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songtoyou · 3 years

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Chapter Eight: Be Still

Would You Call That Love

Pairing: Chris Evans x Raina Morrison (OC)

Rating: PG to PG-13 (Might be 18+ for some chapters)

Story Summary: There was always that one person Chris Evans tended to turn to when he was not in a committed relationship, Raina Morrison. He could confide in her about things going on in his life that he did not feel comfortable talking to his family or close friends about. Chris and Raina were able to establish a way to openly communicate with one another, but also being respectful of the other’s time and needs. It was the only constant “relationship” he had, but without all the nonsense of trying to build a life together. A “friends with benefits” situation. However, what happens when Chris starts rethinking his “relationship” with Raina and if either are willing to pursue something more?

Chapter Summary: Raina and Chris are having trouble dealing with their time apart. Long-distance relationships suck.

Chapter Rating: PG

Warnings: None

Word Count: 2,258

Author’s Note: I was having trouble with this chapter. I had to end up rewriting it because I was not feeling the first draft.

Italics represent flashback conversations.

Sadly, I do not know Chris Evans or anyone in his family, and this is just a fictional take on his life. I do not permit this fic to be reposted on other platforms.

Tag List: @patzammit

Three months. That is how long Raina and Chris had been apart. She continued to star in the Broadway version of Moulin Rouge as Satine. Shows were constantly selling out. Reviews were acclaimed. Unfortunately, Raina was feeling bored. The same routine was beginning to annoy her. She didn't like that there was no room to change things up. Being in a Broadway show was vastly different from her concerts. Raina knew it would be.

Jerry had warned Raina that Broadway was a whole different ballgame than what she was used to or experienced. "You won't be able to change or add things from show to show. It is more rigorous than what you are used to, kid," Raina remembered Jerry telling her one day before she accepted the role.

Raina wanted a challenge. She wanted to do something different. There were times where Raina felt stagnant in her career. Plus, Raina was now considered an aging pop star, so she had to begin the process of branching out into different fields of entertainment.

"You should do the voice," Jerry would always suggest, which Raina repetitively turned down. It wasn't that Raina looked down on voice competition shows. She didn't want to open that door to be on television every week for months on end. She was a performer, not a judge.

Again, three months. Three months since Raina had physically seen her boyfriend. They talked on the phone and skyped regularly, but it was not the same as being in the same room. She missed Chris terribly. And he missed her.

Chris had been pretty busy himself, first having to take Dodger back to Boston before getting ready to go to Toronto. With Raina's busy schedule, she would not have been able to take care of the canine. For a week and a half, Chris would attend the Toronto Film Festival to promote the movie Knives Out. Raina wished she could have gone with him. Chris wished she could have gone with him.

After the film festival, Chris didn't have much downtime. He rushed into working on A Starting Point with Mark to outline the website and coordinate interviews with politicians.

Raina made it a point to steer clear of conversations about ASP. Truthfully, she didn't find the idea appealing or exciting. Yes, Americans needed to be informed about certain aspects of politics and important issues. But many outlets already offered what Chris and Mark were trying to do. She asked Chris one time what made ASP different from the others. She was surprised that he wasn't quite able to come up with a sufficient answer. Raina knew Chris meant well.

"Chris," she spoke up one day before he left the City, "You know I will never bullshit you, and I won't ever blow smoke up your ass. That has never been the kind of friendship we had. Nor is it how we want our intimate relationship to go."

He looked at Raina and told her to go on. "Sometimes, I have noticed, is that you tend not to be able to look outside of your privilege, Chris. You know what I am saying?"

Chris turned to his girlfriend. He was confused about where she was getting at. "No. What are you saying?"

Raina sighed. She could tell Chris was on the verge of getting defensive. "Nothing," she said, throwing her hands up in defeat. "Look, let's no…argue about…stupid stuff, okay." Raina pleaded and walked up to Chris to put her arms around him.

He reciprocated by doing the same. Leaning in, Chris captured Raina's lips. "I don't want to argue either. Especially not before I have to leave," he whispered in her ear.

There would times when Raina would look back on that exchange between her and Chris. She felt weird about how Chris became so defensive. Yeah, she could have worded things better; however, why should she?

Truthfully, Chris was a privileged white male. If he took the time to recognize his privileges, it would make him a better ally to those who represent underprivileged groups. Raina was worried about any possible backlash Chris could face with a project like AS, which was not what she wanted for him. She understood that this was a passion project for Chris and Mark as well. Raina only wanted Chris to make sure that everything was in order and that nothing would be thrown at him unexpectedly. She knew Chris wasn't able to take criticism very well, even when it was constructive, mainly when it came to projects he was enthusiastic about; she understood as she was the same way.

With their time apart, Chris had to miss her birthday, October 19. Chris made sure to send Raina an enormous flower arrangement he could find, along with an array of goodies from Dylan's Candy Bar store. Chris knew the gifts would something Raina would appreciate. However, he still felt guilty that he was not with her to celebrate her birthday in person.

"Hey, birthday girl," Chris greeted Raina through skype on the day of her birthday. He laughed when he saw that she was holding the cupcake pillow he got her.

"I love it!" she exclaimed happily. "And I love my three-tier candy cake. I can't believe you got me that," Raina pointed out as she adjusted the laptop camera to show Chris the candy cake. "I won't be able to eat all of that."

"Yeah, you will," he laughed.

"I miss you," Raina said to Chris. "I didn't think being away from you would be this hard."

Chris sighed, "I miss you, too, sweetheart. But we'll see each other for Christmas, right?"

"Yes, of course. I made sure to schedule that time off. I still plan to come up to Concord for Christmas. My dad has already made plans with Diane for not only Christmas but Thanksgiving as well. So he is taken care of," Raina revealed. "Speaking of Thanksgiving, what are you doing?"

Shifting in his seat, Chris shared that he would spend it in Concord with his family. He noticed the slight disappointment on Raina's face and shift in her demeanor. "You don't want to come here and spend the holiday with me?" she asked solemnly. She didn't want to press on the issue but wanted to hear Chris's reason.

Raina understood that Chris always liked to spend the holidays with his family, but deep down, she hoped he would change it up this year. "It's just been two and a half months since we saw each other," Raina began but stopped. The last thing she wanted to do was to make Chris feel guilty. "Do you have any time off before then?"

"Like you, I'm completely booked up until Christmas. Mark and I are still working on the website for A Starting Point for the rest of October, then when November comes around, it is all press for Knives Out and premiers. Trust me; I would rather be with you than have to do press junkets or walk red carpets," Chris acknowledged.

Raina grabbed a piece of candy from her three-tier candy cake. She just sat back in her chair, not looking at the computer screen. Raina focused on the candy. She didn't want to look at Chris because if she did, tears would begin to form. For some reason, missing Chris and wanting to be with him felt like the equivalent of homesickness. It was a feeling she had never experienced when it came to another human being. Even when she was a teenager touring across the world, she never felt homesick. Her relationship with Chris brought along a whole new set of feelings for Raina, and part of it scared her.

She suddenly asked herself, 'Am I becoming too dependent on Chris?' The last thing Raina wanted to be, was co-dependent.

Raina shook her head and sat up in her chair. She looked at Chris and smiled. "I'm sorry. I know you're busy. I don't mean to pressure you or make you feel bad."

The two continued to talk a bit longer until Chris noticed Raina yawning. "Okay, sweetheart, I will let you get to bed."

"No, I can still talk. It's early," Raina whined like a child.

"It's a quarter after eleven, and that is now your fourth yawn in the last fifteen minutes," he pointed out. "You need to get to bed."

Raina sighed, "Alright, boss. I'll get to bed. Talk to you later or when either one of us is available. Bye, honey. Love you."

"Love you, too. Bye."

Thanksgiving rolled around faster than Chris expected. Time flies when one is busy. He continued to talk to Raina via phone or skype. However, Chris was also beginning to get frustrated at their time apart. Currently, he was home, sitting in his living room with his brother and brother-in-law, watching a football game between the Buffalo Bills and Dallas Cowboys while his mom and sisters prepared dinner. Lisa would poke her head from the kitchen, asking the boys for help from time to time. His niece and nephew were running around playing with Dodger, who appeared to love the attention.

It was almost perfect, except one person was missing. Raina. He called her earlier that day. She shared that she was celebrating Thanksgiving, Chandler Bing style, with some of the Moulin Rouge cast.

"What the Hell is Thanksgiving, Chandler Bing style?" Chris asked, confused.

"Damnit, watch friends, Christopher," Raina scolded teasingly. "Chandler Bing doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving. Because that was the day his parents told him that they were getting divorced. So, instead of all the turkey fixings and stuffing, we have grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, and a family-size bag of Funyuns as an appetizer. We have lots of booze, so don't worry. Oh, and pumpkin cheesecake. Good times, right."

Chris only laughed. "You're living the dream. I don't think what Ma is making could compare."

"Just be sure to tell her to make her spaghetti for Christmas dinner. Or at least make a small pot of it just for me, okay."

"She's planning to, so don't worry. What are you watching? I hear gunfire," Chris enquired.

"I'm watching my husband, Tommy Shelby, shoot at the Italians," Raina informed as she watched Peaky Blinders. "I love Tommy Shelby. I tell you, Chris, if Tommy Shelby showed up at my door asking me to marry him, I would most likely say yes."

"Is that so."

"In a heartbeat. Sorry, hon, but Tommy Shelby, the things I would let him do to..."

"Thank God he is a fictional character," Chris interrupted.

"Not in my dreams he isn't," Raina taunted.

"Okay, I'm hanging up now."

"Alright, I'll stop lusting after my fictional husband while I'm on the phone with you," said Raina and switched topics.

The two continued to talk until Chris was ordered into the kitchen by his mother. It was his turn to help.

Chris was chopping carrots and celery when his mother asked how Raina was doing.

"She is doing fine. Raina wishes she could be here."

However, Lisa could tell something was bothering Chris. He could never hide his emotions from her. "What's the matter, Christopher?"

Chris continued to chop the vegetables until he stopped to look at his mother. "I didn't expect being away from Raina would be this hard, Ma."

"Of course it is. You love Raina," Lisa stated as she continued cooking.

"I do. But in the past, I had girlfriends who I loved and had to do long-distance," Chris explained. "None of those worked out."

"Because you weren't truly in love with them," Lisa pointed out. "Don't compare what you have with Rain to your past relationships. Every relationship is different. What you and Raina have now is not something you have experienced before, which is real love. True love. Everyone always knew that you two would end up together, except you and Raina. You both are so cute but also clueless at times. You both will get through this. The work commitments will die down. You both will be reunited. Everything will be fine."

Chris took in what his mother was saying. He knew she was right. He had things to look forward to beginning the start of the new year.

"Raina is the first person I dated, well since Jessica at least, that I have really begun to think about marriage and kids. Part of me is scared because it's all so fast. We have only started dating back in mid-July. I don't want to rush anything. I don't want to scare her off. I don't want her to get bored of me," Chris confessed honestly.

It was heartbreaking for Lisa to hear. She gestured for Chris to sit down at the kitchen table. "You need to stop, Chris. You are allowing your anxiety to get the best of you. Just take a deep breath, okay," she instructed her oldest son. "Raina will never get bored of you. She loves you very much. Don't think about the past; only focus on the future. You and Raina will be fine. More than fine. Yes, there will be hard times, along with good times. It is normal for every functional relationship. You can't have the good without the bad, the sad without the happy, the ups and the downs. The universe needs balance."

"Okay, Oprah," Chris joked. "I get what you're saying."

"Do you?"

"Yeah, I do, Ma."

"Good. Now get back to chopping," Lisa ordered, and Chris went back to cutting vegetables for Thanksgiving dinner.

#chris evans #chris evans x oc #chris evans x ofc

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venuscommissions · 4 years

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heyooo guys ! so , last four months were literal hell for most people worldwide, me & my family included ! shit sucked balls , but thankfully i’m proud to announce that we’re slowly but surely getting back on our feet . a lot of you were genuinely concerned , & i received a ton of asks inquiring about my well-being & sending words of encouragement / hope / well wishes my way ... which even though i wasn’t in the right frame of mind to answer back then, they still warmed my heart & gave me some much needed strength. since , many asks are asking similar things, i thought it best to make one faq sorta post rather than answering each individually and clogging people’s dashboards.

so, basically a lotta third world bullshit happened, food stuff, medical stuff, etc. as my government implemented a very strict ( read : brutal ) lockdown that lasted more than three months. i don’t want to get into, because many people have had troubling times recently & i’d rather not make anyone upset / sad or even trigger them in any way. Know this though, after few months of me trying to just survive & not fucking starve, one of the main reasons of my not being active or doing anything was my laptop constantly breaking down, the issue with it being very simple, my ram slot had some carbon gunk on it, but alas. the first time it crashed in the beginning of may, the call center got me doing some tests on the phone via keyboard keys ( because laptop wasn’t opening. ) & they diagnosed that the issue was that my ram needed to be replaced. & since i wasn’t an essential worker ( i.e government or hospital worker ) they weren’t allowed to give me priority service or machine parts. it took them a month for them to ship the ram to my cities service center & to get a guy to my house to put it in. & when he did, the guy was either so overworked or stupid enough that he didn’t notice that there was some carbon gunk inside the ram slot & not just on the old ram chip. my laptop worked fine for some days, but crashed again. this time around, they once again put me on a waiting list, & it took the guy almost three weeks to come back around. this time though he finally fixed it, & i was able to start working again. so , yeah, i’m ok now guys, mostly lol ... but it really meant a lot to me that you guys cared enough to ask !

no, i’m not opening commissions right away, hopefully by the end of this month though. if you do wanna commission me though, & wanna be the first ones I inform when i do open, SEND ME A MESSAGE ON THIS TEMPORARY SIDEBLOG : @vc-neworders . please mention what you are planning to order & for which character, etc.

yes, even though my laptop was fixed at the end of june, & i’ve been working nonstop, i’ve only been able to finish half of my pending orders. this is partly due to me having 1500+ ims about stuff like psd recommendation & other general questions that people ask commissioners in my i.m. chat box that have accumulated during my four month absence & i’m having trouble finding pending orders as i have to deal with each chat one at a time & the shitty little chat box refreshes after every message i send. & also partly because this weeks of monday was a deadline for a ton of term end assignments & essays that i was supposed to have done over the summer but couldn’t because no laptop. IF YOU HAVE A PENDING ORDER THOUGH, PLEASE SEND ME A NEW MESSAGE. this will help me find our chat & subsequently your order & finish it. you will also be gifted various freebies from my side as an apology for the huge delay & for being so patient & understanding during these shitty times.

firstly, let me say how touched i was that so many people wanted to know if their was anyway they could help me, it made me all melty inside omg. and since i still won’t be able to open commissions for a bit, it is a very good question lol.... so, here’s how you can help support me till i’m able to open commissions :

BUY PSDs , ETC. FROM MY DEVIANTART SHOP ! all the stuff available can also be bought via PAYPAL , just DM me .

ALSO , THESE SALE DISCOUNTS ARE STILL AVAILABLE UNTIL I SAY OTHERWISE !

BECOME A PATREON ! this month i’m offering two exclusive psds for the price of one, to celebrate me surviving the world almost ending. THIS MONTHS PSD PREVIEWS !

BUY ME A KO-FI !

ONCE AGAIN , thank you so much for bearing with me, being patient with me & for just sending me some love when i needed it the most !

#I LOVE U GUYS

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homespork-review · 4 years

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Homespork Act 4, Part 2: Flight of the Paradox Groans

BRIGHT: Remember Spades Slick being bizarrely aware he was in a comic, back in the Intermission? Buckle up, things are about to get even more fourth-wall-breaking. Appropriately, this starts by the comic focusing on an actual fourth wall, which activates to show...Andrew Hussie.

Hussie’s MS Paint avatar notices the audience watching him, laments that his side of the wall doesn’t have an off switch, and then recaps the first year of Homestuck.

Now, in all fairness: The recap is thorough, full of links, and explains things fairly well. It’s quite long, but given how much territory it has to cover I’m not sure it could be any shorter. So it does its job well, and it’s a boon if you’re getting lost with the plot.

As for the author insertion...on this occasion I don’t mind it. It comes across as tongue-in-cheek, but framed more as the author talking to the reader than as the author inserting himself into the narrative. It’s definitely very Homestuck.

Anyway, AH gets back to work, and after a couple of false starts we return to John!

John is still flying around with his jet pack. GC trolls him to offer him a world map of LOWAS and tell him she feels awful about killing him, although in literally the next line she tells him that technically he never even died so she doesn’t understand why he’s so upset. John understandably finds this disturbing. They have a brief nonsensical discussion about Jesus/Jegus, and then John agrees to go take a look at what’s on the other side of his Second Gate. Yes, on the advice of someone whose previous advice got him killed.

CHEL: Almost a shame we didn’t set up a Too Dumb To Live count, but then to be fair that was a separate timeline and he’s probably not thinking of it as something that “really” happened. This is supported by his later dialogue.

FAILURE ARTIST: The word Jegus is really popular in the Homestuck fandom, used far more often than it is in the canon. Gets quite annoying, in my opinion. Actually, a rather Jesus-like figure does appear, but he’s not called “Jegus”.

CHEL: Yeah, I think only Terezi, John, and Dave ever use the term, but it somehow became latched onto as an actual term used by trolls in general, even though in canon it isn’t.

BRIGHT: Fortunately, this time GC appears to be playing nice. John flies though the Second Gate and emerges...into LOLAR?

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie does an amusing trick where he has what looks like a loading screen for a flash but it’s actually a still image eternally at 2%.

BRIGHT: Yes, it’s LOLAR. John promptly crashes into Rose’s house, smashing through a wall and into her bedroom, where Rose is still snoozing in her knitting pile. Apart from briefly being stuck upside down, he does not appear injured by this collision.

Rose has somehow slept through the commotion. John decides to let her rest and borrows her computer to talk to Dave.

The first one he talks to is actually Davesprite, who points out how moronic John was to listen to GC again. No arguments here! Then he explains how the Gate system works: Odd-numbered Gates, above players’ houses, lead to somewhere on their planets. Even-numbered Gates lead to other players’ planets, exiting over their houses. Normally they aren’t meant to go through even-numbered Gates until the houses are built up, so they don’t fall to their deaths, but fortunately John has a jetpack workaround. So far Davesprite is living up to his promise of being straightforward.

John realises he’s talking to Future Dave, and asks “do you think i could talk to the real dave for a second?”

...ouch, John.

Davesprite goes off on a tear, ranting that he is a real Dave — arguably the realest Dave, since he’s been running around LOHAC for months trying to get enough information to save everyone. John apologises sincerely.

CHEL: This won’t be the last we hear of this theme, though.

EB: i think i pissed off your future self. TG: what did you do EB: i said he wasn't the real dave. TG: ahahahahaha EB: i think i might have really hurt his feelings though! TG: pff TG: dont worry about it EB: why not? TG: cause i wouldnt give a shit TG: and hes me

BRIGHT: Not a hundred percent sure I believe Dave, there.

CHEL: Dave uses John to snoop around Rose’s room and get the captcha code for her journals. Classy, Dave. Not a SLAMMER point, however, as this does come back to bite him very soon.

Rose’s dreamself has awoken on Derse, the purple planet, and flies across to the opposite tower. Dave’s dreamself appears to be awake, sitting upright in his computer chair; the room is entirely an unsettling bloody red colour apart from the SBaHJ cartoons on the walls, and… oh shit, there’s Lil Cal again, now in a long purple nightdress and hopping around the room on his own. If Rose was having nightmares because of dreamself issues, I can only imagine how Dave’s nightmares must look. Rose throws a ball of yarn at Dave’s dreamself, alerting him, and causing the awake Dave to pass out.

Back in Rose’s room, it seems that Charles Barkley quote was not misattributed:

FAILURE ARTIST: Another SBaHJ reference in the book quote. Is that where Dave got it?

Still, I don’t recall this book ever coming up again. Just another item that seems like a Chekhov's Gun but isn’t.

