s body. “It’s not like Evander and you needed such thing, did you?”

Hugh’s confusion frown suddenly shifted.

Then, all Simon saw was the embodiment of anger, with his cheeks becoming flushed, and his knuckles becoming yellow.

“So that’s what this is all about.”

There was one word to describe that tone, and that word was condescension.

To Simon, the gut-wrenching feeling of frustration that caused him was indiscriptable, and he didn’t wish it to anybody. He would’ve preferred Hugh to scream at him, or just refuse to answer at all, because he couldn’t take it.

He had had people talking down to him his entire life. He wasn’t willing to keep tolerating that.

And in the moment he stared into Hugh’s blue eyes, Simon knew there was no turning back. Because sometimes the right thing to do was not taking it back.

Others, it was not holding it back.

“No. In fact, it’s not about that.”

“WHAT IS IT, THEN?!”

“YOU TELL ME!” Simon howled, getting one step closer to him, and all the memories started flowing...more likely, overflowing, including that time when he had talked to Kasumi and Tamaya in the living room, just like as if they were teenagers, instead of grown ass people, about how Hugh was leaving, even though he was still right there.

Right there, looking like a corpse.

A blue, stiff corpse.

“Why don’t you ever kiss me anymore?” Simon asked, and his voice sounded way less threatening than he had intended. “Why?”

“Are you really going to pull that card on me?”

“I am going to pull it because I want to know!” Simon barked, pointing at his own chest, which was getting tighter and tighter with every second. “Why don’t you ever touch me anymore? Why am I always invisible to you, even when I’m not? Why are you so fucking cold all the time? Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?!”

Hugh wheezed, maybe pretending it didn’t make sense, or maybe pretending he hadn’t understood at all. Still smirking, he ran his fingers through his hair, and stared at Simon, scratching his chin, and clicking his tongue.

“So...Sex.”

Simon’s heart was pounding.

“Yes, sex!” He yelled, shameless. “And kisses, and hugs and my husband! That is what am I asking for!”

“WHAT DO YOU EXPECT ME TO DO?! WE’RE BUSY!”

“WE’RE NOT BUSY NOW!”

“SO YOU WANT TO GET LAID NOW?!”

“I’M NOT GETTING LAID WHILE THINKING ABOUT HOW A CHILD WILL BE EXECUTED BY ANOTHER CHILD BECAUSE I WASN’T ALLOWED TO DO ANYTHING TO STOP IT FROM HAPPENING!”

“SHE TRIED TO KILL ME! SHE TRIED TO KILL MAX!”

“FIRST: AN ATTEMPTED ASSASINATION IS NOT ENOUGH TO GIVE SOMEBODY A DEATH PENALTY, AND, SECOND: THAT’S WHAT GENISSA SAID!”

“ISN’T THAT ENOUGH?!”

“THAT’S NOT ENOUGH!” Simon screamed, covering his ears with hands.

He didn’t know why, specifically, the ears, knowing that, in reality, his eyes were the problem, because every time he closed them, he saw Nova in that chair, like an animal. And he saw Genissa standing in the lobby, playing with them like puppets; he saw Evander’s despicable smirk when he told Genissa to go ahead; he saw Adrian’s furious eyes as he called his own dad a dictator; he saw Hugh.

Mostly, he saw Hugh, and the caricaturesque villain version of him, which Simon despised with every inch of his being.

Then he was back at the beginning. At Nova.

Nova, who had tan skin, pitch black hair and slanted blue eyes. And Nova, who looked familiar when she smiled, because she looked similar to that man who had come to the Headquarters asking for help, whose smile looked similar to the other person who carried their blood.

And Simon couldn’t help but consider it as a real possibility. And if he happened to be right, then they were failing her.

For the second time.

“It’ll never be enough, Hugh.” He declared. “Because she…”

Simon’s internal knots became tighter, to the point they were suffocating him.

“How do we know who this girl is?” he questioned. “How do we know it isn’t her?”

“Her, who? What are you talking about?”

“Her. The one we failed to protect.” Simon felt a tear slipping from his eye, as he became closer and Hugh walked backwards. “Uh? How do we know that? How do we…?”

But something stopped him.

And that something was Hugh’s eyes, turning grey as chromium.

He was breathing fast. Faster with every second, and where maybe he saw anger, Simon saw nothing but deep, stored pain, flowing out of him like sweat, or like the tears that weren’t there.

There was Hugh’s bleeding shell again, protecting him like he was a small child curled up on the floor, in a ball, through a polarized surface where Simon and him couldn’t touch, and where nothing could hurt him, while everything could at the same time.

There it was.

The despicable, horrid, bleeding shell.

Except this time it wasn’t bleeding. No. No.

This time, the dense, bubbling blood was falling off it, reaching Simon’s feet, and the shell was in flames. Tall, untamable flames, that were burning the roof and everything surrounding them.

The shell was burning, while Hugh was inside of it, and nobody could get him out before he was burned to death.

Why didn’t he let anyone help him?

Why did he insist the flames weren’t there?

Why couldn’t Simon hold his hand?

Why was he so far?

“We didn’t fail to protect her. She died.” Hugh declared, and when Simon saw his lips quivering, he realized they weren’t talking about Nova anymore.

“She didn’t fail. She died. “ Simon saw the silver painting Hugh’s fingertips, as tears started rolling down his face. “She died! SHE DIED, WHEN IT SHOULD’VE BEEN ME, SIMON!”

The bleeding shell was burning, and Simon still couldn’t find his way in.

“IT SHOULD’VE BEEN ME! AND SHE DIED! SHE DIDN’T FAIL TO PROTECT ANYONE! SHE DIED! IT SHOULD’VE BEEN ME! SHE DIED, SIMON! SHE DIED!”

Their eyes met for a couple of second, and the connection vanished after a blink.

“IT’S NOT HER FAULT SHE DIED, IT’S MINE!”

Hugh was sobbing, like a small child, and Simon was too.

“...It’s...it’s mine, Simon. Always has been.”

And they were so far, despite being so close, that they were left with holding themselves tight.

Because there was no way to get into the burning shell, for Hugh, strangely as it sounded, had never said those words out loud, because he thought the picture on the wall behind him, the one with the woman wearing a floral pink dress with their son -who was also hers- sitting on her lap, would hear him and that would make her sad.

Yet, Simon knew she wasn’t sad at the moment.

He knew her well enough to know she would’ve been disappointed, instead.

Anybody would be if they had to see their family kill the one thing they had died trying to protect.

“No.” Simon declared, calmly. “But I’m not going to go and try to convince you otherwise because I know it’s not the right time.”

Hugh started shaking.

“Si…”

“And I won’t be a part of this, either.” Simon declared, firm, still staring at the picture through the corner of his eye, yet still fully focused on Hugh. “From now on, all you’ll get from me is silence in regards to the issue. I’m not willing to be a part of it. I don’t agree with this. I will never agree.”

“You don’t understand.”

“And I’m glad I don’t. In fact, I hope I never do.” Simon wiped his tears with his palm, and before continuing, he tried to find his Hugh one more time.

He was still there.

Simon hadn’t yet given up on him, but he didn’t feel like telling him that at the moment.

For some reason.

“If Adrian wants to see me, tell him I’ll be at Kasumi’s.”

“Simon.” Hugh grabbed him by the wrist, and a simple wave from Simon’s hand was enough to get it off. Way too easy, for a person who happened to have super-strength. “Simon, please. Don’t do this again. Please. SIMON!”

But Simon did it again anyway.

Later, he wondered what Adrian had felt when he abducted Max from the hospital and left a note for them.

He also wondered what everyone else had felt when the real Nightmare showed up.

Not that he was mad at them.

He just wondered what they had felt.

#renegades trilogy #dawnie writes #renegays #humon #simon westwood #the dread warder #hugh everhart #captain chromium #nova artino #nightmare #adrian everhart-westwood #sketch

39 notes · View notes

oboevallis · 4 years

Text

quarantine blues

hey! sorry it’s been a minute since ive posted. a new chapter of unexpected should be up soon and it’s set a bit into the future. this fic i had a couple of prints for and kinda combines them, so i hope y’all like it and are doing well and staying safe!

Amelia dramatically sighed as she fell back into the couch. Scout had been especially fussy lately, Link acted as though he was a child and not an adult, and the kids were giving her a hard time. She knew everyone was under a great deal of discomfort and stress regarding quarantine and the pandemic, but she was at her wits end being blamed by the kids. As if she had planned the whole pandemic to happen just so they could be isolated from their mother. As easy as it was to lose her temper she knew she was the adult and could process her emotions, the kids were still kids so she knew she couldn’t expect the same level of understanding from them. She glanced over to the digital clock reading ‘3:27am’, she hadn’t been able to sleep with Scouts sporadic eating schedule, and resented her boyfriend for being able to get a somewhat decent nights sleep. She knew she shouldn’t have been complaining because Link was up all day wrestling the kids to do their homework and keeping them occupied, so her having to stay up taking care of the baby should’ve been a somewhat fair trade off. But Amelia was mad at everything, all she wished was for none of this to have happened.

“Auntie Amelia?” A small voice came from the dark hallway of the living room, slightly starling the older woman.

“Zozo? What’s the matter?” She reached her arms out for the girl, but she sat at the other end of the couch, so she awkwardly put her arms back to her sides. The girl shrugged her shoulders and looked down at her hands. “I can’t help if you don’t talk to me.”

“I-is my mom dead?” Zola asked tears forming in the corners of her eyes, as much as she didn’t want to ask she was desperate for an answer.

“No.” Amelia said firmly, yet reassuringly. “She’s sick, but she has an amazing team of doctors working for her, and they put her in something called a trial to try some medicine out to see if it’ll help her.” She stood up and sat a little closer to the girl, but respected the girls desire for space.

“Why can’t we speak to her? We used to FaceTime her when she was working and then we did for a little bit just when she got sick but now we never get to.”

“Your moms in something called a coma. Her body just needs a little break. It’s kind of like a really really long nap.”

“She’s not dead?”

“She’s not dead.”

“Good.” Zola nodded, before tears streamed down her eyes. Amelia couldn’t help herself and she wrapped the girl in her arms and the girl happily obliged allowing her tears to fall onto her aunts shirt. “Could she die though?”

“Your mom is a fighter, she’s been through so so so much and she’s always survived. There is a possibility though, there’s a lot of things we don’t know about this virus. Your mom’s as strong as they get though.” As much as Amelia wanted to lie and say that Meredith was going to be fine, she knew it wasn’t fair to the girl. Zola was wise beyond on her years, she would’ve seen right through the lies. Kids like Zola need the whole truth so they could properly access the situation themselves. “I want you to know you have a big group of people who love you so so so much. And whatever happens your gonna be okay.”

“Thanks auntie Amelia.”

“Of course. I’m always here if you need to talk.” Zola nodded and allowed herself to fall deeper into her aunts embrace.

________________________________________

Once Amelia settled Zola into bed she made her way into her own bedroom where she found her boyfriend cradling their wide awake son. She smiled at the sight and quietly moved to sit beside the pair, leaning her head on his shoulder. She was content being in the presence of her favorite people, here it felt like nothing was wrong in the world it was just the three of them. A soft knock jarring her out of her peaceful thoughts, she stood up to open the door revealing a distraught Bailey.

“Hey what’s the matter?”

“I had a bad dream.” He confessed softly, clinging his arms to wrap around his aunts legs.

“Want to sleep with me and Uncke Link tonight?” He nodded and walked over to their bed making himself comfortable in the middle of it. Amelia smiled and made her way over to her side of the bed, and pulled the boy into her embrace. “May I ask what your dream was about?”

“I don’t remember. I just remember waking up scared.” He nuzzled his head into his aunts shoulder.

“It’s pretty scary right now.” The older woman confessed, the young boy nodding in agreement. “It’s come to my attention I haven’t really been explaining what’s happening with your mom right now. The only reason she hasn’t called is because she’s in this thing called a coma so basically she’s just sleeping for a little bit until her body is ready to work better. Make sense?”

