#that team has been shady all these times yet WE get called delusional | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lykegenia · 3 years

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Trust, But Verify

Convinced that Unit Bravo isn't everything they seem to be, Detective Leah Kingston decides to return to the warehouse that she knows plays some part in the mystery of Wayhaven's first murder in years, this time with Tina as backup. But sometimes, what is said on patrol doesn't stay on patrol, which isn't great when the subject of conversation is a certain new arrival with a dazzling smile and warm brown eyes.

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The air in the office holds a studied silence, from the members of Unit Bravo who have arranged themselves around the room like they’re on a photoshoot, and from me ignoring them so I can finish updating the board with information about the case. There’s precious little to go on so far. Adam called it a waste of time, but working as a teammeans everybody needs to be on the same page, and now I can feel a certain amount of spite creeping into the thoroughness of my notes.

I can’t afford to let it. Getting bull-headed means things get missed.

“What information can you give me about the other victims?” I ask.

“Nothing that will help us here.”

Nate passes a guilty glance between me and his glowering leader, but all it does is get me even angrier. Folding my arms, I turn to Adam, temper finally frayed enough to let my professional veneer slip.

“Did my mother send you to sabotage my case?” I demand. I shouldn’t, but today has not been a good day.

Adam glares. Somehow, the silence in the room deepens.

“I’m only asking because so far you seem to be trying your hardest to seem incompetent and uncaring about the fact that a woman has been murdered. If you can’t show even basic respect for that then you can get the hell out of my office and not come back.”

“Detective…”

“Are you here to help or not?” I’ve dealt with Saturday night drunks and middle managers angry at getting parking tickets – hell, I’ve had to face the mayor’s bluster more than once – and though Adam looks like he knows more ways to break someone’s bones than any of those guys, I’m willing to bet he’s on a much shorter leash.

Finally, the muscles working in that square jaw unclench just enough for him to loose a strained breath through his teeth. “We’re at your disposal.”

“Glad to hear it.” My shoulders relax a little. “The better we work together, the faster we’ll solve this, and unfortunately all the legwork has to come first.”

Nate steps forward, visibly relieved that we haven’t come to blows. “What do you want us to do?”

“We need to trace the victim’s last steps,” I say. Coming up with a plan gives me something to focus on. “Bank records, phone records, CCTV. If we can find out where and when she met the killer, hopefully we can follow the thread back to them. Someone should ask Verda if there’s any way to track down the equipment the killer needed for the transfusion, too,” I add.

“Anything else?” Mason drawls from his corner. He’s started on another cigarette.

“Nate very kindly said you’d all go and check out the Farris warehouse later. We think it might be the murder site.” I don’t miss the look Adam shoots across the room, but it’s not important. “Be careful when you do, when I was there yesterday I ran into some unsavoury characters.”

“Really?” Felix asks, grinning. “If we see them I’m sure we could take them.”

Nate rolls his eyes and Adam grinds his teeth again, and neither of them are doing anything to soothe the off vibes I’ve been getting all morning.

“Glad to hear it,” I reply, turning to grab my coat off the peg. “While you’re on that, there’s something else I want to chase up.”

“What something else?” Adam asks, his eyes narrowing as if he can hear the uneasy tick of my pulse.

I shrug, already half out the door. “I’ll let you know if it pans out.”

“One of us should go with you.”

“Thanks for the offer, but Tina and I will be fine – Tina! Fieldtrip!”

She looks up from the papers on her desk and gestures to the steaming mug in her hand. “But I just –”

“Now. We can stop off at Haley’s later.”

There’s a pause as she glances behind me, assessing, no doubt lining up a bunch of questions to ask me as soon as we’re out of earshot. “Sure thing, Detective.” She pulls on coat and scarf and sidles closer. “Day one and the power’s already gone to your head, I see.”

I stifle a smile and turn back to Unit Bravo, who are all leaning around the door of my office in various attitudes of surprise. “I almost forgot, while I’m out I’d be grateful if you could add the information on the other victims to the board. It should help.”

“We’ll see to it,” Nate promises when his colleague only flexes his biceps in response.

“I appreciate it.”

I’m almost to the door when I catch Felix sigh and mutter I don’t think she likes us very much, but I straighten my shoulders and step into the already darkening winter day, not allowing the prickle of guilt to take hold. They’re not here for me to like them, they’re here for a job – and I need to figure out what that job really is.

Tina shoots me a dubious look as I pull up outside the Farris warehouse and cut the engine. There’s still some light left, though the thick growth of trees crowds most of it out, and aside from a few harsh alarm calls from birds flitting between the trunks, the place is lifeless. Silent. The moon watches us from just above the top branches, hanging in the sky like a spider in the corner of its web.

“You changed your mind about letting Unit Boyband have this one?” she asks.

I reach behind me for my flashlight and check the safety on my gun is locked before kicking open the door. “There’s something not adding up about them, and I want to know what it is. Nate practically contorted himself trying to think of reasons for me to stay away.”

“And so here we are.” She sighs and follows. “Just like the good old days. As your friend, I think you’re being a bit paranoid.”

“Shady government agencies bring that out in me.”

“Just as long as you’re not expecting to split up in there.”

I toss her a grin. “Not even for a Scooby Snack?” I chuckle at her flat look. “Don’t worry, after those guys put that dent in Nessie last night, I’m not taking chances.”

With a wary look around, she unholsters her own gun and takes position on my left. “That dent looks like it was made with a sledgehammer.”

“Yup.”

We fall silent as we cross the threshold, crumbs of rubble cracking under our boots. The wind blows in from behind us, rustling the ivy reclaiming the walls, distorting sound, but unless someone is keeping very still, there’s nobody else here.

“Sooooo… it’s ‘Nate’ is it?” Tina ventures as we climb the stairs to the first floor. The artistic endeavours of Wayhaven’s teenagers scroll the walls, the empty cans and bottles from last summer’s illicit parties still scattered in the far corners.

“That’s what he asked me to call him,” I reply carefully. “It’s what the rest of them call him too.”

“Uh-huh.” She peers down at something. “Cigarette butt.”

“Recent?” I catch a shadow to my left, but when I chase it with my flashlight, it turns out just to be pigeons again, scattering for some reason of their own.

“There’s still ash on it, so I’d say so.”

“Bag it.”

While she kneels and starts the usual procedure for getting evidence into one of the bags we both carry with us, I pace the rest of the floor, peering around rusted heavy machinery and into the dustier corners in case of footprints. With so many people passing through, though, it’s unlikely we’ll find enough to connect anything to the murder – at least not anything that would stick in court.

“You have seen him eyeing you up though, right?”

“What?” I glance over, startled by the suddenness of Tina’s voice. “Who?”

Her tut would have made any disapproving grandma proud. “Nate.”

“Tina, I met him this morning.” One last glance around. “This floor’s clear.”

“So?”

“So when has he even had an opportunity to ‘eye me up’?”

“Oh, that’s right,” she sing-songs, “you were too busy doing your best to make the grumpy one quake in his combat boots, but I see everything. His mouth was hanging open and everything. And that was after your cosy little trip down to the morgue. I’m telling you, babe, you have a shot.”

We go one at a time down the stairs, which means she can’t see me roll my eyes, but as we turn to take our first proper look at the ground floor, the idea wiggles in to distract my better judgement. Nate has certainly made a better first impression than most of his team, but that’s not exactly hard, and his face looks like one that’s used to smiling, to smoothing ruffled feathers. If I maybe noticed the warmth of his hand when I shook it earlier, or caught the faint scent of whatever aftershave he uses when we were walking down to see Verda, then it’s still not something to lose my head over. It’s not something that matters.

“As your friend, I’m duty-bound to say that I think you’re delusional,” I say, deliberately light.

“Over here.”

Tina’s flashlight rounds on the transient’s camp I found yesterday, a loose pile of tattered blankets and a few rusted oil drums converted into fire barrels, only now with more light, there seems to be little evidence of recent occupation. No trash, no scuff marks beyond what could be explained by the passage of my own feet and the strangers who ran into me, and no odour of an unwashed body.

And yet…

Still crouched, I glance at the walls, try to imagine them blurred as I hold up my phone screen with the photos copied from Janet Greenland’s. She had known she was going to die, with enough advance warning to try and leave some kind of message, and then hidden them where her killer would be unlikely to look.

Tina breaks the concentrated silence. “What’s so delusional about someone finding you attractive?” It helps, the distraction from the grisly reason we’re here.

“Nothing in particular,” I reply. “People have wanted to sleep with me before. It’s just not something that would work.”

“Why not?”

I stand and walk slowly, still with my phone up in front of me. “One, this is a temporary assignment. Once we catch the killer, Unit Bravo will be whisked away to somewhere far more exotic than Wayhaven with far more interesting people.” I stop. “Two, he’s technically a colleague, which is never something that ends well. And three…”

The last of Janet Greenland’s photos line up with the view ahead of me, minus the difference in our height.

“Three?” Tina presses.

“I’m not interested.” It’s a ready answer, but she scoffs all the same.

“Oh come on, you mean you don’t think he’s sexy as hell?”

From somewhere behind us, there’s a loud crash as a piece of masonry collapses. We wheel, ready for something to come at us, but after a long moment, nothing else moves. Probably a rat, or a piece of the ceiling that was ready to go anyway. Even so, Tina keeps her back to mine as I return to my snooping.

“That’s not a no,” she wheedles after a few more minutes of silence.

“He’s –” The right description eludes me for a moment. “He’s good-looking. He seems nice, for what it’s worth. But that doesn’t mean he’d stay, and it doesn’t mean he’d be interested in anything… beyond casual. I have more worthwhile uses for my time than trying to guess a stranger’s motives for noticing me.” The bitterness isn’t something I meant to slip out, but thankfully there’s no comment on it. Tina knows enough about the fiasco with Bobby to leave that particular sleeping Rottweiler lie.

Besides, I’ve found where Janet stumbled into the warehouse – or tried to get out. By one of the broken windows some of the stones have tumbled and turned the mossy sides underneath, and a few threads of material are snagged on the jagged edge of the glass that are the same colour as the jacket she was wearing. There’s just enough light left to photograph it, but without any evidence of the killer or any kind of struggle, there isn’t much else to be done. Wayhaven doesn’t have the resources to dust an entire warehouse for prints.

“I remember being told at the academy that we should try to collect all the evidence we can,” Tina says, when I make no move to reach for a bag.

“That’s what I’m doing,” I reply. “Sometimes it doesn’t all look the same, that’s all.”

She eyes me with a frown, though the corner of her mouth is fighting a smile. “What did I tell you? Paranoid.”

Sitting in the Facility cafeteria barely a week later, a plate of unappetising mince and mashed potato in front of me, it’s hard to believe how much a life can change. Hunting for petty clues, looking through bank records and phone calls as if any of it would have turned up anything useful – not even the vindication of knowing I was right about my mother’s team does much to lessen the lurch the world has taken since learning that the man I was hunting is not only a vampire, but that he’s hunting me, too. The thought puts me off eating. Or maybe it’s the tests, or just that the food itself isn’t very good.

I’m in the middle of drawing a passable mixed media landscape with my fork when a shadow falls across my plate. Nate smiles at me, genuine if somewhat nervous, one hand holding a mug of tea and the other on the back of the chair opposite mine.

“May I sit?” he asks.

I’ve barely seen him since the first night I was here, between all the debriefings and the sessions with the scientists, and even those brief glimpses have been accidental, moments of stumbling into each other in the corridors of Unit Bravo’s section of the Facility. To have him seek me out, in a place that reeks of leftovers, stirs an unfamiliar flutter behind my ribs that turns into a smile to answer his.

