#originally this all started because I wanted an excuse to ramble about my fanfic idea

[zombiethingy]

20 Questions for fic writers

I've been tagged by @leollyen in this post. Thanks for tagging me and giving me an excuse to ramble a bit! And yeah, that's gonna be an interesting one because I wouldn't necessarily say I am a fic writer. But here we go: 1. How many works do you have on AO3? 2 (both complete, one is anonymous) 2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 4'733 (like I said, not really a fic writer) 3. What fandoms do you write for? Both published works are for Stranger Things but I do have a WIP for Sense8. 4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Uhm well, the anonymous one has less kudos than the other one... 5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? I think I would or at least try to because as a reader I like to get answers to my comments! 6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Definitely [redacted], that one's anonymous for reasons 7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? The other one obviously. And I think that it would also keep up if we considered my WIPs too - but then again, none of those really have an ending... 8. Do you get hate on fics? Not so far. 9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I'm thinking about it. I've definitely written smut in original things but not yet in fanfic. But one WIPs chapter is literally titled 'horny' so far - so either I'll remove that idea/story line somehow or at least write fade to black... (Or the most likely scenario happens and I'm never finishing that fic...) 10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Nope. 11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of. 12. Have you ever had a fic translated? No. But I've thought about translating my own writing - the things I've written (over) ten years ago in my first language. I actually like the ideas behind them! But also none of them are finished and it's been a while. I'm also not sure how well the language switching would work out. Rewriting in English would probably be easier. 13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No. 14. What’s your all time favorite ship? In general or to write for? In general it'd be zukki (Zuko, Sokka, Suki from Avatar: the last Airbender). To write for is harder... I've written the most for steddie (Stranger Things) but my heart would probably go with Nomi and Amanita from Sense8. 15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? A longer steddie fic that's been a WIP since the beginning of the year. It's supposed to be kind of a slow burn and therefore needs to be longer and chaptered. But I've only got 1.5 short chapters so far from the 5 or 6 I think it should be at... 16. What are your writing strengths? Funky little ideas, vibes and OCs. 17. What are your writing weaknesses? Writing - as in it's so slow going that I don't really write at all. Research - don't really have the spoons to do that which makes my writing really vage whenever I should have research something. Names - I've got all these OCs but most of them stay nameless... 18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I love to read it! Especially if it's one of the languages I understand or it's translated/made clear by the context. 19. First fandom you wrote for? First published: Stranger Things But I started writing the Sense8 one first and I may have written other stories as a kid/teen before I really understood the concept of fandom 20. Favorite fic you’ve written? It would probably be either the Stranger Things or the Sense8 WIP but since they are WIPs I'll go with the one that's published and not anonymous 🙃 I'd like to tag @lostghosts and @csinnamon-fox - only if you feel up to it and no pressure! But I'd be interested in your takes on those questions :)

[hammerhead-jpg]

cacophony/cataclysm Vega consept(?)

So there is this kinda concept/fanfic idea (although I don’t think it has enough substance for me to write a fic about it, even if it did, I don’t think I have the energy to write like a 35 chapter fic) not really an AU, and not really a theory just jumbled “what if”s, so I decided to share it here

Warning, this might seem a little juvenile and self-indulgent since it’s basically a sad backstory for the brutish villain but just so you know, I am well aware that this very sad boy backstory doesn’t excuse his wrong doings.

And also, I ramble a lot, so this will be long

This story I've cooked up in my head is all based of this mini theory i have that Vega is as old as the cacophony (the war between the Sovereigns and the humans and deamons) which would make him like hundreds of years old. This theory of mine doesn’t have much backing it up besides it would be good writing for his character because of his line “you want to know how time and circumstance might lead someone here.” (and I’ll talk about that later)

Idk, the reason why he's like 120% sure that the Sovereigns are real and why he knows so much information about them despite the story being majorly seen by de(a)mons as just a myth/folklore might be because he was actually there, but again that might just be like saying every crazy Christian is actually Jesus Christ in secret so idk

I mean his age is never specified in the timeline and the only reason something might not be on the timeline is because a) It’s not important enough or b) Erik is hiding it for future events and I don’t think Vega is an unimportant character

But then again maybe this is just a safe assumption and I’m just stupid or maybe this is a purely out of the blue theory with dogwater evidence and in that case I’m still stupid

But this is where theory ends and my daydreaming a story into existing begins.

In my mind, the cacophony happens in ancient Rome

Ancient because, It obviously didn’t happen in the close past since it’s regarded as myth and Vega while talking to Warden about it calls the humans “ancient humans” and the Rome part? Well... this is more of me throwing a pin dart at a board

I first thought it was ancient Greece since that’s where myths of deamons originated (in this world they would be based on the de(a)mons we know and not just folktale) but now I decided It’s ancient Rome because I have a theory that the de(a)mon language that Avior talks about in his story is actually Latin because most if not all de(a)mon names we have seen are Latin, so I guess in this world humans learned the language from de(a)mons? (also in the imp AU the first ever king of the imperium is named “Emil” which is a Latin name and we know that the imperium was formed some time after the cacophony) and I know that a lot of other countries spoke Latin at that time but whatever

But again, this is just me taking a stab in the dark, I could be completely wrong

So in my concept, Vega is born out of the elision well right as the conflict is starting. The Sovereigns have all gone to Elegy and now deamons are stuck in Aria without any source of energy. Vega manages to create a rift of his own and travels to Elegy (not saying that he’s the first deamon to make a rift to Elegy, just that he figured out how to do it himself, if that’s even possible).

When he first entered Elegy, he was hit with major sensory overload from experiencing new colors and shapes and hearing and smell and touch an all of that. But after he recovers, he goes exploring of this new plane of existence. Soon after, he sees a human being tortured by a Sovereign who’s experimenting on them, trying to give them powers. Now, in this point in time, Vega is not the human-hating unfeeling person that we know him as now. Then, I imagine he had you know, this thing called empathy (but I don’t want to completely scrap his personality, so imagine him how he was in the imp AU, just still, less sadistic).

He might have been on this plane for like 5 minutes but he can clearly sense the emotions of agony from the human

He goes in to defend the human, and while the Sovereign could have easily smushed him then and there, they didn’t, and instead just left since their work was done.

This human is in my mind, kinda like a fellow listener (since I don’t have the balls to call them an oc), so I will refer to them as listener.

When listener awakes, Vega is still with them and even though first they’re scared and confused, they quickly realized that the creature before them meant no harm (and this was ancient times so a demon isn’t as an outlandish concept as it was back then).

At first, it’s difficult for them to communicate since they don’t speak the same language and Vega is communicating trough telepathy and doesn’t even know how to make a sound with his vocal cords.

(and also the listener has powers now and I didn’t decide what kind)

But soon enough, they learn to speak each other's language and Vega starts living along side humans with the other deamons. The humans are reasonably afraid of them at first, but quickly start cherishing them as powerful beings they could lean on (similarly to how they were portrayed in ancient Greek mythology).

As the humans and the deamons plan their rebellion against the Sovereigns, Vega and the listener get closer and eventually fall in love, aww, how cute

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, since the war comes, and the listener needs to join and use their new found magical powers.

Sadly, they end up dying in the war by the hands of a Sovereign, and Vega lives. After the war is over he is distraught, but life goes on and he continues living.

Through the years Vega sees it all. He sees the slow shift between humans and de(a)mons being allies, to the humans hatred towards de(a)mons (probably because the rise of Christianity where deamons go from being seen as basically any magical entity to evil helpers of Satan). He sees the people he risked his life to protect slowly turn against him for reasons he doesn’t know. Now because of the new title of “sadism demon” humans and fellow de(a)mons judge him. And at one point he stops caring. He stops caring about being seen as evil and he stops caring about humans. All of them seem to wish him ill and any potential ones that don’t will die some day.

He now probably can’t even remember the voice or the face of the human he loved, he probably forgot they even existed.

And that’s how Vega became Vega

Really a “you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself turn into the villain” situation.

You could also make the scenario that he is intrigued by Warden since they remind him of the human deep down, Stranger to Lovely reincarnation and all that jazz, and I’m sure that Brachium could fit in the story too since we know that he is also as old as the cacophony (maybe he’s the steward that relayed the situation to Vega, idk!) 

Also i imagine that in the imp! au the same thing happened just the listener didn’t die in the war, but they still had to part ways since the de(a)mons made the decision to just chill in Aria and never speak to the humans again. Which is also why he was a lot nicer to humans in the AU, since he wasn’t there to see all the bad shit they’ve done.

But this is defiantly just some brain vomit that I came up, but that being said if you like this story or have any ideas of your own let me know! I’d love to hear it

 now, enjoy some delightfully quick and messy concept art I made!

ohhh Vega’s “birth” soo mysterious

I know Elegy is like a “something the human mind can’t comprahend” kind of thing so I just wanted to capture the feeling

Idk how y’all imagine the sovereigns, I imagine them as giant eldritch horror monsters!

Yes Vega was naked when he first entered Elegy, long story

His eyes glow red cuz in the first imp!AU video he describes them as “like glowing embers in the dark” or something like that, probably didn’t mean it litterally, but oh well

oop they got squished by a Soveregn, sad

[thevagabondexpress]

february, november forever <3

february: okay so i have this series of (in retrospect very cringe) unpublished handwritten tmi-tsc fanfics i wrote in grades eight and nine piggybacking off my best friend's crush on this one character and i think it might have a holiday special lying around somewhere but i'm also pretty sure i've lost it. there are fanfics i have that i would like to write holiday specials for but i haven't done it yet. i think a christmas special for genderbent-tlh could be fun.

november: not really. it'd probably be a good idea for me to build such rituals but so far i don't have them.

forever: yes, i do. unlike most writers i've encountered i tend to think of my fanfic as my "real/serious writing" and my original stuff as less important, because fanfic gives me a chance to show off my analysis skills and my memory for detail and things like that in a way original work does so "my" stuff tends to get back-burnered but i've got two original universe concepts that exist. crater of grace is a space opera/science-fiction fantasy world that i'd best describe as a cross between six of crows and star trek: deep space nine, centering around the shenanigans of the residents of the starbase giants' tenement, and the one starship it employs, as they combat everything from villainous lunar mining corporations to thieves hellbent on taking hold of the ley lines of the universe. and then ogham & pine is a weird hybrid of romantasy with scandinavian-style crime novel that started out all the way back in the summer of '22 under a different name with a different setting and protagonists as a spiteful fix-it of a series where i loved the first book and hated the rest of it and wanted more of what the first book gave me, which now features a protagonist based heavily on myself who i realized just today also functions as a weird-ass genderbender of one of the protagonists of another series i read about a month ago and sort of liked but would have executed differently. (give me any excuse to ramble about either of these and i will)

[nataliaphantomhivesblog]

In the end of it all, Monaca Towa was still a child.

To start this off, this isn't my usual Black Butler posts but ive been meaning to talk about Danganronpa for a hot minute, so please bear with me! Second, this is solely my opinion and before anyone wants to attack me please read thoroughly first. Thank you:)

(Spoiler warning for Danganronpa: Ultra Despair Girls and Danganronpa 3)

Also, before we dive in I'm going to list some trigger warnings:

Physcological abuse

Physical abuse

Manipulation

P*dophillia

Suicide attempt

Violence (?)

Childhood trauma

Please take care and read at your own risk<3

Hello there Danganronpa fandom! Today I will be talking about Monaca Towa (as stated in the title) and how people often minimize her trauma and sometimes forget the fact that shes still a child who got heavily manipulated by Junko too.

Monaca is seemingly very amiable and caring, because of her charming personality, all of the Warriors of Hope love her and try their best to keep her happy and go along with what she wants. However, it's slowly revealed that she is actually manipulative and cunning behind her friendly facade.

Monoca is a character that is cruel, manipulative, and extremly unhinged. Many of her actions cannot be excused or justified, but you can understand where she's coming from.

Monaca's Backstory:

She was born an unwanted child by both her father and her mother. Monaca's mother was supposed to take care of her but instead abandoned the child soon after her birth. Because of all her actions, Monaca saw her mother as a completely selfish and pathetic person. Monaca's father thought of giving her to an orphanage but instead took her into his family.

However, Monaca was always unwanted and everyone else felt uncomfortable around her. Every time Monaca smiled or joked, the others looked at her coldly, as if she didn't deserve to laugh. Every time she spoke, the others turned silent. His older-half brother thought of her as an alien, not part of the family.

She was also physically abused to the point that she pretended to be seriously wounded for them to stop as a result.

Monaca also attended Hope's Peak Elementary School and was part of the "trouble-makers class" along with Nagisa, Masaru, Jataro, and Kotoko.

Along with her fellow abused classmates, she planned a group suicide; however, Monaca never had any plans to commit suicide in the first place and was planning to let the others die as a prank.

The group suicide was stopped by Junko, who took the kids in and manipulated them by treating them with kindness and love.

Monaca then helped Junko mass produce Monokumas for the Tragedy by using her position as a representative of the Towa Group.

She lied to her father and the other adults in order to produce the Monokumas, telling them that she wanted to create futuristic robots that could be domestic helpers and emergency aid workers.

Due to her separation from the family and her genius, her family decided to give her leg room to do what she wanted as long as she brought in profits to the company, and didn't delve too deeply into her plans.

Things to keep in mind about Monoca's backstory:

She was emotionally and physically abused from a very young age.

She started to pretend to be paraplegic because she was finally treated with some kindness and she could have more control over people.

She convinced Nagisa, Jataro, Kotoko and Masaru to commit suicide.

Out of all the Warriros of Hope, Junko took the most intrest in Monoca due to her position, meaning that she was the one who got used and manipulated the most.

How Monoca's mindset works:

The moment she got physically abused to the point that she had to fake her injuries to make her family feel bad was the moment she learned that through sympathy from others comes power. Due to her families neglection and abuse, she started to quickly pick up on things in which benefited her yet hurt others.

She started to use manipulative tactics on her family to gain control over them. She then started implicating these tactics with the Warriors of Hope.

When Junko got into the picture, everything changed for the worst. Junko was the only person in Monaca's life who showed her affection. Even though deep down Monaca knew Junko only cared for her as a means to use her robotics genius for the Tragedy, Monaca didn't care, and happily helped out Junko with her plans if it meant being loved and appreciated in return. At the heart of it, despite all her horrific acts, that's a very child-like thing to do, right? So when Junko dies, Monaca's entire reason for living basically disappears.

AI Junko via Kurokuma may have planted the idea of a successor in her head, but in Monaca's mind it's a way to get her big sis back, and very specifically chooses to mold Komaru into becoming Junko's successor. That's for a big reason, Monaca doesn't want to become Junko, I'd say she actually just wanted her big sister back who would love and appreciate her again, and hence tried to make someone else take on that role initially. Once again, that's the mindset of a child.

Monaca's relationship with the Warriors of Hope:

The Warriors of Hope are a group of children who are extremely resentful and hateful of adults, regardless of whether or not they were involved in their rough paths. 

We all know that the Warriros of Hope are extememly tramutized kids. Masaru had alcoholic parents who physically abused him, Jataro was physcologically abused to the point he bealived he was so ugly that if anyone saw his "repulsive" face they would die, Kotoko was r*ped multiple times by disgusting p*dophilic men (not to mention, Monaca's brother was attracted to her), and last but not least we have Nagisa who had pressuring parents who wanted to raise him as the child prodigy and expirimented on him constantly.

Monaca used the Warriros of Hope's trauma against them, manipulating them to the point were they had to do her bidding completly.

As much as I hate to say it, Monaca truly saw them as pawns. Although there are some instances where she openly declares her care for the Warriors of Hope, it's likely she does that as a form of emotional manipulation.

If anything, she probably did see them as equal in the beginning but then when she started to gain control over her own family, she started to do the same with the Warriors of Hope as a way to protect herself from getting hurt, then again this is my baseless assumption.

Her dynamic with Nagito:

Monaca was amused by Nagito's strange behavior and contradicting beliefs and appeared to be somewhat annoyed with him at the times. However, the two appeared to at least seemingly respect each other in some way, as they treated each other somewhat formally as allies.

Her dynamic with Nagito is one of the most intresting ones. Obviously I think that her being rasied by Nagito was potentially a dangerous thing, considering Nagito's goal was for Monaca to become Enoshima's successor. Monaca seemed to agree with this goal, but Nagito's constant rambling about hope and despair made Monaca bored and feel embarrassed about the whole thing.

She claims he made her an adult in a way, as she grew up in the mental sense and became more cynical and apathetic, not really caring about anything.

In the end, Monaca found Nagito creepy and annoying, but she also appeared to get closer to him during their time together, while originally calling him just "Mister Servant" in UDG, she later refers to him as "Big Bro" in Danganronpa 3. I do think their dynamic was sort of soft and I would've loved to have seen more of it. Honestly the concept of Nagito being a soft brother to Monaca warms my heart, and the wasted potential will forever anger me.

(If any Danganronpa fanfic writer or any writer in general is reading this post: if u could be so kind and do a PLATONIC Nagito and Monaca prompt and tag me in it, I would love you forever!!)

My opinion on Monaca:

I think that Monaca was a very well-written character who deserved more than what she got in the end of Danganronpa 3. She was abused, mistreated and belittled by her family. If anything, I see her as a completely misguided little girl. If she actually had a positive authoritative influence in her life, she wouldn't have turned astray.

A lot of people disregard Monaca's trauma and forget that at the end of the day, Monaca was a child who the moment she was born, the people who were supposed to love her were unwelcoming.

Don't get me wrong though, there is no way in hell I will ever justify or condone the things Monaca has done. If anything, I just think that she alongside the rest of the Warriors of Hope should've been properly taken care of.

Also, if you dislike/hate Monaca thats 100% valid! She did a lot of inexcusable things and its alright to hate on her. I personally love her character but I know she is not everyones cup of tea.

If you read all the way, I'm actually surprised! Thank you and I hope you enjoyed<333

[englandsgray]

Sherlolly Self-Interviews 2020

Well hi 👋

Ignoring the internal image of Gilderoy Lockheart smiling smugly while flashbulbs pop and saying ‘In my autobiography, Magical Me...’ 🙈😆 I shall take the opportunity of this lovely event to introduce myself as a writer of Sherlolly fanfiction on AO3...

I am English and somewhere over 30.  I watched the show as it aired, and lost my heart as quickly to Molly Hooper as to Sherlock Holmes.  The kiss is British television history.  Series 4 is my favourite.  Moriarty on the beach is life.  The Holmes brothers break my heart every time.

I am extremely lucky to have been provided some questions to answer here by @ohaine and @mybrainrots - huge, huge love and thanks to these two lovelies, and not just for this.  I admire you both so much as writers, and your support means the world to me ❤️ Thanks too, to @sherlollyappreciationweek!

Where did you begin to write, and have you written for other fandoms?  I wrote my first fanfic when I was eleven years old - a 100 page ramble about The Monkees.  Oh yes.  Then in 2018, I fell for the characters of the Disney Pixar film Cars and began writing and publishing.  So far so random!  Writing in this fandom sprang from binge-watching all four series of Sherlock during lockdown.  I remembered reading Louise Brealey talking about being disappointed Molly didn’t get chance to ‘roundly kick Sherlock’s arse’ and agreeing with her wholeheartedly.  That, over a few weeks, turned into my first fic - Who You Really Are.  

You’re a recent (and welcome!) arrival to the Sherlolly ship, and I was wondering if writing in an established, less active than it used to be fandom has been a challenge?   Thank you, firstly.  My experience of this fandom has been incredibly positive - the sense of welcome has been wonderful.  I will admit I was terrified posting the first fic - there are hundreds of times more stories posted daily in the Sherlock fandom as in the one I had some experience of.  But I needn’t have worried, it’s been a blast.  I will also admit, that it’s no small thing to be surrounded by such brilliant writing and the long-standing passion which goes with it.  But I find that inspiring in itself, and I’m very glad to be here - how supportive the fandom are makes me feel like I always have been!       

What’s your favourite place and way to write?  My aesthetic is Lin-Manuel Miranda in his in-law’s laundry room 🤣 I wrote my first ten-thousand words on the notes app on my phone before my other half told me to stop being ridiculous!  I switch between the laptop, my phone and longhand (I’m a sucker for a nice notepad and a Uni-Ball Eye) and, more often than not, not sat up properly at a table.   

Since you’ve (done something I’ve never managed successfully and) written a novella length fic... how did you organise/keep track of all the details and where you wanted the story to go?  Did you outline/plot in advance?  First of all - I would love to see a novella length fic from you @mybrainrots!  The final scene of Who You Really Are came to me very early on and I knew I wanted the fic to fit within TFP - a lot of it takes place in the timeframe of the final montage.  At first, it was going to be much more about Sherlock’s relationship with the ideas of sentiment and love (the phrase ‘I’m not sentimental about you, I love you,’ haunted me for a while) and I spent some time researching the psychology and playing with scenes from throughout the series - one of my favourites I didn’t go on to use was inspired by the final scene of THoB.  Using scenes from the canon gave an automatic structure, and I was always aiming for the final one I wrote early on - the two of them on the beach (everything is about the beach, with me!)  As I went along and started, inevitably, to slow down, I mapped out the chapters with a short note of what I wanted to be in each, then would add notes or phrases as they came to me - often emailed from my phone!  I had to force myself through a tricky section set in Baker Street at one point, but it came together in the end.  I did plot The Pathologist’s Skeletons on paper first, as I found with a casefic which remains a WIP, that I can get confused and lose focus when it comes to details and how to reveal them in a way which stays paced and interesting.  I’ll certainly do that from now on with longer stories and cases.  How did you keep up enthusiasm for the work?  I want to write an original novel, so I am forcing myself to work through the knotty bits and blocks as a learning experience.  Not everything is destined to be finished or finessed, of course, but I’m finding this process is building my confidence that I can overcome problems and slow periods.  I also find I know when I need some external inspiration - some of my favourite scenes have come to me while out walking the dog or sitting on the beach.  I’ve also been inspired by books or other series or things going on in the world, as we all are, and sometimes that’s pushed me on.  Plus, of course, I’m a newbie - I’m very much in the honeymoon period of my writing, even though I’ve loved Sherlock for ten years! (Ten years! Bonkers.) 

You’ve got a knack for writing Sherlock’s thoughts and capturing his voice.  That said, which character do you find easiest to write?  Which is the hardest?  Thank you so much.  I absolutely love writing Sherlock and Mycroft, and I’m sure that’s because they suit my somewhat over-the-top writing style!  I find Molly and her POV really difficult.  I want the scenes I write from her perspective to sound completely different to Sherlock, but that means writing in a style which doesn’t come as naturally to me.  I’m a long way off happy with that at the moment, but I’m enjoying the challenge.

Is there a scene or character that specifically inspired you to start writing Sherlolly?  The whole of TFP, but especially from the moment Sherlock arrives at Musgrave onwards.  I am desperate to see what a Sherlock Holmes who has been reacquainted with his own heart would look like.  I find his emotionality in those final scenes hugely compelling (Mycroft’s office is one of my favourite moments from across all four series) and, as I have always believed in him and Molly, I practically jumped up back in May after watching it and said ‘right, where’s my notebook?!’.

There’s a lovely peaceful, quiet feeling to your fic ‘We’re All Right At The Moment’.  Can you tell us what inspired it and if you’ve thought of doing the backstory that goes with it?  Thank you!  Like everyone, I would go back to January of this year and start again in a heartbeat, but I am hugely fortunate to be able to say that I have a lot to be grateful to the UK lockdowns for.  I might never have begun writing in this fandom otherwise, for one, and I have had a brilliant time so far and met some lovely people. Honestly, I don’t feel able to do any sort of justice in my writing to what has happened in the world in any broader sense than drawing on my own experiences of staying at home and enjoying my family.  This particular super-short fic sees Molly cutting Sherlock’s hair at home in Baker Street.  I wrote it in the evening after I had cut my other half’s hair and had been reminding myself that despite how horribly worried I was - and still am - about everything, we were all right in that moment, and to focus on that as much as possible.  I wanted to try to capture that, if for no reason other than to look back on this entire experience and remember something lovely, so I am so pleased to hear you felt the fic did that.  It was only after I finished it and reread it, that I realised it is ambiguous as to whether Molly is worried about Sherlock contracting the virus, or whether she is remembering him being treated for it... As I say, I don’t think I could write more about these extraordinary circumstances - perhaps it’s just too close at the moment - so I don’t plan on extending it.  But you know how it is, the plot bunnies hop where they will... 

Do you have a Sherlolly music playlist?  What are your top five favs from the list? Here’s a run down of (6 🙊) songs I have been getting emotional over in the last little while, leading my brain to assign their significance to my favourite couple...

Kissing You - Des’Ree - It’s so 90′s, it’s a bit cheesy, it’s oddly disturbing.  It helped me write A Request, Made Properly, and that gave me an excuse to have Sherlock kiss Molly in the snow.

How Long Will I Love You? - Ellie Goulding - part of the playlist, but also in remembrance of a friend who passed away recently.  Life is very short, love is forever.

High and Dry - Jamie Cullum - It’s made me emotional for a very long time.  The original is my partner’s version of choice, this is mine.  

Think About You - Delta Goodrem - Okay, this one isn’t emotional, and it’s not my usual vibe!  Blame the zoom exercise class I do!  But oh my goodness, it’s Molly.  Bless her.

Blinded By Your Grace (P.T.2. F.T. MNEK) - Stormzy - One of the best ever, I reckon.  Spent an awful lot of time thinking about angels and demons, grace and what it takes to save someone, while writing my latest - The Pathologist’s Skeletons.  This has been in my head most of the (blimmin’) time!

Love Me Like You Do - Ellie Goulding - I didn’t know I was a fan of Ellie until I wrote this list... I don’t subscribe to the theory that the love Molly wants or that which Sherlock has to offer is any lesser because it isn’t ‘normal’ or expected. I don’t think romantic entanglement would come easy to either of them. But it’s still love and it would be beautiful.

Thank you so much for reading.  Thanks and love to @ohaine and @mybrainrots. And thank you @sherlollyappreciationweek for the event and for everything you do ❤️

Feel like I should sign off with a quote from the show...

