#she also said something about her mission for saving my family or something. my mom cut her off by distracting her lol | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sissytobitch10seconds · 17 days

Text

As It Was

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy Summary: Lila's in too much emotional distress to be any good on this mission, so Five has gone to the next best person. Who else would he take with him on a mission where he could get stranded than the man that has always kept him grounded in reality? Thankfully this time Viktor doesn't have much to loose. Warnings: Isolation, mentions of stomach-related illnesses, injuries, medical malpractice, and trans characters being forced to de-transition due to lack of healthcare Word Count: 8,088 Ship(s): Five Hargreeves/Viktor Hargreeves

Archive link!

A/N: I don't care if you didn't like Season 4. I did, I loved a lot of it and think that the people who didn't like it are being too loud and making fandom not fun anymore. If you didn't like it, you're still welcome to read this fic but I do. not. want. to. hear. about. it. I will block you. This is simply a fiktor reimagining of the Subway plotline because I have done a lot of fiktor reimaginings for other events in this show. That being said, I hope that you can enjoy this! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

When Five approached Lila with the proposition, her initial reaction was to immediately agree to go with him. She knew that the world was ending, it was something that always happened when all the Hargreeves were back together. She had been partially to blame for causing it the second time, when Viktor had been kidnapped and then blown up the FBI building in a torture-and-LSD infused rage. She had pushed for it in the first timeline too, by coaching certain people to make mistakes when it came to correcting the timeline. An event that big being mishandled would have gotten her mother a promotion, and she was taught her entire life that was a good thing. She knew that with the Hargreeves, there was an apocalypse to be solved. She had been itching for one since the twins were born and she was doomed to another two agonizing years o the kids being so little that they needed her at the home all the time. She wanted to have a crisis to solve, she wanted it so badly that she could feel it in her teeth.

She also knew that she couldn’t handle it. Not only had she aged what felt like an entire lifetime in the half a decade that they had spent in the new universe, but she’d given birth to three kids. She still had the mind of a trained assassin that would be able to deduce what was going on in a scene within minutes of arriving and talking to a couple of people, but she wasn’t sure that her body would be able to keep up with that big of a fight. She also knew that her children were depending on her and she wanted to be the mother that she’d never actually gotten to experience. The twins had toddler gymnastics and Grace had ballet, like they did every single week since they were two years younger. Grace had told her that she loved spending time with her mom after they had dropped the twins off and it was just the two of them in the car, and the thought of letting her daughter down like that ate her from the inside out.

“I have to get back to my family,” Lila said.

“I thought that I was part of your family,” Five huffed, a bit indignantly.

“Why do you want to save the world so badly this time, anyway? When the end of everything was staring you in the face and we had been offered a way to fix it all you kept spouting on and on about how another version of you had told you not to save the world,” Lila retorted. It was so much easier to bring it back to Five and his issues instead of admitting that even though she was bored out of her mind being a housewife, she wouldn’t trade being a mother for a single thing in the entire world or any timeline.

“I finally know what it’s like to live a life! The rest of you got the chance to do that when you were dumped into the sixties, well, not you specifically,” he waved his hand at her dismissively. He ran a hand through his long hair, which she sincerely hoped that he was going to get cut again when he was finished snooping around in the Keepers meetings that she was infiltrating to keep herself busy. “Look, I jumped forward to an apocalyptic wasteland when I was thirteen. I had to make my own way for the next forty-five years, which meant that every moment was spent working to keep myself alive instead of having the normal human experiences. Then I spent a grueling month fighting to stop apocalypses, or let them happen in the case of the Kugelblitz. I never got the chance to know what it was like to be an adult growing up in the world or a human interacting with and meeting new humans without being a member of an Academy. I just got a taste of that these last few years and I want to experience that longer. So I need your help.”

“Why my help specifically?” she asked, raising a brow at him. While it was true that she had kind of forced him down into the time-travel railway before, but that was before she had been reminded of the things that she had to do today. She also remembered the whole ordeal that he had gone through when it came to time traveling without the Commission and briefcase backing him up. She couldn't get lost for any amount of time, not when it might cause her children to start forgetting what type of perfume she used or the way that she laughed. That was what had happened to her with her own parents, she knee the pain that someone went through when they had to face that.

“Because you know how to do missions with exceedingly high levels of efficiency. We may never have worked together, but I did see your name on the leaderboard for most missions done in a day. You were just underneath me,” Five replied.

“Is that a compliment?” Lila asked, waggling her eyebrows at him. She turned around just in time to see Diego and Luther start arguing about something they likely agreed on. She watched the way that Diego’s hands made chopping motions in the air and then how he cupped the head of the stuffed reindeer that he had under his arm. He loved their children so much, he never let them see a sour face despite how much he hated the dead-end, abusive job that he had taken so that he could support them. She loved that man, even if they needed a second apart from each other so that they could figure out the whole mess that their marriage had become.

“It’s the closest thing that you’re going to get from me. That and the admission that you appear to make Diego actually happy,” Five said as he turned in the same direction that she had.

She looked back to him and then stared at her husband. She was a bit worried that she was going to be too intense with that look and accidentally turn on the laser-eyes that she apparently had. She really needed to figure out why she was doing that and how to control it. The last thing she wanted to happen was to cut a person in half when she didn’t want to. “Do you think so?”

Five tilted his head from side to side as he contemplated what he was going to say next. “Well, you don’t really make him happy any longer.”

Lila felt that burning shame in her belly grow even stronger than it had before. She felt it creep up her cheeks and neck so that they were flushed bright red as she put her hands on her hips. “What is that supposed to mean, you little creep?”

“It means that I can see the bullshit he’s putting up with and how miserable he is. You were frustrated with your extended family and the domestic life that was forced upon you, so you decided to have ‘book club’. He doesn’t have anything like that. He goes to work at a job that he hates, that doesn’t respect him and that’s incredibly repetitive. He then comes home to a wife that doesn’t give a shit about him to take care of three kids under the age of ten to give you a break since you did mothering all day and have to get out of the house,” Five replied.

“So?” she asked as she folded her arms over her chest. She could see where he was going with this and she understood what he meant, but she wanted to push him further so that she could deny it a little bit longer. It was so much easier to pretend that she and Diego were absolutely fine that to face the reality that their marriage was falling apart.

“So, he’s bored and boxed into a life that he never wanted. Did you know that he and Viktor had a punk band before Dad sent him to Europe to go to music school? He ditched it and the band broke up because he loved missions so much. The change from being respected, to some extent, and able to help people to only ever being loved by his children has to be difficult,” Five commented. “Perhaps you should have talked to Diego about the high-adrenaline enrichment that you were doing for yourself before you decided that he wasn’t worth it.”

“I love Diego too!” Lila scoffed indignantly. Her husband was the light of her life, he had drawn out a part of her that she had never known existed and then stood steadily by her side as it flourished and flowered.

“You don’t show it. Telling him that you want to take a break because all he does is complain instead of listening to those complaints and assuring him that you don’t hate the way that his body is changing or helping him to fulfill his own needs is not love,” Five informed her.

She knew that she was right, those words struck through her faster than the bullets her mother had pumped into her body when she had turned into more trouble that she was worth. Still, it hurt just as much and she quickly became defensive of her actions. “What would you know about marriage and love?”

Five’s eyes sparked with a kind of fire that she had never seen before. He leaned forward as he spoke to her with a seething hatred. “More than you ever will, Lila. Now I’m going to go find someone else to help me stop this goddamn apocalypse while you reconcile with the husband you allegedly love.”

---

As Five turned on his heel and walked away from Lila, his heart ached. He saw himself in her more than he would ever admit and yet after all this time, she was still so hostile towards him. They both knew isolation, him through the apocalypse and her through being the only child to grow up at the Commission Headquarters. They both knew what it was to work as an assassin that had to choose the life of a couple of the lives of the many. They knew each other inside and out, and yet that similarity had only served to drive them further and further away from each other as time went on.

Five had let himself drift away from his family again. He had romanticized them in his head when he had been fighting so hard to get back to them and out of the Commission. He had forgotten how awful it was to be around Luther and Diego when all they were doing was bickering with each other, how moral-detonating Klaus’ most recent relapse for them could be, the sickening way that Allison thought she was better than all of them even though she no longer had a superpower that allowed her to get whatever she wanted simply by asking for it. Viktor was the only person that was the exact person he remembered in his mind, likely because they had spent the most amount of time together.

Over the last five years in the new universe, he had seen some changes in his brother. Viktor’s body had changed, with his voice deepening and his muscle redistributing itself with the changes in his hormonal balances. His face was more angular and beginning to grow the shadow of a beard as well, especially since they had been working too hard for either of them to find a moment where they could step aside and shave. He had changed quite a lot as a person, too. He was still sweet, caring, and shy as he had been when they were children. However, the amount of shyness that came out of him had been crumbled down into a tenth of what it had been when Five was still living with the rest of the Umbrellas. He was able to stick up for himself against their father, and was quick to defend himself when someone said something unfair.

Five liked the new version of his brother, enough so that it was reigniting feelings that he thought he had long since put away. He had Delores when he was in the apocalypse, but he also had Viktor’s voice ringing through his head in the form of the book that he carried around with him as a reminder about why he had to go home. Those things had kept him alive, and then he had been allowed to find meaning and purpose on his own. Those things were being threatened right now, and that scared the absolute shit out of him.

He hadn’t been that scared in a long time, not since he was a child that barely knew anything outside of missions and the two walls of his home. He knew that he had to do something about it, so he spotted Viktor standing near Allison and Luther and then immediately rushed towards him. He placed his hand on his brother’s shoulder to get his attention and then jerked his head in another direction to show what he wanted.

Viktor peeled away from the siblings that he had since grown closer to, walking a few feet away with Five. “What’s going on, are you okay?” Viktor asked.

“Not really, but I’m surprised that you were able to tell that,” Five huffed. He bit the insides of his cheeks as he realized just how sour and bitter it sounded while coming out of his mouth. He had meant to be saying something that would subtly manipulate Viktor into coming with him because he was the only other person in all of the universes and timelines that Five could imagine going on a dangerous trip with. If he hadn’t gotten antsy all those years ago and blurted it out during breakfast only to have to make a point for his thirteen-year-old pride, he would have taken Viktor with him the first time too.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Viktor asked, reeling back with an indignant expression on his face. Five didn’t fault him, what he had said was objectively rude.

“You’ve been spending an awful lot of time with Allison since this entire endeavor went down. I’m just surprised that you were able to notice a change in my behavior due to that,” he replied as he tried to get the topic back to where he had wanted it to be originally. “I’m glad that you noticed, Viktor, I really am.”

“I’ve been spending a lot of time with Allison because I think that she feels guilty for the way that she treated me in the other timeline. She’s been hanging around me like a bad smell and I’m kind of okay with it. It’s nice to be the person that has to do no work in the relationship, you know?” Viktor shrugged.

As Five looked at him, he saw the twelve-year-old that had sat beside him one day after a mission, bawling his eyes out. He had baked a cake with their mother that day as a special surprise for them, a desperate plea for his family to pay any attention to him so that he didn’t have to be so alone. When the siblings had found out that he was the one that had done the baking, they had all eaten a lot slower and more cautiously, like they were expecting him to somehow have poisoned them. Of course it would be more appealing to Viktor for his siblings to reach out to him when it had been the other way around for his entire life. It was simply another piece of the confidence that he had gained post-medication and coming out.

“I’m glad that she’s the one reaching out. What she did to you was borderline feral and not okay on several levels. I wouldn’t give her as much slack if I didn’t know how hard it was to be a person out of time when you belong to a minority,” Five said. “That being said, I would like to ask you to do just that with me.”

“What do you mean?” Viktor immediately responded. His head snapped towards Five and his dark eyes bore into the other man’s mind, as if trying to read his thoughts from a simple glance.

It was a startling thing that Five had asked, he knew that for certain. It was frightening enough to be a queer woman back in the sixties, but it was another thing entirely to be a transgender man in any other time (and sometimes including) their own present. “I want to fix the apocalypse. I want to go back and stop the one thing that got us all into this mess so that we can come out the other side alright,” he said.

“Do we even know what’s causing the end of the world this time? Other than Ben and Jennifer, I mean,” Viktor said. The whole explanation that they had gotten from Abigail and Reginald concerning the end of the world had made very little sense to them this time around. Five was sure that they would end up figuring it out, but it wasn’t much to go off of for what he was asking.

“I was thinking that if we go back in time and either reset the universe, if we can find that place again, or stop Ben and Jennifer from touching each other in the van, then we can figure out how to stop The Cleanse from coming,” Five said.

“I don’t know, Five, it sounds kind of weak. The last time that we went back in time it also didn’t end well,” Viktor shuffled awkwardly. “Are you sure that this is worth all the hassle?”

“Like I just explained to Lila, I want to fight for this life I have. It’s not everything that I had dreamed it was going to be, but it’s still something. I want to be able to have the chance to grow up in a world with other people, where I can have a job to sustain myself instead of having to dig through cans of exploded food and prey that my next meal doesn’t give me botulism,” Five said. He hadn’t realized how desperate he was for all of those things until they were spilling from him with no stop in sight. By the time that he had finished, his chest was having and his mind felt feral.

Viktor reached out and placed his hands on Five’s shoulders, enough to snap his brain out of the haze of memories that were pouring back in. It was so hard to be sick on his own, to be vomiting and not knowing if he was going to be able to find clean water in time to replace the water he had lost, or aching from an infection and hoping against all hope that the penicillin he had made himself would cure him. He had so much terror inside of him, for so long, that it was addicting to live in a world where he could finally be calm and sheltered from the horrors.

“Five, I don’t know if this is going to work. I don’t want you messing around with time and us getting sent somewhere worse. Dad has an idea for how we can get Jennifer and Ben back to him. Maybe Abigail will come up with an idea to extract the durango and shoot it into space or something,” Viktor said.

“What if we could save Ben in another timeline? Stop him from dying?” Five asked. It was kind of stupid, but he had seen the way that their choices butterflied into the future for their family. Clearly, Ben and Jennifer were linked. Viktor had informed him of the memories that Allison and Luther had recovered from that last meeting. If their father had killed Ben before he had even touched Jennifer, then there was a chance that something more was going on that the old man was leading them to believe.

“Wha-what?” Viktor asked. “I thought that Dad just killed him because he was an asshole.”

“Dad was a total dickhead, but that was because he had no regard for other people’s emotions and thoughts outside of his plan. He used our feelings to manipulate us, which was why he brainwashed our siblings on what happened on that mission. He wouldn’t have killed one of us when he needed seven to reset the universe. Even if he knew about Lila or the Sparrows or Phoenixes or whatever, there was very little chance that he would have been able to get them,” Five explained.

He could see the cogs whirring in Viktor’s head as he considered the proposition that Five was laying out for him. The three of them had bee thick as thieves, the people at the end of Reginald’s ranking and the ones that were most prone to studying. Five was certain that after he left, Ben had picked up the slack and chosen to continue to stick by Viktor’s side until Klaus became the one that needed deliberate and constant saving.

Viktor’s lips pursed as he sunk his hands down into his pocket. He turned out towards the fake little town that Reginald had made to hide Jennifer. They had thought that returning there may have helped them find some more clues, but it seemed as though the rest of the agents that they hadn’t managed to kill had come and cleaned everything up in their wake. The town was nothing but peeling paint signs and boarded up windows, waiting for the next purpose that the owner would happen to bestow upon it.

“Okay. Let’s do it,” Viktor nodded. He spoke with his hands despite the fact that they were in his pockets, which was one of the cutest things that Five had ever seen in his entire life. “Ben saved me, when we were in Dallas. He was able to come into my mind and get me to remember my memories so that my powers stopped freaking out and trying to kill everything that they saw as a threat. I think that he deserves a chance to live too, it’s the least that I can do to repay him.”

“If I didn’t know any better I’d say that you were in love with him,” Five joked. It hurt to think about, that the person he had longed after for years, so much that his heart hurt with the effort of it all, had fallen in love with the friend that he had cherished second most in the entire world. He knew that he had left Viktor and Ben behind, but part of him had always hoped that there was a chance Viktor would wait for him. He knew that was stupid, no one would be able to love their thirteen-year-old bodied adopted brother. Still, the idea hit him in the back of the head like a sledgehammer every time it popped back into his mind.

“There was a time where we kind of were. I mean, I’m pretty sure that there’s no a duo in the entire family that hasn’t been tried out once or twice. Well, maybe Luther and anyone who isn’t Allison,” Viktor shrugged. “The only person that he kissed other than her before you came back was Klaus and that was supposed to be for ‘practice,’ but I think that Klaus was just pitting us all against each other to see who was best.”

“Man, this family is so fucking weird,” Five shook his head. He took a deep breath and then rolled his shoulders before he stuck his hand out to his brother. “Are you ready for this?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Viktor replied. He grasped Five’s hand as tightly as he could, squeezing his eyes shut as he prepared for the feeling of the teleportation. Five’s body was made to be dragged through time and space, he had never had to deal with the spins that way that Lila and Allison had. He also didn’t get nauseous or dizzy when he jumped unless someone had done something that caused him to correct while mid-jump. He knew that Viktor didn’t have the same protections on his body, which was why he was bracing himself so hard.

Five reached deep down into his body, to where the marigold was now nestled within his heart. He took a deep breath as he summoned it up so that it was pooling around them in purple energy. They appeared in the subway a moment later, the marigold settling back down where it belonged inside of him.

Viktor dropped his hand and began to look around the same way that Five had when he first appeared. The subway station looked exactly as it had the last several times that he had visited. The tile was white on the floors and the walls, the ceiling was concrete except for the pipes and electrical wires that lined it, fueling the hanging fluorescent lights and vending machines that dotted the terminal. The entire place was clean, despite the lack of people or perhaps because of it. None of the signs were in English or any other language that Five had seen during his time traveling the earth, but they fit the theme of the place well.

“Woah… Do you think that this is the same kind of thing that the Commission was made out of?” Viktor asked. He started forward, toward the massive map that wrapped around one of the wall pillars in the middle of the room.

“What do you mean?” Five asked as he walked after his brother. He had picked Viktor for a reason and this was exactly that, Viktor was already picking up on things that he had dismissed or not even considered. A second set of eyes were better than none, which was another reason that he had decided not to go it alone like he had many times before.

“Well, you kept saying that the Commission was a place out of time and that was how they managed to preserve the timeline,” Viktor said. “If this place can travel between multiple timelines and points in time, then it has to be something like the Commission. Did time move when you were here? Like for the rest of us.”

“No, it didn’t,” Five replied. He felt his brows furrow as his mind began to whirl with thoughts. “I never got the chance to ask the other version of myself why he had created the Commission or how. It’s something drilled into you from the minute that you start working there, that some things just don’t make sense and never will. I suppose that there was a chance that the other version of myself found a way to enhance his powers so much that he created a pocket of the timeline that was removed from it. Maybe he just saved up enough of his power that he was able to travel here. There were doors that we weren’t allowed to access in the main building where all the briefcases and the safe room were kept, it’s likely that there was an entrance to a place like this or this very subway system.”

Viktor began to run the tip of his finger over one of the lines as his eyes followed it. Someone else may have quickly gotten lost, but Viktor was a musician. His mind had been trained to follow a single line of notes even if the piece that he was reading was covered in other information. It was exciting for Five to watch him trail around the board until he tapped a circle and turned to his brother, “What is this?”

“I believe that those are the stations. If you look over here, there’s a sign pointing to this one in the same language as all of the street signs,” Five said as he tapped the glass on the other side of the pillar from Viktor.

“Do you know how to read that language?” Viktor asked.

“I do not, but I was able to fine this,” he peaked around so that they were on the same side as he brandished the directional pamphlet like it was the mos important thing that had ever existed in any of the timelines.

Viktor took it from his hands and then opened it so that his eyes could scan over the layouts and the rails. “Wow, I never realized how often the timelines intersected with each other,” he commented.

“I suppose that they have to, since every minor decision that the catalyst for this grouping makes splits it into two or more,” Five shrugged. He stepped behind Viktor so that their bodies were almost entirely pressed together.

Somehow that felt more natural than anything he had done in a good long while, so he let himself remain there despite the fluttering anxiety in his stomach. Viktor leaned back into him with as minute movements as he could manage while they tried to decipher the timeline that they could arrive in.

“I think that we need to take this as carefully as we can. We shouldn’t go to any of the other timelines unless we absolutely have to. I don’t want to fuck anything else up, and I’m pretty good at that,” Viktor commented as he flipped the pamphlet over to look at the other side.

“I don’t think that us simply being in another timeline is going to cause issues,” Five shrugged.

“Five,” Viktor replied, giving him a disbelieving and disappointed look.

“What?” Five asked, raising a brow at him. The urge to kiss his cheek overwhelmed him all at once. He almost took a half step back to resist it, but he didn’t know if it would actually work or if raising his foot from where it was planted would send him forward and directly into Viktor’s perfect arms.

“You should know better than anyone that messing with one thing can cause the rest of the timeline tumbling down around it,” he replied. He placed his hands on his hips and looked cross, making a pretty good imitation of what Grace, their robot nanny not their niece, had looked like when she was reprimanding them for breaking something.

“Since when have you become the expert on time travel and apocalypses? Last I checked, I was the only one in this subway station that has actually worked for the Commission,” Five said as he glanced around. If he had brought Lila then she wouldn’t have fought him on this idea so much, but he knew that Viktor was the better option. Out of all their siblings, he was the one that could fight the longest and the hardest while keeping Five grounded properly.