“Please do.” I gesture, and his smile grows wider, and I cast about for something that will avoid me floundering in awkward silence. “I didn’t think I’d see you here – not because you don’t need to eat!” I add hastily. “The smell of stale coffee is almost too much for me with just human senses.”

He doesn’t seem too offended, and just shrugs. “I like the ambience. People here are just being people, no matter what species.” As he speaks his eyes cast over the nearly empty room, and the pockets of agents and supernaturals at other tables buried in conversation. A person could visit a thousand parallel universes and a cafeteria would look the same in every one.

“The more things change…” I mutter, following the line of his gaze.

A smile touches his lips. “You have no idea.”

I really don’t. Not compared with someone who’s lived so long and seen so much. In the pause that follows, I turn my attention back to my plate, and the interrupted tree I was trying to capture in the foreground with an overcooked slice of carrot.

“You’re quite the artist – I mean it!” he adds, holding up his hands at the sharp glance I throw his way.

“This is the part where you say you met some famous painter or other, isn’t it?” I grumble, quirking an eyebrow at him.

“Van Gogh did sell me a painting once – not one of his own, I’m afraid.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d say the statement was meant to impress me, and that the sip he takes of his tea is more to hide a smirk than because he’s thirsty. Still, his eyes grow serious as he taps the mug back on the table, and the measured way he looks me over makes me want to twist my fingers in my lap.

“What?”

“You seem to be handling the revelation of all this rather well,” he replies, muted, with a flicker of a softer smile. “We should have trusted you with it sooner.”

For a moment I don’t answer, both startled by the admission and caught up in an echo of the resentment that’s characterised so much of my time with Unit Bravo so far. It’s not a comfortable feeling, not now I know the reason behind the secrecy, but the morning after my second visit to the warehouse is still fresh in my mind, Adam’s flat ‘no’ when I asked if they’d found anything, and the way Nate glared at the floor, arms folded and shaking his head in tacit disagreement as the others waited for my reaction, as if they knew I wouldn’t believe them.

“I’ll admit, ‘new co-workers are secretly vampires hunting down a vampire serial killer who’s picked me as his next target’ wouldn’t have been my first guess for what was going on,” I try with a shrug. “I assume it’s not something everyone responds well to.”

“Most people who find out don’t have to deal with the serial killer part.”

Sometimes, in the face of such absurdity, you just have to laugh. Nate seems pleased that I haven’t run screaming, amusement warming the sympathetic way his gaze lingers.

“Actually, I wanted to thank you,” I say, after another moment of silence.

“For what?”

I shrug. “For wanting to tell me – trying to tell me, even though you had orders. Not everyone would do that.” My mother springs to mind as a prime example.

“It was clear you were going to find out anyway. You’re pretty incredible that way.” His gaze on mine is heavy, soft and intense but tinged with regret as well, and he looks away. “But after you went to the warehouse, it was also clear you didn’t trust us. It’s not a great combination for trying to keep someone safe.”

“How did you know I was at the warehouse?”

“I, uh…” He clears his throat, not meeting my eye. “I followed you. One of us had to, just in case Murphy came back.”

He seems… embarrassed more than anything, as if following me was somehow something more shameful than lying to my face, and it’s not what I expect. And then I remember my conversation with Tina while we hunted through the ruined building. Damn. My fork sets against the edge of my plate with a faint clink.

“You were in the warehouse – when I was in the warehouse,” I check, just in case there’s no real reason for the sudden flood of heat into my face.

“I was.”

“And you heard everything me and Tina were saying with your hypersenses, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t exactly need –” He stops, smiles an apology. “Yes, I heard everything.”

I roll my lips together, chasing something to say. My fingertips drum on the table. “There’s no chance you could just… forget all of that, is there?”

And now the smile curls into something smoother, sleek like a cat. And guess who’s the canary.

“I would rather not.” He purrs it, and my insides squirm. “But since we’re on the subject of… things you said, I feel the same way. About matters of the heart. They’re too precious to be treated casually.”

I stare. There’s more in the words than I really want to acknowledge, certainly more than I can respond to in the middle of a public place full of creatures I thought were myths for most of my life. His brown eyes search my face, patient, until I can’t stand it anymore and drop my gaze to the table, and he covers by taking another sip of his tea.

“That’s an elegant way to put it,” I manage, after what feels like an eternity. He’ll still be leaving once we’ve caught Murphy, and now that we’ve got a solid set of leads on him, that won’t be long at all.

“I hoped you would think so.”

“It must be hard to have any kind of relationship with… all of this.” I wave my hand around the room. “The secrecy and the travelling, I mean.”

His head tilts, the smile returns. “You don’t think it’s the vampire thing that would put people off?”

“No.” I don’t miss the way his mouth twitches upwards at that. “Vampires have become fashionable in the last few years, so I hear. Even if you don’t sparkle.”

“I’d hope my wit does, at least.”

I can’t help it, I break into a laugh at that. It’s so easy to feel comfortable around him, to want to be closer and spend hours just talking. When I knew he was lying, it was an easier feeling to ignore.

“You could always find another vampire,” I point out. “That would solve it if you thought it was a problem.”

It confuses him. His brows furrow as if it was something he hadn’t considered, as if the conversation has taken a turn he didn’t expect, and I use the distraction to look at the clock, high on the wall where clocks always are in cafeterias.

“I need to go. It’s stab-Leah-with-needles o’clock.”

“So soon?” he asks.

It’s not entirely untrue, but I’ll have to walk slowly not to be early, because god forbid they think I’m eager for more tests. My heart skips a little, and he can probably tell, but this whole conversation has veered far too close to gates I locked a long time ago, and do not want open again. I shrug.

“The sooner I get through everything they can think up, the sooner I can go back to catching Murphy.”

“The sooner this whole case is finished.” He watches me, the unspoken half of the sentence left hanging.

“The sooner Wayhaven is safe again.”

In the end, that’s what matters. I can’t lose sight of it.

#in this house we talk about our feelings #but only if we're not talking about *our* feelings #and only if our bff bullies us into it #twc #the wayhaven chronicles #n sewell #nate sewell #nate sewell x detective #leah kingston #tina poname

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shinobirain24 · 3 years

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Water and Ice- Chapter 11: Ransom

Vytyl Festival

A match where a young man with rusty red-brownish hair. And brown eyes, wearing a black tank and green jeans, and a caped draped on this right arm. Standing with three other huntsmen students against another team of four.

"And here we have Team VSTI, a team who attended Atlas Academy. Featuring their leader, a young man who led his missions into victories. Very smart and quick at his feet. Better watch out, cause he's poisonous. The one, and only, Carlos Vega!" Came to the announcement. A young Carlos then smiled and waved to the crowd. Holding a rose from his teeth.

Female students then get a glimpse. Then he turns to each of them and winks at them. Making the girls either heated from the sight of the student, or fainted. Some however, are disinterested as some regarded him as a show-off. Team RWBY watches, not that they cared as they just want to enjoy the tournament.

"What a show-off. Who does this guy think he is?" Blake complained. Disgusted of how much attention he's getting.

Carlos then spots Weiss and smirk at this opportunity to throw the rose directly at her. Making his supporters jealous. Weiss then catches it. Ruby then spoke up. "Well, Weiss. It looks like he has a thing for you." Weiss is also dismayed for the way he looked at her like he have know her. She drops the rose and walks away from the audience. "Hmph!" She stormed off.

Sometime after the match. Weiss is walking into the Amity Arena to find her friends after recuperating from the nightmare she hated most. That is when she accidently dropped her scroll. "Why, every time?" She sighed. To her shock, A hand reached to her scroll first. "Please, allow me." A male voice offers.

"Oh, thank you." Weiss replies as the man handed back her scroll. "I thought I..." She gasped when she looks up to get a good look at him. Carlos Vega. The heir to the Vega Corporation that invested in dusts, rivaling the Schnee Dust Company. "Y-you!" Weiss exclaimed.

"Pardon me, I believe we have yet to formally been introduce. Miss Schnee. I am Carlos Don Vega." He bowed in respect. "It's a pleasure." He takes her hand and attempts to kiss it. But she pulls it back.

"Um...Thanks." She said awkwardly. She has the need of running before things get too awful. "Well, I have to get going then. My team is probably worried about me." She takes her right foot to get away, but Carlos stopped her in front.

"Please stay a bit longer, mi belleza de nieve. I just wanted to speak to you."

"What is it that you want? So that you can just leave me alone." Weiss demands. That is when he pulls out a rose and holds it in front of her eyes. "The moment I saw you, I knew there is a favor I would like to ask of you."

"And what is that?" Weiss is startled when he pushed her to the walls. "What the-?! What do you think you're doing?!" Weiss yells. And saw the smirk on his face. It didn't look good to her.

"The moment I saw you, I knew we are meant to be one."

"Being one? Oh please, that was plain corny coming from you." She snarked. "And heck, I don't even know you!" She tries to push him away, but to no avail.

"What I meant to say is, I am going to make you my bride." He said. She is appalled for what he said to her. Normally she would turn down every suitor her father picked for her. "Get it in your head, Vega. Your attitude towards women is unacceptable and appalling." She refused. "And I refused to give myself up for a spoiled snob like you."

"Hey Weiss, is everything okay here?" Asked a blonde teenager with gauntlets. Yang Xiao Long. She could see what was going on. "It's fine, Yang. Just some loser who is very delusional." Weiss responded with her arms crossed. Yang then grabbed the back of his neck collar and led him away.

"Alright pal, you had enough fun for one day." Yang then drag him away. Much to her relief.

Weiss cracked her eyes open from that memory. She was about to get up from where she was lying. At the same time she felt weak from all the poison. Falling back down in some bed. She looked at her lower body to see that she is no longer wearing her huntress gear. But rather a white dress with frills at the bottom. And a silver hairpin in her hair. When she looked around, she was sitting on a bed. She is in a room, where there's a dresser. A window where she can see the ocean. She could tell she's on a yacht. "You have awaken, mi belleza de nieve." Weiss gasped to see the man she has always hated.

"Stop calling me by that creepy nickname, my name is Weiss." Weiss scorned. But he ignored that comment. "And, why am I in this dress?! It's awful!" Disgusted being changed into a dress, which reminds her of the rules she have to endure in the house.

"But you are very lovely by that furious look on the face. I hope you can forgive me after our meeting with your father." Carlos tries to kiss her hand again. But Weiss lashes out at him. Showing no interest to submit. "Could you get any more stubborn? You should appreciate that I am giving you the luxury that you deserved."

"I have no interest in living the life of luxury. Neither is the money. Whatever scheme you have here, Vega. It's never going to work. So good day." Weiss began to summon her glyph. But it was no use when it her aura flickered. And her Myrtenaster was already confiscated while she was unconscious. Darn it, he took my weapon.

"Oh, I forgot to mention, your aura somehow saved you from the poison. So you got lucky. However, at the cost of your use of semblance. As long as it is in your body, it was no use." Explained Carlos. "This way, you will honor me by paying the debt." Weiss blinked, she didn't remember anything about a debt. She knew her father has shady businesses, but never in her life she knows about a debt. But it's all connected to her father. "What debt? I don't recall agreeing to this."

"You'll see when your father gets here himself. Oh, there he is." He glanced at the doorway to see Jacques Gele. Formerly known as Jacques Schnee after being married into her mother's family. The results of her family turmoil. She no longer fearing his presence. All she ever has towards him is hate. "Weiss, how a pleasure to see you again."

"How did you get out? You're supposed to be in prison." She snarled. Having the smug on his face. The reason she put her father arrested was because years back, she found out he was running as a candidate for chairman in the council of Atlas. The only crime he committed was conspiracy with murder, by making a deal with a mad scientist, named Dr. Arthur Watts to help him win the election by having an assassin to murder supporters of his rivals to rig the votes. After winning the election, Jacques however, was busted due to having blind spots of hidden cameras.