CHEL: John feels guilty about opening his birthday gift from Rose, but reasons that it’s technically now his anyway, so he does, finding another bunny, this one black and filthy-looking except for the pristine knitted purple patches repairing it, though its shape is eerily familiar.

The gift in this box is a resurrection. I used your present to thread life anew into a tattered heirloom. As long as I can remember, its black, greasy appendages have been tethered limply to its ratty, porous carriage. Too delicate to wash, too dear to discard. I used to love this rabbit. Now he's yours. I trust you'll find this to be adequately sentimental. Happy birthday.

Oh my gosh, awwwwww. Even if you don’t ship them romantically how can you not love their interactions? Definitely one of the comic’s strong points. Also I need to go hug my childhood teddy bear.

John puts the bunny back in the box again and the box in his sylladex, freeing Casey the salamander while he’s at it. And let’s just take a minute to feel utter horror because dead John still had Casey in his sylladex, so the best option is that she died too, and the worst is that we have an And I Must Scream situation on for a baby salamander. Gah.

FAILURE ARTIST: Thanks, I’d never thought of that and I never want to again.

You aren't actually sure if she is a girl though. You don't even know if salamanders can be girls. Aren't they hermaphrodites or something?

CHEL: No, for the record. Though some frogs can switch from one to the other.

FAILURE ARTIST: Casey is very popular as a name for an OC child of John (often having Rose as the mother).

CHEL: John answers Rose’s Pesterchum, upon which GA is half-heartedly sending antagonistic messages. John answers on Rose’s account, saying that Rose is asleep, which GA takes for Human Sarcasm, prompting John to pretend to be Rose.

GA: I Should Figure Out How The Viewport Feature Of This Application Works GA: So I Can See What Such A Primitive Creature Looks Like TT: haha, well i know what you guys look like. TT: you look kind of like... TT: howie mandel from little monsters.

Wait, how does he know? Am I forgetting a point at which he saw them?

BRIGHT: I always assumed that he was just goofing around and his guess happened to land in the right ballpark, but thinking about it, I’m not sure the kids ever express surprise at the trolls’ appearance.

CHEL: John, pretending to be Rose, talks about how awesome John is.

GA: He Is Either The Leader Of Your Party Or You Hold Whatever The Human Equivalent Of Mating Fondness For Him Is

CHEL: Both. Both is good!

FAILURE ARTIST: Knowing what we do of troll culture later this is an odd statement. Heck, it’s just an odd statement. Maybe this is why people think trolls don’t do friendship.

CHEL: John apparently confuses GA by saying it’s because Rose is thoughtful and John appreciates his gift, and suggests GA talk to John.

TT: why don't you pick the time that will make the most complicated mess out of everything imaginable?

GA sounds very annoyed, and leaves, intending to have the conversation with John that she had previously. We see her, GC, and the horns of AT and an unknown troll in the grey room, now revealed to be a computer laboratory. For some reason she chats via Pesterchum with another troll instead of just walking over to talk to them. This new troll is twinArmageddons, an appropriate name for the circumstances, who type2 iin yellow text liike thii2; he is, as it turns out, the hacker guy GC mentioned earlier. TA is busy setting up the network and seems irritable in general, and is not willing to help GA work her viewport.

TA: iif ii 2ee one more 2narl of wiire2. TA: kiind of juttiing out and beiing tangled or whatever. TA: ii am goiing two perform 2ome 2ort of athletiic fuckiing 2omer2ault off the deep end and get a call from the pre2iident or 2ome 2hiit.

Nice callback, but trolls, as we’ll later find out, don’t have presidents.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 14

GA wonders why TA doesn’t want to talk to her, and TA complains that he knew in advance the trolls were doomed and no one believed him. He refuses to troll the humans himself but is setting up the system so the others can in order to get them to leave him alone. GA asks again for help, to no avail.

TA: iif you cant fiigure 2hiit out by fuckiing around you dont belong near computer2. TA: kiind of liike wiith regii2tered 2ex offender2 and 2chool2. TA: iif you move two a new town you have two go up two your neiighbor2 door and warn them about how 2tupiid you are. TA: and giive them a chance two hiide all theiir iinnocent technology. TA: and vandaliize your hou2e.

Ooh, a threefer plus one! Tacky simile for the Problematykks. As for WSP, we’ll later find out that 1) trolls kill all their criminals, 2) trolls don’t give a shit about the welfare of their children, and 3) trolls don’t appear to actually go to school. These two counts are neck and neck in the lead now!

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 17 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 17

BRIGHT: As with much of Homestuck, the trolls give the impression of being made up as Hussie went along. That’s not entirely a bad thing -- it certainly makes the comic pretty unique -- but it does lead to some out-of-place slip-ups.

Anyway, GA chucks her F1 key at TA’s head and then starts poking him. We also see CG in the lab.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think I recall GA/TA were a popular ship before we learned more about GA. It does seem like they have a Rose & Dave dynamic going on.

BRIGHT: Back on Derse, Rose and Dave have a dance party to Dave’s music while accompanied by some crows and Lil Cal, who keeps teleporting around the room. Rose eventually gets tired of Cal’s shenanigans and hurls him out of the window, to the relief of many.

FAILURE ARTIST: The flash originally included music by Bill Bolin. In fact, it was his unfinished music being included here that caused all the drama in the first place.

BRIGHT: Time for some random interludes! First up is Maplehoof the pony, who is following Rose’s mother through a large cave which, judging by the grist lying around, recently contained very dangerous monsters.

FAILURE ARTIST: Apparently pets can collect grist for their masters...and know what grist is despite being a normal(?) animal.

BRIGHT: First Mom, and then Maplehoof, stand on a transportaliser platform and disappear. Second is Dad, who has just acquired a replacement shoe and hat (which showed up in the walkaround game, way back at the beginning of the Act), when he encounters a familiar-looking stranger with a Colonel Sassacre book, who leads him to another transportalizer platform. Both of these interludes do become relevant later, but at the time they seem a tad unnecessary.

Meanwhile, John uses Rose’s alchemiter and a code Davesprite gave him mid-rant to produce a truly epic hammer called FEAR NO ANVIL. It’s far too big for John to wield, but fortunately he can use the scaling upgrade on the alchemiter to reduce it to a more useable size. ...wait. When did Rose’s alchemiter get a scaling upgrade? Dave and Jade added a lot of modifications to his, but Rose’s should be the original edition. Sigh.

EB: so what is this? EB: the thing the code made... TG: really powerful hammer EB: how do you know? EB: i thought you couldn't use hammers. TG: i cant TG: better be though TG: got it from hephaestus EB: who's that? TG: really tough to kill dude EB: you killed him for it? TG: nope EB: how'd you get it then? TG: shenanigans EB: ok.

...and we’re back to sprite evasiveness. Davesprite is being less than forthcoming here, although it’s less obvious than with Nannasprite because it superficially imitates John and Dave’s bantering.

CHEL: Now, this would be a good way of keeping us interested if we were eventually going to see how he did it, and also they have a time limit, so not going off into a long anecdote would be understandable. However, we’ll see how his evasiveness level proceeds in the future.

BRIGHT: Dream Rose and Dave see John using Rose’s alchemiter on Dream Dave’s computer. Rose wakes up.

FAILURE ARTIST: It is interesting how early Homestuck avoided having characters have face-to-face conversations. Would have been unique if it kept up throughout the entire comic.

BRIGHT: Back in the meteor, GA hassles TA into opening the viewport on her computer. This turns out to be as simple as clicking on the point in Rose’s timeline that she wants to see. No wonder TA was frustrated!

Of course, by this point, the only one left in the room is Rose, now awake, and the young salamander. Rose hurries to catch up with John, but he blasts off to explore before she can reach him, taking her mutated kitten with him.

CHEL: John renames Vodka Mutini to Dr Meowgon Spengler, and Rose renames Casey to Viceroy Bubbles von Salamancer. Interesting link to the themes of identities which are starting to crop up, though it’s not really a direct analogue. The animals are the same animals with different names; the alternate timeline characters have the same names and superficially the same identities, but are they really the same people after their new experiences?

BRIGHT: Back on Derse, Lil Cal inexplicably lands on a stray rocket board, catching the attention of AR.

You're not sure which laws are being broken, but it is probably a lot.

AR follows Cal to yet another transportaliser, and they both dematerialise.

We jump back to John, who spies a boat on one of the islands dotting LOLAR and lands to investigate. He follows hoofprints in the sand into a subterranean hallway filled with monsters. Fortunately his new hammer has time powers, which stun the monsters long enough for John to kill them. Further on, he finds the transportaliser Mom used. John, naturally, stands on it, and is transported to a meteor in the Veil.

Actually, it’s not just a meteor; it’s one of the laboratories where the Skaian troops are produced. John, along with the cat and Maplehoof, finds a bunch of chess guys being grown in glass jars on a giant podium. Most of them are the standard carapaces we’re familiar with, but there are also a few larger pieces, apparently based on knights and rooks. He also finds a JUNIOR ECTOBIOLOGIST’S LAB SUIT, and another of those strange house-shaped sets of monitors.

On Prospit, PM is preparing to board a shuttle to Skaia when a COURTYARD DROLL sneaks up behind her. Unaccountably, she fails to notice him, despite the fact that he’s wearing a hat larger than he is. CD successfully pickpockets the White Queen’s ring, and PM departs for Skaia, none the wiser.

CD radios the DRACONIAN DIGNITARY to report mission success, and is told that he doesn’t need to keep wearing his ridiculous outfit, per orders from Jack Noir, who is now going by the SOVEREIGN SLAYER. CD says he’d rather keep wearing the outfit. Apart from the sword-through-the-chest part, it is a very nice outfit, so I’m with CD on this one.

Catastrophe is averted by Jade delivering a flying kick to CD’s head and following up with a very efficient smackdown. Her robot body replicates this back on Earth, beating the stuffing out of her mummified grandfather. Jade retrieves the ring, and puts it on her fingers to remind herself to give it back to PM later. Unfortunately, this doesn’t cause Jade to sprout wings and tentacles. Seems the rings don’t work on humans like that.

Meanwhile, in a Timeless Expanse, a WARWEARY VILLEIN is getting tired of the battle between Derse and Prospit. The next animation is called “WV?: Rise Up” and it’s one of my favorites! When I first read Homestuck I had to watch it a few times before I understood what was going on, but it is a very neat video.

Watch on YouTube

The Battlefield has been prototyped three times, and is now spherical. The forces of Derse and Prospit meet. The usual carapaces with swords are backed up by larger pieces -- some of them very strange -- and by battleships clashing in the sky. In the chaos, WV, who is farming peacefully on Skaia, has his home and farm burned down. He raises a flag and addresses the troops of both armies. Elsewhere, Jack Noir appears, flying over the Battlefield in search of the Black King.

WV rallies the armies and tells them that their real enemies are the monarchs, who are responsible for the war. Encouraged, the Dersite and Prospitan troops band together and march on the Black King.

Meanwhile, PM has reached the White King and discovers that she no longer has the White Queen’s ring. The White King listens to her and hands over his scepter, which seems to represent Skaia and serves a similar function to the Queens’ rings. Behind a nearby hill, the Hegemonic Brute radios somebody to report the transfer.

As WV and the united armies reach the Black King, Jack arrives and slices the Black King’s scepter in half, nullifying its powers and turning the Black King back into a normal carapace. PM is attacked by HB, who knocks the White King’s scepter out of her hand; it falls down a waterfall. Jack Noir beheads the Black King and turns to WV, and the animation ends.

...okay, much as I love it, I have to admit there’s a glaring question here: Namely, the kids started playing the Game less than a day ago and Dave’s kernelsprite has been prototyped for a few hours max. The second prototyping made the Battlefield more complex and the third took it into its current form. That’s a very short time to instigate a cross-faction revolution, organise the troops, and march on a monarch. For that matter, how long has WV been a farmer? The inhabitants of Derse and Prospit have obviously been doing their thing all the kids’ lives, but the Battlefield was supposedly a static, rudimentary space until John entered the Medium, so what gives?

Then again, the timeline in the Medium is supposed to be distinct from the timeline on Earth, so maybe that explains it?

CHEL: An interesting point is also raised by WV’s revolution. Namely, Derse is presented as a kingdom of darkness and evil by the game, while Prospit is presented as good. However, while PM is good, WV and AR are demonstrably not bad people either. In this animation, we see carapaces of both sides apparently don’t want to be involved in the war and are willing to rise up against the Black King. The rank-and-file carapaces on both sides, it seems, are decent people who are just following orders. (Not to mention very cute.) Jack Noir and his gang are nasty pieces of work, except CD who’s also just kind of going along with it, but there’s nothing saying white carapaces couldn’t also be… And is that a Problematykks point, presenting the black-coloured people as bad and the white-coloured ones as good? I know they’re chess pieces, but still.

This raises the question, however, what’s Derse’s motive? Are its rulers and archagents simply destroying for the evulz? I wonder. I also wonder how much Skaia itself is involved in this and how aware it is. Skaia is called the crucible of creation, and it’s responsible for the creation of the carapaces too. References are made to it “seeing” and “knowing”; it’s quite possibly sentient, though maybe not sapient. On top of that, SBurb is specifically a game, and a game needs an objective, and an adventure-type game needs enemies. Derse, it seems likely, was created and presented the way it is in order to give the players something to battle against even if its people don’t want to be their enemies. No wonder WV’s pissed!

BRIGHT: Yup. Hmm, thinking about it...the imps and other enemies we saw attacking John’s house early on were obviously Dersite, but the ones we’ve seen in Rose’s seem to be Prospitian, if anything? The colour scheme looks that way, at least. But Nanna said earlier that Derse was the enemy, nothing about Prospit.

Perhaps it has something to do with Rose being a Derse dreamer, while John is a Prospit dreamer? But in that case I’d have expected it to come up in the text. Instead it just goes unremarked.

Rose goes on a massive alchemising spree and ends up creating the Thorns of Oglogoth, a pair of wands.

The needles seem to shiver with the dark desires of THE DEEP ONE. Any sane adventurer would cast these instruments of the occult into the FURTHEST RING and forget they ever existed.

Instead of throwing the wands away, Rose takes on the enemies camping all over her house, with style.

Meanwhile, Dave goes on another, less visibly productive alchemising spree.

GET ON WITH IT!: 18

FAILURE ARTIST: The SBaHJifier could be considered productive in that it provides foreshadowing cartoons. Wish Dave’s Brain in a Jar came up again.

BRIGHT: Once he’s done creating smuppet variations to disturb the monsters encroaching on his house, he sits down to take a look at those two journals he copied from Rose earlier. One of them is called ‘MEOW’, and is literally just those same four letters, repeated over and over in different orders. The second is ‘Complacency of the Learned’.

There is no way to adequately recap the beauty of ‘Complacency of the Learned’, so we’re just going to show the whole thing:

Frigglish bothered his beard, as if unkinking a hitch in a long silk windsock. A more pedestrian audience would parse the exhibit as nervous compulsion. Behavior to petition contempt among the reasonable. He was however not surrounded by the reasonable, but the wise, a distinction in men that would forever be the difference in history's garland of treasured follies. As a matter of fact, his cadre of fellow wizards were all putting similar moves on their beards as well. The practice would evince thoughtfulness - sagacity, even - if they didn't do it all the time. Standing in line at the bank. Shooing squirrels from bird feeders. Few occasions were safe. Zazzerpan inspected the clue. A single piece of evidence cradled in his coriaceous old man palms. It was a human bone, not striking in the tale it told alone so much as that told by the thousands like it festooning the marshy soil of the mass grave. The grisly expanse bore the texture of a decadent dessert, like one of Smarny's formidable custard trifles wobbled out on wheels for the holidays, to the dismay of a small nation. "You're certain of this?" asked Frigglish. Despite what he was doing with his beard, he was, in fact, immersed in meaningful contemplation. "I am afraid I am becoming more so with each terrible tick groused by that gaudy timepiece slung around your neck." In case it wasn't clear, Frigglish wore a clock Zazzerpan didn't care for. It was magic. "The massacre of Syrs Gnelph was not as written." "What has you convinced it was the hand of our disciples in this blackness?" Executus chimed in. "I believe... I..." a fat face stammered, eyes darting with the guilt of a thief in the throes of an unraveling alibi. "I can summon a... more pressing line of inquiry..." No, Smarny. Nobody was in the mood for a sticky bundt loaf just now. Zazzerpan's ears fell insubstantial to any line of inquiry, pastry-oriented or otherwise. His abstruse contour carved a pondering shape in the fog carpeting centuries-dead. His eleven contemporaries too embraced the muted consternation of their great Predicant Scholar. Few wizards kept sharper adumbratives or read them with such lucidity. When Zazzerpan treated men with silence it was seldom unrepaid by the wise and reasonable alike. It was harrowing to entertain. Zazzerpan the Learned's storied Complacency of Wizards was marked for grander descendence. Disciples hand-picked, vetted by Ockite the Bonafide and tested by Gastrell the Munificent. The twelve sweetest, most studious children a pair of elderly eyes could give their sparkle. Not the ragged guttersnipe so oft-harvested by the common Obscenity, those vituperative little beggars with hearts to corrupt as dropped bananas brown. That these chosen youngsters would turn was not merely unthinkable, but something of a roundhouse to the temporal bones of the Upper Indifference's high chamber of Softskulled Prophets. His wisdom-savaged brow pruned further with recount of his many lessons to wouldbe successors. Lessons to advance humanity's elucidation and prosperity, an outcome this bleak trail now painfully obviated. There were few puzzles The Learned could not suspend and dissect in the recondite manifold beneath his extremely expensive pointy hat. Daring to pitch his cherished pupils in with the foul melange of history's rogues, the heretofore abstract scourge that built up civilizations with ungodly magic and tore them down with joyful malice, would prove an intellectual trespass to make his calcium-deficient bones quake. And more daring yet was the only question that now mattered. Could a bunch of bearded, scraggly old men in preposterous outfits hunt them down? He didn't have an answer. Only a simple observation so blunt and uncharacteristically jejune for the lauded sage it was breathtaking in its selfevidency. "We're going to need more wands." (Wow. Think of something better.)

Wow.

Dave is understandably intimidated by this, and decides to stop reading for now. He puts his copy of the SBURB Beta in the notebook to act as a bookmark, and leaves both books in his room for later.

Then he checks in on Rose, who is burning her version of the MEOW book.

CHEL: Dave inquires about the wizard story.

TG: i thought you hated wizards TG: whats the deal with that TT: I like wizards. TT: What I don't like is my mother's obsession with feigning interest in them to antagonize me. TG: oh man thats so messed up TG: that you think that TG: she probably digs wizards for real just like you and youre blowing shit out of proportion like pretty much always

Once again, we see exactly how fucked-up Rose’s relationship with her mother is. Mom Lalonde has somehow managed to raise a child in such a way that Rose interprets everything her mother does as an attempt to mock and provoke her.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 16

TIER: The Lalondes are pretty damn dysfunctional as a family unit, and considering the zany nature of early Homestuck and its world's weird logic that is saying something indeed.

CHEL: As for the MEOW book, it turns out the gods from the Furthest Ring informed Rose while she was sleeping that the book’s contents are highly dangerous and must be destroyed. Said gods dwell in the sky above Derse; Dave’s never heard or seen them, but Rose points out his dreamself is always wearing shades, listening to music, and distracted by Cal.

TT: You're the prince of the moon. TG: ........ TT: I'm sure they've been meaning to seek a royal audience. TG: ..........................

Davesprite chats to Rose next. She protests at being spied on by two people, but Davesprite asks her why she burned the codebook. She didn’t need to in the future, but according to her future memories of the gods absorbed from her future dreamself, Davesprite appeared to make it relevant by traveling to the past. A sinister and familiar face watches through Dave’s window, soon proving to be the Draconian Dignitary, while Dave and Davesprite awkwardly spout elaborate mixed metaphors about how safe they are, until Dave, embarrassed, says "so i guess ill go back down and burn that book".