“I’ve started enough end of times to know their insides and outsides,” Viktor joked with a lopsided smile.

Five felt like his breath had been stolen from his lungs and he just nodded his head mutely. “What do you think we should do, then?”

“I think that we should try to work out how this map works, get a good idea of where each of the subways might go, and then try that out,” Viktor said. A studious look overcame his face as he leaned closer to the map so that he could keep track of each of the tiny glowing lines that spanned the surface of the map.

---

Year 1

Time travel had always been taught to them as something that was unattainable. None of them had been allowed to read any sci-fi books that contained the subject, and now Viktor understood why. It was fine and good for people that could never attain that ability to dream about what it might be like and the adventures that could occur, but it was dangerous in the hands of someone that could actually do that.

Despite all the studying that they had done and the pamphlet that they carried around with them, they had still gotten lost. The subways had a mind of their own and they traveled where they wished, not where the voice over the subway or the signs said that they were going. They kept track of the stations that they ended up at, but Viktor still refused to have them go above ground.

They began to make food out of the subway rats so that they could sustain themselves without hunger gnawing at their guts. Viktor was able to get them oranges and chips and candy out of the vending machines when they landed in a station that had enough quality food for them to actually get. It wasn’t the life that he had wanted to lead after all his fighting to make something soft for himself, but he had his best friend with him so it was alright.

They changed in minute ways, for the most part. There was no way that Viktor was going to be able to get the testosterone that he had been taking while they were traveling. Time felt basically meaningless, but he knew that they had been down there for quite some time when he saw that his body was changing its muscle and fat deposit back to what it had been when he could barely even look at his own body. His face and abs softened, his hips widened again. He hated the way he looked but he was glad it was only Five with him, so that they could share complaints about shaggy hair and grimy bodies. Viktor had gotten top surgery during the time that they had spent without their powers in the new universe and so he didn’t notice the beginning of his cycle returning until he woke up with his shorts entirely drenched in blood.

It was the first time that he had let Five upstairs, out of the subway and into the world longer than just to check to see if it was the right one.

Year 2

Viktor had no idea how things had lasted as long as they did. They began to go up onto the surface for longer stretches of time, to begin to make sure that every single option was crossed off. They would explore the town until they happened across either an alternate version of themselves or an entirely different version of the Academy compared to what they were used to.

Some of the timelines had been very different to the ones that they were used to, which meant that they tried to correct by moving back to one of the timelines that was closer to what they believed was the timeline that they had come from. They still had the pamphlet that they had arrived with, but at this point all the lines and characters didn’t make any more sense than they had when they had first arrived.

They carried backpacks with them now, supplies that they had gotten from the surface when they had ventured up there for the second longest time since they had first arrived. They went up to get things for their survival now, like bottled water and more food than the rats and vending machine food that they had been subsisting off of for the year previous.

As they chugged down another one of the seemingly infinite tunnels, Viktor felt his body sagging and soon found his head resting on Five’s shoulder. It felt just as natural as it had back when they were children and caused the tension and nerves in his shoulders to relax entirely. He let his hand drop down in between them and then felt another palm meet his own. He tilted his head up just enough to see the serene expression that had taken over Five’s face. Was this what it would have been like if Five had taken him with the first time that he had time traveled?

Year 3

It was bound to happen eventually, but when one of them finally got sick it was the most terrifying thing that had happened in a long time. They had been camped out at the edge of the surface of a timeline that they hadn’t explored that much when Five woke up with a sweaty body and a blotchy red face. Viktor had seen that happen enough when they were children to know that Five had picked something up.

Viktor strayed out into the timeline to find that it was one where something had happened, not one where they were waiting for that thing to happen. All of the people seemed to have just gotten up and left the town that they had lived in, leaving behind literally everything that wasn’t attached to them. The cash was all still in the till, the electricity and water worked as well as it could when the maintenance team for the city had gone as well. Viktor was able to pick up medicine and supplies from the local hospital before he returned to the house that he and Five were staying at.

It was a nice enough place, even if it was extremely disconcerting that there was literally no one around them. He enjoyed the silence, finally able to shake the rattling of the subway cars moving around them or next to them out of his head. He kept Five’s fever down by dosing him with a fever reducer and soaking his neck and feet in cold water whenever his temperature got a little too high.

By the time it was over, Viktor felt like he had seen a piece of Five that was the closest to his soul that he was ever going to get. They had their backpacks loaded with the supplies that they would need for the next stretch of journey that they took as they tried to find their original timeline.

Year 4

Injuries had become commonplace, but that didn’t mean that Viktor liked what was happening very much. He had his hands down on the ground, gripping the wall behind him so that he didn’t reach out and attack Five for simply trying to help. His boots were off his feet and next to him on the ground, which was the only thing that he was able to look at and yet still reminded him of the thing he was trying to put out of his mind in the first place. Five had a pair of pliers carefully gripped in his fingers, his eyes hardened by the seriousness of the situation and how dedicated he was to the task at hand.

“Ow! That fucking hurts, you asshole,” he growled. He let go of the pillar with one hand and then covered his mouth with his sleeve. Despite how grimy and gross he was from the stretch of nasty subway stations that they had traveled through, he let the fabric fall into his mouth and bit down onto it as hard as he could.

“Well I told you to be careful when you were walking through that glass and you chose not to listen to me,” Five replied, his voice distant and unsteady because of how dedicated he was to the task at hand.

“Not all of us can just pop over it, Five, I had to get there somehow,” Viktor replied. His own voice was tense with the pain and discomfort as he felt the shard of glass being pulled out of the bottom of his foot. Once it was finally over, when he heard the tinkling sound of it hitting the subway floor, he slumped down onto the ground and groaned. “Next time one of us gets hurt, I think that we should just try and find a doctor.”

“Or we could just not get hurt,” Five offered as he began to wrap up the wound with the antiseptic that they had stolen two timelines ago. He laughed when he saw the unamused look that Viktor gave him.

Year 5

Sleeping had never felt like it was something that they had to risk while they were traveling. It was something that came naturally to them, despite the strange place that they had found themselves in. They were only ever in trouble when they went up to the surface because the gates leading down into the subway never let anyone down. They had encountered a handful of people that had chased them to the subway but hadn’t been able to follow after them, or had landed in their own version of the terminal. It was impossible to know for sure, but they did know that they were safe with each other.

The worst that they had ever faced when they were down in the subway and trying to sleep was a surprise train showing up, or the rats that skittered everywhere. They always woke when the rats arrived to make sure that they didn’t get bitten, when Five had during their second year it had almost turned gangrenous, and so that they they could hunt the animals. They were abel to get a decent amount of food from the surface, but nothing enough to fill their bellies with enough energy that they could continue on steadily.

Viktor liked the way that they were sleeping with each other, it felt like it had when they were children. Five had used to pop into Viktor’s room and then cuddle under the fluffy comforter and thick quilts that Grace had placed over their beds. When they had gotten caught like that and Viktor lost the privilege of sleeping with his door shut, they had begun to do it a little differently.

Five would teleport down to Viktor’s room and then bring him upstairs before someone could even notice that he was absent from his bed. They would set up some of the thick quilts down on the ground and then lay next to each other underneath the sheets and comforter, cuddled together for warmth on the floor of their drafty house. That’s what it felt like they were doing now, with several woolen blankets underneath them to support their aging bodies and Five’s arms wrapped around Viktor’s waist to keep them both warm.

Nothing felt more natural than loving Five and taking care of him, he was sure that nothing ever would again.

Year 6

“I’m tired,” Viktor sighed as he let his head hit the pillar behind him. “I’m not sure that I want to do this anymore.”

“What do you mean by that?” Five asked. He gently set down the stick that he had been using to move around the rat that they were eating for dinner that night. “The rats may not be very palatable after all this time, but they taste better than hunger.”

“They taste like hunger,” Viktor said. The two of them smiled at each other, laughing silently in their eyes at the inside joke. “You don’t have to worry about me offing myself, I would never leave you here alone. At least, not if I could help it.”

“I don’t like to think about you dying,” Five shook his head. “You gave me enough of a scare when you slipped underneath the train car while we were trying to get dinner three months ago.”

Viktor sighed again, “I still don’t know how you manage to keep track of time while we’re down here. I thought I was going to be able to feel the differences in the timelines based on the amount of marigold there, but we’re too close to the rest of them. When we’re on the main track like this,” he pulled out the pamphlet and then pointed towards the massive jumbled line of color in the middle. He took another deep breath, “When we’re here it’s all so loud. I feel like they’re rattling around in my chest and they’ve been doing it for so long that I can’t hear any difference.”

Five was quiet for a while before he asked, “Do you remember where we went when I was sick? The timeline where everyone had vanished but there was no destruction or havoc?”

“Of course I do. You being that sick was one of the scariest things to happen while we were down here,” Viktor replied with a nod.

“I think that we should go back there. We should try to backtrack as far out of the main set of timelines as we can, to give you a break. I want to have one too, but I can’t imagine how loud all this has to be for you to deal with,” Five said. He was speaking pragmatically, but his tone was still softer than it usually was.

“Why are you so concerned about me?” Viktor asked, folding the pamphlet back up and setting it down next to them.

“You know why,” Five mumbled.

“I think that I would prefer to hear you say it out loud,” Viktor said. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest and he knew that this time it was from anticipation and excitement instead of another panic attack that was trying to murder him before the surface did.

Five turned to him properly, dropping the stick down to the ground. He brought his soot-coated hand up to Viktor’s face and brushed his thumb over the other man’s cheekbone. Slowly, they both leaned closer together until their lips had touched. Their mouths moved in perfect synchronicity, open and closed, back and forth. It was the most love and care that either of them had ever received in their entire lives and it was exactly the thing that had kept them alive all this time.

Year 7

“Viktor?” Five called through the greenhouse that they had made into their home.

They had stayed there longer than the couple of days that they had promised each other. It didn’t feel wrong anymore, not when they had suffered through so much to get there. They made things out of the items that they scavenged from the subway and the houses around them. Viktor had been able to get new clothing, jeans and a comfortable t-shirt that had a band he had never heard of it on the front. Five was in a Henley and a pair of slacks, something that he said made him very happy. They had matching golden bands that they had taken from a jewelry shop across time too, the one that had the alarm going off even to that day despite the fact that there was no owner and no cops to come and investigate.

“Yes, love?” he asked as he set the watering can down. He didn’t have a lot of things to do in the new place since there were no other people, but he had picked up the violin and gardening. The music helped the plants grow, or at least that was his theory since everything was so much more lush and green since he had arrived.

“I found something that I think may be of interest to you,” he replied as he pulled a notebook out of the back of his pocket. “This is what I was using to keep track of the timelines that we crossed while we were searching for the one that might have brought us back to the original.

“I don’t think that one exists, but this could help us get back to our siblings. We wouldn’t have to be alone anymore,” Viktor beamed.

“Are you feeling up for it?” Five asked. The worry that creased his brow was cute, so Viktor stepped off the stool he had been on to reach the strawberries in the back and then kissed the lines away. He was met with another pair of lips on his, which filled his heart with so much love that he felt like it might burst.

“I am. I want to go back to where we belong, with people and answers and our siblings,” Viktor smiled.

“Hopefully they haven’t managed to fuck anything up in the time that we’ve been gone. However long that is for them,” Five said. He caught another kiss before the two of them delved into conversation about what they would need to take with them when they began the second part of their two-person odyssey.

#fanfiction #fanfic #writing #ao3 #archive of our own #tua #the umbrella academy #tua s4 #tua season 4 #tua spoilers #fiktor #viktor hargreeves #lila pitts #diego hargreeves #five hargreeves #number five #the boy #as it was fic

16 notes · View notes

strqyr · 1 year

Note

Me just chewing on the Summer working with Salem theory. Just... As someone else pointed out Summer is the only stepmother we've seen in the entire show about fairytales. And very specifically Yang has both abandonment issues and the family absolutely imploded when Summer died or "died". Bonus that's messed up points: Raven at least occasionally visits as a raven. I'm all for this theory because oh it makes sense and it finally puts the spotlight on the family implosion.

More on the whole Summer Rose possibly joining Salem makes the whole STRQ situation stupidly complex - Yang and Ruby nearly ended up Grimm chow because went looking for Raven. Qrow saved them - but given Raven's semblance she possibly could have also. Or what I'm saying is that I'm considering the option that Raven's reintroduction to the narrative is her bailing out RWBY after they come across Summer working for Salem. Because Raven is extremely set up for high powered evac from nowhere.

my mind always goes back to red like roses part ii bc with every new revelation that make the picture just a little bit more clearer, the more relevant it becomes. i made a sacrifice but forced a bigger sacrifice on you is often read as "summer took a risk going against salem and died trying to end this war once and for all, and thus the weight of being the simple, more honest soul fell on ruby" but reading it in the light of summer working with salem, and it becomes "summer made a sacrifice by essentially faking her own death and never making any contact with her family, perhaps hoping that one day she could return to them when it's all over, but in doing so forced ruby, the little girl with silver eyes, her own daughter, into the spotlight" which i find 100x more interesting characterwise.

and god is the reveal going to have an impact on the whole family; the comparisons between summer and raven are apt bc so far, they could have not been spoken more differently about, but the more the curtains get peeled back, the more similar they become (not the same, never the same, but i do think summer and raven are more similar to each other than even they themselves may think). and it's so interesting bc we know how the family was affected after summer's alleged death (at least from yang's perspective) but nothing after raven left other than they all eventually moved on and what tai said about it doing a number on their family (which rings odd when the focus has been more on how they were handling things post-summer's 'death' rather than raven's departure).

the bridging of the gap between heroes and monsters is already well on its way; a world is a lot more complex than a simple black-and-white morality might suggest, being a hero and doing good doesn't equal never failing, people you trust or don't trust can both be right about one thing and wrong about another, everything that ruby is going through mirrors plenty of villains, it's just a matter of perspective, etc; finding out that summer, the best of the heroes the world has to offer, is working with salem is definitely going to speed things up even further.

i'm not willing to try and predict when raven is going to come back properly (i.e. excluding potential summer flashbacks) bc, well. she's kind of unpredictable. like, her first appearance was 'foreshadowed' by yang talking about her family to blake, but that was as much about summer as it was about raven, and what it left us with was "yang is searching for her mom", not "her mom is going to drop in out of nowhere to save yang."

like the setup is there, the warrior in the woods made it clear—"next time you enter the woods, you're on your own." -> "i knew you'd still come to my rescue." is not being subtle—but it could also do with summer potentially going to ask for raven's help during her final mission that took a turn, and. ya know. "promises are like birds; they taste great, but always escape." or something like that. idk.

i jinxed myself not so long ago by saying that i don't think any of my long running, serious theories are going to get proven or debunked this volume and now i've been told to buckle up and the strq brainworms are having a unannounced party that has kept going way past into the quiet hours.

like. ten years of waiting and i might actually get all of team strq in the same episode this saturday? trying to keep my expectations in check but also i might just cry.

#rwby #rwby9 #rwby spoilers #grundpfeiler #ask.strqyr #they're my Blorbos™#i mean i know one of them is going to let me down #by not appearing #might make bets but like #summer is already a win in my books #everyone else is a pleasant surprise

84 notes · View notes

someidiotwithalaptop · 2 years

Text

Alright: What the FUCK happened to Summer???

Because something sure did, and every new thing we hear about her gets more disturbing, and it haunts me.

So, I'll start with stuff that's fairly certain and like, small leaps of logic before I go full tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist. We have very little actual info about Summer, nearly all of it from different characters talking about her.

From Yang we get the basic facts from her family's perspective: Summer was a Huntress who went out on a mission and never came back. We also get the characterization of, "Super-Mom: Baker of cookies and slayer of giant monsters."

From Qrow, we learn that 1. She was a brat, which like, honestly STRQ was probably just "oops! all brats" 2. He thinks she would have pressed on if she knew the truth, which, uh, she almost definitely did. "We don't have to kill you to stop you," is not the sort of thing you say to Salem if you don't know she's immortal, that's all I'm saying. 3. Whatever her final mission was, she didn't tell him or Tai or Ozpin. I'm inclined to believe Ozpin when he says he genuinely doesn't know what happened to Summer, since his biggest secret is already out—plus he's been genuinely repentent about the mess his lying caused in Volume 6 and is taking steps to do better in the future. It would feel really weird thematically if he knew and was keeping yet another giant bomb of a secret. So Summer went on her final mission alone, or at the very least, she didn't tell any of Ozpin's inner circle where she was going.

We'll get to speculating about why not later, but I think this point is probably going to be important in Ruby's character arc—whatever Summer's ultimate fate, she got there because she tried to save the world alone, and we've seen Ruby do something similar. Like she's not running off after Salem by herself, but she's definitely trying to shoulder the burden of leading and inspiring everyone to keep going all on her own, without asking for help as that responsibility has been slowly yet systematically destroying her mental health. I mean ffs she's been literally carrying her team on her shoulders for two episodes now.

HOWEVER: Oz, Tai, and Qrow don't know anything about what happened to Summer, but it's possible that Raven might. When Ruby tries to reach out to her and convince her to work together, because they'll have a better chance than if they try to do it alone, Raven says, "You sound just like your mother," in truly the most bitter, disdainful-ass tone I have ever heard. And then she opens a portal for Cinder to throw a fireball at her. Whether this is about a more generalized friction that maybe contributed to Raven leaving, or a specific moment when Summer tried to get her on board with whatever she was doing on that final mission, is kind of uncertain. Or it could be both!

(And it might also be she married my ex bitterness but, admitting my biases here, I hate that fucking trope with a fiery passion and I think it's more interesting if her anger at Summer is actually about Summer.)

Regardless, if Summer did ask her for help, then based on how Raven reacted to Ruby I don't think she got it lmao

And then. Oh, and then. We get Salem!

"Your mother said those words to me. She was wrong too."

"Her again?"

So like. Salem definitely met her. Had a whole-ass conversation with her, even.

And that fucking smile??? Salem did some shit to Summer. It's just a question of what, exactly?

Right. Okay. So after they kill the Hound and realize WHOOPS that was a person and he looks an awful lot like Ruby! and everyone reunites, Ruby says this:

"When I saw its eyes, I knew. Salem used to kill people with Silver Eyes, like Maria. But she’s always wanted me alive. Why would that change unless, when she met Mom, she learned she could do something new?"

Timeline-wise, this seems accurate! But I'd like to also insert TR into the equation. It's a little hard to tell given the uhh, body horror of it all, but he definitely looks younger than Qrow (which is maybe not saying a lot given that Raven looks at least ten years younger than Qrow and she's his twin lmao) and, more to the point, like he's probably younger than Summer.

Like, yeah, hard to tell, but I don't think this man is past forty. And even if he is, it doesn't seem like Salem's had him for very long, seeing as she never sent him after Ruby or the relics in previous volumes. So he's probably an example of what Salem's been doing to SEWs after Summer.

Also, Salem calls him an experiment, and says that so far she's pleased with the results. Meaning Summer isn't exactly a Hound, though I wouldn't say that puts grimmification off the table. Just that it's not in the exact same way he is. And it's worth pointing out that the way TR has been grimmified, it's left him completely without agency and unable to disobey Salem. Even after Ruby blasts the Grimm off his head, he's still left repeating "Take The Girl" over and over without any sign of whoever he used to be coming back to the surface. It's possible that is what Salem is referring to when she calls him a successful experiment.

So the way Salem has dealt with people with silver eyes has gone:

Maria (kill her) > Summer (?!?!) > TR (an... experiment) > Ruby (bring her to me alive)

Adding TR into the mix, it seems unlikely that the "something new" Salem learned she could do from Summer Rose would actually have been, y'know, a Hound. Plus from a narrative perspective, I don't think we're going to have Ruby literally saying exactly what happened to Summer into the camera only for her to turn up, Hound-ified just as expected, a couple volumes later. So, some possibilities:

Ruby is actually exactly correct about what happened to Summer, but she's not going to show up later so there's no reason not to just tell us. Personally I doubt it's this, given the way the mystery has been unfolding over eight volumes and counting. It'd be kind of weird to just tell us instead of showing us, or indeed having the Hound literally be Summer. Also, if Summer is a Hound too then why is TR an experiment?

Summer was Grimmified but didn't survive the process, so she gave Salem the idea but she's not actually a Hound. This also seems a bit odd to me given that would mean she's basically just dead like we assumed, but with extra steps. Like it's upsetting but it doesn't represent the kind of dramatic upheaval to the sisters' worldviews that it feels like this is building towards. It doesn't explain how fucking smug Salem is about the whole thing.

Summer was Grimmified, but didn't actually lose any agency. This would explain why Salem is still experimenting, and why she's so pleased with TR—he's even more singleminded in carrying out her goals than Tyrian is. It also fits with the way the Grimmification worked on Salem. Even after she jumped into the goop, she was still very much herself—it's possible it influenced her, but she was definitely capable of showing love and affection to both Ozma and her daughters. She just, uhh,,, was also willing to try and murder them. But it's unclear to me how much of that was Evil Goo and how much was just that there's no way a human being spends any significant length of time as the Last Woman Alive without some unpleasant side effects. We're social creatures and we do not generally do well when completely deprived of company.

Summer wasn't Grimmified at all, the whole Hound thing is a red herring.

In either 3 or 4, regardless of how much body horror happened, Ruby is wrong about what happened to Summer. And in order to not undercut that moment of utter despair at what probably happened to Summer... I feel like what actually did happen has to be. like. worse.

AND IT'S A TAD DIFFICULT TO GET WORSE THAN THE HOUND.

So. Time to put our tinfoil hats on: what if we add an element of horrible betrayal?