“You’re not a puzzle-solver, you never have been. You’re a drama queen!” Dr John Watson (Moffat & Gatiss) 2014 😜

X

A fav fic of mine by @mybrainrots

https://archiveofourown.org/works/7563193

A fav fic of mine by @ohaine

https://archiveofourown.org/works/10562904

My stuff:

https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnglandsGray/works

[hogwarts-is-my-wonderland]

i don’t know if you know this (i’m guessing you don’t) but iron heart is already the superhero in the marvel comics who is kinda tony’s protege and who is also a black girl so it’s kinda weird that you took her superhero name and gave it to a white woman — but i’m guessing it was unintentional and you didn’t mean to

Hello, thank you so much for your interest. To anyone who read the above and wonders (I'm not popular, but it is very important for me to acknowledge it as a writer and for personal reasons), I'd like to address this in a serious manner. Warning, I'm a rambler so I'm going to build my answer with a lot of text. Before I officially throw myself in, I apologize to anyone whom I gave the wrong idea and ended up hurting or offending them in some way or another because of this.

So. Let's start with the facts (or my excuse, whichever one you prefer):

Robin Drake (my MCU OC) was conceived when Avengers: Age of Ultron came out, so that was like, 2015? I thought of calling her story Iron Heart (two words, not just the one) but with so many movies coming out one after the other, her storyline just kept building and it hasn't stepped out from Plot Bunny World. The "Iron Heart" title has stayed as a placeholder since.

In the meantime, Ironheart/Riri Williams (a black canonical character in the Marvel comics) was officially introduced in 2016 and she is Iron Man's successor. She's even got the A.I. version of Tony Stark as her number one supporter.

Having said this, I'd like to clear out that the OC, in no way, was ever intended to become Ironheart. NOT AT ALL. As a Mexican-American (raised in Mexico), I am very aware of white characters' appropriation of POC's storylines. Like OG Miles Morales' backstory key plots being taken by MCU Peter Parker. Or the original Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, having her debut and title stolen by Carol Danvers.

No, the "Iron Heart" part at the time was meant to represent Tony and Robin's relationship as siblings. Comic!Howard Stark had this credo: "Stark men are made of iron." It's a toxic sentence, one that sent Comic!Tony Stark spiraling down a path toward alcoholism; it was also intended to be incredibly misogynist from the get-go because of the nature of Comic!Howard's character (if you know your Marvel lore, you know what I mean).

The way I am developing (important keyword, by the way) Robin's story, this little sentence shapes her entire relationship with Tony, thus the Iron Heart part. The story is supposed to be about them. Not the Avengers, not SHIELD, not Thanos—them, the siblings who, because of the hand of fate, must deal with what life has thrown at them together; must deal with the legacy of not only being a Stark but also that of Iron Man and live with it as gracefully as they can. And believe it or not, Riri Williams, from the moment I read about her, became the endgame of this crazy story.

I want to ramble so, so much. This is a plot bunny that hasn't seen the light of day in any fanfiction site, a story that's still taking place and reshaping itself in my head every time I remember to because I want it to go down a different path from the MCU (yeah, an AU). The OC takes a lot from personal experience (mine, friends', family members'), so I haven't had the courage to even write the beginning (again, because it's personal and it feels like I'm revealing some harsh truths to myself) let alone think of a name for that first story (Iron Heart is meant to be the series name). It wasn't meant to be a serious or professional project (no fanfic is), but you Anon reminded me why it is.

First, let me tell you what I have planned so far for Robin Drake: she is a bastard child (conceived through an illicit affair) and a woman who could not finish her studies because of her limited resources. Not only that, she is just as smart as the Starks but her intellect is derided by people who think themselves superior to her (both men and women, including Tony Stark and some of the Avengers). And society has beaten down her wishes to succeed, so she is also disillusioned and frustrated but like all must, keeps going because she had the proper emotional support. She had a mom who loved her, a stepfather who taught her to stand up for herself, and friends who empathized with her.

Then she gets the one chance to become who she wants to be thanks to Tony Stark. Not because he is rich or because he becomes her "sponsor/daddy sugar/all-loving-brother" but because he sees her potential and challenges her to see beyond her closed mind and do something about it.

See the difference? Two completely different characters who happen to only have in common the words ‘iron heart’. So, to me, this a story of growth. Or it will be, once I get it into words, if ever. Though Robin gets an Iron Man armor (not the way you'd expect), she doesn't and never will become Ironheart. But like you, Anon, I wondered the same thing: by leaving that title, was I taking someone else's story? After years of thinking until I finally started to (tentatively) post about her here (and I was encouraged by many plot bunnies whom I would love to read about but must resort to wishful thinking), I think I reached a "no." It's an idea—still not set in stone. I am very open to taking off the Iron Heart part at any time, but until I start writing this down or think of a different name when imagining it, it will take me a while to change it.

If you read my whole ramble, thank you for taking your time. Thank you, Anon, for making me acknowledge this publicly (one never knows) and think about it more carefully. And again, I'm very sorry if I ended hurting or offending anyone because of this misconception. If you believe my explanation wasn't enough and I'm entirely in the wrong, I understand. I'm also open to receiving feedback of any sort (and I'm aware I could get some backlash) as long as it's constructive (i.e. I won't answer to unreasonable comments).

P.S. I want to keep posting about Robin Drake (the aforementioned OC). So I am going to take off the Iron Heart name and leave it as MCU Plot Bunny. I can't erase previous reblogs, so those will keep the name.

P.S. 2. If the text is an eyesore in your dash, please tell me so I add a Keep Reading line, I don't mind.

[therainbowwillow]

https://therainbowwillow.tumblr.com/post/639917088173113344/alright-its-been-a-hot-second-since-ive-written -Part 1

Okay, Hadestown Fanfic With Crossovers Where Orpheus’s Terms are Different and Also ✨Olympus Drama✨Part 2/???

I think my greatest struggle in writing is... posting it. And deciding on a consistent plot. That too. Expect changes. Edit: Well, well, well, there’s a draft feature on this website? I might just migrate to Tumblr.

I may make an overview post at some point so you don’t actually have to read this. A long TL;DR probably, because it is written by Miss What-Is-Concise. My TL;DRs need TL;DRs of their own. Anyway, I’m rambling, so let me actually get started.

Preemptive:

-Orpheus is Apollo’s kid in this version, as he is in many retellings. He is raised by Hermes.

-Hermes works for Hades, bringing souls to the underworld. He resides away from Olympus to fulfill said duties.

-Dionysus’ parentage is by Persephone and Hades. (Because there’s no way Persephone’s screwing Zeus in the other room. Also this is his more underworld-connected family ties.)

-You drink from the River Lethe, according to some ancient authors, to forget your past life. And if Virgil can blatantly rip off Homer, I’m stealing ideas too.

-Would you look at that? This “short” AU fic is expanding by the minute. Hades and Persephone’s are true to the musical and that’s about it at this point.

Eurydice drags Orpheus to his feet. He leans against her. “Eurydice...” he mumbles. “I... I’m so sorry.”

“I signed my life away. That wasn’t up to you. We need to get going.”

Orpheus nods. “Why’s he letting us go? I don’t remember... anything really. I sang. Then I...” he turns away. “It felt like I was sitting in a fire. I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t think. It was unbearable.”

“I’ll never let them lay a finger on you again.”

“You didn’t answer me. Why’s he letting us go?” he asks, softly.

“He’s not,” Persephone mutters. “He wants you to fail. Then he’ll have a canary for his mines.”

Orpheus shudders at the thought. “My song... I thought... Persephone, I think I rewrote every note a hundred times. I lost the love of my life for that melody. And... it failed.”

“Just walk, okay? Please. Once we’re out of here, none of it matters,” Eurydice pleads.

“H-how far?” He’s almost afraid to ask. The original walk had been a grueling task. This one, he thinks, might be a hundred times harder. Whatever Hades had done to him... the effects hadn’t faded. Eurydice must already think he’s a selfish, naive, worthless idiot, he’s certain, so he plans to stay quiet. Unless it gets bad. Only if he needs to tell her, he decides.

“A mile, maybe a little more,” Persephone replies. “We’ll rest in my old greenhouse. It’ll be a roof over our heads at least. Don’t look back,” she warns. “Hades’ servants will follow us. Don’t give them a reason to think we’re afraid.”

Eurydice wraps and arm around Orpheus’s waist. “Tell me if you need a break.” He nods.

———————————

Hades sinks into his office chair. A painting of his wife hangs on the wall. He’s posing at her side. They’re smiling. She’s holding a bouquet of flowers. He rises and storms over to the portrait. He rips it of the wall and it crumples to the ground, torn in two.

He glances out the window. He’s viewing his realm from the highest point in Hadestown. The landscape is as flat as a sheet of paper. No hills, no mountains, only rivers, flowing by some force that is not the gravity of the overworld. His tower is the only peak. And the smokestacks of his factories.

This is his realm. All of it is his. Every inch of dirt, every scrap of metal and gemstone beneath the ground. Every sullen face of every tortured worker who’d sold his soul away. The wall is his too. And the Styx, which wraps it 7 times over. He’s a king and his castle is protected by the highest of palisades and yet... that boy... that son of Apollo had taken it all from him. What is a king without his iron fists? Now he had shown softness, now he’d shown weakness. A crack in the wall will bring the whole structure down, he thinks to himself. But what else can he do? Persephone is his wife. She is *his*. To imagine a thousand winters and springs and summers without her...

The underworld is lonely. He cannot lose her. But he cannot let the boy escape. Nor his lover, nor his traitorous workers. If he shows them an inch, they’ll take a mile. Worse, the traitors were right. Orpheus is alive. Orpheus is not his. That poet is all that stands in the way of his kingdom. And like any barrier, he will fall. How? Hades wonders. How can he kill the boy, break his spirit and punish him without losing Persephone? What blinds his wife? he asks himself. That silly little song had manipulated him, taken hold of his heart like alcohol. And Persephone loves it. She believes, truly believes, that Orpheus deserves to live for the very reason he must die.

Hades slams his fists against the window. Perhaps she was right. He ought to follow in his brothers’ footsteps. Forget his wife. That simple action would be enough to fix everything. If he let her go, she’d have nothing to hold over him. He wouldn’t be her puppet. He’d kill Orpheus, chain up the boy’s foolish lover and send Achilles and Patroclus to the darkest mines, and force them to work day and night apart from each other. Sure, the bunch of them would whine like kenneled puppies, but he could take their cries. They’d forget everything if he could get them to drink from the Lethe. Orpheus would be easy. Threaten his pretty little muse and he’d be scrambling to his knees. Eurydice would be nothing without her poet. Achilles would resist. He’d fight a millennia before he or his lover bowed before their king. But they too would fall.

Only Persephone stands in the way, he knows. He likes to imagine he has her under his control. But he knows it’s a lie. The food of the underworld she’d eaten, it didn’t confine her as well as he’d hoped. Sure, her time above ground would be made unbearable, but she would still be out of his grasp. She could leave. She would leave. He knows her threats aren’t empty. So he’ll find a way around her. He needs her to come back. Without Persephone’s warmth, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.

He watches the crowd of shades begin to disperse and it dawns on him. Orpheus gives them hope, but he makes them afraid. How many deceased reside in Hadestown? It’d take a hundred thousand mortal lifetimes to count. And how many had stepped forward to help the poet boy? Two. Among that crowd, he knew, were great heroes. Heroes who once resided in Elysium. And still, only two shades had betrayed him. Two out of a trillion. Hades smiles. He won’t need to kill Orpheus. One of his workers can take the fall. Even Achilles won’t succeed in standing against an army the size of his. And Hades will win. His wife will see that some dead man has killed the singer to appease his king. She’ll suspect, but without proof, what does she have on him? Eurydice will see she has no choice. Once the boy belongs to him, Orpheus is his to manipulate. She’ll be trapped. Achilles, for all of his strength, is nothing alone. Without his dear Patroclus, he’ll give in. And so Hades plots.

————————————

Hermes, god of roads and messages, receives word of his adoptive son’s predicament with astounding speed. And he fears for Orpheus. But Hermes guides souls to the underworld, to Hades. To betray the king of Hadestown by helping the boy would be to lose his work and by extension, his freedom to live on the railroad. Without an excuse, he’d be back on Olympus, listening to Zeus and Hera’s endless bickering, watching Ares and Aphrodite humiliate themselves, and helping Dionysus comfort Apollo over the death of the mortal pretty boy of the week. And they wonder why Artemis avoids the damn place at all costs. In fact, he’s stuck on Olympus right now, called to the counsel by Zeus? Athena? He can’t remember. Some mortal breaking some rule.

Orpheus is more important than the meeting. His messenger had interrupted the counsel meeting to bring him word of the poor boy’s situation. He’s not sure how to cover this one up. No one was meant to interrupt important matters as this. Plus, he’d given the kid directions straight into Hadestown, which was the opposite of what his contract with Hades had said. He wasn’t allowed to barter for the return of mortal souls and he wasn’t allowed to assist mortals in doing the same.

“Hermes!” Zeus booms. “What is the meaning of this?”

He rolls his eyes. “Begone, messenger.” He slips a note into the man’s hands: ‘Tell Orpheus I’m coming.’ “Nothing, father. Just... matters of work. You know how Hades is. And don’t get me started on Thanatos! I’m late by half a second and-“

“Enough! I’ve half a mind to banish you from this counsel.” Hermes smiles. His excuses have succeeded.

Dionysus laughs, considerably beyond tipsy on his own wine. “You mind if I go too? I’m sick of this awful alcohol and I’ve got something far better back home.”

“Dionysus, wasn’t there an agreement we made?” Athena inquires, icily. “You cannot come to our meetings drunk.”

He smiles. “Well, you see,” he snaps his fingers and shakes his head, washing away his intoxication. “I didn’t come drunk. I *got* drunk while here.” He raises a flask and shakes it, refilling the canteen instantly. “There’s a difference.”

Athena grits her teeth. “Father, one more of these counsels and I swear...”

“And husband,” Hera pipes up, “We were going to address that nymph girl you’re always hanging around?”

Zeus flushes a deep shade of red. “Out. All of you. We’re done here.”

Hermes rises, forcing himself to keep his composure, at least until he’s out of sight. He steps into the sunlight that dazzles Olympus, treks the road to the edge of the mortal realm and... “Hermes?”

“Gods have mercy,” he mutters. He turns. “Apollo.” The god is puffy-eyed, probably from crying. Even Hermes had to agree, his latest lover had been gorgeous. Hyacinthus, was his name, if he remembered correctly. Apollo himself had called the counsel to beg for mortality when the boy had died and he hadn’t found another for what? Seventeen years? Spare for Orpheus’s muse mother, of course. Still, this was unusual, even for Apollo’s mellow dramatic self.

“You’re afraid.”

“Don’t... don’t do that, would you?” Hermes snaps, recoiling. “Yeah, yeah, medicine and all, but I don’t want you telling me what I’m thinking.”

Apollo dips his head in acknowledgment. “It’s my son, isn’t it?”

Hermes shakes his head. One word to Zeus and... all Prometheus did was hand over a spark. This was treason. “No, just work.”

Apollo tilts his head. “You’re lying.”

“What cause would I have for lies? I cannot keep Hades waiting, now.” He whirls away from Apollo’s gaze.

“Perhaps... treason?” Apollo inquires. Hermes’s eyes widen.

“Strong accusations.” He forces his voice not to shake.

“I won’t turn you in.” Liar, Hermes thinks. He wants to get on Zeus’s good side. A chance at getting his lover boy back.

“Correct. You wouldn’t have anything to turn me in for,” he tells the son of Leto.

“Orpheus’s wife... no, fiancée. No... I don’t know! The girl. She’s dead. Orpheus’s song is a failure. I heard it from Olympus. Lovely, really. But not nearly enough to convince Hades to let her go. Nothing is.”

Hermes turns again to face his half-brother. “Keep your voice down, would you? If Zeus hears a word of this-“

Apollo cuts him off. “And you helped him. You broke your contract and you know Hades better than anyone, other than Persephone, if they still talk these days. He’s crueler than he once was. They say Elysium itself is no more, that there’s only Tartarus now. You’re afraid of his wrath. And you’re afraid of Zeus. He’ll punish you too. You saw what he did to Asclepius. Struck by lightning for treason against Hades. And that was before this... winter,” he says, softer now.

“I don’t want a lecture, Apollo. What do you want?” Hermes glares at the god.

“I want a deal.”

Hermes narrows his eyes. “What kind of deal?”

“You break me in to the underworld-“

“No. I’m in enough danger as is.”

“Hear me out.”

“I said no!” Hermes steps back onto the road. Apollo grabs his wrist.

“I can get you out of trouble. Dionysus!” The wine god steps out of the woods.

“I’m due to visit my mother. Hades won’t prevent me from entering his realm, I’m his son,” Dionysus explains. “You and Apollo are there on Demeter’s ask to learn why Persephone is late. You, because you’re the god of messages and Apollo because he was available, on leave from his duties to mourn.”

Hermes groans. “The walk is far. Even if you’re me. Days on end of moping and drunken ramblings for a plan almost certain to backfire? I said no.”

Apollo smiles. “Then I’ll turn you in,” he says simply.

“You won’t. Orpheus is your blood. You’d put him in more danger. He knew of my contract and he let me break it. You’d add a charge against him. And it’s me. You cared once, didn’t you?”

“You know I would. You said so yourself. I visited the poet boy twice, maybe. And you? Ask yourself: when was the last time you optionally visited Olympus? But Hyacinthus, I loved for years. If I turn you in, I’m one step closer to him. On Zeus’s good side again.” Hermes shifts on his feet. “It’ll be good to have a doctor at the boy’s side too, seeing as your instructions just about starved him to death.”

Hermes glares at him. “Don’t.”

“You know it’s true. So? Let’s go or you trade places with Prometheus.”

“Fine,” he mutters, through a clenched jaw.

“Good. Now, this is on our terms, Hermes. I will aid your son because you’ve always been good to me and because he is my blood. If he gets in my way, he belongs to Hades.”

[paintedwithapalette]

So, I got back this absolutely amazing commission from @pun-riii​ to fit with a scene from chapter 11 of my Memories of You fanfic! So, here it is. Hope you all enjoy! 

-------------------------------

Memories of You: The Balcony  

Word Count: 2, 592

-------------------------------

Roxas figured some fresh air would do him some good and he returned to the balcony Paine dragged him to earlier, resting his arms against the white wooden railing. With his mind finally clear, he was able to admire the stars speckling against a dark midnight blue backdrop. His mother always taught him about the existence of another side where hearts go after they pass on from the land of the living. The idea was appealing as a child but as he grew older, he began to question it. Did an afterlife truly exist? Was there a chance his father was looking down at them with a proud smile? He didn't have anything to go off of other than his mother's word that he would understand someday, but it was beginning to feel like a fairy tale designed to keep traumatized children from succumbing to despair. 

Roxas dug into his pocket and salvaged the balled up card Rufus originally gave him earlier. After wrinkling his eyebrows, he ripped the card into two and carelessly tossed the severed pieces into the air, watching the evening breeze carry it through the night.

"Roxas?"

Naminé stood by the door frame behind him with her head giving a slight tilt. She was still wearing those ridiculous shades. 

"Sorry," Roxas apologized, putting on a friendlier demeanor. "I just needed some air. I should have told you."

Naminé leaned against the railing along with him. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"I'm fine. Just needed some time to think."

"About what?"

"About what I'm going to do with my life," Roxas answered rather quickly. "About where I belong or what I'm supposed to do. I've had all this pressure and expectations put on me and I'm not sure how to handle it."

"Sounds pretty deep. For you, anyway."

"Thank—hey, wait. What do you mean, for me?"

Naminé let out a delicate giggle into her closed fist. She could see his smile through the tint of her sunglasses. His company was always so pleasant. She couldn’t remember the last time she could bear being in the same room with another soul outside of her immediate family for more than five minutes without feeling a crippling urge to drop dead on the spot. To think that she nearly wouldn’t have experienced this moment with him if it hadn't been for her father dragging her to this surprisingly eventful dinner party in the first place. The thought brought a frown to her lips. 

Roxas didn’t fail to notice it. "What's wrong?" 

"I... have a confession to make." 

He crossed his arms. "What is it? You can tell me."

"I, um... I didn't really come here because I wanted to," she painfully admitted. "Not at first, anyway. I mean, I'm glad I came because it turned out to be really fun, but... I was originally planning on not showing up, even after Kairi tried talking me into it. I’m only here because my dad forced me to come because I guess he wants to keep an eye on me." She lowered her head in shame. "I'm sorry."

"What are you apologizing for?"

"Aren't you mad at me?"

"Why would I be mad?" Roxas asked with an airy chuckle. 

Finding his reaction unexpected, Naminé blinked. "Well, I'm not here because it was my decision, like you said it should be. I-I mean... it's not like I came because I'm a good friend or because I'm making a real effort to come out of my shell. I didn't have a choice in the first place, and if I did, it wouldn't have resulted in me being here with you right now.” 

"But you are here. That's what matters in the end, right?"

"But I—"

"Listen," Roxas interrupted gently. "Whether you wanted to come or not, you still did. You still went through the trouble of finding something to wear. You still walked through those doors. You even let me introduce you to my friends. You didn't have to do any of that, but you did. That has to count for something." He smiled. "Whether you realize it or not, you're trying. That's all that matters to me."

Naminé felt her lips part momentarily before turning her head to downplay the shy smile growing against her own will. "You're so mushy."

Roxas chuckled. "Yeah, I’ve heard it from Xion more than once."

Naminé still couldn’t inwardly deny a fragment of guilt lingering in the back of her mind. She wished she had the resolve to face her fears and take the initiative in the first place without her father’s demands being the main catalyst for her attendance. If anything, she could do it for Roxas. In the short amount of time they’ve known each other, he’s been such a good friend to her. Naminé tried to convince herself that taking this step was for her own sake, but she wanted to take his feelings into account as well. Seeing that look of the purest form of joy glowing in his eyes when he first saw her earlier that evening was something she was glad she didn't miss out on. She promised herself she would make it up to him, even if he didn't feel like she needed to. For their next outing, and yes, there would be a next, she would go of her own volition. Not because anyone told her to go. But because he was her friend and he deserved it.

"You’re sweet, Roxas."

Roxas couldn’t tear his eyes away from her smile. And oh, what a pretty smile it was. It would only be prettier if he could see the eyes designed to complement it. "Naminé, why are you still wearing those?"

Her smile faltered. "I told you before—I can't handle eye contact."

"Not even right now?" he asked, closing the small distance between them. "Not even with me?"

Naminé pressed her lips together. There was something about wearing the shades that made her feel more secure. It made her interactions with others more impersonal. "What difference would it make?"

"More than you might think.” Roxas scratched his cheek. “I just kinda want to see you. Those shades make me feel like there's a wall between us. You shouldn't have to hide behind these. You don't need them."

"B-But I do," she argued. "I get so nervous when people look at me, like if I'm looking at their eyes in the wrong way or they get the wrong idea or if I'm staring at people for an uncomfortable amount of time, people don't have to know what I'm looking at and—and—"

"Naminé," Roxas said, effectively cutting her rambling short as he placed his hands on her shoulders. "Trust me."

Naminé felt her lips quivering before she let out a deep sigh. She knew she was making excuses. He was right. It shouldn't have been a big deal. Besides, it was Roxas. She didn't have much trouble looking him in the eyes anymore. As long as it was someone like him or Kairi, she could live with it.

"So, is it okay if I take these off?" he asked.

Naminé nodded reluctantly. Roxas held the sides of her sunglasses and pulled them from her ears tenderly. Her eyes fluttered open; soft blue with the stars ornamenting sparkles into their reflection. It was the first time he saw her eyes the entire night and the first word that came to his mind was... 

Breathtaking.

In the corners of his mind, Roxas always found Naminé attractive even when he first laid eyes on her. But this was the first time he had seen her dolled up, her soft features highlighted to near perfection. His eyes trailed to her lips that were parted slightly—he gulped. He had a dangerous, crazy thought involving his own lips he would not allow himself to act on. Quite frankly, he wasn't sure where it came from, but he blamed it on his dumb teenage boy hormones. Roxas cleared his throat before she could get nervous at his staring.

"See? You don't need these," he said, placing the sunglasses into his back pocket. 

Despite his encouragement, Naminé couldn’t resist the urge to squirm under his gaze. Sure, she had looked him in his eyes before, but not under a circumstance like this. With her eyes exposed, it brought about a sense of vulnerability she wasn’t accustomed to. If eyes truly were windows to the soul, then Roxas was getting a peak at hers. Just the thought of that made her rip her eyes away from his. What if he didn’t like what he saw? 

"Hey, Naminé..." Roxas said softly. The way her name rolled off his lips was starting to make Naminé weak in the knees.

"Y-Yes?"

However, any potential butterflies in her stomach fueled by anticipation were thrown out the window with his next words.

"Staring contest!"

"H-Huh?!"

Roxas grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to look up at him. Her wide, confused eyes were locked with his intense, focused ones. Neither moved for a solid five minutes. Or at least, Naminé felt like it was five minutes. Despite not knowing what was going on or where this came from, she suddenly caught wind of the competitive bug and didn’t want to lose. She returned his stare with an equal amount of intensity, refusing to back down from his challenge. A third spectator might have thought they were furious at each other.

The contest proved difficult for Naminé. Roxas wouldn't budge, not even so much as a wince. She felt her eyes threatening to leak and clenched her teeth after what felt like an eternity of staring. But she couldn't lose. She wanted another excuse to rub something in his face.

Then he blew into her eyes, practically forcing her into a rapid sequence of blinks. 

"I win!"

Naminé continued to blink if only to moisturize her dried up eyes while Roxas laughed at her expense. It was bad enough she was wearing contacts. Did he really need to blow into them? "You cheater!"

"I never said you couldn't sabotage your opponent," Roxas said cheekily.

"Wow. Thanks for letting me know, jerk."

"But hey, you see? Eye contact isn't so bad."

“Okay, but there's a difference between managing eye contact and an actual staring contest."

But for some reason, it did help. She was making eye contact with him without an issue. It was easier when there was something so silly and weird to break the ice. That must have been his plan the whole time. The rascal. 

“Still, it’s not like I can just walk up to a stranger and force them into a random staring contest if I want to break the ice,” Naminé challenged. 

“Hey, you never know.” Roxas shrugged, making Naminé send an unconvinced gaze. “Kidding. It’ll get easier with time, though,” he assured. “Maybe with some practice.” 

She sighed. "That's what they always say. It just stinks when practice involves putting yourself into situations you're not comfortable with."

“Well, are you comfortable now?” 

Naminé replaced her frown with a soft smile. “Well, sure. I’m with you, aren’t I?” 

“Then that’s good enough.” 

