#they’re really broken and unusable

[silksongeveryday]

Drawing Hornet everyday until Silksong comes out - Day 87

requested by anonymous !

yes

[verstappen-cult]

hiii idk if youre doing reqs rn but how about lestappen x reader where shes unused to being taken care of, having to succumb to the fact she needs help after an injury (nothing too graphic like maybe a sprained ankle or a broken wrist) and max and charles trying their best to make her understand that they *want* to help and that she has to let them and her yk kinda warming up to the idea idkkk😭 feel free to ignore it i js thought it was sweet✋️😔

You turn on the kitchen lights and Charles and Max are immediately pausing the game and turning around, surprised to see you supporting all your weight in your left leg, while keeping your balance by leaning against the wall.

Max is up in a blink of an eye. “What are you doing, sweetheart?” He helps you walk to one of the stools by the kitchen counter.

“I wanted something to eat.” You say, sitting down and trying not to show how relieved you are. Your ankle is still hurting but you don’t want to worry them.

“You could’ve just told us.” Charles joins you and Max in the kitchen. “What do you want?” He asks you while walking towards the fridge.

You wince, looking down at your hands. “I can prepare something. You’re busy.”

“We were just playing FIFA.” Max leans down to leave a kiss on your cheek. “We weren’t exactly busy.”

“Still,” You argue back, this time looking at your blonde haired boyfriend. “I can do it myself.”

“You’re supposed to be resting, or you’re not gonna get better.”

Charles is right.

And just because of that you accept his offer to make something to eat.

“I’d like some pasta, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Charles frowns as he takes all the ingredientes out of the fridge. “If it’s not too much trouble? Are you hearing yourself?”

Max gives him a disapproving look when he sees you look away.

“You sit here and we’re gonna take care of it, okay?” Max smiles before helping his boyfriend to avoid any incident like it always happens when Charles cooks. Or tries to.

While they’re occupied you think that is a good idea to take a shower to feel fresh and clean before dinner.

But the second you move to get up, Charles is by your side ready to help you.

It makes you feel a lot of things, some good and bad — especially some bad ones. Because the last thing you wanted was to cause trouble and have them running behind you to help with whatever you need, forcing them to cancel events to stay at home with you. Which is exactly what happened.

“What do you want?”

You groan, “I’m gonna take a shower.”

“I’ll run a bath for you.” Charles smiles brightly, forcing you to sit back down. But you don’t let him get away, grabbing his wrist.

“I can do it,” You feel stressed and a burden, and there are tears pricking your eyes. “You don’t need to do everything for me.”

Max stops chopping the vegetables to pay attention to you. “We know that,” He says with a weird expression on his face that you don’t really want to think about right now. “we’re trying to help you. You fell down and are in a lot of pain even if you want us to believe otherwise.”

You blush because you thought you were doing a pretty good job hiding how bad you actually feel.

“When we said that we want to take care of you, it was because we mean it. Nothing is more important than you.” Charles rubs his thumb over your knuckles, while you feel really small and scolded like a little kid.

“I just–,” You hide behind your hands, finally letting the tears fall freely down your face. “I don’t wanna be a burden.”

They stay silent for a few minutes. And then, you feel Max arms on your back while Charles lifts your chin up with his fingers. They look softly at you which only makes you cry harder.

“Oh, princess.” Max wipes the tears with the pad of his fingers. “We love you. Of course we want to take care of you and help with anything you need. You’re never gonna be a burden for us, okay?”

“I know you’d do the same for us.” Charles lets you rest your head against his chest as the both of them hold you in their arms. “Will you let us take care of you?”

You want to say no, but deep down you want to be taken care of. But you’re so used to doing everything by yourself, you never had someone worrying this much for you, never had someone who cared. And now you don’t have one but two people willing to drop everything just to take care of you.

You nod against Charles’ chest, tears still flowing down your face, and whisper, “Okay.” Even if you still want to fight against it and do everything by yourself.

Maybe things need to change a little.

[witchpassing]

catching strays [2]

[previous.]

Up concrete stairs dogeared by cleaning, down the sodium-lit walkway between the flats, past the notice board with the childrens’ drawings, past the neighbour smoking into the blue darkness of the courtyard - she doesn’t look, which Katya is reflexively, pitifully grateful for, as if anyone gives a fuck who she takes home these days - then they’re there, Katya fumbling with the key while Rook stands a little away and pulls her jacket close against the night. Glancing up and down the walkway, like she, too, is operating on some vestigial idea of getting caught.

Weird name, Katya thinks, the things she’s going to do once she gets the door open roiling low in her gut. Not outside-bounds weird, not for a transsexual, but still. Probably fake.

No hard feelings there.

The door jams halfway on a wedge of unread mail. They fall through the crack together, chiaroscuro shapes in the walkway light. Katya takes a fistful of Rook’s jacket, shoves her hard into the nearest wall, and Rook lets her, all that height and sinew just folding for her, and fuck, if that doesn’t feel good–

One of them, could be Rook, could be her, kicks the door shut. The lights go out. Darkness, and another woman’s blood on her tongue.

Someone has to come up for air eventually.

Katya, panting, gropes for the light switch with her free hand, gets it on her third or fourth try. Even as she pulls back for air, Rook stays where she’s been put, up against the wall, breathing hard through her nose.

The half-lit sketch Katya’s been carrying in her head since the bar fills in: warm, freckled skin, a broken nose that looks a couple of years older than the rest of the damage. Wide dark eyes in bruise-inked sockets, blown pupils locked on Katya’s face, hunting something in the contours.

You’d be a lot less pretty if you weren’t beat to shit, Katya thinks, tucking a strand of dark hair behind Rook’s ear.

Lucky me.

“Y’alright there, sweetheart?” A taut nod. Katya snorts, turns away. “Yeah, it’s been a while for me too. Just…” She gestures towards the couch, wincing slightly as she recognises, through a newcomer’s eyes, just how thick the undergrowth of magazines, books, records, bottles has got in here. “Find yourself a seat. I’ll get something to clean you up with.”

Sure, at first it was just something to say, words arranged into the right pattern to get a stranger off the street and into her flat, but she might as well take her time now that she has her.

Rook rubs absently at her jaw, gives no indication that the state of the place is registering as a problem, picking between the stacks like autopilot has kicked in somewhere. Katya leaves her to it, ducks through into the little shitbox of a kitchen. On the counter, her answering machine blinks its reproachful red eye. Not getting answered tonight, not getting answered tomorrow, not getting answered this week, moving on. Her first aid kit is buried somewhere under the sink, way at the back, unused for God knows how long; conveniently, this is also where she keeps a bottle of what is probably the only half-decent wine in the block. She weighs the difficulty of replacing it on the black market against the likelihood that she’ll have another girl over any time soon. It’s an easy choice.

Rook has cleared a spot for herself on the couch, a half-dozen empty bottles of tenant union moonshine clustered around her feet, tapping her fingers against her leg in this weird little pattern. Katya shoves a stack of magazines off the coffee table and settles herself in.

“Don’t be so nervous, baby,” she says, taking a pull at the wine. (It’s alright.) “This is only going to hurt a little.” Rook runs her tongue over her teeth, still not all the way present, and nods.

Well, whatever. Weird is fine. You order damaged goods, you don’t complain about the condition it comes in.

She gets about halfway done, Rook turning her head away now and then like a dog that doesn’t really get why someone is touching its face, these breathy little hisses of pain snaking between her teeth, before she caves. Rook is taking a pull of the wine and Katya is watching her throat work and suddenly she can’t take it any more, just shoves the bottle out of her hand and crawls into her lap, the first aid kit’s contents everting into the mess on the floor. That wakes Rook up, alright. Hands push up under her shirt, stroke along her ribs, smear things around a little in her wine-softened brain; a mouth presses into her neck, gives her a bruise of her own to wear. Rook’s prosthetics don’t feel cold in the way she’d expected. Katya shudders, exhales, twists needy fingers into her hair.

Fuck, she’s needed this, needed it with a hunger so bone-deep she’d forgotten what it felt like to be full. After this she’ll go dry for another few months, forget again, find out again. Never learns. Rook slides a palm over the cup of her bra, tugs her a little closer, eases her tongue along up the corner of her jaw, and Katya makes a noise that is positively fucking virginal.

It takes her a second to realise what’s under her own hands; her mind is elsewhere, way elsewhere, somewhere in the unknown below Rook’s waistline. Eventually, awareness pushes through, in some dim sense: there are scars at the base of Rook’s skull, a fishbone pattern of ridged keloid, taut against the skin. Touch maps the contours; double rows flanking her spine, down between the shoulderblades, like she’s been split open. Automatically, Katya counts.

Eight contact points. Intermediate Rachis implant, probably a C-type. Doe’s was an E-type; she had twelve.

Katya is on her feet, recoiling straight into the coffee table, near falling straight on her ass. The bottle spills, bleeds into the carpet. She might actually fucking stress-puke, god, there’s another thing that’s been a while- this isn’t fair, it isn't fair god dammit. she just wanted a little company, why this--

Rook is still on the couch, watching her with those dark eyes, and she knows too, there’s no way she doesn’t. She’s clocked her now, and that’s if she didn’t know right from the start. Smelt the reek on Katya’s skin, felt the shift of the old patterns beneath her surface. Liked it.

“I d-don’t – I didn’t know you - were–”

“Too good for surplus, huh?” Rook’s voice, as she looks up at her, is like dull, pitted metal. “Don’t worry. You’re not gonna get in trouble for this. I’ve been decommissioned; can do what I like now, more or less. I can even consent.”

“Fuck you,” Katya starts, and then thinks better of it. Thinks about a new name and new papers, a new city where nobody knew her, a dozen measures taken to prevent unofficial reprisal. Thinks about what happened to the others, the ones who didn’t buy themselves out with a briefcase full of typewritten sin and a candid tell-all approach. Thinks about what could happen to her if Rook tells that woman smoking on the walkway, her neighbour, the one who nods to her in the cold mornings and doesn’t care who she brings home, what she is.

“Please don’t.” Katya swallows terror. “Talk to anyone about this.”

“Tell me not to,” Rook says, rolling the words around her tongue, trying them for taste, “And I won’t.”

“What?”

“You know how this works. Give me an order, and I’ll obey it. Handler.” The final word is articulated with all the care and venom of a slur.

And just like that Katya is on her again, fist in the front of her shirt, face inches from hers. Some people say you’re the sum of your worst days; others, that defining yourself by the lows in your life means you’re never going anywhere else. Katya, personally, is on the former team, because after three and a half years this shit still comes back so, so easy.

“You aren’t going to tell anyone about me,” she grinds out. “Not your friends, not your next fuck, not your shrink up at that dog pound on the other side of town, nobody.” And, you know - it almost feels good, in its way, for a moment there. “Do you understand me, girl?”

Rook’s lips part in something close to a smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.” She lets go, sickness rising in her throat. “Now get the fuck out.”

And she does, quick as you like, and suddenly Katya is alone again.

She does puke then, folded over in the middle of her floor, kneeling in the wet mess from the spilt bottle. It’s mostly alcohol that comes up, vodka and cheap wine, shot with something foreign. Fresh blood, licked from Rook’s split lip.

[isalisewrites]

TERRIBLE, BUT GREAT - CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

SUMMARY:

“Harry Potter.” The cold burrowed into his flesh, the scent of cloying death and molding earth clogged his senses.

“The Boy Who Lived.”

A strange sense of loss and disappointment rose within him. That brilliant, yet cruel boy could’ve been so much more if he’d not stepped down this bloodied path.

Terrible, but great. He pitied this creature.

“Come to die.”

Harry Potter faced the flash of green light with the bravery of a Gryffindor and the broken heart of a Hufflepuff.

---

When Death gives Harry a third option, one that can save everyone he ever cared about, he takes it unflinchingly. Even when that means doing the impossible: falling in love with the enemy, Tom Riddle.

---

THIRTY-TWO EXCERPT:

Why in god’s name did I agree to this?

As the hour of Sunday dinner with the Scamanders approached, Tom could only feel like a cornered animal. This was a mistake. A terrible, horrible mistake. Tom shouldn’t have agreed to this. Harry’s curious gaze on him was an itch to the back of his head. The common room had a few other students, though they were otherwise occupied. Tom twitched; he rubbed the palms of his hands on his trousers.

“Nervous?”

Tom slipped an annoyed expression on his face, before he gave Harry a raised eyebrow. “No.”