Yes this is a Summer-joined-Salem conspiracy post.

But hear me out okay! Circling back a bit, why wouldn't Summer tell any of the inner circle where she was going? If she talked to anyone, it was Raven, who had already noped the fuck out by the time Summer went on her final mission. Now, if it was just Tai and Qrow I'd say she might've kept it from them for the same reason everyone always keeps that secret—she didn't want them to lose hope. But... Ozpin already knows. There'd be no reason not to tell him what she was doing, unless she knew he'd try to stop her.

Now: my goal here is to make all this make sense, without altering the first foundational piece of characterization we get for Summer. Namely, "Super-Mom: Baker of cookies and slayer of giant monsters." I'm not saying Summer learned the truth and went, welp, if you can't beat 'em join 'em. Because both Summer and Raven tend to act as foils to Ruby and Yang, and "gave up immediately" doesn't feel like an interesting foil to Ruby's perserverence. But, if you find out that there's an existential threat to the entire world, and she can't be killed...

Isn't it worth trying to negotiate?

Especially if, say, you were absolutely desperate to end this war in your lifetime. Because Summer knows that if it's really impossible, if Salem can't be stopped, then Ruby will get dragged in whether she likes it or not. All because of a trait that Summer passed down to her.

Salem's been killing people with silver eyes, probably for millenia. It's easily possible that Summer had her own visit from someone like Tock, or noticed the same thing Maria's father did, that there's a suspicious lack of people with silver eyes considering how useful they are against the Grimm. As long as Salem is a threat, Ruby is going to be in that same danger. Forever.

So she has to do something, right? If there's even the tiniest chance she can end this now, before Ruby will ever have to suffer for it, before she gets pulled into an impossible war and Yang comes charging in after her, because of course she's going to try to help her sister... isn't that a chance worth taking?

This is why I think Raven knows some shit, by the by—when she's telling Yang about Salem, she actually kind of indirectly drops the same bomb that went off in Volume 6, it's just that she didn't do it in the same explicit terms that Jinn did. "She can't be stopped, she can't be reasoned with, and she will not rest until Humanity crumbles at her feet."

"Can't be stopped" is Raven's translation of can't be killed, since "We don't have to kill you to stop you" seems to be a flavor of terrifying exclusive to Ruby and apparently Summer. But "can't be reasoned with" implies that somebody tried. And like, let's be honest. Do we really think Raven was the one who decided to give diplomacy a go?

Not to mention this line, which I'm like 90% sure is referring to Summer:

"Or... you can go back to Qrow and join Ozpin's impossible war against Salem, and meet the same fate as so many others."

It really seems like Raven knows something she's not telling us. Like, if that is a reference to Summer's fate, does that mean Raven knows what it is, or is she just speculating like everyone else? Does she have a portal to Summer, and is that giving her information the others don't have? All that, combined with the fact that she's also way more bitter about Summer than everyone else, seems signficant.

Anyways. Let's say Summer decides to have a chat with Salem.

She can't tell Ozpin. He'd try to stop her, because he'd see it as a suicide mission. Qrow or Tai both might tell him, or agree with him and get in her way, so she keeps it from them too. Maybe she goes off completely by herself—or maybe she goes to Raven, because she's the only one who might be able to help who Summer knows won't breathe a word of it to Ozpin. Either way, Raven doesn't help her. She's not getting anywhere near Salem.

And then... well. Salem got here by manipulating people, by swaying them to her cause. Summer asks her what she actually wants out of all this. Isn't there some way they could resolve this without this endless war, all this endless death?

Important to note, I don't think we've heard Salem's motivation in her own words. At least, not since the Lost Fable, when she wanted to rule with Ozpin as the new gods of Remnant. I think it's safe to say at least a few things have changed since then. Closest I can think of is what she says to Cinder in Volume 8, "In pursuit of a new world, no cost is too great." Which is ominous, but also quite vague, and says nothing about what she plans to do with the relics.

Instead, we get a whole lot of people guessing. Ozpin thinks she wants to die. Tyrian thinks she wants to destroy the world. Hazel and Mercury think she wants to remake it, with no Huntsman Academies, with them as the new top dogs.

There's a pattern here—Salem never actually says what she wants, and other people have a habit of projecting their own motives onto her actions. Ozpin wants to die, Hazel wants to destroy the Huntsmen Academies, Mercury wants to be the one with the power so he's not getting hurt, and Tyrian's just in it for the chaos.

And it's not like Salem hasn't done stuff like that on purpose. By the time she started growing her army against the gods and telling people they would all steal immortality like she did, she'd already tried to kill herself. She didn't want immortality. She just let people think she did, because it was more convenient for her.

So if this agent of Ozpin's comes to her, absolutely desperate for a way to end the fight before it can come for her daughters, well... why not just tell her about the gods? About how Ozpin plans to one day reunite the relics, and submit Remnant to their judgment? About what might happen if he does?

(TBH I don't think Oz will ever do that, not because I think he's decided not to or anything like that, but because I doubt he'll ever see a humanity united enough for it to be worth trying. We're an argumentative bunch.)

But like. To Summer, all of a sudden there's this other, even bigger existential threat. And Salem isn't like Ozpin. She does have a plan! She wants to destroy the relics, so that the gods can never be resummoned, because of course she hates them and so she would never want them to come back!

(Again, not saying this is actually true, my best guess is that she's trying to bring them back so she can fight them again slkdfjlskdj)

And then, if they succeed, not only will the gods not be a threat anymore, Salem won't be a threat either. She'll have gotten what she wants!

"This can all... be... over..."

Summer has to finish this. There has to be a way for her to do this by herself, to save everyone, to put a stop to it all in time to protect her children! (Raven can't be right, it can't just be hopeless!)

From there, all Salem really needs to do is be a bit careful how much she tells her other followers about what she plans to do—which it seems like she has—and eventually find a way to either hide what relics she has or convince Summer that she's trying really hard to destroy them, definitely, pinky promise!

(And, as an aside: if true, it's very possible that the reason Salem's so insistent on keeping Ruby alive isn't that she wants to turn her into another Hound, but rather that was one of Summer's conditions.)

All this, of course, may or may not come with a sprinkle of Grimmification. Because why not add some body horror to the good old-fashioned betrayal horror! Though, if I'm right and not going completely off the wall here, I suspect it's probably more in the vein of Cinder than TR. Namely, like, consensual.

Regardless, it definitely feels like Summer has been idealized to a point that's just sort of... begging for trouble. She's the perfect Huntress. The best of us. The one who would have pressed on. And like, historically putting people on pedestals like that has not gone well in this show (see: Pyrrha). Not to mention the way trying to be the perfect Huntress that Summer was has been affecting Ruby over the years.

Also, definitely totally unrelated to all of the above: I think paragons that turn to evil despite or indeed because of all their wonderful paragon qualities FUCK SEVERELY and I would like to see it.

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 9 #tbh only very briefly but I wanna be safe #summer rose #ruby rose #salem rwby #tinfoil hat time #cw suicide mention #(Salem's canonical failed attempts)#long post

99 notes · View notes

lagomoz · 2 years

Text

Info on Milgram families

Haruka: Mom, possibly had a sibling. His mother is clearly very neglectful and abusive, but was kinder to Haruka in his early childhood, leaving him with all his Issues today. His dad left when he was young, and Haruka implies it’s either something to do with him or that Haruka blames himself for it, though she still considers his father family. Lists no siblings as his family, but it’s a common theory that he may have had a sibling he killed. Either way, he’s an only child now and has some MAJOR issues with his parents. Says he loves his parents, but it’s pretty obvious it’s not a two-way love. There’s a lot to say about his family in particular since it’s so important to his murder

Yuno: Mom and younger brother named Yura, along with her grandma and grandpa listed as family. Her father left her when she was young, so Yuno has no memories of him. Loves her family and wants to see them again and seems especially close with Yura, who she shows off cats cradle tricks to

Fuuta: Mom, dad and older sister. His parents are divorced and he hasn’t seen his mom since said divorce, while his dad is a “weak, pathetic fogey”. He lists only his father and sister as family, but when asked who he’d like to see, picks his mom. His dad is a civil worker and his sister is a beautician, though he doesn’t know what his mom does

Mu: Mom and dad, only child. Her parents are rich, her dad a landlord / furniture importer and her mom a former model. She’s clearly quite close with her parents, repeatedly saying how much she misses them and how she loves them, along with calling them both kind cool and beautiful and saying her ideal type of man is like her dad (??????). Her mother is French and father Japanese. Her parents have almost certainly spoiled her, but considering how highly Mu speaks of them, it raises the question as to why she didn’t (or couldn’t, or did and failed) reach out them to stop the bullying

Shidou: Unknown? Lists his family as something he treasures, but also states there’s nobody he’d leave behind if he died. He considering having a loved one die more painful than death and when asked who he could bring back to life says he couldn’t chose. Whether or not the person he was trying to save was a spouse, blood relative or something else, it’s possible he’s had more than one loved one die

Mahiru: Unknown, but her answer to someone she could confide to is the worker at a beauty salon she goes to rather than a friend or family

Kazui: Well, he had a wife

Amane: Mom, dad, to an extent her cult. She admires her father, who has been away on some kind mission (likely a religious one), which Amane sees as something honorable. She wants to see him so she can be praised. Amane says her parents must be proud of her because she’s such a “good girl”. There’s also the four figures in Magic - Gachata, Yuri, Gozake, Riyone - that she interacts with (and that abuse her), but it’s unclear who exactly they are in relation to Amane other than fellow cult members

Mikoto: Mom and little sister, parents are divorced and no mention further of father. His sister is in high school and he describes her as brilliant. Says he gets along with his mother, that she raised him and he doesn’t want to worry her

Kotoko: Mom, dad, older brother and grandma. No further information to my knowledge

#milgram #meta #milgram project #haruka sakurai #yuno kashiki #mu kusunoki #fuuta kajiyama #shidou kirisaki #mahiru shiina #kazui mukuhara #amane momose #mikoto kayano #kotoko yuzuriha #autism. ACTIVATE #let me know if I missed anything

116 notes · View notes

heydorothea009 · 7 months

Text

Bread on Toast - A Future Man Fanfiction

Josh Futturman and his fellow coworker and best friend, Liv Branson, get roped into saving the world as time traveling saviors with, what were thought to be, video game characters, Wolf and Tiger. Not only are Liv and Josh completely incompetent, but they are also emotionally inept- will this cause the destruction of mankind? Only time will tell.

Warnings: strong language, mentions of throwing up (not in detail), fighting, mentions of violence

Chapter 4: Justice Desserts

When they finally got back to Josh’s house it was dark and his parents were definitely home. Liv’s car was still in the driveway, which probably looked super weird to his parents. It was a good idea earlier that day when they decided not to take it just in case something illegal happened while they were on their mission, but now Josh’s parents were confused as fuck. Josh had missed 8 calls from his mom and 6 from his dad and his mom had even left a voice mail that went,

“Joshy, hey sweetie, I was wondering why Liv’s car is here but neither of you are? I know you’re 23, but I was just curious. Okay, I love you! Bye!”

“Shit…my family’s home.” Josh muttered as they slowly approached his house. “We can’t just go inside.”

“Sure we can, just climb through your bedroom window like last time.” Wolf said.

“How about we just go back into your little sewer lair or whatever.” Liv suggested. While the sewers were disgusting, at least it was more discreet than planning a mission in Josh’s bedroom. Climbing into the sewer made Josh paranoid because he was worried about a couple things: 1- what if his parents saw and put him in a mental institution for looking insane, 2 - what if a giant mutant spider got him, and 3 - what if the ladder was wet and he slipped and fell and died? Thankfully, none of those things happened as they all made it down into their new designated secret lair. Maybe they really were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

“I’ll tell you that right now, it’ll be hard to separate humans from Biotics.” Tiger said, beginning to pace around as she formulated a plan in her head.

Wolf was already starting to make it look like a lair, he’d already hung weapons on the walls and from the ceiling and was setting up some sort of torture chamber for when they caught a Biotic. “I could go Call of Zion on them. It’ll be messy, but it could work?” Wolf suggested.

“Can you two get everyone you work with in one room so we can flood it?” Tiger asked seriously.

“No, we can’t do that.” Josh said.

“Hm, can’t or won’t?” Tiger put her hands on her hips.

Josh scoffed. “I dunno, both? I thought that point was to catch a Biotic alive and get them to tell us where we can find their TTD?”

“Yeah, so we have to weed out the humans from the Biotics, humans are weaker so they die first. The Biotics will be left standing and then you can,” Wolf drew a line across his neck. “Take ‘em all out except for one. Then the torture starts.” He looked excited.

“Isn’t there a way we can do this without killing people? Like a light, non-lethal dosage of poison?” Liv suggested.

“Biotics are immune to poison,” Tiger said, thinking it through. “I mean, we could gas the vents, but I don’t know, that’s too risky.”

“Ingestibles are safer.” Wolf said. “This place is thick with sewer mushrooms,” he looked around as he pulled on a chain he’d been setting up, making sure it would hold. “A couple seconds after eating one of those and you’ll puke and shit yourself and wake up with little to no memory of what happened. Learned that the hard way twice…I think.”

Tiger grabbed a chain that was dangling from the ceiling and started to loop it around a metal chair they must have found out on the street, they looked like they were making a homemade electric chair. “I dunno, too many variables, it would work if they were all in the same place at the same time eating the same thing.”

Liv looked at Josh and shook his arm as it dawned on her. “Josh! The Kronish Ball!” She exclaimed.

Josh lit up. “Oh my God, Liv you’re a genius! Guys, our company party is this weekend. Everyone gets dressed up, there’s an open bar and tons of food and the best part is that at the end, Kronish gives this big speech and it ends with everyone eating a Kronish ball. They’re like little chocolate truffle balls.” He explained.

“And they’re delicious.” Liv added.

“That’s stupid, even for the standards of this time.” Tiger immediately shut them down.

“No, Tiger, the entire company has to be there.” Liv explained.

“Yeah, so if there are anymore Biotics hiding in the lab they’ll have to be there.” Josh said. Wolf and Tiger looked at each other. “If one of us can get the recipe for the Kronish Balls, do you think we could make a poisoned version and then swap it in?”

Wolf nodded his head. “It’s doable.”

“Wolf, you seem to know about poison, what do you know about cooking?” Josh asked.

“Remove the hair, eat the meat.” Wolf stated.

“Okay, that’s a start,” Josh looked at Liv and shrugged. “Tiger, you can go undercover as my date.” Tiger made a face. “A partner.” She blinked at him. “A mate?” She rolled her eyes.

“Fine. I’ll be your fucking date.” She grumbled. Josh looked at Liv.

“You can be Wolf’s date since you seem to be his best friend.” He said quietly to her. Liv sighed and nodded. In an ideal world, she would have the balls to have already asked Josh to the Kronish Ball, but, this wasn’t an ideal world. Every year they would go and meet up at the party, but then Josh would just wistfully stare at Jeri and talk about how he wished that he were brave enough to talk to her. This would be the first year either of them brought dates.

“If they’re gonna fit in, then we’ve got a lot of work to do.” Liv whispered to him, pointing to Tiger and Wolf subtly. Wolf had found a plunger and was making noises into it, thoroughly entertained by how it made his voice sound echoey. Tiger shot a snot rocket out of her nose, making Liv and Josh both wince.

“I gotta even it out.” She mumbled as she blew one out the other nostril. Josh scooted away from her and nodded.

“Tomorrow I’ll introduce them to my parents and come up with some kind of lie so they don’t think they’re crazy. Come over a little earlier tomorrow, ‘kay?” He said quietly to Liv. She nodded.

“What about my car, how will you explain that?” She asked.

“Uh…shit, I’ll come up with something.” Josh and Liv left Tiger and Wolf to set up their torture chamber, ordering them to stay in one spot for the night. Josh snuck Liv up his driveway and into her car. As Liv drove away unnoticed by Josh’s parents, she wondered how Josh could possibly come up with a lie believable enough that Josh’s parents wouldn’t think Tiger and Wolf were insane.

The next morning Liv knocked on the Futturman’s door. Diane Futturman opened the door and her whole face lit up. “Liv! Oh my goodness, it’s so good to see you! Did you have fun at the movie last night?” Diane asked, hugging Liv tightly.

She was caught off guard “Yes!” She answered as enthusiastically as she could, reciprocating the hug. “It was…a movie!”

“Liv!” Gabe Futturman walked into the living room. “Congratulations on deciding to get places on foot from now on! You sure are stronger than I, that’s for sure.” He greeted her.

Liv laughed awkwardly. “Thank you, Gabe?” Her car was in the driveway, she hadn’t walked there on foot…and then it hit her. That must have been the lie Josh had come up with. She should have never trusted him to come up with the lie, it should have been her.

“Joshy, Tiger, Corey, Liv’s here!” Diane called into the kitchen. “You’ve met Tiger and Corey right? How crazy is it that they were in Afghanistan?”

Before Liv could answer, Josh came around the corner. “Liv! My partner for this program!” He announced unnaturally. “Aren’t you so excited to be partners for the job training project at Kronish Labs?”

“You’re so bad at this.” Liv whispered to him as he went in for the world’s most awkward hug.

“Shut up, Liv.” Josh whispered. Wolf and Tiger sauntered around the corner.

“Liv, it’s so sweet of you to help Joshy with this program.” Diane said. “And tell me, what made you decide to start walking everywhere?”

Liv shot Josh a look as he looked down at the ground, pretending not to be paying attention. “You know, I have no idea. But I did just barely decided not to do it anymore.” She said, staring daggers into Josh the whole time.

“Well! We’d better get on our way to work!” Josh interrupted before his parents could ask more questions. “Those toilets aren’t gonna plunge themselves.”

“Well, hope you can stay longer next time, Liv!” Diane gave Liv another hug. “Bye Joshy,” Josh gave both of his parents hugs.

“Goodbye Liv, Josh.” Tiger nodded at them formally. Wolf also nodded at them. As soon as the front door closed behind them, Liv scolded Josh as they walked to her car.

“You told them I walk everywhere now?! Josh, you terrible liar, my car was in your driveway?”

“Well, you don’t anymore! I told my parents we walked to a movie theater last night, okay? They asked why and that’s what I told them.” Josh defended himself. “And by the way, Wolf and Tiger are now refugees from Afghanistan who were in the war.”

“I heard,” Liv and Josh got into her car. “So, are we just trusting Tiger and Wolf to be alone in your house with your parents?”

“I told my dad that Wolf was on the committee for making the Kronish balls and wanted to learn some things about cooking.” Josh explained as Liv pulled out of his driveway. Gabe was an amazing cook, so if anyone could teach Wolf how to cook, it was him. “And my mom is so excited to have some ‘girl time’ with Tiger.”

“Damn, I kinda wish I could be there to see that. So what’s your plan to get the Kronish ball recipe?”

“I was thinking I would go and ask Kronish.”

“Going straight to the man himself, I like it.” Liv said as she flipped on her blinker.

“Is it weird that I’m nervous to go to work?” Josh asked.

“No, because I am too, especially because anyone we work with could be a Biotic.”

Two days really wasn’t a lot of time. Josh realized that as he exited Kronish’s office, panicking. Kronish broke the news to him that the Kronish balls wouldn’t be making an appearance at the Kronish Ball due to Dr. Camillo being severely pissed off at him for giving away their research.

Meanwhile, Liv meandered past Jeri’s empty desk, hoping to snag another mini candy cane when she saw Josh leaving Kronish’s office. His face told her everything she needed to know. He had bad news.

“Hey you two!” Jeri greeted them as she came back to her desk. “I’m so glad to see you! I was worried you two had quit without notice like two people did yesterday.”

Liv and Josh exchanged glances. “Uh- uh, who quit?” Josh asked.

“Carl,”

“Oh no, not Carl!” Liv acted as though she didn’t know.

“And Janis from accounting.” A flash of Janis “Pretty Smile Girl” from accounting having her arm axed off crossed both Josh and Liv’s minds.

“Oh…I don’t think I knew her…” Josh side-eyed Liv.

“Yeah, don’t think I met her, but oh no! That’s so sad!” Liv awkwardly shuffled her feet.

“You also missed a whole day of Camillo yelling at Kronish,” Jeri said, pulling up a video on her Blapple phone. “I caught some of it on video.” She turned her phone to Josh and Liv, showing Camillo screaming his lungs out.

“STUPID, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID MAN!!!! YOU’RE SO STUPID, STUPID-“ Camillo shrieked in the video.

“Ohhhhh,” Josh shook his head as he watched. “Kronish does not deserve that…you know, what if we tried to cheer him up?” Josh suggested.

Liv looked at him with a confused look. They didn’t have time for that. Josh noticed her face.

“I heard,” he started, trying to organically explain the situation to Liv while not sounding suspicious to Jeri. “Uh, I heard the Kronish balls are being retired this year.” Jeri nodded solemnly.

“What?!” Liv gasped. “I- I mean, because they were my favorite part.” She cleared her throat awkwardly.

“I know, me too.” Josh said. “I was thinking, Jeri, could you maybe get me the Kronish ball recipe and we can surprise Dr. Kronish by making him some!”

“Wow, that’s really thoughtful for a dude.” Jeri sounded impressed. “A real renaissance janitor.” She said to Liv, making her giggle.

“I feel like you could have said man there, but okay, I’ll take it.” Josh muttered.

Jeri gave him a small charming smile. “I’ll see what I can do about that recipe.”

Josh gave her a big flustered smile back. “Thank you!”

“I’ll email it to you tomorrow, man.” She teased.