They descended into a gentle silence, their eyes bound to the night sky. Naminé came to an epiphany. Their conversation dwindled and somehow it wasn’t awkward in the slightest. What madness was this? Weren’t long pauses supposed to be uncomfortable and inelegant? Was there not an unspoken expectation to fill the silence and alleviate the tension on both sides? Yet there she was in the company of another human being partaking in a peaceful lull that made her feel the furthest thing from tense. In fact she felt, dare she say, relaxed? 

The pleasant scenery surely helped. While far from turbulent, Destiny Islands was noticeably more animated during the daytime. But the night allowed for the evening lanterns to come alive and highlight the town’s fine points with its tropical aesthetic. The darkened sea engulfed the majority of the horizon and in the short distance sat a tiny island Naminé had never been to before. The sight had to be out of a fairy tale novel. 

"This place really is beautiful," Naminé said, filling the silence as she clasped her hands together. Not because she was uncomfortable. Just because she felt like it.

"It is," Roxas agreed, leaning on the railing while turning to face her with a grin. 

Though, the sky wasn’t the only thing he found alluring that night. Naminé truly was more beautiful than even he had anticipated. Something about the way her eyes captured a soft volume of contentment tugged at something inside him. The way her hair was tied up in a bun with loose strands framing her porcelain face. The way her dress highlighted her slender figure that wasn't without subtle but very visible curves. She was always cute, but this was different.

Should he have admitted his attraction to her? It wasn't always easy to predict how Naminé would react to things. Everything seemed to have a half-and-half probability. With a compliment, he could see her taking the praise and thinking nothing of it just as much as he could see her rejecting his opinion and finding it too overwhelming and embarrassing to be true. But transparency was something Naminé needed to become more acquainted with. 

There was also the implication. Would she perceive it as some sort of confession? Roxas wasn't sure if he viewed Naminé in that way. Did he really like Naminé in the way Axel suggested? He sincerely didn't think so before, but now—having her there, to see her trying to put in more of an effort, and the fact that her inner and external beauty was becoming more evident...

He wasn't sure.

"Is everything okay?" Naminé asked, her voice returning him to the present.

"Oh, yeah," Roxas said, mulling on his next words. "It's just—I think you look really beautiful tonight. I, uh... thought I'd let you know."

While the blush was imminent, she took it better than he expected. She didn't flail her arms around like a manic and she didn't have a nervous breakdown. She only stared at him in momentary surprise before the ends of her lips offered him the slightest of curls. "Th-Thank you, Roxas." She gulped. "I-I was... thinking the same thing about you."

He raised a brow. "That I look beautiful? I mean, I'm flattered and all, but—"

"No, goofball," she said, replacing her smile with a pout. He was just trying to pull the proper words out of her and she knew it. "You l-look... good.” 

“Good?” 

“Um... h-h-handsome?" That was the correct word, right?

Roxas snickered. He could never get tired of watching her twist and turn with discomfort. "Just tell me you love me already, why don't you?"

"I take it back..."

"Oh, come on! I'm joking."

"Can't you go five seconds without teasing me?"

"What kind of a question is that? I can't even go three seconds."

"There's something we agree on."

"Fine," Roxas groaned. "I'll take you out for mint chocolate chip ice cream to make up for it, Ms. Killjoy. Take a joke, would you?"

"I most certainly can take a joke! Excuse me for thinking we were having a moment."

“So, you were wanting us to have a moment?” 

“Th-That’s not the point!” 

“Except it totally is.” 

“Shut up.” 

While they bantered, Xion, who was about to go check on Roxas herself, stood around the corner listening to the echoes of their laughter. 

[thehollowprince]

Writing Ask: 2, 3 and 20?

2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

Oh, I have so many different projects bouncing around inside my brain. A combination of fanfics and original works that are all vying for my attention, so much so that I don't know which one to actually sit down and write first.

Like, I have three different fixit fics in mind, for The Vampire Diaries, Star Wars and Captain America: Civil War, and the sad part is, I have them all planned out, but I lack the motivation to sit my ass down behind a computer and actually type them all up.

Then there's the idea I got here on Tumblr, from a writing prompt blog, about a serial killer stalking a group of teenagers out at a cabin in the woods for the weekend. The twist is that the teenagers are a pack of werewolves and I'm having so much fun with this one. I'm thinking of attempting to write it as a script, because I think it would make a fun movie.

And then there are the two big projects I've been working on for years. The first one is something I started with my best friend back when we were both freshmen in high school. It involves a vampire hunter trying to hunt down and kill the vampire that ruined her life, complete with a whole gaggle of supernatural sidekicks. It was very Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but if it was rated R. And the other is something I've been working on for the past few years, more YA oriented, and the premise is a witch-centered murder mystery that takes place in New York City.

I'm actually considering combining those two into one project, seeing as how the premises of both, and the characters of both, are so similar.

The thing is, I'm easily distracted, and every time I see something on a show or in a movie or book, I love it so much I want to do my own version of it, which usually leads to these giant clusterfucks that I have to untangle.

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

Okay, so there's this scene from the YA I've been working on that was really my whole inspiration for the entire project.

Tara waited impatiently by the entrance to Central Park, garnering strange looks from the few people out and about at this hour. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. The whole point of this was to not attract unwanted attention.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Quinn approached from the direction of the subway station, dressed in ripped jeans and a buttoned up flannel shirt, a leather satchel bouncing against his hip as he jogged closer to her. Once he was close enough, he looked her up and down with an incredulous look on his face that she's sure was mirrored on her own.

"What the hell are you wearing?" They asked simultaneously.

"Excuse me?" Tara spoke first after a moment of stunned silence between the two.

"I didn't realize we were on our way to he extras on the latest Matrix movie." Quinn quipped, mocking her all-black ensemble.

"Oh, because you're one to talk." Tara fired back. "Where's your guitar? Shouldn't you be serenading some college co-eds with your rendition of Wonder Wall?"

Quinn's brown eyes narrowed dangerously. "At least I don't look like I'm about to go commit a felony."

"We are about to go commit a felony!"

"That doesn't mean you need to advertise it! Seriously, why didn't you just hang a neon sign around your neck that says 'Off to defile a corpse'?"

Tara quickly looked around to make sure no one had heard what he'd just said before responding. "Forgive me, I'm new at this whole breaking-the-law thing."

Quinn closed his eyes and took a deep breath before exhaling slowly. Without a word, he let his satchel slide orr his shoulder before he unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it, revealing a plain white t-shirt that really emphasized that there wasn't a gym exercise that this boy didn't like. Seriously, it wasn't fair! Witches were supposed to be old and ugly with warts and liver spots and broken teeth, not young men that doubled as models in their spare time. Her entire educational experience had been a lie!

"Here." He held out his shirt, black and yellow flannel, Tara stared at it. "What?"

"What exactly do you want me to do with it?"

"Put it on." He shook the shirt at her until she took it gingerly, as if it were a bomb, or about to turn into a snake, the latter of which was probably an actual possibility. Slowly, she slipped it on over her black shirt and realized it was too big for her. A few adjustments with the buttons and a couple rolls of the sleeves later and she was much more presentable. Quinn, for his part, reached out and quickly snatched the beanie from her head, letting her hair fall about her shoulders.

"Better," he said after giving her an appraising look before he slipped the beanie over his own curls and adjusted it to be more chic. He leaned down and plucked the satchel off the ground, slinging the strap over his shoulder. "Okay, all set." He held out his left hand, which Tara just stared at.

"What now?"

"What do you want me to do with it?"

"You hold it."

"Why?" "Because for the next ten blocks, I'm your boyfriend."

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, don't be such a prude." Quinn snapped. "Trust me, this isn't ideal for me either." Tara slid her right hand into his left, something that left both of their dominant hands free. She could feel the bracelet he wore on his left wrist

"Why wouldn't this be ideal for you?" She asked after a few minutes.

"Well, no offense, but you're not my type."

"Oh?" She tried not to sound insulted.

"Yeah, not unless you suddenly sprouted stubble and maybe grew eight inches." Tara looked at him, confused, and he simply shot back a raised eyebrow and a smirk, his gaze traveling down. The moment her brain caught up with his words, Tara immediately looked forward, her face burning in embarrassment. Quinn laughed and Tara cursed him. Even his damn laugh was attractive!

I think it works really well, even without context or build-up, and I think gives a great feel as to who these two characters are.

Oh, and the names are just place holders right now.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

This is the type of thing that I excel at, the world building for the stories I want to tell. I usually get so caught up in this that I neglect the actual story.

I realized that the worlds for the two stories I mentioned in the first answer were so similar that I should just combine them, because it was a lot easier than trying to maintain two separate worlds that were so similar.

Anyway, as you can probably guess, the story is supernatural related, particularly the witchcraft element. I've always been Team Witch and I wanted a story that put that at the front, especially in a genre that's so focused on Vampires. I wanted to have almost everything circle back to witches in some way. For example, I came up with the idea of a Hag, a witch from which (ba dum tsh) the legend of vampires comes from. In my story, a Hag is a type of witch that extends their own life (and vitality) by a combination of bathing in blood and dark magic.

I love the idea of werewolves being the result of an actual curse as opposed to something that can be transmitted by a bite or a scratch. Although I also love the idea of lycanthropy being transmitted via sex - an STC, Sexually Transmitted Curses.

In regards to the witches themselves, I have them broken down into the three Cs: Cradle, Contract, and Cunning. Cradle witches are the ones who are born with an innate sense of power. Contract witches are those who get their power by making deals with demons or spirits or fey. And Cunning witches are those who "crack the code" on magic by just being obnoxiously smart and relentless.

And then, since I have this set in New York City, I had the idea to have the supernatural world run by the Five Covens (sort of like the Five Families of the mafia).

[valkerymillenia]

Hi, I asked about jason’s memory in my last ask in cbds. Thanks for answering. It made me wonder would jason gets flashes about his time with dick and the twins?I really admire your patience in writing your story. This is why i’ll fail as a writer, because i have absolutely no patience. I mean I would probably rush my story and that would make it turn bad.

Ok, so, no. At first Jason has no memory between his death and the Pit. Eventually though some things start to trigger pieces of memories that he doesn't really understand, his full memory takes quite a while to return and by then he's dug himself into too deep a hole.

Also, you sound EXACTLY like me when I started writing.

So I'mma ramble now. Feel free to ignore the boring story time beneath the cut but I promise it has a point, it's just bound to be long because I don't know what brevity is and when I'm sleep deprived I talk to much.

Before I started writing I always wanted to put stories down into words but I never ever considered writing books, I used to make elaborate fantasy worlds, characters and lives in my head that dragged on for weeks on end, slowly becoming more and more complex, it was pure escapism, but I never thought about writing those stories down precisely because I though "I'll never have the patience to develop this, I'll just rush it or quit halfway".

Then when I was in 10th grade there was a writing contest in my school and two of my cousins were teachers there and writers themselves and encouraged me to enter (there were 3 categories actually- teachers, 7th to 9th grade and 10th to 12th grade). I figured, why not?

The story had to be handwritten under a pseudonym with a 5 page limit (no word limit because it was handwritten, you just had to use standard test paper for 5 pages, and yes, this was normal because not everyone had access to a computer to type their work), it was fiction under the theme "stories of our people" and the judges were a panel of teachers and one famous writer (he had a very popular YA adventure series and some great mythology based novels, unfortunately he passed away a few years later).

Now, bear in mind 2 things. This was a school surrounded by forest in the hills of a small rural city but it was the biggest rural city around and all the other towns and villages sent their kids to high school there, the second thing to remember is that high school is mandatory education in my country so dropping out isn't really an option. Therefore we had hundreds of kids in the high school grades (somewhere between 600 and 800 kids, I think, there's less nowadays because the next town over grew immensely and has its own high school now).

You'd think kids wouldn't be interested in a writing competition but the author that was coming to judge was very popular at the time and, well, it was a high school in the middle of the woods in a small countryside town. Things were boring, ok? We didn't have a mall or a movie theater or anything, so when something popped up to break the boredom (or someone even remotely famous showed up) everyone jumped at it.

So a lot of people participated and me? I was just dragging my feet because "I didn't have the patience", I waited until the last two days before the deadline and poured out a story last minute with a shitty penname based on my mythology obsession (Valkery Thot, you can laugh about it nowadays but Thot was the Egyptian good of scribes and I was NERD).

The story was about two kids that never liked each other growing up even though they lived close to each other, they end up crossing paths on the same adventure to a local inaccessible waterfall we have here in the mountain, they were looking for treasure based on stories and maps from each of their grandfathers and find a cave together where they discover etchings left by said grandfathers and, long story short, the treasure was friendship.

(Sappy as hell, I know, but I was thinking the whole YA adventure mindframe, ok? Plus, it wasn't my preferred writing language, which is English, and I was 15 and literally improvised the whole thing last minute, didn't even draft anything, I just wrote it directly and barely proofread for typos.)

So I entered the contest last minute with no real hopes, it was just an experiment but it proceed to be way more entertaining than I though, without the pressure of actually wanting to win it was easier than I thought.

Award day came and we all gathered in this fancy huge auditorium we had, it was the fanciest part of the whole school but it still couldn't fit everyone in there, then again most students that came just wanted an excuse not to go to class that morning. Anyway...

One of my cousins won in the teacher category and I was all proud. I watched the 3 winners of the 7th to 9th grade category being awarded and started getting distracted (because unless I was drawing or stimming I had the attention span of a goldfish). Then the 10th to 12th grade category came and I was so distracted that they had to call me twice before I realized I'd won second place!

First place went to 12th grade boy that wrote a story called "The Message", very purple prose and perfect grammar, lovely story, but I digress.

Anyway, the famous author was the one to give me my prize and told me my story was very vivid, there were some typos but he was impressed by the creativity and the amount of action I packed into 5 pages while still giving it a satisfying ending. I barely grasped what the heck he was saying at the time because I still had this certainty that I bullshitted the whole thing last minute and couldn't even remember half of what I wrote but I asked him if he thought I "could be real writer someday" and he just said I already was a "real writer" because all it took to be a real writer was putting it it words, that and actually enjoying the world I made up.

It stuck with me. I didn't realize right away that that was my dream, that I wanted to be a novelist, I still wanted to be an artist and was stuck under all those expectations to choose a proper college path and career (I thought I could do law, AH! what was I thinking?!) but it really stuck with me and shortly after I started getting really deep into a side of fandom that I hadn't experienced before (because I never had much access to internet before that) and started to want to put my stories into words even if I never finished them, I still didn't think I had the patience or the originally.

A few years later I realized that when it comes to something I'm passionate about I do indeed have the patience, by age 12 I had already been writing long comprehensive character bios, story details, transcribed quotes, meta theories, summaries and collecting tons of info of all my favorite fandoms and not to share, just for fun (and probably OCD) this went on for years before I even found out that the internet had whole websites and encyclopedias for such things (not like today though but yeah), and it had never occurred to me the patience that that in itself required.

My first fics were atrocious! Mostly because I made A LOT of typos due to not being used to writing in English full time but my thoughts came more naturally in English and I didn't enjoy writing fiction in Portuguese anyway (poetry though? Absolutely), I also used extremely exaggerated plot points, be it drama, angst or romance. But people liked the stories for the content and not the accurate spelling so I kept at it. I never used to finish my fics back then, not due to lack of patience but mostly because I put too much pressure on myself to make a story perfect and would stop having fun.

When I started writing purely for fun and passion (and realized that not every story needed to be a novel length epic) that's when I started churning out my best (and ironically longest) stories and getting better and better.

I won't lie, having readers encouraging me was key, it's half of the fuel I need to keep going, outside interest is an incredible motivator, but mostly I just realized that the key to good writing is:

Less pressure + more passion = all the patience you need

This doesn't just apply to original work though, it's also about fanfic.

Holy crap, that was a lot of words just to sum everything up on that one bold sentence... See, I could never have written this much when I was in high school, that's also a matter of practicing until letting your thoughts out into writing becomes second nature but that's a whole other story.

Anyway... Thanks for the lovely message. It's the story of thing that means the world to me ❤️

(and PS- no, I haven't won any other contests since that one but I have published articles on magazines, no published novels yet though because I don't think my original ideas are ever good enough to follow through).

[muffinlance]

I am in awe. You have three WIPs that you update on a regular basis AND each of them is just as engaging as the next AND you manage to keep everyone in-character, if not better (I will never be unable to unhear Engineer Hanako or unsee Flying Lemur Squad’s plausible deniability). How do you do it??

Real talk time!

I have no idea.

For real, this is significantly faster than I have ever written in my life. Like. By a considerable margin. And I'm going to just go ahead and attribute it to,

(wait for it)

~The Marvelous Power of Procrastination~

Because I am currently making the move from kind-of-amateur writer to serious-face-writer. And I should be editing up that short story I'm sitting on, 'cause I'd really like to get another mag credit before I send out the next round of queries on Novel J (which has gotten full requests, but no bites yet). And I have two other novels lined up to query if that one flops, pending fairly minor edits that I should really be doing. And I've got the outline for my next one all prettified, and that one's middle grade so it's super short, and I really need to work it into my writing rotation.

'Cause.

'Cause I've mentioned this to a few people, but I rationalized starting each of these fanfics as craft practice.

Little Zuko: full novel outline practice. Holy shit outlining is so much better than pantsing for me. But I need to level up my thinking-at-the-novel-level game.

Towards the Sun: series level outlining combined with freeform scenes. 'Cause I'm actually getting pretty confident at the novel-level thing, so this is the next logical step, and 350k-ish is a nice reasonable word count to sandbox in. (And can I just take a moment to scream internally that I feel confident in committing to that kind of word count? 'Cause like, two or three years ago, I'd have been hyperventilating even contemplating that.)

Cheating at Pai Sho: completely winging it. 'Cause I am a pantser at heart, and fanfic is delightfully low stress. I just have a checklist of things I want to do, like 'pick up Toph', but I'm not actively making an attempt to outline the steps in-between. Just seeing where the pai sho tiles fall (I did figure out the Toph thing while writing that last chapter, and will start the groundwork in chapter 5. Go me!) But yeah, this is why you got 10k of adorable Lovecraftian cats and Zuko-Katara semi-shirtless bonding. I make niether excuses nor apologies, shameless fluff is shameless. This story is hella relaxing to write, and I'm getting the impression it's also relaxing to read, and you all deserve some me-time after making it through the Towards the Sun prologue.

Most importantly, these are all daily writing practice. They're fun and low-stress and if I'm not feeling one, I can bounce to another for awhile. I always knew I was physically capable of writing this fast, 'cause my typing speed is ridiculous, but I'd hit a creative limit where I'd feel drained and have to walk away for an-hour-a-day and those kinds of breaks are dangerous, that's when you lose your writing momentum and a day turns into a week turns into six months and what are you even doing with your life you failure you said you wanted to be a writer. And that is not a good headspace, as I think pretty much every creative person ever is cripplingly familiar with.

So these fics are my no-pressure no-stakes daily writing exercises.

And I accidentally proved to myself that I am capable of so much more than I thought.

And I am feeling real good about it, thanks to the wonderfully supportive feedback from all you FF reviewers and AO3 commenters and Tumblr fan arters and those amazing human beings writing ficlets for my stories. Like. Real good, is how I'm feeling. Like I can do this, is how I'm feeling. Like maybe I'm ready to stop hiding from my serious-face writing, and I can write so damn fast now I-know-I-can, so. So even if I work my serious projects back into the writing rotation, y'all should barely notice a dip in my fanfic posting speed. 'Cause I can do this. I really can. <3

In conclusion I love you all, thank you so much for the overwhelming support as I continue catopus-paddling through figuring out this writing thing.

This got long and rambly and didn't even answer the original question. To which the answer would be: practice your craft intentfully. You want to write engaging stories? Study the stories that captivate you and tease out what elements are pulling you in. There's a fuckton of nitty-gritty technical details that go into making things dynamic and engaging at the level of a sentence, a paragraph, a scene, a chapter, an arc, a novel, a series (I consider myself fairly solid up until those last two--hence why I'm using these fics to actively work on them). Characterizations and how to write voices that sounds distinct from each other but unique to themselves, likewise. When you read, don't just read--tease apart the material. Why do you like what you like, why is something not working for you, what would have improved this, what would you have done differently if you were writing it.

Also, take the idea of a muse and shove it. Daily practice, or as near as you can make it. Runners have to build their stamina over time; same thing with writers. Just 'cause it's a mental stamina doesn't make the fatigue any less real. Build it up over time, celebrate your victories, try not to backslide with the mental equivalent of laying on the couch eating potato chips and letting your writing-brain get flabby again. Get out for a writing-walk, everyday, even if it's only a little.

[twilightofthe]

fanfic asks!! really late!!: a, b, c (walk the family line), d, j, n, r

Hello you!!!  Thanks so much for the ask, so sorry I couldn’t get to it sooner!!  Ask questions are from this writing ask game

A: Of the fanfic you’ve written, which is your favorite and why?

Oooof ok, time to pick my favorite child!!!  Lol but really, all of my current fics up are just so different, ya know?  I put a little bit of myself into all of them, and I’m so happy to see how they all turn out!  I think I’ll always have a soft spot for And The Void Answered Back just because it’s the first fic I ever finished, but I really like all of them equally!!!!

B:  What was the first fandom you read fic in?  Which was the first you wrote fic for?

Answered here

C:  How did you come up with the title to Walk The (family) Line?

Ok, so for context, this is the series name of my Force Ghost SW Sequels Reaction Trilogy, with one fic for each movie in the trilogy.  I knew I wanted a title that would emphasize my point in all of this, that was to connect Anakin Skywalker and the rest of the Skywalker saga more fully to the events of the Sequels to make them really feel like one connected saga, which I honestly didn’t feel like the movies had done a very good job of (still don’t, honestly).  Was playing around with different overarching titles and things to do with family lines and the phrase “Walk The Line” popped into my head, and after googling its meaning, found it was almost exactly what I was looking for, and adding in the tiny little emphasis on (family) really sealed it for me!

D: What’s the most personal fanfic you’ve written?

That’s a tie between ATVAB and Pas de Deux, honestly.  Void started off as just a oneshot I wrote during a boring class of Force ghosts rambling at Luke on the island because I had missed them in TLJ and figured I might as well publish it because it wasn’t half bad.  But then I kept writing them, because I hadn’t realized just how much I had missed Anakin and the other ghosts in the Sequel Trilogy until I was knee-deep in the TFA script and trying to add the ghosts in anywhere.  I know Disney is trying to distance itself from the Skywalkers so they can play all by themselves in their newly-purchased sandbox, but honestly, that’s always been what Star Wars has been about for me, what made me fall in love with it, the antics of this one stupid overdramatic family, and writing a catharsis fic that injected what I loved back into a trilogy I found myself falling gradually more and more out of love with was really important for me.

Pas de Deux I originally wrote because I wanted to explore the concept of Ahsoka knowing Jar’Kai and why.  I am by no means trying to police people’s headcanons, y’all can think whatever you want, I am not judging.  But.  I always found that when people would just casually toss out “oh it was ever so obvious that OBI WAN taught Ahsoka Jar’Kai because he’s really good at it”, it just rubbed me the wrong way because to me it sounded like “Anakin is incompetent at everything and needs his Master-- who is better than him at everything --to do everything for him up and including teach his student the most major part of her training”.  The thing is, even tho I know that in this particular instance people didn’t mean it like that, it sadly is a really popular opinion held in this fandom that Anakin is stupid and useless and can’t do anything for himself without Obi Wan doing it for him or doing it better (don’t get me wrong, I know some people JOKE about this, I jokingly say it myself, and I know some of my mutuals joke about it too, this isn’t directed at y’all, but like some people wholeheartedly believe it unironically and use it as an excuse to bash my boi).  

For the Jar’Kai thing, I knew I was thinking irrationally-- heck, I remember thinking myself whenever I saw Obes dual wield that he probably taught Ahsoka --and remember at one point being like “jeez, paranoid much?  I’m sounding just like Anakin when I think this,” and that was what really hit the nail on the head for me and I realized what was making me so upset.  I projected onto this mess a little too much, and now whenever ppl called him dumb or incompetent, I was accidentally taking it too personally.  Then I thought further that, “you know what?  Anakin’s insecure, he’s probably had those exact same thoughts himself”, and that started me on writing a fic that explored my own anxieties as much as Anakin’s while I tried to tackle a way that could involve Obi Wan in Ahsoka’s training that didn’t make Anakin out to be incompetent/incapable.  So yea, a LOT of Anakin’s vulnerabilities and worries mentally in the fic is a spiral I’ve gone down very many times myself, those were my anxieties, and also just my desire to have someone like Obi Wan in my life to help me with stuff too lol, so that’s pretty personal for me.

J:  What’s your favorite fanfic trope?  Have you written it?

Favorite trope, eh?  That’s tough, there’s so many!!!!  I guess I love hyper-competence, seeing my faves be reeeeally good at what they do and others appreciating them for it.  I’ve definitely written this.

I like mutual protectiveness, seeing characters going full force defensive, would face a whole army to protect someone they love romantically/familially/platonically, because fuck you you aren’t hurting a hair on their head while I’m around.  I’ve written a little bit of this too.

I like dashing romantic gestures right out of a fairytale because I’m a little girl with a princess complex at heart and I’m still waiting for my wayward knight.  I’ve written some of this, could always write more.

I like dying dramatically together/shared fates, just the idea of two souls intertwined and interconnected that always find their way back to each other and die together.  I don’t think I’ve written this.

I like playful banter, obviously, it makes my heart happy.  I’ve written this, want to write more.

N: Any fic ideas brewing that you’d care to share?

Answered here

R: Which writers (fanfic or otherwise) do you consider the biggest influence on you and your writing?

Answered here

Thank you so so much for asking again, friendo!!!!  I had a lot of fun with these!!!!!!!!!!

[trashpandaorigins]

You Idiot! Deconstructing Groot & Rocket’s Less Than Wholesome Dynamic

I recently rewatched GOTG and it really struck me (shockingly) for the first time how Rocket is really actually pretty mean to Groot throughout GOTGVol1. Now we're gonna talk about it.