"Is that any way to address your father?" He retorted.

"You are not my father, you're just a coward who uses his own flesh and blood as pawns." Weiss points his finger at him. Showing him no mercy for all he has done. "It's no wonder Winter left you." She huffed. But her father has other plans, he still somewhat find her useful even if he took away her inheritance. "I know you're still angry with me, but I have other plans to make your life better."

"Is this about the debt you are ordered to pay? If so, I want no part of it."

"Actually, you are part of it. You want to know the reason I was able to convince your grandfather to let me take over the company?" Weiss never want to hear about it, but she grabs the only thing they haven't taken yet. An earring her sister had gave her that also serves as a recording device, should anything happens. As her father continues to speak. He walked towards the window. While speaking to her. Having to be tired doing nothing after sitting in a cell. "You see, I have an old friend who hired me in the place in the Vega Corporation. Montero Vega. That would be Carlos' father. Do you remember him?"

"Yes, just this one time in one of our after parties." Weiss replies.

"You see, he and I go way back. When I was a lad, I have no use of living, until he offered me a place in his company. All was successful, he and I have a lot in common with. It was thanks to him that I have become the high-paid man in all of Atlas. With all the money he paid me, it was enough to convince your grandfather to let me marry your mother as a requirement to take over his company. The poor fool was so weak, he was too desperate to find someway to manage a company. He doesn't know how his daughter will survive. And that's how it all came to this." Jacques explained his story.

"That company never belonged to you to begin with. Mother was still studying back then before she can inherit the business. Grandfather only let you marry her because he was worried for her. Even if he regretted that day to put her in serious misery. At least that's what he told Winter, she was the only person to have confide in him because she never trusted you." Weiss hissed.

"Later on, Montero and I have met again, only to remind me about the debt since I already borrowed his money. Of course, I invited him to your 7th after party of the concert you sang that night. Before I have the chance to speak to him, I noticed his son Carlos taking in interest in you. But you didn't noticed. No matter if you turn him away. He's not taking no for an answer. Then it hit me an idea, why paying up the debt with money, if I can arrange you a marriage? When I told Montero about this idea, he told me that he can accept this as a payment if I can set you and Carlos to make a business joint between both of our companies. And at least he accepted. Sadly, he died in illness. Leaving the debt in his son's will."

"So you sold me out, didn't you?!" She growled. Over the past years, she never thought that her father would put her in a debt. That crosses the line when he would go this far. But far worse when he escaped. Winter would never consent this arrangement, and neither will her mother. But unwilling to voice out because of the fear he would do something to her daughters and son. "As part of the deal, after Carlos is very kind enough to let me escape from prison. And to take back the company. It's ashamed that your sister never knew of his status as she was too busy teaching her students as headmistress to the academy."

"Winter would never let something like this to happen." She snapped. But Carlos took a step closer to her. Weiss stumbled back to the dresser. He lifts her chin. "I'm afraid you don't have a choice. You see, I have already found the individual responsible for the embargo sinking. Whose surname is Vasilias." Weiss gets shaken, she refused to believe this as a weapon for the ransom. "You see, I ran into him when he came out looking for you. That fool didn't know what hit him. But somehow he figured I was right behind him, and surprisingly, he surrenders." She inquired to herself, silently for why would he turn himself in.

"Don't believe me? I'll show it to you." She pulls out his scroll that features security cameras. There he clicked on a window where it was all black and white. But there a person has arms tied between the walls. And he was bleeding badly from all the beating he has taken. There was a muscular man punching him in the stomach. When he move away from him. Weiss is terrified that the man getting lashed out was Neptune. "No, Neptune!" She whimpered. Covering her mouth. Then Carlos leans over her shoulder and whispers to her. "I'm afraid you have no choice but to accept me into your arms. If you do, then I'll spare his life by turning him to your sister. And if you refuse, then I'll have no choice but to drown him into the bottom of the seas." He then walks out the door with her father giving her a smirk. "You have one hour to decide." Carlos waves before exiting. "Feel free to roam around the boat. Just so you know, I have my security team around in case you tried to escape."

What am I going to do? I cannot let him die, Vega will kill him. Weiss then slid against the dresser in distress. Tired of all the threats that's been going on. First She and Neptune are being hunted. And now he's been held hostage as ransom for her to agree to an unwanted marriage. Back as an heiress, she can be a bit of a complaint. But this time, she has to be considerate of others. She will never forgive herself if those she cared about have died because of her. Risking herself is the only option she has to set Neptune free. For him to run and hide without her.

Neptune is in another ship. Restrained by corners of left and right by ropes tied to his wrists. His Tri-hard have also been confiscated. His head is lower from all the infliction he received by all the beating. For that, there are bruises from the upper body, to the lowest. Never in his life he had endure, aside form fighting the Grimm.

What were they planning to do to Weiss? Why do I get the feeling that this is the wrong ship? He thought. He then thought back to the time he saw the figure in the hood and mask. Something in his eyes didn't feel right to him. When he was at sword point by the enemy. Something about that guy felt familiar to me. But where is this coming from? But he has some connection to the Red Eye. Don't worry, Weiss, I'll get you out of this. He thought.

Then the ship shaken with the sound of a boom, there was an explosion imploded from somewhere near the empty room. Through the doorway, all the guards are running the same direction to the exit. The alarms blared in red. "Um, hello?!" He called, but they ignored him. The he saw water leaking from the hall. "Uh oh..." He eye-widened in fear. "Oh no...water...Anything but that!" He moves in sideways to break free from the ropes. But they were too tight, his hands started to leak blood from the rasp of the ropes. "Hey! Anyone here?! A5 least help me out with these!" But the pain stings him so much, he passed out. "Gotta get out...of here...got...to..."

Jacques and Carlos are standing behind the rails of the yacht staring at the ship where Neptune is being held. Jacques is tapping his foot. Looking at his watch for the remaining time limit for Weiss to decide to give herself up or face the consequences. Carlos still hold the trigger to wait for the decision. However, despite the choices he have given her, he is still tempted to press the button to watch the explosion. Then it was too late. Weiss have exit the door to confirm her decision.

"Alright, Vega! You win. I'll do it if you just let him-!" Weiss was interrupted by the explosion as Carlos have already triggered the bomb. To her horror, the ship was burning in flames. There are guards on lifeboats. And Neptune was an exception. "Neptune!" She screamed. Grasping through the rails in bitterness. Tears are running, but instead she has them in full hatred.

"You monsters! You'll pay for this!" Weiss lets her fury out by creating a projection of the ursa. But it failed as her aura shattered.

"Did you already forget that the poison stops your semblance from activating?" Weiss still glared at him while thinking of a way to escape. "It's no use to save him now, it looks like you're about to be mine after all." Said Carlos when he was about to step towards her. Weiss was about to make a run for it. Climbing onto the rails to jump off the ship. Regardless of the height, to save the man she have grown to care for. "What are you doing? This is suicide, and you know it." Said Jacques. Hoping to bring her into his side. But Weiss turned in defiance, and told him, "I would rather drown than to let Neptune die." And with that, she jumps off. The explosion just went on early, which gives her enough time to dive into the sea and swim to the ship. Carlos then turned to three of his guards.

"You idiots, stop her!" They went after her to prevent her from escaping. But they came to late as they were far from the spot and Weiss successfully leaps off.

Weiss then climbs into the ship using the remaining lifeboat still attached to the lever. She made it to the top of the boat, which can lead to the room where Neptune is. First, she had glanced at the weapons. Her Myrtenaster, and Neptune's Tri-hard in a laboratory. She picks them up as needed for their next fight. In a desperate speed, she comes across every room. The dining room, the lounge, nothing came in. The lower she went, the higher the water rises. The last stop, is the boiler room. There she peaked through the window. Luckily, Neptune is nearby.

Walking on water while opening the door. Dealing with the velocity of the substance. "Neptune..." Weiss spoken while rushing towards him. Moving her arms and legs through the water while it has yet to have risen. Neptune then wakes up hearing her voice. He lifts his head. He thought it was his imagination. "W-Weiss...Is that...you?" He stammered, while still enduring the bruises. Instead of focusing in the water, he focused on Weiss as she embraced him in relief. She then breaks from him and saw the scars he has. "Oh my god. What have they done to you?"

"Forget about me, and get out of here. I can't swim and you know it." Neptune refuses. But Weiss determines to escape with him. Knowing she cannot let him live in fear forever. "Stop talking like that. I am going to get you out." Said Weiss. She then unties him, while catching him before he could fall. He fully regained consciousness. "Just followed my lead, okay? I'll bet this'll be the time for me to teach you to swim." The water then rises further near the ceiling. Flowing along with Weiss and Neptune as they held onto a pipe. They know they couldn't last long if they stay there. "When I give the word, keep kicking. And don't let go of my hand." Weiss instructed. Neptune then gets a grip that he didn't have any other choice but to follow along. And puts his goggles above his eyes. "Do you trust me?" Weiss asked. And he nods.

"I do."

"Okay, take a deep breathe." Weiss told him, and they held their breathes for as long as they can. His ears then got clogged by the water. But it didn't matter to him as long as he could see with the goggles. Weiss held his hand to lead him to safety. As instructed, Neptune kicks up and down to keep moving. This is the first time he felt calm about being in the water. When they reached the higher floors again, they resurfaced from the water. They breathed after reaching the stair. They coughed when some of the water got into their mouth. But more importantly, they survived. "Are you okay?" Weiss asked.

"Yeah...Definitely." He replies.

"Good, let's get out of here." They climbed onto the stairs and reached the balcony of the ship. They reached the the last lifeboat and float away. Weiss then looks at Neptune with a stern expression. "What were you thinking?! I told you to stay behind and you nearly got killed! Do you have any idea how scared I got?!" Weiss then teared up looking at the bruised state he has. "This is all my fault, isn't it? I already dragged you into this, didn't I..." She rubbed her eyes. Feeling guilt that someone could be targeted, all because she is pinned into bounty. "I think it's best if I...stay away from you...while you get as far away as possible..." Neptune ignores her arguments, and instead pulls the back of Weiss' head close to his and kisses her. Weiss tried to pull away, but she gave in. They closed their eyes and break away to look at each other.

"Do you think I am the type to leave you behind?" He asked, but Weiss didn't answered. "That was very brave of you back there. I never thought you can take that risk. I learned today that I will no longer live in fear. I would give anything to save those I cared about. Especially you." Weiss then placed her hand on the back of his hair. "I'm just happy that you're alive. I'll never let anything happened to you either." Then a gun was pointed to Neptune's head. Which they jumped by the sudden movement. "Such a sweet moment. Too bad it's never going to last long." They looked up to see Jacques and Carlos in speedboats with a bunch of bodyguards ready to fire.

"Come along, Weiss. We have a debt to pay." Jacques said before turning to the blue-haired huntsmen. "Either it's that, or the blue-haired boy, gets it." Neptune bites back by pointing his rifle to him. "Try me, old man!" Weiss interrupts by lowering his gun to prevent Neptune from getting injured any further, as he was already punished enough as it is. "No, don't do it." Weiss pleaded quietly. Before he could protest, Weiss explained to him. "Father has made it clear that he's not going to stop until the debt is paid. I can't let him get his way to kill you." His eye widened to hear that the man standing before him was her father. Weiss secretly gives Neptune her rapier before they get caught.

"Wait a minute, you're her father?" Neptune asked. "You're supposed to be in prison."