“Thanks, girl.” Josh teased back.

“Woman.” Jeri and Liv both corrected him, before turning to each other and laughing. Josh gave her an awkward thumbs up as Liv pulled him away from Jeri’s desk as he wore a flustered grin.

“Good thinking lover boy.” Liv said to him in a hushed voice as they walked down the hall.

“Shut up, Liv.” Josh rolled his eyes.

“Hey, I had a thought. What if we tried to go through Carl and that other girl’s records to see if we can find similarities between them, you know, so we can try to spot those same things in Biotics.” Liv said, pulling Josh over to a door that had an authorized personnel only sign.

“Ooh, good idea Liv!” Josh said, looking both ways to make sure no one was looking, and then scanning his badge and sneaking into the room with Liv. The room was full of shelves and cabinets that contained different files.

“Lawsuits…” Liv read as she scanned the cabinet labels. “Pending lawsuits?”

Josh walked to the end of the row of cabinets. “Aha! I found it!” He opened the cabinet and flipped through the files. “Do you remember Janis’ last name?”

“No, I didn’t even know her name this morning.” Liv said, walking over and looking over his shoulder.

“Wait, I think I found her.” He pulled out a folder with her name. He flipped through until he found Carl’s and handed it to her. “Okay, let’s see if we can spot any similarities between these two files-“

“What are you guys doing in here?” Liv and Josh gasped and spun around to see Jeri standing behind them holding a box of Christmas decorations and wearing a confused expression. Josh immediately dropped the file he was holding.

“Uh, uh, we were just talking and we both agreed that, um, we were both so sad to hear about Carl and Janis that we decided to find their addresses so we could send them a goodbye card.” Josh said nervously.

“From the Kronish Labs janitorial department.” Liv added.

“There’s only two of you.” Jeri said.

“Two people can make up a department.” Liv said, looking at Josh and laughing nervously.

“You guys really shouldn’t go through people’s files, it’s a serious invasion of privacy.” Jeri said seriously. Liv and Josh both went pale and exchanged worried glances, worried Jeri would go and tell someone.

“I’m kidding!” Jeri smiled and started laughing. “That’s really sweet you guys, can I put my name on it too?”

Josh sighed and laughed along with her. “Of course,”

“Hey, do you guys wanna take a break from work? Read some of these records?” Jeri asked, giggling. Liv glanced at Josh and saw a bit of blush covering his cheeks as he considered.

“Dr. Camillo’s emergency contact is just 911!” Josh laughed, reading through Dr. Camillo’s file. Liv, Josh, and Jeri sat on the floor each reading a file belonging to the other employees of the lab.

“Oh my God!” Liv giggled.

“Nobody loves that guy!” Jeri said in a fake sad voice but started laughing too. They’d brought snacks into the room with them, a big bag of Cheetos and even a bottle of sriracha (Josh’s request).

Jeri opened a new file. “Joshua Sasha Futturman?” She read out Josh’s full government name. Liv burst out laughing.

“Sometimes I forget that’s your full name.” She said through her giggles.

“I- it’s my grandma’s name, it’s supposed to be sentimental, just- just- give me that!” Josh tried to snatch the file away from Jeri as he blushed. Liv stopped laughing for a moment as she watched Jeri and Josh interact.

“Joshua Sasha Futturman, Joshua Sasha Futturman, Josh-“ she tried to say fast.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he laughed as he tried again to grab the file from her hand. She leaned away, laughing.

“Woah there buddy, back off or I’ll rub tree nuts on your face until you get golf ball sized hives and welts.” She quoted Josh’s file.

Liv bit the inside of her cheek as she slowly peeled her eyes away from watching Josh and Jeri. She should be proud of Josh, she knew she would be, he’d been scared to talk to Jeri for three years, and now they were acting like best friends. Josh was grinning from ear to ear. He was so happy. Liv wanted to curl into a ball and die. She stared down at the file she was holding, which was Jeri’s. Josh nudged her.

“Alright Liv, let me read Jeri’s file and see what she’s allergic to.” Liv handed him the file and tried to look like she didn’t want to snap her neck. She felt terrible for feeling so jealous.

“Jeri Elizabeth Lang…I guess that’s pretty normal.” Jeri smirked at Josh. “Medical issues…none, Allergies…none…”

“Are you having fun?” Jeri giggled.

“Aw, you’re lame.” Josh teased, nudging her. “What about Liv, let’s look at your file.” Josh grabbed hers next.

“Josh, you already know all that stuff in my file.” Liv said.

“I know, but I wanna read it. Let’s see, Liv Amelia Branson,” Josh pretended to look shocked. “Woah! That’s your name?”

She rolled her eyes, smiling. “You’re so dumb.”

“You’re lactose intolerant?” He kept pretending he was shocked. Jeri was laughing at what he was doing.

“Shut up, Joshua Sasha Futturman.” Liv shoved him.

“Alright, alright,” he laughed. “Who wants a sriracheeto?” Josh grabbed a Cheeto from the bag and put sriracha on it.

Jeri shook her head, wrinkling her nose. “Oh, gross…”

Liv reached over Josh and also took a Cheeto and snatched the sriracha bottle from his hand. “Oh Jeri, you’re missing out.”

“This is a Futturman family recipe.” Josh said before eating his creation.

“It’s the only good thing I’ve ever gotten out of being friends with him.” Liv joked, shooting Josh a sly smile.

“You know there’s a thing called hot cheetos right?” Jeri asked, smiling widely.

Josh immediately shook his head. “It’s not the same.”

Jeri laughed again. “Well, this was really fun you guys, thanks for letting me crash your janitorial department’s hang out.” She leaned over and bumped her shoulder against Josh’s. “I should probably get back to work.” She said, getting up.

“Yeah, us too.” Josh stood up after her as Liv followed. “We should probably clean these up Liv.”

“Yeah,” Liv shoved her hands in her pockets.

“I’ll see you guys later, bye.” Jeri smiled as she walked out of the room, grabbing the box of Christmas decorations she was holding earlier. As soon as Liv was sure Jeri was gone she punched Josh in the arm.

“Look at you go, lover boy.” She teased Josh, even though that interaction made her heart weep.

“Shut up, Liv.” Josh shoved her gently.

The next day Josh walked into work carrying a pair of headphones.

“What are those?” Liv asked. She didn’t noticed him carrying them on the drive to work.

“Oh, they’re for Jeri.” Josh said in a quiet and giddy voice. Of course. “Look, I made them say ‘Stu blockers’-“

“Is that seriously what you did last night?” Liv snapped , sounding meaner than she meant it. “I was hoping you had news about Wolf and Tiger and how they’re doing.”

Josh’s smile faded as he noticed the irritated look on her face. “Oh- oh yeah, they’re fine. Wolf finally knows how to measure ingredients now and Tiger is apparently going to learn to walk in heels today.”

Liv closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…I’m just really stressed about this mission, I barely slept last night.” She explained. That was half true, she’d also spent the night listening to “Hopelessly Devoted To You” by Olivia Newton-John on repeat while staring at the ceiling.

Josh quietly nodded and they got into the elevator and headed to the second floor. As they walked together down the hall, they saw Jeri looking stressed out by her desk.

“Hey Jeri, I got you something-“

“What did you guys do?” She hissed, grabbing both of their arms and pulling them into Kronish’s dark and empty office. “The police are here.”

“Why would-“

“They’re looking for Josh and Liv Pastman.” Jeri said, folding her arms and narrowing her eyes at them. Liv shot Josh a dirty look, immediately recalling their little hang out at the meth lab the other day.

“Why did you use both of our real first names, stupid.” Liv swatted his arm.

“Ow! I panicked! I-“ Josh looked at Jeri, who looked slightly scared. “We’re not killers if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Liv peeked out through a crack in the door and saw an officer strutting down the hall and talking to another officer in a hushed voice. He had three scars down his cheek resembling cat whiskers. “Josh. We need to get the fuck out of here.” She whispered. Josh peeked out the crack in the door too and saw the officer walk away. Liv and Josh immediately sneakily ran out of the office, but Jeri followed them.

“Why’s a cop looking for you guys?”

“It’s complicated.” Josh said frantically as Liv pushed through some doors.

“Well can you tell me what’s going on?”

“No, we can’t.” Liv huffed.

“Josh.” Jeri grabbed his hand and stopped him. “Level with me here.” She said. Josh immediately folded.

“Look, I got mixed up in something and accidentally dragged Liv into it with me and the cops just won’t understand right now.” Josh explained, his eyes begging her to trust him. “I promise, we did nothing wrong.” Jeri looked between both of them, trying to decide if she believed Josh. “Would you please help us get out of here?”

Jeri slowly exhaled. “You better be the fun kind of fugitives.” She grabbed their hands and started to lead them down the hall when the door directly in front of them swung open. Josh and Liv dove behind the wall.

“Hello, um, Detective Skarsgaard how’s your search going?” Jeri said, trying to sound as natural as she possibly could. In front of Liv and Josh were two bins. Josh threw open one and motioned for Liv to get in. It had loads of towels stacked inside. She shoved enough aside for her to get in and quietly shut the lid, attempting to cover herself in them. It was rather cozy, the towels were even warm, they were probably fresh from the laundry. She burrowed herself further into the towels, trying to at least get comfortable.

“You failed to mention earlier that a Josh Futturman worked here.” Detective Skarsgaard said to Jeri.

“Oh….see I didn’t think of that.” Liv heard Jeri say.

“We’ve got two options for this Liv girl, Liv Branson or Olivia Turner.”

“You know, I don’t know either one of them super well.” Jeri lied.

“There was a shootout at a meth lab the other day leaving five critically wounded.” Skarsgaard’s voice sounded closer. Suddenly the lid to Liv’s hiding spot was thrown open. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that she’d covered herself well enough. She felt the bin rustle as the lid closed. Oh thank God. Liv thought to herself.

“The people I’m looking for might have something to do with it.” Skarsgaard continued to explain after shutting the lid. “They also might have something to do with the death of a cop back in 1969.” Liv furrowed her brows as she heard this, wondering what he meant. “That cop? My partner, Jorge Santiago. He left behind a widow, belly swollen with child.” Just then, Liv felt her bin rock as Skarsgaard threw open the lid of Josh’s neighboring hiding spot. She held her breath and prayed Josh’s bin wasn’t empty. She was met with silence. “What the fuck do you people do here?” Skarsgaard finally asked in a disgusted voice.

“…science.” Jeri answered.

Liv heard Skarsgaard’s footsteps walk past her hiding spot again. “I’m going to ask you again. Where is Josh Futturman and Liv Branson or Olivia Turner?”

“I don’t know.” Jeri said. “But I can tell you this, Josh and Liv couldn’t have done it, they weren’t alive in the 60s.”

“So are you saying you know it’s Liv Branson?”

“Um…no, I’m saying you asked me about someone named Liv.”

“How do you know they weren’t alive in the 60s?” Skarsgaard asked in an intimidating voice.

“I know of both of those people and they’re both in their 20s.” Jeri said, sounding as calm as she could. Liv’s heart was pounding.

“Then where is Josh Futturman?” Skarsgaard demanded.

“Again, I don’t know. But a shootout doesn’t sound like him! He’s kinda dopey…and- and charming, and harmless- but not in an unattractive way.” Jeri said, and Liv slumped down amongst the towels. Oh. Jeri liked Josh now. Great.

“I used to know a guy exactly like that. My partner, Jorge Santiago. Here’s my card. Tell your lover boy to give me a call.” Liv heard Skarsgaard’s steps get further away and then heard a door shut.

“He’s gone.” Jeri said, letting out a sigh of relief. Liv popped out of her towel bin at the same time that Josh practically erupted out of his bin all covered in possum guts, spitting and retching. Liv and Jeri both looked shocked and disgusted for a second. Josh wiped his eyes and looked at Liv.

“Yours was a TOWEL BIN?!” Josh shouted as Liv handed him a towel, only holding it by two fingers, scared she might accidentally touch his slimy possum gut hands. Josh snatched the towel away from her and wiped his face. He clambered out of the dead possum bin, still sputtering and smelling like death. “Liv, come on, let’s go.” He tried to wipe his clothes off, but just ended up smearing the guts. Jeri helped Liv and Josh sneak out of the building and into the parking lot.

“Jeri, I can’t thank you enough.” Liv said as she fumbled with her car keys.

“No problem, it’s what friends do.” Jeri said, giving Liv a small smile. Liv’s heart swelled as Jeri called her her friend. Then it sank a little, of course she was becoming friends with Josh’s little girlfriend. “Sorry you have to drive home with Mr. Dead Possum Guts over there.” Jeri whispered, watching Josh get into Liv’s car as carefully as he could and laying down some towels he’d brought with him on his seat.

“It’s okay,” Liv chuckled.

“Hey, is there, um, anything going on between you two?” Jeri asked, putting her hands in her pockets. Liv was stunned and opened her mouth to answer but couldn’t. Jeri blinked a couple times before looking at the ground as she shrugged. “I mean…like…romantically?”

“Uh, I mean, no…”

“Oh! Okay! I mean, I was just wondering because, you know, you guys seem really close,”

“Yeah, it’s…it’s platonic.” Liv said, trying to mask the sadness in her voice at the word “platonic”.

“Cool, cool. Just wondering.” Jeri said nonchalantly.

“We, uh, we should probably go, you know, since there’s…cops.” Liv said, awkwardly backing away.

“Yes! Oh yes! Go!” Jeri shooed Liv. She smiled at her again. “Bye Liv, get home safe.” Goddammit. Jeri was such a sweetheart, Liv couldn’t help but feel horrible for feeling so jealous. She never in a million years thought Josh would ever muster up the courage to ever speak to Jeri, and on top of that, she didn’t think Jeri would ever pay attention to him, he was just a janitor. Just like her. Liv got into the car and was immediately repulsed by the smell.

“Oh my fucking God.” Liv gagged.

Josh was slumped in his seat. “Shut up, Liv.” He sighed.

The drive to Josh’s was the longest drive ever because of the smell, Liv had to roll down all the windows. Neither of them spoke for a good chunk of it.

“What was Jeri saying to you?” Josh finally spoke up. Liv tensed slightly. Did she tell him? She wasn’t sure if he’d heard her get all mushy about him to Detective Skarsgaard earlier.

“Oh, she was telling me we should probably lay low for a couple of days.” Liv lied and immediately felt like a terrible friend. Josh nodded in agreement.

“Yeah…but we’re still going to the Kronish Ball tomorrow.” He said. “I doubt the cops will be there then.”

“Oh yeah, by the way, did you kill a cop in 1969?!”

“Oh for the love of God, that was Wolf!”

Liv and Josh made it back just in time for Tiger’s heel walking lessons. Josh went to take a shower after lying to his parents that Kronish let everyone off of work early as a Christmas present and he smelled like death because there was an accident at work (that part was technically true). Wolf was ecstatic that Liv was there and was so excited for her to taste his test chocolate truffle without poison.

“Oh. My. God.” Liv gasped as she bit into it. She looked at Wolf with wide eyes. “Corey, this is the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”

“Really?!” Wolf grinned from ear to ear. Gabe, who was standing proudly behind Wolf beaming, gave Wolf a hug. Liv was surprised to see Wolf happily accept the hug.

“Liv, would you want to come help me and Tiger?” Diane asked, standing at the top of the stairs with Tiger sulking behind her. Liv practically shot up the stairs. This was something she had to see.

Tiger walking in heels was like watching Ariel walk for the first time as a human in The Little Mermaid.

“How is something so stupid so hard?” Tiger growled through gritted teeth as she almost broke both of her ankles.

Liv stood next to Diane, who was sitting on the edge of her bed. “Weight on your toe, not your heel. And don’t look down.” Diane instructed.

Tiger angrily kicked the heels off. “Why would you wear something that would compromise your ability to move?” She grumbled.

“They tighten your tushie!” Diane said. Tiger looked at Liv with a questioning face as she plopped down on the bed in front of Diane.

“Your butt.” Liv translated.

“Everything you’ve been telling me these past two days? Paint my face, wear colorful garb, put on those tiny fucking stilts…you’ve reduced me to nothing more than a sewer clown.” Tiger glared at Diane.

Diane sighed and looked up at Liv. Liv gave Tiger a pleading look. Diane got up and went to her closet and pulled out an elegant black dress. “Tiger, when I wear something like this I feel beautiful, and confident, and comfortable. I do it for myself, I mean, sure Gabe appreciates it,” she laid the dress out on the bed. “He actually calls it the ‘sex dress’.” Liv’s eyes widened as held back a laugh and she looked at Tiger, expecting to see her have a similar reaction, but Tiger just looked pissed off and confused, so, her usual look. “It’s actually the best way I’ve found to get him away from those whale documentaries.”

“Why? Why is it so distracting?” Tiger asked.

Diane sat back down on the edge of the bed. “Well, because he’s a man, and you know how men are.” Tiger looked at her blankly. “They think with their dicks.” Diane said, laughing a little bit. Liv snorted and started laughing too. “Well, not all men, but…” Liv gave her a look that said “are you sure?” “Actually, no yeah, it is all men.”

“So, you’re saying this dress can mind control men?” Tiger asked, picking up the dress.

“I mean, yeah, and some women. That’s besides the point. Tiger, if you don’t feel comfortable in those then who cares what anyone thinks?”

“Why are you being so nice to me?” Tiger snapped. “What is your fucking endgame here?”

“No, Tiger, there is no endgame. If something or someone is important to Joshy, they’re important to me, he’s family. I’m sure Liv feels the same, they’ve been best friends for years.” Diane explained.

“Yeah Tiger, we’re nice to you because we like you.” Liv said. Liv saw Tiger’s eyes soften a little before she spoke again, not wanting to let Liv know what she’d said actually meant a lot to her.

“Well, I never had a family. I had a ward leader, but he was killed trying to steal a sugar cube.” Tiger saw Liv and Diane’s eyes look sorry for her. “It was my sugar cube.”

Diane glanced at Liv and hesitated before she spoke. “Well, you’ve got family all around you here, and I am not going to let you fail!” She got up and walked around the bed, picking up the heels and turned to Tiger. “If Joshy can learn to walk in heels, then so can you.”

Liv burst out laughing. “Josh can walk in heels?” Diane gave her a huge smile as she nodded. Tiger rolled her eyes and snatched the shoes from Diane’s hands.

Somehow, later that night, Liv ended up back at Kronish Labs after hours with Josh in the passenger seat and Wolf and Tiger in the back. Josh had just told her they needed to go “check on something” without giving her any context. Probably because his parents were standing right behind them. They watched as a catering van pulled into the parking lot and two guys got out. Liv was still unsure of what they were doing.

“So why did I drive you guys here?” She asked.

“Well, we need a van to transport the balls.” Josh said.

“And we can’t just bring them in my car?”

“It’s a lot of balls, Liv.”

“We don’t need the van for the balls.”

“I want the van for the balls.” Wolf said in the backseat.

“Wolf wants the van for the balls.” Josh repeated to Liv.

“Stop saying balls.” Tiger grumbled from the backseat.

“So we’re going to steal this company’s van?” Liv asked, shocked Josh was willing to go with it.

“Wolf and Tiger promised not to kill anyone.” Josh said. Tiger huffed in annoyance.

“So let me get this straight, we’re stealing this van from this company who was kind enough to cater for our company party, we’re going to bring it back to your house and just expect your parents to not notice there’s a new car in their driveway?” Liv asked, rubbing her temples.

“We’ll just tell them that the committee let Wolf bring the van home a day early?” Josh shrugged. He saw Liv giving him a deadpan stare. “Liv! We’re trying to not drive your car around when we do illegal things, remember? The police are already looking for us, we don’t need them knowing your license plate number.”

“This is illegal, Josh!” She cried.

“They’re going inside,” Tiger said, watching the two men go inside through the delivery doors of the building. They had probably come the night before the party to start setting up. Tiger opened her door and got out of the car.

“Okay, me and Tiger will go get the van. Wolf and Liv, stay here and follow us home.” Josh said as he hurried out of the car before Liv could protest. She sat in shock as she watched Josh try to keep up with Tiger as they sprinted towards the van.

Wolf slowly leaned forward and said, “Can I sit in the front?” In Liv’s ear, startling her. She’d almost forgotten he was there.

“Jesus-“ she turned around and looked at Wolf. She heard the van start and looked over her shoulder to see Josh in the driver's seat, giving her a thumbs up as he sped away. Liv turned back to Wolf. “No.” She said and sped away after the van. Liv looked out of the rear view mirror and saw that no one came rushing out after them like she thought would happen. She still let out a frustrated sigh.

“Is something wrong?” Wolf asked from the backseat.

“I can’t believe Josh had this stupid fucking plan and brought me here to steal this fucking van because he thought it would be ‘more discreet’ or whatever the fuck. We’re going to get fucking arrested.” Liv slammed a hand on her steering wheel. There was a long pause.

“This was my idea.” Wolf said.

“What?”

“I wanted the van.” Wolf reminded her. Liv felt bad for calling Wolf’s plan stupid…but it was. And Josh was still stupid for going with it.

“Oh…well Wolf, I’m just worried that they’ll be able to find us through this company’s stolen van.” Liv said, a little more gently.

“We’ll be fine.” Wolf said.

“Wolf-“

“It’ll be fine, Liv.” Wolf grumbled. He didn’t yell at her like he would have to anyone else. “All of my plans are fucking stupid.”

“That is not true.” Liv reassured him.

“Tiger always acts like they are.” Wolf was horizontally laying in the backseat, knees pulled against his body because he was too tall to sprawl out. He was pouting.