“You sure?”

Tom sighed. Why’d he always have to push for more? Harry was never satisfied with the first or even the second answer, as if he knew Tom obscured the truth in his replies.

They were getting too familiar with him—the lot of them, Harry included.

Tom wasn’t blind; he could see through the polite smiles and the open expressions of Scamander and Tina. Scamander was really getting into the role of mentor and Tina was right there at his side. Tom did not need a pair of Hufflepuff incarnates hovering over him and getting involved with his life.

A bit late for that, though.

If he tried to skive off, would Tina hunt him down? Tom’s eyes slid to the side, dropping to the floor and gliding over Harry’s form. The urge to bolt twitched through Tom’s muscles.

How utterly childish. I will not bolt like an unbroken horse.

Besides, short legs or not, Tom had this ominous feeling Harry could outrun him.

Tom pursed his lips together.

“Come on, Tom. I know something’s up.”

No, I’m fine.

“You like you’ve eaten something sour. What’s wrong?”

His chest rose. Biting words, a hissing snap—both were on the tip of his tongue, but they all died when Tom met Harry’s gaze. The tension in his body eased. He swallowed. Tom licked his lips.

“I…”

Dammit.

“I am… uncomfortable,” said Tom in a low voice. Harry blinked; his head tilted to the side. Goddammit, stop looking like Monty!“The Scamanders are… persistent in their mentoring and I am…”

Unused to such things.

Harry’s mouth formed an ‘o’ and his features softened with weary understanding. He slowly nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I’m not used to it either, but…” He smiled up at him and the pressure eased from Tom’s chest even more. “I think they’re sincere. They’re not manipulating you or me for anything, you know that, right? They’re genuinely good people.”

“Of course,” said Tom, inclining his head.

And that’s what disturbs me.

[bloofbloofbloof]

PSA: don’t use Unvale to host your work. Site is incredibly broken and near unusable as well as having a ridiculously strict TOS but now staff is apparently targeting minority creators to censor their work.

Just saw them tell a native creator to censor their own indigenous character and that shit don’t sit right with me. Apparently they’re sending out mass warning letters to anyone without even really looking at the character or creator and had to look into it because it felt weird. Staff is incredibly unresponsive and flippant.

I’m using toyhouse instead from now on.

[extrajigs]

Chimeric reproduction go! Info dump below. Nothing graphic aside from pulsing fetus! 

Chimera reproduce in kind of a round about way. So I have produced a CHART for visual aid! 

Step One- Egg Swap Chimera parents, being hermaphrodites, both have eggs to contribute! This is where the actual hanky panky takes place via ovipositors and awkward positioning. End result is each has the others eggs in their uterus. Step Two- Baby Battering So once the eggs are in there they are fertalized by the ‘mother’ chimera. Which technically should be the father cause it’s their sperm and the others eggs, but they’re the ones gravid.  Actually I realized they’re just like seahorses! So think of it like that. Step Three- Placenta Pandemonium After step two there is a large number of zygotes floating around in there, but only one can take the grand prize! The womb of the chimera is very particular about where eggs can plant down. Most of the interior is unusable, but once a lil egg settles on a particular patch of tissue then the body decides that pregnancy is NOW. Multiple eggs can implant here, but the body will usually reject ‘em after they got one OR simply give them a unsustainable amount of resources. 

Step Four- The Chosen One The other eggs are broken down an absorbed by the mother’s body. The lucky lil chimera fetus is now able to spend a cozy 12 months hanging out growing into a full baby. The two parent’s will give birth usually within a few days of each other and then you got two brand new chimera. 

Bonus gif of chimera fetuses, they start breathing VERY early on while they still got jelly bones so v wiggly. Also their eye stalk doesn’t really define itself until the last few months, so they look a lot like the common ancestor of their clade at the start there. 

[solokabuto]

So what are your Fate yuri rarepairs?

Thank you so much for asking!!! I treat fate women like immensely complicate barbie dolls i can roll around in my mind until they slot together in ways that make the deeply ill recovering catholic lesbian in me squeal so you may or may not notice some general themes, I’ll be including hcs and fic ideas in here because my brainrot is terrible rn so have fun with this:

Dobrynya Nikitich x Morgan Le Fay

Now this is largely due to the fact that i noticed similarities in them (white haired mothers that are more than they seem and definitely not who they seem with fucked up daughters that have pink hair and pent up rage) and admittedly I’m not in Tungsuka sanctuary so I don’t have a vantage point on Dobrynya’s personality like at all outside of adorable fanart but they seem like they’d be cute. They’re one of those couples that would largely only exist in au’s where Dobrynya runs the daycare that Morgan drops Baobhan at or something. And the entire story is just Baobhan being terrorized while Dobrynya and Morgan make out in the background.

Okita Souji x Nitocris

That moment when you (living vessel for your brother’s vengeance who immediately committed suicide upon fulfilling your goal due to perceiving the cold embrace of death as warmer than the cruel clutches of your fellow man) come across another girl (a hollow mockery of a human being born and bred to slaughter without a care who relates better to broken bones, sinew, and blood than she does to living beings and can kill her friends at a simple order)and link up (have intense homoerotic discussions about death dying and purpose) over tea and wine (cups of literal blood) and fuck nasty (memento memori style)

Olga Marie Animusphere x Ereshkigal

If you haven’t read Afterlife by nd7878 and you have any form of attachment to Olga or Ereshkigal or see the similarities between the two please read it, it’s amazing and I love it so much it fulfills my Olga Marie cravings very well. Anyways i think these two are cute, like super cute like insanely cute and I’d like to imagine Olga would bring out the more forward and irritable side of Ereshkigal and the two would clash in a way that’s still friendly. I dunno she’d make eresh more lively and make Olga feel more loved. I really love afterlife, please read it.

Jeanne D’ Arc x Barghest

I just think the idea of a woman who already sees herself as an offering, offering herself up to a worthy warrior who desperately wishes to stop destroying things she loves to be incredibly interesting. Especially because in my mind Jeanne would probably have little issue with letting Barghest eat her regularly as long as she recovers decently enough. They’re interesting i have fic ideas for them i think Jeanne would enjoy being devoured gruesomely. The knowledge of having a set place for your body to go rather than being burned and desecrated just to be tossed into the river and washed away. I am far too invested in Jeanne D’ Arc. A part of me thinks she would enjoy having something resembling a proper corpse since she was torched to ash and thrown into a river rather than properly being laid to rest. I have vivid images of their entire routine can you tell u have been plagued by yuri visions for far too long?

Baobhan Sith x Galatea

You know how popular girls in hs always have that one girl that isn’t popular or important or really much of anything to a majority of the student body that they don’t play about? Yeah that’s Galatea to her. They hit it off over sculpting because Baobhan has a general affinity for art that includes her love of fashion and eventually they become friends which is incredibly strange to Baobhan because she is deeply unused to being cared for and loved by anyone that isn’t her mother and even then the way she goes about it is very much not like her mother (it’s okay Morgan you tried sweetie). I just think it would be nice to see Galatea slowly help Baobhan build a healthy relationship with love, loving and being loved. They’d be cute. I also think Galatea would find having her blood sucked to be an interesting experience considering she probably finds the fact she has blood to be quite novel.

Merlin (Prototype) x Morgan Le Fay

With benefits. I don’t know what to call their relationship so they’re just with benefits. Morgan would just vent out her frustration on her while Merlin just takes it because why the hell not, being half-succubus has its perks. Additionally, she’d rely on Merlin to have a few moments of complete thoughtlessness and freedom from the stress and general fuckery of Faerie Britain by just allowing herself to fall for the effects of her beauty. Honestly it’s more so method of relaxation for Morgan then a genuine relationship but I think it’s interesting. They probably have insane conversations about the world that usually end in Morgan forcing her to shut up because she says something she doesn’t want to hear but isn’t untrue. Occasionally in moments of weakness Merlin will ask Morgan if she wants her to take her away to Avalon and leave this place for the faeries she hates so much, and Morgan will always refuse dispute herself.

[try-set-me-on-fire]

every moment points towards the aftermath

Ok this is literally the most self indulgent little au snippet, I’m not even putting it on ao3. They’re wrestlers. Bluff City is like Atlantic City, but weirder. You can listen here.

For awhile, in the beginning, every time Eddie meets Buck the other man has blood in his teeth.

They're in the ring, the first time, so it's hardly surprising. Eddie can taste copper, too. His tongue throbs where he bit it when Buck had dropped on him from the top rope, after a ridiculous spin he shouldn't have been able to pull off with his height. It's scripted, and Eddie tries not to be a romantic about that much later, shoving down the obvious metaphor that they were prewritten somewhere, by someone. It's scripted, Eddie wins the match but Buck steals the belt, and several other beats along the way that make the crowd scream. Eddie's not sure he's ever gone over so well, but this is also hardly surprising when he's never in his life felt more alive. The script couldn't have known the way he feels when their body's move together. When he slams Buck to the mat and their faces are inches from each other and Buck is grinning, teeth crimson and eyes so blue, Eddie feels like he's on fire, and like he'd be happy to let himself burn.

The second time - when he'd been unable to stop thinking about that night in the ring, when he'd already been in talks with Bobby Nash to bring him over to the Firehouse, maybe get a tag team going, maybe see how far they can take a good thing - they're at a bar and they didn't even come together. He's just… here. He's just here, because his house is empty, because Chris is with his parents tonight, because when he'd dropped him at the door his mother said "you can stay" in a tone that meant he really couldn't, because when he drives towards home the preacher on the radio is talking about ghosts and long distances, because he doesn't think his presence will make a difference in his house being empty, because he doesn't want to sit waiting for the phone to ring and flinching when it does. So, he's here and it's packed because it's raining, though it's the kind of place that would be packed regardless of the weather, and the crowd surges against him and Buck is dumped out of it, practically into Eddie's lap. His top lip is split and bleeding into his mouth and he's laughing as he steadies himself with a hand on Eddie's shoulder.

"Oh," he says when he gets upright enough to look at Eddie's face. "It's you." His finger swims as he points it at him, and Eddie's not sure if he's drunk, concussed, or just showy. "Eddie Diaz." The finger turns into a hand outstretched for a shake.

"Buck…" Eddie takes the hand, tilts his head. "You got another name?"

"Not really," Buck shrugs. "Yeah, a few." The crowd behind them churns again, and he says "I should get out of here," in a tone that means you could come with me.

He doesn't. He lets go of his hand, and Buck shrugs again, his smile a little… something, that Eddie doesn't know how to quantify. He takes a step backwards and the crowd swallows him whole.

The next time is the thing with the-

Well, actually between that they're in the ring together a bunch of times because instinct was right and Hotshot and Firebrand are a tag team people start coming to see, and at the celebratory team barbecues at Bobby's place Buck shares his beer with Eddie, one bottle they pass back and forth. Buck meets Christopher because Eddie's car had broken down and he was desperate not to be late picking him up from his parents, and they get on like a house on fire. Buck sleeps on his couch sometimes after matches or on weekends or whenever he feels like it, and Buck cooks meals in his unused kitchen, and Buck answers the phone when Eddie can’t make himself do it. Eddie doesn't ask what's on the other end of the line, and Buck doesn't tell him. Eddie still barely knows anything about him, doesn't know where he goes when they're not at the ring or Bobby's place or Eddie's house, if he has a job outside of wrestling or other friends or a family, but Buck still fits into his life like they have opposing ridges, a key and a lock.

And actually, that first time in the ring with the blood in the teeth is not the first time they met. They'd shook hands half an hour before, gone over the moves they were going to hit. And before that, years before that, when Eddie was still wrestling in a mask and hadn't disappointed anybody yet, he'd been in the crowd on Buck's first night up there under the lights where he'd been booked to lose but fought like hell anyway. Eddie had been there because his sister had a crush on Buck's opponent, they weren't even close to the ring, but Eddie found himself leaning forward in his seat, trying to make out the expression on his face as he was ground into the canvas.

So the timelines already fucked, but the next time after the bar, the time when he meets Evan Buckley, is the thing with the guy who had a crab for a face.