"Isn't it obvious. The reason I have to sent my future son-in-law to capture you, because I knew my daughter would refuse to give in for a debt." Jacques explains while brushing his mustache. Neptune turned to the so-called suitor of hers. And recognized the uniform he is wearing. "Wait a minute, you're from the Atlas Military. How did you not get caught." The heir of the Vega Corporation has chuckled brushing his hair. He's not taking the situations very seriously in the name of the will his father. Neptune didn't like the fact that parents would use their sons and daughters as debts. "I don't want you around her anymore. If you dare to interfere, I won't let you off easily." Before Neptune can fight back. Weiss gets up and responded to them. "No one's dying today. Because I'll come with you." She insisted. Neptune then grabs her wrist to stop her from taking risk. "Weiss, don't do this. Are you crazy?" Neptune protests. But she pulls away and spun to him. "I have to, I cannot let anyone I cared about getting killed. It's my job as a huntress to put others first. You need to focus on finding your brother and bring him home."

"Hop on, mi belleza de nieve." He reached out his hand, and Weiss reluctantly has hers over his and got into his boat.. Neptune watches Weiss being sped away. Weiss then stared at Neptune, knowing that she might not see him anymore if nothing is done. Neptune won't forget his promise to continue searching for his brother. But he cannot let Weiss submit to her enemies either. "Weiss, I promise you. I will get you out of this!" He promised.

#iceberg rwby #neptune vasilias #Icy Seas #weiss schnee #weiss x neptune #Arctic Ocean

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let-it-raines · 5 years

Text

Rising from the Ashes (18/21)

When her husband died, Emma wasn’t sure that she could ever move on. He left her with a broken heart and a baby who was only three-months old. It’s enough to take most people down, to make them not want to keep going, but Emma Swan isn’t most people. She’s stronger than she has any right to be. And after years of heartache, she’s found ways to move on…one of those being in Neal’s best friend, Killian Jones.

As she’s always known, however, things are more complicated than they ever seem to be.

Rating: Mature

A/N: shout out to @wellhellotragic for reading through these next few chapters to make sure they make sense and for being an all around good human being. So many stories come from her encouragement, so she deserves all the praise 🎉

Anybody ready to start finding out secrets? It’ll take a few chapters to get all of them, but you’ll get them!

Found on AO3: Beginning | Current

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Tag list: @ultraluckycatnd @jamif @artistic-writer @cs-forlife @qualitycoffeethings @resident-of-storybrooke @captainsjedi @captswanis4vr @teamhook @ekr032-blog-blog @mayquita @bmbbcs4evr@wellhellotragic @kmomof4 @jennjenn615 @onceuponaprincessworld @shady-swan-jones @snow-into-ash @andiirivera @mariakov81 @shireness-says @kristi555 @facesiousbutton82 @superchocovian @jonirobinson64 @thejollyroger-writer @tiganasummertree @blowmiakisscolin @snowbellewells

-/-

“You’re right,” he sighs, his lashes landing against his cheeks when he closes his eyes and tilts his head toward the ceiling, trying to muster all of his courage to talk to Emma. He desperately needs it. “I’ve got some things to talk to you about.”

He hasn’t even truly said anything yet, but telling Emma that he needs to talk to her, letting her know that he’s been holding things back, it lifts a slight weight off of his shoulders, as if that helps. He’s heavy, his limbs weighed down by lead, and he’s so damn tired that sometimes he thinks his body might stop working completely, all of his vital organs shutting down until he’s just done.

It’s been one of the longest days of his life. The only ones that he remembers that are longer were days at sea when the sun never seemed to rise, everything shrouded in a heavy darkness that made the air feel denser and the breeze cooler, chilling him to his bones even under his thick jacket. Those are days he doesn’t want to remember, but they’re the ones etched at the front of his brain, mixed in with memories of a vibrant blonde with a laugh that sounds of music and a smile that would have brought light to those lightless days.

One outshines the other, always, but right now he’s not sure of anything except for the fact that he’s about to break down his family, and it’s the absolute last thing he wants to do. He’d rather hoard all of this away, keep it to himself and to David, but he set that ball in motion weeks ago, and it’s been a whirlwind ever since, everything tumbling and falling down much faster than he ever could have imagined. A part of him wishes that he could go back, that he could take it all back and have never started any of this, but at the end of the day, this is for the best.

Even if it’ll be for the worst first.

Bloody asshole. He’s a bloody asshole.

There’s no way he could have ever kept any of this to himself when Emma deserves so much more than to be lied to.

Again.

Rubbing his hand against his forehead, trying to work away the stress and the lack of sleep, he takes the last few steps to the living room and sits down on the loveseat across from Emma, still trying to muster the courage to look at her and look at the hurt in her eyes that he knows is his fault right now and that he’s only going to make worse.

He would give everything he has, every part of his being, to never have to hurt her or their children again.

He can’t believe he missed Henry’s soccer game today. That seems like such a small thing, but he made a promise that he broke.

“Where have you been?” she questions, curling herself into a small ball and pulling the blanket up over her shoulders, her bun bouncing on the top of her head. She looks like she’s settling down to watch a movie with Henry, not like she’s about to have this conversation that’s going to change their lives. “Were you – ”

“God no,” he finishes for her, not even letting her entertain the idea of him being unfaithful to her. He knows that’s where her head must have been all day even though she likely doesn’t truly think that. She must have been somewhere between him being an asshole, cheating on her, and being dead in a ditch on the side of the road. He’s not sure which thought he prefers. “I would never. I’m – I’m sorry about today. I’m sorry that I didn’t get a chance to call you and that I made you worry. I’m sorry that I missed Henry’s game. I know he must be so mad at me, and I will try to make it better with him, okay? I would never do anything to intentionally harm either of you.”

She nods her head, shuffling a bit more underneath the blanket, but her lips stay in a firm line. “But where were you?”

“I was with David.” Her brows furrow, and he takes a breath, centering himself and trying to keep all of his organs intact as he bites the bullet. Or, at least, tries to. “Emma, sweetheart, I’m going to tell you something that sounds absolutely insane, and I need you to listen to me, okay? I know that you’re mad at me, as you should be, but there’s good reason for it.”

“What are you talking about? And what do you mean you were with David? He was working today. That’s what Mary Margaret said. Oh God, are they having issues? Is that what this was?”

“No, no,” he promises, his heart breaking a little at her thinking that her brother was having issues in his marriage. “They’re fine. David really was working, and I was with him.”

“Why?”

“I’m trying to get there, love. I am. It’s simply hard, and I don’t know how to tell you.”

“Just tell me, okay? We’re not supposed to lie to each other, yeah? We’re a team. That’s what we say. We’re on the same team.”

His eyes slam shut to hold back tears, her words already too much for him when he has been lying to her after saying he wouldn’t, after working so damn hard for their relationship to get back to this point. She’s been hurt so badly in the past, and nearly every day that he’s been with her he has tried to make sure that he wouldn’t hurt her the same way. He’s not perfect. He’s screwed up many times, but she deserves so much more than the circumstances of her past.

Than the circumstances of her present too.

“I’ve been lying to you,” he whispers, too cowardly to open his eyes to see her face. “I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t say anything until I knew for sure. I’ve – Emma, I’ve been losing my mind since February thinking that I’m crazy and delusional and that my mind has run wild on one too many theories.”

“Killian, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Neal is a fucking liar,” he blurts out, the words tumbling off his tongue without hesitation as one weight is lifted off of his shoulder while another is pressed down, crushing him further into the ground. With everything he says he feels momentarily lighter before feeling heavier once more. “His past, Emma, the missing years, they’re all lies.”

He opens his eyes and watches her process his words, watches the lines on her forehead appear, watches the gaping mouth, watches her eyes twitch as she looks around the room at anything but him. And if he could see under her blanket, he’d know that she’s tapping her fingers against her leg on the couch cushions.

“What do you mean? They’re not lies. He was captured. He disappeared. I know this. You know this. It’s been drilled into our heads over and over again through every news channel and every briefing we got before he came back. He was captured and tortured and has been through hell, and it took eight years for someone to find him and bring him home.”

“It’s not…Emma, I know that’s what we’ve thought. Why wouldn’t we? It has been our truth and our driving force to what has kept us sane, but it’s not true. I – ” he hesitates, reaching up to run his hand through his hair, fingers harshly tugging at the strands as his stomach twists inside of him, nausea beginning to take over like it’s been threatening to since David called him while he was in the middle of the supermarket this morning and asked him if he could meet him at the precinct as soon as possible because a federal agent wanted to talk to him. It was the last thing he expected when he went to David weeks again. He doesn’t know exactly what he expected. All he knows is that it wasn’t really this, and nothing was supposed to happen this quickly.

Really, all he wanted was for David to tell him that he was crazy and that nothing was wrong with Neal.

He left the cart of groceries in the middle of the frozen food aisle.

“Do you remember when you took Ada to her nine-month check-up? How I took Henry to therapy that day and gave Neal a ride as well?” She nods in response, and he continues. “When I was in the lobby after dropping Henry off, I saw Neal get into a random car despite the fact that he was supposed to be in therapy. At first, I thought maybe it was nothing. He’s a grown man. He can make his own choices, and maybe he didn’t want to go to therapy anymore but simply hadn’t found a way to tell us. But then I got a little paranoid, and I just had this feeling in my gut that something wasn’t right, that all of these little things about Neal since he came home weren’t adding up.”

“He got into a car? That’s not…that’s weird, but I don’t understand why that’s a big deal.”

“There was a possibility that it wasn’t, love. It could have been nothing, but it wasn’t. Neal has hidden a lot from us, and I had been letting go of all of the little inconsistencies up until that point. But then I started to piece them together, started to do a map of things like when I’m at work, and after that man came up to us at the zoo in DC and thought he knew Neal, I broke down and had to tell someone all of my thoughts and how I was going crazy.”

Emma’s lips part, and he knows that he’s losing her. She thinks that he’s insane, that he’s lost it, and she deserves to think that right now. She does. He thought the same thing. He simply hopes that by the time he finishes explaining, carefully working his way through this so that she can best understand, have her hear it from him instead of some federal agent like she’s going to have to in the next few days when she’s also pulled in for questioning.

Tears continue to sting behind his eyes as he thinks of all Emma is about to go through and all their son is about to go through as well and for the rest of his life. All he wants is to take the woman he loves and the children he has with her to a quiet house on the coast, the ocean in their view, and hold them to keep them away from the situation they’ve found themselves in.

“Who did you tell?”

“David.”

“Why didn’t you…what did you tell him?”

“I asked him if he could help me or if I really needed to get my shit together and stop hyper-fixating on something that was nothing. But he agreed. He thought something about Neal was suspicious too, that he knew a little too much of what had happened in the past eight years, that he was acting strangely, and agreed to try to look into it for me as a favor.”

“What the fuck?” Emma groans, tossing her blanket to the side and standing up from the couch, pulling her leggings up and tugging her t-shirt down. “Killian, seriously. What the fuck are you on about saying Neal is suspicious and that he wasn’t really captured the entire time? Of course he was. And yes, I know that he does shady things and that he can be a shitty person, but that doesn’t mean any of it is suspicious. I mean, seriously. He’s just a douche sometimes. Did you know that he tried to get Henry off of calling you his daddy because he doesn’t like that I’m with you and not him all of the sudden? I mean, what kind of jackass move is that when he’s been so good about things?”

His stomach twists again, the nausea settling itself down, and he feels anger flicker across his skin, goosebumps rising across each centimeter of flesh. He didn’t even think that it was possible for him to feel more.

“He did what now?”

Emma groans and presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, rubbing them a bit as she paces back and forth in front of the fireplace.

