#or rather. to say that implies like i havent been even though i have

[hxlcyon]

college.........

[satoruhour]

full nelson w gojo or toji🤐

a/n: chose toji bc i have . a lot of gojo requests plus i havent written for toji in so long :3 also didnt know why i made this goofy and cute. enjoy!

warnings: fem!reader, pet names, implied orgasm denial, playful banter, fingering, clit stimlation, riding, full nelson, unprotected sex, creampie / breeding kink, n*sfw under the cut

you were never one to hide your feelings and needs from toji — it was your advice at the end of the day where the assassin had confessed every single terrible thing he’s done and you still embraced him in the dingy motel under the fluorescent light. he had to do what he had to do even if his kills had terrified you a little—

but now he’s put all the assassin business behind him for a peaceful life with you where you showed him every ounce of the love he didn’t get to receive before.

you try your best to follow your own lesson — keep communication open and to be honest — but sometimes it was difficult with toji’s green eyes and hard stare boring into your eyes. they made you feel small and intimidated, something you always felt when you wanted to bring up something more intimate.

“you look like you’re constipated, kid, what’s up?” he asks without turning to you, possibly seeing your shaking hands from earlier. you can see the reflection of the television in his eyes and you‘re getting ready to speak . . that is until he turns to you.

toji raises an eyebrow, not missing the way your eyes dart down to his tongue licking his lips.

“u— uh, nothing, babe. all’s good.”

toji only hums and gets back to his baseball match, but surprises you a second later when he tugs on your waist. he smirks a little at your little yelp as you settle (or rather, were forced to) on his lap and he tilts his head, taunting you for your question.

“c’mon, spit it out. didn’t we promise to be honest?” your boyfriend questions, “and i’m not ’bout to run a therapy session—”

“iwanttotrysomethingwithyou.”

“slower, baby.” toji has a hand caressing your hip and the other blindly reaches for the TV remote, turning down the volume on the commentator’s annoying voice. he eases you into what you want to say.

“i want . . to try something.”

“in what sense? this better not be one more of your tiktok dance c—”

you giggle, “no! no, it isn’t that. i want to try . . the full nelson . . with you.”

toji clicks his tongue and you hate the heat on your cheeks once a smile spreads on his face because this was exactly the reason why you didn’t want to bring something up as embarrassing as this to him, because you could already see the amount of teasing he’d give you.

your moans descends into a complaint when toji yet again pulls his fingers away from your gaping hole, whining when you’re so close to your orgasm and yet he takes it away from you.

“tojiiii—!” you pout, grinding your hips into nothing while he enjoys the way you thrash around on bed and hope for something more than just his fingers in your cunt. not to mention, he’s been neglecting your clit, driving you to insanity on his fingers alone.

“want ya to cum on my dick, doll, ’m not that mean.” you roll your eyes, letting him devour your lips and manhandle you easily until you’re in reverse cowgirl.

he only nods towards his pelvis, “c’mon. ride me.”

your jaw drops — “first, you deny me my orgasm then you ask me to do all the work?” you know he’s truthful when he says he isn’t that mean, especially with how loving he is to you today, but this little teasing side of him still makes you grunt in annoyance. he has something up his sleeve, though.

you tsk, turning away from him and you can hear his smirk, possibly at your ass as you grope around for his cock for a few before you actually get it.

“man, shut up! i’m trying to find it.” you grumble, before finally getting it and he laughs — but it’s cut off. your playful banter is interrupted momentarily when you drag his tip along your folds and you smile upon toji’s hiss; and when you sink down you can feel your throat become dry, jaw dropping at how he stretches you out. you’re never used to it.

“t . . toji—” you squeeze his thighs, feeling his hands move to grab your ass and hips. he helps you bottom out, letting out a few grunts of his own. “feels s’good.”

“y—yeah? f-fuck . .” he swears when your hips start moving and you both can hear your drenched cunt from your delayed highs, each time increasing in volume from how you slam down onto his pelvis. toji can feel your arousal spurting everywhere, hips meeting yours halfway in needy movements.

you’re so drunk on his cock that you don’t realise the sheets turning wet with your cum, pressing harshly on toji’s thighs as you ride him. the other admires how your ass jiggles with each contact made with his crotch, alongside the beautiful moans that you let out.

you’re tired fast, thighs burning and heart pumping and you’d wish toji would take over already. he catches your drift soon enough, always observant as he meets your tired eyes. but he has to smile knowingly and your eyes widen when he prompts you backwards with his cock still in you.

“easy . .” he whispers as he brings your legs up to your ears like he would in a mating press, and even then, your eyes are already rolling back. your head falls on his shoulder in a shoot of pleasure, breath shaking with the first thrust he does.

this submission of power always sends you reeling — how toji slowly takes the upper hand from you by snapping his hips into yours as you stay limp above him. but it goes above that. toji locks his heands behind your head and you’re completely trapped.

“feel me in ya, doll?”

all your reply consisted of were moans and whimpers and a clench of your cunt, heating up when you feel his chuckle along your ear. “movin’ now, baby.”

you swear you see heaven when his shaft rams into you from below and toji groans into your ear. you were just so damn tight, pussy sucking him in that he has to take a minute before his hips properly move and you’re like a fuck toy. your tits bounce with each thrust and your limp body is held up by toji.

“you’re so . . fuckin’ wet, princess.” he mutters, wishing he could see your fucked out face at the position. from here, he can barely see your cunt, too, but if it’s what you want, he’ll happily fold you in half any day.

“toji, toji, toji,” is all you have in your brain, loving the way he impales you with each movement of his hips, feeling each vein on his throbbing, fat cock that you attempt to reach down to rub at your clit. he delivers a particularly hard thrust that has you mewling.

“don’t.” slowly he removes one hand, tuts when your leg starts to loosen. “keep it up for me baby, c’mon, yess . . that’s a good girl.” you listen like a dog to his owner, trying your best to keep your leg where it should be before you’re letting out a loud, almost pornographic moan. his fingers feel so rough against your clit, slapping it obscenely and noisily just as his hips never stop.

“you’re close, yeah?” toji whispers, thrusts starting to turn sloppy. his ass is aching along with his thighs, pleased when you nod. “then cum with me, dollface.”

his hand on your clit is ruthless, rubbing circles into it as his cock stretches you out like no other. it’s hitting so deep in you that you hardly have any coherent words, almost driven to your climax when you look down and you can see just how sloppy your pussy is, dripping all over his length and pelvis that there’s strings of your juices.

“give it t’me. cum all over my cock, baby.” is what pushes you over and your whole body shakes in his hold, vision turning white as you ride out your orgasm. his thrusts don’t stop, sending you into overstimulation when he ruts into you like a dog, finally cumming deep in you that his hot breath stains your neck. it’s hot and so much, painting your insides white with each ribbon of semen he releases in you.

there’s a filthy push of your cunt when he finally removes his cock from you, that drives out all the cum in you and you’re moaning lewdly when he uses his cock to slap your cunt; you hear just how wet your connected bodies are.

toji just chuckles when you grind down on his tip. “little cum dump just f’r me.”

[to-my-emil]

luca's 2024 letter

so i did a whole analysis/explanation/infodump about luca's newest letter on my discord server and. figured i may as well post it here! theres a lot of fun tasty things in here and some confirmation of things that have been implied in previous letters which is fun to look at. please keep in mind i dont have the entirety of every character and manor game's lore memorized so while i did double check some things i mightve missed some stuff. anyway its all below the cut since its Long have fun :)

(also feel free to chime in with any thoughts/feelings/opinions/ideas!)

so theres three sections to this letter! im gonna go section by section, but some parts of the last section are mentioned earlier so uh. sorry if you havent read it yet (id recommend u do read it first)

so part 1 is pretty fun. luca is confirmed to have survived game 10 (which also features tracy, charles, and bonbon though we dont currently know who the fourth survivor participant is) And its implied that hes the only survivor of the game (according to the "fleeting victory" thats the assumption at least). his traits w being able to connect the ciphers is also officially tied into the lore here; there are in fact wires running underneath each arena (or at the very least whichever arena lucas game was in which we dont know yet iirc) so its canon that he can do what he does in matches and its not something that the detective incorrectly deduced lorewise (idk if any of the survivor abilities are Actually incorrect deductions/not actually things that theyre doing (like for example priestess's portals, etc that seem more far-fetched) but since we know hes done other things incorrectly (like "prisoner" and "psychologist" titles being in quotes/technically wrong) i figure he mightve gotten some of those wrong too). luca is also Super Fucked Up w an unusuable left arm (and his previous injuries which we know includes at Least severe brain trauma but likely physical trauma too considering his time in prison + the leg braces) so uhhhhhhhhhhh. my money is NOT on him for the next game.

which is the fun next thing to talk about: baron deross is making him do another game!! this confirms whats implied in emmas 2022 letter (she writes "I've won the previous round, for now" which implies a second round if not more), and probably means that helena and galatea would also go through another round even though its not confirmed yet. so far we dont have a record of what happens in any second manor game for a player who has won (as far as i remember); usually what happens is entire groups are eliminated before the game and the only survivor goes on to the next round to try again by default rather than having won the game (like murro and luchino). so far luca's second game is the only one we have ANY info about for a survivor whos won their first game; we know that alva is in it and its heavily implied ann is in it (we'll get to this later) so we'll likely find out what happens once we get either of their experiment letters. its also interesting that the baron seems to reveal more information about the experiments to luca after luca won his game, but its hard to know whether thats because luca is also a scientist or if he reveals that to everyone who wins. my guess is maybe the former bc u Know luca would have questions and theres also no mention of baron deross saying anything like that in emmas, galateas, or helenas letters.

on to section 2!!! (there was a slur against disabled people in the last line of this section so. thats whats blocked out)

OKAY SO. definitely confirmed that hes in a second manor game, its not even subtext its just right there. assuming the "mechanisms" refer to the same mechanisms that are running under the arena and connecting the cipher machines my guess is that this is what he used to shock other participants?? rather than just being to conduct electricity through himself like he does in the game?? idk thats just spaghetti at the wall its not clear here how he actually got shocked and why. it Is clear that he passed the fuck out at some point or another/his memory issues have gotten worse and the wiki points to that guy in his dream being hermann, so that's. interesting. theres an implication here that luca and hermann used to be closer, but once luca started w physics hermann went mmmm time to stop being a father. which. checks out knowing hermann. whats even more interesting is that luca calls hermanns ideas "ludicrous fantasies" that are neither idealistic nor realistic, because like luca you went and did THE EXACT SAME THING. BRO HE WORKED ON PERPETUAL MOTION. YOURE WORKING ON PERPETUAL MOTION. IM SORRY YOU CANT CLOWN ON UR DAD FOR RUINING HIS LIFE OVER PERPETUAL MOTION WHEN U DID LITERALLY THE EXACT SAME THING

anyway.

i do wonder if this is meant to imply that hermann was in fact actually working on a More ridiculous version of perpetual motion or if luca is just biased as hell against hermann. im banking on the latter there is no way in hell that luca is a reliable narrator considering all his memory issues + his general tendency to outright grab people hes mad at by the throat (<- fun fact we see this at least twice once in alvas backstory video and again in gattos backstory video. luca is the same across all timelines). also implications that hermann became an alcoholic. im guessing as a kid luca was told it was medicine and he hasnt put the pieces together?? or its ironic. idk could be either with him. i highly doubt its actually medicine. ALTHOUGH. theres an alternate explanation here; when luca says "swallow them down" i initially thought he was referring to hiding his "final feelings", since sometimes swallowing down feelings is a phrase used for that kind of thing. but potentially this could be implying that hermann had luca take some kind of medicine potentially to get rid of those feelings in some way?? personally i think its the former because we already know hermann was wasting his life and money so becoming an alcoholic would be an easy answer, but this is probably just because i dont have any answers if it were the latter. something to think about

now the third part, which gives us info about the next manor game!

so first the "gaunt old man" is (according to the wiki which i agree with in this case) mad eyes, which makes sense because mad eyes was involved in game 8/9 right before this and game 10 was filled with inventors + bonbon so it only makes sense he was there. no idea where he went though. whats more fun is that luca is now In The Fucking basement Walls where mad eyes used to be bc luca doesnt trust the rest of the participants. considering the "abnormal eyes" and that alva is here we know for sure that this is those related to the eye of darkness cult, which means ann is also definitely there. whats even more interesting is that this implies the existence of at least one more member of the eye of darkness cult whos going to be in this game; luca says "new participants" and "these people", and considering how specific the letters usually are with other things i would guess hed say "those two" if it were only ann and alva (of course its possible that theyre the only two have arrived at the writing of this journal, but considering he refers to a ritual coming up soon my money is on all the participants being of the cat cult except luca). luca makes a good note that this new game is likely the opposite of the previous and more focused on religion/spirituality which checks out w the participants, but DAMN hes an asshole about their writing style LMAO. sorry luca not everyone can have the same notes u do

the "brother in faith" guy here is alva, and i personally believe that he can in fact believe see through walls just bc thats funny as hell. just kidding its likely because luca is not as subtle he thinks he is because alva Literally Knows Him. other people might not be able to know hes there but like. that guys also a scientist. hed be able to figure out that theres someone in the walls AND he does in fact know luca. its difficult to tell bc of lucas memory issues but this probably also implies that alva looks very different from how he did in life (i doubt its as tall/etc as in his hunter form since thats what they all see when drugged not what he Actually looks like but im sure theres some stuff like his shorter hair/grayish skin/etc that carries across). i for one am fucking thrilled that theyre in a game together bc oh my god this is a time bomb and im just waiting to watch it explode (again).

as for the last line about a ritual... teehee. im very excited for whatever this is going to be and its killing me that this is the Only Information we have on it so far. likely we're going to have to wait for more alva and ann letters on this one, as well as whoever the third eye of darkness cult member is going to be, but i have no doubt that we'll have some more info eventually. if i had to take a guess its going to heavily affect how game 10-2/11 turns out; i highly doubt any ritual goes on without a sacrifice, and, well... theres only one guy here whos not already part of the cult. things are not looking great for lucas future.

[yonpote]

thinking abt forever home again... cuz like we didnt NOT freak out i mean the clips and gifs of dan saying this isnt a forever home were endless but i feel like we werent freaking out bc of the implication of being together forever but rather them just. saying it and acknowledging it outright. like cuz of all the #Dark Past the phandom had operated under this like, silent rule abt dnp about just Not Talking About It (at least not too much and not to their faces) but then when they said stuff that WAs opening up a little it was like. Oh. OH. like how ppl thought they were gonna come out in 2017, i mean ppl thought they were gonna come out every year since 2011 lmao but specifically 2017 cuz thats when dan started talking about the June Video and imo i think that was meant to be the case, but then with moving and probably already planning for ii and dan having a gay crisis it had to be postponed but like, we were FEELING the coming out. like i dont wanna say dnp coming out wasnt a surprise cuz it seems a little "lol ok we been knew lmao" but i feel like it WASNT a surprise bc they had already primed us for a few years of being like ok theyre probably definitely queer even though they havent said specific words, they are definitely no longer saying straight they are no longer implying a desire for girlfriends or even mentioning attraction to women, they are talking about attraction to men a little more and not in a "mancrush" way, they are talking abt queer creators and artists, earring on the right ear etc. ofc there were and honestly still are people who are like "BUT THEY DIDNT SAY SPECIFIC WORDS THEREFORE WE CANT ASSUME ETC" but like. we CAN assume and at this point they KNOW we assume and don't mind it at all! bc they're no longer trying to hide anything!

[s0lar-ch3ri]

theory time!

so reasoning as to why i cant reblog the other one is just cause it doesnt allow videos when i reblog now which sucks but whatever so yeah! its a jrwi theory again, and whatever future info i have was 99% gathered from the wiki (the remaining one percent might not even show up in this theory so ye), and of course theres spoilers for the black rose one shot AND riptide pirates (dont have any exsct eps, all i can say is im at ep 101 now so anything before that is kinda fair game)

for the original theory post

k so we gonna put that one clip (scroll message, about a minute long) and talk about it, def mention all the connections gill would have with the black sea, shit like that

apologies for the buggy clip, just needed to add this and when i recorded i was in school aka just recorded like this for less risk, lets talk about the message though.

"a map that is a guide and a key passed around the hands of destiny, it leads to chaos infinity beneath the seas, the garden giant, the nameless prince, the unborn kings, all await to be inevitably free"

i think in my og theory post i talked on how gill was very connected to the black sea imo so how does all this tie in? lets do some quick lil notes first

ok so the scroll of legend lore has been held onto by gillion, the one closest to destiny's ties, and has not been used until now

chaos infinity while refering to the black sea could also be an undersea thing, what with the leviathins (nobody else remember how the pearl shard gillion has came from one? and how the pearl was never supposed to even see the light of day probs let alone be in some cat mans evil base? just me?)

while i wanna say aster mythborne aeiliana shes not real here so she cant be garden giant

BUT we do have a known leviathin(? could just be a dragon turtle) named duke who has plant shit and is controlled by a gollieth

nameless prince is everso chip coded but we looking all across our board here so yeah

it could apply that the "nameless prince" could refer to someone "unnamed" who holds power like that prince from edison kingdom or smth

it could also reference marshal jon, who's canon first name has been forgotten and canon last name is jon

unborn kings? honestly while i dont think chip's bit of mpreg is apart of this i think the lady inspiring it (aka aslana's mom) has some relations to this whole thing

we all read "kings" btw so theres probs multiple yall

would goobleck count? he is goobleck he must apply someway

non-literal one again? maybe their monsters or smth

wait to be free. huh. gee, i wonder, will the door nightmare with arlin come into play here. thatd be so fun. yeah. ahahaha im losing myself

okay okay maybe its not all clear and i honestly have had this as a draft for too long (as shown below)

BUT ill reblog this later cause ill really just be using text and images and shit

whats the basic idea? this is def where the oath from the sword comes into play (murdering destiny), with the whole "the black sea twists you" thing we may get hints of killion or even dark gillion again, the thign about it being a "key" might imply like a 'this means that' type deal rather then being actually a key, the chaos isnt really referring to the black sea but the state of the undersea in general (lost champion becomign criminal, ally shit gone, oversea war, etc), unnamed prince is either someone we havent met yet or someone who we dont expect to have a return (ie: were deemed before as not really lore relevant), and the unborn kings are monsters, oh and the garden giant isnt arlin but something related to the duke! THIS HAS TO CONNECT TO THE LEVIATHINS FR

some details/info about gill/things related to gill so i write this better:

"You promise to slay all evil before thee, crack corruption that takes hold of this world, strike swiftly enough to split the seas, and even if the thread of fate poses an obstacle against us, we shall sever it"

A hero born of moonlight, storm and sea. / They shall rise or fall to bring unity. / They will be tested or bested by evil’s hand. / By their choice one will remain: sea or land.