"A horseshoe crab is not technically a crab," Buck says, tilting his head back to stop the nosebleed. Eddie, helplessly, is trying to retrace steps to figure out how he got here. There was a match with stakes that didn't seem very high except for the way Bobby and Buck's eyes got tight whenever they were talking to the other federation backstage, and the desperate way Buck grabbed his arm as they were about to go out and told him "Don't take any offer they give you." And Eddie didn't know what that meant but then he was pinned to the mat and the guy, who was skinny and smelled like the ocean, was whispering in his ear about Shannon, who is gone, but sometimes the phone rings and he can hear her on the other end of the line. And the whole room was angry, Eddie and the other wrestlers and the crowd, and Eddie had fought for real, broke kayfabe, and they'd had to actually book it out the back door, Bobby nowhere to be seen, Hen and Chim waving at them from the van to hurry up, and then a tall man in a long coat had stepped out of nowhere and elbowed Buck in the face and Eddie had swung without thinking and his hand hit chitin where he'd been expecting flesh.

"They're more closely related to spiders and scorpions and stuff," Buck continues as Bobby runs up to the two of them. Three of them, Eddie supposes, the crab man is still out cold on the ground.

"Buck!" Bobby does the panicked parent pat down, frantically tapping his hands up Buck's arms and landing on either side of his head to check that he's whole and uninjured. Eddie did it himself when Chris tripped on the boardwalk the other day. It makes his chest feel tight. "You're okay? I called Athena. You're alright?"

Buck nods, eyes sliding to Eddie, and then Bobby is looking at him too. And there's a crab man, right there on the ground, and Eddie's wife is dead but calls him sometimes, and he's very dizzy all of a sudden and here is Buck, close, eyes blue.

"You've got blood," Eddie says weakly, "in your teeth."

And Eddie doesn't faint, but things do get a little fuzzy for a bit and then he's sitting at the back of the van, which is parked closer now, but angled so he cant see what's happening where they were before. He looks down at his wrestling boots on the pavement of the parking lot and thinks a reprimand in his father's voice.

"You grow up here?" Buck is next to him, tapping his toes together, gazing vaguely out into the night. Eddie looks at him, lit from behind by the overhead light in the van. "In Bluff?"

"Yeah?" Eddie's not sure why it comes out as a question.

Buck nods. "I'm from… out of town. I thought you might also- you kind of have the vibe, sometimes." He flashes a grin at Eddie, and his teeth are clean. "But maybe you're just a tight ass."

Eddie kicks him, and he laughs. "Outta town? Like Trenton?"

"Like… farther. Like Blough."

"Blue?" Eddie asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah."

"Buckaroo." Athena is standing in front of them, suddenly, in a long coat of her own. The nickname is kind, the tone is a warning.

"Yeah," Buck says again. "I know. I trust him, though."

"It's not just you that you have to trust him with," she says like she's had to remind him of this before.

"I know," he repeats, eyes just a little stubborn, and Eddie has no idea what this argument is about but still moves his arm a little so it's in contact with Buck's. It's not difficult. They're sitting very close.

"We'll talk," Athena says after a stretched out moment. He's not sure which of the two it's directed at.

"What's going to happen with the-" Eddie gestures more or less in the direction.

"We'll take care of it."

Eddie looks up at her. "What is your… job, again?" He must have learned it, at some point, some get together. Bobby talks about his wife with admiration and frequency.

"Coast guard," she says, and for the life of him he cannot tell if it's a joke.

"Right. Because of the… right."

"Right." She stares down at him before seeming to decide he passed the assessment, and turns to Buck. "You should still lay low for a few days."

"Okay." He glances at Eddie like he's trying not to glance at Eddie.

"You can stay at my place," Eddie says, and his tone means the same.

And they'll go home and Buck will tell him his name, and about his sister, and his parents, and a little about where he came from and how he got here, and he'll talk around Bobby's role in things, and Hen and Chim, because those parts aren't his to tell but they're written all over his life anyway, and it'll all be absolutely unbelievable but Eddie will believe it anyway.

But for now they're sitting in the back of a van and their arms are warm where they're pressed together, and Buck is smiling and it's-

It's something. It's something, and Eddie wants to figure out what.

[whoredmode]

A DUBIOUSLY ACCURATE HISTORY OF STILWATER (& STEELPORT)

So if it’s not obvious by the obnoxiously long post I’ve made talking about the musical history of Stilwater, I’m fascinated by the worldbuilding of Saints Row. And in my quest of learning more about the setting of the series, I’ve pieced together my own headcanons on the general history of the city…and its cousin, Steelport. I’ve spent the last several days going over canonical histories of both cities, primarily Stilwater as it was my original goal, and put together my own ideas of how I think the cities developed prior to the start of the games in 2006. Some of this is based on actual canon evidence, other stuff is just my own conclusions. 

CANON TIMELINE

1783

Knight Plaza is founded, predating the founding of Stilwater itself

1787

Pennsylvania becomes a state

Unspecified year in the 1800s

Stilwater founded

1827

Steelport founded

1837

Michigan becomes a state

1940

Stilwater builds a new sewer system

Post-1940: An earthquake strikes Stilwater

1947

Sunset Park is built in Steelport

1970s

Vice Kings VS Los Carnales. Assumedly mid-to-late 70s into early 80s

1977: Stilwater is voted the most family-friendly city

MAPPING THINGS OUT

So it’s never exactly stated where Stilwater and Steelport are located comparatively. We know they’re in the Rust Belt, and Stilwater is expressly stated to be in Michigan. I’m inclined to say the cities are fairly close to each other (Stilwater in Michigan while Steelport is probably closer to Pennsylvania), probably several hours by car, if only because of similarities in industry, aesthetics, and even a few moments in-game. It can be fairly easily implied that the cities are within several hours driving distance of each other (my guesstimate is 7-8 hours away by car); especially given that in the beginning of SRTT they are able to land in Steelport so quickly despite assumedly not even being in the plane for more than an hour before they blow it up. 

TIMING THINGS OUT

The Stilwater Church is a gothic style church, assumedly a product of the gothic revival in the mid-1800s. Given that Steelport was founded in 1827, I’d say Stilwater was founded around this time as well, potentially ~1830. It was an unused territory for several years and did not get further development until after Michigan’s statehood was granted in 1837. 

I believe, given the architecture of Old Stilwater and the architecture of older buildings in Steelport, that both cities had a huge economic boom starting in the 1920s and had a period of growth and expansion. I’d say things were looking up for Stilwater going into the 1940s and 50s, but the earthquake sent the city into a really bad place economically. Worth noting that Steelport did not seem to be affected by the earthquake or tremors, which allowed it to continue to prosper while Stilwater tried to pick up its broken pieces.

Let’s go back a little into the 1800s, after Stilwater’s founding. I believe some time in the late 1830s/early 1840s, private railways were laid nearby to Stilwater, but the area itself would not get connected to the mainland of Michigan by rails until around the 1850s. Initially it was being used as a place for manufacturing, but wealthy people with railroad money saw the potential for a resort area. We’ll get into that in a moment.

Stilwater clearly had some manufacturing business as evidenced by the factories and boatyards, but I don’t think it ever reached the level of industry as Steelport did. Steelport also had the advantage of being founded a few years earlier. We know canonically that Stilwater has a steel factory and an oil refinery. I believe the steel factory is a minimill specifically, given its small size and the junkyard nearby; this means it uses scrap metal in its steel production. I’d date the mill around the 1890s but with several updates through the years until it was ultimately shut down. The oil refinery was probably built around the 1950s or 60s given its look, though it still appears to be somewhat operational? You can still see plumes coming out of the towers.

I know the Carnales own it, but I don't think they're necessarily refining oil or even using it as a cover for something; I think they’re getting profits from it and protecting it. From what I can tell the oil refinery may be the only factory still in actual operation, as the steel mill is just being used for the Carnales’ arms dealing. 

So where does that leave Old Stilwater’s actual primary industry? If it’s not steel factories like Steelport, and the oil refinery didn’t come into being until around the mid-20th century, what did the city do? All throughout Stilwater there’s old, decommissioned railway tracks.

Parts of them were obviously meant for more general transportation of products, as evidenced by the tracks near the factories, but others follow the slightly newer, raised tracks of the transit system. This implies that at one point, Stilwater had a need for moving people into and out of the city. Given that the tracks also led to a nice hotel at one point (the hotel underground in SR2), there was clearly a market for people getting around to some sort of entertainment and/or hospitality.

Which leads me to my theory/headcanon/whatever that Stilwater, starting in the late 1800s and into the early 20th century, had a nice trolley park and was known mostly for its entertainment. This became its primary source of revenue. 

For starters, all throughout SR2, there is talk about returning Stilwater to former glory, and tourism is obviously its most booming industry at that point in the series, so this seems to imply that it was known for tourism at one point. Stilwater itself has such a heavy emphasis on pleasure in the first two games, so it feels as if that’s always been a part of itself. Even just the fact that a record label was able to start and flourish there says that there is an entertainment scene in Stilwater and it’s a core part of its identity. Not to mention it being voted a family-friendly city in the late 70s, a point where it looked as if it might’ve started to recover from its post-earthquake troubles, further implies that there was a family-friendly image it kinda had. I think the idea of it being a trolley park in the late 1800s and into the 1900s makes a lot of sense. Stilwater itself is quite picturesque, and trolley parks began because of the rise in popularity of picnics. Families and friends went out to the nice waterside area of Stilwater, and suddenly there’s a need for more direct lines into and out of the area; next thing you know there’s new entertainment being constructed so more and more people want to come in. This all follows a pretty clear line in terms of what’s in Stilwater.

Trolley parks went out of fashion with the rise of amusement parks in the 1920s, and though Stilwater doesn’t have an amusement park, I believe Stilwater went in the direction of building venues for things like cabaret, bars, and brothels. It ended up leaning more heavily on adult entertainment, which makes sense given how it looks at the start of the series. Stilwater became synonymous with pleasure, even if it was starting to shy away from the more all-ages entertainment it had in the 19th century.  

So by the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, Stilwater was an extremely popular destination. It had great entertainment, beautiful hotels, and easy access to sex, drugs, and alcohol. All of this caught the attention of the Carnales, probably around the late 40s, and by the 1950s they began to have a hand in many of the institutions of Stilwater. 

One thing that caught my attention was a radio ad in SR1 in which Hughes says that his parents moved to Stilwater 50 years ago (so around 1956) and that, at the time, Stilwater was still a lively place. If we’re to assume the earthquake was the beginning of the end of Stilwater, we can easily guess that the earthquake either happened later that same year, or a year afterwards. With that in mind, around 1956-57, a huge earthquake hits Stilwater, razing most of the city. The place is in shambles, both physically and economically. That said, the Carnales are still expecting things like payments for their business, but now many people are unable to comply, having lost their means of income. In turn, the Carnales became a much larger, even more intimidating presence in Stilwater all throughout the rest of the 50s and 60s. 

Presumably at some point in the 1960s, a cult begins to form. People were seeking guidance and safety in the wake of such a huge natural disaster, and thus Philosotology began to take form. It stays relatively in the background for most of its life, but throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s more and more people join, especially those in places of power. I won’t get too into the development of Philosotology, as this is about the more general history of Stilwater, but I would be remiss to not mention it. The point being, by the 80s and 90s, they’re running things from behind the scenes, to the point they’re just a staple of Stilwater come modern day.

As we move through the 20th century, the progression of the canon story takes form. In the 70s, Julius Little and Benjamin King—sick of the Carnales presence in Stilwater—decide to take back the city. So throughout the 70s, the Vice Kings and the Carnales fight, with the Vice Kings ultimately coming out on top. In the late 70s and early 80s, it seems as if Stilwater might return to former glory, as the birth of Kingdom Come Records helped revitalize the arts and music scene of the city. 

However, the economy of Stilwater does not recover. Generations of Stilwaterians have been hurt by decades of poverty, of negligence by those in power, and it is not the thriving coastal city it was in the early-to-mid 20th century. Obviously, these factors (and many more) contribute to how the events of the first game begin. 

A QUICK TANGENT ABOUT STEELPORT

So where does Steelport fit into all of this? I mentioned it at the start, so surely I must have something to say. 

Steelport was founded in 1827 in Pennsylvania. It was an industrial city, full of steel factories, and it stayed that way for many years. The city steadily grew over several decades, and around the turn of the century, a large number of people from Europe moved to Steelport for work. And it was around this time that the organized crime syndicates of Europe were beginning to take hold in Steelport. 

Fast forward to the 1970s. Phillipe Loren, a high-ranking member of the Syndicate in Belgium, had ties to several of the gangs that were now in Steelport, so he goes to the city himself to see if it’s worth a US expansion. Seemingly pleased, Loren uses his status to begin doing more work with the gangs in Steelport. By the late 80s, Loren had become head of the Syndicate.