“Yeah.” He said softly. His dream had been about his mother which made him sad and scared. He was sad he didn’t get to see her, and scared because he knew she was sick. But his aunts reassurances made him a little less scared. “Can I ask a question?”

“Of course.” Amelia nodded, slightly scared for the question that was about to come her way, but to her luck her boyfriend had just put the baby in his crib allowing him to slipinto their bed behind her shifting them all towards the left side, so she knew wasn’t going to face this question alone.

“What happens if my mommy doesn’t get better? Will Me and Zola and Ellis go to an orphanage?”

“No, you won’t. You’ll stay right here at home, with Uncle Link, auntie Maggie and I.” She loved these kids as her own and would do anything for them, but hoped it wouldn’t come to that. They need Meredith, she was their mother. There were so many things she’s still needed to teach her kids, and things she still needed her sisters guidance on.

“But guess what, Bailey?” Link said wrapping his arm around his girlfriend to comfort her a bit. “Your mom is super duper strong, kinda like ‘The Hulk’ she’s a fighter, and I know she’s fighting really really hard for you and your sisters.”

“My moms nothing like ‘The Hulk’” Bailey giggled at the ridiculous statement.

“Your wrong she’s a lot like him. She’s super strong, super smart, she heals people, and have you seen her when she gets mad?” The young boy seemed to consider this before admitting his uncle had a point. Amelia fell asleep between the two as they rambled on about superheroes, before the two also succumbed to sleep.

_______________________________________

“Hey Elle Belle.” Amelia smiled as she leaned against the doorway to her room. After her conversations with the other kids she needed to check in and see how the youngest was holding up.

“Hi.” The girl sighed softly, looking up from her dolls.

“Can I play with you?” The girl simply nodded in response, her aunt lowering herself down slowly onto the floor next to her niece. Ellis explained the characters and what was happening, and the two played peacefully with one another, before the girl spoke up.

“When will we be able to go back to school, and when will mommy come home from work?” The girl put the doll she was playing with down and expectingly looked at her aunt.

“I don’t know.” Amelia admitted honestly. “But the more everyone cooperates and follows the rules the sickness could go away faster. And once the doctors find a vaccine that’ll help a lot too.”

“Are you making a vaccine? Or mommy or auntie Maggie?”

“No, we aren’t those kinds of doctors. Your auntie Maggie is helping people with the sickness feel better, and right now your mom has the sickness, but she has a really really good group of doctors work on her.”

“That’s good. All the doctors mommy works with are really smart.”

“Yeah, your right.” The neurosurgeon smiled to herself, Ellis had been picking up on Links optimism.

“Will you need to go back to work?”

“Well.” Amelia felt useless being at the house, while people were dying everyday, but she had a baby who depended on her and a trio of kids who did as well. “Not right now, I’m still on maternity leave. If they need help with a case I’ll go in, but I’m going to be here with you kids.”

“That’s good.” Ellis nodded twirling the dolls hair in her hand. “I’d be sad if we couldn’t see you. Like we can’t see mommy and auntie Maggie.” The girl then moved herself and into her aunts lap.

“I’m not going anywhere.” Amelia whispered holding the girl tightly, trying her hardest not to cry.

#amelia shepherd #amelink #atticus lincoln #baby amelink #greys anatomy #greysanatomy #greys fanfic #greys anatomy fanfic #zola shepherd #bailey shepherd #ellis shepherd #scout lincoln

28 notes · View notes

libermachinae · 3 years

Text

Fault Lines Under the Living Room

Part II: Breathe - Chapter 7: Filter Out

Also available on AO3 Summary: The pair continues to search for common ground. Word Count: 4818

---

Working silently from there on, Ratchet and Rodimus cleaned, drained, and stacked every cube from the damaged crate. Rodimus pulled up his old music files, and though Ratchet mentally complained about the first few tracks, it gave them something to focus on other than each other.

Eventually, though, Rodimus’ mind did start to wander further than the music could reel him back in. What was behind the locked door? Ratchet said it was just recharge stations, but what if he was wrong? They still didn’t know where Arcee had gotten this ship and its cargo; how could they truly feel secure that they had found its worst secret? Especially given their own ship’s track record for transporting dangerous secret—

“The cargo bay’s got to be a disaster,” Ratchet said, just to break that line of thought before it could ensnare them both.

“Knowing what kind of firepower Cons take with them on an afternoon walk, we’re probably lucky the whole ship didn’t get blow up,” Rodimus said.

Ratchet did a commendable job trying not to laugh, save for the fact that he thought about it. Despite everything, Rodimus grinned.

“We should go check it out,” he said, dumping the cube in his hands into the drum before standing up. “Whatever’s down there has got to be more exciting than this.”

“Not so fast,” Ratchet said, mind and optics still on the task. “We need to finish this. Every moment we waste is more fuel lost.” The puddle that had formed from the yet-undiscovered broken cubes was sizable, but the pile that yet remained was not.

“We can mop it up,” Rodimus said. Feeling the way Ratchet balked at the idea (unsanitary, he called it, even though that fuel was going straight to the engines anyway), he shrugged and took a step back. “Or not. You can keep working on this while I scope it out.”

And risk Rodimus finding another artifact that—that blew them up? No, absolutely not.

“We’ll go down together,” Ratchet said, and he would hear no argument.

But Rodimus had built his reputation on insubordination, and he said as much, out loud, unaware he had done so. He spun around and marched to the stairs, Ratchet’s bolt of panic only adding to his frustration. He wasn’t some freshly forged protoform, so accident prone as to be literally dripping with corrosive material.

No, Ratchet agreed, he was an adult bot with a lifetime of experience and not a lick of wisdom to show for it: infinitely more dangerous.

“I try,” Rodimus snapped. He didn’t want to, but it felt good. “Not all the time, because I’m an idiot, but I do try to do the right thing and learn from my mistakes. I don’t hang on to people who have betrayed me and I try to keep myself out of situations that have screwed me in the past. And then I still get knocked down sometimes because life sucks life that, but it’s not—I’m not—” Lazy. Selfish. Stupid.

He hated that not only could Ratchet hear the words, but could feel how they burned Rodimus and made the hate he felt towards himself just that much sharper. So, it took him a moment to realize that Ratchet’s head had not gone silent, but was instead repeating Rodimus’ words back at him as he analyzed them. Great, he wanted to form an opinion.

“I’m trying to understand,” Ratchet shot back. Still annoyed, but in the chronic sense Ratchet was known for. “You’re so—” Impossible. “—defensive. I don’t know one moment to the next whether you’ll be apologizing for something or making excuses.”

“I’m not trying to make excuses,” Rodimus said. He shouldn’t be looking at the ground, but Ratchet’s gaze was painful. “I don’t like other people telling me how I think.” Even though you can see it now. You don’t get it.

Ratchet didn’t get it. He didn’t understand how anyone could function with that much going on at once, so much of it conflicting and bouncing off each other. Of course Rodimus would be prone to make mistakes, when getting a coherent thought in was next to—

“Stop saying that!” Rodimus snapped.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You know what I mean!”

“So, I’m the one who has to control what I think?”

“If it’s so easy for you.”

It wasn’t easy. It took effort to not think about something (like Drift, like Delphi, like how impossible Rodimus was), and Ratchet was already expending enough of that trying to keep himself calm.

“Sorry to have made you waste the energy,” Rodimus huffed, not sorry at all.

“It’s—” And Ratchet stopped himself before he could make this worse, because Rodimus was right about one thing: it was a waste of energy to keep fighting, especially when he could barely keep track of what they were fighting about.

You hate me, Rodimus automatically supplied.

“No, stop it,” Ratchet said. “That’s not useful.”

“Truth’s not always useful,” Rodimus shot back, like a discount Primeism.

Ratchet felt bad about thinking that the moment Rodimus caught it.

“Look, kid,” he said, careful not to meet Rodimus’ optics. There was only so much Rodimus he could handle at once. “I don’t hate you. I don’t,” he insisted when he felt Rodimus’ disbelief. “You don’t need me to tell you again that you’ve made mistakes, but if that alone was worthy of being hated for, I’d be a slagging lonely bot.” He touched his chevron and let the weight of his helm rest on his hand. “You’re as angry at yourself as I was, which tells me you want to change. It’s more practical for me to believe that and help you where I can than to keep holding on to this.”

It would be hard. There were some who would find Rodimus’ mistakes unforgivable, and rightly so; not everyone was lucky enough to crawl back from the pits. But Ratchet’s resentment was not planted so deep, and with effort on both their parts, he knew it could be uprooted.

“However I make it seem on a bad day, I don’t actually want us to be miserable the whole way there,” he finished. He was a healer. It would be unfaithful to his vows to keep inflicting this emotional harm on them both.

He glanced down at the task they had abandoned in favor of arguing. At least one or two cubes were still leaking, but Rodimus had a point that the fuel loss would be negligible. They could take a break to explore the rest of their ship.

“I don’t need an escort,” Rodimus said. Despite seeing the rationale behind Ratchet’s decision, his thoughts still felt prickly and uncomfortable. He didn’t trust Ratchet to keep his word.

“I know,” Ratchet said. “I’m not supervising you. You’re right that we don’t know what’s down there. I’ll be there to watch your back.” And you’ll watch mine.

And I’ll watch yours. Their thoughts overlapped and rather than clash, they blended.

They ventured down together, Rodimus in the lead while Ratchet followed at a more sedate pace, taking in the details as he could. Not that there was much order to be found in the mess. The contents of the hold, already thrown into disarray by Rodimus’ frantic search, now seemed beyond any hope of order: weapons and their parts lay among repair tools, containers of unknown fluids smashed open and dripping into delicate electronics.

Half of this stuff was probably unsalvageable, Ratchet thought, and the rest were weapons: handguns, shotguns, cannons, and grenades of every variety. Rodimus even noticed a few swords among the mix, though none so nice as Drift’s. Ratchet pressed at how he could judge the quality of a sword, and Rodimus idly admitted that he couldn’t. They just didn’t look as cool.

“Sorry,” he said. He didn’t mean to keep coming back to Drift.

“I get it,” Ratchet said as he stepped further in, going for a cabinet that might hold something other than weapons. “He’s very present.”

“He’s spooky like that.” Rodimus took Ratchet’s interest as permission to begin exploring. He tiptoed as he went, careful not to disturb anything lest he start a chain reaction, but the piles and mess were already settled. Nothing moved as he waded in.

Rodimus wondered how it would feel to Drift, to be approached by a Decepticon ship chock full of weapons.

“Not like we can do anything about it,” Ratchet said. The first couple drawers he had opened were full of disorganized ammo and magazines, but the third was a packed collection of promising metal boxes. He pulled one out.

“I wasn’t actually asking,” Rodimus clarified as he finally reached down to extract a handgun.

“I know,” Ratchet said. The lid was stuck tight; if there were medical supplies inside, he would need some way to test they were still usable.

“So, you didn’t need to answer.” It wasn’t a gun at all, it turned out: it was a grappling hook.

“You’re going to get one whether I intend to or not.”

“Fair point.” Rodimus aimed the grappling hook across the room, wondering what its range was.

“Don’t you dare,” Ratchet warned, right as he popped off the lid. He discovered inside a few vials of unlabeled powders and fluids. They looked like the ingredients to produce some of the more common data dampeners, but without a test kit Ratchet had no way to be sure.

Rodimus lowered the grappling hook, mildly annoyed, but Ratchet’s thoughts caught his curiosity and he came circling back.

“Can I see?” he asked, holding out his hand. Ratchet obliged and Rodimus took the box, peering closely at the contents.

“Yeah, it’s a syk kit,” he said, tucking the grappling hook under one arm so he could pull out a vial and hold it to the light. “Nice one, too. I thought Kimia was the only place you could get materials that fine.”