[yuukei-yikes]

That post str Harutaka angst hurts my heart a little but I do want it

HEH. CONFLICT IS SO FUN OKAY. haruka and takane get along too well i need a little something to have fun with.... also thank u for sending this im totally using it as an excuse to talk about it. i went crazy in this ask sorry

ok. i KNOW forward by winterhats exists...... and thank god it does 🙏in case u havent read it erm read it. thats like harutaka content 101... not to spoil stuff but something about haruka not telling takane abt his condition Does take place in that fic. but the thing with that fic is haruka has no memories.... (post str no memory haruka is a concept i was never a fan of bc it doesnt rly make sense to me?? Still love forward though🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏) SO IM THINKING OF a canon situation with haruka remembering fine yknow...

logically i think takane would be sad rather than angry once finding out. also she'd hear it from shintaro who is the only one who knew, aside from kenjirou but he's x_x post str💔 so shintaro it is. also it's such a shintaro thing to do isnt it?? accidentally mention it to takane or assume she knew and realise he messed up like, way too late. like he already said it like 5 times before he realised takane is asking him to repeat it so many times precisely because SHE DIDN'T KNOW

like i said i think its kinda a fragile thing because God its so sad. how could u even get mad at someone for choosing not to say they're dying. so yeah logically takane Would be mostly sad about both the sad reality haruka was living AND how she wasn't told, because to her it means haruka didnt trust her or maybe felt he couldnt count on her.

im abt to overanalyse: personally from a writing point of view i think the reason haruka doesnt tell takane is because headphone actor was already written and the narrative where takane doesnt know was already there. haruka's 1 year to live thing was written a lot after, with over the dimension. but besides that: from a character standpoint, of course haruka wouldn't tell takane. she is the last person he wants to worry and the one he wants the most happy memories with. and something important about haruka and takane's relationship is the fact neither knows much about each others conditions. in both their povs upon introducing each other to the audience, they both explain their illnesses briefly. they both say "i havent asked much". to me its always been about haruka and takane deeply relating to each other about people feeling sorry for them. so they dont owe each other the explanations theyre so used to giving to others! so to me, haruka doesnt tell takane because 1.he doesnt want her to worry more than she already does 2.he wants to have happy memories of her 3. related to that, doesnt want her to look at him differently. she is the one person who gets it. if he were to come clean abt it, he'd lose it. besides, haruka tells shintaro by the time he's like. LOSING HIS MIND and really deeply depressed abt the situation. kenjirou also knows... but haruka's father could've told him since its mentioned they used to be colleagues. personally i think haruka told him himself, since he also mentions kenjirou is the only adult he's ok sharing stuff with, so in a way its implied if ur delusional like me.

erm. anyways. i got a little sidetrack IM GONNA GET TO IT OKAY its just, haruka's dying words for takane man. don't cry anymore, you're gonna meet so many new people, etc. he basically tells her he is just 1 person in the long long life he assumes she will have. theyre best friends, he knew takane would mourn him terribly and thats why he thinks all that stuff he cant actually tell her.. augh haruka's goodbye to takane always gets me so so badly. bc he KNEW... like, ene lives in so much regret for not telling haruka how she felt but haruka died knowing she loved him. even if he didnt know it was romantic, he still knew she loved him :( i was going somewhere with this. (pacing around my room) oh yeah. his dying words. haruka doesn't convey all this to takane while he has the chance because of the stuff i said before but the most important was number 3. he doesnt want takane to look at him differently. plus everything he says while he is dying... god id post the whole screenshot. but he says "dont get mad at anyone but me" "please dont cry anymore" "im so sorry youve given me so much and i couldnt give back" he... doesn't Want to see takane upset. he knows she will be upset anyway but its like. at least he wont be around to see it, in a way. we could see this as kind of selfish but like The guy's dying come ON. i think he has the right to do that. lol.

WELLLL COMING BACK TO THE ORIGINAL APPROACH LMAO.. takane finding out post str....... i went on that tangent to defend haruka precisely cuz i dont think takane would be genuinely mad. its a tricky situation and its not like she can be like WELL BUT U KNEW AND U DIDNT WARN ME!?!?!?!? Like THAT IS a pretty lame position to take. HOWEVER. CONFLICT (PUTS HANDS DOWN) i think takane just needs to be mad

WHILE TAKANE WOULD BE MORE UPSET THAN MAD she IS also super impulsive. like insanely impulsive <- finds out she loves haruka and immediately runs for it even if it terrified her. so in the spur of the moment she blows up on haruka about it LOL like as SOON as she finds out. like i imagine she probably hears it from shintaro and like immediately leaves mid conversation to go find haruka and yell at him. that kind of thing.

and haruka's all like 😨😨😨 and he's stuttering cuz HE HAS AN ANSWER ABT WHY HE DIDNT TELL HER IT JUST SOUNDS RLY BAD LIKE "ERM I DIDNT WANT TO SEE U UPSET❤️" like in over the dimension haruka does get pretty nervous when takane starts pressing even if its as a joke. so especially with something so sensitive he has no idea what to do. i think he'd try to be all composed though bc its Post Str and idk str haruka is so. ethereal he is so calm isn't he. i think he would get nervous initially and then get himself together but ends up coming off as dismissive. so hes like i didnt tell you.....because i didnt want to❤️ and takane probably just needed to be mad for a little bit and was gonna get over it and be sad but hearing that just makes her so damn upset for realsies and haruka notices how she changed from😡 to 😐 and hes immediately like oh takane.... no... i didnt mean it like that...i just mean...OH DONT MAKE THAT FACE I DIDNT MEAN IT... and takane's like NOO DONT TOUCH ME WHATEVER IM LEAVINGGG unnecessary conflict in a romcom vibes

conflict probably lasts like. a day or something. a week tops. its harder for haruka than for takane. takane finds it a little refreshing i think its also cool to link it to all the other headcanons abt haruka being super desperate to be in company because erm Daze confinement gang🙏💥 while takane's a little like. i havent had a minute to myself in 11 days. so this distance actually helps her a little while haruka is like Hour 5 without my girlfriend I've cried so much i cant see anymore

they both feel like shit and do spend the time trying to see the situation from each other's perspectives though so takane realises she's being self centered and stupid and admits she just wanted to be angry and took it out on the first thing she could grasp at. but it was unfair. takane will apologize first and probably tells him she doesn't need or want him to "protect" her feelings and wants him to count on her from now onward. haruka's like *nod nod nod nod nod nod* and thanks her for apologizing. hed try to also apologize but takane doesnt accept it bc he wasnt wrong it was her who was unfair. hehe. i think he'd be crying so hard too bc to him its all these feelings coming back abt how he felt when he died and all the things he thought of telling her then. maybe he would tell her abt it, like i was thinking about all the people you'd meet and how u should be happy and not cry for me. and how in disbelief he still is that theyre together. sorry im. auauggagaggsgsggqgggg

all this just for me 2 enjoy the mental image of the little time in between where theyre awkward around each other and takane wants a little distance for a bit. i think itd be funny to see haruka being totally pathetic abt takane not paying attention to him. anyways. yeah. something like that i guess

[voidcat]

– a moment in passing

characters: scaramouche, you

wc & warnings: 5k – mentions of blood and death, implied suggestive themes by the end but vague and short, mc's perspective more or less in a disassociative state and in a negative light towards themselves, scaramouche being himself but a bit more tolerable, the story itself nonlinear and the switch between perspectives is unclear

notes: hihihi finally posting this. idk why it turned out a bit diff than i had planned? ig im even sadder inside my head ahahaah. anyways technically this title was for the first childe fic i planned (yes the same one i STILL havent continued...) idk i feel it fits this one better now. hope u guys like this bye!

You do not remember much, you realize one day.

Be it core moments in your life, key memories, things that have shaped you into who you are; you can remember how they feel, the dread, the negativity, your throat running dry and the urge to let out choked coughs– but not the moment itself, never the memories themselves.

Never, not even once what started them, that triggering fire, that first snap of fingers signaling the orchestra to start.

Water pouring over your shoulders draws you out in a sudden.

For only a second it feels hot, you squeeze your eyes shut, then wait in the same position and sit.

Sit and breathe and open the windows again.

The realization dawns on you as you see red swarming at your feet.

And hands scrubbing at your skin, rubbing into the flesh, not too gentle, but not harsh enough to bruise, rinsing you with water.

When you turn, you do not expect to meet Scaramouche’s features.

That explains the awkward pressure of hands, you conclude.

You’ve long gave up on questioning certain things, and this… rather interesting situation you are in, is included in the list.

You do not remember what might’ve happened for red to pool at your feet and for him to stand by your side so silently, lost in his thoughts and wash away your body.

You do remember your hands though, how they hurt, how the muscles contracted so hard until they took the shape of claws.

You remember consciously feeling your nails, it was odd. Their presence so clear, so apparent on your skin– bringing your thumb to your index, you scratch at the tip of the nail to feel how smooth it is.

It is not.

Your face scrunches at the thought, what could you have done to get them like this?

Scaramouche keeps rubbing at your skin in silence.

You were odd. That, he was aware for a long time, perhaps from the beginning.

But right now, your silence only makes the air heavier, he feels on the edge a little. What are you thinking?

Or are you, at all?

No person in their right mind can sit still like this, so still and pliant, have someone wash them, wash off everything that’s been dried up and clung to their skin.

No one in their right mind could look so peaceful and eerie as if nothing happened, right after killing someone.

Lucky for you, Scaramouche is not exactly someone you’d describe to be in their right mind.

It all begins with a– 

A void.

A blankness of a memory, if you can call it that.

You can recall a scholar saying once that we never restore memories truly. Every time we remember one, we make it up again, creating it from the start. You found it interesting then, it sounds only stupid now.

Was there something wrong with you that you couldn’t make up one from the start, like anyone else?

It is confusing, the whole predicament you are in.

He is awfully quiet, more than the times he had a reason too. His hands are gentle, a softness you’d die and still not expect from him.

Sure, he was difficult, and awful and you think like that now but then again, were you not the one staying? Defamation is no nice thing, he was not all that bad with you after all, was he?

In the silence where all you can hear is a faint beating of your heart and his breathing– which you find slow, inhumanly so, but you don’t go around poking this; the question remains, why is he doing this, what is the purpose?

Moving your right arm and crossing it over your chest, you try to reach a spot on your back, straightening your shoulders a little in the process.

Scratching at the point doesn’t do much to bring back to reality fully, you feel dirty. 

For how long have you been neglecting yourself this time?

It is not the dullness of your senses but the weird texture you feel as you pull your hand back– and realize it is not some red liquid Scaramouche has been pouring over your body for a while now.

The source of the color that pools at your feet is blood that clings to your skin.

Walking by an invisible line, your eyes look around at nothing in particular, sight out of focus, the world passing by in a blur.

It’s more beautiful like this, shapes with no edges, the colors blending softly, bleeding into one another– it’s just the world out of focus, your feet swarming on grass and the faint sounds of the bells up ahead.

You find yourself liking this place much more than the static lands of Inazuma.

Walking under another branch, you reach out and tear off a leaf– a dark shade of burgundy, similar to some trees you recall seeing in Inazuma. Tucking the stray leaf to your sleeve, you presume with your steps, arms dangling off at both sides again. 

Another piece to dry press in a notebook you won’t be using.

Even when separated from the land, what comes from Inazuma remains the same, a copy of the never changing atmosphere the land has carried for ages.

Flowers you pick take a little longer than the regular type to die, leaves take a little longer to crunch up and dry, the bones take longer to disintegrate, skin takes longer to crack and rot away.

Another step and you find yourself bumping into a body, stumbling in your feet for a second– you must’ve dozed off, again.

In fear of what’s to come, you squeeze your eyes and look to the side, near the horizon line, body contracted and shoulders tense.

No poisoned words or insults follow however, Scaramouche stands in the same position, as if your weight clashing into him was nothing, staring ahead.

A bush of roses stand before his eyes.

“Wild roses.” you hum and say, noticing the slight nod he makes in response, any other indication he heard you doesn’t exist in this moment.

The curious gaze in his eyes disappear at your words.

Now is better than ever to try your chance, “Never seen some before?” you inquire, “and you call yourself a traveller, claim to have seen many places.” 

He grunts at your claims, ah, there it is, “Watch your language when you speak to me next time.” he says but it doesn’t sound like a bark this time, nor a demand. 

Just a reminder that though it is the two of you here, his men are still around, hearing proximity or not is lost to you, one can never overlook a well functioning ear.

“Apologies, my lord.” The words leave your mouth with a snicker, which only serves to draw his attention.

“These seem to be a wild rose of sorts though, perhaps that is why you didn’t recognize them at first sight.”

Wild or tame, it is a lie either way. One you both go along with, once again.

The flowers sit among the bush, dispersed in their dried, faded glory– all but one, one rose stands among them, still trying to keep alive and not wither away.

A mere attempt to stand out perhaps, or that survival instinct that runs deep.

It stands straight but to no avail, it’s color has faded, petals falling off one after another.

Scaramocuhe’s eyes find your form in an instant when he breaks his gaze from the rose.

Though his intention and the contents of his mind often remain a mystery, you cannot help but take a guess.

You don’t want to.

Maybe that’s the main issue.

Your mind feels hazy.

You decide you hate him more when he is quiet like this.

No, ‘hate’ is too strong of a word, you doubt anything you harbor for him is on that intensity.

You decide you dislike, it sounds more right when you say this, him when he is quiet. When he is not barking insults left and right, when he is not ordering and everyone else clueless as to what he might want this time.

Scaramouche recalls when you spoke of an early memory many nights ago.

It was quiet, dark, save for that awful moon hanging down, your voice had a softness and a pang of innocence to it.

If he deemed you to be these things before, he certainly hasn’t, not after hearing you speak like that, as if on eggshells, barely making a space for itself– not caring if you take up any space.

It was about a conversation you had and how for the first time your definition of a word had changed.

He pauses in his tracks, your perception, not definition.

You can remember even to this day how they said you were unique, as if being unique was an abnormal thing, unfitting– and in definition, yes, it should be.

Yet despite all this, you cannot recall a time you heard that word and felt something negative, something other than a praise, or an admiration, impressiveness, weren’t unique a different type of beautiful? were they not cherished and observed with gleeful eyes for being the way they are? Were they not the hero of the story, the heart of the house?

Then how come you feel a stone at the pit of your stomach now, your throat so dry you feel there is no air, no water, no blood left in your body, that you are about to die.

‘Die’ is a rather dramatic way to put it, it felt more like finally closing your eyes, embracing the end you have already met, an act of making peace with it, and with yourself.

A caw breaks you out of your thoughts, as per any external force does.

Corvus in the area have been increasing for a while now. You watch as one steals a piece of meat off a skirmisher’s plate, the said fatuus in question spilling curses after the departing creature, for the fifth time this week and it’s only three days in.

Feathers glistening in the sun as it flies away, you hum to yourself, they are beautiful, no matter what the others say, call them ugly, deceitful, cunning.

The agent sitting among the men sends a glare your way and returns to his tasteless lunch.

It rains the next day, this doesn’t change anything, save for Scaramouche staying in for the majority of the day and working.

His subordinates do not like you, but this was a truth established long ago. Those who have witnessed your arrival, joining in on his team from then on and so, do not live to tell, or do anything else, really. And those who are around currently are fairly new recruits.

Their icy gazes are not gentle on you, judgment is all it reads.

“What, are you mute or something?” One of them yells and lets out a rather dry and loud laugh– that must’ve hurt a little. You opt to ignore, your gaze cast on the horizon ahead. It’s a quiet day, enjoyable even, the lack of color in the sky is compensated by his lack of presence.

Did they want you to talk? To converse?

You always assumed it was the opposite, if anything.

You have heard the rumors, they’re not as silent as they think.

You know every word and label thrown back and forth, how some denies it can’t be that, that there would be at least some noise– plus, Scaramouche was never known for carnal pleasures or satisfying any needs.

A spy then, they deemed you. Your watchful eyes surely haven’t helped the case either, though it is just at the scenery you reserved this to, not a grumpy bunch who do not see you as a person.

One of the men jumps in his place, it’s the same agent, though he looks odd without his mask or majority of his uniform. “Try adding this.” You hold out a purple herb tied up in a makeshift bouquet.

“Bring one between your palms and rub them against one another, not too much so it won’t be grinded completely.” He stares at you puzzled, then your hands, then you again.

Ah, this must be the moment he has realized you do possess a functional tongue in fact, you just haven’t bothered using it before.

“It adds a fresh fragrance to dishes and richens the taste.”

Taking the semi dried herbs from your hand, he nods and mutters a thanks.

You pull your mouth to a thin line, should you say more? Walk away? He probably thinks this was one of his doing, that he got sick of this team already and wanted to poison his way out.

“It didn't occur to me before that any of you would care for conversing.” With a slight bow, you turn in your step and walk away.

Another caw is heard from a distance. The shade trees provide looks rather tempting.

It is a beautiful day, truly.

Scaramouche listens to the entire exchange in the meantime.

Who knew there was a consciousness behind those glossy eyes of glass?

He lingers for a little longer before announcing his arrival, you can have this moment for yourself.

With quiet steps you retreat just as you came.

Even to his ears, your steps fall rather silent, like your voice, like your presence. Are you trying to blend in? Be so quiet you’ll soon disappear entirely?

What was it that people said: fake it ‘til you make it. What are you trying to achieve, darling?

A blue stocking, that is what you called yourself once, he remembers. Scaramouche begins to suspect he does all the remembering between the two of you.

Even today he thinks you were unjust to call yourself one.

Sure, despite the extension of what your knowledge conveys, perhaps it was not as deep and detailed but you wouldn’t go around gloating about it like the next person either. You lacked the confidence, the most essential ingredient for a blue stocking, that is, if your explanation of one back then was well compiled if you remembered enough.

It is quite frustrating actually, how most of your sentences begin or end with ‘I don’t remember well’, ‘I forgot the rest’, ‘Or so I think’ and the likes.

Blue stocking my ass, your knowledge of things and your expression of it is just fine.

Scaramouche lets the following days to delay slightly, to see you conversing, mingling; you mustn’t feel all that pointless now, right? See? You can fit in just fine, if you want.

You like corvus, despite their ugly caws and attitudes, you really do.

You recall seeing the beautiful wings of that tengu once, not even the distance could put a cloud over the shades reflecting off the feathers. You recall, trying to find a left-behind feather of a crow after that, walking up to their favorite spots and looking at every strand of grass, every corner of dirt for a single feather to reflect off under the sun.

It was one of his better days, for you to have run away so freely, chasing after dumb things and pointless ends.

Another thing to being human was being random and unpredictable, he supposes. Unstable, is the word he would pick any other day but you haven’t been on his nerves that much nowadays.

Another caw reaches your ears, making you whip your head to the direction. 

Caw, caw, kraa– one of them shrieks, adding an eerie air to the place.

The small ball of fur trembles among the murder of corvus.

You see now, why a group of corvus is called a murder. Those eyes glint for all the wrong reasons, you think, those fascinating minds work for all the wrong reasons.

Their caws sound victorious, mocking, cries of war and teasing, of knowing their prey is much weaker, nothing more than a measly plaything.