Liv sighed. “Wolf, I’m sorry I called your plan stupid. I only said that because I thought Josh came up with it.”

Silence. She glanced in her rear view mirror to see a small smile appear on his face as he started lightly chuckling. “It would be stupid if Josh came up with it.” Liv laughed too.

When they got home, Josh got out of the car with his eyes wide. “I just stole a car.” He said to Liv, looking both surprised and proud of himself. “What an adrenaline rush!”

“Quick question, did you consider that maybe the company might come looking for their van?” Liv asked him, folding her arms. Josh’s face fell. He clearly hadn’t thought of that.

The next evening, Liv showed up at Josh’s house ready for the Kronish Ball. Considering the van was still in the driveway, it was safe to say that no one came looking for it. Gabe answered the door for Liv and broke into a giant smile upon seeing her.

“Woah! Look out, movie star coming through!” Gabe exclaimed as he let Liv into their house. “Love the dress, Liv!” She was wearing a lacy navy blue dress that she’d worn as a bridesmaid at her cousin’s wedding earlier that year. She’d curled her hair and put it in a half up half down hairstyle. She felt very pretty.

“Thank you!” She grinned.

Wolf was in the kitchen, sprinkling some sugar on the Kronish balls. He looked up and they made eye contact, immediately smiling at each other.

“Wow, Liv, that’s a fancy dress.” Wolf said with a wide smile.

“Well, thank you Wolf. That’s a fancy suit.” Liv replied.

“Thanks, it’s from Gabe.” Wolf happily rearranged some of the balls on one of the platters. Josh came down the stairs and Liv did a double take. He was wearing a suit with a black tie, something so simple but Liv thought he looked really good.

“Hey Liv! Wow!” He looked at her dress. “You look really pretty!” He said, smiling at her.

Liv could not hide the blush on her face after he’d said that. “…thanks!” She said in an abnormally high voice after realizing she was just staring at him.

“Josh, we’d better start loading up the van.” Gabe said, helping Wolf gather up some of the platters.

“Oh! Right,” Josh grabbed a platter and handed it to Liv and grabbed one himself. They made a couple trips back and forth from the house to the van. “Okay, mom! Tiger! We’d better get going or we’re gonna be late!” Josh called upstairs as he did a final sweep for anything else they needed to take with them. Diane came walking out of the bedroom holding a black shawl.

“Woah, mom, what did you do to your hair?” Josh asked. Liv walked up next to him to see Diane had dyed a streak of her hair purple just like Tiger.

“Oh, I just put a little tiger stripe in it.” She smiled. Tiger slowly walked out of the room in the elegant black dress that Diane had showed her the day before. Josh and Liv’s jaws fell on the floor. She looked sexy as fuck. “Awww, isn’t she beautiful?”

Tiger walked down the stairs slowly, scared to trip and fall in her stilettos. “Yeah, surprisingly so.” Josh said. Liv elbowed him. Diane pulled Tiger into a hug, which Tiger reluctantly accepted.

“Awww,” Liv sighed quietly while Josh impatiently tapped his foot.

“Okay, mom, we really do have to go.” Josh said. Diane let go and Tiger gave her a tight lipped smile.

“Okay, bye Joshy, bye Tiger, bye Liv- ooh Liv! I like your dress! Where’s it from?”

“Mom!”

“Oh right, sorry. Bye Corey!” Diane called outside to Wolf. The three of them loaded into the van, Josh in the driver’s seat, Liv in the passenger seat, and Wolf and Tiger left to fend for themselves in the back amongst the shelves of Kronish balls. As Josh pulled out of the driveway, Liv noticed an aux cord that had gotten left in the car. She grabbed it and connected her phone.

“Any song suggestions?” Liv asked Josh.

“Just play something.” Josh said. Liv put her “Liv&Josh” playlist on shuffle. They made the playlist when they first became friends as something they could listen to together on breaks at work. The first song that came on was “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone. “Ooh! This is a good one! Wolf you’re gonna love this one!” Josh said, cranking the volume. He pointed at Liv and sang. “Hey!”

Liv pointed back and echoed him. “Hey!”

“What’s the matter with your head, yeah!” They both sang together, dancing in their seats. Tiger watched them with a judgemental look, but Wolf was nodding his head along to the beat, copying the way Liv and Josh bounced their shoulders to the song.

“What the fuck is happening here?” Tiger asked quietly, looking confused and scared at the same time.

“COME AND GET YOUR LOVE!!!!” Liv and Josh both sang at the top of their lungs. Wolf grinned and nodded his head ecstatically to the song.

“I do like this song!” He exclaimed. Liv and Josh imitated the guitar sounds with their mouths as they sang along.

Josh and Liv sang their hearts out as Josh drove, Wolf excitedly bopped along, and Tiger had her head in hands and was massaging her temples as if she had a headache. They pulled up to the function and Wolf poked his head up to the front.

“You guys go on ahead, I’ll take care of the food.” He said.

“Aw, but Wolf, you’re my date.” Liv fake whined as she unbuckled her seat belt.

“We’ll meet up, I’ve got an idea for how to sneak these in.” He said in a low voice.

Josh gave Liv a look that said “don’t ask any further questions”. “Alright, let’s go inside.” He said, motioning for Tiger and Liv to follow him. They headed inside, keeping their heads down.

“Remember, anyone who doesn’t puke is a Biotic. When the fighting starts you’ll both want to take cover. It’s hard enough to kill a perf, let alone take one alive.” Tiger reminded them quietly as they approached the party. Josh glanced at Liv with a nervous look.

“Okay.” He said in a small voice.

“I see Kronish,” Liv said quietly. “Should we go talk to him?”

“Diane trained me in the art of small talk.” Tiger said.

“Yeah, let’s go.” Josh said, waking over. “Dr. Kronish!” He greeted Kronish as they approached him and his wife.

“Oh Futturman, Branson! Good to see you two.” Kronish greeted them back.

“This is quite the party.” Liv said cheerfully.

“It’s a fucking joke.” Kronish’s wife corrected, making Liv and Josh’s smiles fade.

Kronish sighed. “Not now Marigold, please.” He muttered to her.

“Give me a drink ticket.” Marigold said softly but sternly. Kronish sighed as he handed her his drink ticket.

“Uh, Dr. Kronish, this is my date.” Josh said, gesturing to Tiger.

“Oh, hello,” Kronish held out his hand for a handshake. Tiger grabbed his hand.

“Tyra. Gerheart. Wow, what a great party. You look like you’ve lost a ton of weight.” She said in a deadpan voice, not even shaking his hand, instead she just squeezed it progressively harder.

Kronish pulled his hand away. “If that shake were any heartier, I’d have to call it a maul.” Kronish attempted to joke. Liv and Josh forced out fake laughs.

“Haha. Haha.” Tiger deadpanned, earning side eyes from Liv and Josh.

“I’ll be at the bar.” Marigold announced, walking away. Kronish sighed again.

“The wife is not happy with me about my gift I gave to the scientific community. I’ll be paying for that for, oh, ever.”

“Well, Liv and I have a surprise for you. We figured it wouldn’t be the Kronish Ball without…” Josh pulled a little box out of his suit coat pocket. “A Kronish ball!”

Kronish’s eyes lit up. “You two are so nice-“ he reached to grab it.

Tiger grabbed his hand with her crushing strength. “Can’t have that. Can’t have that right now.” Josh grabbed her hand and pulled it off of Kronish’s. Just then, Jeri walked by. It seemed like she was about to walk up to them, but saw Josh holding Tiger’s hand and decided against it. Her eyes looked sad. Josh made eye contact with Jeri and let go of Tiger’s hand and shot her a glare.

“If you follow me, I have a surprise for you.” Josh said, leading Kronish away while he rubbed his hand and gave Tiger a look. Josh gestured for Liv to stay with Tiger.

“Tiger, that is not how you do small talk.” Liv muttered as she ventured further into the party, Tiger followed.

“Who was that girl who looked at Josh?” Tiger asked, still sounding deapan.

“Jeri?” Liv pursed her lips.

“Do you hate her?”

“No, she’s my friend. She’s Josh’s friend too.” Liv said, walking over to the tables full of food.

“Then why are you making that face?” Tiger asked.

Liv realized she was pouting. “I’m not making a face.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“I found you guys!” Wolf’s voice came from behind them.

“Oh thank God you’re here.” Tiger said. “Liv is getting all pouty on me.”

“I’m standing right here.”

“Liv, what’s wrong?” Wolf asked, eyes going soft.

“Nothing!” Liv whined. She paused and took in Wolf’s new server outfit. “…where did you get that?”

“I stole it off of a guy outside.” Wolf said.

“Wolf!”

“It’s okay! I hid his body in some bushes.”

“Oh my God, he’s dead?!”

“No, he’ll probably just wake up real fucking confused tomorrow.” Wolf said.

“Wolf, you had a suit. Why did you change?” Liv asked, trying to remain calm.

“To fit in with the people in the kitchen.” Wolf said, as if it were obvious. Liv’s phone buzzed. She huffed and pulled her phone out of her pocket to see a text from Josh that read “911. Come to the kitchen now.”

“Josh needs us in the kitchen.” Liv said.

“A Biotic might have caught him, we need to move.” Tiger said. They rushed to the kitchen (which Wolf had to lead them to), and saw Josh standing in the middle of a chocolatey murder scene. The Kronish balls. Wolf sank to his knees, the look of grief clear as day on his face.

“What happened?!” Liv gasped.

“What kind of a monster would do this?” Wolf was picking up the silver trays he’d laid the chocolate balls on and holding them as if they were a dead loved one.

“Dr. Camillo happened.” Josh said, looking at Liv.

“Fuck this. Back to plan A, we gas the place.” Tiger said, observing the mess.

“No, no, no, Kronish is still giving this toast. Wolf, can you please make more balls?” Josh asked, as Wolf turned his head quickly, looking up at Josh.

“You talking like a quickfire challenge?” He asked, excitement bubbling in his voice.

“The quickest and the fieriest.” Josh said. Wolf jumped up and sprinted away without saying another word.

“Tiger, I’m gonna need you to take someone out.” Josh said, turning to Tiger.

“Done.” Tiger quickly responded.

“What should I do?” Liv asked, wanting to be helpful.

“Liv…you’ve been upgraded to my date.” Josh said. “We’ll just…go out there and act normal.”

“…Cool.” Liv put her hands on her hips nonchalantly and nodded, acting cool. She really could have done a backflip.

“Tiger, I’ll go show you who you’ve got to take out, something tells me he won’t be hard to find.” Josh led them out of the kitchen and back into the party. Sure enough, Stu Camillo was sitting across the room, on the other side of the party, drunk off his ass and had chocolate mess all over his hands and suit. He was yelling into a microphone that wasn’t plugged in.

“I’m the king of the microphones!” They heard him yell.

“That drunk ass is Stu Camillo and I’m going to need you to neutralize him.” Josh said quietly to Tiger.

“Done. Commencing Operation Whale Documentary.” Tiger muttered, patting Josh on the chest as she walked towards him. Liv and Josh watched as she stood in front of him in her sexy dress, and watched Dr. Camillo drop the mic and check her out unapologetically.

Josh groaned. “Gross.”

“So, if I’m your date, what does that entail?” Liv asked, running her fingers over the tinsel Christmas decorations in front of her. “Like are we gonna go dance on the dance floor, are we…” she trailed off as she realized Josh wasn’t listening. “Josh?”

“Huh? Hold that thought Liv, sorry, I’ve just…I’ll be right back.” Josh said, walking away.

“Josh!”

“One second!” Josh pushed through the crowd and disappeared for a second, leaving Liv by herself. After a moment, she saw his target; Jeri Lang. Liv frowned and folded her arms, feeling her stomach sink to her feet. She saw Josh emerge from the crowd and follow her down the hall. Liv tucked some hair behind her ear and and sadly walked over to a bench and slumped down. She really wished Wolf were there with her, at least he wouldn’t have ditched her like that. Maybe Wolf really was her best friend. Liv sulked on her bench for a while. All the merriment around her was pissing her off. She finally got to be Josh’s date, even if he probably didn’t mean it in that way, and he ran away to go talk to Jeri. Just then, a figure coming down the stairs caught her eye. Specifically a figure with three scars down his cheek resembling cat whiskers. Skarsgaard. Liv’s muscles immediately tensed. Her brain flashed back to the day before when Josh had said that cops probably wouldn’t be at the party.

“Josh.” She whispered to herself. “Josh.” She said a little louder, jumping to her feet. She tried to walk over to the hallway that she saw Josh go down earlier as normally as she could. She watched Skarsgaard like a hawk, making sure he didn’t see her, just in case he recognized her. She walked to the hall’s entrance and stopped in her tracks. Her blood ran cold and hot at the same time. Her face flushed and her heart stopped and she forgot how to breathe. Time stopped moving. She didn’t know what to do. Josh was kissing Jeri.

Josh leaned against the wall waiting for Jeri to come out of the bathroom. He probably seemed like a real creep, but he needed to talk to her. Jeri had thought Tiger was his girlfriend.

“What?! No, she’s not my girlfriend!” Josh had said. “She’s just someone I work with!”

“Dude, I literally saw you holding her hand.” Jeri had said as she walked quickly away from him.

“No, Jeri, it’s not like that! That woman in there has used me, she’s endangered my life, and to be honest, I don’t think she likes me as a person. With any luck she’ll be gone soon, like really, really far away forever.” Josh had said as he followed her.

“Josh, I don’t really know you that well and you definitely don’t know me. Let’s just…not do this, okay?” And then she disappeared into the bathroom.

She came out a couple minutes later and her face fell upon seeing him. “Lurking outside the bathroom is not a good look for you right now, Josh.” She mumbled as she tried to avoid him.

“Wait, I do know you!” Josh walked after her and stopped her. “I- I know you always cut the plastic soda rings you have so that the fish don’t choke, that’s really sweet! And I also know that you’re really funny, you know, you’re always making those doodles of possums probing scientists.”

Jeri squinted at him and knitted her brows together. “Are you looking through my trash?”

“Yes…no…sort of. I also know you’re really caring! You write thank you notes by hand…no one does that. And you’re super, super creative! You’re really good at origami, the sandwich wrapper ones? I keep all of them, like the crane, oh! And the dragon boat? Liv thinks it’s weird but-“

“I’m gonna go ahead and stop you right there.” Jeri interrupted him. “You are walking the fine line between creepy and romantic.”

“…which way am I leaning?” Josh asked.

Jeri didn’t say anything. She studied his face for a moment, eyes dropping to his lips multiple times. Josh felt heat rush into his cheeks as he realized what was happening. Jeri leaned in and kissed him. Jeri Lang, the girl he’d had a crush on since his first day at work, was kissing him. His heart exploded with fireworks. Jeri pulled away and he looked at her with stunned eyes.

“Stop looking through my trash…?” She said, lightly gripping his suit coat.

He nodded, eyes fixated on hers. “Deal…yeah…” he replied, hesitating before both of them went in for another, much longer kiss. He gently put his hands on her back, pulling her in closer as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

That’s when Liv entered the scene. The second she saw them pressed against each other her brain shut down. She turned on her heel and mindlessly walked back the way she came, eyes wide and jaw on the ground. The way her stomach dropped and the way her heart jumped into her throat was painful. Josh was kissing Jeri. She felt tears start to form in her eyes and she angrily wiped them away. She shouldn’t be angry, Josh was her best friend. Emphasis on the friend. She should be excited for him, but instead she wanted to go and kick him. But she should be happy for him. She walked right into someone without thinking.

“OhmygodI’msorry-“ she looked up. It was Wolf. He turned around looking menacing and defensive, but his face fell when he saw it was Liv and the state she was In. From Wolf’s perspective, Liv’s eyes were leaking black liquid.

“Shit! Did a Biotic poison you with something?!” He grabbed her shoulders and bent down to her level, trying to study what could possibly be making her eyes leak tears of that color. Liv wiped her eyes and shook her head. “…are you…crying?” He asked, letting go and taking a step back, looking uncomfortable.

Liv wiped her face again. People were probably looking at her and feeling bad for her. She lost it. Wolf looked around uncomfortably for Josh or Tiger, someone he could sick this crying girl on. “Josh kissed her.” She sniffled.

“…huh?” Wolf looked down at her as she looked up at him with the saddest eyes he’d ever seen. Shit.

“Josh kissed Jeri.” She muttered pathetically.

“…I don’t know who the fuck that is.”

“The girl he’s been in love with for like a million years.” Liv said, wiping her tears and rolling her eyes.

“…okay…” Wolf was giving her nothing.

“Wolf, this is the part where you tell me it’s okay.” Liv sobbed softly.

“Oh…uh…” Wolf winced. “It’s okay…I think…” he didn’t understand. “Um…well…the balls are on their way out.”

Dr. Kronish began to tap his champagne glass with a fork, ready to give his toast. “If you don’t like vomit, I’d get out of here.” Wolf said to her in a hushed voice. Waiters came out carrying trays of the Kronish balls, ready to serve them.

“I didn’t think I’d be giving a speech tonight,” Kronish opened, standing on the stairs across the room. Liv saw Josh’s head appear as he came running up the stairs.

“Guess he’s done making out with Jeri.” Liv grumbled. She turned around to see Wolf had left. She let out a frustrated groan. Maybe Wolf would have ditched her earlier just like Josh did. She folded her arms and turned back to face Kronish, but instead noticed something alarming and remembered why she’d gone looking for Josh in the first place. Detective Skarsgaard had found Josh and was dragging him back down the stairs Josh had just run up. Her heart started pounding again. She pushed through the crowd towards them. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she followed them.

“I didn’t shoot any fucking meth dealers!” She faintly heard Josh say through Kronish’s speech. She pushed through a clump of people from the accounting department and stopped at the top of the stairs realizing that if Skarsgaard knew she was Liv “Pastman” she’d be dragged away too. She started to well up with tears again, but this time in panic. A server walked by her with a platter of Kronish balls. They looked delicious, Wolf had really outdone himself. Liv swiped her palms on her dress as she panicked and moved away from the stairs. She spotted Wolf looking proud as he watched people excitedly take his creations off of platters.

“Wolf, Wolf, Josh is getting arrested.” Liv said, maybe a little louder than she should have because some people gave her confused looks.

“What?” Wolf perked up, looking alert and ready to go pounce. “By Biotics?!”

“No, the police!” She started hyperventilating. “I don’t know what to do.”

“So, let us all raise a ball!” Kronish said excitedly, wrapping up his speech. “Next year Kronish Labs will go down in ‘herpstory’!” The crowd buzzed with laughter at his pun and everyone began to eat their truffles.

“Hold on Liv, things are about to get good.” Wolf readied himself, getting into a defensive stance. Tiger came sauntering up to them.

“Good news…or bad news, Camillo’s not a Biotic, I made him lick all the chocolate off his hands and he puked all over his expensive coat.” She smirked and laughed to herself.

“Tiger! Josh is getting arrested!” Liv said frantically. Everyone around them was excitedly enjoying their Kronish balls.

“By Biotics?” She asked.

“No! By the police!”

“Go give them a ball. Maybe they’ll puke and shit themselves and he’ll be able to get away.”

“I don’t know where they went!” Liv was still panicked.

A sense of uneasiness fell over the crowd as people began to keel over. Wolf was still ready to fight and Tiger grabbed a glass vase off of a table, ready to smash it over someone’s head.

“I’d get down if I were you, Liv.” Tiger said quietly, hearing the first victims begin to retch. Liv hesitated but saw someone standing straight up in the crowd of vomiting people. Sandy from the front desk. She was a Biotic. Tiger and Wolf went after her. Liv backed away quickly and spun around in circles looking for a hiding place when she saw a small decorative Christmas cottage. Bingo. She sprinted over to it and peeked in the small chimney to see that it was hollow inside. She kicked in the door and crawled in. She pulled her knees to her chest and listened as she could hear the disturbing noises outside as people were reacting to the sewer mushrooms. “Sleigh Ride” by The Ronettes played loudly over the speakers, not matching the commotion outside at all.

“Cane block!” She heard Tiger cry out as she fought off a Biotic. “Crystal antler shield!” There must have been a lot of Biotics out there because she couldn’t hear many people throwing up, but instead heard battle cries.

“Brain freeze!” Wolf shouted. “Clear!” She heard a body fall to the ground. A shadow appeared through the cracks in the small door in front of her and she screamed as it was kicked open. A Biotic found her. Instead, Josh’s head popped through the small door.

“Liv!”

“Josh?!”

“Liv, let me in!” Liv crawled over and grabbed his hands, which were handcuffed, and helped him crawl inside.

“Josh what happened?”

“I almost got arrested for the meth lab, but then Skarsgaard ate a ball and threw up and I escaped and I’m okay now.”

There was barely enough room for both of them, Josh awkwardly knelt between her legs and she was uncomfortably squeezed into a corner. Both of their heads were on a swivel, looking out the tiny windows and catching glimpses of the fight outside.

Tiger’s head went through one of the windows, making Liv scream.

“You’re doing great! Keep up the good work!” Josh panted with wide eyes.

“Fuck you!” Tiger pulled her head out and they both heard a sickening cracking sound. Josh reached over and latched the tiny window closed. Liv and Josh both screamed as a hand holding a giant cleaver knife came through the other small window. Josh immediately bit the hand owner’s wrist, both of them hearing a scream and the knife falling right in between Liv’s legs and Josh’s knees.

“Wrist bite!” Josh announced like Tiger and Wolf. Josh leaned forward to look out the small window, his face awkwardly close to Liv’s.