“Decepticons had their own labs,” Ratchet said, though he also would not have been surprised to learn that the cross-faction drug trade had gone beyond the cheaper to produce circuit boosters.

“That’s true,” Rodimus said. He was getting an idea, and Ratchet immediately shook his head.

“No,” he said.

Rodimus’ expression was steady, but his emotions were expanding again. Some hurt, some curiosity, some frustration.

“It’s just an idea,” he said. “If I can calm down for little bits at a time, maybe we’ll be able to get through this without blowing up at each other anymore.”

“Do you have any idea how much sediment I’ve had to scrape off idiots’ brain cases?” Ratchet demanded. “A single impurity could cause your whole processor to melt down.” Even those he managed to recover never came back exactly as they had been. In best case scenarios, the changes weren’t apparent until after they had left his office: subtle shifts in mannerism, a change in fuel preference. The worst… Ratchet had seen a bot’s entire language core corroded as a result of bad materials. He didn’t care the depth of experience and knowledge Rodimus was broadcasting to him, it was a risk he wouldn’t allow any friend to take while they still had a choice.

Rodimus had faced worse in Nyon than a few bad trips, worse on the frontlines than suddenly coming back to consciousness with a gun in his hands. It wasn’t a solution, no, but at certain times it was the best a bot could hope for. Maybe right now happened to be one of them.

Ratchet tried to grab the box back, but his thoughts projected his intentions and Rodimus easily dodged him.

“People need you, Ratchet,” Rodimus said. “Not just Drift; everyone on the Lost Light relies on you.” Exaggeration, plain and simple. Rodimus ignored him. “If something were to happen to me, Ultra Magnus and Megatron can keep things running, but you need to get back in one piece.”

That wasn’t true, not in the slightest. And, Ratchet found, it didn’t matter.

“Not everything is about what’s best for other people,” he said. They were out here to look for a solution, and none were viable that did not result in both of them continuing their lives afterward as best they could.

He felt something quake in Rodimus, a distraction just powerful enough to give him a chance to grab the box back. He barely had a moment’s satisfaction, though, before a pounding emotion hit him with blunt force. It was deep, but not in the sense of a hole, where one might find safety or comfort; it was deep like the emptiness of space, yawning wider and more oppressive the deeper one sunk into it. Ratchet squeezed the box between his fingers, disengaging from Rodimus’ thoughts and retreating back into his own.

Ratchet stared at Rodimus, who from the outside looked normal. A bit tense, but no more so than he usually looked when they got into one of their spats. Had he not had this perfect window, he would have missed the storm entirely.

“Rodimus…” This was beyond his scope.

Rodimus opened his mouth, but he didn’t say anything. He was horrified.

He shouldn’t have seen that, Ratchet realized. Whatever injustice they might fight about next, whatever disagreement they came to over whether something was right or okay, nothing could excuse such a breach of privacy.

No one had ever seen that before. Certainly not Drift.

“Okay,” Ratchet said. Without turning around, he put the box back in the drawer and shut it. “Do you want to be alone?”

“God, yes,” Rodimus said. He had been doing so well not going to that place. Of course he had been a fool to hope he could keep it up a whole week, but he’d hoped to go a few days, at least, maybe wait until Ratchet was in recharge before he let himself fall back into—

“Come on,” Ratchet said. “Let’s go upstairs.” Out of the mess, the forgotten scraps of violence that had chased them throughout their lives.

Ratchet led them back up to the bridge and seated Rodimus in the captain’s chair. He wanted—he didn’t want—Primus, it was so hard to think when everything kept circling, he wished Ratchet hadn’t seen that—

“Can you teach me how to meditate?” Ratchet asked, using the tone of voice he was finding worked well to break them from a loop.

“Huh?” Despite that, it still took Rodimus a moment to understand. “I was terrible at it, remember? Couldn’t sit still.”

“And sometimes the worst students make the best teachers.”

Yeah, like he would know. Ratchet had probably aced every class he had ever been in.

That actually got a laugh out of him.

“Me?” Ratchet said. “Frag no, my early years were a disaster. Almost flunked out one semester, considered dropping out the next. If it hadn’t been for one of my instructors stepping in and deciding I was worth something, I probably wouldn’t have made it to my residency.”

Ratchet had been lucky in many ways. It was, of course, the Functionist Council that had decided he should go into medicine, and he had gone along with it out of the assurance that it was what he was built for. The early rhetoric had him thinking that he would be able to breeze through and grab his high-paying job on the way out; only once he was in the thick of it had he realized that not only was it a great deal of work to become a doctor, but there was also a real chance he could fail on the way. It had only been Glass and his kind yet brutal way of teaching that had helped Ratchet onto the right path.

Rodimus wasn’t sure what to do with all that information. Ratchet shrugged.

“It’s all ancient history,” he said. “Just hope I didn’t scare you off of trying to teach me.”

“I never agreed,” Rodimus said, but he was thinking about it. Even if they only managed a few minutes, a distraction would be good for them, anything to push them farther away from that.

“Come on,” Ratchet said, helping him up again.

It only took a few minutes to hack their way into the recharge closets at the back of the ship. On an Autobot vessel, the crew’s recharge docks would have shared a common room, but the Decepticons had divided them into four cramped compartments. Something about reducing the risk of getting stabbed in recharge, Ratchet suspected, not that he would have thought reduced visibility would help much. Half the rooms contained four berths each, stacked in two bunks, and the others each contained a single large slab likely meant for a heavy.

The bunks were just tall enough for a bot to crawl on for recharge, inadequate for sitting up straight, so they took over one of the larger berths. Perched at the foot, Rodimus watched in silence as Ratchet climbed on the other end and got himself situated.

“Am I doing this right?” he asked. For all the mindfulness seminars he had dozed through, Ratchet had very little idea of what actually went into meditating. He had stumbled into Drift practicing a couple times in out of the way yet distinctly visible spots, but he had not bothered to inspect the minutia of his activity. The one exception had been the time he had stumbled upon Drift with his foot twisted up behind his head, but he had never figured out whether that was supposed to be meditation or just showing off.

“Um.” Rodimus thought back. “Sit however’s comfortable for you. But, like, actively.” A straight back was the most important thing. When Rodimus had started fidgeting, Drift had let him try it standing up, and then gently pacing. He doubted Ratchet would have that problem, though, so they stuck with sitting side by side, their legs dangling off the berth.

“And now?” Ratchet asked.

“Power down your optics,” Rodimus said. Drift had offered a soft reassurance here, that they were alone and safe, but Rodimus doubted he could capture the same sense of security Drift imparted, so he skipped it. “Don’t do anything yet. Just sit with it. Pay attention to your body. Think—I mean. Feel it. How it feels.”

As though Ratchet could ever get away from feeling his body, the persistent aches and tugs that accompanied years of poor maintenance. Their exchange did not include physical sensations, but Rodimus could feel Ratchet’s reaction to them and winced in sympathy.

“Is yours really much better?” Ratchet countered. “Can’t remember the last time I got you in for a tune-up.”

Was Rodimus comfortable in his own body? He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t paid attention to it in—

Right, meditating. They were meditating. He quickly reeled himself back in, trying to pay attention to the way the cables in his right shoulder twitched without actively thinking about them.

“Don’t crank your fans, but if your systems are running hot, try to cool yourself down,” he said. “Filter out the warm air until you’re comfortable.”

This had been one of their stumbling points, because Rodimus always ran hot due to the combination of an inefficient alt-mode and his poorly optimized flameout mod. They had eventually agreed it was best to just have Rodimus running his fans throughout, but he knew that wasn’t the right way to do it.

Ratchet nudged the thought—he might be able to do something about that, once they had a proper medbay again—but he didn’t comment out loud.

“And now… don’t try to stop your thoughts. Let them come to you, but don’t dwell on them. Acknowledge them and then move on.” Drift had suggested anchoring himself to the beat of his fuel pump, but not-thinking about it had caused it to speed up until he couldn’t sit still anymore and had to move. Then had come the trinkets: a ball he could roll between his palms, or a long shard of crystal to tumble through his fingers over and over again. Practicing with them had brought Rodimus the closest he had come to understanding what Drift was on with all his talk about inner peace.

Rodimus had no idea what had become of those things when Drift left. Maybe Drift would have wanted to take the crystals with him, but Ultra Magnus probably confiscated the rest when he did the final room sweep. He didn’t even know where that stuff had ended up, whether Drift’s possessions had been thrown away or—

Broadcasting his intentions with his thoughts but otherwise staying quiet, Ratchet pulled from his subspace a laser pointer and pushed it into Rodimus’ empty hands. The button at the end would depress a decent distance before it settled with a click, and Rodimus’ thumb immediately sought it out, testing it a few times before it settled into a rhythm.

Thanks, he thought.

Don’t mention it, Ratchet sent back. Just letting the thoughts go, right?

Right, Rodimus thought, and then he did just that, letting Drift slip to the back of his processor. Always there, especially as of late, but not dominating. Just waiting.

Click. Click. Click. Ratchet was good at this. Ratchet was really good at this.

His job wasn’t always snap decisions and pinpoint accuracy. In the smoldering years, a lot of Ratchet’s time was spent performing basic maintenance work, the same procedure a hundred or thousand times over. Thoughts had a tendency to turn dark in situations like that, so he had become adept at keeping his processor empty.

Click. Click. Click. Rodimus was reminded of drill routines and perimeter sweeps, but that was as far as he let the thought go. He settled again.

Click. Click. Click. Click click. Click. Click click. Click.

No commanding officer would sponsor a mod that introduced so much randomization to a battle, so Rodimus had had to go through back channels to get it, chatting up anonymous specialists on the intranet until he found someone he could both afford and reach between assignments. He had never gotten his name—Accupunch was not a name any MTO could have snagged—and the only note made on his patient file was for a blown tire (which had been real; the first time he tested the mod, he hadn’t known to adjust his tire pressure ahead of time).

He felt Ratchet’s frown like a wave. He would definitely be taking a look at it. Later.

Right. Meditating. They were meditating.

Click click. Click. Click click. Click. Click click. Click. Click click. Click. Click click. Click. Click click. Click.

The noise was starting to grate on Ratchet’s nerves.

Rodimus onlined his optics to find himself staring down at the laser pointer in his hands.

“This isn’t gonna work,” he whispered.

It just takes practice, Ratchet thought.

“I’m talking about everything,” Ratchet said. He squeezed the laser pointer; he wanted to throw it at the wall. “Cleaning the ship and finding Drift and surviving long enough to do it. It’s not going to work! We’re too different; the things we do just to function are too incompatible.” No matter how much effort they put in, there had never been a chance this would work. “You’re all—all patience and find details and compassion.” In the most jagged possible way. “And I’ve gotten through on charm and the occasional—” very occasional, always fleeting, but essential nonetheless “—handout of good luck. I’ve tried, but not the way you try, and I don’t care the way you care.” Ratchet didn’t take on vanity rescue missions; everything he did was for the good of someone else. “You’re going out there to find Drift—” because Ratchet was in love with him “—and I’m—”

Ratchet, who had been gripping Rodimus’ thoughts like he was trying to pull a tumbling speeder out of a nosedive, felt his hands slip.

“Now hold on,” he demanded, twisting so he was facing Rodimus. “I’m what?”

“You’re what?” Rodimus had already lost track of the thought. Luckily, it came bouncing back to him, echoed over and over as Ratchet’s precision processor analyzed and examined and tried to make sense of what Rodimus’ own had considered an inconsequential observation.

“I’m not—” But he was, and he had known. Of course he had known. How could anyone miss something so monumental, as discovering they would do whatever it took to keep one singular person (Just one! Not a planet, not a platoon, just one person!) safe and happy in a universe that seemed to conspire against it. Ratchet had known, but he hadn’t thought about it, not when Drift was alone and needed help, not—not another mess. Not this.