Your breath hitches.

One of them takes a step in, another flaps its wings, spreading them wide– they are not as gracious as the tengu’s, nor as gentle on the soul.

With quick steps, you rush toward the circle, scaring the murder off in the process.

Standing like that now, under the sun, feet having created a path in the grass, your very own footsteps, chest rising and falling, the only sound that remains is your rigid breathing.

The pathetic little creature and you stare at one another. 

All it can do is to shake, let out a small, high pitched ‘mewl’ and keep shaking.

Something seems to be wrong with it, it doesn’t seem alright.

Eyes surveying the open area, only to see nothing but green and some corvus waiting afar, watching, you cast your gaze back, then turn your head back.

“No.”

Scaramouche knows what you’ll say before you get your brain to formulate the right words, let alone open your mouth.

Curt and clean, he cuts it before it can grow.

No buts, no pleas; you look at him, big, shiny eyes, glossy but not misty like any other time, are you about to cry? Now, of all times?

“I said no. Now get ready, make amends or whatever, dig a grave for all I care. We are leaving in five.” he waves a dismissing hand and walks away, leaving you and the kitten behind.

No name for yourself, no place to call home, no one to use the term ‘friend’ for, you are quite the case, aren’t you?

Hah, and to think, he spent his early years wandering off, feeling all kinds of down for not being human enough, for not having a heart– some days Scaramouche muses, you are worse off than him.

Supposedly human but so far away from it.

Are you broken, darling, do you require mending?

No goal, no wish, what is it that keeps you going, keeps you walking? You never answer, only keep your gaze on that void you’re focused.

No wonder you don’t possess a vision, he would find it rather pathetic of you, if so.

Contrary to what some might believe, visions are only a show of excessive ambition.

Everyone has ambitions, a drive to keep them waking up the next day and eating when they’re hungry. Only few who burn with it, their ideals and goals draw the eyes of the gods on themselves to be granted a vision.

Everyone has ambitions. Well, aren’t you quite the exception? He might even go as far as to say you are enjoying this.

The little cat cannot even make a single sound, it must be preserving all its energy to breathe and stay in place. If the wind blows a little stronger, it’ll be toppled off, you fear.

You can feel something clawing at your neck, bile rising up your throat– it stings, it is bitter, this feeling is worse than crying, you feel a thousand needles prick at your eyes, your lacrimal glands, your face, any part of your skin you can sense.

No goal, no purpose, not even making a sound, too small to leave even a trail behind, pathetic– you hate that word, you do. You still find ‘hate’ to be a strong word but this feels bigger than ‘dislike’, fierier than it too, else, how could it have such a big effect on you?

The kitten reminds you of yourself, you realize.

You wonder if your brain will make you forget this moment too. With your luck, you’re willing to bet the answer is no.

By the time the flock gets to moving, Scaramouche walks up ahead, stretching his arms and letting out a rather lazy yawn.

Another day, another pesky task coming to an end. Hopefully he will stay indoors for the upcoming months, initiating his favorite type of missions. A freshly brewed tea sounds heavenly to his ears, he should have you make some, as soon as you arrive.

Behind him the flock trails after. You first among the rest, almost skipping, there is a giddiness to your steps and the little kitten safely tucked into your arms.

Walking with arms in any position but to dangle at both sides decreases speed, but it’s alright, you are a fast walker, and he seems to be taking his sweet time walking today, steps slightly slower than usual, perhaps enjoying the fresh mountain air.

Yes, you conclude once more, you like him more when he is his obnoxious awful self, when he is selfish and nose so high up in the air, no regard for anyone else.

It makes things easier. 

It helps refrain the fog over, keep hating him for dragging you with him, for having to endure his temper.

A gaze that spits ‘I know what a rose is.’ Ready to bury you alive for even implying that he didn’t, “They are not native to Inazuma.”

He shouldn’t sound understanding, that is your job, your task, your only purpose here, is it not? To balance out everything he lacks.

“They’ve been subjects of tales for as long as mankind has conjured up tales. About love, tragedy, strong emotions that burn you from the inside until you become ashes. Good stories, bad stories, stories for the sake of storytelling…” your words trail off once more, blend in to the serene silence and faint chirping of birds in the distance.

You don’t know why you’ve said these, why you wanted to share. 

You’ve been doing quite a deal of things you don’t know the reasoning to, you surmise.

You do remember him staying fixated though, and switching your weight between your feet until you sighed and walked away from him.

A sudden snapping sound, and something small yet hard by the side of your head, as if tucked behind your ear.

You do not grace him with any reaction, and he doesn’t expect you to.

Another rose to dry press for later.

Another silence to fill the air.

You do not have a word to convey your feelings for growing to enjoy the sound of his bells.

Jingling ever so slightly, chiming with the wind, the rain, the sun.

People dread his arrival, you find yourself looking forward to hear those bells chime a little earlier.

Maybe he was right all along, something is wrong with you.

You find yourself wishing more and more he would remain static, as his shocking self that reeks of dangers.

You’d much prefer your wrists to be gripped hard, and not your fingers intervened.

You wish this silence wasn’t so suffocating, his quiet breath on you much warmer and louder than his orders and yelling.

You’d rather clench your teeth through shockwaves of electro throughout your entire body to his cold touch that resembles marble, gracious yet distant, elegant.

He always spoke in cryptids and codes only he could understand, yet less and less he seems like a mad man.

Your head might be over the clouds but you are not stupid. You can tell apart the distinct air he carries, quite literally.

Something nags at your brain, a certain spark somewhere, it is familiar, you have felt this before, just not from him.

Well, you shrug, no point getting beat up over lost things.

Not every mystery should be solved, not every hidden part of the world, of life and order should be known and decoded.

There are many things about Scaramouche you find yourself at a conflict for.

But more often than not, it is the quiet, the bells, the touch, the way he acts like he cares.

As if he is taking off a mask whenever he takes off his hat and places it to the side, becoming someone new, someone fresh, a peeled orange, and it’s slice by slice you get a taste– you don’t want to, you never did.

Distaste fills your senses when his hold on you softens, gentle, you’re not made of glass, you want him to be his usual cruel self.

Scolding you for getting your clothes dirty when it started raining out of the blue, threatening to make you sleep outside for the night in hopes you’ll learn your lesson– this man cannot be the same one who washes the blood of your body, wiping away remnants of it off your cheeks. For you to be drenched in crimson, you ought to have some splattered on your clothes.

So why isn’t he angry?

His stinging tongue hurts less when it is all poison that drips, now he sounds considerate, lost in a reverie, these words so far away from everything negative, everything dark and gloomy burn at your skin more than his warm breath tickling your neck; needles prickling your skin would hurt more than his cold fingertrips dancing on your skin.

You want him to stop, you want this to end.

You don’t want him to look so serene, so fragile and beautiful. You don’t want those lithe fingers any closer to your hands, to your face, stroking gently.

You don’t want his movements to become much slower and deeper, sensual in a way– just take what you want, get on with it already, you want to yell at his face.

Be the bad guy, play the role you’ve known your whole life.

What if that’s not the case? You try to ignore that first vagon of thoughts.

Nobody is born evil, after all, what if he was a gentle soul once as well? Would that not explain all his inconsistencies? But understanding isn’t what you want, not from him or for the sake of logic.

You want an excuse, a reason to blame, a reason to hate, to have the upper hand if time ever comes and you can bid adeu, leave all that behind.

Nobody in their right mind would stick around with The Balladeer, Sixth Harbinger of the Fatui willingly after all.

Despite the coldness of his skin and the burning of his words, his breath carries a gentle warmth, like a beloved blanket from when you were a child.

Despite his flaky personality, there is grace to him, and a hint of care, not that he finds anyone worthy enough to display that, this small part of him buried deep in his chest.

Something shines in the distance, bright enough to make him bring a hand as a cover for his eyes.

In the distance, the very same spot, you sit on the grass with that hairy creature.

Something is spread out underneath, the cat doesn’t seem to care for it however. Running off to sink its claws to the earth below, chasing after something in the air, jumping in the process.

For all this time Scaramouche has known you and had you around, for the first time you look genuine, happy, even.

The pesky cat grew with time but you still carry it around in the same fashion– placing it on your shoulder, and to everyone’s surprise, it sits there every time. Even when it doesn’t, it makes sure to stand on your shoulders, not so curious to get back down.

Who knew kindness would be an efficient teacher with training young, bright, empty, new minds?

Walking closer to where you sit, the object stops shining, the sunlight having lost that angle it seems.

Sitting by your hips stands an all-too familiar shape, with its fair blue center, that unmistakable icy blue.

What is a vision doing here of all places? At his camp, swarming with people under his command.

Scaramouche knows, no new recruit recently is a vision holder– he would rather stay in a room with Tartaglia for five minutes than to have one on his team.

Vision holders are arrogant, they think they know a lot, the secrets of the world and what-not.

They think they’re strong enough to challenge him even, yet always with a snap of his fingers, they are gone.

Steps nearing you, there is only one explanation, one he already knows the answer to.

You don’t seem to care for his approach, though he sees you quickly steal a glance his way.

Steps coming to a halt, Scaramouche towers over you from where you sit, his arms crossed, the overgrown grass brushing against his feet, tingling.

When his shadow cast upon your form goes unaddressed for too long, do you scratch the cat’s head one last time, gazing after its running figure with a peaceful smile and look up to meet his gaze.

Both with empty expressions, mirroring one another, though he seems a little annoyed as opposed to your blank uncaring look.

The breeze brushes his hair as it blows, carrying a smell of peaches along.

“What is this?” He says sternly, shifting his weight to one foot.

You settle for a shrug, a vision, you both know the answer to.

“I won’t ask again.” He speaks up, “where did it come from?”

For all the odd habits of collecting trinkets and running after birds, butterflies, sunsets, chasing them; not even you would stop by a vision and take claim.

Is it cast away, lost, abandoned? those questions don’t even get a chance to come later.

Turning your head ahead, your eyes roam for the cat, holding out your hand and snapping your fingers, 

“I don’t remember.” you say, you always do.

To the sound of your fingers, the cat comes running, earning a giggle and a whistling sound from you.

The cover spread underneath is spacious, more than enough for two.

Walking towards the empty spot by your side, not ever once Scaramouche draws his eyes away from you.

A cryo vision, huh?

He feels a smile tugging up one side of his lips.

A perfect match for his electro.

notes 2:

*A bluestocking holds forth self-confidently and with unreasonable affectation about literature and other learned things about which he knows absolutely nothing. He does so not because he has any interest in these matters, but merely to show off his intelligence (which, as it happens, he did not receive from nature), his sublime aspirations (of which he has as many as the chair on which he sits), and his education (of which he has as much as a parrot).

[cdroloisms]

uhhhh ,, , hi ??

i feel bad bc i havent been here in. LITERALLY forever lmao - hope you guys r all doing good!! ive been working on some stuff but it’s been pretty slow going, and school is also A Thing, so i definitely havent been writing as much as i’d like. 

as an apology, have this? really self-indulgent feel-good syndicate + c!dream centric oneshot bc i felt like writing this so u know. why not. 

tws: implied torture, abuse, self-harm, disordered eating, starvation mentions, prison arc themes - overall everything’s just blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mentions, not too much angst here for once! c!sam and c!quackity critical, sorry guys but we r still in the prison arc and they still r on their “fuck human rights” arcs. 

Dream leaves.

 It’s a surprise - or maybe it isn’t one, Niki isn’t quite sure. She’d never grown to quite trust the man, she knows, and she can’t really tell if the bitter twist of emotion that swells up her chest when Phil comes to her city with the news is betrayal or resignation - what can she say. She’s gotten more than her fair share of broken promises. They don’t exactly faze her anymore. 

 None of them seem all that surprised, save Techno, who entirely fails to hide the worry that flickers over his face when he calls the Syndicate meeting to officially inform them of what’s going on. She shares quick, careful glances with the other members when his back is turned - despite how many times he’s been burned, Techno still seems so adamant at holding onto every thread, trusting all too easily those who would use and leave him behind without a second glance. He can handle himself, she knows. Still, that’s not going to stop her from slapping Dream upside the head for being yet another worthless person to betray her friend’s forgiving nature. 

 Nothing much changes in the next few weeks. Niki has to admit, it’s strange without Dream around - he’d not been an ally, much less a friend before dipping completely, but he had been some sort of constant - and Niki is self aware enough to know that she misses him, a little, the same sort of way you might miss an old routine once it’s gone, if only for the familiarity. She still visits Techno and Phil with various baked goods, knowing that Phil would have his hands full just keeping Techno from running himself ragged - makes sure to check on Ranboo, whose nerves have inevitably returned with Dream’s disappearance. To be honest, she doesn’t worry as much as he does - ally or not, she’s spent enough time with the Dream that had left prison to expect that he won’t exactly be able to get himself very far should he come for the four of them, and doesn’t particularly care about he might pull with the rest of the server - if things get bad, she’s sure Phil and Techno will have it handled. She asks Phil, once, what happened, and he shrugs. 

 “I don’t know, mate,” he heaves a chest to the side, pulling out a stack of stone blocks that Niki gladly holds for him. “One day we woke up and he was just- gone. Everything. Was like he wasn’t ever there at all.” 

 Niki hums. “Why’d you think he’d do something like that?” 

 “If I could understand half of why Dream does what he does, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now, would we?” He smiles at her from behind a crate. “Shall we bring these things upstairs and start on dinner?” 

 Niki laughs, knowing that the conversation about Dream is over. “Of course, Phil.” 

Dinner is a welcome distraction; all of them have gotten better at cooking in recent months, between her baking and the veritable library of recipes Phil knows that she’s never even heard of, but Phil is still the only one she really trusts to hold his own behind the stove - Ranboo is still a little too nervous around water, and fire, and much of everything, and though Techno can be a perfectly capable cook, he’s been distracted as of late. She has a strong feeling that left to his own devices, he’d just grab a stack of steak and disappear for another few weeks, searching the server for information. 

 Honestly, she’s a little thrown off by his behavior - he’d not done anything like this with Tommy, if she remembers right, and had hardly seemed affected by Wilbur’s betrayal on the Sixteenth at all (then again, she was a little too lost in her own head to notice if he was.) She tosses her head over to ask Phil, who’s leaning over a few carrots he’s slicing to throw into the stew he’s making, and the man pauses, frowns. 

 “From what I know,” he starts, words slow, careful, “they’d spent three months in there together, and the conditions weren’t exactly- stellar. According to what Techno said, I’d assumed they had come to some sort of understanding.” He goes back to the carrots, expression dipping into shadow and out of sight. “Guess I was wrong.” 

 Niki hums. She can see it, sort of - spending months together with someone, no matter how insufferable, probably would end with some degree of attachment - she thinks back to plotting through sleepless nights with Jack, anger and grief leaving them simmering, crabs in the same pot of boiling water, remembers looking into his dead-eyed gaze and seeing her own stare back - and feels a brief pang of guilt. Besides, Techno is Techno. She’d never met someone so willing to forgive, understand, reach out despite everything that’s happened - for Dream to take advantage of that feels almost too obvious. Of course he would - what were they all thinking?

 “He’s Dream,” she says as if that explains everything, flipping open the oven door and feeling a wave of heat blast her face. Phil hums lowly, understanding. “I hope Techno will be alright.” 

 “He’s tough,” Phil cracks a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, “And he has us on his side. He’ll get through.” 

 Niki opens her mouth to reply, only to be interrupted by the front door slamming open. Outside their quaint little cottage, the wind howls - it sounds like the beginning of a blizzard out there, flurries painting the world in a thick blanket of white. In the door, Techno strides into the entrance with loud, decisive movements, shutting the door loud enough to make the walls shake. Inadvertently, Niki finds her eyes drawn to the small pile of snow that he’s tracked into the house - Techno’s usually so careful to kick it all off on the porch, never liked it much when there was a pile of melting ice and snow dampening the floorboards and soaking into his shoes. He huffs harshly, stripping off a snow-dusted scarf from his face - a long, multicolored abomination that had been the product of her attempting to teach Ranboo how to knit. Phil has reached his side, hands splayed over his upper arms, eyes soft in the corners from concern. 

 “Techno, mate-” his tone is chiding but his movements gentle as he brushes snow off of Techno’s signature cloak, “you’ve gotten snow everywhere. What were you doing, dueling a blizzard?” 

 Techno shakes his head, not meeting Phil’s banter as usual, fur sticking up from the snow melted into it. His voice is gruff and holds little humor - unconsciously, Niki feels her shoulders tense. 

 “Phil, call a Syndicate meeting.”

 ---

 Phil, per usual, is unrelenting, so it’s not until a quick dinner and some hurried messages to their final member later that the Syndicate is gathered in their meeting room, Techno pacing the length of the room as they wait in their respective seats. He looks less frazzled than he did when he first entered the house, in part due to Phil’s sitting him down to eat and picking through his fur to smooth it out of its windblown spikes and tangles - Techno had grumbled at him to stop preening him, but looked a lot more relaxed by the time they were all finished with their food. Still, his ear flicks periodically, twitching toward ssome sound that Niki can’t hear, movements tighter and jerkier than she is used to. He’d always been a little flightier after the prison, but not quite like this - everything here feels like that but dialed up to eleven. Inexplicably, it reminds her of Dream. 

 “Techno?” Phil gestures towards his seat, prompting, and he settles into it with an obliging huff. 

 “Y’know, Phil, the code names are kinda pointless if we never use ‘em,” he says, words carrying no real heat - he looks back at the rest of them, lips thinning into a line. “Anyway. I called this meeting because I found a couple leads on Dream.” 

 “O-oh,” Ranboo stutters, tail lashing behind him. 

 “You don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to, mate,” Phil reminds him gently, a sentiment that Niki affirms with a determined nod. 

 “There’ve been some reports- rumors, really,” Techno says, calling their attention again, and they all turn towards him, “of increased activity around the prison again. The Warden spending more time on its grounds, movement seen around the walls and around the portal- so I decided to go check it out for myself.” 

 Niki frowns, and watches as Phil does the same beside her - Techno had seemed to avoid the prison if he could help it, save for when he went on the initial mission to break Dream out. It was no secret to them that he didn’t exactly like the place. 

 “We could’ve helped if you asked,” Phil reminds him, and Techno shakes his head. 

 “I know, Phil. It’s just- that place is bad news. I’d rather keep you guys away from there if I can-” his hand goes to his head with a poorly hidden wince. “Sorry, Chat’s a little- worked up, at the minute.” 

 “Sorry, we’ll stop interrupting you,” Niki says, cutting off Phil before he says anything else. “So you went to the prison?” 

 Techno takes a second to gather his thoughts, mumbling quietly in the way that usually means he’s telling off Chat. “Right- I decided to stake out the portal. The rumors were right- Sam has been hanging around there, entered and left the prison four times yesterday. And today-” he hesitates, expression visibly darkening. “This morning, about an hour after the Warden arrived, Quackity came to the prison and went through the portal. He left the grounds about six hours later.” 