As any savvy reader could guess, he’s too late. The prompt suggests that he should go back in time to stop the books from being stolen, but, well...

It looks like you already tried that. GORE GALORE: 10

Dave looks completely undisturbed, but whether he is undisturbed is a different matter. He flings the corpse out the window into the lava, claiming it would freak Jade out.

John, in the lab, presses a button, causing the first monitor to depict his town, shortly before his birth. There is a Betty Crocker factory and a shopping mall, neither of which are in the town now. Zooming in locks a target over Nanna Egbert, who is taking a stroll with Dad. A meteor looms; this looks like it’s going to go very badly, considering the target lock, but it hits the factory instead. When John presses the glowing blue button, a PARADOX GHOST IMPRINT of Nanna is created; refer back to Rose’s experimentation in the lab and the green slime blobs. This time, the slime is sucked into a tube.

The next monitor does something similar with Grandpa Harley on his ship, and the next the same with Bro Strider, who stands over a meteor crater on an unseasonably warm day; something of an understatement, as the sky is the same lurid red and the sun the same glowing spiral that they were during the Strider bros’ battle even though it’s December. Bro is, regardless, prepared for the occasion with a small pair of outrageously awesome shades. What he needs these for will soon be revealed.

The fourth monitor goes back to John’s home town, a gigantic crater where the factory once was. In the shopping mall, Dad Egbert stands outside a joke shop, while Nanna apparently remains inside, busying herself with a tall bookshelf, a ladder, and a rather hefty unabridged joke book.

Mom Lalonde, clutching the infant Rose and wearing a rather snazzy long Jaspersprite-pink scarf, has come to town to study the meteor impact at the request of Grandpa Harley while he explores elsewhere. Unfortunately, now is the time a meteor chooses to strike Nanna’s location, destroying the shop.

An old mother lost today, but a new son gained.

Wait for it.

Mom Lalonde flees, dropping her scarf, which Dad Egbert picks up and slightly creepily sniffs. The monitor continues tracking her, and John captures her paradox imprint too, starting the machines whirring away...

Four babies abruptly appear on the pad, already diapered and bespectacled and old enough to sit up unaided. Convenient, no?

When the kitten jumps on a green button, the slime is blended in pairs; Nanna’s and Grandpa’s, and Mom’s and Bro’s. More blinking lights ensue, and another four extremely familiar-looking babies appear.

BRIGHT: I will say this: These kids are adorable.

While babies clamber over him, John vaults up his echeladder to the rank of Ectobiolobabysitter, acquiring one million Boondollars in the process. This automatically converts itself to a Boonbuck, the weight of which smashes his Porkhollow.

Finding out just what is going on here will have to wait, as the comic takes a brief detour to a battleship navigating the Medium nearby. There’s someone very familiar at the wheel…

An old man has much to do before he returns to Earth, dies, gets stuffed by his adopted-yet-biological daughter-slash-grand-daughter, and stuck in front of a fireplace.

Also aboard the ship are Dad Egbert and Mom Lalonde. Dad returns Mom’s scarf, and the two of them hold hands as Grandpa Harley pilots the ship towards Skaia.

We return to the lab, where John has his hands full with the babies. One of them has managed to break one of the paradox slime jars from earlier, but appears uninjured. Also, CG’s trolling him again.

CHEL: CG makes mention of the ULTIMATE RIDDLE, but John is confused because CG hasn’t told him about that yet. He uses an ableist description in explaining.

CG: SEE I KIND OF PAINTED MYSELF INTO A CORNER. CG: I STARTED TROLLING YOU AT THE END, JUST BEFORE THE RIFT. CG: AND THEN JUMPED BACK A LITTLE. CG: AND NOW I GUESS I'VE BECOME RAILROADED INTO WORKING BACKWARDS HERE. CG: UNLESS I WANT TO DO THE SORT OF DUMB SCHIZOPHRENIC HOPPING AROUND LIKE THE OTHERS. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 18

… why wouldn’t you just hop right back to the start and work in a linear fashion from there?

TIER: Because CG excels at making things complicated for himself and is fundamentally rather stubborn and set in his ways/actions. Like he's made his bed, he's gonna lie in it.

CHEL: Anyway, CG banters with John for a bit, and then informs him that he (John) has arrived in the Veil and created infant versions of the players and their guardians.

EB: so they are like cloned copies of us? CG: NO. CG: THEY ARE LITERALLY YOU AND YOUR GUARDIANS. CG: PARADOX CLONES.

A paradox clone, we are informed, is A CORRECTLY CLONED DUPLICATE THAT WILL INEVITABLY GO BACK IN TIME AND BECOME THE ORIGINAL TARGET THAT WAS CLONED. The game worlds contain many clues hinting at the ultimate destiny of the players to create their own selves through the game, and the only way things could possibly go involved the players creating themselves, or else the game session would never happen.

CG: WHICH IS ESPECIALLY PATHETIC SINCE PARADOX SPACE APPARENTLY WENT TO ALL THIS TROUBLE TO MAKE YOU JUST TO HAVE YOU FAIL AND DIE. CG: REALLY THERE'S NOTHING MORE TRAGIC THAN THESE NULL SESSIONS FULL OF KIDS ENTERING THE GAME AND FULFILLING SOME COSMIC DESTINY SHIT JUST TO GET WIPED OUT AND LEAVE BEHIND AN EMPTY POINTLESS INCIPISPHERE FOR ALL ETERNITY.

Tragic and completely unnecessary, when there are millions of perfectly good humans already in existence who could just as easily create winning game sessions without this aspect of it. Here we see another aspect of Homestuck which hasn’t come up quite so clearly before; an extremely weird take on determinism. I’m not sure if this is meant as a parody of Chosen One plotlines or if Hussie just thought it sounded cool, but it’s uncomfortable. As it turns out, only clones created by SBurb have a hope in hell of winning the game, and even they fail most of the time. Regular people who enter the game to save themselves from the destruction of the planet will fail and die there, which honestly is not really selling this game as a good thing, since it’s what causes the destruction of the planet in the first place. I’ve had actual, legitimate, honest-to-God nightmares about this aspect of SBurb, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think many fans wish to play SBurb. There’s lots of fan sessions and fake GameFAQs and custom Lands. Yet in reality SBurb is not a fun time. This is cosmic horror. I think Hussie is sometimes playing it for horror and sometimes he ignores the implications.

Then again, some people want to live on the troll planet, which is straight-up dystopia.

CHEL: Again, it isn’t really clear what he’s going for. Is it supposed to be terrifying or did he just think it would be clever? Does even Hussie know what he was going for? While it’s not exactly a joke, I think it’s worth another point here:

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 17

It might be a joke. As I said, I could see it as a parody of or playing with the Chosen One narrative. In this case, literally only the chosen ones have any hope, for reasons that are not down to any merit of their own. But if it is, there isn’t really much made of it.

Of course, the reasons people want to live on the troll planet are reasonable when taken alone, but a) contradicted every alternate scene and b) not a fair trade for everything else that’s going on there. But we’ll get to that when we actually see it. And I admit, SBurb powers would be fun, but not worth the loss of my entire species.

TIER: To me at least it's fun in the same way wondering how I'd fare as a wizard during Harry Potter's years at Hogwarts, or a ninja in Naruto is. Fundamentally you'd rather want to never encounter this sorta stuff even if you get some swanky I guess powers, but the mental exercise of it is quite honestly, really fun. The game has quite a lot of interesting things to poke around with, from lands to quests to what your co-players are up to. And I'm def guilty of playing trollsona games, because the world presented is just really fascinating in its gruesome glory.

Never want to have to actually go through it, Lord knows I'd be dead within the first ten minutes if I'm super lucky, but stories about it are pretty neat.

CHEL: That’s true, but the paradox clones thing seems almost to be taunting us for having that mentality. We can pretend we’d be the super-smart strong competent ones who make it, but in this universe if we demonstrably have parents we’re doomed to die for nothing and there’s nothing we can do about it.

BRIGHT: Another fun thing about this is that it fundamentally isolates the players from the rest of humanity. If you think about it, unless they have children with a non-player, they are completely unrelated to anyone else on Earth.

CHEL: And they can’t have kids with a non-player unless something thoroughly horrible happened, because as is stated later SBurb specifically takes its players away and destroys their planet around the point of their puberty.

BRIGHT: Although I think John is actually related to Dad — as far as we’re told, Dad is in fact Nanna’s biological son, which makes him genetically John’s half-brother.

They also miss out on (going by how active the babies are) the first couple of years of life. Those two years are crucial in terms of brain development. SBURB probably controls for that, but it wouldn’t be surprising if there were negative consequences.

Oh, and if you’re a player, your existence means your civilisation is doomed. Lovely!

CHEL: And do the players ever feel any guilt or conflict over this? Do they hell. It doesn’t even occur to them, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t occur to Hussie either.

TIER: Welcome to the hell game that is SBURB; it's fundamentally pretty fucked up! It runs on a hellish scale of "things have already been predetermined" and I am Big Fear™.

CHEL: That’ll come up later, too, but there it’s obviously intentional nightmare fuel, and not at all a bad use of time travel as a story device.

CG, meanwhile, explains that he was the one to create his session’s players. With twelve of them it was a bit more complicated, but troll lineages are complicated anyway, and we’ll find out how later.

The babies are still getting all over the lab. Note that they're repeatedly referred to as "little pink monkeys". Then again, calling a non-white child a monkey really wouldn't be good.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 18

John’s infant self has latched onto the Sassacre book, while his infant Nanna is sitting in Dad Egbert’s old hat. Baby Bro is napping in the lap of Lil Cal; that baby’s braver than I am, I can tell you that. Baby Dave is sitting on Maplehoof, and baby Grandpa has found a pair of pistols. John does not take them away from him, or even seem to notice he has them.

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 7

BRIGHT: Earlier baby Bro broke one of the paradox slime cylinders and was sitting in it. John is pretty astoundingly bad at keeping babies away from obvious hazards.

TIER: That or the equipment is probably not sturdy enough to make it past an inspection into faulty management.

CHEL: But then he’s distracted by CG trolling him again, at least this time moving forward in time from the last conversation.

CG, like GA, apparently fails to grasp sarcasm...

EB: we had this great dare going. EB: to see who could be the least helpful and informative. EB: and you totally lost, dude! EB: you were hella helpful. CG: I WAS OBVIOUSLY JUST SPITING YOUR STUPID POINTLESS HUMAN DARE. [...] CG: ANYWAY, HOW COULD WE HAVE MADE A DARE IF I'M MOVING BACKWARDS ON YOUR TIMELINE.

… which is weird because moments later he uses it himself.

EB: do you even have elves? CG: YES, LET'S COMPARE WHICH FANTASY CREATURES THAT DON'T EXIST WE BOTH DO OR DON'T NOT HAVE. CG: WHAT A GREAT FUCKING IDEA, JOHN!

Hussie seems to waver back and forth a lot on whether trolls get sarcasm or not, in general. Since he’s contradicting himself with troll worldbuilding, that’s a point.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 19

Banter aside, he informs John that the babies are sent to Earth via meteors during the Reckoning.

BRIGHT: How do they survive the impact? Some of those meteor strikes destroy buildings. Those are some ridiculously resilient kids.

CHEL: Cut to AR, who is still having fun on the rocketboard, until he runs into a frog temple atop a meteor. This is apparently horrifying and illegal by his standards.

You are going to throw whoever is responsible into the slammer. You always call jail the slammer when you are extra angry at crimes.

Inside, he finds an empty time capsule, like Jade’s, some complicated machinery, and a monitor screen showing a greyscale house with a very familiar bespectacled female infant and dirty old hat in it. The year depicted, says the monitor, is 1910. Enter none other than Colonel Sassacre himself.

Eight days prior, the orphan girl was taken in by an aristocratic southern colonel and legendary humorist. He recovered the young lady from a crater where a bakery once stood, operated by the man's wife, a notable baked goods baroness.

An explosion outside leads them both to a crater, where once stood the doghouse of the colonel’s pet, Halley, but before the Colonel can investigate further he’s shot through the heart.

This is exactly why babies should not be allowed to dual-wield flintlock pistols.

BRIGHT: I remain baffled as to how Baby Grandpa can even lift those things, let alone pull the triggers.

CHEL: Baby Grandpa crawls from the crater, and Halley the dog turns out to be alive.

The young boy has difficulty pronouncing the name though. Sounds more like "Harley" when he says it.

How does he know it? The colonel died before he even noticed the baby was there. Is baby Nanna speaking well enough to tell him yet? I guess he could be told later, as Sassacre wasn’t in fact their only sapient guardian...

Thirteen years later, the boy develops a taste for adventure. He and his guardian bid farewell. His sister is sad. She will be left all alone with the wicked pastry baroness. She can handle it, he tells her. He believes in her.

It isn’t clear why she didn’t go with him, or leave under her own power. They don’t seem to be imprisoned, as the panel depicts them outside on grass with no restraints or guards over them, so it’s not a matter of only one of them being able to get out. That’s a point for Nanna not trying and a point for Grandpa not bringing her:

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 9

That dog is also remarkably lively, considering it, unlike Bec, is an entirely normal dog, it was an adult thirteen years previously, and it’s somehow supporting the weight of an entire teenager on its back (again, please don’t try this at home, you can break the dog’s spine that way).

FAILURE ARTIST: As we’ve said, Colonel Sassacre is a thinly-veiled Mark Twain expy. The real Mark Twain died in 1910 at the same time Halley’s Comet was in the sky. It’s a cute historical gag having him be literally killed by a comet but it does muck up the timeline. Nanna must have been a senior citizen when Dad was born. Perhaps he’s adopted?

CHEL: The other option is that Dad is a senior citizen now, but surely John would have wondered why his dad is so ridiculously old. I think it’s just that thing in mainstream comics and cartoons where adults are split into Old and Not Old, and the parents are normal ages for parents but the grandparents would have to be in their hundreds going by the gags. See how Scrooge McDuck in the DuckTales reboot is over a hundred and forty years old yet his sister’s son is still a youngish adult.

AR notes that the appearifier is centred over Halley the dog, but hears someone coming. It proves to be the Draconian Dignitary. AR hides and watches, noting that DD is carrying Rose’s notebooks and Dave’s beta envelopes. DD keeps the MEOW book, but throws away the other items. Complacency of the Learned lands on the floor, and the envelopes land in the time capsule, which sets to bloom in four hundred and thirteen million years.

Meanwhile, John talks to CG while infant Mom Lalonde pets the mutant kitten. John asks if there’s any way to delay the Reckoning, but nope; CG warns him that the smallest meteors will start going in only a few minutes.

EB: ok, well you keep saying how doomed we are and how all this bad stuff happens sooner, but you never say why! EB: what happens in our game that's different from yours that makes things go so badly? CG: JACK NOIR.

The Jack Noir from the trolls’ game session allied with them and helped them dethrone and exile the Black Queen, while the one from the humans’ session, as you may recall, killed the Black Monarchs and gained their powers, and is currently rampaging through the Incipisphere. John asks if it’s the same Jack Noir, but CG explains.

CG: SO LET'S SAY YOU PLAY YOUR BANDICOOT AND I PLAY MY BANDICOOT. CG: THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY THE SAME BANDICOOT, SAME APPEARANCE AND DESIGN AND BEHAVIORS. CG: BUT THEY ARE STILL COMPLETELY SEPARATE BANDICOOTS ON SEPARATE SCREENS. CG: SO WE BOTH HAVE OUR OWN ASS BANDICOOTS TO OURSELVES, THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT. CG: OUR JACKS ARE THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT TOO. CG: SAME GUY, DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES AND OUTCOMES. CG: OUR JACK TRUMPED THE QUEEN, BUT GOT NO FURTHER. CG: YOUR JACK GOT THE BEST OF BOTH OF THEM, AND IS NOW SOMETHING HIGHER THAN A QUEEN OR A KING… EB: like an ace? CG: SURE OK.

The trolls don’t know what went so differently to cause the two Jacks to behave so differently, but CG doesn’t think it matters by now. John interrupts him, deciding to do yet another Con Air ending re-enactment.

Watch on YouTube

Recap: montage of Con Air posters and images to the tune of “How Do I Live Without You”. John hands the thoroughly disgusting Con Air bunny to the protesting baby Rose, while CG watches huffily on his monitor. Jade demands a toy too, so John hands her the bunny he received from Rose in an excessively dramatic fashion. CG frustratedly hits himself in the head. In scribbly crayon-like drawings, Casey the salamander performs a drum solo with glowing blue mushrooms for drums and the Con Air plane crashes. More Con Air imagery, John embraces baby Jade and the baby Lalondes while sobbing; GC points and laughs at him over CG’s shoulder and they have a slapfight. John imagines himself in Nic Cage’s iconic wifebeater and mullet and performs an air guitar solo.

TIER: Lemme tell ya, as someone who's only experience with this darn movie is whatever pops up courtesy of John this sequence is just a trip and a half. Possibly a higher number.

CHEL: Cut to end-of-act curtains; they open on the next page, declaring a PSYCHE; there are more pages to go.

Cut to Dave’s hands, covered in the dead Dave’s blood. I… guess he’s supposed to be staring at them in shock? It’s impossible to tell through his shades. For all I know he could be worried about the cleanup. GC trolls him and they banter creepily, with her demanding to know what his blood smells like and him taunting her about her blindness.

TG: just him and me TG: havin a see party TG: like a couple of eagle eyed bros peepin shit up into the wee hours GC: D4V3 GC: C4N 1 COM3 TO YOUR S33 P4RTY? TG: i guess but youll have to be careful not to stumble around bumping into all the gorgeous masterpieces hanging around everywhere TG: god so beautiful to look at with my perfect eyesight GC: C4N 1 L1CK TH3 P41NT1NGS? TG: yeah thats fine

Neither of them seems to take it particularly hard. If there was narrative around the dialogue, I think we’d get a better grasp of how Dave feels. Lacking much body language or punctuation, tone is a bit tricky to get.

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s a character later who gets a lot of grief for insulting her blindness but reading what John, Dave, and CG say I don’t know how that character could be worse.

CHEL: AT, meanwhile, is trolling Jade, rather politely. He even takes time to ask if she’s having a good nap. She’s worried about John’s dreamself not waking, and AT scrolls into his view of the future timeline, but can’t find John awake, nor see into his dreams. Jade, however, will wake up soon, and she thanks him for this report. Unfortunately, when Jade wakes up she will be in danger, and AT can’t see any further. He tells her CG wants to talk to her about her exploding robot. He can’t see whether it exploded or not because there are a lot of explosions, but asking future Jade shows it did, and that she declared CG to be a pretty nice guy, which surprises AT since he doesn’t think CG is particularly nice. Jade says she thinks AT is nice too, and asks why he’s the only one who talks to her while she’s asleep.

AT: bECAUSE YOU HAVE A ROBOT, tO LET YOU SAY THINGS THAT HAPPEN, oN PROSPIT, AT: aND i'M CURIOUS, AT: bECAUSE THE ONLY TIME i EVER HAD FUN PLAYING THIS GAME WAS WHEN i WAS ASLEEP, AT: bUT NOW ALL OUR DREAM SELVES ARE DEAD, AT: }:'(

AT happily remembers his own time on Prospit, and we cut back to Rose, being trolled by GA despite the fact that Rose is obviously in the middle of an epic magic battle. The conversation is understandably chilly, and GA still hasn’t figured out that “Dumb Rose” as opposed to “Smart Rose” was John rather than a bizarre roleplaying scenario.

GC continues trolling Dave. He asks her how she operates a computer without sight.