“Josh, what are-“

Josh shushed her as he watched Wolf stab a Biotic in the neck with a paring knife. Wolf moved and Josh got a clear shot of two legs slowly being dragged down the stairs. “They’ve got Kronish!” Josh used his foot to awkwardly open the door and crawl backwards out of the house.

“Who? Tiger and Wolf? Josh! Come back!”

“No! A Biotic!” Josh was already on the move. Liv stuck her face out of both windows to check and see if the coast was clear. She crawled out of the house and saw Tiger and a Wolf had tied a Biotic with Christmas lights, trying to keep him hostage.

“You’re coming with us.” Tiger and Wolf held his arms against his sides firmly, but he squirmed and thrashed.

“Fuck you, Resistance scum!” He yelled, throwing himself over the side of the balcony. Liv took off running after Josh, even passing him.

“How the fuck- you’re in heels?!” He panted. Liv ran to the hall she saw Josh kissing Jeri in and halted to a stop. Jeri was still in the hallway. She was the one who had Kronish’s unconscious body. She was a Biotic. Josh came running behind her.

“How are you-“ he panted, but stopped in his tracks. Jeri stopped too, looking up at them and dropping Kronish’s arms and letting him hit the ground. Liv and Josh stared at Jeri in shock, she stared back. “No…please tell me you shat your dress.” He said in a strained, weak voice.

Jeri’s eyes pleaded with them to forgive her but then they narrowed and turned aggressive. Liv followed Jeri’s gaze to see that she was looking behind them at Tiger, who had jumped down from the floor above.

“Liv get down!” Josh yelled, dropping to his knees. Liv looked to see Jeri coming at both of them, and hit the deck. Jeri lept over them and went in for the kill with Tiger. Tiger went in for a punch, but Jeri dodged it and also tried to land a punch. Tiger dodged it and tried to grab at Jeri’s throat but Jeri quickly grabbed her hands and tried pushing her down. Tiger wouldn’t budge, so Jeri tried running her into the railing of the stairs. Wolf came barreling down, but Jeri kicked him in the face, knocking him over the railing. He fell as blood spurted from his nose. Tiger seized the opportunity to backflip away from Jeri, creating space between them. If the moment weren’t so tense, Josh probably would have commented on how sick the move was.

Jeri glared at Tiger and did a one handed cartwheel towards her as she backed away, Tiger’s eyes growing wider as she realized this would be harder than she initially thought. Tiger reached into her hair, retrieving the pen-like object that held up her hair, similar to the one Wolf had used days earlier to get the bomb from the Biotics’ necks. Tiger’s hair fell around her shoulder as she ran at Jeri, yelling. Jeri’s eyes widened and she grabbed Tiger’s hand, stopping her from plunging it into her neck. Tiger and Jeri struggled with each other, before Jeri finally kicked Tiger in the stomach, knocking her off her feet. Jeri looked at her smugly as she snapped Tiger’s weapon in half. Tiger gritted her teeth and shot back up running at Jeri with full force.

Jeri and Tiger clashed again, Jeri kicked at Tiger’s stomach at the same time Tiger practically threw her against the wall. Jeri fell against a table behind her as Tiger had the wind knocked out of her. Wolf slowly gained back consciousness from his fall and tried to sit up. Jeri rolled off the table and fell to the floor. It was obvious her vision was going blurry based on how her eyes drooped. Tiger started to get up and Jeri quickly reached her thumb into her mouth, all the way to the back of her jaw and a small beep was heard.

“She’s gonna detonate!” Wolf shouted.

“No!” Tiger screamed. It was like slow motion, Tiger kicked both of her stilettos into the air, jumped up, flipped around, and caught the shoe in one swift movement. She ran at Jeri, stabbing the shoe into her neck. Josh made a strangled noise as he watched. Jeri’s eyes rolled back and she collapsed on the ground. Dead? Unconscious? Liv and Josh couldn’t tell.

“Finally I found a use for these things.” Tiger panted.

Josh slowly started making his way towards Tiger and Jeri with a shoe in her neck. His face showed a mixture of betrayal and heartbreak. Liv’s heart was heavy as she followed and ended up by his side. She felt terrible for being so upset that he’d kissed Jeri. She wanted to hug him, but felt it was probably an inappropriate time. Wolf rushed over to them, detonator scanner in hand.

“She’s alive, but we’ve got a problem.”

“What, is she gonna pop?” Tiger asked.

“No yet, there wasn’t a clean hit.” Wolf said, scanning around the shoe in her neck. “It’s been delayed, not deactivated.” He looked up at Tiger. “Cool move though.”

“How long do we have?”

“About 28 minutes.”

Josh let out a small, sad sound. Liv hesitated, but put her hand on his back, trying to comfort him. “Josh, I’m really sorry. I know you really liked her.”

Josh looked sadly at the shoe sticking out of Jeri’s neck. “I really thought she liked me.”

#future man #josh futturman #tiger future man #wolf future man #derek wilson #eliza coupe #josh hutcherson #maia mitchell #bread on toast #hachi machi #future man fanfiction #Josh Futturman x OC #jhutch

2 notes · View notes

bogbees · 11 months

Text

It's 10:30am, I haven't slept and should be cleaning but soulmate au where you feel phantom pain when ur soulmate gets injured ninja dad ver

10:30 AM · Apr 10, 2017

Kakashi feels his nose hurt and it's like "whaaat" Minato/ Sakumo be like "Yo kid it's probably just ur soulmate no big deal" cue confusion

Iruka constantly feels injuries it's alright until he's like seven and his eyeball is searing with pain as Kakashi fucking removes it

Iruka is like "Jesus christ is my soulmate ok???? Are they in trouble???" Kohari be like "probably a Ninja, nothing to worry about"

Cue adorable "well I'm gonna get strong and protect them!!" promises from the mouths of babes. You're crying, I'm sobbing my ass off

They can't dechiper between another's pain on the kyuubi attack. They ache all over, it's painful but they must keep going

Idk if the strain of loneliness and such things would carry over. It'd be interesting but also really heavy stop hurting the dads I'm beggin

So Kakashi goes on more missions than Iruka, gets injured more often. Iruka powers through it and has forgotten ab his promise to his mom

Kakashi thinks his soulmates fucking dead or something. Maybe a civilian, but mostly dead. He's startled whenever he feels a kunai hit him

Cause Iruka’s kids are bad with projectile weapons. He tries his best to keep from getting hit (emotional trauma fr the kids) but yanno

So when Nar steals the scroll, Kakashi is out of town when he feels this thing pierce through his back and fucking panics. What the fuck

When he gets back he hears about the academy teacher who almost died saving Naruto. Um? Clarify ? Turns out A GIANT SURIKEN PIERCED THE GUY

So he's like "this.... this can't be it...." lo and behold, he meets the man a week later and he has a scar. Over his nose. Huuuuh.

That's funny, I first learned about soulmates when I felt like my nose was gonna fall off.... huuuuuhhhh

So Kakashi is Kakashi right. Doesn't want to deal with it (get close and deal with emotional trauma when Iruka eventually dies) so he dodges

Iruka is none the wiser bc honestly, he's pretty sure his soulmate is like, an anbu or some shit with all the trouble he's gone through

And it's like, all fine and dandy for awhile. Bc Iruka and Nar are "family," Iruka joins them for dinner a lot. Kakashi hates it.

But Sakura is keen and will notice something's up with her teacher if he just bails every night and doesn't at least attempt to know them

So it's on these ichiraku ramen "dates" that Kakashi finds himself falling for his soulmate. He really hates it

Actual thing Kakashi said into his pillow "god damn it he's really nice and his smile is---" the rest is muffled by the fabric and his sobs

Iruka tho, he's harder to please. Man's got standards. Kakashi's not meeting any of them with his perpetual half lidded dead fish gaze

But! He comes to at least like the guy by the chunin exams. Whoops he's trying to kill my children???? No sir please fuck right off will ya

Kakashi be like "I can't mope that Iruka MY SOULMATE hates me I'm trying to train soldiers here if I can't have him it's fine bc Konoha wil"

Whoops would you look at that, they're asking him to pop out a scroll to greet his kids for passing round two. You know who'd like that

Iruka would like that. He'd like to see his kids ( their kids inner Kakashi cries) pass round two and see them and congratulate them

Anyway the gist is Kakashi pines the entire time and it's not until he gets trapped in that genjutsu that Iruka catches on

He's like, feeling awful and when he visits with Sakura, she's telling him about the symptoms bc she's been reading, he goes "is that so"

He goes home and considers the possibility of him being his soulmate. It's not impossible, but it's just so surreal. Wouldn't he had said..?

So he laughs it off. And it's not until much later, when Naruto has left and returned, after many weird dates,

When Kakashi returns from Suna drained and on the verge of passing out, that Iruka decides it must be so.

Because he had collapsed and can't move, he feels fine, it's just his soulmate has drained their chakra he tells the nurses

When Kakashi gets omitted, Iruka grabs some crutches and makes his way to the man's room and yells at him for how foolish he is

The nurses will not stop talking about how Iruka had whopped the famed Kakashi up the side of the head with his crutch only to wail in agony

It's all over Konoha by sundown. They've been given the same room. Naruto and Sakura are screaming. Gai is beaming. Somewhere Tenzo laughs.

"When did you find out," Iruka says when the moon hangs in their window, exhausted from the day. Kakashi is feigning sleep but Iruka knows

After much silence between then and what must be crickets playing their music in the fields, Kakashi dares to look over to Iruka.

(Under the moonlight, the serious moonlight, lyrics provided by David Bowie)

Iruka has fallen asleep. Kakashi bites his tongue. He should have said something, told him the truth. He settles for watching Iruka sleep

And not until years later, when everything has been said and done, that Kakashi confesses to having known they were soulmates from the start 11:42 AM · Apr 10, 2017

#bogs' muttering #the great naruto twitter to tumblr transfer #naruto #kakairu

3 notes · View notes

arickaandherfictionalothers · 1 year

Text

Hi John. I’m your daughter from another universe.

(Main timeline!Aricka and AU!John Winchester.)

(Finale of the Winchesters series. Aricka comes face to face with someone she knows but doesn’t know.)

Aricka stares at the man in front of her like he had five heads. Sure, she knew what she was getting into when Dean asked her at the start of all this- the finding out the truth of his parents-well- their dad, his mom- and what their legacy actually was.

Aricka thought Mary Campbell was the most beautiful woman she’d seen. If she admitted it in her heart of hearts.

But now she was staring at the man who; in her and Dean’s universe; had left her. In the end it worked out for her own good, but when she was four all she understood was that her daddy didn’t want her. Plain and simple.

Dean was talking about how they’d saved Mary- saved Dean’s mom- and Aricka couldn’t do anything but stare at John. She wasn’t- scared, or mad, like she thought she would be. No.

Aricka felt such a deep sense of longing and something akin to a little kid seeing their parent for the first time after said parent left on a trip somewhere.

She saw all the features she had in her reflection in the face of the man in front of her. Their eyes, the way they were both chewing their bottom lip like their lives depended on it, they even had similarly shaped noses. She’d bet anything that John also had a semicolon shaped mole on the inside of his right elbow. Dean and Sam didn’t; so it must’ve been a dad inherited thing.

“I’m sorry- who are you-?” John asks, startling her from her reveri. Askance, she looked over at Dean, Jack, and Bobby. At Jack’s and Dean’s nods of okay, she turns back to John. Bracing herself, she said,

“Hi John. I’m Aricka. I’m your daughter in the universe Dean is from.”

Immediately she saw the reaction those words had on John- his eyes widen and his jaw drops slightly. He looks at Mary- who was also incredibly surprised- and then back at her; and Aricka felt sick. Anxiously sick.

He walks over to her, stands so they’re inches away from each other. She could tell he was staring at her as intently as she was him just moments prior. Now up closer, she could see various moles and freckles on his face, scars dotting his arms and neck, and she noticed the Akidra anti-possession mark on his arm.

“You- you my daughter?” He asks. She nods.

“From another universe.- I’m not sure what all I’m about to say-It’s a long story but-!”

Then John moved towards her. She froze at first, not sure what was happening, and then it hit her-

This AU version of her dad- was hugging her. The way she always wanted “her” dad to hug her. The way she could only remember her mom hug her.

Tears fill crystal blue eyes and she hugs back, not ashamed to wrap her arms around him and press her face into the jacket John was wearing. He only held on tighter, as if to make up for lost time, and his hand moved from her shoulder to her head, pressing her just a little bit tighter against him, but it wasn’t uncomfortable- it felt safe.

John only let go to stare back into her eyes, wiping away tears as he did; and to say- no, demand, gripping her hands as he did,

“Tell me everything. What you like. What you did back then. Did you- were you a hunter too-?”

Aricka looks back at Dean, then at Jack. And then she suddenly vividly understands just why she was allowed to tag along with Dean at all.

This was her mission.

Dean’s was to record their family history.

Aricka’s was to connect with the version of her dad that could’ve been.

With shaky breath and teary eyes, she looks back at John, squeezes his hands like he did hers. “Is there room for one more in that van?” She asks, and before John could answer Carlos was swooping in, wrapping a tight arm around her shoulders and guiding her over to the others.

“You’re more than welcome, darling. Come join the Monster Club.” She laughs, and was about to climb in behind Mary when it hit her-

“Wait,” she says, jumping out of the van-

And runs back to Dean. The man she owed everything to.

Aricka throws her arms around her big brother’s neck. “I’ll see you later on down the road?” She asks, not wanting to say goodbye.

“Of course. You know the way back home,” he says. “You do your thing. I’ve got my own gig.” Dean kisses the side of her head, ruffles her hair. “I love you, sis. Have fun with- well- our dad.”

She smiles. “I’ll keep them safe for us. For Sammy. Bring him by to meet us when he comes-?”

“You know it kid.” And then Dean gets back into Baby; his beloved car, which makes her exclaim,

“WAIT MY MIXTAPE-!” To which Dean laughed and pulled said tape out,

“You gonna educate them on our music-?” Aricka grins.

“You know it, big bro-!” He gives her a meaningful Dean Winchester Look, one she knew well; one she had been on the receiving end of since she was four years old-

I’m proud of you, kid.

She smiles; and waves as he drives away; and out of sight. She turns to the four in the van, waiting for her. Gripping the tape in her hand, she looks at Jack. “Watch over us, okay?”

“Always,” he promises. “But I’m staying hands off. You know this.” She nods.

“ARICKA!” She nearly jumped out of her skin at the very-Dean-like yell coming from the van.

John was waving at her. He was smiling and he looked eager to spend more time with her. The sight made her want to cry more, but she didn’t.

“COMING!” She yells back. Turns to Bobby. “Thank you.”

“I’ll always be here for you, little rascal,” he says, lips twitching up in a little grin. “You were always my favorite.” She grins and hugs him, giggling at the fake noise of protest from the grumpy old man. “Go on; get out of here.”

That was all she needed before she ran towards the van, grabbing John’s hand and letting him pull her inside.

The road awaited them.

And Aricka couldn’t wait to tell John all about her life.

————-

Behold- I have a new sandbox to play in.

I’ve been thinking about how I would use the prequel The Winchesters with my usual canon, and I’ve decided I’m making even more universes for my beloved characters.

This is main canon timeline (2005-2020) Aricka Winchester, the girl who is dumped in Dean’s lap when she’s four years old and grows up in the hunter life, in a versions of the Winchester’s series that’s like heaven. She will travel with them and tell them what happened to her in her universe to prepare them for what they might possibly encounter. Making an entire new timeline.

However I said universes which means that as always I’m making new ships and new families and it’s going to be good chaotic fun.

Until next time-!

————-

@astralshipper @rosieshipper @hyperionshipping @yeehawselfshipping @letsgofoletsgo @callsign-revenge @tsundere-selfship

#Aricka Winchester in the Winchesters prequel #when timelines converge #Aricka and John Winchester #hunters and elements #Spotify

3 notes · View notes

anonymous-writer-hero93 · 2 years

Text

Fiery Christmas for Steve

Chapter 2:

North Pole December 25th 7:00am

Steve POV

The Clause Dinning Room

"So nice to have everyone together for Christmas. How was delivering presents Steven?" Mother asked as I was on my phone clearly trying to ignore everyone and wrap things up from tonight’s mission to start some much-needed time off in the next couple of days.

"Techno Tommy is too busy on his calculator then to be bothered with his family," exclaimed Grand-santa throwing some food off his fork hitting me in the face with it.

I looked up and glared at the old man over my phone. "It is a handheld operational and homing organizer- the HOHO 3000. It was fine. A few glitches with Arthur, but nothing I couldn't handle."

Then, Arthur thought it was a good idea to give more details of the misshape that had taken place the evening before to ruin my calm manner. "Steve did great! I know Steve is a quick thinker, I had never seen him so fast to react as when he was trying to keep us from getting arrested. I mean he did great until we ran in to Samantha and she helped us even though Steve knocked her down in the snow. She let us stay at her house with her until the police left." I didn’t have to look up from my phone to know everyone’s expressions. Any minute now Grand-santa and Father would start laughing and Mother will get upset and worried.

There was silence and all you heard was silver wear being dropped onto plates. Everyone exchanged a look of concern and then stared me down. This made my face turn a deep red color. Father and Grand-santa started laughing at the story, but Mother was not as amused. Called it; I know this family like the back of my hand.

"Steven! Did he just say police and who is this, Samantha?" Mother’s voice sounded terrified at the whole thing. She was one reason why I wasn’t going to say what happened and worry her. She is worried any time any of us leaving the Pole. I don’t understand why she is so worried about us. We are adult for crying out load. Doesn’t she know we may want to leave sometime in the future. A future I had never thought about until last night.

"She is nobody just a woman that helped Arthur and I." I stood instantly waving my hands in front of myself to get the laughing to stop and to get the look of panic off of my mother’s face.

"Wow! Mr. Special got saved by a girl!" Grand-santa laughed even harder as he poked me with his cane.

"She was very nice Mom. She was an adult who still believes. She also, liked Steve, a lot." Arthur chimed in making my face turn even redder than it already was which I didn’t think was possible. He never knew when to stop did he? He was making me the laughingstock of the dinner.

"Oh, did she? Did you thank her for her help and hospitality?" Mrs. Clause asked giving me a side long glance.

"I did, but Steve ran out as soon as the coast was clear without saying good-bye." Wow, way to throw me under the bus Arthur! I was thinking of all the ways I would like to teach him a lesson in keeping his mouth shut.

I instantly stormed out before they could reply and headed to my living quarters to ignore all of them. Why would Arthur bring that up? She couldn’t possibly like someone like me. Right? I told him that once before and asked him to drop it. Was he just trying to get everyone to laugh at me or was he on to something. I finally got to my rooms and changed into something more comfortable and crawled into bed. I picked up my book to read, but I found that I couldn't focus. I had to get up out of bed to pace to help myself think. My mind kept circling back to what Arthur had said, that she liked me. Despite all my efforts to think of something else to calm my mind, I just keep seeing her flawless face. I wasn't sure if she really did like me other then what Arthur had said but, three things I did figure out,

She was the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen

I wished I had known more about her

I knew that I had to see her again somehow

There was a knock at my door that broke my thought and stopped me in my tracks. I opened the door to find my mother on the other side holding an espresso and a tray of cookies. She could tell that something was bothering me, and we needed to talk.

"Come in Mother." I stepped aside to allow her to come in. She walked over and sat on my bed and patted the spot next to her. I took a seat and took the espresso, which was the last thing I needed right, but I wasn't going to turn down something my mother had made since her cooking was so amazing.

Mother just sat there looking at me waiting for me to break and to open up. Finally, I started talking, "I like her a lot and I may even love her." I had said to the floor rather than to her. I stood back up to pace again unable to contain myself anymore. "I am sorry, I wasn't that nice to her, but I was scared of her she was like a beautiful angel that I thought would disappear. I was trying to not seem weird and creepy which is exactly what I was to her. Everything I said to her was rough and mean sounding"

Before she could reply I started rambling again and talking extremely fast. "Why is just one woman causing so many problems? Why me? Why now? My life was great I was running things flawlessly, now all I can do is just see her dazzling eyes. I mean I can't even read my book." I threw the book across the room, and I sunk to the floor holding my head in my hands. What was I to do I am all the way up here at the Pole and she has a life that didn’t seem to have room for me in it in Chicago.

Mother walked over to stand in front of me, "Do you want to know what is wrong?" she asked as she leaned down to pull me up by the front of my shirt which was now untucked and hanging halfway open. I looked like a mess, which I always looked well put together to give off the false sense of me being in charge.

"I have gone mental! I have never had a problem with being alone up here until tonight."

"Steven! No, you have fallen in love with this woman. It is the magic of love at first sight. I had that with your father believe it or not."

"Impossible, I barely I know her."

"You do and with love at first sight you don’t have to. Your soul just knows that you need her that it won’t feel complete without hers right next to yours. You need to go tell her how you feel and also, thank her for helping Arthur and you. By the way I never want to hear you two are ever chased by the police again."

I finally stood up and walked to the other side of the room to pick up the book I had thrown and let everything sink in that my mother had told me. "What should I do? What should I say?"

"Go see her and tell her how you really feel." Mother looked overjoyed at me even asking her what I should do to try and decided if I was going to go see her or not.

"Should I take her a present?" I started gripping my book harder to try and keep my emotions in check

"I can make her some of my cookies. Go visit her at work that will make it more romantic; I would like grandchildren one day and you seem like the only one out of the two of you interested in woman." I looked over at her shocked at what she just said and turned red at realizing what she meant by that.

I sobered. "What if she doesn't like me?"