 “Quackity?” Niki frowns, eyes flicking over to how Phil has stilled in his seat. “What is Quackity doing at the prison?” 

 Phil ignores her question, reaching towards Techno, something indiscernible in his gaze. “Mate…”

 “He smelled of blood when he left,” Techno says, words sharp, and Niki feels her heart skip a beat. “Warden left about half an hour after, and I came back here.” 

 Ranboo clears his throat, sounding tentative. “Okay,” he drums his hand on the table when they turn towards him, eyebrows drawn, “but what, exactly, does this have to do with, uh, Dream?” 

 Techno and Phil trade glances, one of their bouts of unspoken conversation that Niki’s grown extremely used to. They seem strangely hesitant, she notes internally, Phil looking towards Techno with a question written clearly in the planes of his face. Techno sighs, a long puff of air through his lips as he closes his eyes and turns his face towards the table. 

 “You know how Dream was- injured,” he starts slowly, looking back up at them. Niki shifts uncomfortably - of course she noticed, it was impossible not to - if not the bandages that peeked under his sleeves and the cuffs of his pants, then how skinny he’d been, all skin and bones curled up uncomfortably in a pile at the corner of Techno’s couch. She’d not know the extent, by any means, and had always assumed that they’d been self-inflicted - she’d been in a bad enough place on her own before to know how your head can make you want to hurt, sometimes, how eating food can feel like choking on sawdust and the world could feel so much smaller when focused into delicate pricks of pain. Phil’s eyes are trained on Techno - on his face, then on the pinkish raised skin of a still-healing scar along his forearm, and she feels understanding settle like a rock in her gut. 

 “The Warden had apparently been lettin’ Quackity into the cell to torture Dream for the revive book,” Techno trails off, eyes narrowed and seemingly fixed on a random point of the opposite wall. “By the time I go there, it’d been goin’ on for months.”

 “But wait,” Ranboo’s tail moves even more erratically behind him, “You mean you think he’s back- there? How?” 

 “He has to be back in the prison,” Techno points out. “I can’t imagine anyone besides him that the two of them are goin’ to just start torturin’- Sam had been iffy about the whole thing when Quackity started in on me. It has to be Dream in there again.” 

 “But how did he get in there, then?” Ranboo asks, visibly confused. “Last time it took the entire server to lock him up!”

 “There were no signs of a struggle,” Niki points out, matter of fact. “I believe you, Techno, but I don’t really know how they managed to drag him back so easily. I can’t imagine he was jumping at the chance to go back in there.” 

 Techno shakes his head with an uneasy sigh. 

 “I have a feelin’ of what might’ve happened,” he says quietly. “And I really hope that I’m wrong and he’s less of an idiot than I think he is.” 

 ---

 They set out to investigate - and maybe attack - the next day, Techno and Phil taking on the bulk of preparations as Ranboo stays behind. He’d been understandably uneasy about the whole mission, so they’d left him back by the Syndicate room to set off their pearls in case anything went wrong. (“By the end of the day,” Techno had said, giving Phil a look with the corner of his lip quirked upwards, “don’t be like Phil here and think I meant the end of the month, alright?”) They’d all be supplied with armor and weapons, thanks to Phil, but she’d been handed the bulk of their potions, arranged neatly in her inventory by type in case they’d be needed. She lingers in the back of the room as Phil and Techno chat amiably over the sound of making last minute repairs on their armor, listens to Techno’s ceaseless reminders for Phil to be careful, watches as they make sure that their stasis chambers are properly prepared should they need them.

 (She watches as Phil nudges Techno’s shoulder when he lingers behind a certain chair, empty as long as she’s been part of the Syndicate, the fountain behind it bubbling quietly without a pearl inside. Techno sighs, expression strange. 

 “Should’ve set him up with one,” he says, quiet, and Phil pats him on the back. 

 “You couldn’t have known, mate. We wanted to wait a little before telling him about the Syndicate, remember?” 

 Techno hums, noncommittal. “Still.”)

 They Nether travel to the site of Techno’s lookout, which ends up being a little shambling thing with dirt walls dug into a small hill looking towards the prison portal, having hardly enough space to fit the three of them. Phil looks at it with no small amount of apprehension, and Techno shrugs lightly, wearing an expression that makes Phil turn to him with a look that makes Niki break into giggles. Techno crosses his arms- “in my defense-” and Phil looks up at the dirt ceiling with a long-suffering sigh. 

 “You couldn’t have made this a little roomier, mate?” Phil asks, voice dry as kindling, and Techno raises his hands by his head. 

 “Hey hey, it’s discreet, it gets the job done, it’s perfectly structurally sound-” the sound of the leftmost wall crumbling, along with the cloud of dust that puffs from it and fills their tiny space, undermines the tail end of his statement and leaves him sputtering, Niki falling into another fit of quiet giggles. Underneath it all, Phil sighs again, raising his wings behind him. 

 “...these are going to take so long to clean out.” 

 To his credit, Techno looks sheepish. “Sorry, Phil.”

 They sober up quickly; Techno turns around to the opposite side of the hill, where he’s hidden some peepholes inside the dirt - Niki settles herself by one, leaning forwards to put her eye to it and catch a glimpse of the prison looming over the water. It’s been repaired since the breakout, she notes, the gaping hole in the roof completely gone and replaced with obsidian, as intimidating and undamaged as it had been before, if not more so. Phil makes a considering sound from behind her.

 “Same plan as last time?” He asks, and Techno shakes his head. 

 “They’ve probably reinforced it, and Dream’s blueprints won’t include anything new the Warden’s added. I wouldn’t be surprised if they moved Dream to a different location completely. We don’t want to draw too much attention, either, we were cutting it pretty close during the breakout.” He narrows his eyes. “I was thinking we’d try something a little stealthier, this time. “ 

 He gestures at Niki, who blinks back at him with wide eyes. 

 “You got a couple of invis potions for us?”

 She distributes the potions among them all, one regular and two splash potions of invisibility each, and Techno points towards the prison once she’s done. 

 “The most important thing is to get through the portal,” he says with a grim expression. “Worst comes to worst, once we’re inside we can always blast our way through - but gettin’ through that portal is our first priority.” 

 Phil narrows his eyes at him. “The portal is locked, though. We’ll need to follow someone else inside- and I’m pretty sure Sam uses pearls, so he’s out.” 

 Techno nods. “Which is why I’m bankin’ on the prison gettin’ another visitor today. We’ll just have to wait.” 

 Niki swallows. “Do you mean-”

 “Quackity?” Techno turns away, not quite meeting her eyes. “I’m not totally sure, but he’s not exactly the type to just give up on his goals. He’s pretty predictable- an empire needs an emperor, always needs something new to rule- you know the type,” he says, tipping his head towards Phil. “He’ll be mad at Dream for disappearin’ on him and won’t miss the opportunity to prove he has the upper hand again. I’m not sure that he’s going to come today-”

 “-but you wouldn’t really be surprised, either,” Phil finishes for him, eyes steely with cold determination. “I trust your judgement, mate. Just stay safe- from what I’ve heard, Quackity has been...erratic.” 

 “When is he not,” Techno huffs a short laugh, shaking his head. “I’ll be fine, Phil. Just be careful, both of you. Don’t get too close. And if things get messy- which is what we’re tryin’ to avoid, by the way- then don’t do anything too risky. Our priority is gettin’ in and out alive.” 

 “We can handle ourselves, Techno,” Niki reminds him with a small smile. “And Ranboo is there in case anything goes wrong.” 

 “Alright, then. Here’s the plan.” 

 ---

 It takes quite a long time for Quackity to arrive, long minutes that Niki spends fidgeting in the corner of the room, brushing her hands over seams of the netherite plates that Phil had shoved into her hands, back at the Syndicate room. The set is inexplicably light - not weightless, by any means, as it is still netherite, but not nearly as bulky as any set of netherite armor she’s owned or seen in the past. The runes are precise, lines thin and exact, written with graceful strokes of lapis. 

 “Phil’s the best metalworker I’ve ever met,” Techno tells her with a small grin, catching her in the middle of tracing what she can make out as an Unbreaking rune along the metal strapped to her forearm. “But then again, he’s had the time to practice.” 

 “Are you calling me old again?” Phil huffs, and Techno flashes a smile her direction before looking at Phil with a slight grin. 

 “Well, Chat is,” he says, lips twitching when Phil glares back. 

 “You can’t just blame Chat every time you insult me, you little shit,” Phil groans, and Techno only grins wider. 

 “Phil, my ad revenue,” he complains, a dramatic lilt to his voice that has Niki stifling a snort, and Phil’s glare only grows deadlier. 

 “You’ll have more than your ad revenue to worry about if you keep this up,” he mumbles, going back to keep watch at one of the peepholes and stilling as he does. “Shit- Techno, Quackity’s here.” 

 Techno straightens up, hindered slightly by the low ceiling of their room. “Alright- we all know the plan, right?” 

 Niki nods in the affirmative, pulling out a splash invis and letting it settle in her hand, the glass cool beneath her fingertips. She reaches into her inventory and lets her armor fade into it, takes a deep breath and watches as the two across from her do the same. She doesn’t wear armor often, but so close to the prison, feeling mining fatigue settling deep into her bones - she’s never missed the security it offers more. Techno keeps watch, waiting- drops his arm in a signal. Now. 

 Niki throws the potion at their feet, flinching back at the sound of shattering glass and feeling its effects seep into her skin. When she opens her eyes, she can’t see anything but the inside of the room that they’d holed themselves in and the faintest of wisps rising from where their feet must be, curling around the grass. 

 (Please let this work, she begs to no one in particular as they walk towards the prison. And if you can hear me- please keep us all safe.)

 She hardly breathes as they follow Quackity across the path, holding someone’s hand in her own - Phil’s, by the feel of it - careful to muffle her footsteps in the grass and stand still whenever Quackity’s eyes come a little too close. Thankfully for them, he seems focused, hardly stopping or looking around at all as he walks towards the prison’s portal, movements stiff as he walks forward. He punches the button on the wall particularly harshly, and Sam’s voice comes crackling through a speaker a second later. 

 “I’m here for my visit,” Quackity says, punctuating the sentence with a snort of laughter that doesn’t sound particularly sincere. Niki hasn’t seen him in a long while, not after everything that happened in Pogtopia, and she feels a chill worm down her spine - this man looks nothing like the one that had laughed and danced and sung at her birthday party what feels like an eternity ago. What happened? 

 Sam sighs, the sound turning into a sharp burst of static through the speakers. “Hello Quackity,” he says, voice deep and tired. “Please step into the portal after I tell you to and then wait on the other side.” 

 “I know the drill, Sam,” Quackity rolls his eyes. “Just because the bastard was gone for a few weeks doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten how this damn place works.” 

 “Just going through protocol, Quackity,” Sam replies, and something about this response has Quackity exploding into a brief fit of laughter, the sound grating against Niki’s ears. She feels her grip tighten on Phil’s hand, air caught in her throat. 

 “Protocol- ha. Whatever you wanna tell yourself, pal.” Quackity smiles, cold and cruel, and Niki tries not to think about how she’d seen that same grin on Wilbur, eyes sparkling from the light of the lanterns hung from the bridges and walls of their ravine, remember how she’d looked into them and realized her old friend wasn’t there, anymore. Quackity disappears into the portal, and after a second, the hand around her own pulls her inside of it too.

 On the other side, Quackity taps his foot impatiently, crossing his arms and waiting- Sam’s voice comes through the speakers again, words clipped. 

 “Go through the portal,” he says, and Quackity does- once again, they wait for a second for his body to disappear, then go within it themselves, pressed close enough together within its frame for Niki to feel the warmth of a wing wrap around her shoulders for a quick second before they’re out of the hot, stifling air of the Nether and into a large, neatly made lobby of blackstone and quartz. They duck into a corner, watching as Quackity moves towards the front counter, the Warden waiting there with his arms crossed over his chest. He looks- tired. His movements are slow, footsteps loud against the floor, shoulders tense and back hunched. He walks around the counter, sword strapped to his belt, and Niki feels her breath hitch at the sight of dried blood still stuck to the blade in patches and splatters.

 “He ready?” Quackity asks, holding his hands out - Niki catches a flash of metal as Sam drops something into them, watches as Quackity raises what ends up being a pair of shears, dangerous-looking and gleaming with enchants, to the light. 

 “Yes,” Sam says, side-eyeing Quackity with a small glare. “You know, it’s supposed to be your job to clean those things off when you’re done with them.”

 “I told you, busy day back in Las Nevadas yesterday,” Quackity waves a hand- “I’ll do it, alright? Don’t get all pissy now. What happened to being partners?” 

 “You said we’d be done with this months ago, Quackity,” Sam sighs, and Niki feels a light tug on her arm as Quackity and Sam begin to walk towards the wall to the right of them, breathes in slow and deep as she follows Techno and Phil towards the others. The wall yawns open with the hiss of redstone firing and pistons pulling blocks upwards, opening into a dark hallway that feels like entering the maw of some sort of giant, insatiable beast. They step inside as one, and the door shuts behind them. 

 “We’ll be done soon enough,” Quackity says, and Niki feels hairs rising on the back of her neck. “Trust me.” 

 They stalk forwards through a labyrinth of blackstone, Niki brushing the palms of her hand against her clothes when it goes clammy from adrenaline. Halfway through, she pauses to tip back a second potion of invisibility, careful to keep her movements slow and steady as not to make a sound - the liquid is silvery, cool and light on her tongue, and she lets the effects wash over her with her breath caught in her lungs before moving forward. The tunnels are simpler than she’d expected, bearing little obstacles or checkpoints - Quackity makes a wry comment a second after (“Guard tunnels today, huh? Appreciate the hustle, pal-”) that confirms her suspicions. Despite the potion particles still whirling around their bodies and the sounds of their footsteps, too loud in her own ears, they manage to make it forwards without much trouble, entering a large room with a doorway filled completely with a curtain of lava. 

 “Set your spawn,” Sam says, still stoic, and Quackity rolls his eyes again before doing as told. Niki keeps looking back at the lava flowing past the wall, its heat filling the room and making her already slick palms even worse, and Sam moves to the side to flick a lever, eyes trained on the lava slowly bubbling in front of him. 

 “Give me your tools?” Quackity asks, and Sam sighs before doing so - Niki watches as he hands over a netherite axe, then potions, then a few raw potatoes that Quackity accepts and puts into his inventory. Sam raises an eyebrow once he’s done, hand tight around the handle of his trident. 

 “You bring your own sword, today?” He asks, seeming irritated, and Quackity shrugs. 

 “Sorry pal, I need to make a new one. Guess I’m borrowing yours again.” 

 Sam sighs again, louder, and hands over his sword as well, watching as Quackity swings it a few times experimentally. The blade skims a little too close to her on one swing and she can’t quite help the squeak that escapes her lips as she throws herself out of the way, feels her heart hammer in her ears as she backs up against the wall. Please don’t hear that please don’t hear that please don’t hear that please don’t hear that-

 “Quackity, wait.” Sam raises a hand, ear twitching as he looks over in her direction with narrowed eyes. “I think I heard something.”

 Oh fuck.

 “Well, guess show’s up then,” Techno drawls, and both of them whirl towards his voice, giving Niki enough time to pull her armor back on, scrambling to get her sword and shield in her hands as Phil does the same besides her. Pieces of armor appear where Techno is standing, then a bucket of milk- oh, why must her friends be so dramatic- and Techno’s standing there, smiling sharply, with Orphan Obliterator held loosely at his side. “Let’s get this done, then.” 

 As one, Techno and Phil blur into action - Techno moves forward to catch the prongs of Sam’s trident on his blade as Phil parries Quackity’s blows with his own sword- they move fluidly, easily covering each other’s backs as the room devolves into chaos. Niki remembers their guidance as she flits in and out of the fight, scoring quick hits to keep the Warden and Quackity off balance while remaining out of range from their weapons, and it’s not long before both of them have fallen with a spray of items and experience orbs scattered all over the floor. 

 Techno moves over to block off the exposed face of the bed with a block, looking over at the two of them with an uncharacteristically severe expression. “They’ll be back soon- we have to move fast. Niki, you have those fire res, right?” 

 She nods as she reaches into her inventory, finding the potion’s orange-pink glow and smashing it at their feet. They dive into the lava together, Niki scrambling to keep up, her arms struggling to move through the thick lava, loses sight of both until she flails into something directly in front of her and hands are pulling her up out of the lava. 

 “There you go, mate,” Phil smiles down at her as hauls herself to her feet, making a face at the feeling of the lava clinging to her clothes. “Yeah, swimming through lava isn’t exactly fun. You good?” She flashes him a thumbs up, and he laughs- “Niki, you’re still invisible.” She flushes pink- right.

 A few sips of milk later, she gives him a proper thumbs up, and he laughs, loud and bright. She looks past him to where Techno’s crouched over something- someone, she realizes with a start, in the corner. Dream’s back in prison clothes, ragged and ill-fitting, and he’s curled up with his back towards the front of the cell, shaking enough to be obvious even from where she’s standing. Techno speaks lowly, voice barely more than a deep rumble in the air, almost inaudible.

 “You there, Dream?” 

 She watches as Dream turns his head, looking up with wide, bleary eyes. His hair flops in front of his face, and something within her itches to brush it out of the way. “T-Techno?”

 “Yeah nerd, who else?” Techno smiles, and Dream seems to blink awake, drawing himself up with a shuddery breath. 

 “Techno- it’s a trap- what are you doing here?” he hisses, and Techno gives him a look, deadpan.

 “Yeah, yeah, it’s a trap- come on, Dream, we’ve been over this by now, bro. You have to know that their traps aren’t goin’ to do anything to me by now,” Techno rolls his eyes, reaching forward to steady his hands on Dream’s shoulders when the other man sputters and struggles to breathe. “Easy, now. Geez, you wanted to prove me wrong about being homeless bad enough that you came back here? We could’ve just made you a house, you know. You didn’t have to go this far.” 

 “I- they were gonna kill you,” Dream breathes, face twisted up uncomfortably, and his eyes flick past Techno’s face to where Phil and Niki are standing at the opposite wall of the cell. “All of you- they said-”

 “And that’s what I thought you’d say,” Techno groans. “Come on, you idiot, I thought you were smarter than this-” 

 “They were right there, Techno!” Dream fires back, eyes alight. “You- they were right there, what were you thinking, they could’ve-!”

 “And my best friend is a necromancer, remember?” Techno shakes his head. “Come on, Dream- Sam and Quackity? You know we can handle them in a fight, especially when you can just revive us if anything goes wrong. You don’t have to do this whole self-sacrifice thing, bro- there’s only so many times I can break into the same prison, y’know.” 

 “You’re so stupid,” Dream huffs, but he leans in anyway, head just barely settling against Techno’s shoulder. “I- I can’t believe. You’re so dumb.” 