But Drift deserved to be loved, Rodimus pushed back.

“It’s not a bad thing,” he said out loud. Love was what had gotten Ratchet through the war, love of life and other people. It had the potential for destruction, but that was true of the Cybertronian as a whole. “Just… you know. Be reasonable about it.”

“Reasonable,” Ratchet repeated, with a huff that was as amused as it was self-deprecating.

“Make sure we get the pleasantries done before you sweep him off his feet,” Rodimus said. Though a joke, the suggestion did bring a snapshot to mind, just briefly: an orange sunset backdrop, Ratchet and Drift wrapped around each other and gazing into each others optics so fiercely it was as though the whole universe had ceased to exist. Like Rodimus, despite imagining it, had disappeared entirely.

Tagged onto the end of the thought, smothered with the rest as Rodimus desperately tried to turn his processor to the problem of how they would convince Drift they had come in peace, was a note of jealousy.

Ratchet noticed it. His optics snapped to Rodimus, and the latter refused to meet them.

Drift deserved to be loved without reservation, by someone ready to put their whole being into it. Rodimus wasn’t even sure he was built for such a task.

“Hey now, where’s that coming from?” Ratchet asked. Functionist nonsense.

The quivering mass that represented Rodimus’ many, many failures shook loose of his careful hold. Ratchet felt the weight of it, similar to that—

“Everybody makes mistakes, Rodimus,” Ratchet said. He was trying to be gentle without patronizing, and while he didn’t quite manage it, Rodimus caught his intent and was grateful. “Me, Prime, Drift. Your mistakes are serious, and they’ve had consequences, but that’s the reality if you want to be someone important. You’re going to fail at important things. That doesn’t mean you’re built wrong.” With some uncertainty, not immediately soothed by Rodimus’ responding confusion, he breached the gap between them and laid his hand over Rodimus’.

You can love, he thought, the kind of words he could never say out loud.

Rodimus caught them anyway. Still a little confused and equally uncertain but with the boldness that had already gotten him this far in life, he flipped his hand over so that he and Ratchet held the laser pointer between them.

“I admit, I haven’t been the best so far at this… partnership,” Ratchet said. When Rodimus balked and made to interrupt, he shook his head. “No, really. I gripe and complain because that’s what I do, but the truth is, you’re trying. I’m not saying this is going to make it any easier, but I need to start trying, too.” He squeezed Rodimus’ hand.

Rodimus, for once, was empty. He didn’t know what to think about that, so for a moment he just floated, until eventually Ratchet’s steady march of thoughts reeled him back in again. He grinned and released Ratchet’s hand, pushing himself off the massive berth.

“Fuel?” he asked. They had gone to the trouble of sorting all those cubes; might as well make some use of them.

“Sure,” Ratchet said, following at a more sedate pace. Maybe afterward, they could work out how recharging was going to work in their current state. Any peace they found would be short lived if they couldn’t work that out.

“You think the berths will work for us if we’re not Decepticons?” Rodimus asked as he walked backwards to the bridge.

Ratchet had no idea. But if not, it was something to work on, another puzzle to solve. And it turned out the two of them together were better at that than he would have expected. Maybe it would still be a challenge. Maybe they would get angry and think hurtful things of each other and be overly offended by that which neither could control. But that too was just a problem to solve. They could figure it out.

Rodimus grinned at him. A little nervous, but hopeful. He trusted Ratchet, and the feeling he got in return was so similar he almost missed the fact that it hadn’t come from himself.

#maccadam #transformers #ratchet #rodimus #my writing #longfic #fault lines

10 notes · View notes

atopearth · 4 years

Text

Piofiore: Fated Memories Part 3 - Yang Route

Time for Yang!! I'm so excited tbh because I love his voice and he seems like the most interesting character haha. Anyway, I didn't expect Yang to so suddenly kiss her when she's trying to run away from his subordinates after getting captured by them. Love how her slapping his face was like nothing to him lol. I also really like how Yang is basically forcing her with his "aura" to make her understand that she needs to ask intelligent questions in regards to her own situation right now if she wants Yang to not kill her, keeps the tension high and interesting. Although Yang isn't nice in the way Gil and Dante are, he is pretty nice to her in the sense that he kinda allows her to do what she wants if she uses her brain and resists him in a logical way he can understand? I loved the CG of him pushing her down on the bed🥺 Nice to know that if she doesn't stay in the same room as him and let others think she's Yang's woman, everyone is going to screw around with her...😶 Lmao when he "kindly" took her as a cat to hug instead of a woman, so he won't do anything to her haha. I guess that's his compromise🤣

Okay, Lili sitting on Yang's lap and him feeding her congee (probably) is like so hot lmao. On another note, I can't imagine a weird breakfast of xiao long bao, congee and fried chicken?? What is this weird Asian mix hahaha. Hahahaha, I love how much Yang loves to tease her, especially when he calls her human or cat depending on what he feels like. He's forceful to kiss her but I'm assuming he's just being considerate for her in his own way. I feel sorry for Orlok. It's early in the morning and he's in for the shock of his life already since Yang and Lili are making it seem like they had sex lol. Considering Yang's important regards towards eating meals, I wonder if it's because of something like he used to be a street rat or something and starved? I feel like Fei and Lan are pretty cuteee, sad that they died in Dante's route tbh, especially the way Lan died, it just seemed like she was so overcome with grief over Fei's death and didn't know how to cope, which is understandable since they're twins. Awww, I love how Fei said Lan was cuter when she said Lili with blonde hair was cute like a doll.

It's like culture shock for Lili to come to Veleno and try to help someone but realise they're like high on drugs... I guess the twins lectured her in a way that they just wanted her to be more careful than thinking she's stupid, especially since they tried to cheer her up with a mantou haha, why not a cha siu bao though🥺🥺 To be fair, mantou were cheap, warm and filling back in the day, whereas cha siu bao was more luxurious I guess haha. Okay wait, excuse me!! The voices can't say it's mantou and then say it has meat and vegetables!! That's a meat and veggies bun, completely different loll! If even the twins think it's weird for these drug addicts to be so ferocious, I wonder if it's because Lee is starting to do his own thing to try and take over the Lao-Shu? It's nice that Yang saved Lan and Fei in Gau Lung Seng Caai, it's a pretty bad and lawless place after all so I'm sure anyone that passed by who helped them would be an angel tbh, and even if the Mafia may be a frowned upon way to live, it's still better than dying or living on the streets waiting for their death. But yeah...this is a crappy situation for Lili, especially since apparently the women who used to be with Yang ended up dead or living a life worse than death because they "knew too much". But I'm honestly surprised that he would let them know anything, so I'm kinda assuming that these women were gathering this information rather than him showing it to them, but I guess the opposite could happen since I doubt Yang really cares about their lives anyway.

Sfogliatelle sounds super hard to pronounce! But omg, I've seen that pastry before but never tried it either, I can understand Lan and Fei's excitement towards Lili making it for them, so jealous🥺 Not sure if it matches with yumcha lmao but whatever rolls with them. Anyway, I love how even though Fei and Lan are Lili's guards, they genuinely love hanging out with her, it's just so sweet~ they have no obligation to care about her but I think the three of them rub off each other really well since they're all essentially quite simple and kind. Lmaoo when they told Yang about how Lili really likes pandas and she was embarrassed thinking it was childish, but then Yang pat her head and said she can like what she likes, and even suggested bringing a real one here for her hahahaha. Okay, so I tried to ignore what could have possibly happened to Elena, but it's terrible!! Lee's got her high on drugs and is basically taking advantage of that to do what he wants with her. Honestly, I kinda just hope when she initially got captured after trying to save Lili, she didn't get gang raped by the Lao-Shu men before getting to Lee since she obviously didn't have the protection Lili did, and Elena is really cute so...sigh, it's heartbreaking to see her like that, and for Lili to not be able to do anything about it because even though Lee is technically Yang's subordinate, he has his own ambitions and his own men, and Lili really can't do anything about him. I just feel so bad for Elena since he's obviously taking advantage of her sexually, sighhh, I hope Lili actually gets to save her later on.

Not gonna lie, that CG with Yang covered in blood after killing a drug addict was pretty hot. Even though Lili says that Yang could have easily dealt with the guy without killing him, which is probably true, I'm not sure about leaving crazed guys like these roaming around on the streets especially when she was nearly the target of one in the beginning, it honestly doesn't help that they're obviously violent enough and lacking any mental capacity to understand who they're attacking. I just feel like Yang is "cleaning up" his own territory in his own way tbh. And lol, okay, I was right hahaha. LOL, does Lan have Guan Yu's weapon? Yep, I googled, it is hahahah lmao, that's amusing I guess. LOL at Orlok asking Lili why she's Yang's woman, and says that the Bible has informed him that love makes people mad hahaahha, I'm not sure which part that is but I find it so funny how he's basically calling her crazy for being with Yang. I admit that I've been waiting eagerly to see Lili in a cheongsam/qipao dress but omg, I feel so sorry for her considering how revealing it is, and it's tight because it's Lan's size too like dang, not only must it be uncomfortable physically, but it's uncomfortable because all these Lao-Shu men are jeering at her trying to see her underwear. Not surprised Yang was so mad and pulled her out of the room lol, but I honestly feel for Lili, she didn't have a choice since Lan and Fei said they would kill her if she didn't wear it, and like obviously they were playing with her and they wouldn't do such a thing, but after realising that they're not really her allies and would always prioritise the Lao-Shu and Yang, I'm not surprised she would think so. I wanted to cry when she cried because she's basically been fearing for her life this whole time and Yang's mood changes are pretty unpredictable for her so she's definitely stressed, the poor girl🥺 Awww, Yang personally went to get Lili a proper cheongsam, and it was a white one with gold embroidery! I guess he likes how pure but elegant she is? Hahaha. Nice that Lan apologised to Lili about the dress and properly thanked her for the sfogliatella, the twins are so cute, I love them.

OMG LOL, Yang really ordered a stuffed panda toy from the mainland for her!! It literally rode a ship to come here just for her hahaha, it's so sweet and cute of him to do that (even though this particular panda toy is a bit ugly tbh lmao). I kinda wanna feel sorry for the guy who tried to give Yang info to save his family or something, but he betrayed the Visconti and told something important like where they were going to attack Yang, so not really lol. I just feel sorry for Lili having to see the guy die in front of her and have blood splattered over the food, yeah that's disgusting lol. Lmao when the twins got excited over Yang eating Lili's half-eaten bun hahaha. I also found it pretty cute how Lan noticed that Yang was only eating Lili's pastries out of all the desserts haha. It's actually pretty amusing how the twins introduce the tea of the day and Lili tells them what she baked for the day, yumcha for them always seems so peaceful lol. Tbh, I forgot about the human trafficking the Lao-Shu did so it was surprising to see a live trade of it, and pretty sad to think about all these women who were made to get addicted by drugs then sold off in Asia, it's just terrifying to think of. In a way, I wonder if it was a blessing for those women to have been killed due to Gil and Dante bombing the trade ship and burning it down... I feel sorry for Lili that Yang dragged her here to experience all this, but considering his reaction and stuff, it seems like he feels like he lacks what makes people "human", so he tries to bring Lili along to stuff to see her reaction and kind of want to see through her what is supposedly normal and what is not, what any normal person would be angry and what they wouldn't? Or maybe what he lacks is the ability to "feel" things? Since he seems to gauge things by whether they're "boring" or not, so I guess anything that makes him feel some sort of "emotion" is what drives him on to do what he does? Although for a guy that doesn't feel much for other things, he's very understanding and considerate towards Lili, but I guess it's also because he knows people's strengths and limits well. Omgggg the CG of Yang taking her hand and leaving the forest, is she wearing the white cheongsam?! It's so cute on her!! Must be super uncomfortable to walk in a forest with it though, I can see why she tripped at night, but honestly seeing this now, I would be surprised if she could keep up with Yang and them in that dress lolll.