Writing this makes me a hypocrite. I have read and written numerous fanfics about Groot and Rocket. Fics about how they met, how they escaped prisons, how Groot was the first being in the galaxy to care about Rocket, how bereft Rocket was after the original Groot died and how he then rose to the occasion to take care of baby Groot. There are fluffy fics, angsty fics, so many fics and lovely pieces of fanart that feature this iconic duo. However, there’s an element to Groot and Rocket’s relationship that is very much the elephant in the room: Rocket is, (and I was somewhat shocked by this upon my most recent watching of GOTG) really a jerk to Groot. He doesn’t treat him nicely at all.  Let’s just start off with Rocket’s persistent referral to Groot as an idiot. In most fics, (my own included), this is brushed off as an endearing term. One that is playful, doesn’t carry much meaning behind it beyond a nickname of sorts. This is problematic and it’s not the only thing that contributes to their less than wholesome dynamic. Indeed, there is a lot there. Rocket is mean to Groot throughout most of the film and Groot tolerates it even as he is protecting the raccoonoid and assisting him along their adventure. I am going to be looking exclusively GOTG1 for this little ramble. Volume 2 brings up a whole different dynamic and the comics are a different story all together. Personally, I think Groot has  more agency in the comics and pushes back more frequently on Rocket’s antics (not that he doesn’t do that in GOTG, we will get into that later), but the comics have the luxury of time and different runs to expand on their relationship.

After all isn’t that  one of the great beauties of engaging in fandom and shipping? In this case platonically;  that we can both love and adore our favorite characters while also examining their relationships from different angels and gaining new insights and analyzing them critically. I would also argue that it makes fandom more engaging, provides inspiration for new content and allows us to delve deeper into these endlessly intriguing characters. I am not trying to argue that Rocket doesn’t love Groot or doesn’t care about him, in fact I think that if we look at the problematic parts of their relationship it makes the ending of the movie all the more impactful. I’m just saying that sometimes you have to look at the entire ship, even the nasty bits and in so doing you can appreciate the whole. With that note let’s blow some holes in this ship. You know, for fun!

“Don’t drink fountain water you idiot that’s disgusting!” From the very moment we are introduced to Groot and Rocket the raccoonoid is already insulting his partner in crime. The casualty with which he utters this indicates that this isn’t the first time he’s referred to Groot as such and it certainly not the last. Repeatedly calling Groot and idiot  reinforces the idea that people who are quiet or don’t communicate verbally in the way that others do, are somehow dullards, fools or dunces, people with low intellect. This really is quite mean spirited of Rocket especially when you consider the flora’s loyalty.

It might seem as through Groot doesn’t mind this insult but you see him object, shaking his head and looking at Rocket as he tries to deny the fact. Groot may speak in a way that not many people can understand but he can understand them. He knows what words mean; he knows what the word idiot means. So that is how we meet the duo. Rocket ordering Groot around. The fight ensues with Quill and Gamora, during which Rocket calls Groot an idiot again after the flora manages to capture Quill. But Groot does this of his own volition, taking initiative and sneaking up on him to get the bounty. Does Rocket praise his partner or react pleasantly to Groot succeeding in this? No he tells him to quit smiling and again accuses him of being an idiot. Towards the end of the fight as Groot is whimpering over his lost arm Rocket calls him an idiot for a third time and tells him to  essentially “get over it.” Not a terribly wholesome start. It paints their relationship as one where Rocket orders Groot around, using him for his brute strength, hanging around with him out of convenience and the protection/intimidation he offers, but not really caring all that much about his feelings or his well-being.

Not only does Rocket continue to insult Groot but he also demeans nearly everything that the flora says and brushes aside Groot’s genuine concern with irritation. See the, “I told you you can’t fit now stay here I’ll be back,” bit of dialogue before the pod chase as well as, “so what it’s better than 11% what the hell does that have to do with anything?” He dismisses Groot’s anxieties and shrugs off most of what he says. Any suggestions or comments are met with contempt.

Groot is the butt of Rocket’s insecurities, the emotional punching bag upon whom Rocket projects his anger and frustration. Rocket often lashes out at him and  behavior is not uncommon. We’ve all intentionally or unintentionally taken our anger out on those we love most.

Rocket treats Groot as an annoyance for most of the film. Shaming him in front of others, insulting him, snapping at his every word but….can we blame him? Rocket is a tormented little thing who never learned empathy, never learned how to treat people right. It’s heavily implied that the people or things that made him certainly didn’t expose him to an ounce of sympathy or understanding. He wasn’t socialized in the way other beings are whether by human or animal social circles. He is the product of a lab. They were making something to be used for violent means. They didn’t care if their creation could play nice in the sandbox. I have made this comparison before but Rocket is in many ways,  an abused child who is trying to make his way in and understand a world that consistently rejects him and dehumanizes him for that which his creators did, (by the way he doesn’t even know what that is). The fact that he is able to form any relationship or emotional connection with anyone is remarkable.  Of course Rocket’s struggles with forming relationships is indicative of his traumatic past, but having trauma doesn’t give you a free pass to treat people poorly. It can help explain certain behaviors but it doesn’t excuse them, and Groot appears to understand this just as well.

We’ve been focussing pretty exclusively on Rocket’s perspective here so let’s shift to Groots, something that is undoubtedly harder to do, (and people ask me why I only have one story from Groot’s point of view, this is why). Imagine for a second you are in a country where you can understand their language but they cannot understand you. What’s worse, most of the people view you as an outsider and a freak. No matter how many times you try to communicate with them they still look upon you with scorn. It’s alienating, frustrating and profoundly lonely. Then imagine you finally, finally meet someone who can communicate with you, what a relief! Not only that but they seem to be deft at navigating this fast, complex world you are trying to inhabit. Sure they are a bit rough around the edges and sometimes they are rude to you but depend on them. It is precisely this dependency that perhaps provides the foundation for Groot and Rocket’s team up-though the movies don’t tell us exactly how they met. Maybe Groot helped him out of the jam. Rocket is good at many things but given his size he probably does his best to avoid hand to hand combat when necessary. It would make sense for him to relay on Groot for protection as well as his ability to intimidate others as we see in the Klyn. Despite this dependency Groot does put up with a lot of Rocket’s antics.

Groot isn’t some passive figure either when it comes to Rocket’s behavior. As my good friend @captaintoomanybattles pointed out during our latest viewing of GOTG,  Groot and Rocket stick together even when it’s not something Rocket wants to do. Groot is determined to save Quill and Gamora and Rocket follows along even though it’s not something. Rocket isn’t really even being persuaded really. Groot expresses horror at Rocket mockery of Drax’s loss. Groot pushes back against him and takes a stance.  It is Groot who initiates the rescue of Quill and Gamora, he is the first among the Guardians to stand up after Quill’s big speech, agreeing to fight Ronan. Groot makes this choice entirely on his own. When he looks at Rocket he isn’t asks for permission, he’s asking if Rocket is with them. In this case it is Groot who is the driving force. There’s a balance, it goes both ways. Both are able to make their own decisions independent of the other.

In order to really understand why Groot would stand all of this, and who Groot is I think you really need to understand trees. I’m not a philosopher and this little piece has gone on long enough and I still have a few more things I want to touch on so I’ll keep it quick. Perhaps Groot, like trees and other plants is playing the long game so to speak.Thinking and conceptualizing time and existence in a cyclical nature of seasons, life, death and rebirth; slow and steady. So maybe it doesn’t trouble him overmuch when Rocket lashes out in the movement because Groot knows his partner in crime has had a rough life and he is trying slowly to learn how to build relationships and be more compassionate. In contrast, Rocket who is reckless, impulsive, his temerity knowing no bounds doesn’t fully grasp the pernicious effects of words and deeds on to Groot until the very end.  

And that right there is perhaps the real tragedy. That Rocket doesn’t realize until much too late that Groot is, up until this point the only other creature who has ever cared about him. Groot is the one person who has ever deemed Rocket someone not only worthy of friendship and compassion despite his rudeness but someone worth saving, worth dying for. It is in that terrible movement when the two look at each other right after Rocket has begged him not to do this- that Rocket must reckon with how he has exploited and insulted Groot, (and thus begins to realize the profound effects of his own trauma upon himself and his relationships with others). Groot was the only person in Rocket’s lonely misbegotten existence who deemed him capable of something more than the little monster his creator's had intended. Groot proves that Rocket is worthy of being loved and the rest of the Guardians subsequently prove to him that he is capable of loving others. Groot was the first to humanize this little malformed creature, the one who in many ways showed him he had personhood and the Guardians then push him to become a fully realized person in turn.

Rocket’s persistent rudeness towards Groot doesn’t detract from the beauty nor the love in this shot where Groot lifts a vine to stroke against Rocket’s face; it adds depth and dimensionality.  That is the tragedy that only in a moment of pure altruism on the part of Groot does Rocket realize he did in fact love Groot too. His perspective shifts, seeing Groot not as a tool or a means to an ends but someone who cared for him. But at this point it’s too late. Groot has chosen to sacrifice himself wholly on his own volition. Rocket knows he cannot talk Groot out of it, (though he tries by demanding to know why Groot is making this choice.). At this point Rocket can only look into the eyes of the creature he mistreated so and….weep?  He just...looks up at Groot with this helplessness and you feel feel it, deeply. Groot’s last words are ones of hope, reassurance, unity, and boundless love even in the face of utter chaos and his own impending ruin. The scene shows Rocket’s grief-stricken face, powerless to stop what is coming and then you see Groot. Who is somehow despite the tears in his eyes and no doubt the fear, still so full of faith in friendship, of faith that the rest of them will be okay. We are Groot breaks our hearts and then it fades to white. Now I’m not going to make a Jesus metaphor here and say that Groot dies for the sins of the rest of the Guardians bur rather his death does force rocket to face the fact that he did sin, or at least that he treated a kind person who was nothing but good to him, unkindly and with apathy at best.

Still, you can tell that Rocket does care about Groot through it all. He runs towards him under dire circumstances in the Kyln, leaping up on his shoulder ready to fight instead of running away and letting Groot get shot up. He advocates for Groot to get his share of the bounty on multiple occasions and lashes out at the Collector when the man posets buying Groot’s corpse after his death, (wasn’t that some heartbreaking foreshadowing).

It is clear that Rocket regrets treating Groot the way he did. That much is evident in the shot where we see him kneeling-and let’s be clear here-among the literal splintered saw dusted broken remains of his partner. It’s a short shot, easy to miss and Rocket’s mumbled words are hard to hear but he murmurs, “I called him an idiot,” whilst picking up a handful of the remaining twigs. This quick shot, not even a scene really is tiny but powerful. For it shows Rocket’s humility and vulnerability rivilng that of the scene at the bar on Knowhere. The raccoonoid is full of shame and grief and understandably, rage. Rocket took advantage of Groot throughout their time together and only realized the love he had when it was too late. He will never get the chance to apologize, he will never be able to make amends, he will never be able to tell Groot how much he truly appreciated and loved him. Peter never took his mother’s hand and Rocket never apologized to Groot and damn if that ain’t relatable to anyone who has ever lost someone they loved without being able to say goodbye. But this guilt isn’t lost on Rocket. He learns his lesson, at least in part. As another fan pointed out Rocket never once calls baby Groot  an idiot, even when he is frustrated or angry with him. Nor does he call Teen Groot such.

Groot and Rocket’s relationship is not necessarily a healthy one. Built on a mutual dependency with Rocket often times exploiting him and then treating him a nuisance-but Groot doesn’t just stand by and take it either. He pushes back, and when push comes to shove Rocket will follow where Groot goes. Both of them care for one another, deeply. Enough for Groot to sacrifice himself for Rocket’s life, enough for Rocket to begin to change for the better. I adore these two with all my fangirl heart and well I wouldn’t use the word “adore” to describe how Rocket feels-anyone who watches the Groot cocoon scene, or the shot of Rocket as Baby Groot emerges can see the radiant emotion that is there. We are all imperfect people with imperfect relationships. Things we never said to people, friends and family we took for granted, people we didn’t stick up to sooner. If Groot and Rocket’s dynamic can teach us anything it is that it is alright have a messy imperfect love as long as we push ourselves to do better and sometimes give ourselves and each other, a break. Groot said it best: We are Groot, despite our flaws and short comings, we are all worthy of love.

[randomly-random-jen]

Uncalled For Actions (4/?)

A Girl Genius fanfic

When Gilgamesh Holzfäller is fourteen, he’s taken on as an apprentice to Baron Wulfenbach as part of a program to produce the next generation of leaders in the Empire–a group that will hopefully get along (although most see this as wishful thinking on the Baron’s part).

He’s learned a lot over the months of shadowing the Baron, but nothing has prepared him for his most challenging assignment: confronting the skeletons in his closet.  [Part 1 | 2 | 3 | Part 5 ]

Part 4

About half a dozen emotions flitted across Tweedle’s face at that news before he settled back to his barely contained rage.

Gil refused to back down for the obvious intimidation tactic he knew well from his childhood. He brought himself up to his full height which was still nearly a head shorter than Tweedle, chin held high and a practiced, indifferent expression plastered on his face.

Finally, Tweedle stepped out of Gil’s personal space and dusted the front of Gil’s jacket like he was straightening out the wrinkles Gil had already fixed. “The Baron, you say? I heard a rumor about you.”

Gil cocked one eyebrow under his fringe of bangs and crossed his arms over his chest. “Which one?”

“That you’re the orphaned son of homicidal Sparks that went on a rampage, and the only reason you’re an apprentice is the Baron feels sorry for you.”

Gil wanted to laugh–as if his father would give such an important job to someone out of pity. Instead, he shrugged as if the words didn’t bring back loathsome memories. “Close enough.”

As expected from habitual bullies, Tweedle looked even more annoyed that he didn’t get a rise out of Gil, but he recovered quickly. He took two menacing steps towards Gil and shoved a finger in his face. “Baron or no, I don’t care who you are, if I catch you around my sister again-”

Seffie interrupted him with a swat on the back of his head. “Martellus, no. Bad brother.”

She grabbed Tweedle’s rather large and solid forearm and tried to drag him away which had the effect of her trying to move a train until she pinched him in the side.

He didn’t say anything else as he finally allowed his sister to pull him down the hall, but he did smack Gil’s head into the wall one last time for emphasis.

Gil rubbed the back of his head as he watched the von Blitzengaard siblings round the corner then glanced at Anevka. She had her face in her hands.

“I’m so sorry about that. My family is–embarrassing.”

“Aren’t they all?”

She looked at him through her fingers then dropped her hands with a dry laugh. “I guess you’re right and my family has the market on humiliating twisted branches cornered.”

“I don’t know–Seffie seemed okay.”

“Well, you don’t know her like I do,” she said with a grin. “Come on, there’s still time before the summit reconvenes.” Anevka slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, leading him down the hall opposite the way Tweedle and Seffie had disappeared.

Gil looked over his shoulder. “I don’t think we’re supposed to leave the luncheon.”

“They won’t even notice we’re gone. Besides, you’re with me and this is my home.”

Gil had a feeling the Baron would not accept that excuse, but he continued to follow Anevka farther into the castle, memorizing the route just in case.

They took two lefts, a right, went up a flight of stairs, two lefts then right, left, right before going down a very narrow spiral staircase lit by something glowing on the walls. Fascinated, he reached out to touch the substance, but it contracted into itself with a pip causing a cascade of lights going out up and down the stairs.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

Anevka laughed. “Don’t worry–they’ll light back up if we’re quiet.”

Sure enough, the walls began to glow softly a moment later until they were back at their original brightness. Gil leaned closer to get a better look; this time without touching. “It’s a fungus–that glows.”

“Pretty, isn’t it? It grows in the mines all around Balan’s Gap–the miners use it instead of gas lamps or candles with the added benefit of it processing just about every toxic substance into oxygen so-”

“No chance of sudden asphyxiation–a light source and air scrubber in one. That’s brilliant.”

Anevka smiled then tugged him along. “Well, I can’t take credit for creating the things, but I did bring them up here and plant them along the walls in some of the lesser used passageways that are too troublesome to keep lit with gas lamps or wire for electricity.”

“This was your idea?’

She ducked her head and despite the green glow, Gil had the distinct impression she was blushing which made him feel a little light headed.

They got to the bottom of the stairs when Anevka suddenly turned to him, eyes twinkling in the shimmery light. “If you like plants, you’ll love the arboretum,” she said, guiding him to the left. “We have hundreds of specimen from all over the world–Mother used to get dreadfully sorrowful during the long winters so Father brought the tropics to her. It’s all very romantic.”

Gil coughed then started choking before nearly tripping over his own feet.

Anevka tried to hide her giggles behind her hand but didn’t do a very good job. “I’m kidding, Gil.”

Gil let out a breath, face blushing fiercely.

Anevka pinched a cheek. "Aren’t you just adorable.”

He tried to smile, but he suddenly felt uncomfortably aware of their isolation. “Where even are we?” he asked after they passed numerous unadorned and presumably locked doors.

“The East Wing or as it’s affectionately called, the ‘Fire Mountain’ Wing."

"Why do you call it that?”

Anevka just smiled as they spilled out into a large, open atrium–the glass dome soaring at least ten meters above them–and covering every wall, a mural depicting the surrounding mountains burning.

“Pretty, huh?”

Gil's eyebrows shot up--'pretty' is not the word he'd used to describe it.

Terrifying, morbid, twisted--those worked better, but he just nodded, not that she was paying any attention to him anymore.

She twirled around the center of the room, face turned up to the dreary sky beyond the glass. "This is my favorite room in the entire castle.

You should see it during the sunrise and set--the whole room is ablaze of reds and oranges thanks to the special glass." Her eyes looked a little on fire themselves when she glanced back at him. "The flames in the murals seem to dance, and you can almost feel the heat."

"Uh, that sounds-"

She continued to dance, oblivious to his awkwardness.

He needed to move things along because Anevka was seriously creeping him out right now. "So, you said something about an arboretum?"

She stopped abruptly then grabbed his hand at a run. "I almost forgot--we don't have much time before we have to get back."

Gil let out a sigh, allowing himself to be dragged along again. This girl was going to give him whiplash, and it reminded him of his father's numerous lectures on the evils of women that Gil mostly ignored because he thought the theories were just his father's way of coping with being bad at relationships. Maybe he wasn't so wrong after all.

A minute later, they dashed under an arch adorned with angels of some sort and through a set of glass doors.

The air inside was humid and you swam through it more so than walked, and everywhere you looked were plants and trees and more plants--the ground, the walls, hanging from the ceiling, growing in planters.

"Wow."

"You like it?"

Gil could tell this was important to her so he nodded, not that it was a lie or anything; the place was amazing.

"Come on, I'll show you my favorite spot." Anevka reached her hand out to him, wiggling her fingers in invitation.

Gil had a feeling he was going to regret spending so much time alone with this girl, but she was nice and a princess so he could hardly refuse. Besides, it was kind of nice having the attention on him for once and not have it involve fists and stolen food.

He pushed those thoughts away, took Anevka’s hand and followed her through the maze of tropical trees and flowers until they came to a clearing near the center where the largest tree towered over the others, its’ branches heavy with long strings of leaves reaching to a little pond at the base.

"This is the best spot for picnics,” she said, flopping onto the ground and patting the soft grass next to her.

Gil scratched the back of his neck as he looked around, unease growing in the pit of his stomach. “It’s getting kind of late–don’t you think we should go back?”

Anevka threw herself back, her red hair splaying around her face, contrasting with the dark green grass. “You know, you remind me of my brother.”

Gil sucked in a sharp breath. “Why would you say that?”

“Oh, you know–you’re both concerned with following the rules and being responsible.”

That’s how she saw him? Responsible? Gil mulled that over while Anevka continued to ramble about the garden and what having fun actually meant. He considered how it felt to be compared to Tarvek so easily and cluelessly.

As a kid, he probably would have puffed up with pride if someone thought he was like Tarvek who was smart and resourceful and brave, but what would Anevka think if she’d been on Castle Wulfenbach with them when they were skipping classes and sneaking around in restricted areas?

The thought made him smile–sure, Tarvek was always the voice of reason when they planned their adventures, but he never stopped them and came up with more than his own share of stupidity.

“What’s that grin for?” Anevka asked, breaking into his reverie.

Gil schooled his features. “You really think I’m like your brother?”

She cocked her head, considering the question. “No, I suppose not much–he’s way stuffier than you. He’s always studying and playing by the rules to get ahead. I can tell already that you’re a lot more fun–Tarvek would have never doodled during a meeting.”

Gil hoped his disappointment didn’t show too much.

Anevka didn’t seem to notice. “You’ll see when you meet him later. Come, sit with me.”

She patted the ground next to her, her expression way too innocent to be authentic–Gil didn’t like it. “We really should be getting back,” he said, taking a step towards to exit. “I don’t want to make the Baron mad.”

* * *

Violetta balanced on a branch in one of the great trees in the arboretum watching her cousin and the Baron's apprentice chat. Since she'd been following them, she'd learned his name was Gil, he was lying about being an orphan, had zero experience with girls, probably spent most of his life on Castle Wulfenbach by the awed way he stared at the foliage, and obviously already knew Tarvek even if Anevka seemed oblivious to that fact.

And he was surely keeping other secrets that Violetta was eager to discover. She was tired of people like Martellus always underestimating her. She could do this job--she could be a good Smoke Knight if they just let her try.

Down below, Gil took a step away from Anevka. Violetta swiveled to keep him in sight, her foot sliding from the edge of her branch.  The whole tree swayed and she scrambled for a better grip, cracking several twigs in the process. She finally steadied, holding her breath as Anevka looked around suspiciously then she got up, dusting off her skirt.

"Yeah, you're probably right; we should get out of here," she said, holding her hand out to Gil who reluctantly took it, following her out of Violetta's eyesight.

The girl slowly let out the breath with a groan. "I suck at this," she mumbled, tears filling her eyes while she quickly slid down the tree trunk. "Can't even spy on my own stupid cousin."

She gave herself a full minute to wallow then sniffled and wiped her eyes with the corner of her cloak. She couldn't keep following Gil--Anevka was on to her now--so she left through the opposite door into a darker, cooler corridor that wa only used in the summer months.

Consumed by her thoughts, Violetta almost missed the voices growing louder as she walked towards them. At the last second, she darted into a corner and used a technique to blend with the shadows, staying absolutely still without so much as blinking her eyes until the people passed.

She let out the breath she'd held too long and followed after the three older boys--Martellus; that oaf, Orrik; and one of the assistants brought by a distant uncle controlling a nearly non-existent kingdom in the north. She tiptoed behind them, darting between shadows, trying to keep up--all thoughts of Gil and Anevka fading from her mind at the mystery before her.

Somewhere in the back of her head, Tarvek's voice whispered that this is the kind of thing that would get her killed, but like the real boy, she ignored it as always--Tarvek never had any fun.

They took several turns and staircases, including a hidden one, making Violetta wonder how well Martellus knew the castle when he didn't live here full time--she barely even knew where they were and only did because of the scorch marks on the walls.

This hall led to several abandoned labs. Abandoned by people, at least. The accident that nearly took out a quarter of the wing released quite a few unruly monsters that wreaked havoc for days before they were forced back into the labs where they were left to rot--no one smart came over here anymore. So of course, Martellus was here; he was one of the biggest idiots Violetta knew, and too full of himself to know any better.

Eventually, she got close enough to catch their conversation while Martellus consulted a ring of keys in front of a very impressive oak door covered in more locks than seemed necessary. He was actually going to the labs--idiot.

"Martellus, where are we even going," Orrik whined as he leaned against the wall looking sleepy.

"It's a surprise," her cousin answered, finally finding the first key.

"I don't like surprises," said the other boy who looked a little older than Martellus--maybe in his early twenties and still pockmarked with acne that his scraggly beard couldn't hide.

Three more locks were undone followed by a steel bar across the entire door. "Relax Warner, will you?"

Both Orrik and Warner contained any other complaints as the last lock fell off and it took all of Martellus' strength to pry it open--they didn't look very happy about any of it. The door creaked open, and Martellus stepped aside to let the other two through.

Violetta needed to get through that door but there was no way she'd be able to open it on her own--she needed to think fast. She quickly pried free a chunk of battered wall and tossed down the hall, catching Martellus' attention.

As soon as his head shot up, she bolted for the door using another Smoke Knight technique that was supposed to shield her from view even up close. She'd only learned it a month ago and wasn't sure she could even do it correctly yet, but she skirted past her cousin and slid into the shadows of the room beyond where the other two boys were arguing softly.

Not seeing anything, Martellus closed the door, blanketing them in absolute darkness, causing Warner to squeak in surprise.

"I don't like the dark any more than I like surprises."

Martellus lit a match and pulled a candle from a shelf near the door.

"Oh, shut up," he commanded, shoving between the other two towards a dark set stairs at the far end of the room--these led to the labs in the bowels of the castle.

The three were silent as they descended which made it harder for Violetta to follow without being heard. When they reached the bottom, Martellus opened another heavy door that led to another staircase--this one only a few steps long. The complaining started up again as soon as they got to the bottom and realized the room was filled with over a foot of water.

"I don't like water," Warner muttered.

Martellus ignored him, marching through the room with purpose.

Violetta hurried to stay within sight of the dim candle but paused at the bottom of the stairs. She had no fear or general dislike of water, but this water had an oily gleam to it and smelled foul--like rotting eggs. The surrounding room showed the obvious signs of the devastation from the explosion and ensuing battle.

Chunks of walls and ceilings poked above the water and broken furniture floated in the boys' wake, but the lab tables along the edge of the room looked sturdy and intact if more than a little worn. Violetta stuck to these, hopping from table to table to stone blocks to barely stable shelves--anything to stay above the water and out of sight.

"What was that!" Orrik yelled suddenly. "Something touched my leg."

Warner glanced around at the mostly placid water. "Don't be ridiculous."

"No, really, I felt it." Orrik's voice continued to rise in pitch.

"You're imagining things--it's just water."

Violetta perched on a crooked chandelier as the boys argued beneath her, but her attention was on the water.

Martellus had stopped as well, spinning slowly to shed his light on the surrounding room. The water glistened green and purple but nothing moved. "Keep moving," he ordered, putting everyone in motion again.

Violetta swung the chandelier enough to hop to a beam hanging at an angle on the opposite wall then to an equally cockeyed shelf that nearly gave out under her weight.

The idiots were making enough noise not to notice her presence much to her relief. They continued through a heavy metal door blown nearly off its hinges into a bigger lab where the main explosion must have taken place by the nearly complete destruction of the contents--nothing was untouched by fire or left unbroken which left Violetta with a lot fewer choices when moving.

"There it is again," Orrik screeched, his voice echoing in the large space and causing everyone to freeze.

Martellus swung the candle in an arc around them showing placid water except where Orrik churned it up with his nervous dancing. "Knock it off, idiot--you're scaring Warner."

"I'm telling you there's something in the water."

Martellus growled in frustration. "I swear, you whine more than my little sister. Now get your heads in the game."

Warner still watched the water warily. "But I heard there were monsters under Sturmhalten, and we are most certainly under Sturmhalten."

"Why are we even down here, Tweedle?" asked Orrik. "I thought you said we were going to work on the plan."