It was also around this time in the 70s that I believe Steelport began to essentially fill the hole that was left after Stilwater was destroyed by the earthquake. There was a need for places like hotels, brothels, and casinos in this area of the Rust Belt—and Steelport, being flush with cash, was able to fill that demand. In Steelport’s later years, it became more of an icon of sin and pleasure, perhaps even more than Stilwater was. It was bigger and flashier. But despite its hedonistic charm, Steelport was not exactly heading in a great direction by the 90s. 

Similarly to Stilwater, it fell on hard times economically, with many areas falling into disrepair. Many of these areas are still like this even into the modern day as poverty is still a very large issue within Steelport, though as usual is not a topic of concern for those in charge. Thus, the Syndicate very easily continues to spread its control. By the 2000s, Loren and the Syndicate are running the city. 

Getting a little ahead of my timeline, but worth talking about real quick: in 2011, Loren gets into contact with Maero about arms deals and potential expansion into Stilwater. At this point, Loren was already in bed with Ultor so to speak, but this was his first contact with one of the other gangs. Obviously this deal is hurt by the Saints, but that will only come back to bite them in a few years. 

CONCLUSION

I wanted to write some grand conclusion about all this, but to be honest my eyes are starting to glaze over from hours of running around in the first two games, reading documents on my computer, and scribbling four pages of written notes. I read some official Michigan documents on the history of the railway system in the state. I’ve never even been. What am I going to do with this knowledge now.

Stilwater is interesting and was worth a deep dive into the potential history of the area. I used to be the teaching assistant for a class on worldbuilding in college, so this type of shit is just super fascinating to me. And Stilwater has so many bits of scattered information that I really wanted to try to piece everything together in a mostly coherent way. It’s just a setting I really love for some personal reasons, and I just thought I’d give writing its history a shot. Perhaps in some ways like a love letter to the fictional city, or maybe just as a way to fill my long weekend. Who knows.

[scoonsalicious]

man i miss Pocket x Buckybaby🤍

Major x Bucky are like the older wise version of Pocket X Buckybaby. Pocket and Buckybaby (as the nickname) are the babies. Our babies.

Reading unusable just made my heart swell with emotions. The snippet of Unbroken LEFT ME BROKEN. I can’t.

As much as I enjoy Major x Bucky, Pocket x Buckybaby is tattooed in my heart.

Btw I just saw someone said they’re team Lebron😂, and i think it’s because Major kinda looks like the ‘mean’ girl in Lizard’s POV. (If we switch Lenovo as reader, gahdamnn, everyone would be pissed at Major)… or they just love chaos AHAHAHAHAH.

Major does have flaws but subtle, and not the Pocket level kind of flaws. I can tell Major is not perfect. I have a feeling that she’s actually insecure of her own appearance and action but always keep her head high due to her divorce, something like that la.

I get it why it bothers some readers because we haven’t yet to see her bad bad moments. Plus, we were introduced with Major being the ‘baddie’/‘independent’ woman from the beginning. It is a drastic change from Pocket to Major. Not to mention this reader and Bucky are like rabbits 24/7😂 We’re seeing majorly of their body/physical chemistry here before it starts going to the emotional chemistry. (Might I also remind people that things would be crazy after Major and Bucky is officially in a relationship because that means war for Lebron?😂We’re still in the introduction on its way to rising action!!)

Also, we’ve been seeing more on Bucky’s and Lenovo’s POV (especially Bucky). It’s refreshing after Unwanted but I do hope we get to see Major’s POV soon because I’m starting to get attached on Bucky😂 I feel like I’m Bucky. Not only that, but Mother Pookie great mind too. I can’t wait for whatever she’s planning on WFLT.

Anyways, I feel like I haven’t done this for a long time but I wuv you Mother Pookie🩷🩷🩷. Here is your kitten smooches to boost your day!!!

PS// There are new pics of Sebastian Stan (at the Cannes event i think). He so cute. Too fucking cute. I want to pinch his cheek!!! HE SO CUTE LIKE A SMOL BLACK KITTY. I just wanna pet him.

(This is how I see him in the pic)

Me too, Pookie. Me, too. It's why I'm struggling with WFLT; I keep wanting to run right back to them. Pocket and her BuckyBaby are, always and forever, my babies, just like you said. So, I'm eager to get to Unbroken eventually. Even if, for now, I'm just jotting down little snippets here and there as they come to me.

Major and her Bucky are indeed more mature individuals, lol, which might be why it's harder to write them, because my brain just wants to jump to the most dramatic, angsty shit possible, but I am like 'NO! These are adults!'

Lizard is where I will have to get my drama out, lol. Girl's gonna do some crazy shit. Like, not full-on Cunthrage-evil, but more real-world crazy. Like, if you were friends with her on socials, you wouldn't interact, but you wouldn't block her, either, because the drama is too good.

Major's not perfect. She's got some combat-related PTSD we're going to explore, and though she would probably never admit it, she's insecure about Bucky's relationship with Lily. I know we're focusing a lot in these early chapters on Major and Bucky's... well, sexcapades, really, but I wanted to establish them as being crazy for one another, and to kind of really showcase how quick of a change this is for Lily.

But as you said, this is the RISING ACTION, lol; we'll get there!

But, I, too, love chaos. (Actual photo of me climbing the ladder of chaos below)

I love you so much, Pookie! <3 I hope you and your kittehs are well!

[h-didanart]

Tw selfharm

I blurred it

Didn’t appear blurred to me, but let’s hope it works!

Oh. Oh, Bloodmoon. I’m sorry.

This is a very sad piece, the gradient all around the drawing gives a somber atmosphere, Blood seemingly hugging himself reminds us of what exactly he’s dealing with, the scars reveal just how badly he’s taking it, and having his expression shadowed by his hood was just the perfect way to convey his misery.

I also feel the need to point out that the way you drew the tears is very good, they look like actual tears and not just chicken scratch (which the ones I draw usually look like)

Very good drawing, it’s heartbreaking, sad, and perfectly communicates the character’s feelings.

Btw, are those ears under his hood?

*takes a deep sigh*

Okay, I’m sorry, I could not stop myself from rambling about my aus here. This drawing reminded me of some stuff from my aus and, y’know, I thought I’d share, just some quick explanations and then nothing more. But then I started writing and then I had a paragraph and then I started writing from the character’s own feelings and… *sighs* I’m sorry.

You don’t have to read this if you don’t wanna, it’s really just my writer brain having been activated and immediately lore dumping everything I had that reminded me of what you’ve shown me. Again, ya don’t need to read this, it’ll probably make you uncomfortable or upset or both. But if you do, uh, thanks? Don’t hate me?

Below is discussion of these topics: self harm and suicidal ideation

(Do not force yourself to read what’s next, read safely)

You know, I too have kinda thought of Bloodmoon doing this, not the canon one, but the ones from at least two of my main aus. I don’t know if it’ll be canon to the aus, but they’re at least interesting things to think through from a psychological and angst writer standpoint.

Both twins in ‘Get in losers’ post separation, for different reasons.

Harvest because without their other half she genuinely cannot feel anything, so she resorts to the one thing they know they’ll feel, that being pain, all of it focused on her unusable arm, her missing half’s. She gets better when they get reunited, tho they’re afraid of relapsing whenever she’s away from Hunter for an extended period of time.

Hunter because his body is wrong. Jigsaw did not care to explain to them that his body was made to suit a female AI, and when they realize this they try to hide it as much as possible, hiding his chest using whatever he can find, usually to the detriment of his internal fan system, and picking at the casing on their hips hoping to one day be able to take a whole chunk off. They don’t get better when they are reunited, actually Harvest probably catches him about to pass out from overheating due to a broken fan, from there I could see Harvest asking Solar for help with this and Hunter accepting the help after resisting it due to the embarrassment//shame//humiliation from it.

And then there’s Harvest… from ‘Quiet Throes’.

They’ve both taken their situation as badly as one can take that situation, there’s just too many feelings for them to process, so naturally some got ignored. Harvest wasn’t too keen on talking about his own feelings of worthlessness to begin with, and with them insisting on focusing on Bloody they kinda just kept it all in. The twins take turns sleeping at some point, it doesn’t stop the exhaustion they feel, nor does it stop the images flashing in their eyes every time they blink, but they still try to lighten the load for one another. That’s what it was supposed to be, at least. He didn’t know how he started, they just know they were tired of seeing all that over and over and over and over. The pain was a relief, something their mind could focus on that wasn’t the screams echoing in his hearing, but it didn’t last long, so they did it again. And again, and again, and again. Bloody woke up. And then he realized what he had been doing. It wasn’t permanent damage, Solar had been very careful and effective in stopping the oil and sealing their wounds, but it still left a pretty big impact on them all. Harvest was focused on more since then, with him reluctantly starting to talk about some of his issues, but they could never shake off the guilt. Bloody didn’t deserve to deal with his issues. Bloody didn’t deserve to deal with their stupid decisions… Maybe it would all be better if he hadn’t survived.

I

AM

SO

SORRY

YOU

HAD

TO

READ

THAT

.m.

I’m sorry

[bluedalahorse]

Hi! I was wondering, what do you think Simon and Sara’s relationship is going to look like in season 3? It’s been shown that they had a really strong connection as siblings but do you think that might be permanently broken? I hope that you are having a wonderful day!!

Ahh, thank you for this message! And I very much love talking about the Eriksson siblings, so your ask has made my day.

As a heads up, I write from Sara’s POV in the longfic I share with @heliza24, and as such tend to think of a lot of the events in Young Royals from Sara’s point of view first. So this response may be more about her than about Simon, since I am wholly unused to thinking of things from his perspective. I invite some of my more Simon-savvy folks to weigh in on his behalf, if they see one of my points that they could build on. I have also linked some of my past metas in case they are illuminating.

So I am thinking—hoping—that the resolution to the Eriksson siblings falling out will be one of the major plotlines in season 3. I imagine that they will reconcile with one another, but I also imagine that Lisa will make us stress our way through it, because she takes great pride in playing with our emotions and making us cry.

Before I talk about season 3, I want to talk a little bit about what gets established as true in season 1. While Simon and Sara do have a strong bond with one another, there are also unspoken tensions running through their relationship from the beginning. Simon’s been parentified into a role where he thinks he has to look after Sara and help her find friends and be successful at school. Meanwhile, Sara wants to be more independent and have a chance to define herself outside of her home and her family. Sometimes this comes out in messy ways, like when she talks about her cheap riding pants. I also think about what’s unspoken, like when Simon has Rosh and Ayub wish Sara a happy birthday. This is an incredibly sweet gesture on Simon’s part. At the same time, I can imagine it was potentially pretty embarrassing for Sara throughout her teenage years to have no friends of her own, such that her brother attempts to share his friends with her.

On one hand, Sara and Simon celebrate one another’s happiness. Simon is glad to see Sara becoming friends with Felice, Sara teases Simon in a loving way when she figures out his relationship with Wilhelm is taking off. On the other hand, they are also starting to keep secrets from one another. Simon’s going to see his father, for instance. While on the surface, that’s mostly about the “business” of the money and the booze and so on, I think there’s also a part of Simon that misses connecting with his father over music and other things. There is a part of him that wants things to be better, who (based on what Ayub says, anyway) always ends up disappointed. Meanwhile, I would argue that Sara and August are already developing attraction to one another before the video gets released. Even without the video release happening it’s likely more would have happened between them and that this would have affected Sara’s relationship with her family and friends, although it would have happened in a very different way.

ANYWAY. Part of the reason I’m bringing up this rehash of season 1 in the first place is that I think we as a fandom tend to idealize that scene with Sara teasing Simon about being in love with a prince. And it’s incredibly cute! It’s easy to feel sympathy for Sara in that moment because she’s doing something a lot of members of fandom would do in her place. Wouldn’t we all love to tease Simon about being in love with Wille? 

Outside of that scene, though, there are other moments where the Eriksson siblings aren’t quite on the same page, or there’s tension between them that’s going to come out in other ways later. Not because one or both of the Eriksson siblings is evil, but because they’re both growing up and figuring out who they are and what they value, with all the mistakes along the way that entails. Even if the video never got released, they still would have had to reconcile the different people they are becoming and the different ways they grapple with their family history of trauma. August is not the root of the tension between them, but he is the catalyst that brings that tension to the surface. In another situation, it might have been something else. I think any good reconciliation scene has to have that complex understanding of their season 1 relationship lying underneath it if it’s going to feel satisfying.