GC: 1M SORRY D4V3 TH4T YOU W1LL N3V3R 3XP3R13NC3 TH3 S3NSORY BOUQU3T TH4T 1 3NJOY 3V3RY D4Y GC: TH4T 1 3NSCONC3 MYS3LF 1N L1K3 4 W4RM 4ND COMFY B4THROB3 M4D3 OF FL4VOR 4ND M3LODY TG: oh ok TG: so the dumbest and most far fetched explanation imaginable ok got it

Yes, pretty much. This brings me to a Problematykks point; GC is supposed to be blind, but it really doesn’t seem to affect her in any way at all. Its workaround is ridiculously convenient and effective, and while I’m not blind myself, I know many people with physical disabilities hate it when fiction does this. I know I would be pissed off if a piece of fiction showed an easy and convenient way to not have autism anymore. (Horrible, horrible memories of someone back in the days of Livejournal’s Fanficrants of a fic in which autism was somehow cured by having a foursome. I don’t remember how that was supposed to work.) “She’s a space alien” only goes so far in explaining it. Why even bother making her blind if it’s not going to affect her in any way?

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19

FAILURE ARTIST: She’s the least blind blind person in media. Characters like Daredevil from Marvel Comics and Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender have a Disability Superpower but at the end of the day they still can’t do things like read printed text. GC has no disadvantages.

BRIGHT: She can apparently smell and taste photons.

Which raises the question why none of the other trolls ever show a heightened sense of smell or taste. If GC can learn to interpret smells as colours, her sense of smell must have been that strong all along, and there’s no indication in the text that she’s biologically more sensitive than her companions. Trolls must be better at following a trail than bloodhounds.

CHEL: Synaesthesia which makes one strongly associate colours with smells is a thing, and synaesthesia is generally the word the fandom uses to explain Terezi’s ability, but you still have to actually see the colours for that to work. If she was only mostly blind and was picking up blurry colour patches, I could buy it (and that is how the fandom tends to do it with human AUs), but not if she’s supposed to be completely blind, and she still wouldn’t be able to read text that way.

BRIGHT: Time for another animation, and for a hop back into the recent past.

Watch on YouTube

As the meteor locked onto Dave’s house approaches, Dave climbs up the tower to retrieve his cruxite egg from the nest his sprite made. Unfortunately the sprite attacks him, knocking him and the egg off the tower. Bro Strider appears on top of the approaching meteor and slices it in half with his katana; the two halves are diverted by the blow and strike different areas of the city. Dave’s fall is broken by a rocket board, which is presumably how Bro got up to the meteor in the first place. (How did he manage to aim it to intercept Dave’s fall? Wouldn’t it take longer to get from the meteor to Dave than it takes for Dave to fall from the top of the tower to the roof of the building? We shall never know.) The egg hatches, and Dave is transported into the Medium. There’s no sign of what happens to Bro.

CHEL: Yet more cartoon physics around the Strider bros.

BRIGHT: I don’t know if we mentioned this earlier, but although Dave and Bro live in an apartment block that presumably housed multiple people, only Dave’s apartment gets transported into the Medium. Everyone else in the complex is left to die on Earth. SBURB is sociopathic.

Elsewhere in the Medium, back in the present, Grandpa’s ship is approaching Skaia, with Mom Lalonde and Dad Egbert on board.

Down on Skaia, Jack Noir draws his sword and slaughters the army WV raised to march on the Black King. WV cowers, but Jack leaves him alive. He then uses the Black Queen’s ring to send some sort of giant red tentacle attack through Skaia, slaughtering Dersite and Prospitian forces indiscriminately.

CHEL: Are they tentacles? I always thought of them as some sort of lightning lasers.

BRIGHT: That makes a lot more sense!

In the ectobiology lab, as the clock ticks down to the Reckoning, the babies are teleported to asteroids around the lab. There must be an air supply in this asteroid belt — characters are consistently shown as being able to survive outside.

CHEL: Maybe it’s just the players’ natural badassery. Batman Can Breathe In Space.

BRIGHT: On Skaia, CD makes his way through Jack’s slaughter fest, which has now ravaged a sizeable chunk of planet, and hands him the White King’s sceptre. Jack raises the sceptre and initiates the Reckoning. The meteorites start to vanish into Skaia’s defence portals. In the frog temple, DD somehow combines the MEOW genetic code with a paradox clone of Halley, creating Jade’s guardian Bec. Bec’s creation damages the laboratory equipment in the temple.

Cut to Jade, who is snoozing peacefully while her dream self explores Prospit. She looks up at Skaia, to see Jack’s shadow passing in front of it. Jack launches his tentacle attack on Prospit, slaughtering the inhabitants, then severs the chain attaching Prospit’s moon to the planet. The moon begins falling towards Skaia.

Jack then flies to LOHAC, where he encounters Bro Strider on one of the turntable mesas. Unexpectedly, Bro is able to give Jack an even fight. After a few exchanges, he drives his katana into the mesa; some sort of golden light emanates from the crack, and Bro absconds.

Wait, how did Bro get onto LOHAC? How did he survive the meteor impacts?

TIER: The ol' "rule of cool". As long as something is sufficiently "absolutely kickass!!" the rules of reality and physics can go sit on the bleachers twiddling their thumbs for all they fucking matter. There's a reason early fandom pinned down Bro as an unorthodox but immensely cool older brother type guy for so long. Because with what little information was available before we got bludgeoned with "No actually he was the absolute fucking worst thing to happen to Dave and fucked him up for life" that was the general impression he gave off.

CHEL: This and the meteor splitting are yet more reason not to take Bro’s treatment of Dave seriously; this is a world in which ludicrous animesque badassery rules the day, and physically impossible feats of battle occur every five minutes. Forcing a child to go through extensive and excessive sword training in brutal heat in a precarious place, possibly every day, ought by rights to be normal there, and I can’t believe he was physically hurt by swordfighting when he survived a meteor collision as an infant. Besides, training that extensive quite possibly could be the only thing that would keep Dave alive in these circumstances.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 18

BRIGHT: There’s a random Squiddles interlude, and then we return to Skaia.

John’s unconscious dream self has fallen out of Prospit’s moon as it plummets towards Skaia. Jade tries shaking him awake, and then slaps him, but to no avail. At the last moment, she throws him out of the path of the moon, and her dream self is then killed when it lands on her. Back on Earth, her dreambot overloads and explodes.

CHEL: Taking her tower room with it; Jade’s sleeping body plummets towards the earth.

BRIGHT: The moon leaves a gigantic crater in Skaia. John’s now-conscious dreamself hovers above it.

The babies vanish through the defence portals to Earth.

CHEL: Each takes an item with them. John takes the Sassacre book, Rose the first Con Air bunny, Dave rides Maplehoof, Jade takes the bunny Rose gave to John (which is in fact the Con Air bunny plus several years and repairs), Nanna sits inside Dad’s old hat, Mom takes the mutant kitten, Bro sleeps in the lap of Li’l Cal, and Grandpa dual wields the flintlock pistols he should not be allowed.

BRIGHT: Dave and Rose reach the Gates above their houses and set out to explore their Lands. We close on an eerie shot of Bec outside the frog temple on Jade’s island at night.

CHEL: Jade’s tower room is blown to bits, and a truly enormous meteor hovers over the scene.

Curtains close. End of Act 4. Before Act 5, we receive a message from Rose, via her GameFAQ.

[ZZZZ] Rose: Egress. This is my final entry. My co-players and I have made every earnest attempt, with occasional relapse, to play this game the right way.

Really? You haven’t been in the game for more than a couple of hours and Jade still isn’t in at all! Maybe consider that the fact that not all your players are in the game yet when you wonder why it isn’t working?

I have been meticulous in documenting the process to help our peers and successors through the trials should we fail. In my hubris I believed these classes were relegated to the Earth-bound, but in even this quaint supposition I was in error. Our otherworldly antagonists have assured us of our inevitable failure repeatedly, while the gods whisper corroboration in my sleep. I believe them now. I just blew up my first gate. I’m not sure why I did it, really. I am not playing by the rules anymore. I will fly around this candy-coated rock and comb the white sand until I find answers. No one can tell me our fate can’t be repaired. We’ve come too far. I jumped out of the way of a burning fucking tree, for God’s sake.

I can see her point. The game is horrible and should be stopped. On the other hand, I’d at least attempt to spend more than one day investigating it before trying to break it. Randomly destroying shit is more likely to make things much worse than anything else.

I have used a spell to rip this walkthrough from Earth’s decaying network, and sealed it in one of the servers floating in the Furthest Ring. The gods may disperse the signal throughout the cosmos as they wish. Perhaps it will be of use to past or future species who like us have been ensnared by Skaia’s malevolent tendrils. In case it wasn’t clear, magic is real. Pardon my egress. You’re on your own now.

This note is signed with a glowing multicoloured “RL” and revealed to be emitted from a purple box with an aerial, floating in space. It seems that’s how their internet’s still working.

FAILURE ARTIST: The internet seems to be a magical dimension in Homestuck and not something that’s part of physical infrastructure.

CHEL: Hours in the future, WV lands in the desert remains of Earth, wrapped up in John’s old ghost-patterned bedsheet, which is still white. A villein becomes a vagabond. In his memory, he tears up an effigy of Jack Noir… where’d he get it? Did the game create it for some reason? Anyway, John’s blanket falls on him from the sky as Prospit plummets; WV calls it a RAG OF SOULS. Adorably melodramatic.

John’s awoken dreamself gazes sadly at Jade’s deceased one, which for some reason isn’t actually under the rubble of Prospit and appears to still be three-dimensional. There’s no excessive blood splatter like with the dead Dave, which is good, not too over the top. He retrieves the Queen’s ring from her hand. Was he told at any point that it’s important? Because if he doesn’t know, I’m not sure robbing the dead is very heroic. He sees an image of himself flying over the battlefield in a large cloud above him; in the vision he’s near a castle, so he goes to seek it out.

On Earth, PM wraps herself up in an old Prospit banner. A mistress becomes a mendicant. In her memories, she has beheaded the Hegemonic Brute and is arranging a meeting with Jack Noir. He arrives and she presents the crowns; smirking evilly, he honours their bargain, and the Courtyard Droll brings her the green parcel. She brings it to the castle from John’s vision as he arrives there, hands over the box, and angrily walks away.

FAILURE ARTIST: She’s Honor Before Reason (maybe she’s programmed that way) but she has the right reaction. This is a lot to go through to deliver a package.

CHEL: Inside the box is a letter from Jade’s unknown pen pal, who writes in dark green and a distinctive jolly-hockey-sticks dialect, with a tendency to ramble off on tangents about movies and wrestling.

Anyway you should listen to jade from here on out john because she sure seems to know whats best for you. Whatever your adventure throws at you im sure shell tell you you can handle it. She believes in you.

And another letter from Jade.

even though its super late and you probably went through a lot of trouble to get it, i really hope this present cheers you up! you looked so sad while you were reading my letter. um... which is to say, the one you are reading now.

She explains that in her dreams she goes to Prospit and John’s sleeping dream self is there, and that’s where she gets her visions. She hopes he likes his present, and says her penpal is fun…

john i am REALLY looking forward to seeing you when you wake up!!!!! its been nice playing with my prospitian friends and all, but also kind of lonely knowing you were in the other tower sleeping and having lousy dreams. :( im not sure where i am when you are reading this but im sure ill make it down to where you are soon! (jeez how did you get down there??? oh well ill find out) i cant wait to fly around the moon with you and show you all my favorite places. itll be so much fun!!!!!!!!! :D <3 jade

Ow. I think this is the only time John cries in the entire comic.

A Single Tear(™) is a bit of an understated reaction to the death of one of your best friends who you just recently learned is also your twin sister, but to be fair, John isn’t left with very much time to react, as next panel Jack Noir’s sword is pointed at his face.

BRIGHT: John knows about dream selves and waking selves by now, I think?

CHEL: He knows they’re a thing but I don’t think he knows they count as backup lives. AT told Jade dream selves can die separately from regular selves but I don’t think anyone told John.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jack Noir wants the ring, but then he’s stopped by Jade’s gift: a robotic bunny wielding multiple weapons.

They line up for a fight.

Hours in the future, on a destroyed planet, AR wraps police tape around himself and becomes a Aimless Renegade. Before the disaster, he went to the Veil, where he found a sleeping John. He saves John by putting him on a rocket board.

Back to the robotic bunny. Jack Noir flies away from the fight. Grandpa’s battleship lands and Grandpa takes away Jade’s body. Mom and Dad disembark the ship and wave goodbye as it leaves. Grandpa cries a Single Tear as he transports Jade’s already taxidermed body. Did he have a machine?

CHEL: For that matter, why isn’t he helping anyone who’s actually still alive while he’s there?

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 10

FAILURE ARTIST: Nope, transporting a dead body is more important.

Again going back, White Queen leaves Prospit. On landing, she becomes Windswept Questant and wanders the Earth. We go forward years later. She repairs the laboratory and meets up with AR, WV, and PM. WV’s homemade spear hides the ring.

John watches this scene through the clouds of Skaia. He looks at the ring in his hand. In another cloud, there’s Jade’s laboratory. We close in on it and inside is The Fourth Wall. It isn’t turned on, but we are still lead to Andrew Hussie, banging away on a computer keyboard as he recaps the plot for a second time.

CHEL: Which we shall do as well when we’re done with this section, because it’s insanely hard to keep track of everything.

FAILURE ARTIST: Andrew Hussie says Nanna’s comet landed 99 years before John’s “birth” so he has some clue about the age but still doesn’t see it odd that a woman that age has a son who is probably only in his thirties.

CHEL: As I said, it’s also possible Dad was really old too, but that’s never really suggested. Not to mention, since they were brought into existence as toddlers, shouldn’t the kids be noticeably older than the ages given for them? John should be biologically fourteen to fifteen by now and at that age that can make a visible difference. I know the art style doesn’t really give clues, but no one I’ve seen has ever pointed that out in fanfic either.

FAILURE ARTIST: Newborns aren’t distinctive looking and can’t really do the cute things toddlers do. People in TV and movies regularly give birth to six month old infants so it’s not strange.

CHEL: True, but this isn’t TV, it’s a comic, and they don’t have to use an actual infant as a prop here.

BRIGHT: Possibly it’s intentional. Among other things, we see the newly-created players survive short trips through vacuum, crash-land on Earth without even minor injuries, and handle weapons they shouldn’t be able to lift for another four or five years. This could work if players have superhuman abilities (that is, beyond the classpect system). If that was the intent then it really should be made more explicit, though.

Of course, what it really boils down to is that Homestuck runs off Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny, and occasionally breaks down on examination as a result.

On the whole this is a solid Act, I think! We have a lot of new stuff happening, more characters get introduced, and we find out some more about the trolls. It’s much less rambling than Act 1.

COUNTS ALL THE LUCK: 0 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 18 CALL CPA PLEASE: 8 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19 GET ON WITH IT!: 18 GORE GALORE: 10 HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 15 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 10 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 0 RELATIONSHIP GOALS?: 1 SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 1 SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS: 0 WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 9 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 19 TOTAL: 127

#homestuck #Let's read #homestuck meta #reread #literary critique #sporking #Homespork

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ohmygoditsrowaelin · 5 years

Text

Rowaelin - Pregnancy (3/3) - Symptoms and Birth

Just as a warning the final part of this headcanon series does involve blood/bodily fluids so if that is a trigger or are triggered by things in a medical sense please take caution when reading this instalment. OH!!! Also shit tone of angst guys.

As mentioned in previous instalment, Aelin doesn’t begin to show until around the second trimester. She was thankful for this as this gave her more time to announce it to those closest to her. Unfortunately her precious gowns no longer fit. The royals seamstress took it upon herself and her apprentices to make her maternity gowns that resembled her fashion style.

She did suffer from morning sickness severely in the first couple of months, which was easily disguised as her eating to much food such as cake or chocolates.

Her cravings were nothing extreme like the kitchens had prepared for, all that changed was that she liked her meat a bit more rare and had an increased want for cake. Rowan was prepared to travel for days to get whatever she wanted, only wanting her and the child to be happy.

Yrene took it upon herself to stay close to Terrasen, going as far as to make Chaol purchase an estate in Orynth. The woman wanting help Aelin through the process of childbirth as much as possible.

Yrene gave creams and ointments to ease her morning sickness, cramps and lesson the pain when the child decided to kick.

Midway through the pregnancy Aelin found herself forgetting things more often. One time completely forgetting that she had a council meeting or that she was scheduled to make an appearance at the Royal Terrasen Theatre. So Rowan with the help of Lysandra, Elide and Yrene took it upon themselves to always remind her of tasks and duties of the day, much to her annoyance.

I’d also like to include that Aelin would be 100000% hornier, like she just had to look at Rowan and BOOM! She would climb him like a monkey on a tree, not that he really minded. It turned out that some of their best experiences in the bedroom occurred when she was with child.

Rowan also adapted to having a shorter sleep schedule, having to help his mate to the bathroom multiple times during the night. Brushing off Aelin’s embarrassed apologies and her complaints that she could do it herself.

The lords tried to discuss succession with the couple, trying to enforce that if the child happened to be a girl and then they have a boy later. The boy would be King, the daughter being passed over.

It turned out that Rowan was the one who had to show restraint, almost going feral and killing the lords at the suggestion that any child of his would be refused their birthright. Aelin returned his sentiment, but her rage was wielded like steel. Swift and clean, she took it upon herself to remind the men that she in the end would have the final say.

They both walked away from that meeting with a burning pit of hatred for the lords.

So it draws closer to the predicted date of the child’s birth, and Aelin starts to feel different. Not about being a mother, she worked past those issues very easy on. No, she felt like something was wrong.

She would say nothing, having worried to much in the past.

But her pains grew more potent, at first she thought it could have been contractions, but from what she had been told these pains weren’t localised in one area.

She steadily grew weaker, not eating as much and what she did manage to eat eventually came back up. When asked about the change she brushed it off the symptoms she had experienced throughout her pregnancy.

The one person who could tell she was lying is Rowan, but he was away with Fenrys and Lorcan, visiting some of the border villages of Terrasen.

Aedion and Lysandra had decided to stay in the palace just in case something arose.

One night, just after twilight, Aelin awoke to a pain unlike any she had previously experienced. Removing the covers so that she could relieve herself she was confronted with the sight of blood. It covered her legs and the sheets.

Aelin would begin to hyperventilate, shock taking over and her ability to call for help would be stunted. Until the pain she was already experiencing increased yet again.

Her screams would echo through the halls of the palace, the first to reach her room would be Aedion and Lysandra. His blade drawn and her ready to shift at a moments notice.

The sight they were confronted with was one that would haunt their dreams for years to come.

Aelin arched in bed, covered in her own blood, screaming as she clawed at her stomach.

Lysandra’s maternal instincts surfaced, her feet carrying her towards her best friend.

Aedion began to move forward also.

“No, get Yrene, something is wrong with the baby. She may be the only one to save them both.” She instructed, not looking back to make sure he had understood.

Aedion rushed past guards and servants. Ignoring the questions of lords and dignitaries. He was thankful to the gods that Yrene and Chaol had decided to stay the night.

He practically rips the door of its hinges, sending Chaol for his sword, prepared to defend his pregnant wife and child. But when he sees Aedion’s face, terror and pain consuming his features.

Yrene had sat up when Chaol had reached for his sword that was always beside their bed. She only had to take one look at the general to know something was wrong with Aelin.

“Chaol, get my satchel, the one by the dresser. Aedion, I’m going to need your help getting to her.” Both men nodded, Choal grabbing his cane, Aedion carrying Yrene in his arms.

They reached Aelin as a pageboy was rushing out, Lysandra was beside Aelin, gripping her hand and whispering encouragement.

Yrene waddled over to Aelin, ripping away the sheet, going pale at what she saw. She motioned for her husband to hand over the supplies.

He’d shuffle over, trying not to make eye contact with Aelin, knowing if he did he might break, knowing how much this baby meant to her and...Rowan

He returned to his place at the wall near the door beside Aedion, the two men unable to help in the situation. Both feeling like they were both failing the woman in the bed.

“Where’s Rowan?” Aelin would moan, having descended into delirium due to the pain. Everyone would make eye contact, the tension in the room intensifying tenfold.

“I’ve sent word, he’ll be back any moment now.” Lysandra would explain, wiping the sweat from Aelin’s brow.

“I-I don’t think I’ll b-be-”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence.” Aedion growled, not letting her or anyone else in the room entertain the prospect of Aelin not being here when he returned.