Violetta's ears perked at this new information. A plan? What plan? What were these idiots up to way down here with the monsters other than being monsters themselves? Her mind swirled with intrigue but stayed alert enough for other clues.

"We are," Martellus said, his annoyance growing. "We just need one thing."

"What's that?" Orrik asked, inching closer to Martellus but never taking his eyes from the water.

Martellus fiddled with a dented and rusted cabinet in the corner until he pried open the door with a loud squeal of twisting metal. He pulled out a bottle of iridescent liquid with a triumphant smile stretching across his weasely face.

"And what's that?" asked Warner, peering over Orrik's shoulder to get a better look.

"Just something my great-uncle cooked up--right before he cooked himself," he said glancing around the destroyed lab with a chuckle.

He left the cabinet door hanging open and trudged back towards the stairs, Orrik and Warner muttering behind him. Violetta didn't need to know what was in the bottle to know it was bad news--it was made by someone in her family and locked in a lab destroyed by Madboy experiments and monsters.

What she did need to know was what they were planning on doing with it because her imagination ran wild with the possibilities including plagues and mind control. You just never knew with her family.

She quietly followed them back up the stairs, hiding in a dark corner while she figured out how to slip out without being seen which ended up not being a problem because as soon as Martellus shuffled the others out, he wheeled around and tore Violetta from the shadows.

"You just never learn, do you?"

"Damn," Orrik yelled from out in the hall, "look at the time, Tweedle."

That was enough to get Martellus' attention and give Violetta the seconds she needed to escape in a less violent method than she'd originally optioned for which would have probably led to one less future Blitzengaard heir.

She did a quick twist maneuver with a practiced ease that made her heart pound with glee. Before Martellus knew what was going on, she dropped from his grasp, grabbed the bottle from the pocket in his coat and darted out the door--all Martellus found was the broken remnants of a chair wrapped in a piece of tapestry with a dirty mop for a head.

"Violetta!"

She didn't stop to hear what curses her cousin threw at her--she knew she couldn't outpace him in a foot race which meant she needed to get sneaky. And fast.

[Part 5 ]

[waywardfacegarden]

Broken Souls

I’m trying to post this on Ao3 but I have tried to do it like 50 times and it doesn’t get posted, so. Okay. I’m gonna post it here.

This is the first chapter of a multi-fic to my friend @lesbiankankuro!!! I love you girl!! Happy Birthday!! You’re awesome!!

Summary: Who says soulmates stories have to be perfect? Who says everything will work out since the beginning? Who says it won't be hard and tough all the way until you finally meet them and after you meet them? Who says it will be easy?

Sasuke and Naruto. The not so conventional soulmates. The pretty boy, misterious, full of secrets, hide under couples of shadows; the favorite between the girls, prodigy and survivor of the prestigious Uchiha family and The 2007 Tragedy. And the fool, clumsy, clown of the classroom, dead-last. The newbie that came to town too late and that no one knows why. Full of secrets too, full of demons too.Sounds like a pretty unmatched pair, doesn't it?Their story is not perfect, not even near. But they're perfect for each other.

In a world where, in some way, the cosmic dust (the space matter, the one that composes you, the one that mixes with each fiber of your being), is impregnated like ink on your skin when another person cries because, inexplicably, the chemicals in your brain are connected to that other person, meet Sasuke. Meet Naruto.

The story of two broken souls who need each other to heal.

The story of two broken boys who find each other and fall in love.

Notes: Hey! First of all, this fanfic is dedicated to my friend Rav! She is totally amazing and today is her birthday! So if I can’t go and see her to give her a hug or something, at least I tried to write something! I love you, dipshit, you know! Thanks for everything you've done for me and I really hope you enjoy this! It's a long journey and I really don’t know if I'm doing this right, but I really tried! You know you are super special to me!

This originally started as a one-shot but, lucky me, it became too long and tedious to write in a single chapter, so I decided to expand it and write a multi-chapter! My first, in fact! I have everything planned and some scenes from other chapters written already, especially the last one, so I hope to finish it and update very soon! I don’t think it will be longer than 5 chapters. I hope so. However, the updates may not be as fast as I hope they are, because the school starts in a week and totally consumes me and I usually need a lot of time to write a single chapter. I worked hard in a week of holidays to be able to finish this alone. So, if I'm late, I apologize in advance and I hope you have patience! Thank you very much for understanding!

Like I said, it's my first fanfic of several chapters so I'm not sure what I'm doing with this. It is a soulmate au, like it says in the tags, a very unconventional one since the center of the story is that, but at the same time it’s not. If that makes any sense, hah. The fic will be more focused on how their relationship grows until they both realize that, in fact, they are soulmates in this crazy world. It's in my style (though I feel like is very different from my usual stuff) and probably very lazy and boring at first (and along until the end) but well! Here it is! And I hope you enjoy it!

Thank you for reading! Let me know your opinion in the comments!

(Sidenote: I have not written for a long time, so I am very rusty, sorry for the rustic and coarse writing style, I hope to improve as I continue.)

Clarifications: I have no idea how the Japanese educational system works, neither a school in Japan, and, although I know I could certainly have researched, I was more comfortable handling the system in America, since it is more familiar to me. I hope it doesn’t bother you.

The school cycles managed here are semi-annual, as in my school, and they cover from August to December and from February to the beginning of June (based on my school located in Mexico, I apologize if there are confusions).

The name of the Annual Konoha Tournament is "will of fire" in Japanese, but because my Japanese is terrible and I have no knowledge of it I used a translator. Correct me if there is an error, thank you.

Obviously Konoha doesn’t exist in real life, but I have decided that in this world Konoha exists and is a semi-Asian county located in some state of America after the agreement made in the "Civil War of Japan" and vs USA in the Second War World in 1945. (Obviously all this is a mixture of real story and fiction /more fiction/ but I hope it's not confusing for any of you!)

Madara’s death (who dies before Hashirama) according to wiki is still unknown and there are no official dates, but I needed it to be by that date, so it was the one I used (this can be confusing but you will all know what I’m talking about when you start reading!)

Excuse my vague knowledge of sports and martial arts too. I did what I could.

The huge amount of parallels with the canon is because I love doing that, heh. I hope it doesn’t bother you and I hope there is not much ooc around here! I really tried to make it as close as possible to their characterization in canon!

Any question about something that is not understandable is received! I'll gladly answer unless I know it's a spoiler! Thanks again for reading!Oh! And! Also! English is not my first language and this not beta-it, so. Sorry for any grammar mistakes guys! I tried my best!

Prologue.

Around the world, along with the time, there have been said and discussed endless things about the soulmates. It is talked about in science, mathematics, astronomy and its respective branches. Spiritually or even religiously. Is talked about energy, the universe, the cosmos. About atoms, chemicals, magnetism. How it is mathematically and scientifically impossible, even stupid. Is talked about angels and souls and reincarnations. About other worlds and parallel universes and particles. About other lives, past lives, cosmic or spiritual or astral connections. Is talked about the creation of the world. About God.

It is explained or refuted by crazy and gimmicky and outlandish and incoherent theories and ramblings. They shout and murmur arguments and essays and thousands of letters and facts and words and ideas.

The truth is, though, the concept of soulmates is controversial. Credible, not credible. Coherent, logical, inexplicable. Crazy, stupid, meaningless, wonderful.

It's all those things.

A soulmate is a crazy concept. Wild. Brilliant. Wonderful. Unbelievable.

But it exists.

In a world.

In this world.

In a world where, in some way, the cosmic dust (the space matter, the one that composes you, the one that mixes with each fiber of your being), is impregnated like ink on your skin when another person cries because, inexplicably, the chemicals in your brain are connected to that other person, the concept of soulmates is not impossible.

Unpredictable. Crazy. Inexplicable. Probably even ridiculous.

But possible.

.

Not everyone has one.

A soulmate.

Others have it but it died a long time ago. Years ago.

Others have it and it still is not born when they come into the world.

Others have two.

Sometimes, soulmates don’t like each other like that; but they work, they connect, in another way. They have a role in each other’s lives. They are attracted to each other and they turn and dance around for their whole life until they meet because they work like a magnetic field and powdered iron.

It's complicated.

It's not as easy as they paint it in the movies.

Comments fly and they become dust and travel and the world hears them.

“You don’t understand your soulmate all the time and it doesn’t work as you always think.” They say. “Sometimes it is not what you expect. Sometimes it is much more complicated than it seems. Sometimes they just don’t connect the way you would want them to. Sometimes life revolves and they die and you never get to see each other.” They whisper. They scream.

Sometimes you two never meet.

It's strange.

It's hard.

It's new and it turns your stomach in a knot and you feel your head spinning and you feel on the peak of a cliff about to fall.

It is much deeper than a simple word or concept or explanation allows you to see.

.

A soulmate is not exactly what you want. It is what you need.

It is the gift of the universe to you.

.

Naruto longs for a soulmate.

With all the problems.

With all the smiles and laughter.

With everything.

.

Ero Sennin tells him stories about soulmates all the time. He tells him how it feels to have one and how it feels the ink that bathes your skin. He shows him the flowers that fill his wrists and dance between his fingers. He tells him how his parents were kindred spirits and shows him pictures of them smiling side by side.

Naruto asks questions. Naruto observes.

Naruto looks at how he looks at Baa-chan with dreamy, dazzling and dancing eyes and doesn’t understand it at all. He looks at him as he smiles at her with soft edges and looks perhaps too long at the way she picks up her hair or the way she sits or the way she laughs. He looks at him while he keeps looking at her while she is not looking back.

He silently watches him as he pursues her and tries to make her laugh. He watches him try so hard.

He watches him smile brightly as he looks at his flowers.

And he looks while Baa-chan only looks sad when looking at hers.

Distant. Taciturn.

He looks and doesn’t understand it.

Until he does.

Years later.

.

The first time his soulmate cries, the sky does too.

The first time his skin fills with swirls of colors and the ink marks his right wrist with delicate strokes, the sky is screaming.

It rains outside. It rains like it hasn’t rained in months. The sky is dark and the clouds dance in the sky like giant cottons bathed in a pale gray. It's raining and Naruto is only five years old and the world revolves a little around him.

He can feel it burn on his skin. The way the ink burns and itches on the back of his wrist. It hurts a little. Not too much, but enough to notice. It leaves a stinging after the flower is outlined on his skin. The petals touching part of his hand, the center at the point where it connects with his arm.

It is bright blue.

It is pretty.

His soulmate should be very pretty too.

.

His first flower is a rose.

A blue rose.

.

His knees sting a little when he falls into the ground. There are tears that threaten to fall on the edge of his eyes, and everything looks very blurry, but Naruto rubs his small fist hard on his eyelids and forces himself not to let them fall. He pushes himself to his feet and two seconds later there is a foot that is pushing him back towards the ground.

There is laughter around him and the children say cruel things as they kick the dirt out of the yard in his face, in his eyes.

Everything is very blurry. And it hurts. On his chest, on the trail of blood that falls on his knees. But more than anything, he is angry.

Naruto screams back, Naruto screams back as they laugh at him, but the others don’t listen to it. He screams, the anger bubbling in the back of his throat, because it bothers him, because it's unfair, and because he's going to kick everybody's ass, they're going to see, he's going to—

They laugh at him.

They laugh and laugh and laugh and the laughter echoes inside the walls of his mind and it hurts.

It hurts, and it bothers him that it hurts.

He keeps screaming even when the kids have left, with their mocking smiles and their faces of disgust and their eyes that reject him, that judge him, that consume him.

And it hurts, but it is more anger (that burns, that ravages everything inside of him) than pain.

He clenches his fists, he stands up. The kids are no longer there but his face still has dirt and the warm blood continues to slide slowly below his knees.

Adults who walk around send him harsh, disgusted looks over their shoulders, as if he were something unpleasant in the middle of their path.

They don’t help him.

They never do.

And he comes home with a new scratch and a new bruise and more pain and anger that makes a hole in his chest and rumbles throughout his body. And there is the angry look on Baa-chan’s face, not with him, but with others, dying in concern as she carefully cleans his wounds. There is Ero-sennin again, trying to smile without the smile reaching his eyes.

And it happens again.

And again and again and again and again.

.

For a long time, Naruto doesn’t understand why everyone looks at him that way. With disdain, with mockery, with disgust.

He doesn’t understand why they hate him.

He didn’t do anything, did he?

For a long time, Naruto feels angry. Feels pain.

.

The world is hard. It makes you fall and it drags you on your feet a couple of times.

Naruto knows it since an early age. He savors it in his mouth.

But if there is something that Baa-chan and Ero-sennin have taught him, if there is something that his own spirit has taught him, it is to keep his head held high. It is to resist breaking, even when the world is breaking you with everything it has to push you down.

So he does it. He gets up again and fights back and doesn’t cry in front of others, even if it hurts.

Over time, he also stops crying in solitude.

Over time, he learns to not feel so alone. He learns to never give up.

.

The second flower appears in his skin when he’s six years old. It is painted on his left arm this time, just right in the inner elbow.

It is also blue.

It is also beautiful.

.

There is a shower, a spate of flowers a few months after he’s seven years old.

On his back, on his stomach, on his shoulders, on one of his collarbones.

They are all blue. Of different sizes, different petals, different pain.

They are all beautiful and pretty too.

.

The shower of flowers stops when he turns eight.

No flower even shows up again.

Not in weeks, not in months, not in years.

Until it does again.

When he’s fifteen.

.

.

.

.

1.

Looking back, Sasuke always had something that attracted Naruto in an almost inexplicable way. Whether it was in a negative or positive way, there was always something about him that caught Naruto's attention as the magnet attracted the metal. Since the beginning. And looking back again, Naruto seemed to attract Sasuke somehow as well. Both circulating and dancing around each other even without the other knowing, consciously and unconsciously.

So maybe it's not that weird. Maybe a part of him always knew and the other was denying it.

.

.

"Baka, that's my seat!" When Naruto looks up, with his chin still resting on his crossed arms in the desk, he meets some familiar, pretty, big green eyes and soft pink hair falling in waves behind thin shoulders.

"Sakura!" He can hear the tinge of hope, happy and sparkling, tinting his own voice as he raises his head to where she is crouching. Her green eyes move with annoyance towards him and her crossed arms tighten on her chest as she begins to rattle the ground with one of her feet. It's an habit she has when she's irritated, Naruto knows it.

"I said, you're in my seat, baka, move."

Naruto is about to answer about how beautiful she looks with that new ribbon when a shrill voice echoes behind them.

"Excuse me, did I hear well? Did you say that this is your seat? It seems that your big forehead is finally affecting you, Sakura, because I think that's my seat."

Sakura raises her eyes to where the blonde girl looks at her with a mocking smile behind him. Naruto can see the murderous aura that begins to emerge in wisps of steam out of her; one of her strands of pink hair falling carelessly over her face. His long fingers twitch in fists at the sides of her body and Naruto hears her growl "Ino" in a tone that reminds him of long nails making contact when sweeping over a chalk board and (as much as he did not want to compare the girl of his dreams with an animal) probably to the low growl that a wolf or lion makes when it has located its prey (or in other words: strident, dangerous, a little alarming) before leaning over Naruto's head and clash her forehead with the other girl’s, who continues smiling, without flinching in the least.

"This is my seat, Ino-pig."

"I don’t see your name written on it."

It's amazing how one's voice can sound so annoying and the other so sparkling. Ino seems to enjoy every time she makes Sakura angry. She even seems happier now that she has a smoking Sakura a centimeter from her face. Her blue eyes shine amused.

"Ugh," Sakura groans. "You only want it because I want it! What is your problem?"

Ino does not take her eyes off of her. Her smile does not waver, not even a little, but it takes a more crooked turn when she says:

"You only want it because Sasuke is next to it."

At the mention of the bastard, Naruto collapses a little on his seat. Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke. Why does everything have to do with him? Why would someone want to sit next to him? Why does Sakura want to sit next to him? What does everyone see in him?

"Hey! If they are fighting for the place next to Sasuke, then I got here first, so technically..." begins to say a girl whom Naruto does not remember her name.

"I arrived before you! The place next to Sasuke is mine then!"

Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke.

What the hell do the girls see in him?

Naruto keeps thinking, annoyed, and doesn’t realize that he has stood up and is grunting inconsistencies between his teeth until Sasuke's dark eyes look straight at him.

Huh? Why is him so close? When did he get there? Why is he in front of Sasuke's seat so suddenly? When did he stand up?

Stupid Sasuke. It makes his brain stop working well.

"Any problem, dobe?"

The way he says the nickname is almost condescending, and that's another problem (another, besides his stupid hair with the shape of a duck tail and his stupid pretty-boy-face and his stupid eyes that are always looking at you like he’s better than you and his countless list of stupid things in which, in fact, he was better than him, the bastard), Sasuke likes to provoke him. He likes to make him angry. For some reason. What is, if not, the explanation that he is always calling him silly nicknames and showing off that he is better than him in everything? (Because yes, he does show off that he is better than him. Someone can’t be that perfect at everything and not expect that the worst in class to notice and humiliate himself in front of everyone. Sasuke had to be winning in everything in order to make him feel bad, is obvious.)

"Teme..." he growls, hands hard on his desk as he leans towards him. He challenges him with his eyes. He does not even know what he's exactly challenging him to, but he must be challenging something, right? That's what rivals do. And Sasuke is Naruto's rival self-proclaimed by Naruto himself, so yes, he must be challenging him to something, whatever it is.

But of course, Sasuke doesn’t even back up a bit. Not an inch, not a millimeter, and his eyes are implacable, inflexible, untamable. They don’t give in or falter or hesitate; fixed on him as if they want to engrave something there where they look.

"Naruto! Stop looking at Sasuke like that!"

"Baka! Get away from him!"

"Teach him a lesson, Sasuke!"

Naruto barely registers the voices that scream and begin to explode around him when they realize the fight of looks in which they are. For some reason, the only thing he can focus on is Sasuke and the feeling that begins to flow through his veins, through his skin. It happens every time he has to compete with the bastard. It's strange. In addition to the irritation and annoyance and anger that he makes him feel... Sasuke also lights that other thing inside of him. The adrenaline. Raw and hot that begins to bubble inside of him. That makes him want to fight and compete with him all the time.

But then. Then it happens.

The detonator.

"Oh, I'm sorry, did I hit you?"

Pulling the trigger.

Everything stops. Because Sasuke is right in front of him and Naruto moves so fast until he closes the small distance between them and collides with him.

And they kiss.

It lasts a very short time (although little more than acceptable, but he was surprised, okay? Give him a break) and is clumsy and without technique and Sasuke's lips are cracked against his own (points for getting something in which he is not perfect, points less for the way he got it). You can see his eyes expand a fraction before returning to his normal size, and his lashes flap, long, of the color of ink, above his pale eyelids. His skin is very pale.

The room is silent. Cloudy silence.

The kind of silence that is there before a storm breaks out.

The kind of calm is there before a hurricane.

And there is a hurricane.

The moment they manage to react, the moment Naruto manages to make his brain work again and break back (too fast, too abrupt. No lying, his neck actually cracks a bit), everything is still, as if any sudden movement can break the fragile ice on which they hang.

Sasuke looks at him.

He does not seem angry or annoyed or irritated or happy or... nothing.

He just looks at him. Stares at him.

And Naruto swears he seems a bit surprised, even confused, but before he can discern what might be going through his head, the murderous aura that he felt emanate from Sakura's pores a few moments ago comes back in waves much stronger and falls straight on him. His skin bristles.

Looking to the side, a group of girls are looking at him as if they want to tear off every limb of his body and eat it later.

Sakura is in the center.

The warning of danger that begins to ring loudly in his brain is enough to break— anything strange that was there before.

"Naruto! I should have been Sasuke's first kiss!"

Oh no.

And for some reason, that is just the moment when things start to change.

.

Don’t misunderstand. Sasuke was already an annoying, smug bastard with a stupid hairstyle before the kiss, but now Naruto feels that weird thing in his stomach every time he is too close to him.

Is annoying.

It makes him more angry.

He supposes that it is disgust in some way, because that kiss was Sakura's. Sasuke had no right to take it.

But whatever it is, whatever it was, Sasuke is his first kiss, and that irritates him (maybe much more than it should) a lot.

Sasuke Uchiha is his first kiss.

Just thinking about it stirs his stomach strangely.

God damn.

Sasuke is already better than him in everything (in the classes, in P.E., in the art club, the martial arts club, the literature club… even his eyesight is better, his stupid eyes that can see the letters of the poster on the other side of the soccer field), even if it costs him and it bothers him to admit it.

Did he also have to take this from him?

That bastard.

.

.

Iruka sensei hates him.

It's a fact, and it hurts, because Naruto believed that Iruka was one of the few teachers who really treated him well and even appreciated him. (He even took him to lunch at Ichiraku the first time he got a B on one exam. No one teacher had ever done that except him.)

Naruto trusted him.

He was wrong.

It's not like that. Iruka sensei hates him, and the day Naruto realizes it is the day when Iruka sensei commits the greatest possible betrayal.

The day he assigns the teams for the final science project of that year. The project that is worth 90% of his final grade and the project that, if he doesn’t pass with at least a C, he will have to repeat the school year.

Yes, the tragic day when Iruka sensei betrays his trust.

"... Team Six is​​..." He is saying, with his soothing voice echoing in the room, while Naruto thinks, still without knowing about the utter betrayal, "Awesome! He hasn’t named Sakura-chan yet, so he can still put me on the same team as her. I hope I’m with her. Really! With her and... well, it doesn’t really matter, as long as is not Sasuke."

"… Team seven is Uzumaki Naruto," he continues, breaking Naruto's thoughts for a moment. Hope bubbles within him and then, "... Haruno Sakura ..." Yes! Believe it! Naruto raises his hands in his seat while Sakura's head falls. Naruto doesn’t pay attention to it even if she is in front of him because he is busy celebrating in his head. Iruka sensei is the best! Iruka sensei loves me! Iruka sensei is...! (wait for it) "... And Uchiha Sasuke." (There it is, betrayal.) Iruka sensei hates me! He thinks, as he deflates in his seat, while Sakura jumps in front of him.

"Yes! In your face Ino!" She shouts, pointing a finger at the girl who just looks at her with crossed arms and rolls her eyes.

Iruka sensei gestures for Sakura to sit down. She obeys, and he is about to continue naming the teams, but Naruto gets up from his seat and points an accusing finger at the boy who seems as imperturbable as ever, with his hands joined in front of his mouth in an annoying habit that he has.

The dark eyes look at him out of the corner of his eye and his eyebrow raises a little, and that makes Naruto even more irritate.

"Naruto..."

"Iruka sensei!" He interrupts. "Why do I have to be on the same team with a liver like him?!"

Immediately, before the professor can silence them, the comments begin to float around him.

"Liver?"

"He doesn’t even know how to insult properly."

"I would like to eat liver. The one my mom prepares is..."

"How troublesome."

"What a fool he is."

"Sasuke doesn’t deserve to be on the same team as him."

"Tch."

Iruka seems about to collapse when he rubs the temples of his head with one hand and asks for silence.

"Naruto," he says, in a tone of sermon-activated, (as if he was not the one to blame for Naruto fair complains), "Sasuke had the best grade the last partial, and you had the worst..." there are giggles around him when he says, but Iruka continues anyway, "... I did it like that so it would be balanced."

Naruto stays there, gaping before dropping into his seat again, resigned. Growling low in his throat, complaining about stupid pretty boys with better grades than him.

So yes, Iruka sensei hates him. Because there's no way he can appreciate Naruto and put him on the same team as him. It's like putting Sakura and Ino together. It’s just wrong in every single possible way.

.

.

Sasuke, Sakura and he meet for the first time in the school library at five in the afternoon, two days after Iruka announced the teams, to start working on their science project.

Sakura is already sitting there when Naruto comes in (he recognizes her shiny hair in an instant), in a chair on the table next to the shelf with the letter F and the huge window on one side of the wall. She has her hair pulled back in a cherry-colored ribbon and a pink dress that matches her hair. His bright green eyes look up from the thick book she is reading when she hears the footsteps approaching.

There is no trace of Sasuke.

Naruto waves at her. She frowns.

"Saku..."

"You're late," she says, squeezing her fingers into the book she holds while Naruto drops into the chair next to her.

He wrinkles his nose.

"Sasuke is not here either!" Naruto says, indignant, because it's true. "I arrived…!"

"Silence!" The librarian shouts at him from the space she peeks out in counter. The voice is strong and authoritative. Naruto shrugs back in his seat.

"... earlier." He completes, in a quieter voice, though he still has a frown on his face.

Sakura rolls her eyes. "Sasuke is not late, he's just..."

"Did you find what I asked for, Sakura?" Interrupts a familiar voice behind him. Naruto turns around to stick out his tongue, but Sasuke ignores him anyway with not more than a little frown.

Sakura stutters a little.

"I— uh— I was looking for it but..."

"It's okay." Sasuke sits in the other chair and opens the book he's carrying in his hands. He pushes it a little towards the center so that his two classmates can see it.

The title “How to make an electromagnet?” is read with cursive letters in the cover. Naruto grimaces. Too complicated. How does Sasuke expect him to pass if he doesn’t even understand what they're supposed to do?

"I was explaining to Sakura that as we are seeing atmospheric or natural phenomena the teacher asked for an experiment on that. I thought maybe..."

"Magnets are not natural things! I'm not that stupid!"

"Dobe..."

"Don’t interrupt Sasuke, Naruto!"

"But…!"

"Silence!" Is heard on the other side of the room.

Sakura and Naruto shrink, Sasuke grimaces.

"As I was saying, I was thinking that we could make a tornado of fog or sand in a container. It is not as complicated as it seems, but for that we need to make an electromagnet first. Sakura thought it was okay, but..."

"You're not even asking for my opinion!"

"Lower your voice, baka, and stop arguing with Sasuke." Sakura hisses.

Sasuke pulls his lips to the side. Frowns.  He looks irritated. "Hn. It's fine, dobe, what..."

"Don’t call me that! I'm not a loser! You think I’m one but I’m not!"

"Naruto! Lower your voice!"

"But Sakura, he..."

"Just say your idea, baka, he just said he’s going to listen to it. Even if it's stupid," she says, sounding irritated.

Sasuke glances at her.

Naruto grimaces.

"Well, wouldn’t it be easier to make just a volcano or something?"

"That idea is stupid, Naruto. Stop being so useless."

Naruto collapses a little on the table. His voice comes out as a hurt mutter when he speaks. "That hurts, Sakura-chan..."