As for paths to reconciliation, I can’t say I know exactly how things are going to play out. I have a few thoughts about what sorts of plot points could make for good storylines (they don’t all need to happen, these are just different ideas I could see working) and a few things I don’t want to see happen onscreen. So I’ll organize them into bullet points below.

Things I’d be interested in seeing happen with the Eriksson siblings:

I keep wondering if Sara might run away or disappear for a while at the beginning of season 3 in a way that has people close to her worried. At the end of season 2 she’s costumed in a way that feels stuck between worlds, wearing the half of her Hillerska uniform without insignia and the purple jacket that matches her brother’s signature color. I don’t know if I believe Sara was taking that suitcase back to Linda’s house, at least not long term. I can see her trying to run away from everything. A situation like that could shake things up for both Simon and August and force them to talk to one another in situations that don’t involve rowing or drug intrigue, and that could make for interesting interpersonal drama. Like a scene where August and Simon actually have to interact honestly and there’s impassioned yelling of truths? Give it to me. I’m honestly more excited for that than I am for sweet Wilmon moments, because I’m 99% certain I’m getting enough sweet Wilmon moments to make me happy, but I don’t know if I’m getting anything equivalent to the “Simon beats up August in a field and then August rocks and cries” scene we see in 1.3, and I love that scene.

I’d also love a series of events where Wilhelm and Sara get to know one another more, and Wilhelm then acts as the person who helps the siblings reconcile. There’s a reason the writing team has gone out of their way to keep Wilhelm and Sara from interacting for so long, and it’s probably because they have some deeply significant interaction planned between them. Wilhelm would also be motivated to help Simon and Sara reconcile because he knows what it feels like to lose a sibling. And I think it would help Sara to get to know Wilhelm, too. She doesn’t know much about him the way the audience does. At the beginning of season 2, Sara isn’t super trustful of Wilhelm, and given what she knows about him, this actually makes perfect sense. I can see his coming out speech at the end of season 2 as something that lays the foundation for her to trust him more fully, though of course their relationship would need to be built up over time.

A storyline where Sara is pregnant could theoretically be on the table. This one opens up thematic questions about adulthood and whether we can break generational cycles, and that could be the catalyst for some worthwhile Sara-Simon conversations. If Sara decides to seek an abortion, she might be in a position where she confides in Simon about that. This could shift the calculus of their relationship a bit—before, Simon’s protectiveness  of Sara, although well-intended, has always had him responding to her as if she is younger, or at least less mature. Yet this would be a situation that they could respond to as young people entering adulthood, perhaps more as equals. Alternately, combining this idea with the idea above, what if through a series of events it ends up being Wilhelm who finds out that Sara is pregnant and supporting her through the abortion process? There’s potential there, too.

If Sara doesn’t run away, she may try to move in with her father. I know a lot of people don’t think it’s likely, but she went through enough life-changing things last season. If she doesn’t feel comfortable going home to Linda, maybe she feels like going to her dad is the only place she can go. This could also push her relationship with Simon in new directions, and push them to have some needed conversations.

Overall, I would also like Sara and Simon to realize that they have some important things in common, and that they are more alike than they are different. Both of them are deeply empathetic and caring, but also at times guarded because of their past traumas. Also for fuck’s sake they somehow managed to fall in love with the teen boys who were first and second in line for the throne, and yet neither of them comes across as particularly monarchist. There’s got to be a dark humor in that, right? I hope we get a scene where they’re able to laugh about that—not in a way that trivializes it, but in a way where you feel the gravity of their situation sinking in.

Things I don’t want to see happen:

I do not want to see Sara get a Dorothy Gale, humbling, click-your-heels ending where she’s back home and everything reverts back to “status quo” and we’re supposed to assume she’s happier, and it’s only then that she can reconcile with Simon. I especially do not want to see this in a universe where it looks like Simon’s going to end up an internationally renowned music star or Prince Consort or both. I just feel like this happens to female characters a lot, and so many female character arcs are about being humbled. It’s easy to think of the part of herself Sara shows at Hillerska as “not the real Sara” but… Sara is eighteen. She’s figuring out who she is. I think Sara At Home and the Sara At Fancy Boarding School are both real, in a way, and she’s figuring out how to integrate those aspects of her personality that are in conflcit. Maybe this is something I feel strongly about because of the way school, and especially university, helped me express sides of myself that I wasn’t able to express at home growing up. But if the message we get sent about Sara is that only her brother and her mother knew the “real her” and she should just be humble or whatever, I will eat an entire bar of soap out of rage or something.

Likewise for the show using rhetoric along the lines of, oh no, poor little naive neurodivergent Sara did not know August was a big meanie manipulative predator, gosh isn’t it great that we have confirmed that she was enough of a Virginal Ingenue for Simon to forgive her. Sara is neither a Virginal Ingenue who is fully pure of heart nor a Wicked Jezebel who intended to wreck her brother’s life so she could get laid in a fancy dorm room. Sara and August’s relationship was as complex and fascinating as Wilhelm and Simon’s even if the season 2 outcome was more negative by the end, and there are a lot of ways that the two mirror one another. I don’t want Simon to be like “oh I get it now, I can forgive you because you were a manipulated, perfect victim.” That would just feel… icky? And it would flatten what I see as an important connection between the siblings.

For the love of Freya and Epona, I do not want Sara to die. I don’t think she will, I think there was some interview where Omar said that no one was dying, and I hope I’m right about that. That would feel even more icky than the two plot points above, and it might be one of the few things that could kill my love of this series.

One thing that worries me about season 3 is that we really don’t have much indication of what Sara’s arc is going to be yet. There hasn’t been much promo material with Frida compared to the other actors and one news release way back in the day even listed her as “recurring.” Which, as one of Sara’s most steadfast enjoyers on tumblr, freaks me out a little. These promotional details would make sense in a “Sara runs away” scenario or perhaps a “Sara goes back to Marieberg” scenario.

Whatever the case, I hope Sara isn’t sidelined. I don’t think she will be—Lisa clearly has as much love for her as she does for the other characters—but I sometimes worry that if she were sidelined, fans wouldn’t care as long as Wilhelm and Simon got to kiss one another onscreen enough times and go on cute dates. Ultimately, though, I have to tell myself that this worry is all in my head, and that most fans in the fandom want to see Sara have a meaningful arc, and want Simon and Sara to have a chance to reconcile. So now all that’s left to do is wait and see what the new season yields, I guess?

In the meantime, we can always write fic about the two of them reconciling and see how close we get to canon!

[dexrm]

kare no hime | 彼の姫

This story will contain mature themes.  Read at your own risk.

Previous chapter

Next chapter 

-

Sukuna wasn’t happy after you left Uraume, but was unbothered when you said you were with Toji Zenin.  While travelling to your new residence north of Kyoto, Sukuna is ambushed with a curse technique that will forever change him.

Chapter five - Tsuku

“I was kidnapped and escaped, Sukuna,” you explain.  “It’s not my fault I was cornered, is it?” you tried to make your voice sound convincing.  Even if it was true, you felt as if your tongue made you sound like a liar.

“Who was that man?” Sukuna asked, toneless.  “Why did you go to him instead of trying to find me?”

You blink.  

“He saved me,” a brief sentence came from your mouth.  

“We should thank him next time,” his voice gave a sense of uneasiness.  You look up.  There he was, not glaring at you, but the path Toji left.  Your sister always blabbered about if a man doesn’t like another one of your man friends, he feels something much more for you.  

Sukuna and Toji both abandoned you at your worst.  Or actually, it’s more of Toji.  You were the one taken away from Sukuna.  Sukuna had a strange aura around him constantly.  You’ve seen his laughter rom slaughtering humans, but never an authentic one from him being humoured that doesn’t involve violence.  

You admire his ambition.  You really did.

Sukuna then walks away from you, gesturing his finger.

“Are we going home?” you ask, catching up.

Sukuna stops to give you an annoyed stare.

“We will not go back to Hida for a while,” he said.  “I will take you to our new residence.”

You nod.

-

No one ever told you your new residence was deep in the woods.  But you had to sit silently with Sukuna, whom was in deep thought again.  Moment by moment, he got one of his tattoos back.  It was like he was growing back into a monster.  

“Are you in love with that man?” Sukuna asked out of a sudden.

“No,” you reply steadily.  “Why?”

“Don’t women like those hero stories and fall in love with those men?” Sukuna laughed.  “So you don’t?”

“No.” your heart tightened.

Sukuna went back to his silence.

While he was in his own world, your entire body trembled.  Not out of fear, but your heart pounded this time.  You could sense your stomach twisting and stretching.  It felt hot.

“I need to get out,” Sukuna commanded, and Uraume immediately stopped.

You peek out the window.  The wooden wagon stood in the middle of nowhere, and Sukuna was just standing.  But not regularly standing.  Like he was waiting for prey to come to him.

Suddenly, the wagon flew up as you fall on the side.  Your head aches in pain, as another horrendous blow of a piece of wood hit your arm.  You couldn’t move, at least not now.  With the excruciating hit on the side of your forehead, you couldn’t even think.  

“Master Sukuna!” Uraume’s alarmed, not composed voice made you shiver as bits of tears flowed down your face.  You find a broken hole, and shuffle your body to peek.

Sukuna was on the dirt ground.

He didn’t respond to Uraume’s calls and pushes.

You put your hand over your mouth at the sight.

Beside Uraume were four other tall men you didn’t recognize.  They all wore dark blue robes or black kimonos, and one of them even had a disoriented head.

“Now, let us get Uraume,” a man with long black hair said in a calm tone.  

“Are we gonna just leave Sukuna there?” the disoriented head hissed.

“This path has been unused for years, they’re the first to go this way,” he sighed.  “I doubt even a wood cutter will come across here to save the now fallen King of Curses.”

He whispered to the man.

“Plus, you need me to defeat Uraume, remember?”

The other man glared, but nodded.

You looked back at Uraume.  They attempted to touch Sukuna’s body, but knew they had no chance.  Their only choice now was to run.  The other men chased after her.

You slowly sit up, head still dizzy and pounding.  Opening the now half destroyed window, you crawled out.

Sukuna laid there, unconscious.

You quickly ran to Sukuna, stumbling over him.

“Wake up please,” you cry.  You had no where to go now.  “Ryomen Sukuna, our deal isn’t over yet, wake up,” in the first in of your life, you used an immense amount of force to shake someone.  “Wake up!” you say in his ear.

For once in your life, you wish you weren’t free from him.

“Where am I?” his voice cracked.

You look at his face again.  He was blinking.

“You were attacked,” you explain.  “Are you hurt?”

“I was attacked?” his confused voice made your brain stop.  “I don’t remember being attacked.”

The worst of the worst came true.

“Do you remember your name?” you ask, cautious.

“N-no,” he said, sitting up now.  “Do I know you?”

“No,” your eyes were now red.  “We’re strangers.” the word made you want to vomit.  Before, Sukuna and you were strangers.  It was an undeniable fact.  But you wanted to understand more of his thoughts, his past.  He truly was a human monster, back then at least.

You stand up to leave Sukuna alone.

“Where are you going?” his voice made your heart heavy.

Your deal was now over with him.  You’re free.

A sudden punch in your chest hit you.  You cough up blood, lots of blood.  Each cough were like needles entering your lungs, slowly sinking into them.  Your head pounded faster, each breathe you took in made living feel like hell.

Coming to realization, you couldn’t break the rules.  Even if Sukuna has no memory of what happened, a vow was a vow.

Walking to the wagon, you pull out your bag.  You turn around to lift Sukuna up.

“We need to leave here, now,” you command.  “It’s not safe, people will come back to attack us.”

“Is there a village near by?” he asked.  

“We’ll find one,” you say.  

Walking the opposite direction, Sukuna follows you, but catches up to walk beside you.  You walk even faster, and he catches up easily.  

“I’ll lead the way,” he asserted.

“You don’t even remember how you came here,” you say with a stern tone.  

“I don’t care,” he laughed, walking.

-

The journey to find a village of any kind was long, exhausting, and made you furious.  This Sukuna wasn’t as calculating, he was open about his mistakes.  He would reach a dead end of trees, turn back, and repeat.

But the two of you saw smoke coming from a distant hill.