 “Hey, don’t be sayin’ that to the guy that’s breakin’ you out of prison,” Techno laughs, slinging Dream over his shoulder with an easy motion and laughing harder when it makes him yelp. “That’s just bein’ ungrateful. You’re making Chat sad, man, and when they’re sad they don’t subscribe-” 

 “I regret this entirely,” Dream says, voice muffled against Techno’s shirt, tone completely flat. “Put me down- you idiot- I’m staying here. You’re worse than Quackity.” 

 “Rude. Now you’ve really made Chat mad. I demand an apology-” 

 “Boys, boys.” Niki can’t help giggling, watching the way their gazes snap towards her, rolling her eyes as she moves forward with a few potions held loosely in her hand. “Dream, do you want a health pot?” 

 Dream seems to deliberate for a second, before nodding at her, expression slightly strained. “...sure.” 

 “You two can finish your argument after we’ve broken out of the biggest maximum security prison on the server,” Phil drawls from behind her, arms crossed at his chest. “Come on, now, before Sam gets back.” 

 “Isn’t this the only maximum security prison on the server?” Techno asks aloud, an amused expression on his face - one that only gets worse when Phil glares at him with one ice-blue eye. 

 “Shut-” he sighs, shaking his head. “You two are chaotic little shits, you know that?”

 “Don’t compare me to him, Phil,” Techno complains, Dream mirroring his words with muffled protests of his own, and Phil breathes another drawn-out, long-suffering sigh as he rubs at the bridge of his nose. 

 “Niki, give us some fire res please?” 

 She finds the potion bottle between giggles, throwing it to the ground as she tries to choke down the laughter rapidly bubbling up her throat. “Of course, Phil.” 

 She looks back at Techno and Dream before jumping into the lava, the two of them once again lost in some sort of argument, Dream draped over Techno’s shoulder. He’s breathing easier now, she notes, and Techno looks looser too - a little less tense, leaning back with a perpetual quirk to the corner of his lip as they fire insults back and forth. This is familiar, she recognizes with a soft twist in her chest, the same way that Phil and Techno can finish each other’s sentences and look at each other with laughing eyes sharing the same memories of the past, the same way Ranboo watches Techno’s every step as he adjusts his stance and lifts his sword and Techno laughs and calls him a main character in turn, the same way she and Phil will settle together on the porch over cups of tea and sit at each other’s sides for hours. The rhythm between them is one well-established, the road well-worn - she imagines them, huddled in this dingy cell for months together, and breathes in slow and deep. 

 “Come on,” she smiles, making sure to keep it on her face when Dream meets her eyes with wide, startled ones of his own. Dream still isn’t an ally, and isn’t a friend. 

 But - she watches as he smiles back, something inexplicably warm in her chest - maybe, one day, he could be.

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

Alone, Alone, Alone

Prompt: Prompt idea! (Im assuming youve seen Loki though, so IF YOU HAVENT DONT LOOK AT THIS) Mobius doesnt come for Loki when he's stuck in the memory prison for a while, so he hears that he's not loved over and over and over, and he gets out, sad boi, then hugs from Mobius. - anon

 ah yes our favorite boys

Read on Ao3

Warnings: implied/reference child abuse and sexual assault

Pairings: can be platonic lokius or romantic you guys choose

Word Count: 4672

“You deserve to be alone, and you always will be.”

A time cell is designed to do one thing and one thing only.

To hold.

The cell captures one moment and plays it over and over, on an endless loop, never letting its captive step off the path. A self-contained story, designed to revolve around a single stretch of spacetime and never let go.

“You deserve to be alone, and you always will be.”

  Loki suppresses a groan, wrenching himself up from the floor. He aims a half-hearted glare in the direction that Sif had gone, brushing down his shirt and pushing his hair out of his face.

  “For a warrior who seems intent on fighting with honor,” he mutters to himself as he waits for her to come around the corner again, “you sure do enjoy hitting people below the belt.”

  Sure enough, a few seconds later, he hears the familiar footsteps again and barely suppresses the urge to roll his eyes long enough to hear her grit out the same drivel she’s been spewing for the past who knows how long.

  “Look, Sif, I really think—ah!”

  She sends him to the floor with a well-timed kick. As he doubles over, groaning in pain, she spits out her last insult.

  “You deserve to be alone, and you always will be.”

  “Yes, yes,” Loki mutters, “so you’ve said.”

  He gets up again, wincing as his shoulder pops. That’s new.

  “If I’m supposed to be left alone,” he calls out to the empty room, “then why do you insist upon coming back? Huh? Aren’t I supposed to be alone?”

  He spreads his arms wide, spinning around in a circle.

  “If I’m supposed to be alone,” he calls, dragging the word out of his mouth like sap, “then why am I still being visited? Why must you prolong my exposure to others if I’m supposed to languish in my solitude?”

  No response. Not other than the tromping of boots that signal the approach of Lady Sif.

  Another kick. Another wince. Another jibe shot off his tongue as soon as she gets out of earshot.

  He stands in the empty Asgardian hall and looks around. He remembers this place. Well, he’s probably supposed to, this memory was picked out to torture him, it should be something he remembers.

  But he remembers this place.

  Remembers running through this hall, Thor hot on his heels, one of their many pranks gone wrong before they got caught by the guards. He looks up, sees the sconce on the wall offset just a bit, from where Thor burned his fingers the first time he tried to use Mjölnir.

  He scoffs, turning aside as if to physically block them. He doesn’t need to give this place more information to feed off of.

  Not just because it would mean they have more information on him—even though they’ve seen every second of his life, beginning to end, backward and forward, and probably know him better than he knows himself.

  But…maybe, just maybe, if he absolutely had to give another reason, he’d rather not have another private aspect of his life corrupted by this place.

  Before he can spend too long on that train of thought, however, there come the footsteps of Sif around the corner.

  “You—“

  “Sif,” Loki says, holding his hands up, trying to placate her before she can keep going, “Sif, please, listen to me—“

  No luck. She’s extra vicious as she drives her knee into his groin this time, his words morphing into a surprised howl as he collapses to the floor.

  “You deserve to be alone,” she spits as she leaves, “and you always will be.”

  Loki grits his teeth as he stands back up. He spares a glance at the door that she vanished from and immediately turns away from it. No use dwelling on what could have been now, he’s about to have another chance.

  “Sif, Sif, please, one moment, I just have to—ah!”

  And again.

  “Wait, wait, please—Sif!”

  And again.

  “Please, please, just—just wait one moment—I know you want to—argh!”

  And again.

  “You deserve to be alone, and you always will be.”

  Loki doesn’t bother to groan as he picks himself off the floor again. No use, the pain won’t fade in time to bloom again when the next Sif comes around the corner. No, instead he just grits his teeth and waits.

  The next time Sif comes storming into the room, he attacks.

  He never did get paid as much attention as Thor did in their sparring lessons, but what he did learn, he learned fast. Fr—someone had taught him that even if he couldn’t fight like the others, that didn’t mean he could win.

  So he gets low. He gets in close. And when it really comes down to it, he fights dirty.

  Sif recovers quickly, because of course she does. She’s an Asgardian warrior in her prime, trained to fight and survive the worst the Nine Realms has to offer. She might not be armed to the teeth as she normally is in combat, but she is fierce.

  Loki has the upper hand for about three seconds before he’s got a fire burning in his groin again and he’s being wrestled to the ground.

  “You deserve to be alone,” Sif spits, only partially out of breath, “and you always will be.”

  Well. First proper fight in a while, and without his magic too, he’s bound to be a little rusty.

  He tries again.

  Lets the burn of the fight reach into his muscles that don’t quite know how to do this in this form. Feels the bile and spittle rearing in the back of his throat from blows absorbed too quickly, too harshly, tries to force it down enough to bare his teeth. Tries to make the blood rushing in his ears drown out her vile spits of the mantra this cell so desperately wants him to remember.

  “You deserve to be alone, and you always will be.”

  He doesn’t know how many fights he manages on his own two feet.

  He doesn’t know how many more he weathers when he starts off barely staggering up from the last.

  He doesn’t know how many beatings he takes when he can’t even raise his hands in time.

  He just knows that, eventually, after what feels like hours of being thrown, bitten, punched, kicked, beaten into the ground, he’s on his knees, on the cold stone, panting, when he hears footsteps.

  “You—“

  “Sif,” he gasps, holding up his hands, “Sif.”

  “—pathetic worm—“

  “Please,” he gasps out, back on his knees, his chest burning, aching with the effort of breathing, “please, no more.”

  The sight of him must give her pause, because she slows, a tad. Some of her righteous fury gives way to wariness and he seizes it.

  “Please, I beg you.”

  She stops. She stops in front of him, still regarding him with the fiery ice of Asgardian judgment, but she stops.

  Loki swallows, trying valiantly to remember that this is Sif. Not only is this Sif, but a reconstruction of Sif. This is not anyone else. Anyone else.

  “I’m a horrible person,” he says, trying to stay here, in this weird limbo where he’s breathing, “I get it. I really am. I cut off your hair because I thought it'd be funny. And it's not.”

  It…really isn’t, is it? Hair grows back. It’s not worth the temporary satisfaction, nor the wrath incurred by anyone who it might have offended.

  Sif stays. She doesn’t move, but the subtle quirk of her eyebrow tells him she needs more.

  This is Sif. This is Sif. This is Sif.

  But a confession is a confession.

  “Uh…” He was his lips. “I crave attention... because I’m…”

  He sighs.

  “I’m a... I'm a narcissist.”

  That isn’t enough. He knows it isn’t enough. His chest and throat burn with how much it isn’t enough.

  “And I suppose it’s…it's because I'm scared of being alone.”

  There is a moment. One glorious, stupid, hopeless moment where Loki lets himself earnestly believe that everything might be alright.

  Sif offers her hand to him.

  He takes it, suppresses a shudder at the feeling of someone actually touching him as he stands.

  She regards him, the ice and fire leaving her gaze as they stand there, in the old Asgardian hall, just looking at each other. She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, Loki’s heart racing every second she does so.

  Surely…surely…

  “You are alone,” she murmurs, indifference the sharpest sword she could wield, “and you always will be.”

  The Frost Giant feels cold.

  Indifferences ice the floor behind her as she leaves, detachment sucking the air out of the room. He stands there, wavering, unable to breathe in the wake of the soft words that cut much deeper than anything else could have.

  When she next comes around the corner, he doesn’t move.

  Lets the words run over him like water over stones, lets the punch to his face and the knee to his groin fell him like some great tree. Lets the sound of her footsteps be his cue to get up, wait for the next one.

  He should say something. He should respond. Should play his part, act the role, the way he’s supposed to. Maybe that will get him out of whatever hell this is.

  But he can’t.

  Every word he would say is snatched from his mouth at the mere memory of someone telling him so gently, so softly, you are alone, and you always will be.

  He remembers this. He never did learn some lessons fast enough. He remembers the rote of getting back on your feet so someone could knock you down. He remembers the pattern of being told to fix something, to do better, only to be knocked below square one. He remembers.

  He remembers.

He lets his eyes go blank. He lets his hands hang loosely by his sides. He lets his face cool into the perfect neutral expression. And he waits.

  The punch winds him but he doesn’t let the pain linger. The knee to the groin burns but he doesn’t wince anymore. He gets up, ignores the screams of his body to stop, to rest, and pushes himself to stand. Sif keeps coming. Over and over and over.

  You are alone, and you always will be.

  The one fatal flaw with his current plan—is it even a plan? It’s a technique he perfected in these very halls, that doesn’t make it a plan—is that before, he knew there was an end. If he could just hang on, just make it through, just survive, it would stop. Everything would just…stop.

  And then he would go. Would retreat to his chambers and lick his wounds, would bury himself under showers and baths and then blankets and robes until he couldn’t see himself anymore, until he could drown in the safety of his own demons, not the ones put there by everybody else. There, there he could breathe.

  But there isn’t an end to this. This is a time loop. This is a time cell.

  He isn’t on Asgard. There is no one to help him here.

  There are only people that want to use him. Only people that see him as nothing more than a tool to be used and discarded the moment he becomes more trouble than he’s worth.

  There are only people that know him so well, manipulating him is no harder than pressing the buttons on an elevator. There are only people that know him from files and memories they had no right to, that they would shamelessly exploit to get what they wanted. There are only people that knew, somehow, that this one memory would be enough to make it past every single defense he could’ve thrown at them.

  There is only him.

  He’s alone.

  He doesn’t know how long he lasts like that, moving like a broken doll to stand perfectly still for Sif to beat, only to move back into position when she’s finished one round. But he doesn’t last forever.

  There is a time where he can only just stagger to his feet before Sif is knocking him back down, a ‘pathetic’ tossed over her shoulder as she leaves.

  There is a time where he makes it to his knees, only for Sif to grab his hair and shove him back down, raw contempt on her face as she leaves.

  There is a time where he can’t move at all, only there on the ground for Sif to look at, the soft indifference hitting much harder than her fists as she leaves.

  But she always, always leaves.

  You are alone, and you always will be.

  It blurs after that. Flashes of gold and Asgardian leather and licks of pain at the corner of his bruised and battered psyche. But always those words.

  You are alone, and you always will be.

  At some point, he cries. He only knows by the way a puddle grows under his head and his split lips sting with the salt.

  You are alone, and you always will be.

  He doesn’t know if Sif stops coming or if he can’t tell what’s real anymore.

  You are alone, and you always will be.

  It doesn’t matter.

  You are alone, and you always will be.

  It doesn’t.

  You are alone, and you always will be.

  He doesn’t.

  You are alone, and you always will be.

  He is alone, and he always will be.

——————————————————

Mobius sighs, swinging the set of keys around his finger a few more times as he strides back to Time Theater 5. Honestly, he got the need for scrupulousness as much as the next analyst, but taking so long just to get gear checked back in was really unnecessary. Especially since most agents hadn’t even left the TVA.

  Time wasn’t really a big deal to them, though, so he supposes it didn’t do much.

  He steps into the theater and sighs, glancing at the stack of files on the table.

  “Oh, Loki,” he mutters to himself, “why’d you have to go and pull a Loki?”

  He knows the answer to that the same way he knows the nebula next to Orion is going to alter the planet’s gravitational presence in the galaxy.

  Mobius scrubs a hand over his face and suppresses another sigh. He doesn’t want to have to do this interrogation, if he’s being honest. He’s too close to it. He tried to say as much to Ravonna only to realize that if he’s not the one talking to his Loki, someone else is going to have to and they’re going to make an even bigger mess out of the already big mess they have.

  …he’s also calling him his Loki.

  In another version of this, he would walk inside and ask if Loki was ready to talk. He’d pull him out, sit him down, a strange mirror to how it was when he first arrived. He’d pretend he wasn’t burning inside from how easily Loki left him, pretend to laugh uproariously at how Loki seemed so enamored by the female variant. He’d pretend, Loki would tell him a grand story about how everyone who works for the TVA is a variant, and he’d huff quietly, because Loki could only be lying. In another version of this, Loki would go back to the time cell again, but just for a little while, before Mobius found out what he needed to burn the whole TVA down.

  But that’s another version of this.

  In this version, a red door opens in front of Mobius and he steps through, expecting to see a Loki spitting vitriolic barbs at whatever version of Sif was here, or perhaps see him standing defiantly, refusing to give a single inch.

  Whatever he expected, it wasn’t an empty room.

  He frowns, looking around. There’s no way Loki would’ve been able to get out of here. The only way in or out was with a TemPad, one Loki definitely wouldn’t’ve had access to.

  Then he spots the crumpled body on the floor.

  “Shit,” he mutters, rushing over, “shit, shit, shit, Loki?”

  The body is cold, limp, and as he rolls Loki over onto his back, his head lolls uselessly to the side. Mobius’s heart stops.

  “No,” comes a voice that is far too close to a whimper for his liking, “no, no, no, Loki—“

  Clumsy fingers jam themselves against the cold neck and there, there, is a thin, thready pulse.

  Tension unspools from his chest in a rush, bowing his head in a silent thanks of oh god, he’s not dead. He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive.

  “Alright,” he manages breathlessly, “alright, you big drama queen, let’s…let’s see what’s the matter with you, okay?”

  A little less frantic now, he turns Loki fully onto his back, hands running over him to make sure he isn’t injured. No sighs of permanent injury, nor any blood, but he’s cold. Too cold.

  “You’re a Frost Giant,” he murmurs, as if Loki can hear him, “don’t suppose you could tell me if you’re supposed to be this cold, could you?”

  He pauses for a moment, reaching up to cup the cold face in his hands. It comes away damp and he automatically lets loose a comforting noise at the evidence of tears.

  “Oh, kitten,” he murmurs, slowing his hands for a minute just to stroke his thumb along one sharp cheekbone, “it’s okay now, I’m right here, I’m so sorry.”

  He looks up and around the time cell and curses.

  “I left you in here,” he mutters, “I left you in here for—for too long and now—“

  Mobius sits the limp body up, propping his weight against his arm and cupping his face again.

  “…now look at you.” He rubs gently at the teary spots on Loki’s face, neck, chest. “I’m so sorry, Loki, I’m so, so sorry.”

  He glances behind him at the red door. Then back down at the man practically lying in his lap.

  “Hold on one more minute for me,” he says, laying Loki’s head down as carefully as he could into his lap, “just—just one more minute.”

  Rigging a TemPad isn’t necessarily in his job description, but he does know his way around some of the sneakier mechanics. The red door closes behind him and a gold one appears in his place.

  “Okay, Loki,” Mobius says, leaning down and picking up the man with a grunt, “let’s—let’s get you somewhere safe.”

  He makes it through the door and into his quarters, staggering a little under Loki’s weight but able to lie him out on the bed. Panting a little, he clicks the TemPad again and the door closes, leaving them alone.

  “Alright, let’s have a look.”

  From the files, he knows what not to do when it comes to Frost Giant biology, but he has a feeling this is more to do with what happened emotionally in that damn cell than anything else.

  Which means the best thing he might be able to do for Loki right now is…leave him alone.

  The very idea twists his gut until he thinks he might be sick. But the idea of potentially taking advantage of Loki right now is worse.

  He does his best to make Loki comfortable. Props his head up on a pillow, loosens his tie and top buttons, tries his best to make the collar just a little less of a weight on his throat. He removes his shoes, sets them neatly on the floor next to the bed, and smooths the covers out. On second thought, he fills a glass with water and sets it on the side table.

  “Loki,” he murmurs, knowing the man probably can’t hear him properly right now, “Loki, you’re safe now. I’ve—I brought you to my room, no one else can get in here but me. I’m gonna be just next door—I’ll hear you if you need anything, okay?”

  He reaches out and makes sure Loki’s head won’t fall off when he sees another tear roll down a pale cheek. He reaches out to wipe it away.

  “You’re not alone, kitten,” he whispers, “I’m right here.”

——————————————————

Loki blinks.

  The ceiling he stares at isn’t the Asgardian hall, nor is it Time Theater 5.

  He sits up.

  He’s in a bed.

  His muscles groan and protest as he looks around, shaky and nowhere near as sure as he should be. He turns his head and notices the glass of water on the table.