“Today has been awful, babe. Just awful. Henry couldn’t find his shin guards, and we were running late to his game. And while we’re looking, Ada decides to melt down. Like screaming and crying and yelling so loudly that my ears wanted to burst. So obviously this upset Henry and I said something…I don’t even remember, but I said something about texting you and asking if you were on your way home to help. And he just yells at me that you’re not his daddy, that you’re his step dad which I think broke my heart until a million little pieces which only got worse when you didn’t show up to his game and when you didn’t answer my calls. I – ”

Emma stops her rant to straighten her shoulders, her chest visibly moving with her breath as she wipes at the tears under her cheeks. He has no idea what’s happening, no idea what kind of mess he’s wandered into on top of the one he’s created. All he knows is that he has to brave this storm until it’s over.

“- I haven’t felt that alone in months,” she finally continues, pacing again, and he knows exactly when she last felt that alone. “Our kid needed you today. I swear there is nothing he loves more than having you cheer for him at those games. But you weren’t there, and you didn’t bother to let me know where you were. That hurts, Killian. You can’t lie to me because I have to be able to trust you. I have to be able to trust that one day you’re not going to turn on me and decide that I am not enough or decide that our kids are not enough. I need to be able to…I can’t have you treat me like Neal did, like he still does sometimes. You’re my best friend who I rely on for everything, and I don’t know how to reconcile whatever it is you’re trying to tell me with my real life when I’m still reeling from the emotional whiplash of my day. It’s two in the fucking morning.”

He can’t help himself when he stands, stepping around the coffee table so that he can pull Emma into his arms despite the fact that she’s got her arms crossed over her chest and isn’t returning his embrace. She’s pissed at him. It’s understandable. She should be. He should have been here today. He should have called. He should have done something to let her know that he was okay and that he wouldn’t be home so that maybe she wouldn’t have felt so alone. There’s so much to unpack with what she’s saying, complications that he never saw arising when he prepared himself for this conversation. They’re tired and emotional, and they still have so much more to talk about. He still hasn’t been able to tell Emma the real, whole truth.

He's barely touched the surface, and he’s terrified.

“You, Emma Swan,” he starts, rubbing his hands up and down her back in soothing circles as she hiccups into his shoulder, “will always be enough. Not just for me but for everyone and hopefully, if you believe it, for yourself. I will never want to leave you or our children. I cannot express enough how the three of you are my world. I screwed up today, screwed up these last few months, but I promise I had the right intentions behind it. I simply need you to listen, and if you want to kick me out of the house afterwards, you can. But I promise every word out of my mouth is the truth. Use your superpower. Use your trust in me.”

She nods and wraps her arms around his waist, squeezing tightly enough that he can feel his breath escape him.

“So tell me.”

And he does.

They both make their way into the kitchen and start a cup of coffee, the two of them knowing that it’s going to be a long night without much sleep, if they get any sleep at all. Whether she believes him or not they still have things to talk about, and it’s all happening whether they like it or not.

He hates it.

So over a cup of coffee he tells Emma all about how David started poking around and using his resources as a detective to figure out all of the inconsistencies that Neal has shown since he got back. Emma still looks distraught, confused even, and he wonders just how much all of her muddled feelings for Neal are causing her to be resistant and in denial. He understands. The same thing happened to him.

The same thing is still kind of happening to him.

David couldn’t find out much, especially since it wasn’t a case he was assigned to and most of the things Killian had mentioned were circumstantial that honestly couldn’t be looked into, but he did manage to track down traces of a Neal Gold in London between two thousand and twelve and last year. It wasn’t much, just a few trails on Facebook, but there were photographs online of a Neal Gold being pictured at the Three Kings Pub after a United game, just like Kyle Thomasson had said. Kyle ended up being the key in it all, oddly enough, and Killian still can’t decide if running into him at the zoo in DC was a blessing or a curse. To him, it seems like something akin to fate, and he’s not quite sure if he believes in that.

Kyle was in university three years ago and active on Instagram, seemingly documenting everything with his mates. He had several pictures of all of them in the pub wearing Manchester United jerseys, and in one picture timestamped March tenth, two thousand and sixteen, Neal was in the background sitting at a bar counter staring almost directly at the camera.

Decidedly not a prisoner of war in Iraq.

David said he’d nearly fallen out of his chair at work, the wheels rolling underneath him, and he’d had to catch himself on his desk as he stared at the picture for nearly an hour before shaking his head and realizing that Killian was right, that something wasn’t adding up.

That Neal wasn’t adding up.

David hadn’t really been sure what to do with that information, had mulled over it for a few days when fate seemed to knock on his door in the form of FBI Agent Graham Humbert. Apparently, every prisoner of war, especially those who were captured for an extended period time and then released, are monitored when they come home. There have been incidents in the past of men and women who come home seemingly normal and then end up in terroristic plots. It’s all very secretive and hush hush, but it happens for select veterans.

Neal has been one of those.

The FBI and the CIA have been keeping tabs on him since the day he came back.

Fucking insane. It’s all insane.

“They’ve been watching us?” Emma asks quietly, wiping away some of the sleep in her eyes as she comes back to herself a bit, some color returning to her cheeks. Good. he feels a little less nauseous too.

“Aye. Mostly Neal, but also us.”

“That’s all very big brother-ish. Is that even legal?”

He shrugs. “Apparently so.”

“I still don’t…I don’t understand. Are you saying that Neal is a terrorist? That he was turned against the country?”

“No, no, love,” he assures her, tapping his fingers against the table, even if that’s only true in the most technical sense. “But he isn’t – Neal isn’t – he isn’t…Neal has been living in London with his father for most of the past decade.”

“Neal’s dad is dead.”

“He’s not,” Killian sighs. He was shocked by the information too. Emma must be even more so since he knows that being orphans is something Emma and Neal once bonded over. It’s something the two of them have bonded over themselves. “Neal’s father is Robert Gold. That’s Neal’s real name. It’s Gold, but he changed it to Cassidy about twenty years ago.”

“None of this is making any sense.”

“I know,” he promises as he reaches across the table and places his hand over hers, wishing he could work away the worry lines on her forehead. “It will, though. I promise. You just have to trust me.”

“I do.”

Thank the heavens.

So he tells her that Neal’s mother is actually dead and really had been from Boston. That part is true, but his father is a businessman in London who owns an engineering firm. The thing is that within the engineering firm is what is suspected to be an illegal weapons manufacturer. Interpol and Scotland Yard have been surveying it for years, but they’ve never been able to find any proof that the weapons were stemming from the business. It’s all been well covered to the point that they nearly gave up, but then several shipments of illegal weapons started popping up in America in October of last year.

And Neal Gold isn’t quite as good at covering his tracks as his father is.

“I don’t understand,” Emma murmurs under her breath, picking her legs up and settling them in her chair.

“He’s been illegally selling weapons to criminals, Swan, and he’s been caught. Almost.”

“No, no. It’s…” She takes a sip of her coffee and lingers with it on her lips before placing it on the table and rubbing her fingers between her brows to work out the lines. “I understand that bat shit crazy thing. I still feel like I’m having a fever dream and you’re going to kiss me and I’ll wake up in bed and none of this will be real, but I don’t understand…I’m missing the connection between him being deployed, somehow escaping captivity from terrorists, and then going to work for his apparently alive father who is some kind of criminal mastermind. And then coming back here to us. Like, that doesn’t make any sense, and I’m not entirely sure that I don’t need to have you admitted to a mental institution.”

“I’m not crazy, sweetheart.”

“Her eyes roll. What you’re saying is.”

“I know,” he sighs, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath before looking at Emma. He’s only had a few hours to truly process this even when he’s had suspicions for weeks, and he’s still in disbelief. Mostly he’s angry, angry enough to want to punch the bastard hard enough to knock all of his teeth out and break his nose, but that has nothing to do with how he’s been aiding in violence across the world for money and everything to do with the fact that Killian knows that Neal left Emma and could have come back home.

But he didn’t.

He didn’t come home for years, and he could have.

He abandoned his wife and his son, and Killian has never felt more hatred coursing through his blood than he has at that thought.

“Emma, my love, we don’t know all of the details yet. Agent Humbert and his associates, they won’t tell us everything because we’re civilians. We don’t have that kind of clearance, but they’re involving us because they think we might be able to give them information on what Neal has been doing since he came home or that maybe we can tell them more on why he came home.”

“He came home because he was rescued. That’s what happened. He couldn’t have been living in London all of those years. He couldn’t have because if he has been, that would mean…oh God, that would mean…h-he left me,” she sobs, hand going over her mouth as he entire body shakes, large tear droplets falling down her cheeks in a steady stream that he thinks may stain her skin forever. “He left us.”

-/-

He watches her walk down the stairs, his eyes scanning up from the black stilettos and dark tights to the gray and white plaid skirt with a fitted black turtle neck tucked in, the sweater fitting all of her curves. It’s not at all what he was expecting her to wear tonight, especially since he saw this sinful red dress hanging in their closet last night. If he’s honest, he was looking forward to that knowing the way that it hugs Emma’s curves, but he’s not idiotic enough to not appreciate the way his girlfriend looks right now. They spend most of their time together in joggers and t-shirts, usually with a mysterious stain from something Henry did despite the fact that he’s six years old and should only be staining his own clothes.

“Hot damn, woman,” he whistles, stepping forward to grab her hand so that he can help her down the rest of the staircase. She smiles in return, a little blush coating the apples of her cheeks. “I do believe I’m the luckiest man in all of Maine.”

“I’d think so,” Emma laughs, finally stepping down on the wooden floor and releasing his hand. “I mean, there’s no way you could do better than me, Jones.”

“And yet you say I’m cocky.”

“You are.” She looks up at him and raises her brows, the corners of her red-painted lips curving up even more. “But you don’t get to have that term all to yourself. You have to share.”

“I’ve never been very good at that.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Is it?”

“Definitely.” She reaches forward and places her hand on his chest, her fingers tapping against his shirt. “So I had this red dress – ”

“I saw.”

“Did you now?”

He raises a brow and hums in response, placing his hands on her hips and tugging her a little closer. “I did, and though I told myself not to be stupid enough to ask, I figured since you brought it up – ”

“ – that you could ask why I’m not wearing it for our date?”

“Yep.”

“Well, it’s a funny story,” she starts, her hands snaking up his chest until they land on his shoulders, fingers curling into the cotton of his dress shirt. “You see, I woke up with this awfully large bruise right in the center of my chest because it seems that someone got a little overenthusiastic last night. Some would say possessive, but that’s not true because he wouldn’t be dumb enough to try to mark me.”

He has to hold in his laugh as the tips of his ears heat, most likely going red, and he waggles his brows. “I did say I wasn’t very good at sharing.”

“Asshole. You – ”

“Momma,” Henry interrupts, somehow stepping between them despite their proximity to each other, “I don’t feel good.”

“What’s wrong, kid?” Emma soothes, stepping back and reaching down to move Henry’s hair off of his forehead. He’s weird about people touching his hair, but he always lets Emma do it.

“My tummy hurts.”

Her eyes glance toward him for a moment, brows furrowed together, and he watches Emma flip her hand around and press the back of her it to Henry’s forehead. “You’re burning up. How long have you felt bad?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“Okay, okay,” Emma sighs. “Let’s get your temperature taken and then get some medicine in you. Babe – ”

“You want to stay home with him?”

“Yeah. I just…don’t call David and Mary Margaret to cancel just yet, but he’s really warm. I don’t want him to get Leo sick or for them to have to deal with a sick kid. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he promises, stepping to the side so that he can move into the kitchen with them following him. He opens the cabinet where they keep the medicine and pulls out the thermometer and a bottle of ibuprofen before stopping to think. “Lad, do you want the medicine that you drink or that you chew?”

“What flavor is it?”

“Both are bubblegum.”

“The kind I drink.”