Mother walked over and pulled me down to her so she could kiss me on the check, "if she doesn't then she is stupid, and I will have to take care of her. No one hurts my boys."

"Mother I am not a child anymore." She walked to the door to leave but, before she left for the night, she paused to look back at me. She looked at me like it was the first time she realized I was an adult and not a small child.

"You will always be my little boy. Good-night Steven." She left closing the door behind her. I was left once again with my thoughts, but they did seem a little clearer after talking my mother.

I knew I had to finish my wrap up work over the next couple of days, so I can visit her. At least it was after Christmas we weren't as busy, and I had some more time off. That night I feel asleep with a smile on my face that I couldn't get rid of. I have not felt that happy or have a smile like that in a long time. I was ready to talk to her and I just hoped she felt the same way I did.

December 25th 9:30am

Chicago – Sam’s house

I sat at the kitchen table already dressed for the breakfast I was supposed to be at now but had not found the energy to leave yet. I knew my nephew was probably taring open all his gifts by now with my dad, brother, and sister-in-law, but I didn’t sleep well, and this second cup of coffee hasn’t done anything. Had last night really happened or was I going crazy? I knew if I didn’t show up soon my father was going to come and drag me over.

The front door opened and closed, and I didn’t have to turn around to know who came in. It was my room mate and best friend Casey. I knew it was him by the smell of cheap cologne and sex still lingering around him. “How was your date? I am guessing it went well since you didn’t come home last night.”

“She had lots of Christmas cheer; if you know what I mean.” He winked at me; like I wasn’t going to know what he met.

“Eww. Well, are you at least going to call this one back?” I asked swirling my coffee around. “There is fresh coffee in the pot.” He walked to the corner and poured him self a black cup of coffee before taking the seat across from me.

“Why aren’t you at your dads? You look like something is on your mind. Do you want to talk about it?” He watched me as I just stared into my cup. He didn’t push for answers, which I wouldn’t even know where to begin to explain what happened last night. I still haven’t worked out what happened last night.

“I am just tired had a long shift last night.” I got up and put my cup in the sink and started to head toward the door. He followed be hind me placing a large hand on my shoulder giving it a firm squeeze before going up stairs. I am glad he stuck to the rules of our room mate code to not pry into each other affairs. “I will be back later after dinner with my family. You can come if you want.”

“Maybe after I shower and change, I will be over.” I nodded my agreement and headed out to my truck and drove over to my dad’s. I drove in silence still letting my mind think of Steve from last night. Why was I sitting here daydreaming about a man I was never going to see again. I shock my head knocking some of my hair out of my messy bun to help clean my thoughts. Before I knew I was pulling in to my dads driveway and before I could get out of the car by nephew came running out in his elf PJ’s carrying what looked like a monster truck with him. I squatted down picking him up and tossing him over shoulder and headed in the house. Once inside I sat him down and he started talking a mile a minute.

“Look what Santa brought me! It was the monster truck I asked for! It is so cool it even lights up and make noises!” Before I could answer he ran off again to play, but I couldn’t help but think of Steve and Arthur from last night. I hope they knew how much what they do means to these kids. My brother walked up to me hugging me and wishing me a happy Christmas and I used this moment to face palm myself. I had just convinced myself to stop thinking about that handsome man from last night.

“Glad you could finally make it. We tried to get Mikey to wait till you got here, but as you can see that was a wait of breath.”

“Oh no it is ok. Sorry I took so long work was a killer last night, so I slept pass my alarm.” Oh no I was sitting at my table trying to figure out if a handsome fictional character really was in my house. I though as I took my coat off and hung it up. It was Christmas and the only time of year I got to see my bother and nephew.

9 notes · View notes

egrets-not-regrets · 5 months

Text

Guesthouse of the (Lost) Astartes: To Render Aid (2)

Erriox and Lenora provide aid to a lost chaos space marine and his young bonded human. Malaran and Ben are on a mission.

Dialogue spoken in the Gothic language are bolded and italicized.

Author's Note: Part 1 is here, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

I lied, this story has more than two parts to it. Good god, this story has grown monstrously. Every time I wanted to push to the ending, I end up adding more characters to it. I don't know how it happens or why it happens. Just to give a note from last chapter:

This story focuses on the relationship of a chaos space marine who is intensely bonded to his human and touches upon the issue with Black Templars bonding with humans.

Also, Erriox is a responsible space marine and does responsible things. And no, he definitely does not do it for his bonded human's approval.

Thank you @squishyowl and @saradika-graphics for making the fic dividers! Also thanks @sleepyfan-blog for letting me borrow Sirass.

OCs: Lenora; Erriox (Iron Warrior); Ben; Malaran Blackspike (Black Legion); Sirass (@sleepyfan-blog's Iron Warrior)

Tagged: @kit-williams, @barn-anon, @bleedingichorhearts, @shadowfirecat, @gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan,

@sleepyfan-blog, @c-u-c-koo-4-40k, @bispecsual

Following the the end of part 1:

Their heartfelt moment was unfortunately cut short when Erriox asked his Black Legion cousin, “How did you end up here?”

“We are looking for his mother. We were ambushed by ferals and were looking for shelter from the storm when you found us.” Malaran answered. Both Erriox and Lenora knew that wasn’t the whole story.

Lenora asked the teen, feeling a little guilty taking advantage of Malaran’s lack of understanding of the English language, “Ben, if you don’t mind me asking: could you tell us, how did you guys get here? Did he kidnap you or something? You don’t have to answer if you don’t feel comfortable.”

The boy shook his head, “No! No, Orca didn’t kidnap me!” He then had a look of determination, “He helped me escape my dad and we’re gonna find my mom. Besides, that asshole wanted to kill Orca.” His voice lowered into a growl.

Lenora found that worrying, though some element was missing, “Find your mom? And your dad wanted to kill Orca? I mean, he’s not exactly easy to kill, unless your dad is also a space marine.” She’s heard of cases of families not tolerating one of their own bonding with a chaos space marine and would try to get rid of the marine by any means, most often occurring with those who were deeply religious. Though she’s only heard and read about them, the endings of those situations were rarely happy.

“That asshole is my dad’s Black Templar. He hurt Orca. He drove my mom away, because she apparently bonded with a chaos space marine too and now they won’t even let me see her. My dad divorced my mom, because my grandma and them said she was evil. They said she’s a whore who consorts with demons.” Ben’s voice started to break, “That’s so stupid! They hate my mom and were just looking for an excuse to get rid of her! And now they want to get rid of Orca! Orca saved me! My dad and his family and that stupid asshole. I hate them! I hate my family! I want my mom!” Ben spat as he hid his face in Malaran’s chest. Malaran felt tears soak into his skin as he purred and rubbed his youngling’s back, trying to soothe his distress.

He may not understand much of the local language, but he understood Ben enough. Ben often talked about his mother (“mom” as he put it) and always with a sad voice. He had seen her pictures, smelt her faint scent when he was in the home and on the little cherished momento that Ben always carried with him. Malaran knew what Ben wanted, and he will fulfil it for him. He’s also watched how harshly his youngling was treated after they found out he was bonded to him. All the more reason to evade the Black Templar, despite wanting to test his mettle against him again. He admitted, it was a thrilling fight, but it was just not worth losing his bonded human over.

“You’re so young, do you understand that it looks like Orca kidnapped you?” Lenora asked worriedly, though Ben’s answer was as she expected.

“I don’t care. Orca’s helping me! I asked him to!”

What are the chances that everyone in the immediate family bonded with a space marine? That is so incredibly rare, but the circumstances and combination could not be worse. Lenora grimaced as she started to understand what was going on. Black Templar space marines were well-known for their zealotry and intolerance to anything chaos. Added with the fact that this may be one of the cases where the family is trying to get rid of the bonded chaos marines so as to not tarnish their family name, it was obvious why Ben ran away from home. Erriox noticed her troubled expression and snuck his hand behind her back, subtly giving a reassuring squeeze on her hip.

He turned to Malaran, “You are being hunted.”

“…yes. We managed to escape since the Black Templar went on a mission at the time.” The chaos space marine was hesitant to admit it, but he needed help. They needed help to find Ben’s mother and evade the zealout Astartes. At this point, he wasn’t even sure where to go from here.

“I’m surprised you haven’t encountered the Templar’s battle-brothers.”

“No, this one seemed to be a lone wolf for some reason.” Malaran confirmed.

Lenora and Erriox exchanged glances. Hers, full of worry and unease. It would only be a matter of time if the Templar rallied for help or the Templar came to find them himself. Erriox frowned, “What is it you wish to do? It will not be long before the Black Templar looks for you here and the youngling should seek extra medical attention. Your best option is to go to the hospital. Being exposed to such prolonged cold could cause your human to become ill, even if he doesn’t look like it currently.”

“I cannot, they will take Ben away from me. We need to keep moving to at find his mother.”

Lenora was about to argue when Erriox stopped her, “Do you know who the mother is bonded to? All we know is that he is a chaos marine.”

“Unfortunately not. Ben brought me to where his mother used to wait for him at school. Her scent was only a trace as she had not returned for some time and there are scents of multiple marines already covering hers.” Malaran thought for a moment then continued, “Of those who were touched by chaos, there were Night Lord, Death Guard, Ultramarine, and one of your brothers.” Erriox's brows rose with the mention of ‘Ultramarine’, he certainly wasn’t aware that Ultramarines could even become corrupted by chaos, but that was a question for another day. If one of his legion brothers is a possibility, he may be able to find out more information from the legion base.

Erriox asked the teen, “Ben, what is your mother’s name?”

Lenora passed a box of tissues to Ben, who gratefully took it. He wiped his tears and blew his nose, crumpling the used tissues in his hand, replying, “Amelia Plover.”

Thinking along the same lines, she asked him, “Is that your dad’s last name or your mum’s?” just in case either surname would be used.

“Plover is my mom’s last name. My dad’s last name is Richter.”

With that, Erriox put on his helm and hailed one of his brothers from the legion base over vox, “Brother Sirass, could you look up the list of bonded humans and see if Amelia Plover or Amelia Richter is among them? Filter for our chaos battle-brothers.”

“Searching now. Why do you ask?”

“I have a child searching for their parent who may bonded to one of our chaos battle-brothers.” Erriox replied. He heard a snort over the line, “Helping a lost child?”

“Don’t laugh, Sirass. I know you’d do the same in my situation.”

“Fine. I found them. There’s an Amelia Plover who is bonded to Brother Alcyon. Makes sense as to why he started living off-base the last six Terran months. Did he know that his bonded had a child?” His battle-brother asked. Malaran gave Ben a squeeze when he heard that.

Erriox shrugged, “Likely, but your guess is as good as mine. We will make our way to the base soon and should be there within five hours.”

“Five?” Came the questioning tone, “Isn’t the base just over a two hour run for you?”

“We should arrive earlier, but we’re preparing to deal with the possibility of Black Templars hunting us along the way. Notify the Warsmith of our situation. Give me a moment.” Erriox took off his helm and told the rest of the group, “Prepare yourselves. We will be heading to the Steelix Fortress as soon as possible. If the Black Templar is hunting Ben and Malaran, then we should leave before this weather breaks. Lenora, you will need to drive Ben there. I will go with Malaran.”

Ben asked, hopeful, “Is my mom there?”

The Iron Warrior’s stern gaze turned to him, “It is a possibility, but don’t get too excited yet.”

Erriox didn’t like the thought of having Lenora driving through the snowstorm, let alone potentially having to outdrive a determined Astartes, but he knew she was familiar with the route and driving in such conditions. He was confident she should have no trouble. Other plans had left Lenora alone to wait, which meant leaving her vulnerable should the Black Templar come knocking. That was even worse. Both he and Malaran will be accompanying them along their drive anyways. This was for the best.

Lenora nodded, having a vague notion of what Erriox is planning, “Understood.” Driving through a snowstorm was not ideal, but she’s done it enough times that it was a familiar routine. She immediately went to gather a pack of extra supplies for Ben, seeing as he had little else outside of the clothes on his back and whatever was in his small backpack.

Erriox put on his helm again, “My bonded and the child, Ben, will be arriving in her vehicle. I will be escorting the Black Legion Astartes, Malaran Blackspike. Call Brother Alcyon and tell him that we may possibly have his human’s child and they can meet us at the base.” He paused, “No, have Alcyon and his bonded meet us at the medical wing. Let the apothecary know that we will be bringing the child to have him seen to; he suffered mild to intermediate hypothermia and may need further medical attention.”

“Consider it done, brother. Alcyon will probably meet you to assist.”

“Thanks, Sirass.”

Sirass’ voice came on again as Erriox was about to lift his helm, “Tell your bonded to bring more of those cookies she made last time.”

“Maybe next time, but I will let her know.” Erriox chuckled and ended the vox call. He turned to the Black Legionnaire, “My bonded will drive Ben to the Iron Warrior base. You and I will travel alongside them starting from another route, we will try to throw off the trail for the Templar.” Malaran felt uneasy to part with Ben, but he did not argue.

“If you want to throw off the trail…” Lenora returned, the bag of Ben’s supplies ready to go, “Erriox, I don’t know if this will help, but if you and Malaran carry Ben’s bag with his old clothes and shoes with you, there maybe a chance the Templar would follow his scent trail on you two for a while if we’re lucky. I have spare clothing that Ben can wear instead.”

“It is worth trying.” He replied as both Malaran and he donned on their armour again. His human gestured Ben to follow her to the bathroom and shortly returned with the boy cleaned and bundled up in her winter clothes and herself ready to leave. They gave Ben’s pack to them and Malaran wrapped it in his cape once more.

“Do you have shoes I can wear?” Ben asked.

Lenora started her truck before grabbing a pair of smaller rubber boots left behind by one of her coworkers from her closet. She passed them to him, “Here, wear these for now. They’re probably a bit too big for you, but we’ll go with what we got. Once you’re ready, wait at the door.”

Once Ben put on the boots and shouldered the pack Lenora gave him, he did as she instructed. Lenora turned to the two fully armoured Astartes, “We’ll meet you at the base?” she asked.

Erriox lifted her hand to the mouthpiece of his helm, “Yes, we will be following you closely.”

His human looked at him worriedly, her hand pressed onto the cold metal, thumb stroking his helm, “Be careful. Both of you.”

“You as well.”

Malaran patted Ben’s head affectionately. Lenora turned to the teen, “Ben, you will hop on my back and we’ll piggyback to the truck. Once we get there, get in from the driver’s side and shuffle to the passenger seat. That way we only leave one set of tracks instead of two. You got it?”

The boy nodded, “Yes ma’am.” And clambered onto her back, “You ok carrying me?”

Lenora snorted as they made their way towards her truck, “Bud, I’ve moved logs at least twice your weight.”

The two Astartes watched as their humans drove off before closing the door.

“We should go our separate ways to the base, it is likely the Black Templar will follow me first. You should follow your human’s vehicle.” Malaran said.

Erriox agreed and pinged the location of the base to the Black Legionnaire, “This is the base coordinates. Take the trail through the forest on the west side of the house. When you see an opening to a field, jump the fence and continue west.” He pinged another location to Malaran, “There are two trenches starting at this location that span 10 meters and are covered in snow. Face westsouthwest and cross that span in four steps, each spanning 2.5 meters, you will cross without falling in. By any luck, it will slow down the Black Templar. Keep west until you come across a road, then head southwest. It will take you to the main road leading to the base.”

Then he went into Lenora’s closet and grabbed a bunch of hand warmers. Opening them up, he stuffed them into the wrapped bundle Malaran held, “This should make it seem that you are carrying the child from afar.”

Malaran tilted his head, “You and your bonded. Why are you helping us so much?” Erriox replied, resolute in his self-imposed mission, “Your boy’s mother is bonded to my battle-brother. There is no way I will let one of ours be terrorised and kept away by some son of Dorn. She’s just being kind.”

#warhammer 40k #space marine husbandry #space marine husbandry sentience #iron warriors #black legion #black templar #oc: erriox #oc: lenora #oc: malaran blackspike #oc: ben #oc: sirass

43 notes · View notes

skadee17 · 8 months

Text

VI- Incandescent Glow

I had decided to have lunch at the ranch cafeteria after a busy morning. As I grabbed a tray, my gaze was drawn to a man sitting at a table in the back of the room. It was the man who had made inappropriate advances towards me the day before. His face bore numerous bruises, and I felt a knot form in my stomach as I understood what might have happened.

While I searched for a place to sit, my eyes met Troy's. There was determination and anger in his eyes, but also something deeper, something more profound. A shiver ran down my spine as I realized that Troy knew I had noticed the man's injuries and was aware that I understood he was behind it all.

I sat at a nearby table, close to Nick and Alicia, unable to take my eyes off Troy. Despite the physical distance between us, it seemed like he could read my thoughts. A silent tension settled between us, charged with emotions and implications.

While I continued to gaze at Troy, he made a slight, almost imperceptible nod, as if signaling me not to say anything, to leave things as they were. A sense of mutual understanding seemed to arise between us, an unspoken agreement that this conversation would remain unsaid, at least for the moment.

I felt a wave of conflicting emotions wash over me as I finally looked away. I knew this situation was not resolved, that there were unanswered questions. But for now, I chose to respect the silence between Troy and me, realizing that sometimes, some stories must remain buried, at least until they are ready to be revealed.

"Your attention, please. I wanted to talk to you about Outpost Alpha. McCarthy and his unit have been gone for 36 hours, and we still have no news. There could be a hundred possible scenarios, the first 99 not being alarming, but we always need to prepare for the worst. My son, Troy, will go and see what's going on, but we need volunteers," Jeremiah concluded.

Men raised their hands to volunteer after Jeremiah called them, and I saw my mother raise her hand as well. Nick and Alicia didn't understand why she was doing that, and I must admit, neither did I. It was a dangerous mission, and if something happened to them, my mother would have to rely on the militia, and I didn't trust them.

My mother headed towards our house to pack her bag for the expedition; we followed, the three of us, without a word. Once the whole family was in the cabin, Nick began:

"You can't go, Mom, it's too dangerous!"

"I have to go, alright? We need to help here," she explained.

"But not like this! We can help in many different ways, but this, this is madness, Mom!" I exclaimed.

"Bella's right, Mom. I don't trust these people," added Alicia.

"Listen, my decision is made, and I won't go back on it. Nothing will happen to me, I promise you," she insisted.

"Mom, please," I said, worried.

"It's decided, I'll be back; we leave tomorrow, it'll be fine."

She hugged the three of us and repeated that everything would be alright and that she would come back.

A few hours later:

The peaceful silence of the cabin was abruptly shattered by the incandescent glow of flames that engulfed the night sky and the desperate screams of the inhabitants. The ranch, once a haven of peace, was now in the grip of frantic activity, desperately trying to contain the fire that had engulfed a small isolated cottage on top of the hill.

"What's happening?" Luciana asked.

"I'll go check," replied Nick.

"Where's Alicia?" my mother worried.

"At her Bible study," I affirmed.

"Wait for us, Nick; we're coming!"

Awakened by the screams, we ran straight towards the fire. Troy and his men rushed to fight the blaze. Buckets of water were thrown in vain at the ravenous flames, battling against a fire that seemed insatiable.

Anxious and determined to save anyone who might be trapped, I ventured dangerously close to the flames, ignoring the warnings of caution.

Troy, alerted by my movements, rushed towards me, firmly grabbing my arm before I could get any closer. "Stop, Bella, you can't go there, are you crazy?" he exclaimed, his voice tinged with concern and firmness.

With a pounding heart, I tried to free myself from Troy's grip. "I have to go see! They might still be in there!" referring to the old couple.

Troy shook his head gravely. "It's too dangerous, Bella. We can't risk more lives."

Helpless, I watched the cottage, flames dancing around it, while the rest of the group tried to keep the fire under control. A heaviness settled on my heart, anticipating the horrible truth that would follow. Jeremiah decided to call it quits and save water; unfortunately, the couple was gone; they had passed away together, in life and in death. Sadness and desolation were evident on everyone's faces. The loss of these lives in a world already devastated by tragedy was unbearable.

I stood there, watching the flames rage on the cottage, families had left, not wanting to witness this horror show any longer. A few remained; Jack, Troy, Nick, and I, stayed in front of the flames without a word. We shared a moment of silent mourning, linked by the pain of this heartbreaking loss, our differences momentarily erased by the cruel reality of life in this apocalyptic world."