  No. No, he knows a trap when he sees one.

  Footsteps.

  He jerks his head around, eyes wide, only for Mobius to come around the corner.

  Mobius’s eyes go wide too and his breath leaves him in a rush. “You’re awake.”

  His throat closes up. No, no, Mobius didn’t—he wouldn’t—

  He isn’t on Asgard anymore. He isn’t there. He’s—he’s in the TVA.

  “Hey,” comes the gentle voice, too gentle for Loki, “hey, Loki? You with me?”

  Loki blinks again, focusing on Mobius with his hands raised in a gesture of surrender.

  “Hey, there, bud,” he says softly, a quiet smile crossing his face, “there you go. You just stay here with me now, okay? Can you do that for me?”

  Loki blinks. Mobius is here. Mobius is here. He’s—he’s not on Asgard. He’s not in the time cell. He’s—he’s—

  “You’re in my quarters,” Mobius says in that same gentle voice, almost as if he can read Loki’s mind, “I brought you here so you could be safe. No one’s hunting you, no one’s angry at you, it’s just little old me here.”

  Just…just Mobius. Just Mobius.

  “Loki, hey, Loki, I need you to look at me.” Mobius’s face swims back into view. “That’s it, you just keep looking at me.”

  His throat feels dry. His body aches. Something, deep within him, is still crying.

  “Can I come over to you, Loki?” Mobius indicates the bed next to him. “I won’t touch you, not unless you want me to, but can I come a bit closer?”

  He barely registers that he’s nodding.

  “Thank you, I’m gonna move real slow, okay?” He keeps his hands raised as he takes a small step closer. “Just like that. No surprises…nothing’s gonna happen to you…I’m just…walking a little closer.”

  He keeps up the litany of reassurances until he eases his weight down onto the bed. He tilts his head and smiles at Loki.

  “See? That’s all, sweetheart,” he murmurs, still far too gentle. “I’m right here now.”

  Loki can barely swallow before his eyes start to burn again.

  “Oh, hey, now,” comes the concerned voice, “what’s all this? Shh, shh, darlin’, you’re okay.”

  Loki’s hands tense in the sheets, unable to look anywhere but Mobius’s kind face. “Is—is this real?”

  “Oh, kitten—“ Mobius moves slowly, always slowly, always gently, as he takes Loki’s face in his hands— “yes, Loki, this is real. I’m right here, sweetheart, I’m right here.”

  Loki’s eyes flutter closed as warm, dry thumbs sweep tenderly across his cheeks, his eyelids, his lashes, and it’s too much.

  “Shh, shh, shh, my scared kitten, come here,” Mobius soothes as Loki all but collapses into him, “that’s it, you just come here, you must’ve been so scared…I’m so sorry, Loki, I’m here now.”

  It’s so different. It’s so different from the cold inhuman comfort of layers of blankets. Mobius is warm and solid and alive and real and the gentle words in his ears threaten to unravel him completely. He has been starved for tenderness, starved for affection, and now that he’s being given it so freely, he doesn’t know what to do.

  “That’s it, pussycat,” he hears as he begins to sob in earnest, “you just cry into me for a little while, okay? I’ve got you, I’m not gonna go anywhere for a while, I’ve got you.”

  A warm hand cards through his hair, another rubs up and down his back. Mobius is everywhere, the smell of him, the rough fabric of the hideously brown suit, the soft lull of words in his ear. Everything is Mobius, Mobius, Mobius.

  Distantly, he becomes aware that he’s being rocked back and forth like a child, tender words whispered against his hairline as Mobius cuddles him. Some part of him wants to pull away, to laugh that if it was that easy to get out of that cell, he would’ve done it ages ago.

  The overwhelming part of him sends pleas and begs to the tip of his tongue for Mobius to never stop.

  They manifest as a whine as Mobius starts to pull away, only for him to be shushed gently as Mobius strokes his face again.

  “Hey, there, don’t you worry,” he soothes, “I’m not going far. I just think that I’m covered in half a dozen different types of TVA gunk and I’m sure you’d like to have a shower too, huh?”

  A shower seems so cold now that he’s known the warmth of another. The thought must register on his face because Mobius is quick to gentle it away too.

  “We don’t have to take long, kitten, but you’ll feel a little better. I promise, okay?”

  If Mobius promises…

  “Good,” he whispers, stroking a thumb along Loki’s cheek again, “can you try and drink that glass of water for me too?”

  Loki doesn’t want to look away from Mobius. If he does, maybe he’ll disappear. But Mobius wants him to do something, so—so—

  “Here,” Mobius says, reaching for the glass himself and taking a small sip, “I’ll drink half, you drink half?”

  Loki nods. Mobius winks and drinks half the glass, before handing it off to Loki. It doesn’t go down as smoothly, but he gets it down.

  “Good job.” He takes the empty glass and stands, gently tugging on Loki’s hand. “Come on, let’s go clean up.”

  He was right. The shower is nowhere near warm enough. But when he gets out of the shower, Mobius is there, clean and clothed in pajamas, with an extra set ready for Loki to change into.

  “There,” he murmurs once Loki finishes changing, “that’s better, huh?”

  Loki nods. He still doesn’t trust his voice to speak, to say all the things he should say, needs to say. But then Mobius is gently telling him to tilt his head to the side as he runs a warm washcloth underneath the collar and the words evaporate into a mess.

  “Sleepy?”

  Mobius sets the washcloth aside and takes his hands again.

  “Come on, kitten, let’s get you back to sleep.”

  He thinks that maybe, maybe he’ll have to convince Mobius to stay, not to leave, but he doesn’t. Indeed, Mobius slides into bed first, pulling back to covers and holding out his arms.

  “C’mere, kitten,” he coaxes, “come lie down.”

  Mobius is warm. So, so, so warm. He nestles into the crook of the man’s embrace as the covers are tugged up around them. He feels a chaste brush of fingers against his lips, checking to see that they aren’t still torn and bitten open. A soft hum that he can feel more than hear as Mobius turns off the lights.

  “Just close your eyes,” Mobius murmurs, “close your eyes, Loki, it’s okay, I won’t leave you. Just try and rest a little more for me, okay? I’ve got you.”

  Some part of him wants to hiss about this being part of a trap. That he’s falling right for it.

  That part of him dissolves as warm fingers tangle in his hair again and warm lips press a chaste kiss to his forehead.

  “Some timelines believe that a forehead kiss gets rid of all the bad,” Mobius whispers, “here’s hoping it works for you.”

  Tears prickle at the corner of Loki’s eyes again, but these don’t burn.

  He knows that someone will wipe them away if they do start to fall.

[askderynsharp]

Hey! Do you mind talking about Deryn's brain and the way she thinks and stuff?  I love the way you analyze these characters. It's a lot of fun hearing what you have to say about them.  xoxo

GOD its been a million years! im so sorry im answering all your asks so late.

Dylan (im gonna be using he/him for this analysis) is a bit of a tricky one for me, ive mentioned before that im used to being alone with my thoughts about Dylan and get nervous interacting with the fandom because of that. I'm insecure about being too forceful or intolerant of other people's relationship with the work, so i prefer to talk about characters im less bonded to be safe. But the other side of that i havent touched on is how revealing my reading of dylan is. A lot of how i feel about dylan relates to how i feel about myself and the time of my life when i first read those books. There is. GARUNTEED. to be projection. especially about the gender stuff. I'm not sure if im like- a good authority on Dylan. So take everything i say with a grain of 'This particular character is difficult to analyze objectively due to his creative and emotional influence on the mod."

Part I - Relationships

While I think the most immediately relevant topic of Dylan's psyche has to do with his trauma, I believe there are subtle hints to the kinda person he is normally, and how that traumatic incident compounded on his 'natural' insecurities. Therefore, its not just going to be about the fire, but rather what I think of Dylan's overall psyche, the well and not so wellness of it.

Dylan is presented as a happy cheerful person with great empathy for his enemies and allies alike. He's cheerful, patient, and trusting to people regardless of their status and seems to judge people by how they act as people. There are four instances of Dylan genuinely disliking someone in the series, two of those could be attributed to Dylan worrying about Alek's relationship with them. The other two, Fitzroy and Volger, Dylan is shown to dislike because the other party expressed dislike first. We never see the first interaction between Dylan and Fitzroy, but Dylan muses that since arriving on the airship Fitzroy had been overtly hostile and implied that the two had gotten into a physical fight that Dylan lost. The more developed relationship we see is between Dylan and Volger, Dylan approaching Volger with a level of nervous respect until Volger makes it clear that he doesn't trust him. (Even then, it takes Volger disparaging him AND Alek for him discomfort to cross over into overt dislike.) Both of these characters think they're better than Dylan, one might presume that Dylan doesnt like how stuck up they are but I think what makes this interesting is how Dylan treats Alek when THEY first meet.

Dylan had a truly inexhaustible reserve of patience for Alek from the moment they meet, even in the depths of a life-or-death situation. He is friendly and cheerful to Alek, despite his behavior being really no different to how Dylan resented being treated by Fitzroy. Dylan cheerfully meets Alek's open insults with jokes and comebacks then doesnt think twice about consoling a boy who had been a dick to him for the entire 24 hours they've known each other. Dylan doesn't care if you're stuck up or rude to him, in fact he seems to think it's funny, so what DOES actually cause Dylan to start disliking people?

In the aftermath of The Fight Dylan seems the most fixated on the fact that Alek replaced him with Tesla, the stuff about him being a stuck up prince is just window dressing for the thing that actually bothered him: Rejection. A lot of time is spent solidifying that Dylan's only real fear is fire, but I'd argue that his fear of rejection plays a larger role in his arc. He doesn't tell Alek his identity, not because he's afraid of Alek thinking any less of him, but because he doesn't want to be rejected. He knows that there is no 'win state' to his secret getting out- even though Dylan seems hilariously certain Alek would fall in love with him, he knows that the rejection is inevitable due to their statuses.

“Deryn had imagined the look of horror on his face. Not that she was a girl in boy’s clothes, or that she’d lied to him for so long. All that yackum Alek would soon get past, she knew. And then he would love her, she knew.

But that was the problem, because there was one thing that would never change.… Deryn was a commoner.”

Dylan has an uncanny ability to predict how other people will react, this little snippet in Behemoth is exactly how it eventually plays out in Goliath. He kept the secret from Alek because he knew that Alek would fall in love with him, and Alek loving him would end their friendship altogether. And, once this rejection comes to fruition, Dylan's internal monologue complains about the same kind of thing that he previously hated in Volger and Fitzroy, even though it hadn't bothered him before. Beneath the status, the insults, the misogyny, or the overall rudeness, the only thing that really causes Dylan to become hostile is being rejected.

It is notable that Dylan dislikes Lilit at first because he is jealous of her, but the moment he realizes that she is in love with him and not Alek, those feelings vanish. Though he's hardly receptive to her flirting, he is definitely warmer to her once he realizes that she is accepting him. Noticeably, its not flattery that wins him over- she gave him plenty of that when he still disliked her, but rather her understanding of who and what he is and accepting him outright that causes his perspective of her to shift.

I feel like the combination of Dylan's fear of rejection, tendency towards jealousy, and cheerful disposition to everyone he meets paints a picture. Dylan has faced a lifetime of rejection: He's rejected from the air service for his sex assigned at birth, his passions rejected by his mother, and spends the entire series terrified of being rejected by his best friend. It's mentioned that his mother attempted to brow-beat him into becoming a girl and that he was able to resist, but that kind of parenting doesn't just go away when you realize your parent was wrong. Dylan had to work hard to be the true version of himself, so he doesnt want to waste time with people who will question that struggle and avoid interactions that could lead to rejection. But at the same time he wants to prove that work was worth it. Its not enough to be dylan, he's gotta be dylan the best midshipman the best friend to alek the best at flying and the best at any task he's given. So he's cheerful. Helpful. Empathetic to other people's problems and lets insults slide. He tries to see the best in everyone until they make it clear they dont like him, in which case he is eager to find any reason to dislike them back even if it's hypocritical.

Dylan's other motivation is his non-standard loyalty. While it never crosses into outright treason, even Dylan is quick to make jabs at his own inability to prioritize his country. But I think he does have a loyal streak, its just similar to how his dislike works. In stark contrast to Volger, things like honor, tradition, and status mean nothing to Dylan. You gain Dylan's loyalty by being friends with Dylan, full stop. He doesnt care about darwinism because its the superior science or philosophically righteous, he just feels a sense of pride in the fact that he's apart of the society that invented it. he doesn't care about the leviathan because its his king's airship, he cares about it because he sees the crew as family. Once alek becomes apart of that family in his mind, Dylan finds it troublingly easy to trust a kid who is, by all other metrics, a complete outsider on the Leviathan. I mentioned before that Dylan was pretty cool with Alek when he was doing everything in his power to insult Dylan during their introduction, but there was one moment where he did drop his friendliness:

“Well, if your ‘beasties’ are so wonderful, then how did the Germans shoot you down? With machines.”

Dylan gave him a dark look, pulling off a glove. His bare hand curled into a fist. “Ten to one, and all of them went down too. And I’ll bet they didn’t land as softly.”

Alek realized he’d said too much. Dylan probably knew crewmen who’d been wounded, or even killed, in the crash.

Like with how he would start hating Volger later, it wasnt enough for Alek to insult him or the philosophy of darwinism. He only got mad when the insult extended to his allies. He is fiercely loyal, perhaps to his own detriment, it just isnt the kind of loyalty that monarchistic europe in the 1900s could appreciate. In Dylan's mind, everyone is deserving of a modicum of respect, often regardless of how they treat him, but he will get hostile if he perceives that he is being rejected or his allies insulted.

Part II - Trauma

Now it might seem that im reaching or over-exaggerating a bit for that last section, but I want to make it clear that I think these are things that his personality and motivations drift towards, not hard fast rules that are disordered or compulsive. People are built a certain way, and thats the way I hypothesize Dylan is built. His trauma, however, I am going to be a bit more heavy-handed in analyzing because i think trauma is what turns some of those neutral personality traits into flaws.

First off is the fire, a pretty straightforward depiction of PTSD. Easily the most traumatic moment of Dylan's life, leaving behind a fear of fire and a twisted suspicion of somehow wanting to die in the same way.

Most stories with child characters involve the children getting traumatized. We dont really think about it, but its sorta vital to the conflict that something awful happens on the adventure. But I think the line where its drawn in disturbia is when the child character is specifically hurt by something they used to enjoy. Theres a reason so many creepypastas involve beloved childhood IPs. There's a reason clowns and toys are utilized in horror. If the child is looking forward to a circus and willingly enters the belly of the beast believing he is going to have fun, it makes the dread lurch in your stomach all the harder once the trap closes.

I think a lot of Dylan's trauma manifests in that transition between comfort and terror. A hot air balloon, the thing that was integral to Dylan's growth and representative of his bond with his father, is now a trigger for him. He has conflicted feelings about his desire to fly being suicidal. He wouldn't wish his trauma on anyone, yet as a soldier has to condemn strangers to the same fate every time the claxon rings. The Leviathan is his home, a place where he can be himself and do the thing he loves. But its also a war machine that forces him to lie to his new family and could go up in flames at any moment.

And then theres the other side of trauma, the slow and subtle kind. (Fair warning, this is where I start to project/speculate a little) We dont learn much about the two years Dylan spent with his mother before the first book, but the threat of going back to that situation hangs heavy over Dylan's chapters. Sometimes its petty and surface level, not wanting to fail or be stuffed back into skirts. But sometimes hints of something darker is referenced in passing- months where he apparently refused to eat or speak. Recurring nightmares that could only be soothed by staring all night at the medal. implies that, despite having a still living parent, he still feels like he's an orphan. Having never talked about what he saw during the accident until alek, not even to his brother or his mother or his aunts. Those years are described as 'impossible' and at one point in behemoth Dylan seems to contemplate's death as preferable to returning to them. We never know if it was just the result of lingering trauma or something that Dylan's family did, but whatever it was it was bad enough that Jaspart agreed to this insane plan just to get him out of Glasgow.

While there is more intensity to the scenes showing Dylan's fear of fire, I believe that slower and subtler trauma that accounts for the conflict in his arc. Some part of him was broken by what happened, a presumably natural aversion to being rejected turns into a fear of abandonment. The desire to impress and prove himself turns into avoiding his feelings vicious self-doubt.

We love what a show off dylan is, but I think its easy to understate the disdain in how often he refers to himself as 'common as dirt.' Alek never said that about him, not even Volger did. Dylan started referring to himself that way in his head on his own, and notably does it every time his feelings for Alek bubble to the surface. Dylan is afraid of ruining his friendship with Alek for his own sake, but part of him also feels like it would be selfish to deprive Alek of his only friend. Why should alek, whose whole world is on fire and has this whole destiny to worry about, have to deal with Dylan's problems on top of that?

This is ultimately what causes the fight- Alek is so used to seeing Dylan as this perfect soldier that he cannot comprehend that Dylan might have actually been ashamed or afraid to tell him his secret. It doesn't even occur to him that Dylan might be insecure, he assumes that it has to be, ironically, a rejection of Alek's confidence.

And thats why I feel like the sitation around the fire has more negative consequences than the fire itself. Hell- his trauma doesnt even stop him from acting heroically. It seems to fuel it further. His PTSD manifests as him rushing in to save Newkirk from the burning huxley. The part after is harder for him to process. That's when he starts to think about whether his need to fly is suicidal, when he wonders if he belongs here, and when his trust issues and insecurities become more pronounced. He knows as he's being triggered that it will effect him later, and somehow seems even more afraid of the nightmares coming back than the fire itself.

Part III - Identity

This is the bit I've been dreading talking about, because I think this one is the most colored by my own relationship with gender and experience with cross-dressing as a narrative conflict. I stand by there being genuine evidence of Dylan experiencing dysphoria and euphoria. I do think there is some thematic evidence for him cross-dressing for more reasons than wanting to fly. And as someone who read a lot of polly oliver books for presumably no reason at all, Dylan does stand out from the usual tropes in ways I find interesting.

Compare Dylan to characters like Alanna the Lioness or Jackie Faber.

Both of these characters shed their male personas the moment they no longer profit from them, Jackie by the end of the first book, then spend the vast majority of the series building their reputation as women in a male-dominated field. Alanna and Jackie like being girls, they sneak away from their male friends to get wear dresses and makeup in secret. The topic of gender only comes up either to disparage the patriarchy or to reclaim their femininity. A lot of time is spent contemplating the dissonance of their traditionally masculine skills and their desire to present as women. They find their own version of femininity that allows them to be themselves whilst doing what they love, and that should be celebrated. Femininity is not the enemy, it's not a corrosive force that ruins your life. It is possible to be a proud woman whilst disagreeing with feminine gender roles.

But that never comes up in Leviathan. At all.

Dylan never has a desire to reclaim his femininity, never feels an urge to dress up, and never feels conflicted about his wants as a woman and his career. The only attempt to present feminine is in costume, and only with the caveat that Alek, another boy, is presenting as feminine with him.