He nods his head and puts back the chewable to grab the liquid while handing Emma the thermometer so she can take Henry’s temperature. Both times it comes back just over one hundred degrees. It’s not the worst temperature in the world, but it is a temperature above normal. Besides, Emma has already made up her mind that they’re staying home tonight, so while she toes out of her heels and gets Henry medicated and changed into his pajamas, he calls David and Mary Margaret and tells them the change of plans, insisting to Mary Margaret that it’s fine, that they’ll have date night another day when Henry isn’t feeling under the weather.

After he’s finished all of that, he grabs two water bottles out of the fridge and moves to the living room, settling down next to Henry on the couch as Emma puts on the movie Robots. It’s a bit older, but Henry is absolutely obsessed with it. Killian believes that they’ve watched it at least five times in two weeks, and a part of him wonders when that phase is going to be outgrown.

“Why does he say making the baby robot is the fun part?” Henry innocently ponders, looking up at him with those big brown eyes that he swears could melt the ice caps. “It didn’t look very fun.”

He nearly chokes on his own lung, the adult joke in the movie going over Henry’s head even if he still asked about the joke. It’s times like these where being a dad is both mortifying and hysterical.

“People like different things, lad, and they happened to like making their baby robot. It was fun for them, so that’s what matters.”

“That’s weird.”

“One day you won’t think so.”

Emma reaches over and slaps his shoulder, but he doesn’t care as he laughs to himself and keeps watching the movie, answering all of Henry’s questions along the way. The finish Robots and start the Lion King, which Killian has seen infinitely more times than any other movie they own, but even after Henry has fallen asleep with his head resting on Emma’s chest, they keep watching in silence until he hears a small sniffle beside him.

Twisting his head, he looks at Emma to see her wiping at her eyes, and he’s just about to tease her for crying at a movie she can (and has) recite when he realizes that her tears are not simply tears from watching the movie, the sobbing far too intense.

“Hey, hey,” he whispers, his heart constricting a bit as he watches Emma’s eyes fill with tears, “come here, love.” She nods her head before gently getting up from the couch so as not to disturb Henry and slowly settles down on his lap, crossing her legs over each other and resting her head on his shoulder as her arms become a heavy presence on his waist. He’s not exactly sure what’s happening right now, so he simply wraps the arm that’s not around Henry around Emma and rubs up and down her back. “What’s wrong, Swan? Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I get nervous when Henry gets sick. I don’t – I can’t explain it. I mean, this obviously isn’t the first time he’s been sick or the worst of it, and it’s certainly not the worst you’ve seen but I – ”

“ – you get nervous,” he finishes for her when she stops talking, pressing a kiss into her hair. “Sweetheart, I understand. I don’t like when he’s sick either, but he’s going to be just fine. It’s simply a little cold.”

“I know, I know,” she sniffles, her voice barely audible with her mouth pressed into his shoulder. He can feel the vibrations of her voice more than he can hear her, and it’s likely a good thing with Henry right next to them snoozing away. “It doesn’t make any sense, but I’m so scared of something happening. He is my baby, and for a long time, he was all I had. It was me and Henry against the world, and I would do absolutely anything to protect him from the world. I don’t know – I…it’s the anniversary of Neal being deployed soon. I don’t have a death date for him, so I’ve always gone with when he was deployed, and that’s tomorrow.”

“I didn’t even realize.”

“That’s because I never told you that was the day I remembered it.”

“Why not? You know that I understand, that I miss him too.”

“Yeah, but…he was my husband, and I loved him. I know that he wasn’t perfect, but I did love him. He made me happy a lot of the time. He gave me – I have Henry because of him. It’s been six years, and sometimes it feels like I just lost him yesterday.”

He gulps back his sigh, gulps back a lot of his words. Talking about Neal can either be the easiest thing in the world or the most difficult. Some days he and Emma share lighthearted stories, but other days she grieves him like she’s doing right now. She grieves his death, grieves him missing Henry’s life, grieves him missing her life. Emma is hands down the strongest person he knows. He’s been through shit in his life, seen friends and family die, has had his heart broken, but he’s never been left with a newborn and told that his spouse died. He’s never…he lost a friend. He didn’t lose someone who was supposed to be his lifelong confidant.

But he can imagine. If he ever lost Emma, he doesn’t think he’d be able to move on. He wouldn’t want to. He’d never love again if he lost her. He’s young. He has a long life ahead of him, but if he lost Emma, he would never recover from that. He’d do it for Henry, be there to raise him and to be there for him, but the loss of Emma would destroy him.

No part of him is as strong as Emma is, so when he sees her break down like this, it breaks him. He wants to be strong for her, though. She makes him stronger, and he can find the words to help her through tonight and every other night where she’s scared and possibly even a little lonely missing Neal.

“Time doesn’t heal all wounds,” he promises, holding her a little closer as he remembers his mother’s death. “It certainly helps, but it doesn’t heal them. It doesn’t matter that it’s been six years. It doesn’t matter that Henry is older. It doesn’t matter that we’re together. You’re hurting Emma, and you should never feel ashamed by that.”

“I do, though,” she sobs, the tears getting loud enough that he encourages her to wrap her arms around his neck so that he can stand from the couch, lifting her in his arms to carry her out of the room. He’ll come back and get Henry later. She usually doesn’t let him do this outside of in a passionate embrace, but sometimes in moments like this she allows herself some weakness that is truly strength.

“You’re fine,” he promises as he sits them down on the bed upstairs, letting Emma cry into his shoulder. He already knows that she’s going to be embarrassed later, that she won’t want to talk about it again, but she shouldn’t feel that way. She usually doesn’t, but it’s always this way when she’s missing Neal. “You’re fine, my love. You can miss him all you want. I want you to miss him. He loved you so much, Emma. Probably more than anything in the world, and he didn’t leave you because he wanted to. He was doing a very honorable thing, and he would be so proud of the woman and the mom that you are. Oh, he would be so proud of you.”

She nods her head, her entire body shaking as she curls herself further into him. She��s still got on her outfit she was going to wear on their date tonight, but the difference between three hours ago and now might as well be the difference between the moon and the sun. Of all the twists and turns that tonight has taken, this is the last one he expected.

“I love you,” he continues, pressing the words against her forehead and nudging her back so that he can make an attempt to wipe away the tears, the black mascara likely making it too difficult as she blinks up at him, “and I will always, always be by your side.”

Her bottom lip quivers a little bit as she wipes at her own tears and the snot that’s beginning to run. “I love you too. God, I’m such a mess. I just spiraled out of control there, didn’t I?”

And there’s that Emma deflection, even if this isn’t the worst one he’s ever heard.

“No, it was totally understandable. You had a bad night. Your son is sick, and you had to cancel a date with the most handsome man in the world. I think I’d cry too.”

She snickers, her lips almost forming a smile, before she reaches down and pulls the cover up over her shoulder and his lap. “You’re such a ridiculous flirt.”

“I simply wanted to see you smile. It seems like you needed it.”

“I did. I don’t – will you sit with me for a little while longer? I think I’m going to have a few more breakdowns before I’m finished.”

“Of course. Though I do think that I already used up all of my good words of advice.”

“They were very good words.”

“I know. I should be a motivational speaker.”

Emma leans a little closer to him and presses a kiss onto the underside of his jaw. “I love you. Thank you for falling in love with the crazy lady who has far too many issues. I’m sorry that I – ”

“Emma, I never want you to be sorry for any part of your past,” he tells her as he brushes her hair behind her ear, feeling her soft skin underneath his fingertips. “You should never apologize for having loved someone who made you happy.”

-/-

“How could he have l-left me? How could he h-h-have left H-henry? I…I – ” Her words stop when her cries become too much, and even as tears sting behind his own eyes and he watches as Emma’s world burns down in front of his eyes, watches as every truth she’s ever known turns out to be a lie, he cannot sit here and not hold her. He cannot let her think that his love for her has ever been a lie because it never has been and never will be.

“Emma,” he whispers, pushing back his chair and ignoring the harsh scrape of it against the wood while he squats down in front of her, placing his left hand on her shaking arm and rubbing up and down while his right hand rests on her knee in an attempt to coax her into looking at him. “Emma, darling, why don’t we go sit down somewhere more comfortable, okay? Let’s go upstairs to our room, yeah?”

She nods her head up and down while he listens to the heartbreaking sounds of her sobs. He feels sick to his stomach, especially since all of this is so far from over, but right now his only concern is to make sure that Emma is as okay as she can possibly be. He stands from the ground with aching knees and holds his hand out to her to take. She does, her entire body still shaking, and to see this woman who embodies strength be but a shell of herself as they slowly walk up the stairs, the wood creaking underneath their steps, is by far the worst thing he’s ever seen.

This is one of Emma’s worst nightmares coming to life.

Emma gets into bed first, not bothering to pull to covers down to get under them, and without even bothering to take his shoes off, he tentatively crawls into bed after her, aligning the front of his body with the back of hers and wrapping his left arm over the curve of her waist and his right under the pillow that’s supporting her head. He has no idea if Emma wants his comfort, and he fully experts her to reject him until she gently takes his hand and holds onto it, pulling it up to rest between her breasts so that he can feel the erratic beating of her heart that does not match up with the coolness of her skin.

They sit in silence for so long that he loses track of time, loses track of what he’s supposed to be saying and what he’s supposed to be doing. The only sounds he can focus on are the occasional sniffle from Emma, the ceiling fan rotating above him, and the sound of his own heart thumping so loudly that practically all of his thoughts have been forcefully removed from his mind. He can’t think. He can’t breathe. He can’t…all he can do is hold Emma and try to prepare himself for the fact that this is so far from over that it’s barely even begun.

Of all of the awful things that he knows that Neal has done now, he wonders just how that man could have ever let this woman and Henry go. They are just…they’re wonderful, and they bring him so much joy. He thought they brought Neal joy long ago, and he thought that they did now. Neal loves Henry. There’s somehow no doubt in his mind about that.

Neal loves his son.

So why did he do any of this?

Why, once he was released from captivity and able to live in freedom because his father sells weapons to Al-Qaeda and brokered a deal with terrorists, did Neal decide to work for his father? The father who he most likely hated enough to cut ties from and change his name decades ago. Why would helping a man aid in creating violence and destruction in the world be something that Neal wanted when Neal had been serving and protecting his country for good for a decade?

Why would he want that when the scars on his back are real?

Why wouldn’t he want to come home to his family?

Would he really have stayed in England for money and for the ability to start again with a new life where he wasn’t attached to two people?

And if so, why come back?

Killian still has so many questions swirling around in his mind, each one garnering another, and he wants answers to every single one of them. He wants answers, and he very much doubts he’ll ever get them.

Mostly, though, he wants answers for Emma. She’s lived her entire life never knowing why her birth parents adopted her. She lived for nearly eight years wondering what exactly happened to Neal. She can’t get answers to one, but she can to the other.

Hopefully.

Neal doesn’t have to own up to anything that there’s no proof of, but since it’s happening, he might as well. He’s not an evil man. Killian is convinced that he’s not, that there is good in his heart, and if it’ll help Emma move on and help Henry move on when he’s older and realizes everything that he’s about to go through.

“Why is all of this happening to us?” she whispers what seems like hours later, her voice so quiet that he almost believes that he’s fallen asleep and dreamed of her speaking. But then she twists a bit in the bed, presses herself further into his body and tucks her bare feet between his calves so that they’re nearly completely intertwined. It comforts him that she feels safe in his arms when she knows that he’s broken promises to her too.

Not all promises can be kept, but no one realizes that until the broken pieces are laid out in front of them with few, if any, ways to put them back together.

“I don’t know,” he whispers back, pressing his lips into the skin at her shoulder and burying his nose there so that he’s enveloped by her.