"Well, it's the truth!" She says, with the same tinge of irritation bathing the edge of her voice.

Sasuke frowns. He looks at Sakura as if he wanted to say something to her, but he squeezes his lips and looks at Naruto instead.

"That idea is very basic, dobe. Is probably most in the classroom would do it."

"So what? What really matters is that we do the best one, not how many there are! You'll see, Uzumaki Naruto will make the best volcano that...!"

"Ugh, Naruto, you're so loud," Sakura complains. "Why do you never listen to Sasuke-kun? He…"

Naruto collapses back in the seat. Sasuke actually seems a little annoyed at the way Sakura starts talking too sweet and squeaky and leans towards him.

"Sakura, that's enough, you're also as annoying as he is. Probably more." He says, in an irritated tone.

She recoils from where she is clinging into his arm, her lips twisted down, her cheeks turning red. If it was not because her eyes are shining as if she were about to cry and her expression was so hurt, Naruto would be or laughing at how the Great Awesome Sasuke Uchiha lost his control and reacted like an common irritated teenager or complaining because he just said he was annoying (not as if it's something new for Naruto, he knows that Sasuke thinks he's annoying anyway, they have a lot of clubs together and every time Naruto calls him a bastard or an idiot, Sasuke responds with dobe or clumsy or irritating or, worst of all, one which he doesn’t even know what it means, usuratonkachi, what kind of people say such long insults?), but he will not do either of them because Sakura is about to cry.

"Bastard..." he growls, as he watches Sakura starting to cry. Sasuke raises an eyebrow at him, "what kind of...!"

Before he can throw himself at him, there is something holding him from behind. He starts throwing fists in the air trying to break free. Sasuke keeps looking at him as if he expected him to suddenly get free and start attacking him. Sakura wipes her eyes, she looks embarrassed, and immediately says:

"Sorry, Naruto is..." She starts, but something in the lady's face must stop her, because she closes her lips and bends her head in apology.

"I want you three out of the library."

"But...!" Naruto starts to protest.

"Out."

Sasuke and Sakura collect their things while the librarian takes Naruto's backpack with one hand and drags him with the other.

"Look what you did, Naruto!" Sakura shouts, when they are already outside.

"He started it!"

"Hn."

"Bastard!"

"Stop being so vulgar, Naruto!"

.

Their first time as a team does not start very well.

.

That same afternoon, while the shower water runs through his skin and Naruto can carefully inspect every corner of his body, he realizes something.

Sakura cried that same day.

Sakura cried that same day and Naruto doesn’t have any new flowers painted on her skin.

Sakura is not her soulmate.

It hurts a little more than it should.

.

.

The next day, Ino doesn’t stop looking at Sakura throughout the class. It's strange. In a way, it's like she knows what happened. Naruto wonders if Sakura talked to her about it.

He watches her carefully all day anyway, because he doesn’t know his intentions and Sakura has cried just yesterday, she doesn’t need someone else being rude to her.

Sakura may not be her soulmate, but Naruto still likes her, a lot, and he will do anything to keep her away from feeling bad. He knows that, from the bottom of his heart.

.

That same afternoon, they meet again in the library.

They argue again.

Sakura doesn’t cry this time, but Sasuke and Naruto argue so loudly that the people at other tables begin to shut them up. (More like Naruto screaming and Sasuke saying "hn" every time, which irritates him even more).

They are taken out of the library again.

.

.

The third time, they decide to start doing the work outside the library this time, instead of inside.

It makes things improves a little. At least this time they are already outside.

.

.

March arrives and with it comes the beautiful and fresh spring and, with it, the famous annual event of Konoha: The Martial Arts Demonstration Tournament "火 の 意志". Name inspired by the spirit and soul with which the co-founders of Konoha (and also founders of the event) worked, Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha.

The Academy, where he studies, is well known for its high scores and for the biggest number of first places won of all the schools that participate in the event at a state level.

Each year, the event is recorded and televised by ESPN and other channels and sports chains on April 16, in honor of the day one of the founders died. It is seen and known throughout the country, broadcast even on several foreign channels. It is an important event where students of second and third and last grade usually participate in order to obtain scholarships or be more recognized in the industry of this type of sports.

Naruto knows that his godfather Jiraiya participated in Japan's famous Civil War when he was younger, before starting with his trivial and stereotypical saga of adult novels (no, Tsunade, it's not cheap and denigrating pornography, it's high class literature with scenes that explore sexuality openly) just like his parents in their last years before moving to America. He was a trained ninja who fought against and beside wise samurai who trained him hard. It's something that Naruto always aspired to be when he was a child and Ero-Sennin told him stories of his adventures and his amazing, big deeds and feats with Baa-chan and the old man who likes snakes. The three of them were (and are) literally legends who fought on the fronts and saw the best and worst things in the war. Known as classic war heroes: a talented young man with deadly skills, knowledge of someone who you would think has lived a hundred years, strategic, a little cruel, sinister and mysterious; a diplomat, beautiful, incredibly strong and intelligent kunoichi with the most impressive medical knowledge and skills; and finally a kind and charismatic young man, famous among women, strong and clever and cunning. Peace symbols known among all clans. The three born leaders. The three forts. The Big Three. Veterans. Survivors. Now a successful businessman, the head running behind the Department of Hospitals all around the state and a famous writer. His own father was a student of Ero-Sennin and was known as The Yellow Flash since his very early beginnings for his speed, and fast strategic plans that guided his side to victory in the last years of war. His mother, Kushina, was known as well as the "Red Hot-Blooded Habanero". She was a general of troops; she was intense, passionate, impulsive, strong and temperamental, along with a lot of other things. She had a record of battles won as well.

In other words, Naruto carries it in his blood. The action. The passion for Martial Arts. He always enjoyed watching the tournament on television, even from a very young age, and since he moved to Konoha last year he has been training hard at the martial arts club for it.

Being born from the coolest people doesn’t mean that he was born with the skills, though, even if he had the blood and the potential. Naruto is clumsy and absent-minded and lose focus very fast. But he is more determined than everyone in his class. He’s stubborn and strong and smarter than he is given credit for. Since the beginning, he has trained harder than anyone to improve. To prove himself. To prove that he can be better than everyone, even Sasuke. And from being absolutely lousy, he feels he has an opportunity to be selected in the tournament this time.

Usually, first-year students are considered novices, and because of that, they are not allowed to participate, but this year is the 100th anniversary, and (as in the previous year) they will make an exception if they are good enough to be qualified in the internal preliminaries.

Naruto seriously wants to take the opportunity.

Last year he was a novice, he was new, and his technique was fatal, but now he has improved a lot.

He feels ready for it.

So when his eccentric professor in a too-flashy green leotard passes them a list at the club that afternoon to sign up those who want to be in the preliminaries, Naruto does not hesitate a second to write down his name. His careless calligraphy is just below the neat, clean handwriting that paints the name "Sasuke Uchiha." Hah.

After the class is over, the teacher reads the names that are written on the list and makes them stay a moment later to give them a motivational speech. He gives them a thumb up and speaks too loudly while there are tears in his eyes and gives a speech about the "passionate and flourishing youth of Konoha". Naruto doesn’t understand most of what he says, but he appreciates it.

He feels motivated, in fact.

However, things go awry.

As he is leaving the gym, he can hear the annoying, noisy and scandalous voice of the dirty, careless, dog-loving Kiba Inuzuka barking (yes, barking) derisively:

"So the loser decided to sign up? You're stupider than I thought, Uzumaki."

Naruto clenches his fists as he turns to face him.

"I'm going to kick your ass, dog's breath!"

Kiba smiles with his sharp teeth and mocks him. "If you go against me, you're going to wish that you never wrote your name on that thing." He says, and laughs. He turns around before Naruto can even answer, and Naruto clenches his fists and feels his anger boil inside of him.

"I’ll show you how wrong you are!" He shouts.

Kiba laughs again, without turning around, and makes a sign in the air with his hand, as if he is belittling Naruto's threat, as if he didn’t give a damn. It makes Naruto boil even more. "You’ll see!" He roars. He turns around and looks at some of his teammates, including Sasuke Uchiha watching. "All of you!" He shouts. "And you too, bastard! Even more than everyone here! I will kick your ass!" He threats, pointing his finger and pressing the tip into his chest. Sasuke doesn’t back down at all, (no surprise), even if Naruto's face is very close to his. His eyes look down at Naruto's finger, and then they go up to look at him straight in the eyes. He raises an eyebrow. His mouth curves a bit.

"Tch. All right, moron." He says, as if Naruto’s words were nothing.

Naruto frowns. Why do they all act as if his threats were empty? Like they didn’t care at all? Like he couldn’t...?

"All right." Naruto says.

The half-smile of the bastard only twists a little. "Hn."

If Naruto didn’t know him well, if Naruto didn’t know how much of an idiot he is... The way he looks at him... Sasuke almost seems to be paying attention to him. He almost seems to accept Naruto's threat. He almost seems... Like he’s defying him too. Huh.

"I’ll show you all!"

And with that, Naruto walks away down the hall.

Conversations explode even before he takes two steps.

"You cannot be in the same place without fighting for two minutes?"

"Tch. How troublesome."

"Shikamaru, can we go to the barbecue on the way out? Mom gave me money to ..."

Naruto boils.

I'll teach you. I’ll show you. You all will see.

.

.

The next time they meet after the announcement of the tournament, Sakura can’t attend. "An event from her mother," she says, looking a little embarrassed as she clutches her hands shyly and says it more to Sasuke than Naruto.

Since they have a late martial arts club that afternoon, they decide to stay two hours in the gym after school.

Their work is still a disaster, but at least they have agreed on the project. It will be the tornado of fog. Naruto has reluctantly agreed with many of the points that Sasuke mentioned. And Sakura agreed with him since the beginning.

As bad as the bastard is, and as much as he pisses him off, he's actually good at organizing. For some reason, he knows Naruto better than he thought and gives him tasks that are complex but simple to perform for him. Or simpler than other tasks would be at least.

Sakura, on the other hand, is an innate and good researcher to get materials from different sources, and Sasuke has assigned her many tasks that she has successfully accomplished.

It isn’t finished, nor even close to completion, but they still have time. So things at least have a beginning.

They don’t talk a lot. Sasuke is sitting cross-legged on the first step of the bleachers, buried in a thick-volume book called Science for Beginners and taking notes from time to time in a notebook that he has by his side. He bites the tip of the pencil between his teeth, rotates it between his fingers. His hair falls on his forehead. He is silent. And Naruto is too busy doing... his part, to be talking. It’s not like he’s too distracted seeing him, of course not. Why would he do that? Because Sasuke Uchiha actually does something human and bites his pencil? Pfft. No.

They are alone in the huge gym, with the murmur of the voices of the corridors around them and the echo of the sole of Naruto's shoes striking the floor while he is in charge of reading the chapter that Sasuke told him. They are alone; probably less than one meter away from the other when there is too much space in the gym.

They are alone and it is... much less... chaotic than Naruto thought it would be. Of what probably his whole class thought it would be. And it's not exactly nice, but not unpleasant either. It's at a neutral point, he guesses. Somehow, Naruto thinks, he must have gotten used to Sasuke's company after all those afternoons outside the library, because Naruto doesn’t feel like fighting so much with him this time. Because the silence that surrounds them is almost soothing.

"Hey, teme." He says as he turns and rests his feet on the second step, his head hanging upside down to the floor.

Sasuke looks up from where he has his head stuck in the pages of the book, and the black, long fringes at the sides of his face fall delicately on his cheekbones.

Naruto drops the book he's reading on his stomach and nibbles at the nourishing bar with chocolate chips that, in fact, doesn’t taste as bad as he thought it would (in fact, it's very sweet), and that Sasuke gave him at the beginning of the session because, yes, dobe, you need to eat something so you can work better and don’t fall behind; and, I’m sure you didn’t even have breakfast, did you?

Let Sasuke Uchiha be the mother hen type of friend. Huh. Who would have guessed. Not that they are friends or anything. He just tolerates him more. Just that. That’s all.

Bastard, do you think you can tell Naruto Uzumaki what to do? If the bar didn’t taste so good, I would not even have touched it to begin with.

"Dobe. Are you going to tell me something or...?"

Right.

"Do you think we will have to fight each other on the preliminaries?" He doesn’t know why, but the question has been spinning around in his head. The sole idea makes him excited.

Sasuke's mouth twists a little. He raises his eyebrow. "I don’t know." Then he adds, in a tone that sounds a lot like a mockery. "Why? Are you scared of me?"

Naruto snorts, throws his arms in the air. "Of course not. If anything happens and we actually fight, I'll sweep the floor with your stupid mop hair, you cocky bastard."

Sasuke raises his other eyebrow. "I thought it was a duck's tail."

"It can be both."

"Hn."

"Anyway, if we face it, it's obvious that I'm going to win. And afterwards, you'll have to admit that I'm better than you in every possible way. Because I am. And then, the whole school will have to do it, because Uzumaki Naruto has just got left the famous Uchiha Sasuke out of competition. And…"

Sasuke snorts. "Famous? I didn’t know you held me in such high esteem."

Naruto frowns as he bites the bar. He mumbles between his teeth, "Cocky bastard."

And then Sasuke Uchiha smiles (rather, smirks, but still) and says something that, somehow, goes inside Naruto's brain and breaks it.

"Good." He says, ignoring Naruto's insult, and as if he's not just going to say the thing that's going to put Naruto’s stomach up to jump a lot, later. "Whatever it is, I just want to know if I’m strong enough or not. To know the answer, I really want to fight the strongest ones. I've seen you train lately. The truth is, I want to fight you too."

Holy.

Ramen.

Naruto blinks as his eyes focus on the ceiling. His mouth hangs a little open even before he realizes it.

Does that mean that Sasuke recognizes him as a rival, that Sasuke Uchiha believes he is strong enough and worthy of fighting with him?

For some reason, that fills him with happiness from the tip of his feet to the tip of his head.

He doesn’t stop smiling after that for a long time.

.

.

"Kiba Inuzuka vs. Naruto Uzumaki" is written on the printed sheet stuck on the door of the gym, a week before the preliminaries, just below "Shino Aburame vs. Sasuke Uchiha".

That explains the disdainful smile that Kiba gave him this morning.

Kiba is strong, he is very strong, and Naruto knows it.

"I'm going to kick your ass, dog's breath!"

But Naruto Uzumaki never goes back on his word. He’ll show him.

He’ll show everyone.

It is a promise.

.

.

He trains. Hard. For a long time. In the evenings. Every day. In the mornings on weekends. He strives. More than anyone.

"I want to fight you too." Sasuke's voice echoes in his head, over and over and over and over again.

For some reason, it gives him more energy and strength to continue.

.

.

Three days before the preliminaries, when Naruto is arriving at their usual table outside the library, Sasuke and Sakura are already there. Which is not very strange or unusual, but this time, Sasuke and Sakura are talking, and it seems to be about something important.

Sasuke looks serious, and Sakura looks embarrassed. At least, she is blushing.

Are they talking about something romantic?

Naruto's heart rolls over in his chest. In a bad way.

On the other hand, Sakura always blushes when she's with Sasuke, so... It can't be... She... They can't... That is...

Naruto's heart rumbles in his chest. Hard. And it hurts more with each step he takes.

However, the pain doesn't last that long, because now that he remembers it, Sakura had that exactly same expression when she was about to cry the previous time that Sasuke told her she was annoying.

Holy... Naruto swears over all the delicious ramen in the world that if Sasuke makes her cry again he will...

"Oh, Naruto, hi!" Sakura says, her green eyes focusing on his.

Sasuke goes silent immediately.

Naruto looks at him. Then at Sakura. And back. And back.

"Is everything okay?" He asks, and Sakura smiles at her, almost shy, almost embarrassed.

"Oh, yes, of course, I... Sasuke and I were just talking about the advantages of using a new material in the fan holder that the device will have. You know, because the other material can get wet with the fog and ruin the project."

Naruto frowns. "Okay," he says, as if it isn't.

She smiles wider. "Seriously, thanks for worrying Naruto, but everything is fine."

Everything is fine.

Okay.

Okay, everything is fine. He will believe her. For this time.

.

.

Two days before the preliminaries, a miracle happens, because when it is five o'clock in the afternoon and Naruto starts putting his things back in his backpack to finally leave to his home, Sakura turns to him, him, Uzumaki Naruto, not Sasuke, and says:

"Hey, Naruto, do you think we can go home together? It's okay if you can't, but I've seen that you take the same path as me, so until we deviate, it would be fine if we go together, don't you think?"

Naruto stops, his science notebook half way into his backpack, and turns to see her. He blinks.

"Really?" He says, grinning. He is sure that his eyes are shining too.

Sakura smiles, her eyes soft. "Yes, really," she says, while nodding.

When they start walking, she seems like she wants to say something to him, but she stops and lets Naruto speak instead. She is friendly and listens to the conversation and asks questions from time to time, although she doesn't talk that much. She smiles, many times, but she seems a little distant, nervous.

Naruto wonders if something happened. Maybe.

Maybe not.

Sakura does not mention anything, and even if he wants to ask about it, he doesn't. He gives her space. If she really has something she needs to say, she will do it. When she feels good or comfortable enough to.

.

The next day, at the end of their work session, Sakura wishes both of them good luck for tomorrow.

The preliminaries are exclusively for members of the school, of all grades, and only those who are in the club can participate in them, but those who want to go and watch can do it if the date doesn't interrupt with their class schedule. Sakura tells them that she is going to go and support them both. She mentions that they should all go to the gym together, to give each other mutual support, or whatever. It's a bit strange, and Naruto thinks that maybe she's just trying to be nice when she smiles and points out how they're starting to work better together and how they are more united and bonded with one another, and how going the three of them would help both of them to give themselves a sense of tranquility and familiarity before the start of the fight.

He thinks she's decorating things to makes them look better than they are, but she's partially right. They have fallen into a routine, they know each other better. None of the three discuss as much as before. Even before Sakura began to behave more kindly around him, she didn't shouted at him as much as before anymore, she was calmer around him. Maybe she's right. Maybe is better if all the three of them go together. Maybe his nerves would calm down a bit.

Naruto and Sasuke look at each other for a second, and then nod.

Yes, it should be a good idea.

She smiles brighter at their answer.

.

They meet in the hallway at eight in the morning, half an hour before the preliminaries start. Sasuke is already there, dressed and leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. His eyes are closed. Naruto thinks he may be trying to focus himself. Maybe he's nervous.

He knows he is. But more than nervous, he is anxious. He's going to totally kick Kiba's ass, he made a promise. Believe it!

He's about to greet Sasuke when he hears Sakura coming. She arrives almost at the same time as him and runs to catch up with him. She has the red ribbon in her hair again and pretty pink-chewing-gum shoes. Naruto smiles at her and waves a hand when he sees her running towards him.

"Hey!" She greets them when she gets where they are. "How are you, nervous?"

Sasuke doesn't open his eyes from his position on the wall.

Naruto laughs at the question.

"Hn."

"Pfft. Of course not. I am anxious! I'm going to so kick dog's breath's ass!"

Sakura beams. "All right! It looks like you two prepared yourselves a lot! I'm sure you both will win!"

Naruto smiles, nods, raises his fist in the air and is about to say something really cool when...

"Sakura!"

That happens.

A boy with thick eyebrows, a bowl cut and a leotard very similar to the one that always carries his martial arts teacher is running towards them, waving a hand to say hello.

"Sakura Haruno!" He shouts, his voice too loud. There is a girl with brown hair gathered in two buns running behind to reach him and, further back, a boy with long hair with a stern expression and crossed arms is following her, walking. When the leotard boy comes to where they are, he gives a thumbs up and smiles. He practically shines. He doesn't even seem affected though he just run through the whole corridor as if there were a bull chasing him. "Be my girlfriend, I promise that I will dedicate my life to take care of you!"

Sakura blinks quickly, her arms limp at her sides. Naruto is so surprised that he almost falls over. He looks to one side, and even Sasuke seems to have found something of interest in the conversation. He has not moved from where he is and has not uncrossed his arms from their position, but he has opened his eyes to see the owner of the voice.

Sakura tilts her head to one side, the wave of pink hair falling on her side. "Uh, oh... I..." She stumbles over the words. "Sorry, who are you?"

Naruto laughs at his response.

The boy does not seem depressed even a little because the girl has not said _yes_ to his not-too-normal proposition, he just smiles wider; but, again, we are talking about the kind of guy who runs in the middle of a corridor and knows the name of a girl just to ask her to be his girlfriend. Everything is possible. "I'm Rock Lee! I…!"

The girl who was running after him finally comes to where they are and hugs the boy, Lee, from behind (though it looks more like an octopus trying to crash its dinner with its tentacles) and covers his mouth with one hand. She gasps a little, "Are you serious? You know you're too fast, that was cheating! And I told you to not scare her!" She scolds him, frowning. She points to where Sakura and Naruto look at the scene with big, wide eyes. Naruto seems more like he's about to fall into the ground and start laughing his head off, but Sakura seems more curious than anything. "Is that the face of a girl who hasn't just got scared because a random boy has just run to her to ask her to be his girlfriend? I don't think so!" She waves her free arm in the air as she says it, looking like a mother scolding her son because he just took a lollipop at the super when she told him not to and is now eating it. She does not wait for the boy to answer, and turns to look at them. Her expression changes to an embarrassed one, and she laughs awkwardly as she stills cover the other boy's mouth. "I'm sorry about that, he's usually like that all the time."

"Weird?" Naruto offers.

"Baka!" Sakura says, punching his arm.

"Ow, Sakura-chan, that hurts!" He moans, rubbing the spot where Sakura's knuckles have just bruised.

"Don't be rude!"

"It's the truth!"

Sakura gives him a death glare that makes him shut up. She looks embarrassed towards the others, and says, "I'm sorry, it is. Um. He meant that he's... too eccentric." It sounds more like a question than an affirmation, but the other girl laughs.

"No problem. We know that Lee is weird. We don't love him any less because of that. I'm Tenten by the way. He is Rock Lee, as he said, and our silent friend from right there," she points to the boy who is a meter behind her, with his arms crossed and dressed in an elegant combat suit. More elegant than Sasuke's, which is saying a lot, "it's Hyuuga Neji. All three of us will compete today! We are of second year!"

"This year's rookies have guts." The boy says, ironically, superbly. "Tch. Rather, I would say that they are presumptuous or very stupid. We prepare ourselves a whole year and they think they can beat us so easy? It is an insult."

"Uh, Neji..."

"Hey, Girl Hair! If you have a problem with me, let me tell you that I can kick your ass right here and right now, so...!"

There is a sigh at his side. "Dobe..."

Sakura goes forward when Naruto walks towards The Idiot with his fist raised and takes him by the arm to stop him. She laughs nervously. "Naruto, be nice." She says, with a tone everyone can hear. She pulls him towards her and her face contorts a little. "Are you crazy, baka? They are sophomores, think before you act! Besides, he's the genius of the Hyuuga family, have you ever heard of him? He has won more fights than anyone in this school, in just one year. He has medals of international events. He's going to massacre you if you fight him." She whispers vehemently.

Naruto is about to say, "I don’t give a shit if he's the prince of Europe or whatever, I want to kick his ass!" but something catches his attention at his side.

Sasuke moves from his place against the wall. His expression is tired, although Naruto can say that Neji's comment also irritated him. He can know that by the way he moves. Too rigid, though he’s trying to seem like he doesn’t care. "Tch.” He says. “Let's just go to the gym, dobe. It's getting late anyway."

Naruto frowns and growls low in his throat, because that’s not the answer he was expecting, but a look at Sasuke calms him down a bit. Sasuke’s eyes are fierce beneath irritation. They say to him, we are only going to be able to teach him what we are capable of in combat, dobe. Shut up.

They tell him he's dying to hit something right now, and to be honest, Naruto wants that so badly too.

So they move and they walk pass the group in front of them, both Sasuke and Naruto determined. Sasuke is calmer than Naruto, who walks around smoking, but his movements are definitely more intense.

Maybe it was a good thing to run into that asshole. It motivated them more.

"Hey, what's your name?" The Girl's Hair Jerk asks when they go two steps in front of them.

Sasuke turns and kind of smiles, condescending, challenging. Naruto likes the intensity and ferocity in his eyes. They have this fire that he always has when he’s challenging Naruto, but they’re even more intense. It gives him the good kind of goosebumps for some reason.

"I don’t need to tell you that. You will know it when they name me for having won."

Ohhhhhh. Okay. Wow. So Sasuke can be Sassuke. Wow. All right. Okay. Excellent.

Naruto laughs, and if it weren’t because he knows Sasuke will ignore him, he would have said something like "high five, dude! That was brilliant!"

So yes, Sasuke has just crushed the ego of a guy with an elegant last name and another boy has just proposed to Sakura as a knight in armor in a green leotard.

It was a good way to start his day.

.

.

The preliminaries begin at exactly 8:30 a.m.

Sasuke and he are sitting in the stands, on the last step stuck to the ground, next to the other competitors. The second year group is next to them. Sakura is right above. She squeezes their shoulders as the coach beings the lot to see the order in which they will participate.

Naruto gets the number 10. The last one.

Sasuke gets the number three.

Naruto doesn’t know which option is better. He doesn’t think so much about it, though.

Sakura wishes them good luck when they start the tournament.

Bushy Brow (as Naruto decided to nickname him since this morning, because Guy with Green Leotard is too-long), is the first one to fight. He goes against another senior student whose name Naruto can’t remember.

Actually, Bushy Brow is awesome. Naruto realizes this two seconds after he starts the fight.

He is fast. Very fast. He is incredibly agile and flexible and lethal too.

Naruto and Sakura make identical expressions of "Wow!", "Cool!", "Awesome!", "He's fast!" At the same time. Both waving their arms or jumping in their seats.

The girl sitting next to Naruto, Bushy Brow's friend, laughs when she sees them.

"He's amazing, isn’t him?" She says, as she watches her partner totally smash his opponent in less than two minutes. "He tried so hard to get where he is right now. He wanted to show everyone that a "simple injury" was not going to stop him, although what happened to him was more than just an injury. The boy with whom he fought the last tournament almost left him paralyzed. Or at least unable to participate in this kind of fights."

The coach announces that Lee is the winner right at that moment, when Bushy Brow gives a last combined kick that leaves his opponent knocked out on the ground. Wow. That movement is magnificent. Naruto has to ask him how to do it.

But returning to the topic that Bushy Brow almost dies...

"What?" Naruto says.