“Finally,” you gasp.

“What should my name be?” Sukuna stops.  You freeze at the question.  The name Ryomen Sukuna would give the bad men an idea of where he was.  

“I’ll name you,” you think.  “Tsuku?”

“That works,” Sukuna replied.  “Ugly name though.”

Although he was in no place to say that, you tolerated his comment.

Squinting, you spot a woman wearing slightly loose purple robe.  You walk closer, to see she was collecting herbs.

“Hello?” you yell.  The woman turns around, startled.

From the long grass, she pulls out an axe.  She walks, closer and closer to where you and Sukuna stood.  She then drops the axe.

“Yes?” she finally replied.

“Apologies if we startled you, we wanted to seek refuge from a nearby village.  We were recently just robbed most of our valuables,” you say.  

“Oh, I’ll lead you there,” the lady quietly said.  “I’m sorry if I looked as if I was about to attack you, there have been rumours of a beast in this forest.”

While following the lady, you glance at Sukuna.  One more tattoo added on the back of his neck.  He obviously was unaware of it though.

The village was relatively smaller than the one you lived in the Hida province.  But most houses still weren’t made from straw.  The lady’s robe was silk and new, probably from the wealthier part of the village.  She led you and Sukuna to her small but nicely furnished house.  Compared to Sukuna’s old residence, the smaller house was not minimalist at all.  There were flowers, plants, and decor anywhere you went.

You two finally sat on mats in the supposed guest room.

“My name is Aoi.  Tell me, where are your families?  What do you do for a living?” the woman pours green tea into cups.

“I don’t have a family,” you say.  “And he..  recently hit his head.  He can’t remember anything.”

This Sukuna didn’t glare at the woman with a deadly stare, but he drank his tea like a normal person.  But his gaze was still lifeless.

“I see,” the woman stopped to think.  “I have enough resources to house you both, but you two must contribute to the household, or else my husband will get mad.” she said with a vague smile.  She looked at you.  “Young lady, what is your name?”

You take a deep breathe.

“Fushiguro is my family name,” you reply.

“You will help with cooking, washing the clothes, and caring for my children.  Their both four,” she stood up.  “What about this man?”

“Tsuku,” Sukuna immediately said in an annoyed tone.  It was like he knew you were going to speak for him.

“You will aide my husband in his work then, I don’t know what he exactly does, but I’m sure he’ll appreciate extra help.”

Sukuna nods.

“You two will sleep in this room, and stay until you find a new place to live,” Aoi said.  “You will all start working tomorrow.”

The moment Aoi left the tiny room, you open the window.  It the sun was practically down, but you can see the red and orange hues at the bottom of the sky.  Sukuna sat down the thin mat we were supposed to sleep on.

“If you were just a stranger, how come a broken wagon was right beside us?” his voice was rather condescending, but not as much as before when he didn’t randomly forget everything.  Jujutsu or not, you didn’t understand.  But the other men clearly did something to Sukuna.

“I was travelling,” you confidently lie, sitting down on the bed next to him.  Your head still heavily ached from the fall, but you could feel the injury somewhere on the side of your head, your hair covering some of the blood.  But asking the lady to treat it was too much to ask for.  “I was robbed most of my things, and then I saw you lying on the ground.”

Sukuna raised an eyebrow.  It was something he never did at all before.  The old Sukuna seemed to know the answers to everything.

“Thank you for saving me, Fushiguro,” he said.  Hearing Sukuna thank you was the last thing you expected, but you reminded yourself he wasn’t the same person.  

“I wouldn’t leave anyone like that in the middle of the forest,” you say, putting a blanket over yourself.  “Do you remember nothing from your life?”

“No,” Sukuna’s gaze leaned towards the window.  “I remember nothing at all,” he then turns to look at you.  “Are you injured?”

“No, why?” you tried not to stutter.

“I smell blood,” Sukuna claims.  

“I slightly hit my head,” you quickly shut his claims.

“Get it treated,” he lies down.  

You didn’t lie down.  You stared at Sukuna, wondering how different he was.  You weren’t quite sure what to do next.  But food, shelter, and safety wasn’t a problem now.  You didn’t know if you should leave Sukuna here and find your family, or take him with you.  But you couldn’t.  Your deal with him wasn’t over, but he doesn’t even remember the deal.  

Sukuna turned around to catch your eye.

“I don’t like it when people stare,” he said, turning back.

-

The cold midnight air woke you up.  Although the room was originally warm, it felt like the middle of winter.  The room was so dark you could barely see in front of you without overthinking about those creatures.  That purple blob who kidnapped you.

There was a slight knock on the window.  You back off a little.

“It’s me, Fushiguro,” a casual voice said.

Toji.

The window creaked opened, to reveal the muscular build and black robe.  It really was Toji Zenin.  His smug face.  Scar.  It was really him.

“T-toji?” your voice cracked.  “Why are you here?  How did you find me?”

“I’ll always know where you are,” he climbed in.

“Are you here to take me back?” a slightly trembling you asked.

Toji walked closer to you.  This time, his face was much more warm and approaching.  It was Toji.  But didn’t feel like Toji.  He looked at you in the eye.

“We are married, what do you mean?” he said.  “I’m just taking my lost wife home.”

“You abandoned me,” you lash out, but not aggressive enough to irritate him.

“Stop throwing tantrums,” he gently laughed.

Before you could react, a pair of giant hands flew to Toji’s neck, pinning him against the wall.  A monstrous height and body rose from the darkness.

Sukuna in his beast form.

His glowing red eyes stared into Toji’s.  A cunning smile rose from his face.

“Stop!” you shriek, rushing to slap Sukuna’s hands.  It was no use.  No matter how much you cried, you couldn’t stop Sukuna.  Toji was getting bluer by second, and you knew his ending.

“Toji!” you cried.

-

A gentle slap on the stomach, made you sit up from your cries.  You were still in that same room.  It wasn’t dark.  The moonlight was bright enough for you to see Sukuna leaning towards your face.

“Get off!” you crawl away from him.

“You were having a nightmare,” he said, unbothered.

“I was?” your voice sounded more paranoid then ever.  “Did you choke someone?”

“No,” he said, backing away.  “Were you dreaming of me hurting you?”

“Nono,” you say.  “I dreamed of someone I know hurting a friend.”

“I won’t hurt you,” he says.  He looked slightly scary, but genuine.  “I wouldn’t hurt someone who was my saviour.”

“How do you know I don’t have intentions to use you?” you joke, slightly happy on the inside.  

“Because,” he leaned forward, head towering over you.  “A vulnerable young lady with nothing, helping an unconscious man on the streets.  Tears in her eyes.  You did that out of mercy and kindness.”

“I guess you could say that,” you weren’t sure if you really did that out of kindness, or because of the consequences of breaking the binding vow.  

“There aren’t much people like you out there nowadays,” Sukuna suddenly scowls.  “A lot of them are selfish bastards.”

“How do you know if you lost your memory?” you started getting more comfortable.

“I remember seeing a child with an ugly, disfigured face being beat to death by some wealthy lords,” his gaze sharpened with disgust.  “I don’t know when or where.”

“There isn’t much you can do,” you say, leaning against the wall.  Sukuna doesn’t.  He sits on your mattress, legs half crossed, hand on his face.  “As long as hierarchy of any kind exist, people will belittle others, humiliate them.

“Of course it can be changed,” he snapped.  “If all humans were disfigured and sad, we’d be equal.  No one can laugh at you for looking and behaving strange,” Sukuna explained in a serious manner.

You cover your mouth to laugh.

“Most people would say if all people were healthy and kind to one another, we’d all be equal.  Your approach is interesting,” you shuffle closer to him.  Placing a hand on his shoulder.  

“Nonsense,” he replied.  “Illness will happen as long as mankind stay on this earth,” he glanced at you for a few seconds, then turning away.  “A perfect world is not realistically achievable, but an imperfect, grief ridden one will only make everyone appreciate what they have.”

You start to imagine a world where no one had a beautiful face.  Where everyone was ill, disfigured, and poor.  Where everyone was in grief.  It would be a disaster.

But it was true.  No one can compare themselves to others, or ask for more.  

“And how will you change mankind?” you ask.

“We have work tomorrow, let’s get some sleep.”

“Goodnight,” you say, before your head hits the mat once again.

[quietwings-fics]

Stalemate

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Fandom: Doctor Who Ship: Gen (Simm!Master & OC) Additional Tags: Biting, Aftermath of Violence, Complicated Relationships, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Off-screen Organ Eating, Codependency, Alternate Universe, Major Original Character(s), Nonbinary Character, Antagonistic Cuddling, Sharing Clothes, Possessive Behavior, Ambiguous Relationships, Post-Episode: s04e17-e18 The End of Time Wordcount: 1532 Part 12 of 11089/Even Fics Summary:

Even wakes up, a ship of Theseus.

I should be dead.

The TARDIS floor is cold and sticky under their cheek. They lift their head, and hair pulls from their scalp, trapped in the dark red stains.

Brought me in. Left me here. I want to be dead. They recoil from the final thought on sore hands, broken nails crusted with their own blood. Wars named for devouring time should be cleaner. It all seems so high, far and beyond their own senses, but it’s still fought with bodies. Not theirs. They don’t fight for a world that won’t exist and so doesn’t, except as an unintended prison.

The Time War does not care. It chews them up anyway. It tears them all between its teeth and starts again on the same flesh untouched when it’s finished.

They are breathing, and they are naked, and they are cold, and he did not take the watch.

He knows what it is. He takes it in his hand sometimes, stops them dead when the chain around their neck pulls tight and thumbs the watch. He has never taken it from them.

They suppose, if he’d thought he’d left a corpse at the foot of the engine, he would have.

What a waste, otherwise.

They take it between their hands. It’s warm and beating like a second heart beside their own. They curl around it like it could heat the rest of their shivering body.

There is a feeling like rain on the back of their neck. They flinch. It goes away, reluctantly.

She’s trying to help as best she can. She is flying with jagged shoots through time — where all her focus should be on avoiding the rising peaks of years-lived-twice and years-that-weren’t — and she still reaches out to comfort them. Even wants no mind inside theirs but their own, but the unavoidable psychic landscape of their shelter means they’re never really alone. She’s clumsy compared to the Doctor’s TARDIS, unused to a human inhabitant, born and broken for war. And she retreats further when Even makes the comparison, as though she’s hurt by it.

Even presses the watch against their cheek. The metal is a poor substitute for what they want. They get their blood on it.

They stiffen at the approaching footsteps, but they know the quick pace. They listen to his brief pauses around the console, circling to make sure they aren’t off-track. He doesn’t tell them to do anything, doesn’t name an instrument or an adjustment. He knows they’re awake. He steps around them to view their trajectory, and Even doesn’t turn their head up, taking in the folds of the short robes he’s wearing and the mud on his boots.

(They have a matching set. Or had. He liked them to compliment him when they were seen, and given how the translation circuit left them stranded with only their rudimentary understanding of his language, they didn’t argue with having an easy way for people to see them and know they were together. (Besides, they understood more every week, if weeks were how they were measuring their life. It was funny what people would reveal to someone they thought couldn’t hear them.))

He stops moving, very briefly, and then starts again in place, a never-ending stream of small gestures like he can’t contain them. He is most like the Doctor when he does that, and Even doesn’t think about any other way that he could be.

“You’re alive,” he says, as if it’s a surprise and not something he must have known. Even raises their eyes to his hands. They’re clean. They hate him for taking the time to. “You can thank me now,” he continues after a beat of silence.

“What have you done to me?” they ask. Their knuckles are going white around the watch.

“I saved your life. And didn’t you look? I left you a souvenir.” They raise their eyes further, to his chest, and then drop them completely. If nothing else, at least with him they always have an excuse not to look him in the eye. “A reminder,” he says, hushed into a threat. They don’t look, but they do drop one hand down their front, splayed open as it drags over their skin until it finds the raised skin of a scar already older than the wound that made it. The wonders of advanced technology. They trace the line of it over their side as he speaks, “that you can’t die.”

“What have you done to me,” they repeat.

“You ruined your own liver. Don’t blame me,” the Master says. “Or the shrapnel did. Does it hurt?” There’s little care there, only curiosity. “You know, I’m not much of a-“

“No,” they cut him off as his lips begin to curl for his little joke. They hope to disappoint him. The answer mostly seems to bore him instead, which makes their stomach turn and their hair raise on the back of their neck.