Yrene swore after finishing examining her, her hands covered in blood. Her hands glowing softly, as she tried to use her gifts to heal the damage done in her womb.

Rowan that night had nightmares like he hadn’t experienced since before the war ended, all revolving around Aelin and their future family.

Rowan wakes up in the morning being shaken relentlessly by Lorcan, as he begins to tell the fae to piss off he notices the worry in his eyes, then sees the letter in his hand with the royal seal.

He doesn't wait to hear what Lorcan has to say before shifting into his falcon. Flying as fast as he can back to his mate, feeling the pain and terror through the bond.

He arrives at the palace via the balcony of their chambers. He’s immediately confronted by the sight of Aelin. She’s deathly pale, covered in sweat, the bottom half of her body covered in blood. He could see Lysandra holding her hand, Yrene furiously trying anything to heal her. The royal doctor beside her, offering his services when Yrene would become unsure of what to do. Choal and Aedion remained by the wall, the two first noticing his presence.

Lysandra looks over her shoulder, seeing him, she’d stand so that he could take over.

As he reached her side he’d notice how quiet she was, the occasional moan would fall from her lips, but other than that she remained silent.

Yrene and the doctor began whispering hurriedly, but due to his worry Rowan didn’t make out anything they said. But he could see dread written on both of their faces.

“What? What are the two of you saying?”

“We need to deliver, the placenta, it’s torn from womb causing her to bleed out and cut off circulation to the child.”

“Why haven't you delivered yet then?” He’d ask through gritted teeth, anger evident through his words, he couldn't imagine what could cause them to not deliver.

“I can’t promise she or the baby will survive. The baby will be born before it should, and there is a high chance that tear lead to her to bleed internally. We haven’t done anything in hopes that my gifts could reverse the damage, but it’s to far gone.”

Rowan paled the healer’s words sinking in.

He turned back to his wife, who was barely conscious. He leaned down and nuzzled the crook of her neck.

“Save the child.” Her voice, even in that moment sounded like a symphony, instructed the healer.

“Aelin, you might not make it if she does. I can’t lose you, either of you.”

Aelin remained silent through that and many more pleas from her mate, ignoring his wishes. Knowing that she'd never forgive herself if she let the child perish just so that she could survive.

She lifted her head to indicate to Yrene her wish once again. They held eye contact, both knowing what a mother would do for their child.

Yrene then asked the doctor for a scalpel.

Rowan’s eyes would fill with fury, Lysandra would have to restrain him. Chaol stepping forward his face hardening. He didn't care what was happening, he wouldn't let the fae intimidate his wife. Aedion would pull him back, the pair had to remain otherwise the room would descend into chaos.

As Yrene would begin working to save the child Aelin would scream again, her hand reaching out in search for Rowan.

He’d immediately drop resisting Lysandra, his instincts making him be their for his mate. He held her hand tightly, pressing kisses to it while his other hand stroked her forehead. He tried to comfort her as best he could, but couldn’t help but flinch every time she cried out. After a minute he was crying with her.

Then there was a moment of quiet.

A baby’s cry filled the room, Rowan looked at their child in awe as Yrene cleaned the child as best she could.

“It’s a girl.” Yrene announced with a sad smile, handing the newborn over to her father.

Rowan cradled the child in his arms, almost forgetting everything and everyone in the room. His entire being was focused on the daughter he and Aelin had made together. She was so small, she had almost no hair, but he could tell it would be the same shade as her mother. Her eyes were closed, as they would remain for a week or two but he silently hoped they would also be her mother’s.

Turning to Aelin, he sat beside her and leaned down. Showing her their beautiful child.

Aelin cooed at the little one, holding out her pinky for her to latch onto.

“What shall we name her Fireheart?”

“Lyria.” The room stilled, all except the doctor knew that was the name of his first wife and who he was lead to believe was his mate.

“Aelin I-”

“She brought great joy and love into your life. I’m sad I never got to know her, but I can only hope that our Lyria will grow up to be just as wonderful as her namesake.” Aelin whispered hoarsely, her eyes closed. Rowan blinked away tears, he knew Lyria, the one he married wasn’t his mate. But she still held an important part of his heart, and Aelin wanting to honour her memory...it made him love her more than he thought possible.

“Oh, Oh my!” Yrene gasped, Rowan’s head looked up, afraid of what she might say.

Yrene did not elaborate on what caused her outburst, but it must have caused the following groans and almost screams.

Then another wail filled the room, silencing the room once again as the two cries joined together.

“It’s a boy! Twins, you have twins!” Yrene announced joyfuly, the room filling with cheers. The lords rushing to make the announcement to Terrasen and the surrounding kingdoms.

Rowan handed Lyria to Lysandra who was practically purring at the sight of her goddaughter. Taking his son into his arms, shock, joy and wonder filling his soul. He showed him to Aelin like he did with Lyria, but this time Aelin remained silent.

At first he’d pay no attention to it, believing that she was just shocked as he was. But he turned to ask her what they should name her when he noticed she had gone still and her chest had stilled.

“Fireheart? Aelin-Aelin? Darling wake up, do not leave me now after everything we’ve survived don’t leave me now!” He begged, their son’s cries mixing with his own.

Yrene’s face would harden, telling Aedion and Chaol to get Rowan out of the room so she could save the Queen.

Rowan waits outside the room, his son still in his arms, but had fallen asleep shortly after exiting. He tries to refrain from crying but can’t. Tears slowly trail down his face as he tries to comprehend raising his children without his Fireheart.

He can hear Yrene shouting at the doctor and then there's silence, it feels like hours before the door opens. The royal doctor exiting without saying a word, then Yrene opens the door wider. She’s covered in sweat blood and birth fluid, but she has a smile on her face.

That smile sends relief through him, almost making his knees weak knowing that Aelin will be okay.

“She’ll be okay. She won’t be able to leave her bed for a month at least but she will be okay.” She explains to everyone, but her eyes never leave his.

They all began to renter the room but Yrene stopped them with a hand. She only let through Rowan and Aedion who was now hold Lyria who was gurgling happily to herself.

Rowan almost sprinted to Aelin’s bedside, kneeling beside her, needing to see any evidence that she was alright. And he let out a breath of relief when she opened her eyes, those eyes he loved so dearly.

“Wha-what happened?”

“Nothing that can’t wait. Would you like to meet our son?”

Aelin almost sat up straight at those words, she looked over to Aedion to confirm that she did in fact have two children.

They spent an hour together, the three adults and two newborns just learning what they looked like, acted and mannerisms. That is until Aedion perked up.

“What are you going to name him?”

The couple shared a look before going at their son then Aedion.

“Gavriel.”

Aedion nods quickly looking back down at Lyria quietly, but both Aelin and Rowan can see the tears in Aedion’s eyes.

They both at that moment can’t wait to see what life had in store for them next.

tags: @zarixxx

If you’d like to see more about how things continue from the end please leave a request. Well that brings an end to the pregnancy au! series, and I can confirm that the next thing I write that will be posted will be for...(DRUM ROLL) ELORCAN!!!

El, xoxo

#ohmygoditsrowaelin #rowaelin #headcanon #rowan whitethorn #aelin ashryver galathynius #rowan x aelin #pregnancy #pregnancy au #rowaelin baby #twins #premature birth #3 parts #part 3 #finale part #angst #throne of glass #sarah j maas

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mythicamagic · 5 years

Text

Picture Frames - Hatori x Tohru Oneshot

Hatori is stranded at the Sohma estate during a blizzard. To his surprise, Tohru stumbles into his solitude, and the two awkwardly try to place their feelings about the other while waiting out the storm. Hatori’s self-imposed isolation won’t be easily shattered, but Tohru’s smile has been known to melt snow.

Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Romance, Fluff (many many tropes be in this fic, take a shot for each one)

Rated T

Made for @frost-guardian - hope you enjoy bud!

Post-curse fic

Word Count: 7,000 (as always you can read this on ao3 or fanfiction.net via the same username)

Picture Frames ~

It was snowing again.

The soft breeze spun the flakes into flurries of white confetti. They fell and landed in silence, a strange stillness lingering in the air, as it always did when it snowed. Hatori observed the fall from his porch, hands buried in his pockets. He stood lost in thought, allowing melancholy nostalgia to settle over him. Usually he wasn’t so generous with his time, but the worsening snow was so deep the authorities had issued a warning for people not to leave their homes. So Hatori found himself in the strange position of not being able to make house calls. Which meant no work needed to be done.

That never happened.

At a loss of what to do, he was reminded of why he’d become a workaholic in the first place. It starved off painful memories.

Taking out a cigarette and lighting it, he mulled over calling Ayame or Shigure. Which was also strange and never happened. They always rang him first, Ayame to gossip nonsense or Shigure to wryly observe some latest mischief he’d made. Taking a drag, Hatori padded inside and exhaled slowly, dialling for Ayame.

‘Due to the poor weather conditions, we cannot connect your call at this time. Please try again later.’

Ah, that explained things. Even Akito wasn’t around to send for him. The entire Sohma estate lay empty, with him the sole occupant. Everyone else was busy enjoying their time off for the holidays and he’d been so caught up in work he’d ignored the weather warnings. The open doors shuddered, the wood starting to rattle against the bellow of new, harsher gusts of wind. Pulling them shut, Hatori frowned to himself, sighing. Good thing he had a heater or the room would be freezing.

Tired eyes slanted towards the single bed in the corner of the room longingly. Maybe…he could just sleep for a little while? Uninterrupted rest was rare, he should make use of it. Hatori took a step towards it before catching sight of his desk. Kana’s picture frame stood empty now, but something about it still made his mouth thin. He looked at the filing cabinet instead. That’s right. He needed to check over some prescriptions first before sleeping.

He could always rest later.

Not like he’d been up for 48 hours already.

Hatori let the cigarette hang loosely from his mouth, sitting down and pulling open the cabinet. He thumbed through it, fingers lingering on the letter ’T’ just as his door suddenly flung open.

Brunnet hair and blue ribbons caught his eye first. Her wild pants and red face suddenly registered, sending his heart skittering.

“Hah- hah- whew!” Tohru panted, struggling to close the door against the gusts of wind. “It’s crazy out there!”

A pale hand pushed the door shut above her head. Tohru blinked snowflakes from her lashes, looking up at the doctor.

“Miss Honda. How-” his mouth clicked shut, good eye slightly wide. “Why were you out in the storm? Didn’t you hear the news?”

“Hm? Oh no, I haven’t heard anything. I’m so sorry to barge in on you like this, I’m sure it’s an inconvenience.” She fussed, lingering by the door and not moving to take off her snow drenched coat. White flakes sprinkled her shoulders, nose, even the top of her head. Tohru gave a worried smile, hands moving animatedly in the air. “I did notice it had started to snow while at work, a-and some of the staff decided to wait out the weather there. But I thought it’d be over pretty quick. Next thing I know it’s like a blizzard, but oh- I’m sure you’re busy with work,” she babbled.

Hatori noticed their proximity and leaned away, wondering if he made her nervous. He took a drag from his cigarette, letting her ramble until a few certain words caught his attention.

“No, you’re not going out again.” His quiet gaze settled on her, tone dropping.

Tohru blinked, putting her bag down and holding her gloveless hands. He noticed they were red, fingers no doubt stiff. “Are you sure? I don’t want to interrupt.”

“Please do,” he muttered flatly, offering his hand to take her coat. “Work isn’t exactly keeping my focus right now.”

“Well then,” she smiled hesitantly at first, before beaming outright. “I’m happy to be your distraction.”

His heart did another funny thing in his chest. Hatori firmly folded it away just as he hung her coat on the rack over the heater. Tohru rubbed her hands and sighed with relief as she unwound her pink scarf from her neck. Hatori offered his hand again, setting it aside.

“That’s better,” she chirped, dusting some melted snow off her. “I couldn’t get through to anyone on the phone, so when I passed by the Sohma estate, I wondered if it would be alright to use yours.”

“There’s not much point. The phone lines aren’t working.”

Tohru paused, “oh.” She deflated a little, and he regretted being so blunt. Unfortunately, that was just in his nature. He blinked when she smiled anyway, “that’s okay. The electricity still seems to be working,” she gestured to his lamp. “Would you like some tea? Or I can cook something if you’d prefer.”

The former dragon zodiac stared. He then swallowed, removing his cigarette from his lips and snuffing it out on an ashtray. He could hear Shigure now, simpering about 'sweet little Tohru’ and her kind ways. She always threw him. Because while he listened to Shigure and sometimes Ayame drone on about her latest feat, he never expected her kindness to extend to him.

But she always offered it freely, and so easily. He hadn’t gotten used to it despite knowing her for years now. “Tea would be…nice,” he uttered, clearing his throat. “Thank you.”

Tohru smiled and wandered to the kettle, kneeling to open the cupboard and take out some mugs. Her actions were thoughtless- like she spent many hours there with him. Hatori sat at his desk, running a hand through his heavy bangs. He supposed she did visit sometimes, usually with an entourage of their strange, colourful friends.

Tohru padded back when she was done, placing his mug down on his desk, only to wince and move it onto a coaster. Hatori rose a brow, glancing at the water rings on the wood. It wasn’t like he would ever yell at her, let alone over something so simple.

Thanking her again, he took a good measure of comfort from wrapping his hand loosely around it. He watched the steam rise from the cup and attempted to make casual conversation.

“How has your health been?”

Damn it.

Tohru took a seat on a cushion by the low table. Hatori averted his gaze as she blew softly on the steam from her cup, nursing it close. “I’ve been wonderful. No worries here, what about you?”

His good eye slid back to her, as though unable to do anything else. People tended to forget to ask doctors that. “Yes, much the same.”

She tilted her head, gesturing to the space under her eye. “But you have bags under your eyes. Are you sure you’ve not been pushing yourself too hard? I suppose you must have a busy schedule in winter, lots of colds. Please remember to rest.” Tohru seemed to notice how prying her words could come across and opened her mouth to apologise-

“Pot kettle black,” he muttered, cutting her off.

Tohru blinked, tilting her head. “Um, do you want…black coffee instead?” She made a weak guess.

A huff of amusement escaped him. “No, I’m referring to your own dark circles. You should take your own advice and 'please remember to rest’.” Hatori quipped, lips curling up at the edges.

Her cheeks flushed scarlet, and she drew her knees up, hands curling in the thin material of her black tights. Hatori noticed her legs shaking slightly.

“I-I have been resting, honest. You’re starting to sound like Yuki and Kyo,” she smiled, eyes widening when he stood and grabbed a nearby blanket, tossing it over her legs. Pale hands settled on the tops of her knees as he leaned down slightly over her.

Black hair slid forward, exposing one sightless eye. “Do you also lie to them to assuage their worry?”

Tohru’s eyes widened, gaze fixed on his. She then bit her lip and smiled coyishly, “pot kettle black.”

He inhaled, lips tilting up while he straightened. “Touché.”

This wasn’t flirting, right? He’d never been good at it so he hoped this was simple banter. Because he was not flirting with a woman 12 years his junior. He had firmly filed that particular thought into a cabinet known as - never to be reflected upon. Even when she’d graduated and grown into a young lady of 19, he assured himself that he'd never open the cabinet.

“I really like that tie,” Tohru changed the topic of conversation, looking at him over the rim of her mug. “It looks very nice on you.”

He cleared his throat for the umpteenth time. Again, not flirting but an innocent compliment. He touched it uncertainly. A gift from Aya.

“A biased opinion. Isn’t pink your favourite colour?” Hatori muttered, retreating to the safety of his seat. Her smile froze on her face, before she busied herself with sipping her tea, the steam causing her cheeks to grow redder.

An awkward silence descended upon them, and Hatori cursed his social skills. They hadn’t been…alone together for a very long time. Usually their louder friends were filling the silences. Why couldn’t he have just accepted the compliment?

“How did you know that?”

Oh. That’s what was bothering her. Hatori shrugged, “you mentioned it once.”

And he’d remembered.

Tohru smiled slightly, before shivering and rubbing her legs over the blanket. Hatori noticed and leaned forward, angling the heater near his desk more toward her. Tohru made a face and pulled the cushion closer to him so that they were sharing the heat. Hatori’s lips tilted up slightly. She was stubborn in some ways.

“I wonder how long the blizzard will last for,” she mused aloud.

Hatori lifted a shoulder, resting his chin on his knuckles. “The news said at least a day. Unfortunately, it looks as though you’re stuck with me for company, miss Honda.”

Tohru jolted and shook her head violently, ribbons ruffling in her hair. “N-no! That’s- I mean, you’re wonderful! Please don’t say that, and you really can call me Tohru you know,” she said, standing suddenly. “We just need to take our minds off the snow and how people are probably worried about us! Do you um…have any board games?”

Hatori stared at her, blinking slowly.

“Let’s see, one, two- six. I scored six!” Tohru chirped, leaning over the scrabble board. It was the Western version, something Momiji had brought over, but luckily the two were proficient in English. They’d played a number of games for a few hours, punctuated by idle chatter, before landing on this one as their favourite. Tohru didn’t have the strategic eye for chess and Hatori didn’t possess the same enthusiasm for 'Old Maid.’

Hatori walked over, carrying yet more tea. He placed the tray down and rose a brow, looking at the word. “Dragon, hm,” he took his place opposite her at the low table, wondering why he could feel a slight chill in the room. “You know you could have scored higher by utilising this triple letter score,” he tapped his figure on the blue square.

“Yes but then I wouldn’t have been able to spell Dragon!” She giggled, obviously more pleased by the word than winning the game.

He rose a brow, feeling a warmth in his stomach. Her enthusiasm for pointless things appeared to be infectious. Glancing at the letters on his side, his lips curved up. Taking hold of an 'i’ he placed it under her 'r’ and began completing his own word. Sitting back, he looked at it with quiet satisfaction.

Tohru tilted her head, blushing slightly. “Rice ball…hmm, isn’t that two words, Doctor?” She said playfully.

He blinked and checked it again, his own cheeks dusting with heat at the mistake. “…I suppose. Hm, should have gone with onigiri.”

She let out a carefree laugh that sounded like the personification of sunshine. At that moment, the orange light of the heater that had been casting orange hues onto her face made a distressed noise. It then abruptly shut off. Hatori frowned, shifting the rack away to fiddle with it.

“Oh no, is it broken?”

Hatori turned off the power and removed the back, fiddling with it. “No need to panic, it’s probably just a faulty-” he broke off a wire. The heater probably needed that. He calmly returned the broken piece to its place. “…Yes, it may be broken.” Funny how his hands could be so careful when treating patients and yet he had an allergy to tinkering with electronics.

Tohru’s brows drew together when the room started to grow colder. The Sohma house was old-fashioned, with no radiators in sight. She sat up, holding her arms, “okay, um. We need a battle plan! This is fine, my mom couldn’t always pay for the gas bill and we made do!”

Her hands balled into fists, face determined. Hatori straightened, noticing her shiver. He hummed, removing his white doctor’s coat and placing it around her shoulders, touch lingering. They felt much too thin and small under his hands. “Extra blankets are a must, I’ll take care of finding those.”

She smiled bashfully and nodded, “mhm! And I’ll see if you’ve got any electric ones! Or candles. I’ve also got a bento box leftover from work that we can share. Keeping well fed is integral for fighting the cold!” She nodded sagely.

Dark hair slid forward as he leaned down, tugging on one of her ribbons lightly. “You didn’t eat earlier? Miss Honda…am I going to have to strictly monitor your health?” The calm tone dropped once more, ice leaking into his words. And yet, vague worry lingered around his perpetually melancholy eyes.

Reaching up to fix her ribbon, Tohru slid her arms into the sleeves of his coat, which slipped past her hands. “There’s no need to worry~ I promise! Now, let’s begin operation: Fight the cold!” She quickly turned with yet another curiously red face. Hatori wondered if she were coming down with something.

Something foreign heated his veins though when she padded away, the coat swaying out behind her like a cape due to it’s size. Her long shapely legs were visible for a moment under the billow of white- and his breath caught.

