Now that I’ve read the entirety of TGCF, here is the result of my grand research on:
“The number of times that Xie Lian did not know whether to laugh or cry”
Volume 1
Pages 79, 107, 235, 330, and 367 - 5 times
Volume 2
Pages 28, 80 (81), 206, 256, and 339 - 5/6 times
Volume 3
Pages 321, 330, and 363 - 3 times
Volume 4
pages 212, 290, 298, 311, 317, 338, and 368 - 7 times
Volume 5
Pages 27, 121, 177, 246, and 300 - 5 times
Volume 6
Pages 22, 40, 80, and 119 - 4 times
Volume 7
Pages 33, 81, 124, 134, 151, 164, 171 and 196 - 8 times
Volume 8
Pages 176, 213, 266, 285, 305 and 322 - 6 times
Which makes it a whopping average of 5 times with the Median being 5~5.5, Mode being 5/6 (depending on whether it was 5 or 6 times in volume 2), and the range of 5.
I could be missing a couple more of the instances so if I find anymore at any point in time during my re-read, I’ll come back and add it up and recalculate everything.
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How the Avengers Would React…
To You Hiding and Injury, No Matter How Small
616 Stephen Strange x Reader
You and Stephen had been squirreled away in the Kamar Taj library for two weeks, doing everything in your considerable power to find a way to reverse the memory spell Stephen had cast for Spiderman. Stephen had been fine with leaving it be but you insisted that at least he, Mrs. Stark, young Morgan Stark, Happy Hogan, and a pair of teens named MJ and Ned remember evenething about New York's webslinger.
"OW! Mother trucker that hurts more than a buttcheek on a stick!” you swore from behind your wall of stacked books.
"What is it?” Stephen demanded, standing and using the Clock of Levitation to get around the books and hover anxiously at your side. ”What's wrong?"
"Paper cut. I'd take being stabbed over one of these little fuckers any day,” you grumbled as you squeezed the wound to your right finger to stem the bleeding.
"Haven’t they suffered enough?" the older sorcerer hissed as he glared balefully at the tome currently resting on your lap.
"Stephen, seriously. Take a chill pill, it's a papercut. I've had worse,” the you snorted as you pulled a Band-Aid from a pocket dimension and wrapped the offending cut.
"That doesn't mean you should suffer at all,” he argued back, carefully taking your hands and checking them over for any wounds you might have missed as he sat beside her.
"Ma cheri, it's sweet of you to worry, but you can't protect me from the world," you chided, slipping your hands from his shaky grasp to gently hold his face, the scratch of his beard tickling your palms.
"I can damn well try," he fired heatedly.
Cocking your head curiously to the side, you becan to get the feeling that there was a deeper problem behind the Master of the New York Sanctum's worry and over-protectiveness.
"Stephen, babe, you never worried this much before 2014 Thanos and the Snap. What's really goin' on, sweetheart?”
The former neurosurgeon remaind silent and stubbornly stared at his boots.
"Stephen? Come on, baby. I can't help you if you don't talk to me. I'm many things, but telepathic ain't one of them” you pressed.
"You were in a coma," the doctor finally whispered. "For five weeks, and there was no way I could help you. Nothing I did helped you heal or wake up, I couldn't even kill Thanos myself, let alone protect you because of that dawn flood. You were bleeding so much, darling. And I couldn't get to you!”
Terrified, angry tears were trailing down the doctor’s cheeks when he finally looked up, making it clearer than ever how much you meant to him.
"Oh, baby boy,” your murmured, heart breaking in your chest. "Come 'ere."
Stephen willingly curled against you, resting his head on your shoulder and holding you as tightly as he dared while you ran your fingers soothingly through his dark hair.
"Honey, I took that risk because I knew Tony needed a diversion to get the Stones from that raisin-faced bitch. I can heal from anything. Immortal, remember? I'm not leaving you anytime soon, gentil garçon, I promise. Death knows better than to fuck with me,” you reassured him, softly pressing a kiss to his forehead.
You two spent several hours curled up on that spot, you quietly humming, rocking , and petting his hair as you continued your research. Stephen remained tucked in your arms, re-enforcing in his mind that his darling was safe and whole.