They liked those feelings once. They rarely understood the meaning, only the sway and shift of their body. They can connect those sensations to fear now, and their world is less beautiful for it.

The Master stands in front of them. They return their gaze to his boots. It’s not all mud, they realize. There’s worse in the grooves of his heels.

“Where is it?” they ask.

“It wasn’t wasted,” he answers, and he smiles again. There are teeth in it.

Their fingers relax slightly around the watch. They tighten them again, but the moment their focus falls away from defying their relief, it doesn’t stick.

They don’t flinch when he drops down beside them. The hollow in the console where they’ve fit themselves is clearly made for two. When he settles, he does it with a magnanimous toss of his robes. Even takes them and warms themself beneath the cloth, tilting into his body heat without guilt. Time Lords have too much of it, burning and burning inside. It’s selfish to keep it all.

They do not tentatively press into him like they once did the Doctor, unsure of where the boundaries lay. Even tosses a leg over his own. They turn until their face is in his neck. Their hands sneak down against his stomach. The Master sighs and leans back. His arm wraps around them, hand under his robe, fingers pressed into their hip. They drum. The rhythm is far from comforting, but familiar, now, fitting like it infested their skin and made it home. Even lets go of the watch. It falls until the chain catches it and keeps it safe against them. They find the Master’s pulses against their cheek.

They could do a good thing for the universe here.

His fingers don’t stutter. Even’s hands grow firm against his stomach. They open their mouth against his neck and rest their teeth there.

They’ve seen him do it. They’ve seen the mess it makes.

Easier for someone with his inheritance. They have duller fangs. But he armed them himself. They dig that poisonous tooth into his skin as well as the others.

It would probably kill them both.

Or kill them, and leave him to regenerate, if he can. As good as living — to force him to remake himself in their violence.

The Master raises his hand. His fingers wind in their hair. It’s all grown dark now, like his own. He presses them against his neck, and their breaths fan back across their own face, hot and dry like desert wind.

They release his throat. “What have you done to me, Master,” they say a third time.

“It won’t last forever.” He’s honest now. He strokes their hair, nails against their scalp, so clean. They have spread their blood across his skin anyway, rubbing it in from their bloodstained cheeks until his skin and undershirt are mottled with ugly dark reds. “Maintenance. You’ll know when. It’s hard to miss your liver failing.” He strokes through their hair again. “I can fix it if you ask me nicely, Even.”

That is the bargain for their continued life. It’s more fair than they’d expected of him.

They should bite down. They should. He will be the death of them either way.

He can feel that. Without reaction, they know he has to. He is reading them with every touch, and he’s better at this game than the Doctor ever feigned when he gave them their short-lived lessons in psychic defense. The Master thinks it all flies over their head, and it’s funny, how much people will reveal when they think someone can’t hear them.

Even exhales slowly. He’s keeping them.

“Was it good?” they ask. He is tap-tapping again, on their skull this time. It seems to ring through their head.

“Tender,” he answers.

The TARDIS shudders around them. They wonder what she says to him that they can never hear, but they decide it’s worth not knowing if they also don’t have to know what he says back.

They should be dead. They feel whole. They aren’t sure how much of them is left. They cannot leave.

They brace their teeth against his throat again. For now, at least, neither can he.

(Enjoyed it? Any interaction is welcomed. You can even support me on Ko-Fi <3)

[pigeonwhumps]

Registration

Sanctuary masterlist

Whumptober masterlist

Alt 5: ambushed

Thanks to @haro-whumps for the list of box boy positions (and position 5 in particular)!

Taglist: @littlespacecastle @whumpymirages

Anita takes Theo to be re-registered as her pet at the WRU.

2.8k

CWs: BBU, pet whump, collar, dehumanisation, 'it' as a pronoun for dehumanising, muzzle, Theo's fucky headspace, non-con nudity (non-sexual), caning, conditioning

Anita plucks the coat off the hook in the hallway and turns to Theo, who’s kneeling, eyes on the floor, grey beanie pulled down past his ears. It’s slightly too large but she hopes it’ll stop anyone else recognising him. They can buy a new one that fits today.

She bends down in front of him until he can see her, then reaches out and drapes the coat over his shoulders. He takes the hint and shrugs his arms into it, his eyes still confused – he’s very clearly unused to being kept warm, and she hates that. Hates everything she’s been able to gather about Theo’s treatment by his former owners. She glances down at the WRU sign language booklet, reminding herself of the signs – some for pets, some for owners. There’s some she’ll certainly never use.

“Comfortable?” she signs, and he nods. Not that he’d tell her if he wasn’t. “Good boy.” She strokes a hand through his hair once, which he leans into, and then stands, shouting in Tamil. “Paati! I’m going out now!”

“Good luck! And don’t forget the shopping.”

“I have a list!” she replies indignantly.

“Well don’t lose the list then! I know what you’re like.”

Anita rolls her eyes and turns to Theo, signing, “Come.” Her paati’s always worrying, but they need to leave if they’re to make their appointment at the WRU.

Once outside Theo seems somewhat uncertain, clutching his teddy close, jumping as a car passes close to the kerb. She takes his hand, keeping him by her side instead of slipping behind her as he seems to be attempting to do. It’s only a short walk to the bus stop, and Anita spends most of it avoiding the curious gazes of her neighbours, feeling ashamed despite herself. Clearly they now think her the sort of person to own someone willingly. She wishes for a moment that Theo hadn’t been dropped off at her shelter.

Then she looks at the pet walking beside her, head down, shoulders hunched, and feels a pang of guilt. It’s not his fault.

When they reach the bus stop he kneels in front of her and she reluctantly pulls a leash out of her pocket, Theo bowing to allow her to attach it to his collar. She needs to buy him a more comfortable collar while they’re out today. Pets aren’t allowed out without a collar, so he really needs a more comfortable one than the plastic one he was delivered in. Besides, Theo won’t let Anita take his collar off, even at home.

Anita stands with Theo on the bus, keeping a hand on his arm to hold him steady. His eyes are focused on the floor so Anita can’t see his expression, but he’s trembling. Scared. Anita strokes his hair while the bus is stopped at a red light.

When they exit the bus in the town centre they make their way to the council building, Anita holding Theo’s leash loosely, both their hands covering it. Anita stops in the courtyard just outside.

“It’s okay,” she signs, unsure what other reassurance to give, and mouths slowly, “we’ll be quick.”

“Yes, mistress,” replies Theo quietly.

They enter the building together. The WRU offices are on the top floor, of course, and the lifts are both broken, of course. They make their way upstairs, Anita cursing her luck, pausing frequently so Theo can catch his breath. Finally they make it to the fifth floor.

There’s a receptionist at the desk and Anita and Theo walk up to her. She looks up from her computer as they stop in front of her, Theo immediately kneeling at Anita’s side.

“Welcome to the WRU, how can I help?” the woman asks in a bored voice.

“I’ve come to re-register my pet. I have an appointment at 11 o’clock?”

“What’s your name?”

“Anita Ranjit.”

The woman clicks on her computer a couple of times. “Ah yes. Do you have the paperwork with you?”

Anita swings her rucksack off her back and pulls out the thick stack of forms she’d been given by the shelter Theo had been supposed to go to. “Er, here. This should be everything.”

The woman on the desk flips through the paperwork, and Anita strokes Theo’s hair, trying to calm him. She still doesn’t understand why he needs to be here.

“This all seems to be in order. If you could just leave your pet here, someone will be along to collect it shortly.”

Anita starts, a well of panic opening up inside her. “What do you mean, he has to stay here? Why? How long for?”

“Just half an hour, madam. We need to run through some checks.”

“What for? What happens if I refuse?”

“It’s company policy. Either you consent to the check-up or you don’t see your pet again.”

Anita grits her teeth, looking helplessly at the pet kneeling beside her. “Fine. Just give me a minute to explain.” The woman nods curtly and she crouches down in front of Theo, who watches her closely.

“Stay here for half an hour,” she signs, saying clearly afterwards, “I’ll be back.” His eyes widen and he looks heartbroken. She hates this. He was only abandoned two weeks ago, and for her to leave him, now, in this place... she doesn’t know what he must think.

“It can’t take anything in,” says the receptionist suddenly, as if she’s just remembered.

“Right.” She enunciates clearly to Theo now, accompanying her words with gestures. “I need to take that for now.” Theo hands his bear over with slight reluctance, pleading with his eyes, and she signs an apology, swallowing back more reassurances because everything isn’t okay, he’s not safe, she doesn’t know what’s going to happen in there. All she can promise is that she’ll be back. Instead, she squeezes his hand and runs her other hand through his hair.

Footsteps approach and Anita looks up to see a stony-faced man in a WRU uniform. “We need to take it now.”

Anita pets Theo’s head one last time and stands. “You know he’s profoundly deaf, right? I don’t want him getting in trouble for not listening or anything.”

“Of course not, madam. We have its records.”

“Good.” She forces herself to hand over the leash and clenches her fists, digging her nails into her palm so she doesn’t snatch him back, run after them as they lead him away.

It’s only half an hour. Just half an hour.

“Shouldn’t have filed the paperwork at the WRU if you didn’t want a check-up,” the receptionist says, not entirely without sympathy.

“Wait. I didn’t have to do this?”

“No, dear. You think everyone who takes part in a private sale registers with us? We’d have queues around the block. You can update the details online.” She takes in Anita’s stricken expression. “Someone told you you had to?”

Anita nods. “The shelter. He was delivered to the wrong place, and when I contacted them they said I could have him for free, provided I registered him officially with the WRU within the next few weeks using the paperwork they provided. I didn’t realise that there’d be check-ups.”

“It’s mandatory for shelters. If they’re adopting out a pet they have to check their condition first, for insurance purposes. People sue. Inflict an injury themselves and then claim it was there already, that they were mis-sold. Used to be pretty common.”

“That’s sick.”

“Mm-hmm. I’ll print you out a leaflet about the WRU check-ups if you want to read it.”

“Thanks.” She hovers around the desk awkwardly as the woman clicks a few things, and the printer starts up behind her.

“That your first pet, then?”

“Yes.”

“We have lots of resources on our website, if you need anything. Here.” She hands over the leaflet and gestures towards a set of chairs in the corner. “Take a seat. You can always leave and come back for your pet later, but you don’t seem the type.”

“No. Thank you.” Anita sits down and starts reading the leaflet through carefully.

Most of it is the usual polished WRU spiel, but certain phrases jump out at her. Full physical and behavioural examination... owner details updated... free muzzle for those on our shelter partnership program.

Dear god.

What kind of a world does she live in, Anita wonders, where these things are just an accepted part of everyday life?

_

Theo follows the handler down the corridor, eyes down, hands behind his back. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen but Mistress said she’d be back. He has to believe that. He has to believe that he can continue being Theo, despite the uniform this man is wearing.

The handler leads him into a white-panelled room lit by bright lights with a computer in the corner and drops his leash. He signs for Theo to strip, and once Theo’s divested himself of everything but his collar, the handler attaches his leash to a hook on the wall.

“Position 1,” the handler signs, and Theo spreads his legs so his feet are directly below his hips, back straight, arms held out at 45° angles to his body. The handler nods in approval.

Theo stands perfectly still as the handler examines him, taking photos of his scars and tattoos with a small camera. He tenses when the man’s out of sight, each touch to his back almost making him jump. Then the handler gestures for him to open his mouth.

He has a chipped canine and another tooth missing, and the handler snaps on a pair of nylon gloves, forcing his mouth open wide enough to take photos. Theo doesn’t understand what they’re for, but then, he’s just a dumb pet, he doesn’t need to understand.

Once the examination’s complete, the handler commands Theo through his 25 taught poses, then through the rest of his signs and learned spoken phrases, testing his obedience. Then he signs for him to get into position five.

Theo gets onto his knees, face pressed to the floor, palms resting either side of his head. In this position he has no idea what’s going on, and although he doesn’t need to, it’s up to his owner and handlers what he knows, it still makes his heart pound faster, and he starts trembling, his body defying every attempt to stop it. He didn’t used to tremble, he knows, it started sometime with his previous owners. He hopes that doesn’t stop him going back to Mistress. She probably wants a perfect pet, and he’s picked up many habits over the years that mean he’s not.

Stupid pet. Thinking again. He shouldn’t think, he shouldn’t hope, he just needs to obey. It’s what he was made for. This is why nobody wants him.