Hatori quickly adjusted his tie. No, put that thought away damn it. Just because she looked like a woman didn’t mean Tohru deserved to be disrespected by his unwanted attention. He quickly strode into a new room, opening the cupboards and bringing out all the blankets he could find, loading them into his arms. Now if Shigure were here, or- Hatori shuddered- in his place. Alone. With Tohru. The former dog could not be trusted not to cause a scandal. But Hatori Sohma, lonely and admiring of Tohru though he was- never caused scandal. He was the straight-laced doctor, a man of discipline, routine.

Besides even if there wasn’t an age gap and even if in some mad parallel universe Tohru returned his affections-

Hatori shook his head, returning to the room and glancing at the empty picture frame. He couldn’t do it, not again. He needed to stop thinking about ridiculous things.

He’d vowed never to hurt another person ever again.

Tohru came padding in, holding a tub of various sized candles but sadly no electric blanket. She smiled amiably at him, before pausing. “Hatori…what’s wrong?”

Lean muscles froze. He placed the blankets down, straightening slowly. Fishing in his pocket, he brought out a lighter and offered it. “Nothing, here. Just don’t burn yourself,” he muttered.

Cold fingers closed around his own, gentle and soft. His lips thinned.

“I-I’m not that accident-prone,” she lightly teased, giving a smile. It fell on her face a little when he didn’t respond. Accepting the lighter, she turned and with his help, began arranging the candles around their make-shift nest of comforts. They didn’t provide much of a heat source, Hatori wryly observed. If anything, they were more of a fire hazard.

Tohru concentrated on lighting the wicks, glancing up at him every so often. Hatori pulled out a spare futon to spread beneath them, sitting on it as he worked on making their surroundings as comfy as possible, spreading blankets everywhere like a fort. He didn’t own a kotatsu, much to Tohru’s dismay. Once they were done, Tohru brought out her bento box, grabbing a spare set of chopsticks and handing them to him.

“Since you haven’t eaten, it would be best if only you-”

“You’re eating too~!” She smiled brightly, to the point that Hatori sweatdropped, backing down. He still had reservations about taking half, but she divided it evenly, placing the box in between them.

Digging in, Hatori quietly appreciated the food, noting the amount of care she’d put into every part. The attention to detail that she afforded every meal. A thought surfaced in his sleep-deprived head- tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop it.

“You’ll make a wonderful wife, someday.”

Tohru made a noise, chocking on her food. He winced, mentally kicking himself as he offered her water. She gratefully accepted, chugging it down. “A-ah! Thank you, that’s very sweet of you to say. You’ll make an amazing husband too!” She rambled, also wincing.

His limbs locked, coldness skittering down his spine just as his pulse raced. “…I don’t think that’s something in my future, but thanks,” he quietly admitted.

Tilting her head, Tohru picked up the pickled plum in her chopsticks, putting it on his side. She knew he liked them. “O-oh um…what makes you think that?”

“Experience,” he uttered, placing the plum back on hers. He knew she liked them more.

Her cheeks puffed up indignantly, but on her face, the expression only came across as cute. “W-well for what it’s worth I think you’re wrong. Yuki used to think something similar, but now he has Machi. Then there’s Rin with Haru, a-and Kisa with Hiro. Even Ayame and Mine. I don’t really know what’s happening with Akito and Shigure but if you’re worried about not marrying because of the zodiac then-”

“I know. The curse is broken, and it has been for some time.” Hatori interrupted gently, exhaling. He could really use a cigarette, but he didn’t like exposing her to secondhand smoke. “I’m just of the opinion that it’s…in my personality or fate to be alone. I’ve become used to solitude, there’s no need to fuss over it. I don’t find it uncomfortable.”

Tohru’s brows drew together, and she glanced at the picture frame on his desk. Hatori busied himself with eating, wishing he hadn’t opened his mouth once again. He didn’t even know why he was talking about it, but Tohru had that effect on people.

“I understand,” the words escaped her gently, lifting some rice to her lips. He hated that he’d lowered her mood, but upon looking up, he found the girl lost in thought, not upset. She was…different, miss Honda.

When first getting to know her, he’d surmised that she was a lot like Kana, but as time wore on, that thought had faded. His ex-fiance had been beautifully sensitive, like an orchid. She’d filled his days with colour when she’d blossomed. But under strain and heartbreak, her petals wilted. Tohru, for all her naivete, held a deep well of pain within her. It was like no amount of troubles the Sohma curse threw at her would compare with the loss of her mother. She could handle the secret. Hell, she’d broken it.

Drawn out of his musings, he noticed her fingers had turned blue. “Miss Honda,” he muttered, placing his chopsticks down. “Your hands, give them to me.”

Brown eyes blinked, nibbling on the rice. She set her own utensils aside, startled when large hands covered her own. The doctor shifted to sit beside her, holding her palms over a larger candle. Lips thinning with consternation, his slightly calloused hands rubbed her smaller digits.

“H-hator-” she jolted when his head dipped down- exhaling on her hands and continuing to massage her skin with his thumbs. Hatori lowered his head once more, the movement bringing his lips shockingly close to her skin.

“We can’t afford to be polite right now,” he grumbled. “If you’re feeling cold, tell me.”

Tohru swallowed under his intense attention.

“Alright,” she softly agreed, smiling. “You’re so kind, Hatori. It’s no wonder you became a Doctor.”

He hesitated in his touches, before continuing to rub her hands. His eyes stayed fixed on the task, but a slight gentleness warmed his gaze. “I didn’t have a choice in occupation, it was something my father did before me. But…I do enjoy it.”

His muscles tensed when he felt something light tap his cheek just under his good eye. “Still, you should let other people look after you sometimes too. You look like a panda. Ah!- sorry that came out rude. I meant it as a cute thing!”

Hatori rose a brow. Cute?

Tohru reeled, waving her free hand, “a-anyway. Just how long have you been awake for?”

He checked his watch, mulling it over. “About 52 hours,” he said bluntly.

It were as though her spirit had ascended from her body, leaving Torhu with a sucker-punched expression. Hatori reached out and tugged on her bangs almost fondly. “There’s no need to freak out, it’s quite normal in my line of work.”

Still reeling, Tohru snapped herself out of her daze, raising a finger. “That doesn’t make me worry less! A-ahh, and you’ve been staying up to take care of me when you could have been resting! I’m the worst! I am so sorry- here!” She quickly got up, breaking their contact to dash to the bed. She began fluffing a pillow, setting it down. She then tucked a thick blanket over it and gestured to it with the most determined expression she could muster.

“Please rest.”

“No.”

“W-why not?”

He sighed. “For one thing, it’s getting late. You need your sleep more than I do after actually working today, I’ve only been sitting down and sorting notes. You’ve been on your feet and out in the snow. So go ahead, use it.” He gestured to the bed while dousing the meagre amount of candles they’d put out. He then picked up the bento box and carried it to the kitchen. He heard uncertain, worried sounds as Tohru followed, hovering behind him.

“B-but you need it more than me!-”

Hatori turned on the tap water, letting her ramblings wash over him much like whenever Ayame or Shigure started fussing.

“Besides your schedule is busier, and it’s 52 hours, Hatori! 52!”

He calmly washed the utensils and bento box, surprised she wasn’t running out of steam talking a mile a minute. So caught up was he in his musings that Hatori misjudged her proximity. Turning to grab a dish towel- he bumped right into the girl. Hatori reeled, eyes widening as he automatically caught her by the shoulders, heart thudding when he expected to transform. To become small, fragile. Something easily stepped on as he fell the great height to the ground.

But nothing happened. He didn’t realise his breathing had escalated until soft palms gingerly touched his cheeks, drawing his startled gaze down to hers.

“It’s okay, Hatori. See? Nothing- nothing happens anymore…” she murmured, seeming to only now realise he hadn’t tested his newfound freedom yet.

Hatori caught his breath, wondering why sweat dotted his temples. He trembled slightly, touching her hand on his face. He hoped he imagined leaning into her touch. “I apologise. I guess it was just a shock…”

She nodded empathetically, gazing up at him. She stroked her thumb over his jaw slightly, before blushing and letting go. “U-um…so- like I was saying,” she murmured, holding her hands as they slowly padded back to his room.

“Fine, look see, I’ll sit down.” He took a seat on the bed, that he admitted was much comfier now that she’d plied it with blankets. Still, this was not enough to assuage her as Tohru placed her hands on his shoulders.

“Okay! Step one is done~ now for step two! Lying down,” she beamed, putting all her strength into trying to force him to lie back. Hatori felt her hands shake and noticed her grunt with effort, but he did not budge. He sighed. Reluctantly, he allowed himself to fall back- head hitting the pillow and scattering his dark hair in disarray.

However, the sudden movement made the girl lose her balance. She landed with a squeak directly atop him.

Hatori stiffened immediately, shifting to get up, “m-miss Honda.”

Tohru seemed to misconstrue his motives to escape- as she placed her palms firmly down on his chest, trying to keep him there. “N-no! You shouldn’t get up! Go to sleep!” She blushed scarlet. “I’ll keep you like this if I have to!”

“I can hardly rest while you’re-” he sucked in a harsh breath when her hips squirmed. Directly against his. His head hit the pillow once more, mind screaming. Alright, so Tohru was essentially straddling him. No big deal. It wasn’t like he could also feel the gentle curves of her body pressing against his, smell her scent of fresh linens dancing in a warm summer breeze- or sense the line of tension in her spine. His hands reluctantly settled on her lower back.

“This isn’t necessary. I’ll sleep if it means that much to you.”

Tohru shifted atop him, tilting her head up where it rested on his chest. Heat surged down his stomach, curling his fingers in the material of her blouse. Suddenly seeming to realise how indecent their positions were, Tohru lifted her upper body, hair frazzled. It hung down to tickle his nose.

“I-I um- okay. Just make sure you rest!” She blushed, moving carefully to try and untangle their limbs. Feeling the warmth leaving his chest, Hatori surprised both her and himself by halting her movements.

His hands had settled on her waist.

Tohru paused, cheeks seemingly incapable of losing their red hue. “H-Hatori?”

Exhaling, violet eyes stared up at her. He quickly grasped a blanket and tossed it around her shoulders, tugging her to lie back down on a mad impulse. “Let’s just…both get some sleep. You’re as bad as me when it comes to watching your health and pushing yourself too hard. I don’t trust you not to stay up.”

Surprising him, she gave a soft, mumbled giggle. “You make us sound so rebellious. Like Black Haru or something.”

The former dragon stared up at the ceiling, his heart thundering quicker at the sound. He was certain she could hear it in his chest. He’d forgotten what it was like to hold another human so close. The alien feeling was dissolving into such a pleasant sensation he feared he’d grow spoiled from it.

“Hatori…this is okay, isn’t it?” Came her small voice.

His hand glided up her back to rest on her head. “Of course. Unless it bothers you.”

“Oh no, not at all,” she murmured, grip tightening in his shirt. He wondered why. “I mean, we’re friends!”

“Yes. Friends.”

Tohru made a noise of quiet affirmation, settling closer. “Goodnight Hatori.”

Hearing her breathing even out, his attention shifted down, glancing at the crown of her head. Brunette strands of hair were sprawled over his chest, some spun into gentle spirals. His pale fingers stroked the soft locks, before clenching and drawing away.

“Goodnight…Tohru.”

Hatori was floating on clouds. Or at least it certainly felt that way. He slept long and deep, breathing in heavenly smells and feeling oddly…safe.

Releasing a dusty sounding breath, his lashes fluttered. Surfacing from sleep slowly, he lifted his head groggily. At once, he noticed their positions had changed. Strands of hair were stuck to his lip, his face inches from Tohru’s neck, where he assumed he’d been resting just a moment ago. Somehow they’d changed positions in the night. He was now laying on his stomach, trapping her more petite form under his. His felt his arms wrapped around her, and more alarmingly- hers around him.

Shifting, Hatori’s face flushed when he felt something. Ah, it seemed her leg had hooked around his in the night too. Fantastic.

Grasping her wrists, Hatori gently untangled her from him, shifting to get up. He braced his hands on either side of her head on the pillow to rise.

Of course, her lashes opened.

“H-hatori,” she breathed, eyes widening. She then smiled shyly, hands grasping the covers tighter. “G-good morning! Did you sleep well?”

Hatori made a noise, quickly moving to rise. He half-heartedly tried to fix his bed-hair, only to give up. “And you?”

“Yes, very well thank you,” she chirped. “It felt very warm.”

He adjusted his tie, wishing he could stop damn blushing. He strode over to his desk, “I’m going to see if the phone’s working.”

“Ah, sure. I guess I’ll start making breakfast then.”

“You don’t have to-” too late, she was already gone.

Hatori dialled for Shigure and lifted the phone to his ear.

'Due to the poor weather conditions, we cannot connect your call at this time. Please try again later.’

Not good. It was only the second day but spending any more time with Tohru alone might make her catch wise to his feelings.

“Hatori!~ Would you like some eggs?”

Then again, it was Tohru. He was quite fortunate she saw everyone around her as strictly friends. Sighing, he tried to fix his expression into a calm mask and joined her in the kitchen.

While they contentedly tucked into their breakfast together, he noticed her pause mid-meal. Finishing a bite, he waited for her to speak up.

“Hatori, remember yesterday when you said you didn’t think you’d get married?”

He made a non-committal noise.

“I-I don’t think it’s in my personality to be alone, maybe I’d make a good wife-”

“You would,” his tone brooked no argument.

“Hmph. Pot kettle black,” Tohru smiled with a hesitant impishness.

Violet eyes danced. “You think I’d make a good wife?”

She gave a laugh, lips tugging up as warmth lit up her expression. She then sobered. “It’s just that…maybe I’m afraid of marriage in a similar way. Afraid of someone being more important to me than my mom. If I got married, then I’m worried they’d take her place in my heart. I don’t like to admit it, because it makes me a bad daughter- but I can’t…picture her face clearly anymore. I have to rely on her photo. I-it’s awful. I’m terrible.”

Something vicious attacked his bloodstream at her put down. “Don’t. Your mother would be proud of you.” His voice became haunting steel, before softening. “For what it’s worth, I’m the same. I can’t clearly recall Kana’s laugh, but I know it was distinct. I can’t see her face, but there’s the recollection of her eyes or how she used to stand that I do know. I’m sorry, she’s not deceased so it’s not the same-”

“No, no. It is- because it’s just as painful. You still…lost her.”

He stopped, that reserved quietness in his bearing softening for her. “Just because we loved them…doesn’t mean we have to be alone to honour them, Tohru.”

She stared, tears collecting in her eyes. “Does that mean you’ll reconsider becoming an old maid?” She sniffed, smiling teasingly while trying to ignore her red nose and wobbling lip.

Hatori’s gaze shifted over her honest features, before returning to his now cold breakfast. “Perhaps. If the right suitor came along.”

It was at that moment the electricity decided to shut off, dousing the room in faint blue tones.

Tohru had let out a yelp and panicked, hands fluttering everywhere. “H-h-hatori! Oh no! If there’s no electricity then we can’t cook dinner!”

“Calm down. We’ll find a way, besides there’s enough food to snack on if this isn’t just a short power cut.”

He heard her get up, but she was on his sightless side- moving closer. “But what if it lasts longer than- GAH!” Something knocked violently against the table, making the plates rattle.

Hatori turned in alarm, hands reaching out and finding her form stumbling. Firm fingers wrapped around her arm, steadying her. He shifted to stand, brows drawing together.

“Tohru? Are you alright?”

The lights flickered, before turning back on. The whole room was bathed in soft hues once more, and the girl exhaled in relief, looking up at him. “O-oh, yes I’m fine. I just tripped.”

“You’re bleeding,” he deadpanned, attention fixed on her torn tights. Her left knee was scrapped, some bruising starting to rise to the surface.

Tohru gaped, peering down. He decided to take it upon himself to pick her up, leaning down to allow her to place her arm around his shoulders as he slid one arm under her legs. He didn’t think of it as some gallant thing, he just couldn’t be bothered to wait as she hopped over to a chair. He placed her down in his desk chair and retrieved some antiseptic, along with a plaster.

Though he knew her to be a grown woman he couldn’t shake the habit of tending to even the most minor of injuries, especially when it came to her. He’d taken the car to Shigure’s house on several occasions when it was reported she had a headache or scrape from a new fall.

Hatori knelt down to grasp her ankle, placing her foot on his thigh to elevate her knee and allow him to see it better. She made a noise, though he wasn’t certain why. His fingers then rubbed the cream onto her wound, and this time he understood the hiss between her teeth.

“The pain will pass…am I being too rough?” He muttered, trying to gentle his touch.

“N-no not at all,” she murmured.

He hummed and placed the plaster over the scrape, smoothing the edges to let it stick. He felt mild satisfaction at such a simple task, ready to move away.

Hatori shifted, raising his head. He froze, finding her closer than anticipated. His breath stilled, eyes widening marginally. She wasn't…pulling away.

Her eyes shone from the light of the nearby candles, giving the brown a brightened earthy glow. Some loose strands of hair hung forward, lingering near his cheek. His nails caught in her tights as his fingers clenched- and he inhaled. He needed to pull away. Needed to stop. But the look on her face remained gentle and inviting. He couldn’t understand why.

Hatori’s heartbeat thundered in his ears like a roaring tide. He leaned forward-just a touch. Just to see. To know. Tohru didn’t scream or pull away. Her cheeks coloured red, mouth parting a touch. Those kind eyes flitted down to his thin lips.

That was what did it. His fingers rose up to her jaw- touch feather light, bridging the last of the distance between them. She inhaled, her lips feeling soft and pliant under his.

Something crashed down his veins and melted inside his stomach. Rapture and longing collided, hurting in an exquisite, visceral kind of way. Suddenly he was more aware than ever of his loneliness, his secret want of her. It caused his hands to tremble.

He felt her hesitant palm on his cheek, smoothing the long dark strands of his bangs aside. When he pulled away, eyes peeling open, he wished for the first time in a long while to have his full sight back. Tohru remained frozen with rosy cheeks, opening her mouth to say something-

Hatori retreated, standing. He walked over to his desk, facing away from her as he collected himself slowly. A fire churned in his gut, emotions pressing tight against the surface. He wanted so badly to embrace her.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-” she murmured, voice wavering. She was hurt. He could tell.

“Don’t be. You have nothing to apologise for. I took advantage-”

“No, no you didn’t!” She burst, and he heard her stand. “Please don’t turn away…”

His fingers twitched at his hands, hands curling into loose fists that tightened until they shook. “You understand why we can’t do this, Tohru. Aside from the age gap-”

“M-my parents were far apart in age-”

“There’s also my…disposition. My fate,” he said with an air of grim finality.

Despite the curse being broken and the zodiac members free, he still felt fear. He still pictured history repeating itself. That she’d somehow be hurt again just like Kana. Perhaps he should be worried about losing another eye, but Hatori gladly would if it meant keeping her safe.

He heard quiet footsteps approach, and he turned to face her. A guarded look had entered his gaze, haunted with past terrors and agony.

He was afraid. Terrified of hurting her. The empty picture frame stood silent and empty as a grim reminder.

Tears swam in Tohru’s gaze, though he wasn’t sure why. She clasped her hands, perhaps to stop herself from touching him. “You said it before 'we don’t have to be alone to honour them.’ Things are different now…they’re not what they were a few years ago. No one’s going to punish you for being happy, Hatori. Not Akito, and not fate.”

That’s right, God had stepped down.

Looking to the future felt like an insurmountable task considering the past that still clung to his lonely room. Lingering in the backs of his eyes and resurfaced in his waking thoughts.

But then Tohru…

Tohru sometimes felt like she’d present a 'maybe.’ Maybe things wouldn’t go to hell with her. If he were just brave enough to take her hand then-

The sound of the phone ringing filled the room.

'It seems like the worst of the storm has passed. There is no longer a Red Weather Warning in effect, so you’ll all be pleased to know it’s clear to go outside again~ This has been your three o'clock weather report.’