Although I love how sexy their first time was, I'm surprised Lili gave herself to him already, like didn't she just realise she likes him?! I understand she's willing to offer herself to him if he'll save Elena but she herself also understood that saving Elena didn't just mean taking her away from Lee, it also meant that she needed to help her get off the drugs and willingly leave him and go back to "normal", so I feel like she just went too much with the flow with Yang lol. She's still confused about what kind of person he is and whether she wants to be with him, and yet she got mesmerised by him, which I guess in a sense can't be helped since he is pretty attractive haha, but c’mon human trafficking. Btw her white negligee was beautiful, Yang has good tastes in clothing~ but loll, he really likes white doesn't he. I have to agree with Yang, Lee as a "villain" was pretty boring and disappointing, I honestly thought he would be more interesting (especially since he's kinda pretty too~) but he turned out like such a basic villain that wanted to take over the Lao-Shu but was too weak and not calculative enough haha. On another note, I'm surprised Dante was killed rather easily by Yang, but anyway Dante really shouldn't have tried to corner him by himself. Anywayyy, I'm surprised Lili doesn't feel bad about it though, like I know she doesn't really know Dante (but then again, she didn't know those girls on the boat) but as Yang said, Dante lost/died to Yang because he was trying to "protect" Lili and not hurt her. So even if he may not be someone she can trust, I find it saddening that other than not liking seeing people die in front of her, she couldn't even give some sympathy for Dante who genuinely tried his best to not hurt her... And Dante is such a cinnamon roll so it's sad loll. I feel bad for Nicola though. Honestly, if I was Nicola, I would hate and want to kill Lili too, it's not like he cares about the Key Maiden thing anyway, and honestly from his perspective, I would be so mad that Dante died because of some silly girl enraptured by Yang and condones all the crap he does compared to Gil and Dante.

It's kinda funny and cute how she's so smitten with Yang that even though she thought about taking Elena back to the church, she never thought about returning even though it's her home lol. It's also kinda cute how sweet Yang has been to Lili, especially when he poured a drink for a subordinate that was insisting on Lili pouring it lmao, he was so intense about it😂 Pretty terrible for Nicola to hold the church kids hostage to lure Yang out, even if he's not planning to kill them, he's already mentally scarred them. I think it's really cute how Fei and Lan decided by themselves that they want to help because they understand the desire to protect their home, so even if Yang refuses to go, they'll go. I just hope nothing happens to them because I love the twins! Anyway, it's interesting of Lili to say that she couldn't believe the Falzone would do such a thing even though she decided that she couldn't put her trust in Dante before? Lol, like what do you really know about them Lili if you thought you couldn't trust them before? Gotta love how Lili was happy to hear Yang's confession, and how if she ever wanted to leave him before he got bored, he'd rather kill her than let her go lol! I like Yang, but dang I'm definitely more scared than swooning over it lmao. On another note, even though Lili's actions are irrational and she might come to regret it one day lol, I guess I can to an extent understand the idea of not accepting someone's actions but still loving them.

Anyway, why didn't Nicola and Gil band together to get rid of Yang? What was the point of Nicola trying to get rid of Yang himself at the church? That was such a waste, there's so many better opportunities to try and kill Yang without having to take such a huge gamble, not to mention that Nicola and them are at a great disadvantage against Yang when it's one-on-one. It's basically impossible for them to defeat Yang by themselves because they rely on guns and Yang has the agility and speed to dodge most bullets, and on the other hand, they're quite incapable of dodging Yang's weapon because of how unique it is and how strong Yang is. I'll say that Nicola and Gil were pretty silly for the best ending but I guess they needed to die in order for Yang's ambitions to succeed, so I guess it is fitting to call it Yang's best ending, but not really Lili's haha. But since she seems okay with it and just kinda rolls with all these deaths, she's pretty much complicit in it all now lol, like excuse me Lili, they killed so many people, so they did a "good job" and should get a nice dinner? Hahaha, she's totally living the Mafia life, I don't think she's a normal civilian anymore lol. I still love how much Fei and Lan are fond of Lili though, and always try their best to protect her. Going to London as their next destination sounds interesting but yeah, this is a very different holiday than it is with the other guys lmao.

Okay, in the good ending, Elena seems weirdly interested in who killed Lee, and she's weirdly "sane", so I guess she's more on the insane side? Haha. I always found it kinda frustrating that they never really talked about what happened to Elena, and it just kinda brushes it off and she kinda goes back to normal, so I'm a bit more happy now that they're addressing it here and showing that in a sense, Lee saved her from being drugged and transported back to the mainland where she would have then died. And it is pretty disheartening to hear that she was drugged to the point that she probably didn't even realise how much she was "used" by those men. Anyway, I feel sorry for Lan and Fei because they're very emotionally kind people, they're just where they are because of their circumstances and because of Yang. As for Elena... I feel sorry for Lili, but I guess in a sense it's true that you can't really save everyone...even though she tried. Because of her, Lan probably died so I don't really feel sorry for Elena anymore. On the other hand, Yang dying because he hesitated to kill Lili along with Gil was pretty saddening. He always says he doesn't really care about her thoughts and feelings and only selfishly wants her, but in the end, he was the one who loved her the most. Lili doubted him and his love a lot in this ending and Yang himself probably doubted his own feelings too, so it's kinda saddening to see it all turn out like that. Honestly, I don't know which part of this ending was good though LOL, it was definitely much more bittersweet, but yeah I quite liked it and it probably flowed better than the best ending too haha. I guess it's good in the fact that now the Visconti kinda rule/take care of Burlone and get along well with the Falzone? Hahahaha. Guess it's a good ending for the masses lol!

Anyway, I feel sorry for the Yang in the tragic ending, is this what happens when he indulges in Lili? He lets his guard down? Omgg btw, there's so many nice kiss CGs with Yang! Love how Yang carried her around jumping across buildings or something lmao. Yang arriving like a prince on the balcony is so beautiful, I love it🥺🥺🥺 but it's so weird of Yang to do all that hahaha. Is it supposed to allude to Romeo and Juliet? Hahaha. Honestly, Yang is so sweet to make a commotion just so he can see her, I'm dying, my heart is so full🥺 Ooh, I love this tragic ending! I especially like that it didn't go as I thought it would (Yang dying), instead Lili died because Yang used her as a shield to kill Dante. It's quite saddening that Lili still loved him even as she died😭 It was also kinda nice to see that despite Yang sacrificing her, he does regret it to an extent and I think I kinda like tragic it is in that sense. I always feel so sad when the twins die, sigh, but I'm just glad they got to die together. I like the variety of bad endings, I knew there would be one where Yang would get bored of her and give her to the other members, but yeah that was pretty hard to stomach imagining her life from then on... Anyway, I really enjoyed the short story, it was so cute how Yang made Lili braid his hair, and loll when he kept making excuses that it was annoying to braid but didn't want to cut it lol. Lmao in the extra story (after the best ending) when Yang got angry over the gentleman guy kissing the back of her hand, and Lili told him it's normal, and Yang's like you're a cheater😂😂

Overall, I really loved Yang and his route. Some parts of it are iffy in terms of stuff like how Lee and his part was more boring than he looked, how our Mafia bosses seem to make silly decisions just to make it the "best" ending and how Lili kinda throws all sense out of the window because of love, but I still loved it. Honestly, I'm not usually a fan of characters like Yang who would kill girls like the heroine at the drop of a hat depending on his mood, but he was so hot, I could see why Lili was mesmerised, especially Okamoto Nobuhiko's voice omggg🥺 I relished listening to Yang talk all the time because it really captured the type of guy he was, seductive, dangerous but enrapturing. I also loved how Yang never really "changed" for Lili, he didn't suddenly become a better person, she didn't suddenly become a "bad" person (although she did compromise a lot of things to be with him I guess lol), but they still worked out because they liked each other and did things for each other that warmed their hearts. He's the Mafia guy I wanted all this time hahaha! A terrible guy in real life but great in otome😂 I guess there's something about ruthless and dangerous guys doing stuff like giving stuffed panda toys to girls that make me swoon lmao. Yang was such a playful flirt, it was fun. Oh and omg, I honestly think Fei and Lan really made this route so much more fun too, I love the twins. They're so cute, deadly but also super kind, I loved their companionship and honestly think they're probably the best subordinate/secondary characters compared to the other characters in the other Mafia groups. It was also nice to see a different perspective to the normal Mafia dynamic that Dante and Gil have, since Dante and Gil are respected for either their kindness or their charisma, but for Yang, it's the fear he instills and his strength, it was good to see dodgy subordinates too lolll. Anyway, I really loved the tragic ending so much because seeing Yang deny he loves Lili whilst constantly thinking about her and in a sense regretting he killed her is just so tragic and interesting. Oh and the CGs are so good with Yang!! It was so hard to pick ones to be my absolute favourite😭

#piofiore fated memories #piofiore no banshou

13 notes · View notes

script-the-skeleton · 4 years

Text

FE3H AU that I want to write but don’t know 100% of the lore of the game to accurately depict.

After trying multiple times for a golden ending, Byleth resets one last time with a new plan that could be her last

She remeets Sothis. “How many more tries must we do this? It will never work, we have tried everything! Oh? Well, I have always wondered what would happen in the End.”

Byleth smiled at her father and calls him such for the first time before heading into battle.

Byleth takes the knife for Edelgard but doesn’t rewind time. She dies, the last thing she sees is Eldelgard’s terrified and regretful face. In that moment, her hair turns the light green and the Ashen Demon is no more.

Jeralt is heartbroken, and furious because Rhea definitely did something to his kid with that hair, so he agrees in a rage to go back to the monastery. He wants to bury Byleth with where he thinks her mother is buried and fight with Rhea.

The Lords all are affected from Byleth’s death, they asked this person for help and they died for them. Claude is silent, Dimitri prays for her soul to be put to rest, and Edelgard can’t comprehend why a stranger would throw away their life for her. She feels extra guilty since the bandits were her fault and now she killed an innocent. None of them can stop apologizing.

They get to Garreg Mach and the real differences begin here. Jeralt yells and argue with Rhea, but can ultimately do no more than demand Byleth be buried with his wife. He stays for a month for her funear before leaving with his mercenaries.

The third teacher is Jeritza, but he somehow gets stuck with the Blue Lions. Hannerman is with the Black Eagles. Maneula is with the Golden Deer.

That’s when the clock breaks.

The three main lords start seeing and hearing things. They’ll blink and they’ll see a different proffessor in front of them. They’ll hear the song of the goddess from dark corners or the slashing a bone sword going through enemies. They remember timelines that shouldn’t exist in fragments and they are all secretly going insane.

Hubert tries to push Edelgard to continue with their plans, but she was so affected by Byleth’s death that she tells him to hold off. She doesn’t know why, but it pained her so much that one death. Hubert obliges, but TWSITD are restless.

Throughout the story, the respective teachers help each house. Mercedes finds out Jeritza is her brother and them connecting again leads him to branch off from Edelgard’s plans, because he doesn’t want to hurt his sister. Manuela recruits Dorathea with her aspirations to continue opera and even helps Ignatz with his paintings. Hannerman recruits Lysithea and they research over her multiple crests. Edelgard hears about this and joins, coming to realize how much TWSITD are responsible for her pain and not the church.

TWSITD attack even though Edelgard has declared that she would no longer help them and would activly fight against them if they pushed. They are pushed back from the tomb and other holy areas, the the crypt that supposedly held Seiros’ remains was empty, no sword in sight, as they three lords defeats their soldiers.

After that battle, the three lords no see a figure take shape in their rooms. They are mix between Sothis and Byleth, making them look slightly younger than Byleth, so around 17 or 18, and they don’t know who they are, not even their name. The talk to the lords and act like Sothis did in the game. Dimitri thinks its another ghost from the past, projecting the mercenary who died for them, and ignores it. Claude talks to it every once in a while and has pleasent conversations. Edelgard tries to ignore it, but eventually uses it as a therapist whenever she needs to talk to someone.