"Really?" Sakura asks, also returning to the conversation. Her eyes are wide open. She seems really surprised and horrified at the same time. Her voice is also tinged with concern. "He must have been very strong then! His opponent! Because Lee is really impressive!"

Tenten turns to see them while still applauding and smiles sadly. Her eyes look somewhat dark, as if she were remembering a bad memory. "His opponent was strong, yes, but more than anything, he was crazy. It is very sad. For a moment I thought— We all thought that— But Lee has always been impressive. Very strong too. He has always known how to get out of difficult situations and improve. I should have imagined that he would recover without any problem. But still, I was so worried. And Lee became very depressed at first, even if he was trying to hide it. I get it. That all his dedication could have gone to trash just for one fight— And the thing is… he always had to try so hard because of his condition, so..."

"What condition?"

She frowns. "Oh. How strange, I thought everyone knew. Lee has chronic osteoporosis. Weak, small bones. That means it's very easy to break them. A sport like martial arts should have leave him on a stretcher weekly. But like I said, Lee has always worked hard, especially thanks to Gai Sensei. He gave him the power to dream and to think that his dreams could come true. But then the accident happened last year and Lee almost gave up everything he had worked for, but Gai Sensei helped him a lot and we..."

"I don't think it's pertinent to be talking about our partner's condition with them, Tenten." Jerk with Girl Hair murmurs next to her. "Also, Gai sensei was wrong that time, filling his head with dreams like that, Lee could have died in that operation."

Tenten turns to him and gives him a wry smile. "Oh come on, the whole school, or at least most of it know it already, they will find out one way or another, I don't see the problem, and besides, about the other thing, you were also worried about him that time, don't pretend that only Gai Sensei supported him in his decision, we were part of it."

The boy has an annoyed expression on his face, crosses his arms over his chest. So the Jerk has a soft spot for Bushy Brow. Huh. Everyone has one, he supposes. But that doesn't take away how presumptuous he is and the expression of superiority in his face that makes Naruto want to knock out his teeth.

"Tch, do whatever you want."

Tenten rolls her eyes. "I swear, you two, honestly. But anyway," she continues, turning to Naruto and Sakura again. "A miraculous woman came after Gai Sensei went in search of her and operated him. It was a difficult decision, Lee could have died, and the healing possibility was 20% at best, but she was really impressive and patient and the operation cured him as much as possible. Lee had to do movement therapies afterwards, but just look at how he is. He did all of them in two weeks when he should have work at least months with them, and he kept training to get through. It was a complicated, very hard year. Gai sensei, Neji and I support him all the time, but he obviously was very sad to think that something could go wrong and he could never stand up again, or use his legs, or move easily. His whole life has been twice harder than anyone else, so I'm not surprised that he now tries the triple, but still."

"Wow." Sakura and Naruto say in unison, just when she ends with a somewhat sad smile.

"I know." She grimaces. "And the guy he fought with last year? A psycho, for sure. He went crazy. Lost all control. He almost kills him. I'm sure he knew about his condition because he made some... movements that put pressure on the bones. It's just that, as far as I know, nobody had ever been able to even hit him..."

"Amazing."

"He must be very talented!"

"He was. But when Lee hit him one time... and then another... and another... I mean Lee is too fast. He didn’t even see it coming. He went crazy. The host had to stop the fight and penalize him. It is very likely that this year he won’t appear again, which is good for you guys! I would never want to run into him again."

"Wow! Bushy Brow is really awesome! Get out of something like that! He is really strong!"

Tenten smiles and nods. "Mhm. He's incredibly annoying but I've always admired him a lot. And…" Before she can finish, a voice interrupts her from below.

"Tenten!" When she looks down, Lee is crying and smiling brightly at her. "Neji! I passed! I passed!"

Tenten gives him a thumbs up. Smiles. "Well done Lee!"

Neji nods besides her. "Good job."

That only seems to increase Lee’s cry. And it only gets worse when Gai Sensei appears behind him.

Tenten grimaces and stands up. "I'm sorry, but I have to go and... try to get those two to not drown or something."

Naruto and Sakura laugh. "Sure."

Naruto looks down at the scene unfolding on the field.

To be honest, and fair, if Naruto had the same story as him, he would probably be crying too. So it's not that weird.

And he sure is strong. Awesome too.

He would like to fight with him.

Looking to his side, he sees Sasuke as he looks down at Bushy Brow as well. Naruto wonders if he heard the story. He wonders if Sasuke wants to fight him too.

That would be interesting. Bushy Brow and Cocky Bastard. Hm.

"Hey, Sakura," he says, with shit-eating grin, looking up. She stops looking at Lee to look at him.

"Hm?"

"Your boyfriend is really cool, don’t you think?" His smile grows like the Cheshire cat.

"Baka." Sakura growls, as she punches him again, this time on the shoulder.

Naruto's smile hesitates a little. "Okay, okay, I was kidding, I was kidding!" Naruto begins to cover himself while Sakura throws him more punches. He laughs anyways.

.

.

The bastard is pretty impressive too. He wins almost immediately. Naruto almost feels bad for Shino. That last movement sure was going to hurt for a week.

.

By the end, almost his entire class has arrived. They gather next to where Sakura is and observe and make comments from time to time. Shikamaru's comments are the most analytical of all. Naruto likes to listen to them. He’s always right when he says who will be the winner.

When it's time for his fight, Naruto is anxious. Sakura smiles at him to give him good luck and even Sasuke looks at him a little more than he should and crashes his fist with his when Naruto puts his own in front of him.

Oh yeah. Naruto is going to sweep the floor with Dog’s Breath.

.

"So, who do you think will win?" Tenten asks them.

"Kiba." Ino, Chouji and Shino say. Hinata and Shikamaru remain silent.

"Naruto." Sakura and Sasuke answer, at the same time.

Tenten blinks, then laughs. "Okay?"

Shikamaru turns and frowns at Sasuke. He doesn’t seem annoyed or angry, but a little surprised. And curious. The others have astonished expressions while also looking at him. Everyone knows the animosity that exists between them. The tension. The usual bickering, the mutual desire to be in each other's throats all the time. But they also know they've been getting along a little better lately, maybe...

"Why do you think Naruto will win, Sasuke-kun?" Ino asks, clearly surprised. Shikamaru by his side seems genuinely curious. It is normal, Shikamaru’s strong point are the facts, the strategies. He wants to hear the arguments of how someone like Naruto, someone who started so bad at the beginning and was still very clumsy when he signed up, could beat one of the best students in the course.

"Naruto is strong." Sakura says, and it seems like she means it.

"Sakura is right." Sasuke agrees. "Naruto can be clumsy and distracted, but he's strong. He's really stubborn too, he wants to participate in the tournament more than anything, and he's determined in his goals, he trained very hard. Kiba is one of the strongest in the course, yes. He is brutal and strong, but also coarse and impulsive. Especially impulsive; he doesn’t think that much about his technique precisely because his strong point is brute force. He most likely would go with all he has and would try to finish off Naruto from the beginning of the fight. Naruto knows it, he has analyzed his fights, his style; he can be distracted and everything, but he is smarter than people give him credit for, I saw him train a lot in his blockade, he probably thinks about avoiding fighting at first until he gets Kiba tired. Kiba is tough, and he has a lot of energy, but being as reckless as he is makes him wear down everything from the beginning, which is a weak point. And knowing the dobe, if Kiba provokes him enough, he may start fighting as well instead of dodging, but even then, even if Kiba is smart or fast or strong enough to make Naruto fight instead of blocking, the fight will be reduced to see who gets tired faster. In other words, a fight of resistance; and Kiba can be tough and resistant, but Naruto definitely has a lot more stamina than Kiba. He will endure it more than enough."

Sasuke finishes just as the coach announces the start of the fight. His classmates look at him surprised, shocked.

"That's a good point." Shikamaru points out. "Very good points."

Sasuke leans forward, his eyes focused on the field. "Hn."

He doesn’t pay much more attention later to the looks that Sakura or others "surreptitiously" throw at him out of the corner of their eyes. He is too focused on something else.

.

In the end, Sasuke is right. Naruto tries to dodge a lot at first. It costs him a bit, Kiba has improved a lot and is faster than before, but in the end, Sasuke's analysis is correct. Kiba goes with everything since the start, he doesn’t contain himself, not even a bit. Naruto doesn’t do it either when he starts to counterattack. And although it takes a little longer than Sasuke had in mind, Naruto seriously kicks his ass.

.

Both pass the preliminaries. And that’s amazing.

.

Ero-Sennin buys him a bowl of his favorite ramen that night. Baa-chan rents his favorite movie to see it with him.

Sakura makes both of them homemade bentos as a gift.

His classmates don’t exactly congratulate him, but they look really surprised. Naruto doesn’t care that much, Kiba's bitter face as he growls all day long is enough to make him happy.

Girl Hair passes, just like Bushy Brow.

Part of Naruto seriously hopes that, if he doesn’t have to fight Sasuke on the tournament, he'll fight him. He wants to kick his fancy ass too.

.

.

Two days after the results of the preliminaries, Sakura is walking besides him again, both heading home.

"You know," she is saying, "it was really smart to change the temperature of the container, Naruto, I don’t know why I didn’t think about it sooner."

Naruto blinks. "Huh?"

Sakura looks up at him, her eyebrows raised slightly. "The temperature? On the thermometer?"

Naruto tilts his head and blinks, searching in his brain if... "Ah!" He says, while one of Sakura's eyes trembles a little, like a twitch. "That!" Sakura looks at him and the fingers at her sides twist, as if she wants to hit something. "That was just an accident when I was—" Sakura takes a deep breath, one, two, one, two. She says to herself to calm down, to breathe, to not despair. "I mean," Naruto says, laughing a little nervously. He scratches the back of his head, smiles like when he wants to apologize for something, "yes, that! That was totally on purpose! Yes, I— I just thought it was obvious, you know," he continues, as he puts his arms behind his head and grins openly. "Uzumaki Naruto is a genius, you know! Believe it! He's the best at... Uh, are you okay, Sakura? You look a little… altered."

Sakura raises an eyebrow, clenches her fists at her sides. She smiles at him, though it seems more like she wants to scare him than to reassure him. Her voice is somewhat tight when she speaks, forcibly sweet, as if she was trying very hard not to scream. "What? No! I'm fine! I'm perfect!"

Naruto frowns. "Um, but your eye..."

Sakura raises both eyebrows. "Mm? No, it's okay!"

"But it's shaking."

"Oh, it's just a nervous tic, I'm fine, don’t..."

Naruto lowers his hands from behind his head. He’s going to touch her shoulder, "Are you su—?"

"I said I was fine!" She screams, her eyes a bit mad. Naruto flinches back.

"Sorry!"

She looks immediately sorry. "Oh! No, no! I'm the one who’s sorry! I shouldn't have screamed at you! I'm. I'm just nervous that’s all."

Naruto stops in his tracks. He blinks. "Uh? Nervous? Why? We've been doing this for many days."

Sakura stops and turns to face him. "Um, yes, but... There's something..." She doesn’t look at him, she looks down instead, and rubs her arm shyly. "Well, uh... It's just that, the reason why I called you to go together the other time, and these times, it's not exactly because we take the same path."

Naruto blinks. His heart begins to bounce madly in his chest. He wants to smile, although he is very nervous all of a sudden. Excited? Scared?

"I... Well, it's... I wanted to apologize."

Naruto's heart slows again until it returns to its normal rhythm. Oh. So it wasn’t— Sakura wasn’t going to— Good. Good. Part of him already knew it anyway. He is not sure if he is happy or not because it is an apology instead of a confession though.

However, Naruto is a bit confused. "Apologize? Why?"

Sakura rubs her arm timidly again. She looks to the left, to the right, to the ground. "Well. For everything. For calling you useless and dumb, and yelling at you. We're a team now, I shouldn’t have..."

"Oh!" Naruto says, interrupting her. "It's okay, Sakura! Don’t worry about it!"

She stops looking at the ground to look at him. She tops herself with bright, cerulean eyes and a bright smile. She blinks. "Seriously? You forgive me… Just like that?" She seems genuinely surprised at his reaction, as if she didn’t expect it to be so easy.

"Yes, why wouldn’t I?" Naruto grins. He puts his hands behind his head again. "It's all good! No problem! Now we're walking together, aren’t we? We've done it several times! It's nice! I like it!"

Sakura blinks a couple of times before smiling. Her eyes become soft. The softest they’ve ever seen with him before. She seems genuinely calm and sincere when she says, "I also like to be with you, Naruto, maybe we should walk together more often. Maybe even on the mornings before we get to class, we have the same schedule, right?" She says and turns to continue walking.

Naruto does not realize that he is standing there blinking and gaping like an idiot until Sakura looks over her shoulder to nod at him. "You're not coming or what?" She says, almost laughs, at his dumb expression.

He nods, because he's physically incapable of talking in the moment.

Sakura just... Sakura just said it was nice being with him? That they should walk together more often? What? Is he dreaming? If so, please don't wake him up.

He knows her words can be empty, full of false promises, but he chooses to believe in her.

He feels like he can believe in her.

.

They walk together after their work the next day again.

And the next day.

And the next.

And the next, and next, and next.

And the next week.

They even start walking together in the mornings too.

She doesn't talk a lot the first times. More like listens and nods and smiles. Sometimes, Naruto makes her laugh.

The next week, though, she starts to talk too.

She is so pretty and smart, Naruto thinks. And he’s happy. He really is.

.

Everything is fine. Everything is more than fine.

Until it isn’t.

.

.

To be honest, Naruto must have suspected something was wrong. It's not normal for Sasuke to be so quiet all the time. Well, it is. But the silence that was there in the last afternoons was... different. More tense.

Sasuke acted differently. His movements were very rigid. His answers sharp. He didn’t even try to fight back when Naruto made an offensive comment about his hair at one time. He just decided to look angry and irritated and sit there. Besides, Naruto had seen him look at Sakura and him when they start to chat more animatedly in their sessions. He had seen him look at them in the classes. He had seen him look at them when they arrived in the morning and, when his eyes casually met Naruto's, he pretended he wasn’t looking.

Something was very weird in there.

Naruto wanted to ask what was happening, why he was acting like that. It wasn’t very normal on him.

And maybe he should have asked.

Maybe.

.

The next Friday, Sakura arrives a little late. Before she does, Sasuke and Naruto are alone in the table. Is quiet and there's not many others around.

Naruto greets him when he arrives and he is taking notes in his notebook. Sasuke greets him back, without taking his eyes off the book for more than three seconds to look at him.

Naruto laughs. "You're really more nerdy than I thought, you know, teme?"

Sasuke frowns. He actually seems a little irritated.

"Do you know where Sakura is now? She has the container, so I can’t try the modification without her." He says, raw and plane, as if he had no emotions.

Naruto frowns. "No, why would I know?"

Sasuke lets out something very much like a snort. "Well, you and she have been hanging a lot these days, haven’t you? I assumed she would tell you, since you two are suddenly very close friends." He mumbles something else between his teeth that Naruto cannot hear because Sasuke's face is covered with the book.

Naruto begins to feel the familiar discomfort that starts to burst in the back of his throat when he speaks with him. "What are you talking about, bastard? She and I just walk together home. Besides, why do you care about that? We’re not supposed to be irritating and annoying to you?"

Sasuke stops writing, but he doesn’t look at him yet. "I don’t care, dobe." He says, as if he cared.

"Then why do you mention it?"

"It was just an observation of what I had seen these days."

Naruto snorts, rolls his eyes. "I knew you've been seeing us weird these days. What's the matter? Why does it bother you that Sakura and I are together? I thought you weren’t interested in her that way."

Sasuke is now looking at him, and his eyes are fire. There is a wrinkle between his eyebrows. He looks angry.

"And I’m not." He states. "Not like that."

"So?" Naruto shouts, leaning over the table to look closer at his eyes. To show him that, whatever it is for, he won’t give in on this fight.

Sasuke's face contorts. As if he wanted to say something but at the same time he was trying very hard to swallow the words that scream to get out.

"Hn."

Naruto raises his eyebrows, "That's it? Hn? The Great Sasuke Uchiha gives up?"

Sasuke seems about to punch him in the face. Naruto smiles. That's it. He thinks. Get angry. Fight.

"I don’t understand what you’re talking about." He says, as if he was clenching his teeth. "I'm not giving in. I'm just not going to fight you over something that doesn’t make sense."

"You're not going to fight me because you know you're jealous and it's ridiculous."

"I'm not jealous!"

"Yes, you are! Admit it! You like her and you're jealous because I'm with her! And I’m not even with her like that, by the way! I just walk her home!"

Sasuke's eye has a twitch. He squeezes his hands hard on the table, Naruto can see his knuckles go white. His gaze is intense, penetrating in Naruto's eyes, as if they wanted to make a hole in his head.

"I didn’t think you were so stupid, dobe," he says, and he seems sincere, angry, finished; tired, "but apparently you are."

"What do you mean, bastard? I'm not stupid! You're just stubborn!"

Sasuke rolls his eyes, the way he does before finishing a fight. Before leaving Naruto screaming threats alone in the hallway because he is not interested in discussing with him anymore. He takes the book again and turns the page to read, although his movements are visibly stiffer than before.

"And you are dense like a brick."

"Hey!" He shouts, putting his hand on the pages of the book so that he cannot continue reading. Sasuke ignores him, drops the book and takes his notebook instead to keep writing down notes. "Don’t ignore me! That— What the hell do you mean? Bastard! Listen to me!"

Ten minutes later, when Sakura arrives, she finds them on the ground, wrestling like 5 years old. Both entangled with each other. Sasuke has Naruto’s legs immobilized, but Naruto is punching him in the side. Everything is a tangle of arms and legs.

"Guys?" She asks, sounding like she wants to strangle them both and like she's genuinely curious about what the hell is going on.

They stop a little to look at her from their position on the ground, their breaths fluttering.

"He started!" They both scream at the same time.

"It's not true! You threw yourself at me first, dobe! What the hell did you expect me to do?"

"You were ignoring me, what the hell did you expect me to do?" He says, imitating his voice with a fake fancy voice.

Sasuke rolls his eyes. "That's why! You can’t stop being immature even for a minute!"

"I'm immature? Really? Well, Sasuke, I don’t think mature people ignore their classmates when they talk to them as if they were five years old!"

"And there you go again with that! Who is the one that looks like a five years old right now?"

Sakura just facepalms herself. God, these guys.

.

Naruto thinks that maybe, maybe, he should be upset. He should be angry with Sasuke for fighting with him and for being ridiculously jealous of something that was not even happening! And that he didn’t even have the right to, considering the number of times he had an opportunity with Sakura and he wasted!

Naruto thinks maybe he's being very stupid, but the truth is, he is not angry.

Sasuke stops acting weird after that fight. He doesn’t mention anything about the fact that Sakura and Naruto are spending more time together. He’s very quiet again, but in the usual way. And he fights Naruto again, the way he always does. It's as if, in a way, the fight would have helped him to vent whatever it was... eating him inside.

Everything returns to normal again.

The most normal that can be with them, at least.

Sasuke and Naruto argue, yes, but Naruto would dare to say that it is almost... friendly.

It's strange. The way their relationship moves and changes and distorts like a flame of fire in different weathers. With water, wind, heat, cold.

Naruto wouldn’t have it in any other way, though.

.

Their teamwork is much better with each passing day. Naruto is sure that they will get an excellent note at the end.

.

Naruto is still training. A lot. All the time. Sometimes, Sasuke stays with him in the gym in the afternoons. Other times, Naruto finds him leaving when he is going inside, or the other way around, when he is the one leaving.

Is like they even kinda have a routine.

.

.

Two days before the tournament, the fights and the order of them is announced.

Naruto’s fight is the penultimate one. And next to his name is written the elegant name Hyuuga Neji.

Oh yeah.

Naruto is anxious.

.

Sasuke is up against a guy named Sabaku no Gaara. Very famous in the eastern school, (the big one, somewhat rustic, but outstanding in qualifications and competitions in the dry regions of the county), apparently.

Hm. Anyway, Naruto is sure that the bastard won’t be so bad. He most likely wins. But Naruto is going to destroy him in the scores, oh yes, believe it!

.

The big day arrives and it's— well, Naruto is more nervous than he thought.

Jiraiya wishes him good luck in the morning before leaving him at the door of the stadium. He apologizes for not being able to be there, he says he will see him on television.

Naruto smiles at him and tells him that it's okay, that there's no problem. He says goodbye to him while he sees him getting away in the car.

There are many people when he goes inside and many cameras too. Many more people than he thought... oh holy ramen...

For a moment, he thinks he's going to throw up. He feels dizzy. Maybe— maybe he was wrong, maybe he wasn’t ready and...

"Hey, Naruto!" Sakura greets him when Naruto is about to turn around and go back to the exit. "You finally came! You look good! Come on, I saved a place for you and Sasuke-kun! We are up with the others in the class. Let's wait for him there, okay? He hasn’t arrived yet."

Sakura's smile makes him calm down again.

Pfft. What was he thinking. He's Uzumaki Naruto, he obviously won’t have any problem. He came here ready to show everyone who he is, and now it's the time.

Naruto Uzumaki doesn’t back down at his words.

Sure.

He pushes his nerves to the bottom of his stomach to them be replaced with a load of adrenaline.

Besides, he hasn’t shown Sasuke what he is capable of yet.

The bastard will see it too. Naruto will boast him with how much better than he is.

So Naruto smiles and follows Sakura into the crowd and listens as she talks about how anxious she is to see them fight and who she believes will win in other fights and what she has heard from the other schools.

All right.

Naruto is ready.

Naruto is more than ready.

.

.

The tournament starts.

.

And… Sasuke hasn’t showed up. Sasuke has not showed up and the first fight is him, the prodigy of good genes, against the lethal redhead beast of the eastern school.

Not that Naruto cares, of course, but why the hell does not he show up.

The fight is postponed on the orders of the jury until the next fight.

Dammit. The bastard better show up already.

.

The first fight is between two seniors.

A blond girl of the Eastern school fights against an exotic-pink hair girl with weird tattoos of the North Music School. The fight is interesting. Both of them are very powerful and intense in their fighting style. In the end, the girl from the east wins. Temari, that's her name.

Naruto watches the fight with enthusiasm, occasionally glancing at the empty seat beside of him. He knows Sakura does it too, he knows she's worried. What the hell is wrong with that bastard?

.

Sasuke doesn’t show up. The fight is postponed. Again.

Two more fights.

Another.

He still doesn’t show up.

.

Naruto doesn’t know why it gives him an ugly feeling in his stomach.

It’s not like something bad happened to him, right?

.

Another fight.

.

"Hell, what's wrong with that bastard? Is he cowardly enough to not even show up at the fight? What is he thinking?"

Shikamaru on his other side lets out a sigh. "Naruto, stop being so restless. I'm sure he will come, he is just delayed for something."

"But he doesn’t show up! Ugh! It's making me nervous!"

Shikamaru gives him an ironic smile. "You're worried about him, huh? You two are really starting to get along, apparently."

Naruto stutters. "I— wha— no— we— I mean— I just want him to come so he can see how much I have improved and how much better than him I am! He said he wanted to fight with me! I'm sure if he sees me tonight I'll scare him to death and he'll have to admit that I'm better than him! Uh… Um. Yes! That! I—"

Shikamaru scoffs. "How troublesome. Tch. It's okay, calm down, I was joking. I know how much you two still like to be in each other’s throats."

Naruto sinks into his seat, crosses his arms and murmurs incoherently in a low voice. He is beginning to feel warm in the face. Stupid Shikamaru.

He doesn’t care about that bastard. He doesn’t.

Of course not.

.

Sasuke still doesn’t show up by the middle of the event. Naruto thinks he's going to have a heart attack by the end of the night. He doesn’t stop bouncing his knee against the seat in front of him. He doesn’t even pay so much attention to the fights because he's looking sideways at the door.

Stupid Sasuke.

.

.

It's almost the end of the event and it's time for Naruto's fight. It is the penultimate fight of the night.

He doesn’t know why the fact that Sasuke is not there to see him gives him a bad taste in his mouth, but still, he needs to make Sasuke aside for a moment and focus.

Naruto came to show everyone what he is capable of.

And so he does.

.

Naruto gives everything he has in that fight to show that he's worthy to be there. That he deserves in every single way to be there. He has hoped to prove it all his life after all.

So he tries to push Sasuke aside for a second, and he fights. Fights for himself.

Fights to prove to superb idiots like the Hyuuga genius that he, Uzumaki Naruto, can kick his and anybody’s ass. Especially the ass of a talented genius who is older than him. In particular someone’s ass who Naruto has to prove wrong when they say he’s a loser.

"It's your destiny to lose. Accept it.” He spits at him in the middle of the fight, with his pretentious long hair and his strange tattoo on his forehead. With cold eyes the color of ice in light. Violets. Hard, recriminating, broken.

Naruto shows him.

He shows him that he can win.

He shows him that he can "change" destiny. That he can choose.

He shows him that all his words about destiny and so on, are nothing more than trash and bullshit.

Naruto teaches him more than one lesson that night.

Naruto frees Neji that night. From whatever it is that is chaining him.

Something happens. Naruto breaks him, surprises him. In more ways than one.

Neji is not the same boy later that night. Or ever again.

Neji changes. For the best.

Neji learns something deeper that night.

His eyes are no longer so harsh. They don’t look so broken by the end of that fight. And maybe he didn’t win the fight, but he won something more.

Naruto not only wins the fight that night and demonstrate that he can. Naruto wins respect.

Another trigger in his life. Another detonator.

Neji Hyuuga. The boy of destiny that Naruto manages to win.

The genius of the rich and powerful family Naruto manages to break.

The genius that respects Naruto by the end of that night.

Neji Hyuuga, the guy who shoots something that day and makes Naruto's life a lot easier later.

Sakura runs and hugs him when he gets off the field. She smiles and congratulates him and Naruto feels good, feels better than he has in a long time.

Neji walks towards him as Sakura fills him with hugs and warm smiles and words of encouragement, with Lee crying inconsolably and clinging into his arm and Tenten smiling kindly at his side (his eyes are a bit weird, they have a strange mixture of worry and relief in them), and shakes his hand.

And everything is fine.

Everything is incredible.

Everything is great.

Except, that when they go up the stairs to the position in the fifth tier where Sakura is sitting with him, she tells him that Sasuke hasn’t arrived yet, and the horrible taste on his mouth returns again.

All his classmates congratulate him when he sits down, including Kiba, who seems genuinely impressed. Everyone looks like it.

And it's great, it's amazing, except that Sasuke is not there.

Naruto doesn’t know why it disappoints him so much.

.