What conflict his gender DOES bring in the narrative looks like this:

“(Deryn) sighed. Might as well jump now, without a barking rope.”

“Don’t worry, lad,” the bosun said from beside her. “It’s never as far as it looks.”

She nodded, wishing that it was something piffling like a keelhaul drop that had her jittery. Gravity was something you could beat; all it took was hydrogen, hot air, or even a bit of rope. But being a girl was a miserable, never-ending struggle.”

That doesn't sound like someone who would sneak out at night to practice her makeup or secretly sew herself a dress to wear on a date with her boyfriend. That sounds like someone who would rather die than be outed, who describes his gender as a miserable never-ending struggle.

And I don't think its just that a man wrote this, Lilit serves as a fascinating foil to Dylan:

“Lilit wasn’t a bad sort, really. She was a dab hand with machines, as good at piloting as any of the men. In a way, she’d managed the same trick as Deryn had—acting like a man—without pretending, and that was a splendid sort of anarchy, one had to admit.”

Dylan appreciates femininity when Lilit is performing it, and isn't all that baffled to find Lilit being able to balance her ambition and womanhood. That leads me to believe that Dylan understands there are options for presenting as female whilst following his dreams. After all, his dad took him up in balloons back when he presented as female. Presumably, he just needed to find another mentor willing to teach a girl. He could have spent his inheritance (or presumably, insurance) on a replacement balloon and had Jaspart go up with him. This is even lampshaded in goliath, with alek trying to find out if there's anyone else like Dylan and realizing that its easier for women to just go on adventures than try to dress up as men:

“The thought of the heroine made (Alek) turn to Mr. Francis again. “Do women in America really fly about in balloons?”

“Well, they must want to! The Perils of Pauline is so popular that our competitors are getting in on the act, making something called The Hazards of Helen. And we’re already planning The Exploits of Elaine.”

“How . . . alliterative,” Alek said. “But outside of moving pictures, do women actually do these sorts of things?”

The man shrugged. “Sure, I suppose so. Ever heard of Bird Millman?”

“The high-wire walker? But she’s a circus performer.” Alek sighed. For that matter, Lilit had known how to use a body kite. But she was a revolutionary. “What I mean is, do normal women ever fly?”

Count Volger spoke up. “I think what Prince Aleksandar wants to ask is, do American women pretend to be men? It is currently a subject of intense study with him.”

Alek gave the wildcount a hard look, but Mr. Francis only laughed.

“Well, I don’t know about flying,” he said, “but we’ve sure got a lot of women wearing trousers these days. And I just read that one in twenty walker pilots is female!”

Its subtle, but the implication is that between Lilit, Dr. Barlow, and Adella Rogers, Dylan's choice wasnt entirely practical. Dylan chose the air service. he chose a disguise. And here's another interesting difference: We never see how Dylan made that choice.

In all other instances of the polly oliver trope, including ones that openly explore gender like Terry Pratchett's Monsterous Regiment, we always see a girl decide to become a boy and watch every step of her transformation.

Dylan, despite being introduced to us with female pronouns, is presented post transition. He has already cut his hair, chosen a new name, replaced his wardrobe, and made arrangements to sneak into the air service. We never learn what made him come up with this plan and why his brother agreed to risk his own career when easier legal options were also available.

The chapters in another Polly Oliver book spent with the heroine worriedly finding solutions to her secrets are spent with Dylan feeling the euphoria of passing as male. More time is spent with him describing how happy and fulfilled he is aboard the leviathan than the sparse mentions of how he maneuvers showering or taking a piss. The day to day discomfort of 'living a lie' is mentioned in passing but never elaborated on because Dylan's conflict has nothing to do with his gender.

It has to do with his relationships and his trauma. His gender only comes up in relation to his sexuality, and only then because he has a victorian's understanding of what sexuality is. He associates his feelings for alek as being girly but ultimately doesn't need to present as female to act on those feelings. He and Alek start a relationship with Alek attracted to his male persona. He only presents as female once their relationship is established, and even then Alek muses that Dylan doesnt look that different. He's a boy in a dress. A stylish and handsome boy in a dress, but its just the person Alek's dating wearing a particular piece of clothing.

And even though the bonus chapter isnt meant to be the narrative conclusion that Scott planned, I think there is some confirmation to be found for Dylan's arc.

“When she was dressed, Deryn gazed at her reflection in a darkened window. Her usual self stared back: female and fifteen. The careful tailoring only made her look queerly skinny, not so much a boy as some tattie bogle set out in old clothes to scare the crows.”

Dylan starts the series as a girl in her brother's clothes and ends the series as a boy in a dress.

And thats me vomiting all my Dylan opinions! I hope this was worth the read!

[poptod]

Pretty, Little Doll (Merriel Shelton x Reader)

Description: Merriel makes friends with the pretty little doll serving ice cream.

Notes: jus thinking about ice cream. implied female reader, but this.. is too much. theres just too much here. youve been warned. edit: wait no u havent. the warning is that theres suggestive themes and such WC: 2.3k

+

After working long hours in the broiling sun of the south, what felt best down his parched throat was a beer––a bar where many of his friends and coworkers drank at, and the waitresses wore low-cut dresses with short hems and long stockings. That sight went down wonderfully with several drinks, but what drew his attention today was a newly opened shop.

There was no sign, but the large, pristine windows gave a good view of the inside. Clean, white walls with several tables and chairs to the left, and a counter to order at on the right. Behind it stood you, dressed to the nines in ruffles and bows as you opened up the shop, displaying buckets of ice cream.

Merriel grinned. Lopsided and toothy, and he jogged inside, sweat and dirt still trailing down his skin and clothes. With his shirt slung over his bare shoulder, he met your eye and his cocky smile returned as his chin tilted high.

"Afternoon," he drawled as he approached the counter, barely grazing over the different flavors before returning to you.

"Good afternoon," you said in a much quieter voice, though you did mimic his smile, just more politely. "How may I help you?"

"You new here?" He asked, gesturing generally to the shop.

"Oh, yes," you said. "My grandmother always wanted an ice cream parlor, so.. I thought I could help her."

"That's awful sweet of ya," he said as he leant on the counter, tilting ever closer to you. "This ice cream sweet as you, boo?"

Your mouth fell open, eyes widening as you did a double take. For a moment you were at a loss for words, but you quickly attempted to stammer out a response, a blush burning your face.

"Well, um, we have, uh, strawberry, and um.. chocolate, vanilla, cherry, and uh, banana. And bourbon."

"Bourbon?" He said, a single brow kinked upwards.

"It's my grandma's favorite," you said with a sheepish chuckle.

"Damn, girl. Grandma knows how to have fun," he laughed.

"Would you like to try it?"

Only if I can lick it off you, he thought, his attention drifting to the soft skin of your neck. The thought of it melting down and pooling in your clavicle. While usually he didn't bother to censor himself for anyone, you seemed a little fainthearted. His chances with you would probably be ruined after one too-strange comment.

"Sure," was what he said instead. "Long as it's cold I don't care."

"I understand that. I moved here recently and it's certainly something to try and adapt to the heat," you rambled as you stuck a tiny plastic spoon in the bourbon ice cream, giving him the single bite. "Are you a local?"

"Been here long's I remember," he said, taking the spoon. "What time do ya get off today?"

"Oh, um," you fixed the ruffles on your collar, "I won't be finished till late. We're not all set up yet."

"If y' need some help, I'd be happy to offer my expertise. I do a hell of a lot a' nailin' things ta the wall."

You stared at him again, once more losing your words. He hadn't quite meant what he said, but the fluster he left you in had him grinning, humored by the connotation you'd incorrectly understood.

"That – that'd be very nice of you," you said, wringing your hands. "I don't want to bother you. You look.. busy."

He didn't miss how your eyes raked up his body, from his wrinkled, dusty pants up his bare waist and chest still gleaming with the sweat of morning work. His jaw could cut hearts and he knew that very well; accented it whenever he could as he cocked his chin upwards, watching carefully as your breath froze.

"I won't be busy tonight. How 'bout this." He walked up right to the counter, pressing his hips into the edge of it. "I come after I finish up ma' own job, and I'll give ya' a hand. Don't even gotta pay me."

"Really? But –"

"Don't worry 'bout it. 'S nothin' for a pretty doll like you."

"At least let me get you a cone? It's hot out today," you offered, reaching for the largest waffle cones you had.

The guys wouldn't really take well to him eating ice cream instead of drinking, but he figured they'd eat their words when they saw you.

"Won't say no to that."

As much as he wanted to boast about you, how pretty and sweet you were and how he so easily slid his way into your life, he didn't want his friends finding your shop and vandalizing it with their own dirty boots and flirtatious looks. Only he could do that.

In the evening he returned as promised, having walked from his house on the outskirts of town to your shop on the main street. The build, decorum, and location of the shop screamed rich family to him. No one in his state would be able to afford a business on main street, much less fully renovated and repainted. He could ask you, he decided, about your family, your grandmother, and of course you.

Inside, you were closing up the tubs of ice cream, hauling them out of the display case and into a back storage room. He knocked before he entered, earning a muffled 'come in!' from you.

Before either of you could speak, both the buckets in your arms began to slip, and he ran round to the other side of the counter to help. He took one from you to ease the load.

"Careful, cher," he said, grabbing another bucket in his other arm. "Don't wanna break yaself."

"Thank you," you said, mostly ignoring his comment. "My grandma is in the other room, so just, um.. be polite and proper."

Fat fuckin' chance, he thought in his head, but fortunately did not say aloud as he followed you.

The door swung open into a freezer room, where an old lady stood in the corner, covered head to toe in coats as she stirred.

"I keep telling you to let me do that," you sighed, setting down your container before rushing to her side.

"I can do it quite well myself. I'm not useless, you know," your grandmother said, staring you down with a glare. You hesitated, gauging her carefully, before you relented with another exasperated sigh.

"Fine, alright," you said quietly. "I'll go work on hanging up all the paintings and such."

"Thank you, dear."

You motioned to him as you passed by, pushing open the door and heading out of the freezer. He once again followed you, watching your ass with a grin you never saw.

"We need to hang up these," you said as you brought him to one of the circular tables, each of which carried a small pile of paintings, license plates, or tin posters.

"You got a ladder?" He asked, glancing to the high walls.

"Yes sir," you said, sorting through the different posters. He quirked a brow, intrigued by the possibility of that nickname.

"I neva did get ya name," he said as he leant on one of the tables.

"(Y/N). What's yours?"

"Pretty name for a pretty doll," he half sung, the same, one-sided smile stretched lazily across his face. "My name's Merriel."

"Also a pretty name," you said, picking the largest poster to start with. A pin-up girl in a sailor's suit. "Our ladder isn't all that steady. Will you hold it for me?"

He opened his mouth to offer himself up, but with one look to the ruffled skirt you wore, he shut himself up.

"'Course," was what he said instead.

Everything was a bit of a game––one you were unwittingly a part of, and one where you played your role rather well. A sweet, unassuming little thing, essentially a toy for him, accepting his help and letting him in. He hated to act the predator, but when it came to you he couldn't help it.

That was how he saw it. Hunting you down and taking you for his own at the end of a long chase. However, to any outsider, it appeared in a much simpler way; a young man doing anything for someone he'd developed a crush on. That was how it truly was, though the innocence of his crush was abruptly stripped away as he held the ladder, staring shamelessly up your skirt.

"Merriel?"

"Huh?" He said, broken out of his dreamy trance.

"I said could you hand me another nail," you said, pointing towards the package of nails with your hammer.

"Oh. You sure ya ain't gonna fall if I leave?" He asked with a grin. You chuckled, shaking your head.

"I'll be alright."

"If you say so, boo."

After a little while he supposed he ought to offer some more help than holding a rickety ladder, and took your place at the top with a hammer in his hand and nails in his mouth. As promised, his experience with nailing things to the wall (nails specifically, not women) made him much faster than you, and the entirety of the wall behind the counter was covered within fifty minutes.

"Thank you for your help, again," you said as you put away the hammer and nails.

"My pleasure," he said, the image of your thighs still fresh in his mind. "If y' ever need help.. I'm happy t' to be of service."

"Well, thank you. Come stop by again soon. On the house," you said as he left, peeking your head out the door and giggling.

"You know I'm stoppin' by again, get two things done in one trip. Some'in sweet for th' eyes and the tongue," he laughed, watching your face light up with a blush.

And it ain't just the ice cream, he thought.

Over the course of the coming summer, he left drinking for the evening, and instead visited your shop over his lunch break. You insisted on giving his cones for free considering he continued to help you out, but he usually found ways to sneak you the money anyway. You were not, as he assumed earlier, a very rich family.

His favorite activity, which he found rather early on, was to sit outside on burning hot days, his shirt draped over the back of his chair as he ate. Through the pristine glass, he spied you watching him often.

You couldn't help it either. Most of your life was spent in your family cabin, cutting you off from many teen and early adulthood experiences. People flirting with you was a lot to deal with, especially when it came from someone as pretty as him, the smooth dips and ripples of his lean muscles shining with sweat and dirt from his construction site.

His tongue. Ever since he made that comment on that first evening you met, you hadn't been able to get it out of your mind. How it rolled and drawled between his puffy lips drawn backwards with his teeth, in a very specific method you'd pinned down to 'the Tongue Thing'.

Your heated, embarrassed blush only worsened as ice cream dripped down his fingers from the heat, cleaned up by a sharp and precise tongue. You could hardly breathe watching him like that, but as he caught your eye you turned quickly away.

His bravado had clearly earned a huge boost from catching you mid-drool, prevalent in his step as he waltzed back into your store. You hardly met his eye, pretending to clean up the counter, but that didn't stop him. He walked right up to you, leaning down with his elbows on the stone, forcing you to stop and look at him, which you did with incredible reluctance.

"You been watchin' me, cher?" He asked, close enough to see his reflection in your wide eyes.

"No," you said quietly.

"A' think you're lyin'," he said, leaning in closer yet. "Betta' not do that. Could land you in some trouble."

You raised your brows.

"Are you threatening me?"

"Not with anythin' ya can't take," he said as he raked his eyes purposefully slow down your body. When you appeared to be at a loss for words, he said, "I'll ask ya again. Were you watching me?"

"... and if I don't answer?" You tested carefully.

"Well then, I think there's too much space between us," he said, grinning cockily as he jumped the counter, crowding you suddenly.

You drew in a sharp breath, backing up as he continued to step forwards till he pinned you to the wall with his hips.

"Tell the truth, baby." he drawled, carefully setting his hands on your hips and pulling you in. Something hard poked you.

"I – I wasn't staring, I –"

He half-grinded into you, pressing you tighter against the wall as his hands drew upwards, resting at your waist.

"Such a pretty thing," he mumbled beneath his breath, watching your stumbling reaction closely.

By pinning you with his hips, he had free roam to move his hands, one of which toyed with the hem of your skirt. It was wrong, certainly, and it was also illegal since you were in plain view of main street, but he lost control the minute his fingertips brushed the soft, supple skin of your thigh.

Your breathing hastened, hips yearning for something, though you didn't know what. When the rough skin of his fingers suddenly brushed inbetween your thighs your hands shot up to steady yourself on Merriel's shoulders. He laughed, running a finger through your lips, finding you already soaked and not wearing underwear. Instantly his laugh faded, devolving into a long, needy moan as his hips once more pushed up into you.

"Th – there's someone – someone coming," you said, eyes darting to the front door.

Immediately he was off you, stepping to the side as you straightened yourself out. You walked forward with shaky legs, which he most definitely noticed, and took the mother and son's orders as usual. When you finished you glanced to him, your heart stopping at the sight of him licking your slick from his fingers.

"I guess your ice cream is as sweet as you, boo," he murmured in your ear, giving you no chance to react before rushing back out to return to his construction job.

[bimbosupreme]

mephistopheles love post

the equivalent of a mental breakdown tangent is all going under a read more

yes believe it or not that freaky ass literally not even human clown in fgo gets love, and love from who? me and like 3 other people

first off

ok and with that out of the way,

i’m not even familiar with their lore. Reason why i stopped caring about the lore behind faust and mephistopheles is that an interlude happens that shows that mephistopheles is just some homunculi made by some mage nobody named faust. and even then the interlude doesn’t talk about the lore behind the novel, its just you helping mephy kill faust

that being said though i would hope the developers expand on their origins more and potentially even release a “true” mephistopheles (a girl can dream)

So, they’re not even the real deal demon known as Mephistopheles in the first place, and i can hear u going “well that’s lame” and like, no, we just need to redirect our feelings from appreciating a demon to appreciating a homunculi who has a weird characterization in the fate universe

Design tangent:

Fgo was actually my first gacha, and so when I came across this servant I kinda instantly fell in love with their design, I love the colors used in their final ascension and overall appearance. The hat that has horns but they're not quite horns, theyre these weird colorful pointy twisty things, the large garish butterfly ornament on their chest (which isnt ugly at all and somehow works so well with their everything on them) is cool, the tights are so cool to look at, i mean look -- a checkered pattern with golden lining on the shorts portion, the tits out look like yes we get it youre insane, the gloves??? purple and also cool, plus theyve got this gradient thing going on? and the fingers have this line going through them, thats so cool. actually the only other servant that comes close to this in terms of “out there” colorful designs is probably final ascension kama and qsh ( i love them both). Also, mephy has this scissor weapon?? thats so cool lol i dont see any other servant wielding giant scissors (for the love of god give mephy an animation update i need to see them use the scissors while doing flips) and they also have this bomb obsession going on? cant relate, but the bombs designs are so so cool i mean its a fucking centipede -- no idea if centipedes are a thing in the original faust but thats something Ill have to look up at some point. ALSO mephy is wearing heels oh my god anytime people wear heels is an automatic win. No clue whats going on with the hair but its kinda cute (dont question me on that) and it has curls and the hair colors are cool i mean its like a lavender thing with darker purple highlights? i love colorful things and i love people with wacky personalities so. Oh my god their tail how could i forget that its so cute and dumb i almost forgot it was there, like what is that even a whip? i dont.. but its got these little purple tips to them that are kinda cute/cool but more cool because tails are fucking up there alongside heels in terms of cool stuff on characters. and of course their fluffly cape -- again no idea what the designers were going for i mean look its a mess of a design i have no fucking idea what any of it means and i hope they explain it someday because that hair and the butterfly and the tail and the hat and the fluffy garb and a bomb obsession?? and this got the go ahead - yeah lets add that to the game like what

ALSO LETS TALK ABOUT THEIR EYES

appreciate these with me for a second

god.

oh and the blue lipstick and face paint god thats a cool design ugh

they can be normal too or at least as normal as possible i mean they even trimmed their eyebrow here lol but you can see the not so well hidden insanity/goofiness peaking through with the inside of the suit at the bottom being highlighter purple and a green shirt with gold accents underneath the black coat at the front <3, fuckin hate that hairstyle tho bro we gotta get that middle part hairstyle outta hereeeee--

TAKE A DETOUR AND LOOK AT THIS LINK THOUGH THIS IS THE MOST NORMAL AND BEST IVE SEEN THEM IN FANART. THE POTENTIAL IS THERE. WE CAN HAVE NICE THINGS AND THEY LOOK GREAT ITS POSSIBLE. I HAVE TEARS STREAMING DOWN MY FACE FROM THAT DRAWING.

anyways this is me going off all about why i like their design! but we haven’t even touched the nitty gritty of it all. their personality! what personality you may ask? havent they always been some weirdo laughing a lot and saying dumb shit all the time? well yes and no

Characterization:

True to their dumb little clown design mephy also acts like one.