Hatori stood outside on the porch, smoking as the radio droned on. He stared down at the empty picture frame in his hand, lost in memory once more as the snow fell. Tohru was busying herself cleaning, though he’d told her it wasn’t necessary.

Shigure and whoever else would come to take her home. The mischievous dog had been on the phone, cheerfully announcing that Hatsuharu had found a snow plough for who knows where.

No doubt the roads would be cleared soon. His heart constricted at the thought, though nothing touched his expression.

A soft touch had his eyes snapping down to his hand, where Tohru looked up at him. She gently grasped the picture frame, biting her lip, before looking away. She then summoned the courage to speak.

“I might have to go soon, but um…I wanted to say something.”

She paused, and he waited, hanging on the precipice of whatever she chose to do or say.

“Stop me if this is too forward, but I think…it’s time to get a different photo frame for your desk.” Tohru said, voice gentle. “You don’t have to throw this away of course. See it’s like if someone wanted to become extra special to me, I could never- never put their image in mom’s place. She’s important to me, and always will have a large part of my heart.”

Hatori felt it now, the pull toward her. His attention was magnetised, hearing attuned to her voice to pick up every soft inflection. Tohru smiled gently, no jealousy in her. “Just like Kana will always have a large part of yours.”

She took a breath. “But if…there was someone for me, I’d put them in a brand new frame. That way they’re not crumpling themselves to fit someone else’s space. I feel like I understand that a bit better now. Maybe I…don’t need to be afraid of marriage if I think of it like that.”

She really did understand. For a moment he contemplated her. He saw something radiant in her face, a kind of wiseness beyond her years that mingled with her naivete. “I see, eloquently put.” Violet eyes shifted over her slowly. “In that case, would you like to go shopping for photo frames together, Tohru?”

His hand hung loosely at his side near hers, fingers curling.

Her lips tilted up, stretching further into a breathtaking, radiant smile. “Yes! That would be wonderful,” she murmured, expression softening into something more hopeful and quiet. She released her grip on her hands and also let them hang lose, watching the snowfall. Slowly, as though fearful of rejection, she inched her knuckles closer.

Hatori’s gaze shifted down and giving in to the small ray of hope inside him, took her hand outright. He would follow her lead, he decided. She jumped a little and dipped her head shyly, threading their fingers together.

“Hatori…”

“Mn?”

Brunette hair slid over her shoulder, falling in soft waves as she shifted to look up at him. “I don’t think…friends are supposed to feel this way about each other.”

“No, probably not.” He somberly agreed, heart thudding as though he were a schoolboy.

Her brows pulled together slightly, and her hand squeezed his. “What do we do?”

For a long while, he didn’t reply. The snow fell gently, a silent witness to the quiet regard in Hatori’s eye, which was starting to become reserved only for her. “We’ll do this at our own pace. However, I wish you’d reconsider and think about being with a boy more your age.”

Tohru’s comforting eyes sparked with alarm, her mouth opening to perhaps voice an eloquent protest. It then clicked shut, and her heart took the lead in her words instead. “But I only want you, Hatori.”

He exhaled sharply, a fragile thing inside him anchoring itself to the warmth of her palm. He wasn’t sure if the universe would allow him happiness once more, but he trusted Tohru. However naive it was to hope- he wanted to believe in a future with her in it. He felt his body humming with life, the touch of her skin feeling more tangible the more warmth flooded him. Bringing her hand up- he pressed his lips to her knuckles ardently, breath shuddering over her skin.

“Then you have me.”

Outside, the snow slowly began to thaw.

End

#fruits basket #hatori sohma #tohru honda #hatori x tohru #furuba #Hatohru

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kivaember · 6 years

Text

Obligatory Mass Effect Crossover

(I just. wanted. to worldbuild ffxiv into mass effect setting. ok tbh this is mostly FFXIV IN SPAAAACE but y’know. whatevs. i regret nothing!)

Dalamud always looked so ominous.

It was an artificial satellite the size of a small moon, glaring red and menacingly trailing after Menpina around Hydaelyn. ‘Menphina’s Loyal Hound’, it had been called when they as a civilisation were young and ignorant, before they realised that it was a weapon of mass destruction contained within an artificial shell. The aether around it was always warped, prone to unstable flares and splutters, to the point where they had a whole institution dedicated to predicting and mapping those flare ups to warn incoming and outgoing star vessels so they weren’t reduced to superheated atoms.

It was a relic of a very ancient, reckless past – a relic that was still very much in use. Due to the way it was, ah, constructed, only a select percentage of the population could ever work on it. Only 0.01% of Hydaelyn’s population won the genetic lottery to withstand the Elder Primal’s influences slumbering within that ancient relic, and an even smaller percentage of that actually had the skill, intellect and will to be charged with its day to day running. Dalamud was, despite being a weapon of mass destruction, Hydaelyn’s only source of infinite energy.

One of those very very very lucky few in charge of such an important, vital relic… was Aza.

---

“-ing naked when the snow falls around me! Drifting closer to the edge but She won’t have me!”

Aza hummed along to the song blasting through his helmet, idly tapping along the flickering Allagan display. The live support in the control room was still down, but considering that shit was over ten thousand years old and fine tuned for heavily genetically modified Allagan, it was never all that reliable. After an unfortunately incident a century ago where some poor sod asphyxiated to death, it was now mandatory to do maintenance work like you were ready to be spaced within the next thirty seconds.

“Wake up in sweat, full of regret, try to forget, these memories, lurking beneath, lost in a dream…”

The display flickered, and Aza frowned a little when the same error cropped up for the fifth time since his shift started. It was a minor thing – a miniscule percentage rise in temperature and aether harvesting, but it was really strange. There were no solar flares or weird space shit happening for aether levels to spike, so why…

“Unchosen paths, a broken path, forespoken wr- CHIRP. CHIRP. INCOMING CALL FROM FORWARD STATION: H A L O N E.”

“Damn it, just before the best part,” Aza muttered, sending a pulse of aether to the linkpearl insistently chirping in his ear, “Yeah, whaddya want?”

“Aza,” a very pleasantly familiar voice purred, “Is that any way to greet your partner?”

“Well, if it isn’t handsome!” Aza laughed, his mood buoying as he quickly adjusted the little error flashing across the Allagan display. It resolved itself and Dalamud stopped overproducing aether. He leaned on the console and made himself comfortable, his tail lifting in pleasure, “I thought you weren’t back from New Ishgard until the end of the year? Not that I'm complaining. I missed you, gorgeous.”

“And I missed you too, love," Aymeric returned with such warmth is made Aza's heart want to burst into glittery confetti, even if the crappy reception distorted his partner's voice. Seriously, it was good to hear his voice again! The Comm Buoys were still absolute dog wank between Ishgard's newest colony and Hydaelyn, so he greedily drank up every crackly word from his linkpearl, "I returned early as Haurchefant seemed to be handling its administrative and military duties well enough on his own despite the complaints of his ‘conduct’. He was performing well above the standard, to be honest.”

“Whaaat?" Aza gasped in utter outrage, "Who’s complaining about Haurchefant? He’s an absolute sweetheart!”

“Yes, he’s also pure and ‘best boy’, whatever that means,” Aza could practically feel Aymeric's eyeroll, “Unfortunately, his appointment to a rather prestigious position has ruffled more than a few feathers in the House of Lords-”

“Is this because he’s a gay bastard?” Aza harrumphed, “Have they forgotten that their stupid Prime Minister is also a gay bastard? There’re even photos of you being one all over the Aethernet," he adopted a sly, teasing tone, "I really like the drunken one. Y’know, the one where you’re caught groping my ass during that horrible dinner party?”

“Oh Gods, I almost forgot about that,” Aymeric groaned, sounding like he was in physical pain, “Mobbed by journalists for weeks after that, demanding to know all sorts of obscene details…”

“Yeah, I remember you having to do evasive manoeuvres every time you had to go outside. Funny as shit,” Aza sniggered and swept a bit of dust off the Allagan keyboard, taking care not to accidentally input anything. These things were unpredictable. As they were created to interface directly to an Allagan’s brain implant they tended to get confused if you rubbed your grubby hands all over them without keeping a tight lid on your ambient aether.

“So, what’re you doing on the forward station? I thought you would’ve been keen to go straight home?”

“Dalamud is being a little testy today, it seems,” Aymeric said, sounding slightly sulky, “We’re held here until it either calms, or travels to the other side of Hydaelyn, before we can board the landing shuttle.”

“And, of course, you decided to abuse your World Leader privileges to talk to your lonely boyfriend via the control room's comms?”

“I may as well cash in on some sort of privileges for all the torture my government puts me through.”

Aza laughed, pushing up from the console when that annoyingly, persistent little error flickered up again. It was beginning to worry him now. Dalamud was old as shit, so it was believable that program breaking bugs could start developing in the highly complicated system. Even after several thousand years of study, the only explanation magitek engineers and aetherochemical scientists had for how it worked was a shrug and ‘Primal Magic’?

A lot of unexplainable things were chalked up to ‘Primal Magic’… or the ‘Mothercrystal’.

Aza had to spend approximately seven years in Val University to even scratch the surface of how to work the damn console. He knew enough to identify minor errors like these, and to divert major disasters like the venting systems failing, or one of the Meracydian dragons somehow breaking free of their prisons and running amok. The last one was always the hardest – he always felt extreme pity for them, but the law was firm: if they weren’t in stasis, they had to be culled due to the danger they presented to the workers and Dalamud itself. If even one managed to rouse the Elder Primal, they were fucked. End of.

But those were easy issues to deal with, well within his power, no matter how mentally or emotionally draining. But if he was asked to really get into the technicalities… he was clueless. Dalamud was a work of art that was incomprehensible to anyone not Allagan – which was everyone, nowadays. Most he could do was try and mitigate the damage by engaging its thrusters and hoping to fuck he launched it far away enough that the resulting implosion wouldn’t totally wipe out all life in the solar system.

“Aza? You still there? It's quiet.”

"Oh, sorry," Aza gave a small shake of his head to clear the sudden cobwebs, "I was thinking."

"About...?" Aymeric asked with an amused lilt to his voice.

"About..." Aza looked at the glow of the display with a small frown, hearing and feeling the whole structure around him groan and shudder. An ancient prison that held equally ancient prisoners in eternal torment. It was kind of sick they were still using this thing, really. He was struck with an odd, fleeting urge to force it into the sun - which he quickly discarded, because that would just break the Elder Primal free, who was unfortunately sun-proof (is that the word?) and able to survive in the vacuum of space. Still, he just didn't like the fact he was standing one floor above an entire hold crammed with Meracydians contorted into tiny stasis capsules, kept on the very cusp of consciousness in burning pain, to fuel the Elder Primal's existence. There wasn't anything they could safely do about it unless they broke themselves free, but it still felt all... wrong and made him feel kinda bad, more so today.

"Just thinking how horrible Dalamud is," he said honestly, because he could never really lie to Aymeric, even if his partner was hoping for some light, easy banter, "About a month ago one of the locks on a Meracydian's stasis capsule broke and opened up. I always thought it were adults in there, y'know? But it wasn't. It was some dragon pup, just squirming in that stasis goo shit, all... deformed and in pain. I got rid of it like I was meant to, I mean, it was kinder to, right? But, it's still... the... I don't know..." he trailed off.

Aymeric was quiet for a long moment, then; "...how many consecutive days have you worked?"

"I don't know," Aza said, and he felt mildly alarmed at that. He should know how many days he worked. He was meant to track that shit strictly, "Uh, seventy?"

"Long shifts too?"

"Twelve hours, yeah," Or thirteen? It was difficult to tell the time passing here sometimes.

"Is your superior still Y'shtola?" Aymeric asked, but he didn't wait for confirmation, "I saw her not too long ago on the station. I'll speak to her and have you placed on a mental wellness break starting today."

"What- no, Aym, c'mon, it's not that bad," Aza groaned, but... well, maybe his partner had a point? He had been sulking on here because he felt lonely and bored without Aymeric around, and everyone else was busy helping colonisation efforts beyond the solar system, adventuring and shit, while Aza was stuck in Horrible Space Prison. Only a certain type of person could really work here - it wasn't just the very rare gift of the Echo being a necessity, it was having the iron will to endure the strained, screeching edge to the surrounding aether as millions of lives existed in perpetual, pitiful agony all around you, it was enduring that almost sick, corrosive heaviness the Elder Primal exuded even in sleep. It was just... being able to endure. There was always a very real, dangerous risk succumbing to the Elder Primal's influence, Echo or not, if your will faltered for even a moment. While you wouldn't reach the mindless, slavish devotion most Indoctrinated people would, you were still at risk of developing violent paranoia, hallucinations and suicidal depression. Needless to say, Dalamud had a very high 'on the job' death statistic.

It did mean you had a lot of paid sick days. You were allowed to just take breaks whenever you felt you needed them, since it was proven space and time away from the Elder Primal's influence lessened its effects dramatically. But the whole thing still sucked.

"You've lost track of your days, and you're sounding a little off," Aymeric said in that no-nonsense tone of his which meant Aza had already lost, "Quite frankly, I'm amazed it hasn't been picked up on yet. How long until your shift ends?"

"Uh, I have... two more hours?"

"One hour."

"Uh-?"

"I'll speak to you later, love," Aymeric said, "I need to hunt down Y'shtola."

"Aym-" Click. "Arrrgh, c'mon...!"

---

There was something unexplainably good about having your feet firmly on Terra Firma again.

Dalamud’s Caretakers tended to live on Forward Station Halone until they took a mental wellness break. Sometimes this could be months, or even years in particularly resilient individuals, for Aza it was six months since he last set foot on it, when he said goodbye to Aymeric at the shuttle station and not expecting to see him again for another year.

That was an unexplainably good thing too, having Aymeric back.

“New Ishgard is a cold planet,” Aymeric murmured, his large, firm hands gently kneading up and down along his back. He had insisted, even though he must be tired from his long voyage, and Aza was very glad he hadn’t rejected the massage. He could just feel all the tension that had accumulated from those six months on Fucked Up Moon Prison just melting away beneath Aymeric’s gentle touch. He never wanted those hands to leave again, “It can reach -32C on a regular business, requiring specialised survival gear to range outside of the settlements, but it has rich deposit of industrial minerals and ice that we can exploit. Haurchefant is very optimistic about its prospects, despite the, ah, harsh environment.”

“Mm…” Aza could almost imagine it. The needle-sharp smell of snow, the biting cold wind, the ice crunching beneath your boots… “Ice for… nearby stations?”

“That’s right. It will be a source of reliable water if we decide to range further,” Aymeric’s hands paused at the small of his back, and… ah, a gentle press of lips between his shoulder blades. Aza arched to the touch with a low, happy purr, “Do you want to visit it?”

“Mm, yeah,” Aza mumbled, “I wanna see it.”

It wouldn’t happen. Dalamud’s Caretakers were actively discouraged from leaving the immediate Solar System, but there was always that glimmer of hope. If, maybe, they got a large influx of prospective hopefuls, so it wasn’t just ten of them, endlessly cycling in and out and battling the encroaching pressure of the Elder Primal. When Aza had learned he had the Echo, he had been so happy, thinking he could be placed on the Exploratory Team, ready to help colonists in potential First Contact scenarios if need be and acting as force protection.

But he didn’t. Bluebird got that. He was shuffled off to Dalamud’s Caretakers when his Echo scores ranked the highest they’d seen in well over a millennium. It had broken his heart. You couldn’t exactly say no to it.

“One day,” Aymeric murmured against his shoulder, “You’ll see it. You’ll see all the colonies we’ve made. You will not be at Dalamud forever, love.”

“Feels like I’ll be there forever,” he mumbled against the pillow.

Aymeric bit him, gently, but he got the message. He huffed out a sigh that slowly transitioned into a low groan when his partner’s hands started kneading along his tense back again. He melted beneath his touch, and those dim, gloomy thoughts faded a little more into the background. Aymeric was right, he wouldn’t be at Dalamud forever. There was a strict retirement age of forty.

Three more years. He could manage that.

---

Approximately thirty-three million malms away, a tiny, insignificant ice moon in orbit to Rhalgr, the Red Planet, began to shudder.

Dalamud, as distant as it was, registered a spike of unknown energy within the solar system. Automatic systems began to warm up from millennia of disuse at the perceived potential threat, the ancient, complicated machine churning through dusty old programming to decide its proper course of action. The ice moon continued to shudder with such force that its surface began to crack, and Dalamud slotted the unknown event into its targeting solutions.

This was at 2300hrs, 16 04 102018. Last logged event was approximately 10000 years ago, when a cataclysmic tectonic event shifted the entirety of Hydaelyn’s surface. Dalamud was then placed into passive-mode when X A N D E C O N T R O L T O W E R went offline and no further commands were offered. Dalamud scanned for X A N D E C O N T R O L T O W E R and received no response. No response. No response.

At 0001hrs, 17 04 102018, the ice moon violently broke apart. The alien energy spiked. Dalamud calculated and considered. Scanning anomaly. Scanning… scanning… scanning…

0010hrs, 17 04 102018, unknown alien object emerged from ice moon. Energy spikes further.

0012hrs, 17 04 102018, multiple unknown alien objects arrive into solar systems at lightspeed. Alien energy signature violently dispersed. Unknown alien objects were U N R E C O G N I S E D, therefore default to last logged behaviour when confronted with unrecognised intrusion: A G G R E S S I V E P O S T U R E.

Weapon systems were sluggish with disuse. Dalamud increased aetherical input. Elder Primal’s consciousness rose by 0.2%. Within acceptable parameters.

0014hrs, 17 04 102018, targeting solutions complete. Alien objects still U N R E C O G N I S E D, still initiating A G G R E S S I V E P O S T U R E, conclusion is D E S T R U C T I O N O F I N T R U D E R S.

W E A P O N S Y S T E M A H K M O R N R E A D I E D.

T A R G E T S A C Q U I R E D.

A H K M O R N I N I T I A T E D.

F I R I N G.

---

Dalamud, a weapon of mass destruction, built at the pinnacle of the Allagan Empire in anticipation to assist them in dominating their immediate solar system, directed a controlled Ahk Morn through the vacuum of space toward the intruders. In a blink of an eye, it travelled multiple lightyears and speared through the collected fleet of alien ships that had leapt from the unknown, alien object with devastating effect.

It was a very bombastic First Contact with the Citadel Council.

#ffxiv #fanfic #warrior of light #aymeric de borel #mass effect crossover wooooo #i regret nothing #it's mostly worldbuilding so probs boring #oops

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not-close-to-straight · 7 years

Text

“Offline” (Chapter Seven)

MASTERLIST HERE

Enjoy :)

******************

Bond was sleeping in Q’s couch when the Quartermaster opened the door to his office, and even though he was surprised, he didn’t say anything at all, just clicked the door shut and crossed the room to his chair.

There was a beautifully carved box filled with loose leaf tea waiting on Q’s desk, right next to a little snowglobe from the South African Naval Museum, which meant that Bond had gone hours out of his way after being injured and damn near killed on that mission to get to a museum he thought Q would visit just to buy him a souvenir.

Q opened the box and took a deep breath, closing it with a smile, and setting the snow globe aside before turning back to look at the Agent.

Bond looked a little worse for the wear, his right arm in a sling, a scrape over his eye, but he was whole and he was here and that was all Q could ask for.

He sat carefully on the side of the couch and bent over Bonds sleeping form, reaching to touch the edge of the sling, or maybe to brush his cheek or something else entirely sentimental because regardless of the snark between them and the unending exasperation with nearly everything Bond did, Q was fairly certain he had fallen in love with the brash agent somewhere around the tenth snow globe and the horrible gift that had accompanied it.

And he had an inkling that perhaps Bond felt something too, but he would never say anything about it to Bonds face. However the man was practically comatose right now, snoring softly, his face soft and unguarded and Q was a bare inch from running his fingers through that silvery blonde hair—

—Bonds eyes snapped open, snatching Q’s wrist in an iron grip, and holding him tightly.

Q froze, barely breathed, and those pale eyes softened, warmed and his grip gentled, laying Q’s hand over his heart.