Lee's fight is the one that follows. For someone who has just cried, Lee doesn’t seem vulnerable at all when he goes up to the combat area.

His eyes are determined and his posture explodes energy everywhere, it tells them how ready he is to fight.

Lee is brutal in that fight. He’s fast. Faster than anyone Naruto has ever seen. Naruto can hardly see the movements he makes because of how fast he is. He is agile, strong, lethal.

In the end, he wins the fight in less than a minute.

A record, apparently.

.

.

Sasuke shows up at the last moment, because apparently, he is a fucking show off and wants Naruto's heart to explode, the fucking bastard. He shows up right after they announce the winner of Lee's fight against a senior, in a sleek new suit and with his always-in-place hair. His gaze is tough, his posture is somewhat rigid.

Naruto doesn’t care about his new suit or whatever, Sasuke is there. Finally. Super late, but there.

"You always do what you want to do, don’t you? Arriving at the last minute when your fight is the first, damn presumptuous bastard.” Naruto tells him (when and how did he get down the stairs so fast, it's a mystery), Sakura running after him to catch up with him, but he's smiling, and Sasuke smiles too.

"Hn. That smile. I assume that you won?"

Naruto is inflated with pride. "Yup. So I'm better than you."

Sasuke scoffs, but his smile returns to its place. "That remains to be seen, dobe."

"Whatever. Good luck, bastard, and don’t lose."

Sasuke's smile twists, like he’s saying, who understands you? You’re giving me mixed signs. "I don’t intend to."

Naruto smiles. "Okay, then."

And then he turns to go back to the stands.

Sakura gives a shy wave with her hand and smiles bright when she finally gets there. "Good luck, Sasuke!"

Sasuke gives her a nod. "Thank you."

She smiles wider before following Naruto to their seats.

Naruto almost falls over as he runs back to sit down. It's a little embarrassing, because he loves to watch that tournament every year, and he always gets too excited, but he can’t remember the last time he felt so eager to see a fight before.

God. Sasuke sure is going to kick that guy's ass with the weird name of the Eastern school. He can be a prodigy, or a "beast", or whatever. Sasuke can be an idiot, and a bastard, and apparently a show off but Naruto recognizes that he is very talented.

He will kick his ass for sure.

.

The plans change and his eagerness becomes panic when Sasuke's opponent shows up and the host starts announcing the fight and the reasons for the delay.

Naruto does not listen to the host and his apologies, instead, he hears Tenten's gasp in front of them and watches Lee's shoulders tighten a bit.

Sakura also notices it.

"What's going on?" She asks.

Tenten turns in her seat, her eyes looking dark. "It's him, the one who injured Lee last year."

"The one that left him almost unable to fight again?" Sakura screeches, horrified.

A visceral terror begins to eat him inside.

The only thing he can think about is one thing: I can’t allow Sasuke to fight with someone like him. He is a monster. Sasuke can get hurt. Really, seriously hurt.

He doesn’t know that he is standing and ready to go to stop them until Lee is dragging him to his place again. Naruto appreciates Bushy Brow, but if he doesn’t move...

"What's wrong, Naruto?" Shikamaru questions, standing two places from him.

"That stupid guy without eyebrows almost killed Bushy Brow last year! I can’t let him fight with Sasuke! I have to prevent—!"

He is desperate. Sasuke— Sasuke can get hurt. He can’t— he won’t let that happen. He… He has to…

"Naruto-kun! Calm down! I'm sorry I made you worry, but everything will be fine!" Lee leans at an exact 90 degree angle and goes back up again in front of him. He gives a thumb up and a bright smile, very similar to the ones Gai sensei gives in his motivational speeches. "I'm sure! I was not ready to fight him that time, he was a worthy opponent, but I'm sure Sasuke-kun is too! I've seen him fight, he's amazing! Much better than me at that time! Sasuke-kun burns with the passion flame of youth, I'm sure he will do very well! Have faith in him! Trust him and the intensity of his spirit like the fire of a sunset!"

Half of those around them look at Lee as if he’s a weirdo. Others seem either on the verge of crying or laughing. Sakura still seems worried, but his classmates look at him to make him sit down.

The host announces the start of the fight.

With a dark feeling of guilt, he sits down.

He doesn’t want to let the fight happen, he really doesn’t.

But maybe Lee is right. Maybe he should trust Sasuke. Maybe it would be too selfish of him to go and stop the fight.

"Okay." He murmurs.

"Excellent!" Lee shouts, sitting back down again.

The fight begins.

.

Apparently, the reason why Sasuke hadn’t show up before and why it took a while to start the fight even when he arrived, Naruto would realize later, was because he suffered an injury two days before the tournament. Not very serious, but enough to damage his shoulder. His tutor didn’t want to let him participate in the event. The judges didn’t want to let him either.

But he's Sasuke Uchiha. The prodigy of one of the founding clans of Konoha. Of course he was going to fight.

.

Even with the injury, Sasuke makes an incredible presentation. Sasuke is precise, fast, impeccable. Even elegant. He is mortal. Lethal. And yes, maybe by the end of the round, his movements are a little more erratic or careless, but that doesn’t stop him from winning. Gaara shreds him a little. Gaara is almost a real monster. He's too talented, his skills are deadly. He is ruthless, cruel. Some strokes and movements make Sasuke actually grimace, even if his speed prevents Gaara from touching him many times. Gaara is almost as fast as Sasuke is, and his block is fantastic. However, after the time pass and Sasuke is still so resistant, Gaara begins to... despair. He presses, pushes him to his limits. Hard. He overstrains himself, it can be noticed. His movements are too abrupt, disorganized, desperate. He is losing control.

Sasuke's prowess is inflexible, he almost never hesitates. Naruto knows him, that's one of his many advantages; Sasuke doesn’t give up, ever. He has proven to be a worthy rival to Naruto many times precisely because he doesn’t give up. But things get complicated. Naruto knows him way too good to know that. He's not doing so well. Gaara is not having mercy.

Naruto feels something ugly burn his throat. Panic.

"Sasuke! Stop being such an idiot and stop playing and fooling around, you bastard! Show him what you can really do, dammit!" Naruto screams from the bleachers. Naruto roars, with his annoying, loud voice, using all the strength his lungs have.

Somehow, Sasuke becomes more... lethal and intense, from that moment. Is like sharping a sword that already has edge.

In the end, he wins.

Naruto is filled with relief inside of him. For some reason.

"What a lame way to win, Sasuke bastard, you're all beaten up!" Naruto laughs (if it's from relief or because he's making fun of him or both, Naruto doesn’t know for sure) from the stands. He smiles, delight. And Sasuke looks at him from his position in the field. He is breathing hard, Naruto can see the way his chest rises and downs irregularly, heavier, but he smiles at him anyways. More like smirks at him than genuine smiles, but that's fine. Sasuke is fine. Beaten up, sure, but fine.

Sasuke rolls his eyes like he knows what Naruto’s thinking. His eyes are mocking, teasing, and he says something with his lips before going down the side of the field. Naruto can read it clearly.

“Usuratonkachi."

Tch.

Bastard.

.

.

There are loud applauses and shouts and smiles and flashes of huge cameras that don’t stop taking pictures of them after they gather all the competitors to announce the first places and they have to go up on the big field to get their medals.

Men in suits move from one place to another with friendly and strict faces among seniors, in search of their next stars or to give offers. The competitors begin to surround themselves with people who congratulate them on all sides, even if they didn’t get any of the first three places.

There are laughter and tears and bright smiles and many people and Naruto feels a little dizzy.

He has just won second place. In the famous Konoha Tournament televised internationally. Wow. He really wish Ero-Sennin and the old woman were there.

Lee doesn’t give him much time to get depressed about that, though. He is crying next to him. He seems more proud of himself than is possible, although Naruto feels the same way he does. He congratulates Naruto, or at least Naruto thinks he does, because he doesn’t understand what he’s saying completely between all the tears that are coming down his face. He and Gai sensei hug him and cry on his two shoulders before hugging each other and crying even more. It is such a show to watch. Naruto watches it a little disturbed before Tenten arrives, with Neji behind her, running with a smile towards Lee. Her smile vanishes when a Lee full of tears turns to her with all her energy and stamps himself against her in a bear hug. She sighs, resigned with a face of "oh well, if I don’t have another option…" as she pats him on the back and congratulates him and says soothing words above his head. And anyone who would look at her face would say that she is irritated, but her eyes are soft, and there is a curve in her face, in her mouth, when Gai sensei appears to one side of her and cries and screams about how proud he is and about youth and sunsets and fire and sunrises. She is happy. Almost amused. Exasperated, yes, but soft. Like saying, "God, I really love this pair of dumbasses."

Neji approaches Naruto while he focuses too much on looking at them. He greets him and shakes his hand. He looks much calmer than Naruto has ever seen him. In peace. Almost... Happy. Much better than a praised genius who just lost a very important fight.

"Congratulations, it was a good fight." He says, in a calm voice, and Naruto smiles.

"Thank you!"

Neji nods. "It would be good if it ever happened again."

"Of course, Hyuuga, it would be amazing to kick your ass again!" Naruto says.

The boy actually smiles. More like the corner of his mouth pulls a little up, but it seems genuine.

"You are very different from how I thought you would be. You taught me many things today, Naruto."

"Oh yes, Naruto Uzumaki is awesome, believe it!"

Neji's eyes seem a little amused, and he seems about to say something else when Tenten calls him out.

"Neji, I need help here!" She screams, as she is crushed by two bodies with green leotards that cry.

Neji looks over his shoulder and sighs, a little tired, as if he's used to dealing with that kind of things. When he turns to say goodbye, he smiles a little, although it seems more of a challenge than a sincere smile, and there is a bit of that arrogant tenacity and determination in his eyes when he looks at him.

"I hope we have the chance to fight against each other again, Naruto."

Naruto nods, smiling brightly, and Neji smiles a little wider before turning and going to save Tenten.

Two seconds later, Lee is clinging into him and Neji has a look of horror as Lee cries over him and squeezes him in his arms, as if physical contact makes him more uncomfortable than ever. He doesn’t do anything to get rid of him and push him away, though, he only complains, with his arms limp at his sides.

Naruto laughs. He stops when something at his side catches his attention. A few meters away, on his left, there is a group of girls who shout and scream and push each other to see... something. Or more like someone.

In the center of the huge circle is Sasuke Uchiha, with his first place medal hanging around his neck and an irritated expression on his face.

Bastard.

When he starts to walk towards him, Sasuke catches his gaze a meter away and manages to get out of there in one piece.

He seems really relieved when the girls see where he is going and don’t follow him.

It's almost funny. In an ironic way. The way Sasuke gets so much attention when he doesn’t like it a bit.

"Smug bastard." Naruto says, when they're close enough without people around them. "Getting all the girls’ attention like always."

"Usuratonkachi." He says, like he's trying to be all smug about it and make him jealous, though he actually looks relieved to be finally alone with him and away from the hungry horde.

Naruto almost laughs. He smiles, almost cocky, and points at the medal hanging in Sasuke's neck.

"This doesn't mean you're better than me, huh, bastard? I was way cooler than you there. And I didn't win that lame."

"Tch. From what I saw..."

"You didn't even see my fight, you liar!"

"I saw the last part. They have a big screen outside and I was arriving when you were fi—"

"You saw it? Really?"

"That's what I'm trying to say, moron."

Naruto grins. He doesn't know why, but Sasuke actually looking at his fight makes him really happy. Maybe is because he's definitely getting stronger, and that way he can show off to him.

Sasuke looks like he's going to say something more, but Sakura's voice interrupts him before he can say anything.

"I finally find you two! Congratulations, guys! You deserve it! You two fought amazing, I'm proud of you both!” She is saying, smiling brightly as she gets closer. “Naruto, you were so cool back there, the training is making you so strong!" She smiles, but then her eyes toughened and she punches him in the arm. Hard. Naruto's smile goes off and dies in a grimace instead. He rubs his arm. "But you are still so reckless, baka! I was worried for a moment there!"

Naruto makes a pout while still rubbing his arm. Hell, Sakura is strong.

"Hey! I was perfectly fine! I had everything under control! If you're going to worry about someone, it should be Sasuke! He was the one who went against the devil without eyebrows!"

Sasuke frowns when Naruto points his finger at him. Sakura's face fills with more concern.

"That's right. They told me what you did, Sasuke-kun! That was very imprudent! More like, I don’t know, something Naruto would do."

"Yes, exactly!" Naruto shouts. Then he grimaces as he turns to look at Sakura. "Hey!"

Sakura ignores him as she reaches out and touches Sasuke's shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, but his face indicates that he is trying very hard to keep himself quiet and not scream at her to get away.

"Fight with an injury like that! Sasuke-kun! You could have get more hurt, I..."

"Wait, the bastard did what?" Naruto blinks.

Sakura turns to face Naruto. "He fought with a shoulder injury that should have disabled him! That's why he was late! His tutor was not going to let him participate in this!" She explains.

Naruto opens his eyes wide. There is something of the cold feeling he felt in the stands when they said that Sasuke was going to fight against someone who could kill him tumbling in his stomach again. "What? That's very stupid, teme! And you say I'm the stupid! You're very stupid! I told you you were stupid! I've told everyone that you are!"

"You had us worried!" Sakura says, accentuating what she says with the expression on her face.

Naruto stops. "Yes, we—! Wait, no! I was not worried!"

Sakura decides to ignore him, Naruto thinks, because after she says, to make it sound even worse, "Naruto almost stopped the fight! And he didn’t even know about the injury! If he had known..."

"Hey! No! No, no, no, that's not true, I wasn’t worried about him!” Sakura looks at him, an eyebrow raised. “Well, yes, I was, but only because. Uh. Because, um, I— is, because he's my rival! Yes. Okay? That’s all! And he promised to fight with me sometime! He said he want to fight me! And I want to kick his ass! If he killed him, I wouldn’t be able to! It was just that! That’s— That’s all!”

Sakura blinks at him while Naruto babbles and screams and waves his arms in the air. Sasuke actually seems a bit surprised, his eyes open a fraction more. Naruto starts feeling warm on his face.

"I swear!"

Sasuke blinks. Then he looks at Sakura, who still looks at Naruto with a mixture of surprise and confusion. "I didn’t try to worry..." he says, and he glances at Naruto, who looks away, "… in whatever way," he points out, as a clear hint to the babble that Naruto has just released, "I was fine, that's why I fought, I..."

There is a pause.

"Sasuke-kun?"

When Naruto turns to look at him again, he gets surprised. Sasuke's eyes are dark, looking at something behind him with an emotion Naruto can almost call hate. Naruto almost recoils back, Sasuke's gaze is too intense. Penetrating. And his whole face is shrouded in something somber, dismal. Dark. It gives Naruto a bad taste in his mouth. He had seen Sasuke irritated, annoyed, but as far as he can remember, he hasn’t seen Sasuke really, actually angry at all. Not even once. He didn’t even know that Sasuke could hate something. Less with that intensity.

Naruto frowns and puts a hand on Sasuke's shoulder. The tension in Sasuke's body disappears, though not entirely.

"Hey bastard, are you okay? What's wrong?" Naruto's voice is enough for Sasuke's eyes to soften a little, but they don’t stop to look at the point behind Naruto. Naruto looks back and follows Sasuke's eyes to find a tall boy with glasses that, by the light, cover his eyes, and a... Man? Woman? Man. A man with long hair, marked makeup and a macabre smile. His spooky eyes resemble those of a snake, fixed on his prey, fixed on Sasuke.

"Do you know them, Sasuke-kun? Who are they?" Sakura asks out loud, echoing some of the questions that begin to fill Naruto's mind.

Sasuke doesn’t answer. Instead, he says, "I have to go. See you later."

Sakura stretches her arm and takes him from his wrist. Sasuke doesn’t turn to look at her.

"But you need to go to the nursing first, Sasuke-kun!"

"You guys go first, the dobe needs to get checked his wrist." He says, and without looking at them, he lets go and keeps walking.

When he goes halfway, the snake-eyed man’s smile widens in a way that gives Naruto chills. The other boy puts his glasses on the bridge of his nose and opens his arms. He leans a little towards him and says "Sasuke-kun! We were just going to say hello!"

Naruto frowns. Something about that... feels off. It just... doesn’t seem okay. It gives him a bad taste in his mouth. A strange feeling in the stomach.

Sakura sighs at his side. "That was weird, but well, Sasuke-kun is right, Naruto, you need to take care of that hand."

Naruto frowns deeper when Sasuke gets to where the duo is.

"I know you care about him, and I do too, but Sasuke-kun will be fine. He knows how to take care of himself, and no matter how strange they may seem, you don’t have to judge them by their looks, okay? Sasuke-kun seems to know them. Besides, there’s a lot of people here, I don’t think anything bad will happen; he will be just fine. Come on. Let’s go get you checked.” Sakura's voice is soft, but her grip is a bit harder than it should be as she grabs him by the arm and pulls him, and when Naruto glances at her face, Naruto sees it. It can be noticed the way she tries to hide it, looking away, hiding part of her face with her hair. Her eyes are full with worry.

And although he feels bad and hesitant to do so, although he feels as if a weight were squeezing his stomach and something visceral and ugly was burning his throat with every step he takes, although there is a voice in his head that screams at him from the back to get Sasuke away from there, away from them, although all of that, he keeps walking.

He leaves Sasuke behind.

At that time, he doesn’t know that he will regret doing it years later.

.

Naruto is corned and asked for autographs before arriving at the nursing. There are smiles and they give him polite hugs and he receives attention from all sides.

It's fantastic. Almost unreal. Surreal. It almost seems like a dream. It's what he's always dreamed of.

It would be better if Sasuke was there, though.

.

.

Ero-Sennin takes him to dinner at Ichiraku with Baa-chan that night. He lets him order all the bowls he wants.

He tells him that he saw him on TV and that he is very proud and that they even recorded his fight on a CD. He tells him that he is more famous than he is between the ladies in the neighborhood now while he laughs and ruffles Naruto’s hair. He orders one of those double ice-cream palettes that split in half and shares it with him while he smiles and tells him how proud his parents would be of him.

Tsunade gives him a necklace with a shiny pendant and kisses his forehead when she hangs it on his neck. She smiles at him and tells him kind words and congratulates him with warm, soft eyes.

Ero-Sennin accuses him of having more luck than him with pretty girls.

Naruto laughs.

It is one of the best nights of his life.

.

His classmates congratulate him a lot (not as much as Sasuke, but yes) the next day.

Even Kiba does.

Things improve a lot from there.

Over time, Naruto learns to hide and push that bad feeling he had at the tip of his mouth when he saw Sasuke with that man in a corner of his mind and not to worry about it.

.

The three end their science project two weeks before the delivery date. They get an A+ and congratulations from Iruka sensei.

.

Things are better than they have been for a long time.

In case someone was wondering the places of the tournament:

First place: Uchiha Sasuke.

Second place: Draw, Uzumaki Naruto and Rock Lee.

Third place: Sabaku no Temari.

Thanks everyone for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments! Thank you!! This chapter was more than anything an introduction to how the dynamics of everyone starts here. I hope you liked it!! Thanks again!! And I'm sorry for so many notes, lol.

[haljathefangirlcat]

still thinking about that “we Have To Talk about how quips are ruining fandom by destroying meta and turning all fic into shitposts” post @ms-demeanor wrote a great rebuttal to, and about the other posts she wrote about it and about the You’re Doing Fandom Wrong attitude in it, and about the notes on those posts. not gonna reblog or reply to any of those because my thoughts are admittedly kind of random and jumping from place to place and probably OT to the point of the discussion, but you know. still thinking.

so, uh. not trying to start wank or anything but enjoy the ranting that got way out of hand under the cut.

so, like... that one “we can’t just block everyone who quips and shitposts because some of these people also write actual meta but then they unfortunately go back to Not Engaging With Canon by writing quippy shitpost-y stuff” line, or however it was actually phrased? besides the blatant entitlement with the “you have to fandom ONLY in ways I like, I can’t just engage with the part of the content you create that I’m interested in and scroll past the rest” thing (which kinda reminds me of the whole “you can’t CNTW on some of your fics, I should be able to read ALL of your fics” thing, in a way) and the ”I refuse to curate my fandom experience and I’ll make it some stranger’s problem” thing (which... reminds me of a few other things, but tbf it has probably been around since the very first days of fandom), what if someone doesn’t even see meta and quips/shitposts as fundamentally different and mutually exclusive approaches to fandom? what if they see them as just two ways to be interested in a specific fandom and interact with it, and maybe even closely linked together, so going from one to another is actually very, very easy for them? hell, what if they (gasp!) even mix quips and meta together sometimes?

I have a few posts about what I think Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese might have been doing with mythological references and themes in Dark, and about what I got from the series finale. some are meme-like, phrased in a joking tone, probably even shitpost-y? another one is literally just a gifset plus me having intense Feels in the tags, and the last one is an edit of the kind I’ve seen people complain about as “those cringey unoriginal tumblr aesthetics that all look the same” in at least a couple of occasions. does that automatically mean I only wanted to “win” at fandom (with my hard-earned prize being... a handful of notes in a fandom that’s not even that big compared to others) and that I haven’t actually spent probably way too much time thinking about the significance of Martha’s Ariadne play as a commentary on character interactions/plot/narrative themes (and honestly still do from time to time), or that I don’t occasionally read the captions under other people’s gifsets and suddenly feel very much enlightened about why the Ariadne play mentions the myth of the Flood of all things? that I didn’t start reading posts and comments and reviews and theories about the series finale as soon as I finished watching it? that, just because I didn’t write 10K+ words of Perfectly Serious Seriousness about all that stuff, I simply refused to Engage With The Text? 

... and if I said that I feel a little irrationally self-conscious at the idea of writing down all of my (often rambling, sometimes jumbled) thoughts about a series that to me actually does feel very deep and complex, so adding memes and humor to that or finding different means to put my ideas out there makes me feel more comfortable expressing myself while also taking off the (admittedly made-up) pressure of having to write a whole coherent essay where I have to find a clear and explicit way to explain where every single thought comes from and how it leads to the next like I’m gonna get graded on it? or that a lot of those thoughts stem from memories of spending five years of high school translating and analysing ancient Greek poetry and reading and watching and discussing every available interpretation and reinterpretation of it from Nietzsche to Vernant to Dürrenmatt to Christa Wolf to Pasolini to a lot of others and from certain things in Dark violently hurtling me back to those times without even asking for permission, so a part of my self-consciousness is actually “I probably don’t actually know/remember enough about this to base a whole in-depth analysis on it even though I do think there’s something there” and another part is “shit I’m too lazy to dig through all of my old textbooks and homework and additional readings to hunt for the thing I feel the desperate need to reference or figure out who might have said it, so no extended explanation here either”? I guess in the end it would all boil down to “there’s an amount of effort and physical and mental energy I’m willing to put into fandom but I also have limits to stop something that makes me feel happy from becoming a chore”, which. considering the whole “you have to put all your resources into constantly pouring out 100% serious meta and nothing else because that’s what I like, no deviations allowed” thing? yeah, I can see saying stuff like that would still make me a blight upon fandom. and/or Not Engaging.

which, I realize, it’s a thing I keep coming back to. but that’s because I really, really, really hate it? seriously, what even counts as Engaging With The Text correctly? not shitposts, and not quips either, apparently. Regardless of the fact that humor and crack have existed in fandom since forever and that it’s actually not uncommon AT ALL for them to be born out of looking at canon from different angles, pointing out whatever the fan in question finds surreal/strange/implausible/convoluted/awkward/just kinda funny about it. 

also, not canon divergence/what if fics motivated not by a desire to “fix” something that made us feel bad when it happened in canon but by a desire to actually fix what we felt was objectively a poor writing choice from the author, because we shouldn’t Engage by analysing the text to criticize it or to think over how and why certain aspects of it don’t work for us or how we think the structure of the text itself could be modified or even improved, we should Engage by... writing meta and/or writing canon-compliant fics with perhaps a little allowance for slightly-to-the-left-of-canon-compliant missing moments fics, I guess? 

from what I’ve gathered from reading other fandom discussion some time ago, AUs are also out, especially Modern/No Powers AUs, because those are always just an excuse to slap your fave’s name on your OC/disguise your original fiction as fanfic to get comments/ignore all that’s interesting about canon to write yet another dumb syrupy high school or coffee shop AU, even if I’m honestly not sure what kind of AUs people are even reading to never get to the “there’s no supernatural threat so let’s focus entirely on the fucked-up family dynamics and blatant mental issues in a world where you can’t just ignore them by marrying off your daughter or sending your son to be someone’s squire” AUs or the “this is pretty much what happens in canon but adding new dimensions and different outlooks on the themes by moving everything to a new context” AUs. seriously, I could rec you a pretty great “this guy would be a horrible father and treat his children horribly in any world, it’s not just the feudal society around him, it’s him as a person” AU and that’s literally just the first thing that came to my mind. but, hey, maybe Engaging is only engaging with the canon plot and setting and nothing else, what do I know.

... fuck, thinking about it, I’m not even sure if by “not shitpost and not quips” I should even mean humor/crack? because it’s not like the OP was clear about it in any way? maybe it’s just all that’s weird and tropey and not-canon-compliant? I can see the “everybody gathers in the main character’s stuff to smoke weed and weird shit happens” fic I got a chuckle out of some time ago being one of the dreaded tumblr-born shitpost fics that are supposedly ruining fandom by ensuring that fans stop thinking (?), but what about the “everything is the same but this one character is a catboy, not for any particular reason but just because” fic I’m currently following and loving? people have been joking and shitposting about catboys a lot on tumblr lately (I distinctly remember that the last catboy joke to pop up on my dash was the “I’m your catboy gf and I’m stuck in a wall” one...) and finding an always-a-catboy!AU initially got an amused smile out of me, so is the mere premise enough to make the fic just a joke/just taking a trope and running off with it/just part of a shallow trend? even when the author literally goes “oh shit just realized this is all a metaphor for neuodivergence and masking” in the story notes? unless writing a character who’s never explicitly stated to be neurodivergent in canon as a being literally or metaphorically neurodivergent in your fic is always shallow projecting or posturing issuefic... instead of, y’know, looking closely at the text and Engaging with it by interpreting it that way....

I feel all this ranting/venting might end up plunging into Why We Slash discussion territory now, so I better stop here.

anyway, in short, good to know I’ve been in fandom for years yet I’ve always been just a Fake Fan who Can’t Think and is constantly Doing It Wrong (by Not Being Transformative Enough, possibly). gonna do my best to stay exactly like that in the future <3