“I just don’t understand.” Her voice is cold, almost no emotion behind it, and he thinks that scares him more than the hysterical sobs earlier. Emma is not emotionless, even when she tries to be. “I’m no one. I’m a mom and a high school guidance counselor in Maine. I’m not someone who gets wrapped up in international arm trafficking or whose ex-husband is apparently a criminal who faked his fucking death to get away from me.”

“You are not no one,” he reassures her, speaking the words just below the shell of her ear. “You have never been no one, and I need you to understand that none of this is on you, okay?”

“It’s not on you either.”

“Love – ”

“It’s not,” she insists, her voice a little louder this time. “Killian, how long have you been killing yourself hiding this from me? Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

“Emma, you barely believed me tonight, and you don’t even know everything yet. What would it have been like if I’d come to you when I knew nothing and all I had were the wild theories in my mind? I have hurt you so much when you’ve trusted me to be the one to hold your heart, and I could not unnecessarily hurt you again. Sins can be forgiven when someone loves you, but that only goes so far.”

Emma twists around on the mattress, quietly turning herself until her nose brushes his, the tip of it cool again his skin, and until her hand rests on his cheek and his on her hip, their bodies still intertwined.

“There is nothing to be forgiven.”

He closes his eyes and clenches his teeth together, swallowing all of the words of protest that he wants to say. “You are too good for me.”

“I see the best in you,” she whispers though her voice sounds as sure as ever as her palm runs across his skin so that he opens his eyes. “I love you with my entire heart, even if I feel utterly broken right now. What do you always tell me? If it can be broken, it still works, right? And you cannot…you were simply trying to protect our family. That’s what you’re always doing to the point of you hurting yourself, and I don’t want that. I want you to trust me, to come to me, and we’ll work through things together. We don’t need to do it separately.”

The sincerity in her eyes doesn’t surprise him, but the lack of water does. They’re still red rimmed, puffy, and she looks much older than her years, but amidst all of that is a vibrant green that could bring light into the darkness and guide any sailor lost in the depths of the ocean home.

They did for him.

“I love you, my darling,” he sighs, pressing a bit closer so that his lips brush against hers. “Do you think you can go to sleep?”

“No.”

“I still have…there’s still more to talk about, love. I have things I haven’t told you yet. David and Detective Humbert want us to meet them at the station tomorrow. They want to bring you up to speed so that we can help them.”

“I know.” She nods her head up and down against the pillow before her lips press into his in the slowest, most languid kiss he’s felt in the entirety of his life. No part of it is hurried or passionate or desperate. It is a simple press of lips against lips, soft skin mixing with an untrimmed beard, and before it ends, he feels salt against his lips that he is not sure if it stemmed from Emma’s eyes or his own. “I can’t turn my mind off right now, but I don’t think I can handle anymore tonight. I simply want you to hold me for a little while.”

They can deal with everything in the morning light where the depths of darkness cannot reach them as easily as it can now.

#rising from the ashes #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan #captain swan fic

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fictionerd · 6 years

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Good to see you, friends!

Oh boy... This is LATE getting out, huh? Oh well I’m covering so few series at this point things are bound to get a little sloppy. My apologies for that. Still that’s enough dwelling on my problems let’s talk about the show.

Synopsis: So Nurse Magical girl transferred to Asuka’s school as we saw at the end of the last episode. Now you may think that this was done by SDF guy who is acting as Asuka’s guardian. Maybe he thought having her old comrade-in-arms around would convince her to join up with the new spec-ops group. However, you would be incorrect. See, Kurumi actually twisted SDF guy’s arm into getting her transferred there by threatening to quit her post. (Yeah, real solid morals you have there.) She again lays on a nice big slathering of guilt for Asuka. Telling her the enemy obviously thinks she’s still a part of this and that it’s best for them to be together as often as possible.

[takes a deep breath and exhales]

Then she goes so far as to say it’d be good if they could live together too, but that gets interrupted by the arrival of Sporty and Bookish. This is when we start to get the very clear picture that Stalker Nurse is completely infatuated with Asuka and is a jealous bitch on top of it all. She starts strutting around like some sort of territorial animal trying to simultaneously reaffirm her relationship with Asuka and let the other two know that she’s the Alpha-Bitch in this scenario.

Believe it or not this is not helped knowing how she was recruited to become a magical girl, and it’s also not helped by the flashback we see this episode that reveals Stalker Nurse was bullied in her younger days. Apparently getting drafted into the magical war effort was the best thing to ever happen to her.

I’m sort of skimming over points so let’s back up a bit. Stalker Nurse officially joins the group as I said before and the four of them start hanging out. Stalker Nurse gets petty and jealous and is kind of obvious about it, but I guess Sporty and Bookish are too kind to mention it. In the lunchroom one day a sound like a suppressed gunshot is made. I couldn’t really tell how the people were making the sound, but it triggers Bookish to have another panic attack. Sporty, having seen Asuka help bring Bookish down once walks her through it herself this time.

They discuss how intense things have been lately, and Sporty spouts off that if things get really bad then the Magical Girls would appear to save them. This visibly irritates Stalker Nurse who seems about to say something dumb when Asuka interjects by quietly putting her hand on Kurumi’s under the table.

I like this. It sort of harkens back to how she’s been handling questions about Magical Girls. It’s a move informed by her character and the secrecy she has to uphold. Quietly telling her friend to just smile and nod because in an ideal circumstance: YES they WOULD show up.

Picking up on the awkward vibes Sporty is quick to try and think of a way they can all get back to some normalcy and invites them all swimming. Asuka and Stalker Nurse agree (Largely because Stalker Nurse starts fantasizing about Asuka in a bikini) and they all end up meeting up for this. We get to see a bit of them hanging out at the pool, swimming, and Bookish climbs up to the tallest diving platform and jumps off as a way to symbolically face down the fear she’s been dealing with. I’m hoping that this doesn’t magically make said fears go away. It works to show she’s moving forward and to feed into Asuka’s character. She really is a lot like Bookish. She’s letting her fear and weariness keep her from truly moving forward. Whether to officially put her foot down about not being a magical girl, or to step into the fight where people need her.

After the swimming trip the four decide they should hang out like that more often and Sporty suggests they all catch a movie together and of course picks what appears to be this universe’s equivalent of a SyFy original: Samurai Cheerleader vs Megaton Shark. She buys them all tickets and the four part ways presumably because the tickets are for another day (Do movie theatres work that way in Japan?)

Now, I’d like to introduce a secondary section: WORLD SYNOPSIS. This is specifically for this show (And any future ones I cover) Where I feel world events need to be addressed separate from the main cast’s progression. So without further ado.

World Synopsis: In world events for MSSO this week we get to see a bit more detail of what the one magical girl in Mexico has been up to as she raids a drug cartel’s den. There she and her team find a barely-alive guy reciting numbers over and over who makes mention of something called “Babel” and “A more terrible war.”

SDF Pops introduces Asuka to the magical combat specialists in training from his group which, naturally ticks her off since she doesn’t want to get involved in the law enforcement stuff (At least not without having her arm twisted into it by necessity). He conveys to her that the world has been forever changed by interacting with other realms. There are criminals from the Magical realm trading magical items to people in exchange for valuable materials. Thus giving us an explanation as to where Babel is getting their toys. Finally he drops the bombshell of illegal Magical Girls. Asuka, of course, is still hesitant to join the fray.

Cut to the foreign affairs department of the Japanese police. Sporty’s dad has apparently been personally torturing mophead from episode one until he spills a few choice tidbits.

“Magical Girl..” “Prey..” “Remake the world” “New Organization” “Library of Babel” “Babel Brigade”

And the repeat of that phrase from the guy in the beginning.

“A more terrible war.”

Sporty’s dad speaks to some one who I assume is his partner in the investigation or a subordinate or something. He says that regardless of how big this is they’re police officers. It’s their job to uncover the truth and do everything in their power so normal people can live peacefully.

The final World Synopsis event of the episode which kind of coincides with the Character synopsis is Sporty, on her way home from hanging out with the Protagonist Posse, gets abducted by shady looking dudes working for Babel. Obviously they know who’s been interrogating their man Kim, and have decided to get to the officer through his daughter.

The episode closes with Asuka receiving a text (Presumably earlier) from Sporty saying she’s looking forward to seeing the movie. CLIFFHANGER!

Thoughts: I think this series is okay. Just okay so far. It still feels a bit rocky in places, but so long as you aren’t coming to this expecting the usual sugar and sweetness of a magical girl series you should be fine. I feel like the focus of the story is a bit scattered, but that could be helped as the world plot and character plots become more wound together in future episodes.There is, however, one thing that bugged me in this episode. To explain I need to introduce you to some one.

This is Kuroko Shirai. She is my favorite character in A Certain Scientific Railgun (And to a lesser extent in Index since so far she’s hardly shown up there). She is a blatant lesbian in love with the main character. I often refer to her as “The Teleporting Lesbian Stalker” because she really is one. She is viciously jealous of time Misaka spends with other people. Is suspicious of any guy Misaka meets or shows even passing affection for. Pulled strings to get herself assigned as Misaka’s roommate. Basically worships the ground Misaka walks on, and a running gag with her is her throwing herself at Misaka.

Now you may be wondering to yourself “Aren’t these qualities strikingly similar to Stalker Nurse Kurumi?”

Very astute you are correct, and yet I do NOT like Kurumi in the slightest. Why do I find Kurumi’s actions detestable when I see them as charming from Kuroko? I think the reason is that in the case of Kuroko and Misaka there’s a level of obvious friendship and trust between them. Between Kuroko’s delusional fantasies and inappropriate behavior we see that their relationship is one of friends. One might even say confidants. It also helps that Misaka is able to easily bugzap Kuroko if she gets too hug-happy. Underneath the over-the-top antics there’s a healthy relationship burried away.

So far there’s no indication of that with Kurumi and Asuka’s relationship and that’s a problem. I pointed out last week how Kurumi seems to be positioned as some one meant to manipulate Asuka into working as a magical girl again. Now it seems that she personally needs Asuka to rejoin the fight in order for her to function. She’s desperate to... well I’ll just out and say it. She wants to get in Asuka’s pants. She has this ideal of Asuka built up in her head it seems, and I can’t exactly blame her.

The problem is that Kurumi makes a big deal about her being “Asuka’s Best Friend”, but she doesn’t seem to be able to read Asuka at all. She’s not picked up at all on why Asuka doesn’t want to fight anymore. She doesn’t even have a mistaken impression as to why. She just thinks it’s wrong for Asuka to be trying to sideline herself, and while that opinion isn’t precisely incorrect she’s not exactly coming across as some one concerned about a close friend.

Now I’ll grant: If all this is intentional. If Kurumi’s arc is to realize that she’s been selfish. To learn to love who she is without her powers, and to see Asuka’s flaws instead of this ideal she’s built up. This will all have been worth it. I could enjoy that sort of story for Kurumi’s character. She’s supposed to be the support unit, and she needs to learn better how to support others.

My fear, as it has been for the first two episodes, is that I’m seeing potential which will ultimately not be fulfilled.

Until next post keep talking fiction, friends. I’ll see you soon.