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Ranva remembered dreaming of the girl with the crown of thorns when she was little.
It had always frightened her, the way the girl would scream and cry and pin her to the ground, raising the dagger high to sink it right into Ranva’s heart.
She used to wake up in tears, running to find shelter in the bed of her parents. Her mother used to run her hand through her dark locks and sooth her back to sleep.
She remembered asking her mother who the girl was, but she didn’t have an answer.
“I don’t know, dear. But she cannot harm you, so don’t be afraid. The nightmare will pass eventually, just you wait.”
And she was right, it did.
Ranva almost forgot about it, until one day Henry crawled into her bed, frightened by a nightmare about a girl with a crown of thorns.
She had soothed him back to sleep like her mother once did for her, telling him the same calming words.
It took some nights, but eventually the nightmare passed for Henry, too. Still, this time the girl with the crown of thorns didn’t leave her mind that easily.
She kept wondering who she was and why she kept haunting the dreams of her family.
Maybe that was why one day, when she sat in her chair with Aiden sleeping close to her heart and exhaustion from worrying about her baby made her fall asleep as well, she dreamed of the girl again.
This time, the dream was different from what she remembered and what her eldest son had told her.
She wasn’t the one standing face to face with the girl, she was watching from the distance as the girl fought with someone else.
It was a young man and he seemed awfully familiar, though she couldn’t quite explain how or why.
Knowing how that dream would end, Ranva ran towards them to try and stop the girl from harming him.
As she got closer she got a better look on the boy that the girl was fighting with and it almost made her stop dead in her tracks.
He looked almost like Milan. Almost. But something about him was different.
Ranva could tell that it wasn’t her husband who was currently fighting for his life there, yet the boy felt strangely familiar and she felt the desperate need to help, to save him.
The girl now had him pinned down to the floor and a panicked scream escaped Ranva’s throat as she saw her raise the dagger high up into the air.
Its blade flashed in the light and much to her surprise the dagger, too, was familiar to her.
Pushing the realization aside she lunged forward to throw herself between the two.
Why she did it, she couldn’t tell, all she felt was the urge to save the boy.
But it was in vain, for she slid right through the two as if they were made out of mist.
Staving off a hard fall, Ranva rolled to the side. She tried standing up again, but somehow she couldn’t move.
Around her, time seemed to have slowed down.
Not too far away, the boy turned his head to face Ranva and their eyes met. He smiled slightly, mouthing something she couldn’t understand.
His outstretched hand twitched like he tried reaching for her and Ranva’s eyes filled with tears as she watched helplessly how the dagger sank down into his chest and the boy went still within seconds.
His eyes were still staring at Ranva, unblinking, and she had to look away.
Her eyes wandered to the dagger and the pair of hands still clasped around its beautifully adorned handle and even higher up to the face of the girl who had just committed the horrible crime in front of her.
A cold fist closed itself around Ranva’s heart. Because the person that held the bloodied knife wasn’t the girl with the crown of thorns anymore.
It was Ranva’s mother.
Ranva awoke with a gasp, her cheeks wet with tears.
Aiden was awake, too, crying and wiggling around as if he just had a bad dream himself.
Quickly brushing away her tears she started to sooth the baby, trying to calm both of them down. She held her little son close, pressing a kiss to his head.
It was just a dream, she told herself. Nothing to worry about.
Later, when her husband and sons were already asleep, Ranva sat down in front of their bed and pulled out a little chest from under it.
Careful not to wake Milan or Aiden, she opened the pretty lid, revealing a bunch of letters and items from a life she had long left behind.
Reaching into the chest, her fingers felt for something hidden away at the very bottom of it.
Something that hadn’t left her mind all day.
She finally found what she was looking for, pulling out an object wrapped in a dark red cloth.
Taking a deep breath, she unwrapped it, revealing an adorned bronze dagger.
It was the exact same dagger from her dream. Runa’s dagger.
Ranva gasped.
Maybe this wasn’t just a dream after all.
Maybe it was a warning.
*
Make it known to the world, I finally got my lazy ass up to write something
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