Remire Village and the attack on Garreg Mach have little to no causalities. Flayn was never kidnapped, so Monica never showed up, and Jeralt wasn’t even there so he never died. The Flame Emperor also never makes an appearance in general.

The following month still left a lot of people feeling dour for reasons they didn’t understand.

Edelgard recieves word from visiting her father that TWSITD are planning one more attack to steal the crest stones. She is crowned emperor and quickly runs back to the academy. She admits to Dimitri and Claude, after the ghost tells her to trust them, that she was being puppetee by TWSITD and that she hasn’t followed them in months, she leaves out the part where she tried to kill them at the beginning of the year, and ask for their help.

They agree and take on the battle in the maseuleum, or however you spell it. TWSITD are there and they fight back. They all notice a figure up on a magnificent throne, she is sitting upright and unmoving and was wearing clothing of the goddess.

“It’s her!” They all say at once as they recognize an older version of the ghost, the greened haired Byleth on the throne, a sword in her lap.

Rhea comes in after the enemies retreat and tells them to leave the area. Edelgard pushes and asks why that woman was on the throne and not buried, and how come her body hadn’t rotted away since she died. Rhea refuses to answer and even threatens them to stay quiet, but still thanks them for protecting what was sacred.

Edelgard thanks the two lords for helping her and she tells them that she will be leaving school early to help dismantle TWSITD.

Following that day for the next five years, the only time they ever see the ghost is when it is asleep and drapped over a chair.

FIVE YEARS LATER!

Edelgard declared her empire seperate from the church, cutting all ties off except for trades while still allowing the faith, without declaring war. Rhea is furious about this but Seteth makes sure she doesn’t do anything rash. Edelgard is still looking with the help of her classmates for the remains of the Agarthins, who have been hiding from her.

Claude is leader of the alliance and is setting in place laws that would end discrimination against foreigners and those without crests. He even visits Almyra frequently, though no one is exactly sure who. He never officially said anything against the church, but it isn’t a secret that he isn’t a believer.

Dimitri no longer sees ghosts of any kind and is a fair ruler to his kingdom. He is the only lord that has close connections to the church and even still talks to Rhea. He has good relations with the empire also, so much that the people say he and Edelgard are like siblings.

Hannerman, with the help of one crest stone that Edelgard slipped him after that one attack, learned the secrets to multiple crests. Lysithea and Edelgard are both free, leaving them with no crests which they are fine with, and their lifespans have lengthened. Their hair even turned back its natural color.

As for the ghost, it always appears in the highest ranking chair to fall asleep in the room the lords are in. Edelgard can no longer sit on her throne without feeling rude, so she is never near it. Dimitri has swapped out his throne for another chair, lying and saying he wasn’t worthy for his father’s throne. Claude doesn’t have a throne, just the head of a table, and he never really sat down when he talked. The ghost also shivers frequently, like they are cold. Weirdly, putting a blanket over it seems to work.

Then, on the 1000 year anniversary of the church being built, the ghost vanishes and is no where to be found. All three lords are going to the ball held at Garreg Mach for their reunions and to show that they hold no ill will to the church. When they get there, they all have the feeling like something is wrong, but they can’t place it.

Individually, they all go to the goddess tower, for they make out the image of the awake ghost. When they make it up there, no one but the living are there and they finally realize that they can all see the ghost. They come to the conclusion that this was something that had to do with the corpse in the basement.

The ball is interupted with spears of light start blowing up the world. Fives years without war led to the Argathins seeking power and they are attacking. All three groups, plus some of the church, find and defeat all the Argathins.

This part isn’t expanded on here because there isn’t much to it except its the endgame of the Golden Deer/Silver Snow path and they defeat the big bads while everyone is still alive.

After the battle, they all go back to the church and go look for the corspe. They find it along with Rhea, who fights them to keep them away.

They defeat her and she admits that she tried to raise the goddess back with Byleth, who held her power. The ghost reveals herself to be the fusion of Byleth and Sothis to Rhea and yells her out mom style about how idiotic is was to try to bring her back at the risk of other people.

The ghost explains how she wanted a perfect ending where everyone was alive and no one fought, and they only way to that was her death, which kickstarted Edelgard realizing her mistakes. She asks them to say hi to Jeralt for her, says goodbye to her daughter, and fades away.

This whole AU I really wanted to explore what would happen if Byleth did die and I realized how much that would’ve affect Edelgard. The war might’ve still happened, but Edelgard was pushed forward by how Byleth was treated by Rhea and by TWSITD. I also like imaging a timeline without Byleth where all the lords keep seeing her and can sometimes talk, but she isn’t really there. I just imagine Dimitri’s internally screaming, Edelgard’s seen weirder, and Claude still calls the ghost teach through instinct and just spills the tea of his daily life to her.

#fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #fe3h #au #sothis #byleth

66 notes · View notes

the-fallen-blue · 5 years

Note

To be clear, I don't hold DS9 as the best of Star Trek or think all its deconstructing woked, but from what I remember, the "easy to be saint in paradise" is more about criticizing the arrogance and borderline xenophobia of Gene's vision, or at least aspects of it and (which DS9 did as a whole) contrivences that kept it unchallenged. If nothing else, IMO it's a fair game to show that a society as dedicated to peace and avoidance of armed conflict would leave some people feeling unfought for.

“It’s easy to be a saint in paradise” is in fact in reference to the Maquis, and Starfleet’s treatment thereof. The official judgement of the Federation is that the Maquis are terrorists (a matter of perspective), a threat to the peace with the Cardassians (potentially, but certainly not more so than the Cardassians themselves), and deserters and thieves (absolutely fact; a majority of Maquis are active duty Starfleet who walked off the job with Starfleet weapons, ships and intel). Thus the Starfleet policy toward Maquis is pursuit, capture, or destruction without quarter.

Sisko cheerfully enforces this policy - he literally committed a war crime in order to catch his former security officer, so he’s obviously on board with “stop the Maquis” as a concept - but he also takes a moment to be judgey about it when the issue first comes up. The people at Starfleet headquarters, he implies with the quote, are arrogant, ignorant, and cold. The Maquis had their homes traded away right underneath them by the Federation, traded to the very enemy who was attacking them in the first place. Even worse, the Feds didn’t even really make an effort in the war - consensus among the sort of fans who Figure Out Things Like That is that if they’d tried at all, Starfleet would have crushed the Cardassians and lost nothing. And now the Federation attacks its own betrayed citizens for fighting back? Sisko, and apparently the show, want us to consider that perhaps the Liberal Elite in their Ivory Towers pushing Peace and Reconciliation with the Bad Guys even to the point of punishing the former Good Guys to maintain it are showing a disgusting lack of 1) compassion for the people they’re supposed to be prioritizing, who suffer the consequences of their decisions and 2) understanding of how the Real World works, because they’ve never lived in it.

Unfortunately, this is patent fucking nonsense.

Consider:

Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki a war crime?

Really?

Even though the Japanese were the aggressor? Even though they committed absolute atrocities against American citizens in the Pacific territories? Even though Truman’s literal job description was “protect American lives and American interests,” meaning he owed his soldiers a strategy that risked their lives as little as possible and ended the war as quickly as possible, and owed the Japanese absolutely nothing? If you’re still out here saying “yes,” congratulations, you’re what Gene’s humanity is supposed to be all about. Someone who remembers that the enemy is still people too, and you have a moral obligation to use exactly necessary force and not a single Newton more. To value their lives, society and culture equal to your own.

If the Federation negotiated peace with the Cardassians even from a position of power, it was because they deemed the potential loss of combined Federation and Cardassian life to be of greater significance than the (easily substituted in a post-scarcity society) homestead rights of Federation citizens on those contested worlds. They chose life over land, even enemy life over their own land. This is the decision we want them to make. We want them to be the people who would not have dropped a nuke on Japan. We want future humanity to be in a place where we consider the Maquis to be in the wrong for choosing bloody war to avoid giving up property.

But the thing is…. how the fuck do we get there, because humans do not, humans cannot make that decision. Humans get emotionally invested in things. Humans get angry and scared and humans are wildly fucking tribal and we make self-serving and short-sighted decisions in order to protect the things that are ours whenever we feel threatened. Poverty creates crime because when people are scared for their survival they don’t care about the rules, strange cultures interacting generates bigotry because new things are frightening, and power breeds sociopathy because losing that power frames itself to the human brain as a loss of identity and safety. And Gene’s humans are not actually different from the real ones. They didn’t develop telepathy like Betazoids to make them physically incapable of forgetting that the enemy is a person. They haven’t altered their own brain chemistry through ritualized philosophy like the Vulcans. They are still giant bags of reactivity, violence and malice. So. What do?

Well the really funny thing is that the answer to this question is within DS-9 itself. One of fandom’s other favorite lines from the series is Quark musing on the nature of humanity:

Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They’re a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people… will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon.

WELL JUST FUCKING INVERSE THAT, GENIUS!

DS-9 is fascinated by the idea that humans are Not As Good As You Thought, Gene, but it seems to persistently overlook the fact that he understood that completely, and that’s why the Federation exists. That’s why they have the free holosuites and free food and Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism. It is easy to be a saint in Paradise, and the Federation wants to be saints, so they put the people who make the decisions in Paradise. Hell, they try to put everyone in Paradise, because it lets us not be massive shits to each other even without telepathy or Logic™. The whole origin story of Trek humans is that they went through a decade or so of Mad Max hell and went “holy fuck never again, what do we do to make ourselves stop being assholes,” and utopian socialist paradise is what they came up with.

Sisko seems to think that not getting on board with the Maquis’ decision to fight for their homes is a sign of blindness and elitism on the part of his bosses, because those bosses aren’t facing the tribulation of losing their own homes. But in fact, that very tribulation means that the Maquis are the blind ones - they can’t be objective or adhere to the principles they normally value, because their lizard brain has knocked all the way down Maslow’s hierarchy to “YOU NO TAKE CANDLE,” while the guys back home on Earth, explicitly because they’re not involved, can act from the top of the pyramid with compassion for all involved parties.

Now, you can disagree with this moral perspective, certainly. You can say that leaders have a greater responsibility to their people than to the enemy and that protecting homes is worth lives and that the Federation should be secretly supporting the Maquis (like the Cardassians are supporting their own “renegades” attacking Federation colonies, something the series really should have spent more time on), and you wouldn’t be wrong. These are matters of perspective, not absolute truth. But that isn’t the argument Sisko is making. He’s arguing that the froofy safe Feds just don’t ~get~ it, which is a shockingly limited understanding of the history and principles of Trek Earth’s culture for a Starfleet captain.

#ask box #yelling forever about star trek

180 notes · View notes

minervahopebeyond · 4 years

Text

Blood Daffodils.

Chapter 3: Trade.

Harry had thought that the jealousy he used to feel whenever he saw Ginny with Dean was bad enough. He was wrong.

Looking back to it, his ‘chest monster’ felt like this little angry kitten in comparison to what he felt when he would see Malfoy crying for Nott.

The pull in his stomach from when he was in denial? Oh, that was just the beginning of it all. Harry could swear that every time he felt jealous over Nott, a hole got deeper and deeper on his stomach, making him feel nausea. And since he couldn’t scream at the boy that he shouldn’t be in love with such a fucking prick... well, Harry would just walk around the house with his moody face on.

“You know we can all sense your magic being angry right now, right?” Sirius would say to him. It had become an habit at this point, a way to bring up the topic of conversation without specifically talking about it. Even though, the green eyed boy, knew that his Dad and Padfoot had the slightest idea about how he felt, the just didn’t talk about it.

Bill’s and Fleur’s wedding was approaching and Malfoy had been pretty much happily surprised when Ron told him that he was invited.