Some servants bond 1 lines are like “fuck off” and some actually talk to you, nah this bastard mephistopheles’ just laughing. and for the second bond line it seems to imply theyre fuckin with you more (showing up and dissapearing and saying ‘afterimage’) so thats nice that theyre actually making some effort to mess with you in a way? some servants take a long time to actually interact with you so this shows theyre not afraid of interacting with you and thats just at bond 2. and of course the third bond line implies they were probably trying to betray you, its stated in more than 1 place that mephistopheles (actually isnt this a caster class thing?) will betray you or attempt to do so. So the third bond line seems to imply that their attempts have been stopped by you and that’s what they say after some failed attempts. So after stopping this freak from doing some shit their next bond line is actually doing a confession! a jester being honest who couldve seen that one coming but theyre 100% not lying, they really arent a demon but a homunculi made by faust

speaking of faust we’re going to backtrack a little into their interlude that i brought up at the start of this post, its one of those dream interludes and it starts with mephy asking you to help him plant bombs for their eventual reuinion/showdown with faust -- in the meantime faust keeps sending golems in an attempt to kill both you and mephy

When you track faust down, it’s shown that faust was your typical mage, inhumane and uncaring. It’s also pointed out that this faust killed innocents, but this typical mage behavior is boring to mephy, and they say that boring typical behavior is why they wanted to kill them

 so i really cant blame mephistopheles for being the way they are, being raised by this type of guy, even if mephy was always messed up and wacky from the beginning its no reason for faust to attempt to kill him.

Mephistopheles also shows up in salem, cu alter’s interlude, and of course the knk crossover event, and some other things im most likely forgetting but those 3 are ones that i find notable

anytime they show up theyre actually helpful, in salem mephy points out that the nature of the being responsible for the salem epic of remnant is something alien rather than a typical foreign god, mephy also tells you that time is also being sped up and in their weird way they try to cheer you up by spouting some nonsense at the beginning (guda needed some kind of distraction from the grim events that had just transpired at that point in the story), i cant quite remember what mephy did in the knk event but they were a part of your group and were helpful the whole time, actually @/zeravmeta does an amazing analysis of their role in the knk event as well as some extra character analysis here

mephistopheles is kinda cryptic in a weird way though,

like overall i mean theyre a jester homunculi in appearance so yeah its to be expected but come on i love morally gray characters, despite their supposed betrayal hints scattered around here and there

they have this one line that always gets to me

and this line is said with a completely serious face too

the rare serious mephistopheles face! its kinda grim to see that line, no laughs, no nothing, their voice is kinda serious and monotone too. of course this could be just to get you to lower your guard but its still kinda out there that they have this rarely used portrait and that line, so i like to take it as being said to you when youre by yourself and with sincerity

and at least sei (with her wacky outfit and all lol) seems to get along with mephy and thinks theyre nice woohoo

so at the end of the day you have this guy that laughs a lot and gives mixed signals

and they fuck with you

and will most likely try to kill you more than once but hey thats just another tuesday at chaldea

Before I finish last thing I want to point out is this snippet from the fgo source material book which provides more information on servants, and this specific translated bit under mephistopheles

at the core of it all this homunculi....can be your friend! you just need to not go into despair i guess

of course this entire post is an overanalysis into an underwritten character, quarantine + all online college classes have done this to me, i have a douman icon what did you expect

OH...BEFORE I REALLY SIGN OFF AND FINISH THE POST HEY CLOWN LOVERS CHECK OUT THESE FANARTS AND FANARTISTS...

THE FIRST ONE IS HASENDOW YES THE DOUMAN DESIGNER... <3

i cant believe they drew mephy

twice !

and for those of you on twitter check out @cuz_pb and @L0VEYAMA003

[ao3gingerswag]

adding on to @ao3time 's ask about sam being punished (who btw is a v v good author I already had multiple of their series bookmarked and didn't even realise so im totally gonna hype them up very awesome), I think cas actually trying to punish/be an authoritative figure towards sam would be quite the journey in itself. bc like thinking about it he himself is barely if at all an adult, and moreover his only experience of authority is *his* father, which is its own kettle of fish what with cas's autism and the general stresses of being a single parent with that kind of job (speaking of, tangent, what's the back story on cas's mother if you've thought of one?), so basically poor cas is probably very stressed with trying to figure out how to deal with sam while also trying to not upset dean and everything's a big mess. maybe sends sam to the room like his dad did for him as a good thing to help him with his sensory overload? so then when he comes and finds sam has disappeared probably leads to a lot of guilt/angst as he worries he's not capable enough to deal with others emotions :'( poor cas

also another little side note ASKS ABOUT KYIS ARE WELCOMED??? cos boy oh boy has that fic taken up enough brain space and hours of my life for me to have far and away enough thoughts to probably right a whole other fic in itself. I havent sent any before bc I wasn't sure if you wanted to focus on it rather than wander home and didn't want to add more things to your already crowded head, but rest assured I have asks in the plenty!

Ok @hooomdooom 1. Asks about KYIS are ABSOLUTELY welcome!!! I love Wander Home but truth is KYIS will always be my pride and joy 😭❤️ that was the manifesto I think had been developing inside me since I was like 10 and idk if I’ll ever be more proud of anything else I create in my life. I’m honestly more proud of completing that fic then getting my masters degree 😭😭

2. My idea/backstory about Cas’s mom is not super developed, but I think I implied somewhere in one of the fics that she up and dipped when she realized that Something Was Wrong with her kid 😭 and that Cas’s dad always told Cas she died in childbirth but he kind of knows that that’s not true bc he was old enough to sooort of remember what happened (like 4 or something)

3. I Agree about what ur saying about cas being an authority figure I mean he’s like. Only 6 years older than Sam so. He’s really like another older brother and even that just barely. And honestly for the most part I think Sam just listens to dean. Like he’s very compulsively defiant but I think for the most part he very much does listen to dean bc he knows dean loves him so if Dean says don’t go near the big stream by yourself he doesn’t go near the big stream by himself. EVEN if he thinks dean is being ridiculous and he’s not gonna somehow fall in. Like….he doesn’t want to give Dean more to worry about so he listens. And He loves dean very much. 🥺🥺 I think really the only things he didn’t listen to dean about were like things about DEANs safety and happiness. Like. Dean would be like sam Do Not pickpocket the creepy men who come into the inn to try to give me more money to meet Johns Requirements! And Sam would be like uuuuh request denied. But now he doesn’t have to worry about stuff like that really so he doesn’t HAVE to disobey dean to like try to get him food and stuff. So him listening is not actually much of an issue anymore.

I think the only time something would happen where cas would have to intervene would be 1. If Dean were not around for some reason or 2. If Sam had some sort of meltdown and started shouting at dean 😭 which tbh I can see happening he’s a very traumatized disturbed little kid he’s bound to crack up once and a while. But Dean would just cry instead of standing up for himself like a regular kid so cas would have to be like Sam!!! Go To Your Room!!! And Sam would storm off and maybe go or maybe not and THAT would be a whole thing. But yes. These r my thoughts. I have a lot of them.

[redcrowz]

Do you have any idea how old the Orca Squad is because I, for the life of me, can’t figure it out because Quint is old enough to have been in ww2, Brody has a wife and young children, and Hooper is out of college (undergrad or grad I have no idea but that makes a big difference) and yet they all look like they’re in their 40s to me 💀

no canonical ages other than Middle Aged Adult Portrayals does make this tricky but i got some goods that hopefully help you, thank god for headcanons

tl;dr

brody is 42 ("canon" through screenplay and actor age)

quint is 47-48 (just through logic- through actor age and calculations, technically "headcanon")

hooper is in his 30s (35 for me specifically- just through understanding college formatting + the system and what makes the most sense considering the context and what has been said + implied, VERY much headcanon)

i mostly factor in the actor's ages during portrayal and also other jaws media into the thing, unfortunately i havent read the jaws novel yet but i may revisit this if ages come up in the novel (or someone whos read it says they have)

first off with the easiest one: brody who is said to be 42 in this screenplay, which is a believable Dad Age and lines up with scheider's age and him beginning to be a dad at ~30 would be reasonable

michael's actor was 11-12, sean's was 6-7

second one is just moreso implications and just lots of calculating with quints age

On November 11, 1942, Congress approves lowering the draft age to 18 and raising the upper limit to age 37.

the uss indianapolis shark attack happened during 1945, so quint couldve easily been 18 during the time- and considering he mentions how Terrified he was to the point where he obsessively shark hunts, having that trauma inflicted with him at such a young age would really, really fuck him up

and it also lines up with his actor's age, shaw was born in 1927, making him 18 in 1945 and 47-48 in 1974/1975

now hooper... richard dreyfuss was 28 when he was depicting hooper

i take Much More Creative Liberties with hooper's age primarily for comfort bc an age gap between the ages of 28 - 42 - 48 can be unnerving bc those are quite the age gaps but its Fine, so hooper's more of a range in my head but ill be more Clear with what i think after explaining this

first: you need 4 years for bachelors, additional 1 year for masters, which is needed to be marine biologist researcher, and of course these dont need to be back to back bc College Gap Years and flexibility- the woods hole oceanagraphic institute both offers undergrad and grad programs

in the screenplays it was much more apparent that hooper was a student rather than a graduate or anything else, but i think if we're still sticking with the college student route (considering quint calls him a college boy, though it could either be him being a college student OR a graduate, so take that as you will), id imagine it'd be for his masters

nothing much was said about his position in the movie other than "expert", but i interpret this as a professor bc "full professors" have expertise and can still be considered a "college boy" despite the title, and could be dedicated enough to his field to get the rank being below the average age

"Very few people become Full Professors before the age of 40"

but it is possible!

if you want my personal interpretation, i really dont see hooper as 28 (ik facial hair does that to a mf but it really doesnt make me believe hes that young LMAO) and neither a student (i dont blame ppl who do take him as a 28 year old student considering the actor age tho)

i see him more as a (full) professor in his 30s, probably some sort of prodigy if we're thinking early 30s, or just the Standard Expert if we're thinking later 30s- he works hard in either even if he is a rich boy LOL

hes also commented looking "young" so i dont wanna go over 40 though that could be viable considering Average Full Professor Age

averaging in my brain, ill consider his age 35 with Personel Headcanons

he couldve taken gap years! college and working in the field such as marine biology is hard as balls So

hope that helps! ^^

[lunatic-fandom-space]

Ranting about Jaune killing Penny and also rambling about VRAINS a bit

Greetings ladies, gents and other friends! I just had A Thought and now Im unreasonably angry and need to rant. Unlike in previous posts, I wont really explain anything because I just need to get this out of my system as fast as possible, so if you need me to elaborate just ask, I would be happy to explain some shit. Also apologies in advance for probably being a bit incoherent.

Oh god there are so many issues I have with Pennys death but the biggest one was definitely that Jaune just had to be the one to kill her! Like, Im not gonna say Jaune is a self-insert even though he is because thats not a legitimate critisism because SIs are not inherently bad. But jesus f u c k the writers are far too attached to this stupid bitchboy!! I dont even understand why!

Like, I get that the typical Heroes Journey is easier to write but if its just that then why not Oscar? Hes not the main character either obviously, but hes actually somewhat interesting simply by virtue of having Oz around.

Hey, you know that tweet where Miles Luna was like "hehehehehe this volume is truly ending in a darling massacre!"?

Uh, yeah, where the fuck is it? Jaune is arguably the biggest writer-darling and hes not only alive and well, but GOING WITH THE ACTUAL PROTAGONISTS TO A COMPLETELY ISOLATED MAGIC BEACH LAND

The only thing that got massacred this volume was Pennys arc tbh

This was like, the big defining moment of the volume where A Beloved Character is killed off by one of our protagonists for Tragedys Sake, and literally all I felt was annoyence because it was Jaune instead of, oh i dunno, THE ACTUAL TITULAR PROTAGONIST RUBY ROSE???

And for the love of god, if I have to hear that stupid defense thats like "oH iT wOuLd Be OuT oF cHaRaCtEr" I will literally burst into flames out of anger. Luckily I havent heard it in a while because everyone seems to have gotten mostly over it, and honestly, me even bringing this up is kinda beating a dead horse at this point but fuck it. This dead meat deserves to be beat! Like

Like

Hey, heyheyheyheyheyheyheyh ey hey.

Hey

You know who else has a kinda goofy AI friend that they would usually never ever hurt because they mean so much to them, but is then forced to do so anyway?

Yusaku "The fucking Playmaker" Fujiki

Like, dude, thats literally part of what makes the final duel so incredibly heartwrenchinh!! The fact that Yusaku still loved Ai, still saw him as his Friend and Partner (HIS PARTNER) but had no choice but to defeat him anyway. Why would you not want this?!? Why would you rather have Vomitboy, who had NO interactions with Penny, to kill her instead?

I literally blacked out for more than half of VRAINS when I first watched it and I still havent rewatched it, and I have felt infinitely more during those final episodes than the entirety of V8, because it wasnt just that Yusaku and Ai dueled and Ai basically died; it was that Ai turned to villainy during the last part, it was that Yusaku still seemed somewhat hesitant in some ways, despite the fact that losing meant certain death, it was the fact that Ai set up this messed up suicide trap to begin with, it was Ai asking Yusaku to merge conciousnesses with him because he still wanted to exist in some form, it was the fact once Ai was defeated, Yusaku still got to hold him and tell him that his name means 'love' and cry and Ai got to say that he loved Yusaku and also cry and ugh.

Man its just. Much sad. Very feelings. Would not recommend, but will watch again. Twice, atleast, if everything goes according to plan.

But anyway, the point I was trying to make here was, you cant just kill a beloved character and expect that alone to make an impact. The context is just as, if not more more, important as the death itself. Even more so in a series like YGO or RWBY, where (permanent) deaths are very rare.

If a character dies and Im meant to feel sad because a characters dead but Im too busy being annoyed at the writing afound the scene, you failed as a writer. Hell, if I, as an audience member, am even conciously thinking about the writers during the series AT ALL, thats a failure.

Like, jesus fuck, imagine writing what I assume to be a YA-series only to have less good writing than one of the fucking card game anime, all of which are aimed at like, twelve year olds.

So yeah, in conclusion: Jaune Arc? More like Jaune Shouldve Died During The Fall Of Beacon With Or Instead Of Phyrrah And Ren's Semblence Being Able To Mask So Many People All Of A Sudden Should've Been Handwaved With A Line That Implies Ren Having Trained His Semblence A Lot Recently

Thank you for coming to my rant, I am much less angry now and will probably have a fine day

[dyketectivecomics]

At long last; another recap of my 90s Gotham reading! (or rather the notes that I took along the way) Still mostly focused on Helena & Tim atm, but change for that is on the horizon...

TW for brief mentions of sexual assault &, uhh, canon typical violence

Tim

Mostly what I wanna focus on is Robin II: Joker’s Wild which... feels like an arc that’s coming in Too Soon and only serves to Prove that tims Up to Snuff.

It’s an entertaining enough read on its own, as a story that allows Tim to Hold his own against a Major™ villain. But it’s much too soon into Tims tenure as a Robin imo, and much too soon for him to have a distinct voice yet for me. It’s just... odd.

I suppose thats some of the appeal for early Tim, I can totally see him as a character here that’s supposed to be an easy way for a reader to project himself onto (he’s a Teen™, he’s a Nerd™, but even one of the Jocks™ in the story briefly point out how easy it’d be for him to be Popular™) and ofc he’s an easy way for a reader to then live vicariously through him.

having read 90s YJ already though... I can already say that I like him infinitely more in that setting than I do rn with how Dixon has handled him thus far...

again. not gonna be one of my fav robins. but i can see the meta appeal of him for others

Helena

We finally wrap up the latter “half” of the Huntress solo run and #13 opens right up with Helena rescuing a girl who’s just been sexually/physically assaulted. Takes the girl to a crisis center and meta textually is definitely taking the situation to heart bc of her own unresolved trauma which oooof

Crisis worker offers to take her on as a client which 🥺🥺🥺 (name’s Dr Evelyn Rosen, note for future randy to WRITE SOME FIC ABT THIS ACTUALLY)

at first Helena going to therapy seems like a ruse just to jacks the doc’s notebook to find out the gang’s hideout and exact VENGEANCE for the girl mentioned earlier, but later issues we see she’s still regularly attending therapy which!!!!!!!! amazing!!! wish we’d see MORE of that kinda thing for these heroes tbh!!!!

there’s a hero who steps in during this arc calling himself the Waterfront Warrior. he steals a spotlight but also the credit for stopping some gang violence, which Helena is Big Mad abt aksjks like girl do u want to be in the shadows or NOT MAKE UP UR MIND AKSJ

(He turns out to be Helena’s landlord but he’s also got a Tragic Backstory™️ and genuinely wants to Do Right by his renters and by his neighborhood just 🥺🥺🥺)

Arc ends with uplifting note abt doing what you can and it just wow. Can’t wait to see how Bruce ruins this alsjaksjsj 

Batman comin to HELENAS city and she is having NONE of it. OH HOW THE TURNTABLES

okay, read thru this all VERY quickly, some stuff to note is that the kid whose family was killed by one of the gangs last arc that i finished was the one driving part of the plot for this final arc. Helena’s kinda??? implied to be taking him in too???

she’s also framed as being much more victim-focused/empathetic compared to bruce in this story which... hmm

there’s THIS panel which is gonna live in my brain and which REALLY wants me to meta abt bc okay hear me out...

(Context jic its not obvs but also bc i forgot to screenshot the panel before it, but she essentially said something along the lines of “i was half expecting (batman) to say...”)

At this point, Tim’s just starting to find his footing as the new Robin in replacing Jay, so like... Similarly............... Helena could kinda be seen as like.... Taking Babs’ place. Not in a COMPLETE 1 to 1 ofc, but still just!!!! idk!!!! knowing that Babs would’ve been finding her footing during this time period as Oracle... Knowing that they’re similar enough in age here (w/ Helena essentially being an early 20-something taking An Extended Gap Year from college, and Babs’ implied to be around this same age)

idk!!! i like the idea of them having contention outside of them??? (supposedly bc i havent read it myself just yet) having beef bc of Mutual Love Interest in Dick which??? that shits always so boring goddamn.

and esp knowing that obvsly in NML helena just straight up takes the Bat-symbol on bc Batman is MIA just!!!!

idk!!! idk!!! its weird!!!!!! but also im gonna be thinking abt this alot now actually!!!