A sudden pain hits his back, a sharpness fading quickly to a dull burn. It throbs when Theo’s pulled back to his feet, back straightening as he gets into position 1. It’s a cane stripe, he’s sure of it. It won’t scar, but it’ll hurt for a while.

As it should.

Theo stands perfectly still, watching the handler pick up a handheld scanner and pull his arm out towards him, holding the scanner over the barcode for a few seconds.

He watches as the handler types something into the computer. He’s not sure what, and he’s certainly not curious. Bad pet. What’s that phrase? Curiosity killed the pet. His old Master was fond of it. So he’s certainly not curious.

It’s cold in this room. Colder than he’s been for over a week, but not quite the bone-deep cold he used to feel sometimes, while being punished in his old Master and Mistress’ garage.

After a while, the handler comes back to Theo and unhooks his leash from the wall, signing for him to dress. He does so with relief. He’s being allowed to dress fully again. That means... maybe Mistress wants him back? She wouldn’t want to lose her clothes.

The handler is holding a black leather muzzle and Theo gulps. No. No no no. This is why he doesn’t speak, this is what it gets him, and he’d taken a liberty speaking around Mistress earlier, she clearly doesn’t like it. Bad, stupid pet, nobody likes him speaking and he knows that. He opens his mouth for the smooth, silicon bit, and the strap is fastened behind his head, leather strips just touching his cheek. The handler checks the fit, sliding two fingers under the strap at the back of his head, and even though it obviously isn’t too tight it feels it, claustrophobic and smelly and he’s struggling to breathe. He takes as deep breaths as he can, and isn’t fully aware of his surroundings as he feels a harsh tug on his leash, following it obediently. He realises vaguely that he’s being led back towards the reception area, and although his eyes are cast down he still recognises his Mistress’ boots, kneeling down beside her.

He can stay with her then. He feels a great sense of relief as she hands him back his teddy. He’s not being abandoned today.

_

Anita thought she was prepared to see Theo in a muzzle.

She was wrong. Oh, so very wrong.

After what feels like an eternity, Theo’s led back into the reception by his leash, a thick black muzzle obscuring the lower half of his face. He kneels down beside her and she presses his teddy into his hands, giving him a quick once-over. He doesn’t look physically injured, but he is trembling. It’s probably best to get him out of here first and then take the muzzle off.

She swallows a sob and nods in thanks as the man hands her the paperwork. Oh, god, he looks trapped behind that. Trapped and scared and, as she bends down in front of him and sees his eyes, so damn hopeful, if a little glazed. How he can be hopeful she really doesn’t know, but it makes her feel incredibly guilty.

She signs for him to follow her and holds his leash loosely between their joined hands as he stands, walking with her out of the WRU office and down the stairs. Once they’re outside she leads him around the side of the building to a patch of grass by the river. It’s too small to be called a park, really, but it’ll do, and she sits down, gesturing for Theo to join her. He kneels down in front of her.

“I’m going to take your muzzle off now, sweetheart, is that okay?”

Theo takes a minute to process her words, but then he nods, and she reaches forward, unclasping the thick leather straps behind his head. The muzzle falls off into her hand, and she drops it quickly, noting the thick, spit-covered silicon bit with disgust.

He barely speaks as it is, and he certainly doesn’t bite. Even if you were cruel enough to want to put a pet in a muzzle, why use a bit? It’s just senseless cruelty.

Theo’s eyes are filled with tears as they gradually become more aware. Anita feels a tickle on her own cheek and brushes it, her finger coming away wet. It’s just– it’s so unfair. Theo’s a person, and to treat him the way the WRU do is abhorrent.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry,” she says, signing the apology haltingly too so Theo definitely understands it, as he trembles on his knees in front of her. “I didn’t realise they’d do that.” Theo twitches slightly towards her. “Hug?”

Theo nods, and she wraps her arms around him, careful that he can still see her if he looks up, keeping her hands on his back, where he can feel them. She feels her hoodie dampen as he leans against her chest.

She’s prepared to sit there for as long as he needs. Paati won’t mind if they’re a little later home with the shopping than planned.

How’s she supposed to take Theo to the Pet shop to buy a new collar after this, though? Will he be able to stand it?

Or will he think she’s going to muzzle him again? She has no idea what’s available to buy there, but it can’t be good, and Theo would think the worst even if he wasn’t so shaken.

She’ll sit here as long as he needs, though. As long as it takes for him to calm down. It’s all she can do, now. Maybe if she’d known about the check-up earlier, she could’ve found an alternative, or at least prepared him. Maybe if she was smarter about this, if she’d actually researched pet ownership properly after she got Theo...

Maybe, maybe, maybe. She shakes her head. Theo has no use for maybes now.

[wibble-wobbegong]

Jack the Ripper and ST: Part 2, ‘Eddy’ Victor and James Stephen

Among the hundreds of suspects for who really was Jack the Ripper, one of the strongest contenders was actually a duo; Prince Albert ‘Eddy’ Victor and James Kenneth Stephen.

In part 1, I emphatically argued for Edward’s role as JTR, but he may not have been working totally alone. Of the four suspects I’ll discuss in these parts, Eddy fits with Edward extremely well and the only reason he wasn’t taken in as JTR was because it would’ve been physically impossible for him to be in the place of the murders. That wouldn’t exactly be an issue for our Edward, would it?

Below the cut, I’ll establish parallels because they’re genuinely just as interesting than the murders themself, the relationship Eddy and James had, how they would’ve functioned as murderers vs how Edward and his partner did function as murderers, and how both of them died.

Establishing Parallels

Edward

First, the most obvious of parallels, names. Prince Albert Victor os the name he’s known by historically, but his full name was Albert Victor Christian Edward and the name the world called him was Eddy.

In his full name we see direct connections to Victor, Edward’s father, Christianity (which is a major theme in the show after the Creels are introduced), and, of course, Edward. The prince could’ve paralleled Victor Creel, but he chooses to go by Eddy. Not Victor, not even Edward, but Eddy. Now, this guy definitely is meant to parallel Edward Creel when we look at his childhood (which we will), but his choice of going by Eddy not only reinforces Eddy being Edward, but it contributes to the theory of Edward becoming Eddie by overtaking his corpse as his own mangled body is unusable after the burns — aka, Eddie puppet theory.

Even more than just the names, there were reports of Eddy as a child that sound eerily similar to our own Creel history. It was said that Eddy had an, “…elegant and possessive mother… ‘want of manliness’… ‘shrinking from horseplay’… [and a] ‘sweet, gentle, quiet and charming’ nature.” That doesn’t sound familiar? Try this one.

“…they would like to make a man of the world of him. Into that world he refused to be initiated.”

Come on.

Eddy also had a younger brother, born so close in age they were treated like twins. They went through education together and the educators refused to separate them because, without his brother, Eddy’s teachers felt like they could not teach him. He was far too “mentally absent”. Broken, if you will.

Again?

thanks em

Another fun little experience Eddy had once he was older was with Oscar Browning, who, “made pets of those undergraduates who were handsome and attractive.”

I’m not even gonna say it because I hate it!

Even moreso, his family held the high expectation for him to marry a woman who was charming, sensible, and pretty. He failed to achieve this goal several times, likely because he was homosexual.

Peter

Yeah. He’s here because god forbid I make ONE post without him working his way in. Here’s a real nice parallel to James Stephen — where Peter is most heavily noticed by the Saint Peter painting in the Russian church, James Stephen was a member of the Apostles intellectual society. Saint Peter us one of Jesus’ twelve Apostles.

James Stephen also has a cousin names Virginia Woolfe! This would also mean that Edward and Peter were likely cousins, seeing as Virginia is Edward’s sister, and then being cousins…. is really fucking funny.

I love it when bad couples parallel bad couples.

One more little thing is that James Stephen was a poet, and much of what he wrote can reflect the show with mentions of curses and melodies,

as well as the concept of twins demonstrating the contrast and similarity as a huge theme in mankind.

Peter’s parallels may not seem strong right now, but it’s hard to draw a ton of parallels to a character who doesn’t yet exist. Just trust me.

Homosexuality

When James and Eddy met, it was because James had been chosen to tutor Eddy before he was to be sent to Trinity College. While Eddy would’ve been 24, figuring out the time this took place in Edward’s life isn’t difficult because of the Brenner figure I mentioned earlier. Eddy met the man who would treat people as his pets during his first semester at Trinity College, which draws the comparison between the lab and the college, effectively placing Peter and Edward’s time right before Edward was sent off to Brenner. Makes pretty damn good sense if they’re meant to be an alternate version of Creelarke.

I’d like to consider this time to be when Peter and Edward were in some sort of summer program together, or something similar. This post by @aemiron-main points out the very likely possibility of Owens being Edward’s father and how, although I have called Peter Owens’ son in the past, the inly information we have that connects him to Owens is that he has Peter’s old school projects. Considering the summer camp is directly connected to both Ruth and Rose being in the same place as Petey McHew, we get this: Rose (Creel), Ruth (Owens), and Petey (Peter) were all in the same place at the same time during the summer.

It’s possible that Owens, as Edward’s father, had Peter help Edward in a summer school before they moved to Hawkins for the new school year.

This relationship is especially fascinating because James was a Christian man who actively participated in Christian activities (see; apostles society) — it’s likely this summer was teaching more than math and science. Where Hames was highly intellectual in comparison to Edward, this may translate to Peter’s greater success at pretending to be normal and straight compared to Edward’s ability to do the same.

Any feelings James felt for Eddy were very intense despite this. Strong enough to write about hating a specific woman and a specific man in his poem Men and Women. He was enraged by everything about this woman and this man was described in grief as his body became vacant of his soul and was nothing more than a corpse. He also mentions a missing eye replaced with glass in this man. Familiar?

It’s all familiar because the duffers fucking hate me and want me dead.

James also killed himself because of Edward’s death. By the way. What normal, heterosexual behavior.

Eddy was also heavily accused of homosexuality numerous times throughout his life by family, friends, press, and even historians. It wasn’t just James either, oh no, the entire Cleveland Scandal (involvement with a homosexual brothel) followed him for the rest of his life.

These bitches gay.

As Murderers

Here’s where things get really interesting.

1886 — two years before the Whitechapel murders — James suffered a massive head injury. He was struck by an object from a moving train, permanently altering his brain.

His behavior quickly devolved and he became deluded that he was a painter of great genius…

…and he eventually proclaimed that the doctors told him he would either die or go completely mad.

He was committed to an asylum in 1891.

Not only is the Phineas Gage parallel coming back, it’s being tied to the time Will was being used as a puppet by Edward. Edward learned that tactic from somewhere.

In the theory that James and Eddy were a murderous duo, it was suspected that James was the one controlling Eddy because his profile matches JtR so well. His hatred for women and mental status are the source of this belief. Their relationship in murder was described as, “…mutually dependent, with Stephen as the dominant partner.”

This dynamic could very sell explain why there’s so much puppetry in Vecna’s image.

i ran out of image room :(

Although Peter is no longer an active participant, Edward is still being guided by his ideals. Puppeteered, even. It isn’t something he rejects.

There are so, so many parallels between characters in ST and JtR’s victims, but this is already long. I’ll simply say that the death of Mary Jane Kelly is extremely similar to what we see in Mother Alice’s bedrooom, and I already pointed out the F in the first part. I’d only recommend looking into MJK if you’re very comfortable with looking at gore.

Also, Eddy’s tomb is surrounded by Saints. Peter follows him to death and beyond (which is about to be really ironic).

Deaths

I’ll keep this bit quick.

James died in 1892 due to mania triggered by the death of Eddy. He starved himself for 20 days as an act of suicide, seeing as he was in an asylum and didn’t have many choices. The timeline would indicate that Peter died in 1964, which also happens to be the year Kali was born in London.

That deserves its own post I think.

More importantly is Eddy’s death. Supposedly, he died if pneumonia, but it is theorized that his death was faked to remove him from his line of succession to the throne, which is cool on its own but what makes it really good is that media chose Eddy to be the one who takes the Dracula persona I mentioned in part 1. There was also a novel written after his death called the The Prince of Mirrors which is about his life with James.

There also happens to be a Sherlock Holmes interpretation of him in Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years, which shows him as a tyrannical ming who rules after the mysterious deaths of his grandmother and father. The throne he supposedly died to be removed from.

There’s a lot influencing this after-death image of Eddy in Dracula and kingship, which makes Vecna’s name of the Undying King pretty ironic.