“I think I‘ve spoken ten sentences with your brother... I kinda talked to Fleur back in forth year... You shouldn’t force them to invite me Weasley.” Was the first thing that the boy had said.

“Ferret, I’m just giving you the invitation. Do what you want but know that I didn’t say a bloody thing to Bill.”

And it was kind of true..? Ron only mentioned to Molly that it would be really rude not to invite Malfoy if Dad, Padfoot and him were going... Not to mention that Draco was now one of his closest friends and he didn’t think that it was much to ask. Next thing he knew, his best friend had an invitation with the blond boy’s name on it.

One thing led to another and the three of them found themselves engaged in a conversation, with his father and Padfoot too, about if they planned to have a family when this was all over. And in case of the other two men, if they had wished to be parents back in the first war.

His dad answer that yes, he did want to have a kid back then... Maybe he would have like not to be running from Voldemort at the time, that Harry wasn’t planned but he was pretty much loved since they knew he existed.

Ron said that he would like a couple of kids running around his house one day. Not as much as them, since he suffered being outshined by having so many siblings, but maybe two or three would be nice. Harry just snorted as he responded.

“Are you kidding? Your family is awesome. I want to have like five, minimum.”

“I believe you should ask your future wife, Potter. Maybe she doesn’t want to be a brood mare.”

The comeback was burning his tongue: ‘Maybe I’ll marry a nice guy and adopt the kids, Malfoy’. He restricted himself from saying it in that moment... He still hadn’t talk to Padfoot and dad... He kind of wanted to come out to them first, since they were the first ones to comment on the possibility of Harry liking boys too. Well, about Harry liking Draco in particular.

Padfoot said that he always saw himself like the cool uncle, but that after Harry was born he kind of wished to have a kid of his own (before everything went to shit obviously). He didn’t like the sound of that... Now that Padfoot was free maybe he would get a family of his own, Harry was not alone anymore... He didn’t have an obligation to take care of him. And he was still young, thirty-eight years was a perfectly good age to meet someone and be a parent. It was kind of ridiculous to think that he wasn’t with his dad, though. He tried to change the subject.

“What about you, Draco?” The blond boy looked at him as if he were stupid. “Forget about you condition for a second! If everything were good and the sun would shine everyday: would you like to have kids?”

“No.”

Harry blinked. It sounded so final, like he had thought about it a lot and came to this major conclusion.

“Why not, kid?” His father asked in a kind voice, Harry could not articulate a single word. The blond boy rolled his eyes and began to explain, leaving everyone speechless too.

“Did you know that your son had to kill a teacher in his first year? Or that he voluntarily went inside of the Chamber of Secrets with the monster to save Ginevra when he was twelve? Not to mention that time when your lovely best friend went to see him to a quidditch match and the dementors started to suck his soul away and he fell off his broom.” Everyone was his staring at him, dumbfounded. “Oh! I forgot that these two fucker drove a flying car to Hogwarts instead of just waiting for the Weasleys to realize that they couldn’t go through the barrier by themselves (ALSO WITH TWELVE YEARS OLD). And that’s just the beginning of it; your son seems to attract danger and if his life is going too normal for his liking he just tries to kill himself. You know why?”

Harry was blushing so hard, he felt so embarrassed and stupid now that the blond boy was saying it like that. At least about the car... that was rather unnecessary.

“Because that’s how a gryffindor kid is. There is this tiny possibility that if I have a kid, he would be a bloody terror like the four of you. I can’t handle the stress. I can’t let my kid be in the hands of another person, of the professors, for an entire year, trusting that they are okay and then get a bloody letter asking for my presence at the school because my son or daughter has been petrified, like it happened to Granger’s parents. And that was worst because they are muggle and they had to be explained that there was a beast trying to kill students around the school. I didn’t even understand how they let her come back after that. I would bloody lock up that poor child and hugged them until they turn seventeen.”

Harry had thought that he was already as in love with the boy as he could be... All he could gather from what Malfoy said was that he would care so deeply about his kid that he could not bare to see them in any kind of danger. It just made him love him even more.

“Come on, Ferret! What if you have a little snake running around the castle? Wouldn’t you be proud?”

“I think that would actually be worst because maybe I wasn’t suicidal like your lot, but I managed to do my fair amount of dangerous things and my father doesn’t even have a clue. Hanahaki aside of course because, that night at the ministry, was pretty much the only suicidal thing I’ve ever did.”

Sirius and his father chuckled. The green-eyed boy was just listening, trying not to be so bloody obvious about how endearing he found Draco’s arguments. Ron couldn’t let it go, apparently.

“Oh, for Godric! Picture this: your one true love asks you to have children, because he thinks that is his purpose in life, to have a family. You would just say no?”

Draco seemed to be taken by surprise, like he didn’t expect the question. His grey’s eyes took a quick glance at Harry before stuttering an answer. Maybe he had been so obvious about his jealousy, that the blond boy was, now, doubting before talking about Nott.

“I- I think” He pushed his hair out of his face and blushed a little. “I don’t have it in me to say no to him. Not if it’s something that he wants so deeply. But they would definitely be terrors then, so I would probably die from a heart attack by the time they turn thirteen.”

Harry felt like he could cry right then and there. He tried to act aloof and to laugh when everyone did but soon enough he excused himself to go to his room, saying that he had a headache and that he needed to lay down for a bit.

He heard when Ron left, he heard someone starting to cook dinner... The dark-haired boy didn’t want to go downstairs and face him. He never had been good at lying and each time he talked to Malfoy he felt like he must just know.

Someone knocked softly on the door.

“Come in.”

He heard the door open and close before someone walked towards his bed and sat at the end of it. The smell of nicotine invaded his nostrils. Padfoot.

“Are you going to tell us, at some point, how you feel or we should just keep on guessing?” The man asked with a soft and playful voice. Harry was already pissed off so he kind of blurted out a comeback.

“Are you going to explain to me why you and dad aren’t together or am I supposed to keep collecting information from the fights I hear every now and then?”

Sirius was silent for a moment, then he sighed and said:

“Fair enough. How about a trade?”

Harry blinked and sat on the bed. He wasn’t expecting that, Sirius had been evasive since last year and now he was just going to tell him? It sounded like a trap. He fixed his glasses and arched an eyebrow.

“Fine, but you go first.”

“I am hurt that you would think that I would not keep my word, Prongslet.” He said in a very dramatic manner. Harry just raised his eyebrows and waited ‘Do I look stupid to you?’

“I kind of think that James would tell the story a little different, so-“

“I’m asking you, Sirius.”

“Just... try not to freak out? James said that you wouldn’t be mad or react badly but he is your father and I’m not, so..”

Harry frowned.

“Is that what you think? That I love dad more than you or something?” He tried to sound as calm as possible, trying to be understanding about the whole thing, but it sounded so fucking ridiculous that he just couldn’t. Sirius looked away, so he grabbed his hand and tried to make him understand. “Padfoot, you are my family. I think you are the closest thing I had to a father before dad came back... That feeling didn’t go away. I love you, okay?”

A tear escaped from his right eye and he quickly cleaned it away.

“I- I love you too. So so much. I know I don’t say it often, you can blame my awful family for how awkward I am at this things, but I do.”

Harry pulled him into a hug, and closed his arms around him tightly. After a while, Sirius pulled away.

“So...” he started, nervous as he looked away. “You know that James and me have been friends since first year. I pretty much saw him and decided that he was my favorite person in the world.” A soft smiled appeared in his face but was promptly replaced by a sour expression. “I didn’t think much of it. We soon became very close in our group and I just thought that it was because we were best friends... Something happened to me every time he talked about Lily, though.” He got jealous, obviously. Harry didn’t say anything because he was afraid that if he interrupted Padfoot, then he would regret telling him at all. He just nodded. “Well, as the years went by, your mother didn’t even look twice his way and your dad used to tell me how pretty she was or that the boys she liked were stupid... By the time we were in forth year, I knew that what I felt for him wasn’t just friendship. Before that, maybe I used to look at him and thought that his smile was really pretty and my brain just went full on internalized homophobia mode and buried that thought really deep.”

Harry couldn’t help but to laugh at that, and when Sirius turned to look at him, he just shook his head.

“Sorry,” he said between laughs.“I just get it.” His godfather smiled softly at him and continued the story.

“Yeah, that year I started to ask, to see if he liked boys too but he got really defensive and told me that ’No, of course not’”He sighed.” In our fifth year we were kind of drunk and James kissed me.” Of course his dad made the first move, he could barely avoid flirting with Padfoot even now. “And I thought that he finally had gotten over Lily, you know? I kissed him back and didn’t even ask a single thing... You can imagine my surprise when the next day he barely looked at me and the day after that, he asked you mum to Hogsmade again.”

Harry frowned then, utterly confused.

“What?” Sirius just nodded.

“It became this regular thing that we didn’t talk about. Whatever happened stayed between us, I suspect that Moony knew about it... The rat too, probably.” Sirius never spoke Pettigrew’s name. It was almost like Voldemort to him now, maybe even worst. “When I’ve moved here, it was different. Your grandparents never asked but James was hardly subtle.” ‘Yeah, no shit’. “I just had to asked him, you know? What were we doing, if it meant something to him... And when he couldn’t give me a straight answer I just lost it and went to my room. Pretty much acted like nothing ever happened after that. Your dad stopped asking Lily out, though... which in the end was for the best, because she finally gave in to his charms and you know the rest of the story.”

Harry was just trying to process the information, it didn’t make any sense but most of all, a single question kept appearing in his head. He had to ask it.

“He made you his best man and my godfather even though you used to be together?” Harry pulled a face, Sirius looked at him with sad eyes.

“I knew you weren’t going to like this. I know it must be so weird for you, I’m sorr-“

“No! I don’t care about that! But weren’t you hurt, Padfoot? It seems awfully cruel.” Sirius just blinked.

“Oh. No... not at all. I was just surprised that it lasted for that long. And we were still best friends, I couldn’t just not be his best man and I loved you since I’ve first saw you... my mini prongs. I was honored to be your godfather.” He said as he pinched his cheek. “But that brings us to the actual question: Why are we not together? Well, beside the fact that he looks gorgeous right now and I’m just this old-post-Azkaban-being... I don’t think that he really feels what he says. It wouldn’t be the first time that we’ve been down this road, and I’m way more old now, not as naive, and not with the same strength in my heart, Harry.”

And he totally got it. He understood what the man was saying, but he could not help but to think that the way that his dad looked at Sirius was not just temporary. His dad told him that, even then, he thought that Padfoot was the most perfect person in the world... How could someone think that and claim to be in love with someone else? And if they were like this now... How did they managed to hide it from everyone back then when they really were together? No, if his mother was as half as brilliant as his father claimed she was, she most definitely knew about them... Maybe she just didn’t care... Or maybe she finally made a move on James when she saw that Padfoot and him had already broken up...? Could it be called a break up if they didn’t even pronounced the words? If they stayed silent like Sirius had said.

“Padfoot, you were just kids. I see how he looks at you, okay? Forget about whatever he did. If you feel the same just go for it.”

Sirius just chuckled and shook his head.

“You sound just like him sometimes.”

Harry just smiled and shrugged.

“Malfoy always says that you and I talk the same. Maybe I’m this mixture of the two of you.” He saw Padfoot’s eyes shine with expectation at the mention of Draco. “Call dad for this part, I wanted to tell you both at the same time.”

Sirius went to get James almost skipping towards his room. Malfoy must had been the one cooking the delicious meal that Harry could smell in the air.

Soon enough, the two men were in his room, sitting on the bed, waiting. Harry rolled his eyes.

“I think that this is unnecessary. Clearly, you both already know.” Sirius was about to say something but his dad nudge him with his elbow. “But fine. I like him, alright? I mean, no, I liked Ginny, I love him. Now, I know the difference. So that makes me, clearly, not straight. I suppose that I’m bi... But I only kissed Ginny, couldn’t go further than that. Didn’t feel right.”