#Anime #Let's Talk Anime #Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka #Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka #Magical Girl Spec-Ops #Magical Girl Spec Ops #Spec Ops Asuka #Fictionerd #In-Character #Winter 2019 #Winter Season 2019 #Winter Anime 2019

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doh-kyunqsoo · 7 years

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If kaisoo is real and sm is just trying to hide t then why is it that they paired Kaisoo in the eve dance? Why does kai feed kyungsoo in pepero commercials? They've been paired together for commercials several times before. Also, why does SM let them walk together and talk on stage? Aren't you and all other kaisoo shippers being delusional and using SM as an excuse that they don't have many interactions? They're no different from chanbaek. They're just fanservice. Fake.

hello anon. Okay so first of all thank you for being aware of all the kaisoo interactions despise the fact that you’re not a shipper. Tbh idk where to start with your ask because there’s tooooo much about kaisoo for me to begin with. Anyway I will just answer what you asked in order. About the dance, it’s the choreographer who positioned exo for the dance, sm has nothing to do with this. SM is in charge of exo and all the promotion/production/choosing songs and so on but it’s not their decision to choose who dances with whom because it’s not their job but the choreographer’s since he’s expertised in this and knows who matched with whom rather than sm themselves. Why ji fed ksoo in pepero commercials? Simply it’s because the director told them to do so??? why u asked? I mean for commercial production, the marketing team has to find ways to sell their products no? and when it comes to exo not just their name themselves are big and popular but the ships are as well. It’s a thing for kpop, ships, otps and so on so being with kaisoo, one of the most long lasting ship in exo with many fans follow the ship, of course the marketing team would team them up to make fans to notice more and get more of the products. they’re not dumb enough to take out this advantage to get more consumers, same with nature republic, they’re using baekyeol and kaisoo because they know about these ships, everyone who are exols know about these ships, they are inevitable. And why did sm let kaisoo walk together on stage and talk on stage? think about it, if you’re in the same group with another person and u dont talk to that person, what would others think of both of yall? either yall are trying to hide something or yall hate each other or not getting along it would be hella weird and shady. sm can’t just make someone not talk to his own groupmate because that’s bs and they can’t just tell the manager to be next to them 24/7 and be like “yo ji/ksoo, stop talking to each other” even when they’re on stage. that’d be weird af. Also another reason why sm cant do that because it’s normal for everyone to talk to each other and they know their place, not like theyre talking to each other alone 24/7, they also interact with other mems as well so why should sm stop them completely???! The reason why we shippers said that sm trying to stop them because theres too much evidence of kaisoo being a thing, too much to avoid so they need to separate kaisoo as much as they can whenever there are cameras in front of them. homosexual isn’t really an acceptable thing in south kor, there are many homo couples but doesn’t mean they are accepted by the society, especially korean celebs. I remember some rumors about 9493room ,aka one of kaisoo fansite, leaving because others were mean and made fun of her/him for shipping kaisoo but that was yrs ago and i hope it was just rumor. but being said it shows that homo otps aren’t really accepted yet if u ship them srsly and sm prob doesn’t want that to happen to their artist, their precious babies who make them balling with money because that’s all they care about…and for u saying that those are fanservices, if u see their interactions, it’s always offstage or whereas other members are talking. Because others are talking they would thikn oh the fans will give their attentions to that mem not them so they can just talk to each other or so, and if it’s offstage then who are they doing fanservice to? the staff? also anon, shipping someone or not is our choice and our opinion, i also respect your opinion and choice but calling us delusional and the ships being fake are a little bit too much. You don’t ship them, i’m completely fine with it because i know there are others kaisoo shippers who support them wholehearted like like i do. But please don’t come and attack us like that just because u dont see the sparks in their eyes when they look at each other, or the attention that they give each other that was beyond anything compared to the attention they give other members. We dont use sm as an excuse because we know that there’s no way ji would be away from ksoo with his own will, if u see other fancam or so, the way he looks at ksoo or vice versa. Also for the past fanmeet or so, all the members sat in their normal order when they’re together, yet only kaisoo’s seats were switched and the only one that could have done this is the ppl behind the scene and who would that be? of course sm. One last note for you, please don’t touch baekyeol/chanbaek either because the shippers did nothing wrong just because they ship those two. Thank you for asking this so i can prove to others that i’m not just a whatever shipper but my belief about this ship is pretty strong, as strong as exo’s love for exols. thank u and have a nice day!

#anon #ask #kaisoo #srsly when it comes to kaisoo i cant stop #chanbaek

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politicalfilth-blog · 6 years

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What You’re Not Being Told About Roger Stone Being Indicted By Mueller

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In this video, we give you the latest breaking news on what is happening with Roger Stone after he has officially been indicted by Robert Mueller.

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Welcome back beautiful amazing human beings this is over to ask you if we are changed. Oregon today is yet again another watershed moment in the Robert Mueller Russia gate investigation which surprise is dividing people on the left and right who come up with their own version of events which the majority of are full of crap that’s what actually happened if they’re actually wasn’t he supposed.

Russian collusion with you becoming harder and harder to find any really F of course we’re also going to talk about how both parties here are just full of horse manure by the way this show is made possible by you and your support on teespring.com stores for and what your purchase help support Independent Media into it since obviously everyone is talking about.

Dory and we not only saw Rodger Stone but also #mueller time hashtag Nixon Wikileaks and even #mueller Friday all trended today on Twitter because of this latest news with FBI SWAT agents who by the way volunteered without pay to Storm the House of shitposter and troll Rodger Stones house in the early hours of this morning to arrest him on an indictment by the Mueller investigation being officially charged on 7 counts charges of obstruction making false statements and quote witness tampering with indictment specifically talking about him lying to Congress trying to get stolen emails from Wikileaks and reaching out to WikiLeaks trying to obtain these emails we’re going to go to some of these charges in Greater detail later on but the story dominated headlines also because of the FBI SWAT officials which many people have accused them of heavy-handed on necessary. Tactics which definitely wasn’t overstep in my own personal opinion and another interesting fact about this arrest which was also interestingly highlighted by Donald Trump in a tweet earlier this morning where you said quote greatest Witch Hunt in the history of our country no collusion border drug dealers in human traffickers are treated better and sentence who alerted CNN to be there? Very important question since some house was able to get exclusive video coverage of the actual rate of the actual rest of Rodger stone with them being on the scene at his house an hour before the FBI agents even showed up which of course leads many people to think that the FBI Tip Top CNN a very interesting leader CNN has contradicting themselves many times saying that at first, it was a producer’s gut instinct I second that it was some kind of grand jury activity that they. Macdon contradicting themselves but of course as other reporters have noted that not one news organization except for a remote CNN crew knew about this arrest and after releasing contradictory statements before seeing and now says that quote they were able to capture the arrest of Rodger Stone because of the assault of determined report and interpreting revealed in the course of a mess that’s called Turtle has been proven time and time does the absolute a bird Pusher of fake news and for them to say this with the absolutely little credibility that they have is extremely doubtful to believe of course there’s a small Slimmer chance that this could be true but honestly just extremely doubtful with the reputation that CNN has that precedes it which makes many people in clue. Myself to believe that they were tipped off again just personal opinion which has not been corroborated moving forward with this story obviously after being arrested.

Rodger Stone was able to see a judge whose Bell was determined at $250,000 which by the way Rogers didn’t have to pay he just have to promise you have to pay that if he missed the next court appointment now soon is coming out of court to Rodger Stone decided to First give the interview to Alex Jones of Infowars where he talked about how his wife and dog were traumatized and how he will fight and defend not only himself but also not flip on Donald Trump and that he is not guilty of all the charges that he was just indicted. And honestly looking at the indictment there actually is no proof of Russian collusion which this investigation is supposed to be about.

There is the fact that Rodger Stone did actually threaten a dog threatened Randy San Marcos dog because.

Randy was disputing Rogers claimed that he was the back channel to WikiLeaks which was most likely Rodger Stone being called out on his constant exaggerations because surprise surprise Rodger stone is in The Toria stroll Wikileaks also released an official statement about this entire incident even quoting the indictment saying that the charges against Rodger Stone do not allege that Rodger Stone lied about his contacts with Julian Assange but rather about his contacts with others and documents reflect English communication socially being charged for lying especially during his testimony to the house intelligence Community again not showing or proving any new evidence of any back Channel with Wikileaks know why do people believe that there was a back door between Trump’s Administration Donald Trump some agent of his campaign team Anna Rogers. Well that is mainly because Rodger Stone was bragging about it before when he was trolling everyone can he’s not a man who tells the truth he’s a PR guy looking for attention and he has been getting it and that’s why some broadcasters today have described today for Rodger Stone to be one of his worst days and also one of his best days because of all the attention that he is receiving he’s being indicted for lying to Congress.

Not to Mueller not a part of this russiagate investigation which then diamond proved no real link to at all Rodger Stone was selling a book bragging about his connections to WikiLeaks saying that he, of course, had quote inside information that Wikileaks was going to release.

Secretive private information on Hillary Clinton that will take her down which.

Obviously what is it a surprise to anyone since Wikileaks even announced it on July 30th 2016 at the same time Rodger Stone was going around all the media circus saying that he had this inside information which was public knowledge and the media didn’t backcheck him or terrify him but just ran with his clothes because they want this Russian collusion story to be true so much but they’re willing to let go of these important facts this indictment even prove that Rodger Stone claimed he had a back Channel even attempted and tried to set up a back Channel it was not successfully able to and then news organizations like The Daily Beast and other ones who fell for his troll.

Even reported that you don’t register supposedly predicted at these Clinton leaks were coming by the way everyone knew they were coming because of the Ouija Experiment even contradicting himself saying.

Predictions claim at the same time that he allegedly in bed with message we even here are this Independent News organization specifically called out Rodger Stone Alex Jones Infowars right as Vici leaks in Julian Assange we’re announcing an anniversary announcement on their social media Wikileaks sent out press releases saying they’re going to be doing a press conference talking about a to z d specific issues which of course Alex Jones Infowars decided to make a big hubbub about and decide that this was Wikileaks deciding to release all the Hillary Clinton information this wasn’t Wikileaks sent out a press release saying exactly what they were going to be talking about and they weren’t going to be releasing any new information they were just going to be celebrating Wikileaks on its anniversary.

Alex Jones of Infowars along with Rodger Stone decided to say that this is the day that the documents are coming out today.

Calling Air Force to freak out and actually slender Julian Assange based off the information that they garnered from Rodger Stone attacking Julian Assange saying that he is now co-opted and he didn’t follow up with his promise you know he didn’t promise anything because it was a delusional belief that they had that was all based on lies and ego and fame and attention whoring at the highest level of the media box.

Windshield and made it as big as it is and these people are actively trolling the mainstream media which is buying and eating everything up Hook Line & Sinker and this was not the first time that allegedly Rodger Stones predictions were just absolute first there was many other times throughout his whole career again Rodger stone is an absolute opportunist he’s one of the Godfathers of dirty political lobbying and Washington DC he has advised and work with many Shady dirty characters in Washington DC and outside of it’s like Al Sharpton which he has very close personal connections with did a lot of personal work with before and you should be criticized for the dirty trickster that he is and not made as popular and as Infamous as the mainstream media is making him out to be that’s why Rodger Stone and the mainstream media alarm with Robert Mueller all of them I just filled with absolute.

That’s not a popular opinion because now in modern News broadcasting you got to take a side got to be an activist you piss off both side.

It’s the freaking truth I don’t give a damn this is just absolute nonsense I’m all parties here Rodger Stone Robert Mueller all filled with crap that were close to Donald Trump under this investigation under this russiagate investigation all of them were charged for statements tax fraud tampering with investigations nothing proved any Russian collusion which this investigation was supposed to be about it’s a false narrative run on people for of course political power and it’s dirty political power and is being played by some of the dirtiest people out there and hang at least you guys get a different perspective here than you would anywhere else and if you’re not taking the bait on any of these dirty political hacks and buying into their bull crap I applaud you for being a friend.

Very rare human being ultimately don’t trust anyone and don’t be a pain for core.

Someone’s bigger political power motive and if you grew that share this video with your friends and family members once again thank you for supporting real Independent Media if it wasn’t for you we want to be here and that’s why you guys thank you guys so much watching stay tuned for a lot more here on youtube.com.

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