#fear the walking dead #ftwd #fanfiction #ennemies to lovers #troy otto x oc #troy otto

0 notes

thebestieyoureinlovewith · 9 months

Note

okay, so my original story is still kind of in the planning stages, but i would love to tell you about my three unlikely besties who are the main characters !!

first we have lysie, my non-binary pirate child whose perspective the story is from. they’re the child of a very famous pirate captain who is feared across all three seas in the land, and so they’ve spent pretty much their whole life on the water training to take over their mother’s ship. they’re a total badass when it comes to all kinds of weapons and fighting, but they’re very socially awkward. when their mom and her entire crew are kidnapped by an evil mage who was thought to have been killed a hundred years ago and has suddenly returned, they make it their mission to defeat the bastard and save their mother and crew… even if it means teaming up with a siren, a member of a species their mother always told them were evil and the natural enemy of pirates.

next we have said siren whom lysie is reluctant to team up with, xella. she saves lysie from drowning when they’re swimming to try and save their mother when she’s first taken, and even though lysie takes it as an attack and almost immediately tries to kill her, she still tells lysie what’s needed to defeat the evil mage and save their mother and crew and offers her help. her siren pod has a special grudge against the mage from when he was wrecking havoc a hundred years ago, and xella, who’s always been something of a disappointment to her family, thinks that if she can help defeat him then she’ll be able to gain her pod’s respect. since sirens can use their magic to change into ( mostly ) human forms, xella and lysie’s first stop is to go back to the town lysie’s crew was docked in when they were taken to steal a ship and supplies, which is where they find the third member of their little ragtag crew !!

now, sagran is my little aro-ace twink of a fire mage, and the third member of lysie’s world-saving crew. he’s actually the great-grandson of the mage who defeated the story’s big bad a hundred years ago, but his family has long since gone broke and fallen from grace, which is why he’s living in the tiny harbor town where he runs into lysie and xella and has only enough magic training to not start a fire every time he gets overwhelmed, since there’s no magic training school in the town like there is in bigger cities. as you can imagine, he as a fire mage is not very happy to have to do this whole adventure on a ship and venture into the sirens’ underwater capital kingdom, but he’s desperate to restore his family’s reputation and hopefully even earn a job as a mage in the human kingdom’s capital, so he puts up with the dampening of his powers that comes from being surrounded by water - plus, he’s pretty sure he’s starting to become friends with this scowly pirate and siren who has very little idea about human customs.

and that’s my three main babies !! they definitely become their own little found family, and lysie and xella also eventually become a really cute nblw couple 🥰 again, the story isn’t all the way planned out yet, but i’m still totally up for questions about these three babies !! <3

Oh my gosh I love them!!! Xella wanting respect and not having it reminds me a little bit of Amali, who is incredibly skilled yet treated badly and like and outsider by the people in the rebellion.

Sagran is the greatest name ever I love it, and he's very brave for going under water being a fire mage.

Aaaaahhhh I love Lysie!! They just wanna save their mom and crew...I totally vibe with that!

Thank you for sharing!!! I'll be shooting some asks about them soon!!

#other people's writing #frens #moots

0 notes

non-un-topo · 2 years

Text

Met my parents’ weird born again neighbour (very old white lady, anti-vaxxer, racist, the whole shebang) and the first thing she said to me was “ohhh you’re the one who wants to die if she doesn’t get a 98!” Bro...

#apparently my mom brags to her and the other townsfolk about my grades asdfgfds thank you mum <3 #she was mowing another neighbour's lawn (who was sitting on the porch and telling me how much he hated the 'garlic eaters' in toronto #bc i said i live there #so glad i didn't mention my partner is half italian dsfgfds #they asked me about university and i said i was halfway through my BA in gender studies. the confusion and disinterest on their faces LMAO #then the old lady said she also has a BA. i was like oh! cool! and she said 'Born Again! praise the lord!'#now i'm afraid to walk around outside bc if you see this woman and do not talk to her she will get Mad.#small ontario towns man....#she also said something about her mission for saving my family or something. my mom cut her off by distracting her lol #thank fuck my mom has good social skills i guess

5 notes · View notes

luminnara · 3 years

Text

alpha!erasermic x pregnant!reader | ABO fluff

Request: Hiya! i’m wondering if you can do an alpha! erasermic x pregnant! omega! reader? maybe when both alphas leave their lunch at home and she goes to bring it to them. the reader and both alphas collectively have custody of hitoshi and eri, and the reader is heavily pregnant. preferably a female reader please, and none of class 1-a have met her. this is my first time requesting stuff so i hope i did okay! 😅

You did wonderfully! I love writing cute fluffy stuff like this, and it’s my first time writing any kind of erasermic thing even though I love them so much, so hopefully I did okay! Idk where exactly this sits timeline-wise, don’t worry about it, it’s omegaverse and I can do what I want lol. I took this prompt and sort of RAN with it, too

*also Mirio has his quirk back in this because it’s fun, and the reader has kind of a dodgy past because i wanted to add a little SPICE*

Warnings: a/b/o, pregnancy, the implications of Aizawa’s scarf and all of its uses

You sighed, resting a hand on your swollen belly. “Those two...”

You had only just gotten Eri out of bed, and, upon heading into the kitchen to fix her some breakfast, you saw two lovingly-prepared bento boxes sitting on the counter. Shota and Hizashi must have forgotten them in their hurry to get to UA earlier that morning, and while you knew they could very easily grab something to eat in the cafeteria, you hated the thought of these meals going to waste.

Besides, your inner omega was a bit miffed that they hadn’t taken your home cooked food to work with them. Was Lunch Rush’s food so much better than yours that your alphas would rather eat at school? You refused to believe that, even if his quirk was cooking. There was no way that he could make your alphas a meal that could compare to the kind you always cooked for them, and maybe it was the pregnancy hormones making you extra bristly about it, but you were determined to march right on over to UA and bring them their proper lunches.

Even if you were heavily, heavily pregnant. They’d probably have something to say about you leaving the house and waddling around Musutafu with only Eri as company, but you were tough enough to fend for yourself. And besides, it was only a quick train ride to the station outside the school, and if you did get yourself into any kind of trouble, the city was chock full of pro heroes and their sidekicks, many of whom you were on a first name basis with.

“Eri!” you called, grabbing a bag to carry the boxes in. “Are you dressed yet? We’re going to visit UA!”

You could heard a thump, followed by the sound of little feet thudding as she ran to meet you. When she appeared in the doorway, her eyes were wide with excitement, her long hair falling around her shoulders messily. “Yes!”

“Go brush your hair and then we’ll go,” you laughed, ushering her towards the bathroom.

“Why are we going?” the little girl called.

“Hizashi and Shota left their lunches,” you explained. “We’re bringing them so that the food doesn’t go to waste.”

“Can we visit Deku and Togata?”

You paused to think. You hadn’t actually met any of Shota and Hizashi’s students before, your alphas always preferring that you stay home and away from the sometimes dangerous school they taught at. Well, you knew Hitoshi, of course, and since he had yet to move into the dorms on campus, he still lived at home with the rest of the family. At least he had remembered to grab his lunch. Would your adopted son be embarrassed to see you appearing at his school? Hitoshi always carried himself in a very collected manner, and the thought of being able to show up and pinch his cheeks and coo at him made you laugh.

And you knew that everyone in Class 1-A would be over the moon to see Eri. The little girl that had been rescued from Overhaul was popular amongst the young heroes-in-training, from what you’d heard, and if you were going to go all the way to UA, you’d be damned if you didn’t let her see her friends there.

“Of course we can,” you said with a smile as she came running back in, her hair significantly less tangled. “Ready?”

“Ready!” she beamed up at you.

“Do me a favor and carry this?” you offered her the tote you’d tucked the bento boxes into and she took it from you eagerly, bouncing towards the door.

You grabbed your purse, made sure your keys were inside, and followed her out, taking her free hand. Together, the two of you made your way to the nearest train station, a few neighbors waving hello as you passed. There were no villains to be seen or head of, and the pros you saw out on patrol all looked happy and relaxed. They all knew who you were, some of the betas and omegas approaching to chat about your pregnancy and ask how things were going. The alphas hung back, calling greetings or offering waves, none of them wanting to get too close to a pregnant, mated omega and risk the wrath of your alphas if their scents happened to cling to you.

The journey went smoothly, Eri sticking close to your side the entire way. You were both excited to be going to visit UA--Eri, because she would get to see Deku and Mirio, and you because you hadn’t been to the school in years--and as you stepped off the train and the gates finally came into view, you let out a happy laugh.

“Ready?” you asked Eri, leading her towards the entrance.

“Mhm!” she nodded eagerly, pulling you forward. “Let’s go! Let’s go let’s go let’s go--”

“Hang on, hang on,” you waddled after her as quickly as you could, fishing around in your purse. When you finally found what you were looking for, you pulled out an ID card, holding it up towards the sensor atop the UA Barrier gate. “You have your card?”

“Yep!” Eri said, grabbing the card hanging from the lanyard around her neck and mimicking you.

“Special ID accepted,” a robotic voice chimed. “Welcome to UA High, (y/n) and Eri.”

The gate opened and you led Eri through it, the big school looming just past it. The special ID cards you both had were a result of Shota insisting that you be able to get to UA if you ever needed to. With the upgraded security measures, and so many of the students living in the dorms, it wasn’t easy getting onto the campus without either a student or guest card. You probably technically weren’t even supposed to have one, but no one was going to argue with Aizawa and Yamada when it came to ensuring their omega would be able to get to them in case of emergency.

This wasn’t exactly an emergency, but it was still an important mission, so you had absolutely no qualms about using your special ID privileges today. You just hoped nobody else would be mad about it.

“Hey, is that Eri I see?” a voice called.

You turned to see a blond haired, blue eyed boy jogging towards you and recognized him as Togata. He was dressed in a PE uniform, and as he stopped in front of you, you could see that he was panting.

Eri immediately set the bag down and rushed toward him, running into his open arms. “Lemillion!”

Mirio laughed as he scooped her into a hug. “What are you doing here? Aizawa didn’t mention anything about a visit!”

“Aizawa forgot his lunch today,” you said, nodding towards the bag Eri had dropped. “So we thought we’d bring it and visit.”

Mirio straightened up a bit when he realized you were there. You had to be absolutely covered in your alphas’ scents, and even if they never told any of the students about you, there was no way that Mirio hadn’t figured it out by now. Besides...your bond marks were very big and very visible, one on each side of your neck just below your scent glands. There was no way Mirio didn’t know what that all added up to.

You had never officially met him, but you’d heard plenty about all of UA’s Big Three, and after he and Deku saved Eri from the Shie Hassaikai, you’d heard even more about him. He was selfless, going so far as to sacrifice his own quirk to keep Eri safe and get her away from Overhaul, and for that, you’d always feel a little indebted to him. He’d luckily been able to get it back, but Aizawa had told you that there had been a long period in which nobody was sure it could even be returned to him.

“Oh, s-sorry!” he bowed to you. “I don’t think we’ve ever been properly introduced! I’m Togata Mirio, I was there at the Shie Hassaikai raid--”

“I’ve heard plenty about you,” you laughed as he straightened up again. “I’m (y/n). I’m the stay at home omega that keeps Shota and Hizashi from starving all the time.”

Mirio’s laugh was probably one of the most raucously happy sounds you had ever heard. “We’re all grateful for that! As for me, personally, I’m really glad Eri has such a great mom now, too. And you’ve got more on the way!”

“Sure do,” you groaned, a hand on your lower back as you tried to lean and stretch it out some. “Due date’s in just a couple weeks. Can’t wait to get ‘em outta here.”

“Well, at least you already know how to do the parenting part!” Mirio was still all smiles as Eri grabbed for his hand and he took it, picking up the tote bag as well. “Come on, it’s my free period so I’ll take you to 1-A’s classroom.”

“Thank you, Togata,” you said, hand on your belly as you followed him into the school.

“It’s no problem!” he beamed at you over his shoulder as he led the way. “It’s almost lunch, too. Perfect timing!”

“Is it really?” you glanced up at a clock on the wall, and sure enough, it was nearly noon. “Wow. Guess we took longer than I thought. But...ugh, I didn’t bring any food for myself or Eri...”

“That’s no problem! Lunch Rush always has tons of options in the Grand Mess Hall.” at your slight glare, Mirio added, “...But I’m sure even his best cooking is no substitute for a homemade meal!”

“That’s right,” you growled, waddling along down the hall.

When the three of you reached the 1-A door, Mirio used his permeation quirk to stick his head straight through it rather than knocking, and judging by the resounding scream of surprise that nearly shattered the windows, he had scared Hizashi half to death.

Mirio pulled back and opened the door, revealing a room full of groaning students, all clutching their ears. Hizashi was the only one who seemed unbothered by the sheer volume of the scream he had let out, clutching his chest instead.

“Why can’t you knock like a normal person, dumbass?” a blond boy snarled.

“Bakugou! You shouldn’t swear in front of esteemed upperclassmen!” a black-haired boy with glasses said.

“It’s not just me you’re swearing in front of!” Mirio said, still smiling, like always. With a nod of his head, he tugged Eri into the room.

Everyone lit up, and you even caught Bakugou’s harsh expression softening some at the sight of her.

“Eri!” a freckly, green haired boy exclaimed, jumping up from his seat.

“Deku!” the little girl yelled happily, letting go of Mirio’s hand to run towards him.

You watched as he knelt down to greet her, the rest of the class all getting up, or at the very least leaning over in their seats to say hello. All except Hitoshi, who looked up, made eye contact with you, started to roll his eyes, and then sighed.

Oh, you were so going to embarrass him today.

Hizashi was still trying to catch his breath, but now, with the students all distracted by Eri, he finally had a chance to notice you. You could see his nostrils flare as he recognized your scent, his head whipping around to spot you standing there in the door.

“BABE!” he rushed toward you, pulling you into a hug.

“Hi, Hizashi,” you laughed into his shoulder, clinging to his jacket as he rubbed his scent gland over your hair.

He immediately pulled back, holding you at arm’s length as he looked you over. “What’re you doing here? Everything okay?”

“I’m fine,” you chuckled. When he glanced down at your swollen belly, you added, “we’re fine.”

He let out a relieved breath. “Okay. Okay, good. Had me worried there for a sec.”

“They came to bring you lunch!” Mirio said, holding up the bag he had carried in for you. “I ran into her and Eri outside while I was out for my daily jog.”

“Togata here was very helpful,” you said. “He even carried that bag for us.”

“Gotta help everyone who needs it, whenever I can!” the teenager gave you a thumbs up.

“Thanks, Mirio.” Hizashi said, putting an arm around your shoulders and pulling you up against his side. “Means a lot to me that my family stays safe.”

“Family?”

You turned to see all of Class 1-A staring at you.

Hizashi cleared his throat, the sound practically echoing. “Everybody, this is my mate.”

The room suddenly erupted.

“Who is she?”

“Is she a pro?”

“Can’t believe anybody would put up with him...”

“Bakugou, quiet! Don’t be rude!”

“But, wait...” Deku said, still kneeling with Eri. “I thought Eri’s been living with Mr. Aizawa..?”

The students all glanced to each other before their eyes swiveled to you and Hizashi.

“Oh, Hizashi,” you teased. “You never told them?”

“I, uh...” a slight pink tinged his cheeks as he blushed.

Luckily, before he had the chance to stumble over his words any longer, he was saved by the appearance of a very tired, very disgruntled, Eraserhead.

“What the hell is going on and why the hell are you screaming in my classroom?” he growled from the doorway.

Hizashi turned the two of you to face him, and you saw the anger immediately drain from Aizawa’s face.

“...What are you doing here?” he asked, his bloodshot eyes full of concern. “Everything okay?”

“Hi, Papa!” Eri chimed from her spot next to Deku.

“...Hello, Eri. Why are you also here?”

“You both forgot your lunches,” you said, practically scolding them. “I worked hard on those!”

“So you came all the way here just to bring us lunch? You realize we have an entire cafeteria here, right?”

“Don’t even think about it,” you growled.

“You shouldn’t be walking across Musutafu without at least Hitoshi with you. It’s too dangerous.”

At the mention of his name, everyone’s heads swiveled to look at Shinso. He sighed, slumping back in his chair and dragging a hand down his face.

“You know, if you wouldn’t forget the lunches that I so lovingly put all that hard work into, I wouldn’t even have to go all the way across Musutafu to bring them to you.” you said haughtily, nose up in the air as you stared your alpha down. “And besides...you know better than anyone that I can take care of myself, and Eri, no matter how pregnant I am.”

Aizawa sighed. He knew there was no arguing with you when you got in a mood like this, and besides...you were already there.

And you were right.

Before he could even come up with something to say, the bell rang, signaling that it was time for lunch, and soon, you were walking down the hall between your two alphas, Eri riding on Deku’s shoulders as Class 1-A flooded out along with you.

You ended up sitting in the mess hall with the students, sandwiched between Hizashi and Shota. Shota didn’t seem entirely pleased with it, mentioning several times that he’d much rather be in the teachers’ lounge where it was quieter, but Eri was far too happy to be with Class 1-A for him to actually tear her away from them. She was across from you, sitting next to Deku and a brown haired girl you learned was named Ochako. Mirio had left to go find his own friends, the other two members of The Big Three, and you could see him just a few tables over, laughing loudly with a blue haired girl with a boy with pointy ears looked like he was trying to will himself out of existence next to them.

“It’s so exciting that Mr. Aizawa has a whole family!” Ochako said.

“And with Present Mic, too,” Tsu, the frog girl, said from her spot next to her.

“How long have you been together?” the pink girl, Mina, asked.

“Don’t ask so many personal questions! We should respect their privacy.” Iida said, in true class rep fashion.

When Shota only offered a grunt in reply, too focused on his lunch to actually talk with his homeroom class, and with Hizashi already stuffing his face, you took it upon yourself to chat.

“Oh, I don’t mind the questions!” you said with a good natured laugh. “I met Hizashi and Shota when we all went to school together. Then we lost touch, because I...well, I sort of...chose a different life path than they did.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Hizashi slurped up his soba.

“Here.” you looked up to see Hitoshi had brought you and Eri each a tray of food, setting them down in front of the two of you.

“You’re so good to your mother,” you cooed, reaching up to grab his cheek.

He dodged you expertly, ducking out of the way and going to sit with Bakugou and his friends on Deku’s other side. You narrowed your eyes at him, making sure he knew that he couldn’t run forever, and as Denki watched the exchange, he spoke up.

“...Wait. You didn’t become a pro hero?” he asked.

“I took the hero course here at UA.” you explained, grabbing your chopsticks. “I ended up dropping out before graduation. This is actually my first time back since then.”

“So...” Deku seemed nervous. “Were you, uh...”

“A villain?” you asked.

When he nodded quickly, you laughed and offered a nod of your own.

“Yeah, I suppose I was. My quirk used to be wild, and hard to control...I got so frustrated when I wasn’t making any progress with it that I decided to just leave school. I was mad at everyone, and I fell in with people who felt the same way. One thing leads to another, and next thing you know, I’m running from the loudest, most obnoxious pro hero in the city.”

Everyone’s eyes turned to Hizashi, who was doing his best not to choke on his lunch.

“And he never caught me,” you said adoringly, leaning against his shoulder.

“I never caught you on my own,” he corrected.

“Made my ears bleed a few times, I think.”

“Yes, and I don’t regret that.” he pressed a cute, fluttery little kiss against the tip of your nose. “You were absolutely going to kill me.”

“Not absolutely!” you protested.

“I had to rescue him.” Aizawa spoke up, his voice gruff and tired, like always. “Had to cancel your quirk and keep you tied down until the others could get to us.”

You smirked at your first memory of his scarf and what it could do, and as you did so, he realized that he had just admitted to tying you up with it in front of his idiot students.

“And that’s when I fell in looooove,” you grabbed his arm, batting your lashes at him obnoxiously.

“Not another word.” he growled.

The students were all staring at you with wide eyes. All except Hitoshi, who was rolling his.

“I guess you could say I was reformed,” you said, grabbing some noodles. “Then one thing led to another, and...here we are.” You patted your belly.

“That’s so romantic,” Mina sighed, leaning her chin on her hand.

“What’s your quirk?” Ochako asked.

“I could show you!” you said eagerly, moving to stand.

“Absolutely not.” Shota held onto your arm and forced you to sit down again. “You are due in two weeks. No nonsense until after the pups are born.”

It was your turn to roll your eyes now.

“Fine,” you mumbled with a sigh. “I never get to have fun anymore.”

“But pups are so exciting!” the invisible girl, Hagakure, said.

“Yeah!” Mina agreed.

Then, the rest of the girls bombarded you with questions.

“How many are you having?”

“What day are they coming?!”

“Can we meet them?”

“Mr. Aizawa, please can you bring them in to the dorms??”

“--But Mr. Aizawa, this is the safest place in Japan. There’s no way anything bad would happen to them--”

“--And besides, (y/n) has a super strong quirk, right? She said so!”

“Come on, just let us see the brats when they’re old enough to travel.”

The sound of Bakugou’s voice had everyone staring at the blond boy.

“...What?” he bristled. “It’s not like I care, I just want the girls to shut up.”

“Uh huh. Sure, Bakugou.” Kirishima snorted.

“...maybe.” Aizawa relented, eager to shut them all up.

That was enough for the girls, and they immediately began talking chattering about the cutest baby clothes, the best toys, and then the differences between their own upbringings. You enjoyed listening to them throughout the rest of lunch, and by the time the hour had ended, you were sad to be leaving.

“Hang on, hang on,” Hizashi said as you took Eri’s hand to leave. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Home,” you furrowed your brow. “Why?”

“We told you,” Shota said, standing with his hands in his pockets. “We don’t want you wandering around the city.”

“And I told you, I’m fine--”

“Just stay here for the rest of the day.”

“...What?”

“We’ll all go home together later.” Hizashi smiled. “You and Eri can hang out in the lounge. I bet Midnight would love to pester you about the bump, too.”

You smiled, walking towards your alphas. “Alright. Alright, yeah. That sounds nice.”

As Class 1-A lingered at the end of the hall, watching for as long as they could get away with, Denki elbowed Hitoshi in the side.

“Dude, your mom is--”

“Don’t you dare say hot.” Shinso growled.

“Actually, I was gonna say badass, but that too--”

The purple haired boy glared at him. “Shut up, Denki.”

“What? It’s a compliment!”

#erasermic #alpha!erasermic #alpha aizawa #alpha hizashi #aizawa fluff #erasermic x reader #abo #omegaverse #bnha imagines #bnha x reader #shoto aizawa #aizawa x hizashi #hizashi yamada #present mic #present mic x reader #hizashi yamada x reader #aizawa x reader #shota aizawa x reader

4K notes · View notes