His dad and Padfoot just looked at him with kind eyes.

“Thank you for telling us, Harry.” His father said with a smile.

“Yeah, Prongslet... And I’ve been thinking since the battle that maybe this thing, the whole being Theodore thing it just-“ But Harry interrupted him.

“You see him cry for him don’t you?”

“Yes, but I see how he looks at you too.” His godfather said, so much like Harry had just said to him. Harry looked away.

“Please, don’t say things that you are not sure of. I’ve never felt like this and everything already is complicated enough.”

His father pulled him into a hug, so warm and protective. Harry just hugged him back. After a while, the man whispered into his ear.

“I know you don’t want to hear it but I agree with Padfoot.”

Harry started to get hope, something that he definitely did not need. He couldn’t be so stupid. He saw Malfoy with Nott. It just made sense.

But maybe, just maybe, there was this possibility of Draco, at least, liking him. Of him looking his way...

Fuck, now he had hope. This is why he hated to talk about his feelings. It always seemed to screw him over.

#drarry #prongsfoot #fanfiction #fanfic

17 notes · View notes

monotonous-minutia · 4 years

Text

was trying to compose some Reality Checks and I wrote this instead. Don’t ask me what it is because I have no idea. But I thought it was funny so I wanted to share.

Enjoy. Or don’t. We’ll see I guess.

Figaro: Five, ten, twenty, thirty, thirty-six, forty-three…you know this would be a lot easier to measure if it was all in multiples of five.

Susanna: Isn’t my hat so pretty? I made it myself.

Figaro: Yes, yes, dear, it’s wonderful.

Susanna: You didn’t even look at it.

Figaro: You’re doing such a great job describing it I don’t have to.

Susanna: What are you measuring, anyway?

Figaro: I’m figuring out where our bed’s going to go in this room.

Susanna: What, this room?

Figaro: …yes?

Susanna: Why this room?

Figaro: It’s so close to the master bedroom. All they have to do is ring the bell—ding, ding; don, don—and we’ll be there in a hop, skip and a jump to serve our respective masters.

Susanna: Yes, and because we’re so close, it’d be easy for Signore Count to sneak in while you’re away—ding ding; don, don.

Figaro: …

Susanna: You do know what I mean by “don, don,” right?

Figaro: I thought we were talking bells.

Susanna: It’s subtext.

Figaro: Oh shit! What are you saying?

Susanna: Well, the Count hasn’t exactly been subtle in his advances lately. Apparently he’s grown tired of the Countess, even though she really isn’t as old as people make her out to be most of the time. So he’s seeking out new conquests, and one of them is me. You do know what I mean by “conquests,” right?

Figaro: Yes, yes, subtext.

Susanna: So he’s going to call on this thing called his “feudal right” which is this really weird tradition that means he gets to sleep with any newlywed he pleases.

Figaro: I thought he got rid of that.

Susanna: Apparently I’m special.

Figaro: Well, we’ve got to do something about this.

Susanna: I’m sure we’ll figure something out; we’ve got the brain cells in this place. Take care, my love, I hear my Lady calling.

Figaro: Farewell, my sweet. We’ll get through this together.

(Susanna leaves)

Figaro: Now, Signore Count, this is a fine kettle of fish. I thought we were friends! After everything we’ve been through together? I can’t believe this. Well, if you’re going to pull this kind of dance, I’m happy to oblige. In fact, I’ll lead the dance myself. You won’t know what hit you. (exit)

(Marcellina and Bartolo enter)

Marcellina: I’ll marry Figaro if it’s the last thing I do!

Bartolo: I still think that’s a little weird, given you’re old enough to be his mom.

Marcellina: Don’t you know it’s improper to talk to a lady about her age? Besides, what do you care? I’m paying you good money to crush this guy. I hired the best lawyer in Seville. Though all this time I though the Dr. in your name was the medical type.

Bartolo: After Rosina left me, I had a lot of extra time on my hands so I went back to school and added a few letters to my name. Now, let’s work on getting back at Figaro. I’ll never forgive him for stealing my girl. Although I really don’t have a desire to pursue Rosina romantically anymore. It’s just the principle of the thing. I’m going to squash him like a bug with all the legal jargon I can come up with.

Marcellina: You know, when you talk shop, it kinda turns me on.

Bartolo: …okay. See you later. (exit.)

(Susanna comes in)

Marcellina: Oh, look, it’s Susanna.

Susanna: Oh, look, it’s that old harpy.

Marcellina: Well, I never! If you weren’t the Count’s favorite and a little simp, I might say something derogatory or suggestive about you.

Susanna: You just did.

Marcellina: My bad.

Susanna: Cougar!

Marcellina: Suck-up!

Susanna: Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

(Marcellina leaves in a huff)

Susanna: Good riddance! I swear she can be so catty sometimes. I feel sorry for anyone who had to call her “mother.”

(Cherubino comes in)

Cherubino: Hey, Susanna!

Susanna: Hey, Cherubino, what mischief did you get yourself into today?

Cherubino: Who says I got myself into any mischief?

Susanna: Oh, you didn’t? What a pleasant surprise.

Cherubino: Okay, so I got into some mischief. I was hanging out with Barbarina—

Susanna: “Hanging out”?

Cherubino: I don’t like what you’re insinuating. Anyway, we were just chilling and suddenly the Count comes in. You know, people should really be more concerned about what a guy several years older than her was doing looking for her than what I was doing in there, given she and I are basically the same age. Anyway, so I hid because, you know, he hates me, but he found me, and because apparently hanging out with my friend is a crime, he fired me, and now I have to leave.

Susanna: Oh, poor kid.

Cherubino: Unless the Countess vouches for me, I’m sunk.

Susanna: What makes you think she will?

Cherubino: She’s so nice and fair! And also really pretty. You are so lucky you get to work with her every day. I only get to see her at dinner. What’s that you’ve got there?

Susanna: It’s a ribbon from your lovely lady.

Cherubino: Can I have it?

Susanna: …why?

Cherubino: Because. (he grabs the ribbon)

Susanna: What do you think you’re doing?

Cherubino: Come on, I’ll trade you for this song I wrote.

Susanna: What am I going to do with it?

Cherubino: Sing it to all the ladies in the palace!

Susanna: Since it looks like this song is about loving women, I don’t know what you’re suggesting about me.

Cherubino: Who am I to say what you are? I don’t even know who I am anymore! I have all these hormones running through my veins but I have no idea what they’re called because sex ed doesn’t exist in my time so I’m just very confused and probably making some ill-advised choices but who cares! I’m in love with everybody!

Susanna: Okay, settle down, Romeo.

Cherubino: Oh H-E-double hockey sticks! The Count is here!

Susanna: He really just makes a habit of walking in on people whenever he wants, huh? Here, Cherubino, hide behind this chair.

(Cherubino hides behind the chair.)

(The Count walks in.)

Count: Hello there, Susanna, how are you today?

Susanna: Oh, you know. Well, it was great catching up with you. See you later.

Count: Come on, is that all I get? Don’t you know how I feel about you?

Susanna: …you make it pretty obvious.

Count: Well then, why not meet me alone in the garden tonight? I’ll give you this ring.

Susanna: That’s just really gross and demeaning, sir.

Count: What can I say? I’m a guy. Wait, who’s that talking right outside the door?

Susanna: Oh, biscuits and gravy, it’s Basilio.

Count: I should hide!

Susanna: Or you could just leave!

Count: Only guilty people run. I’ll hide behind this chair.

Susanna: WAIT NOT THE CHAIR

(Luckily Cherubino goes around the chair and climbs onto it before the Count sees him. The Count hides behind the chair. Susanna throws a blanket over Cherubino to hide him.)

Susanna: I don’t get paid enough for this shit.

(Basilio comes in)

Basilio: Hello there, Susanna, what are you up to?

Susanna: I don’t know if you all just forgot, but I do actually work here.

Basilio: Sure, sure. Well, do you want to hear all the hot goss?

Susanna: Not really.

Basilio: I’ll tell you anyway. Apparently Figaro has some new beef with the Count, which isn’t surprising given they’re both such hotheads. Also, I’ve heard wind that Cherubino has a crush on the Countess. Isn’t that hilarious?

Susanna: Basilio! How can you say these things?

Basilio: Hey, don’t kill the messenger. I’m just saying what everyone else is saying.

(The Count jumps out from hiding.)

Count: And what exactly are people saying?

Basilio: Well, they’ll sure have plenty to say after this!

Susanna: Oh, gods, just strike me down here where I’m standing.

Count: So, Cherubino’s been hitting on my wife, eh? That’s it, he’s spent his last days in this palace. He’s got to go!

Susanna: Come on, he’s just a kid!

Count: No, I’ve had enough. Why, just this morning I caught him fooling around with Barbarina. Don’t ask me what I was doing creeping around Barbarina’s place. Cherubino was hiding under the table and I pulled the tablecloth up like this. (He demonstrates by pulling the blanket off the chair, revealing Cherubino.) WAIT WHAT IS THIS

Basilio: This just keeps getting better!

Susanna: This just keeps getting worse!

Count: Was he here this entire time?

Susanna: …yes.

Count: But I was sitting in that chair!

Cherubino: I hid behind it first.

Count: Shut up, the grownups are talking. What about when I hid behind the chair?

Cherubino: I ran around to sit on it.

Count: So, wait, he heard everything we said?

Cherubino: I tried not to--

Count: How dare you eavesdrop! Well, if you like sitting in chairs so much, you can stay sitting until I throw you out. Pack your bags, you miscreant.

Cherubino: How am I supposed to pack my bags if I’m sitting here?

Count: Don’t be cheeky! Now, Susanna, how do you think Figaro will react when he finds out you’ve been hanging out alone with Cherubino?

Susanna: His reaction probably won’t be as bad as when he finds out you tried to pay me for sex.

Count: I--

(At this moment Figaro enters with a bunch of other servants.)

Figaro: Hello everyone! I’ve come with basically the entire palace for an impromptu wedding. That way we have a bunch of witnesses so the Count can’t pull anything funny. Who needs all the pomp and circumstance of a full ceremony anyway? Here’s Susanna’s veil; now, Signore Count, if you’ll just say the word so my fiancée and I here can be wed.

Count: Oh, come on, you think I’ll let you get married like this? No sir! We’re going to make a big bash out of it.

Figaro: But—

Count: No buts about it. (If I stall long enough, I can get Marcellina to help me ruin this thing altogether. If Susanna won’t have me, she sure as heck won’t have Figaro either.) Now, friends, be on your way! We have festivities to prepare for.

(All the other servants leave singing.)

Figaro: Well, that didn’t exactly go the way I planned.

Susanna: It’s okay, we’ll work it out. We always think of something.

Figaro: But why does Cherubino look so glum?

Susanna: He got fired.

Figaro: Again?

Count: Well, I mean it this time.

Cherubino: What if I promise never to do anything bad ever again?

Count: Nope, I don’t trust you.

Cherubino: What if I promise never to tell anyone what I heard when I was hiding behind the chair?

Count: SHUT UP! Okay fine, I’ll let you off on a warning. Even better, I’ll bestow upon you the highest honor. There’s an opening for an officer in my regiment. You can enlist.

Cherubino: WHAT?

Susanna: Can you at least wait until after the wedding?

Count: Nope, they’re leaving for Seville today so he has to go.

Cherubino: …as you wish, sir.

Count: That’s more like it.

Figaro: Hey, chin up, Cherubino! It won’t be so bad. I mean, sure, you’ll probably be the prettiest one there and everyone will pick on you and you’ll have to deal with deafening cannons and marching through mud and having no money and leaving all your friends (and girlfriends) behind and not having any fun anymore ever, but it’s a glorious life being a soldier!

Cherubino: I think I’m going to cry.

#Le nozze di Figaro #idek what this is but i had fun with it so #opera #opera tag

6 notes · View notes