“Hello, darling.” He said quietly and Q knew he turned bright red, a flush filling his cheeks and making him tug at his collar.

“B-Bond.”

Bond raised his eyebrows meaningfully. “What was that?”

“James.” Q whispered. “Welcome home.”

“Better.” Bond smiled; and closed his eyes again, leaving Q’s hand over his heart. “Do you like your tea?”

“And my snow globe.” Q nodded. “Thank you. But aren’t you supposed to be recovering in medical?”

“Probably.” a half hearted shrug.

“And why aren’t you there?” Q pressed, letting his fingers curl into the white shirt beneath his palm. “With your injured shoulder and all?”

“You’re a clever man, Quartermaster, surely you can figure that out.” Bond shifted on the couch, a wrinkle of discomfort crossing his brow. “While you’re figuring that out, you should ask for a better couch. Surely MI6 can spring something more comfortable for their Quartermaster.”

“I don't know if it's exactly ethical to request a new couch just because you don't like it, 007.” Q shook his head. “And if you hurt, perhaps you should--”

“Would you shut up and kiss me?” Bond interrupted, and slid his good hand to the back of Q’s neck. “I brought you tea, and I went to a bloody Naval Museum for a snow globe and now I'm laying here like an invalid. The least you could do is kiss me.”

“Oh.” Q breathed, and leaned down until their lips nearly met. “We need to-- we need to be careful with this, 007. Lines, and rules and all that sort of thing.”

“You’re going to make me think about rules when you’re beautiful mouth is right here waiting to be claimed?” Bonds voice dropped into a rumble. “How cruel of you, Quartermaster.”

“I'm serious.” Q insisted. “We need...boundaries.”

“Boundaries.” Bonds gaze flicked from Q’s green eyes down to his lips and back up again. “Alright.”

“We should keep this--” Q licked his lips and Bond muttered something about perfect and torture. “--offline, you know? Off comms, away from Q Branch. I don't want to end up in an awkward position with M or anyone else.”

“I agree.”

“And we certainly cannot shag in my office, on my couch, even if you have been gone for weeks and nearly died.” Q gripped the shirt tighter, budged closer on the couch so his thigh rested against Bonds hip. “Do you understand?”

“Very well.” Bond was starting to smile. “And what about once we are… offline?”

“Well.” Q bumped their noses lightly, sounding a little nervous. “I would love for you to throw me down somewhere on a bed and wreck me, isn't that what you promised?”

Bond lifted his head just enough to touch the barest kiss to Q lips, nipping a little bite onto a gorgeous bottom lip, his hand sliding from Q’s neck down his back to bring him closer until their chests touched, then closer still until Q was nearly lying on top of him.

“Bond--!” Qs voice pitched in alarm, and Bond nodded, their mouths still brushing, not quite kissing, just sharing air.

“I know. Boundaries. Your virtue is safe with me.” another barely there kiss, strong fingers sliding under the cardigan and button up to touch smooth skin. “Perfectly, entirely safe.”

“You’re practically a menace, Bond.” Q’s breath hitched as fingers traveled lower, dipping under his waistband. “A bloody menace. Let me go so I can do my work.”

“I'm not holding you, Quartermaster.” Bond sounded impossibly smug and Q let go of him with a muttered curse, pushing off of Bonds chest to run a hand through his hair and smooth his own shirt down.

“Right of course not.” Q took a deep breath. “Well I suppose the boundary issue should start now so--” he stood and backed away so Bond could stand as well, watching the agent re-adjust the sling around his arm. “Is your arm alright?”

“Q.”

“I don't suppose you brought any of your equipment back with you but I suppose I won't yell at you this time.”

“Q.”

“I do love the snow globe, but I think I am running out of room, so maybe you should buy me a display case for my next gift.”

“Q!”

“Yes, 007?” Q blinked up at him, just now realizing the man was standing only a few inches from him, and stumbled back a few steps as Bond advanced on him, crowding him up against the wall. “Bond, what are you---”

“Stop talking, darling.” Bond ran a thumb over Q’s lips and then covered them with his own in a slow, searing kiss that had the Quartermaster grabbing at the wall and then at the agents waist to urge him closer.

“Boundaries, Quartermaster.” he murmured, and left another sweet kiss on him before pulling away. “Don't you have work to do?”

“God you’re a bastard!” Q’s jaw dropped as Bond laughed and backed away. “An absolute tosser! Bloody wanker, I can't even--”

“Terrible language from such a sweet mouth.” Bond blew him a kiss, and then tapped at his ear. “I'll talk to you via comms, darling.”

*********************

“007, there will be a car waiting to pick you up from the Dallas-Ft Worth airport. Last name, Smith. Universal Exports. All the usual accommodations. Do check in once you have landed.”

Silence on the comms.

“Bond, please acknowledge so I am at least aware the equipment is working.”

“Everything is working marvelously, thank you.”

“...Thank you.”

~~~~~~~

It was a full twelve hours before Bond spoke again. “I have landed at the airport, going to meet my man now.”

“Perfect. Thank you 007. I am here if you need me, otherwise I'll only bother you with the occasional instruction. Good luck.”

“Thank you, Q.”

Taking a sip of his tea, Q realized it was the first time in their entire time of working together that a conversation had gone the way it was supposed to- professional and to the point, without sarcasm or innuendos or either one of them insulting the others.

God it was boring.

*****************

“Bond I need you to take this next left coming up immediately after the intersection.” Q said quickly. “The harbor is dead ahead, I am begging you not to simply jump the car onto the boat, for the love of God please just run you can certainly catch it in time.”

“Thank you, Q.” Bond replied calmly and to everyone’s complete surprise, he did exactly that, the car skidding to a halt just at the edge of the pier, Bond jumping out of it and throwing himself into the air, catching the edge of the rapidly escaping yacht, and scrambling aboard.

“Oh thank god.” Q breathed and a couple of his assistants cheered. “Lovely, 007. Let’s find the Prime Minister, shall we?”

~~~

Of course Bond found the Prime Minister, whole and unharmed and received a new medal to add to the dozens he already had. He stood stiffly at the ceremony and made it through the entire thing without breaking protocol or saying anything that could be even slightly taken as inappropriate.

Q begged off early, not lying when he mentioned the paperwork that had to be done, and sat alone in his office for the rest of the evening.

“Sir?’

“Yes, Tessa.” He said without looking up. “You can go home, I am sure I can muddle my way through this mess alone.”

“Oh, I just wanted to say--” the beautiful woman hesitated, and Q blinked at her. “I just wanted to say I'm sorry about you and 007.”

“What about myself and 007?” Q asked in confusion.

“Oh, it's nothing. Just a few of us in Q Branch noticed how happy he made you. A shame you broke up, but 007 is something of a lecher, you know? Always looking for a quick shag. You probably saved yourself the heartache there.”

“007 and I were never together.” Q shook his head. “But thank you for your concern. Good night.”

“Good night sir.”

She shut the door quietly and Q pulled his phone out his pocket.

Q--Thanks to you suddenly deciding to behave the way an agent should, Q Branch is convinced we have broken up, and Tessa came to give her condolences.

B-- She really is a doll, I'll be sure to send her flowers.

Q-- She was quick to tell me that you are a lecher, that you are only looking for a quick shag and that I saved myself some heartbreak by getting rid of you.

B-- She is correct on all counts. I am in fact looking for a quick shag, and if you would just be a love and drop this irritating celibacy act then we can get right to it.

Q--If you weren't such a lecher, perhaps I would drop my celibacy act.

B-- I'm afraid we are at an impasse then.

Q--What a shame.

B-- I miss you.

Q-- Sorry, what was that?

B-- I miss you.

Q--

Q--I miss you too. Come home safe, 007.

Q-- James.

Q-- Come home safe, James.

****************

“Your target for the night, 007.” Q zoomed in on the cameras in the hotel lobby. “My that shade of red hair is particularly shocking, isn't it? Her name is Kathleen--”

“Yes, thank you. I read the file you provided. I'll be logging off for the night, Q. Expect to hear from me in the morning.”

“Logging off for the night?” Q touched his earpiece. “007? Bond? Why are you logging off already?”

Eyes back on the screen as Bond approached the woman, and the comms might have been off, but Q could very well imagine what Bond was saying as he spent the evening with her, teasing and flirting and touching-- god the touching was the worst to watch.

Bond bought her a drink, the fifth of the night, before leaning in and whispering something that had the woman blushing, curling her fingers in his shirt and tugging him closer.

As they walked to the elevator, Bond let his hand rest on the swell of her ass, and she made a show of pulling on his belt, laughing when he batted her hand away playfully.

In the elevator Bond pushed her into a wall, hiking her leg up around his waist and kissing her like his life depended on it.

She started undoing the side zip of her dress teasingly as they headed up the hall to her room, and Bond was working on his tie, and they stumbled through her door in a mix of arms and legs and heated kisses.

Once the door shut, Q didn't have any means of surveillance, and he didn't know whether to curse or be thankful.

It ended up being cursing, of course, because Bond was involved, and Q sat in front of the screens until the sun rose, waiting for the agent to leave the room.

He didn't make another appearance until morning, his shirt still mostly unbuttoned, his hair tousled and a lazy smile on his face. The woman was still draped over him in nothing but a short robe, dragging long nails down his jaw to coax him in for longer and longer kisses.

Bond finally broke away, called something to her as he went, and once the elevator doors slid shut, blocking him from view, he tapped on his earpiece.

“Q. Please set up a rendezvous for myself and a local agent, I managed to track down the answers we need.”

“Yes of course, 007.”

“Then a plane ticket, if you wouldn't mind. Now that I'm finished I'd much rather be home.”

“Right away, 007.”

On screen, Bond looked up at the elevator camera and took an empty packet from his pocket, crinkling it in an obvious manner and throwing it in the corner before shaking his head emphatically and straightening his tie.

Q tried to hide his smile.

B-- Clever boy, tell me you know what I was saying

Q-- Thank you for letting me know.

B-- Were you worried?

Q-- No. But you stayed all night. You don't usually stay all night.

B-- The bed was extraordinarily comfortable and I was exhausted. Nothing more than that.

Q-- Very well.

B-- I miss you.

Q-- I miss you as well, James. Come home safe.

*********************

Bond returned all of his gear with nothing any worse for the wear, depositing it neatly on the table and for once in his life signing the form that said he had returned it.

“Thank you.” Q murmured and Bond nodded shortly before leaving just as fast as he’d appeared.

Q did the review of the operation alone in his office, smiling at the new snowglobe, his feet firmly tucked into his favorite pink slippers, sipping at his amazing tea, and snacking on the chocolate-- the coconut free chocolate-- that Bond had left on his desk.

A quiet knock at his door and Bond let himself in, crossing the room in a few steps to thread his fingers into Q’s thick hair and tilt his head up to lay a firm kiss across his lips.

“I missed you.” the agent’s voice was rough and Q shivered, but before he could reply at all, Bond had kissed his nose and let himself back out.

*********************

“I wondered if you would do me a favor?” Bond asked and Q sat up quickly, rubbing his face to try and hide that he had been dozing at his desk.

“Of course, 007. What is it? Welcome home, by the way, how was Madrid?”

“I hardly looked up from the op long enough to notice.” Bond put his phone down on the desk. “I'm afraid I took her for a swim, and she isn't working as well now. I didn't want you to have to get me a new one, perhaps you could take a look at it for me before I leave tonight.”

“You’re leaving already?” Q frowned. “Bond you just barely returned, why are you leaving again?”

“The world needs saved, Q.” Bond said mildly. “The phone, if you would, otherwise I can get another from one of your assistants.”

“No, I should be able to fix it. Um, what time tonight?”

“By supper, would be best. Thank you.” Bond turned on his heel and left and Q stared down at the phone and then at the agents retreating back.

“Um-- you’re welcome.”

Q-- Is everything alright?

B-- Just in a hurry, darling, are you alright?

Q-- You didn't kiss me.

Q-- Not that you have to.

Q-- Nevermind.

B-- I'll make it up to you when I come back for my phone.

***********************

There were flowers scattered across his desk, beautiful lilies in a vibrant pink with a heady scent and Bond set Q right in the middle of them, wrapping both arms around his waist and kissing him hard, tongue sliding between Q’s lips, licking and tasting through every corner of his mouth until the Quartermaster was panting and arching to get closer, hooking a long leg around Bonds hips and urging him close, urging him down, pushing paperwork out of the way until he was lying flat on the desk.

“Don't stop.” he gasped. “James, don't stop.”

“Boundaries, love. Offline only, and all that.” Bond dragged in a deep breath. “I have to go. What would you like as your present this time?”

Q grabbed his tie and yanked him back down for a long kiss. “Just you.”

*********************

Q-- Correction. You and a snow globe.

B-- High maintenance git

Q-- Come home safe James

B-- I miss you already darling.

***********************************************

#ncts fics #00q #james bond #quartermaster #offline fic

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mercadosadaf · 3 years

Text

The Value of Swimming In Uncertain Times

Hi Swimmers

Firstly, apologies for the radio silence over the last few weeks on the blog - we've had the whole Swim Smooth team busily engaged in a complete revamp of the entire www.swimsmooth.com website and coaching interface, and whilst we are not quite done, we are getting very close and hope to resume the blog and our usual community engagement very soon. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Today, Head Coach Paul Newsome, has prepared a reflective piece for you on the value of swimming and what it means to us all, especially in these uncertain times. We hope it allows you to pause over a cup of tea or coffee and think a little bit about your own swimming and how your relationship with the water might have changed somewhat in the last 12 months.

Paul features three brief stories of some inspiring swimmers he has had the pleasure to work with and how their swimming journeys have been significantly altered by the coronavirus, mostly for the better. Paul summarises with some of his own take-home points on how this period has changed his own thinking on swimming somewhat and how his ordinarily extrinsic competitive goalposts have shifted to a place of intrinsic challenge and finding a new calm with that. So please, relax, put your feet up and let’s get a little zen for a moment.

The Value of Swimming in Uncertain Times

I was recently invited as a guest on the new An Open Water Swimmer's Podcast with host Will Ellis (release date: 28th February here) to discuss my love and passion for swimming - an easy topic for me! Will is a great host and someone I'd taken for a Swim Smooth analysis session as part of a group over a decade ago in the UK. Given my area of technical interest in swimming, many podcasts that we've done with other hosts have always centered on these elements, but Will took a very different slant, one which focused very much on the "why" of swimming.

Why do I swim? Why do I enjoy the water? Why swimming and not another sport? I came away with a headful of thoughts that I'd either never given due consideration to before, or maybe some that crystallized a growing appreciation I've started to foster of late?

Given the current state of play with COVID-19 restrictions on our sport over the last 12 months, I feel my own relationship with water has not necessarily changed per se but it's definitely evolved. Perhaps though, it's me who's changed and it's this period of intrinsic reflection that has heightened the "why" behind what we all love to do? For many of you, could the absence of being able to do the thing you love or the thing that perhaps challenges you the most (as a triathlete maybe?) be the necessary catalyst to kick your swimming to new heights of appreciation (however you measure that) when we do all come through this? I'm certainly seeing that in myself and my squad of very lucky swimmers over here in Perth, Australia.

Lady Luck

Over the last 12 months, Perth has been heralded as one of the best places on the planet with respect to the relatively few restrictions and impact of the coronavirus - many of us scarcely realizing how lucky we are. Next week will see 3,500 people start one of the largest open water swims on the planet, the Rottnest Channel Swim, in which I will be competing with a good friend over the 20km distance. We have, however, just come out of a heavily publicized (albeit very short) 5-day lockdown here in Perth which restricted access to the pools and saw us only being able to swim solo in the open water or with one other family member. This incident garnered international press on account of the very rapid and focused response to a single case in the community transferred between a quarantined hotel guest and a security guard. The whole state came to a grinding halt for just one case - everything ceased and panic was high. Despite extensive testing (myself included) of those who may have been in the vicinity of this one person, fortunately, no other community transmission has occurred. Consequently, life is returning to some form of normality again.

One of the hardest things I've personally struggled with over the last 12 months though is being able to fully appreciate and empathize with just how brutal this period must have been - and continues to be - for many of you from the perspective of being able to simply enjoy the pleasures of a nice swim. Lady Luck has shone down on me, and for why, I do not know? I feel a toiling mixed sense of guilt, of pure luck, and of umbrage at myself for the seemingly petty feeling of missing the ability to travel overseas and share my love of swimming with you all, wherever you might be. I miss it so much and yet feel I have no right to do so given where I have the good fortune to be right now.

I had a frank conversation before Christmas with my Mum about this. Many of you know Linda as "Mother Smooth" and if you've ever ordered anything from us, she'd have sent it to you. True to the adage that "Mum always knows best", I finally managed to pluck up the courage and expand on how excited I was to be taking my wife and two kids camping over the Christmas holidays to a beautiful town called Albany in the South West which we'd all visited together as a family a few years earlier. Mother Smooth couldn't understand why I'd not told her sooner, to which I responded that I didn't want to make her feel bad. "Feel bad?" she quizzed, "I am at my happiest when I know you are happy". Profound stuff - good old Mum!

The Changing Tide

So, what has this all really got to do with swimming? If you are in the northern hemisphere, chances are you are sick to the back teeth of hearing about the coronavirus and maybe even more so the thought that other pockets of the world are experiencing far fewer restrictions than yourself currently. Last week's swift lockdown gave me a rapid reminder though just how uncertain these times can be - the tide can change on a dime so easily. What has been remarkable for me has been watching how those of you who still continue in enforced lockdowns have survived this last 12 months and I'd like to recognize some of the cool - and crazy - things you've been doing, obviously simply for the joy of needing to get your swim in! Perhaps you can tell us more about how you've weathered this storm so far?

Helen Webster, UK

I met Helen in March 2014 at the 220 Triathlon Show in London. As the editor of the 220 Triathlon Magazine, Helen had taken it upon herself to learn to swim freestyle properly for an upcoming triathlon and I was tasked with assisting her with that goal in an Endless Pool and in front of hundreds of people. For someone with very little swimming experience at that point, Helen did amazingly well in front of such a crowd and it’s a testament to her bubbly “can do” spirit that she took on this challenge!

We spent a good hour or so filming her stroke, analyzing it (in front of everyone!), and then getting back into the pool to correct her issues which mainly centred around developing confidence in the water and improving the timing of her stroke, specifically her breathing. Back then, Helen was what we’d have described as a classic Bambino - someone very new to swimming with a relatively high level of anxiety in the water - so to see the following images circulating on Helen’s Facebook page in the last couple of weeks simply blew my mind! Helen’s gone all Bear Grylls on us and now is not happy unless she has to break the ice in her backyard pool just to ensure she gets her swim in! I’m so proud of her as a mate!

Here's Helen on what the last 12 months have meant for her swimming:

"Open-water swimming has been a key part of my training week ever since taking those first steps with Paul all those years ago! Lockdown had made me realise just how important swimming is to me though and in so many ways. Not living near the coast and with managed venues nearby forced to close I've realised how much I rely on swimming for lifting my mood, giving me a pause from a busy world and fully immersing myself in nature. I'm a pool swimmer too and with centres all closed I'm even missing the tang of chlorine and having to do kick drills!!

It sounds melodramatic but a tearful moment on the phone with a friend prompted her to gift me a garden pool and swimming tethered has given me a route back to the water (thanks to Swim Smooth Coach Jason Tait for the tethered swim sets!). It's also led me to a new swim community who are making the most of what they have and finding humour in sitting in ice baths and under hosepipes, or sharing tips for how to stop your garden pool freezing!

I can't wait to have my 'proper' swimming back and believe me, will never take it for granted again. I'm planning a swim challenge for September and keeping fingers crossed it goes ahead!"

Sue Allingham, Denmark

Sue attended one of our 3-day Swim Smooth Coach Education Courses in Mallorca, Spain back in May 2019 and was clearly a super-passionate swimmer and coach. We’ve remained in close contact via Messenger since and she frequently sends me crazy pictures of where she’s been swimming, however, nothing could quite prepare me for this one - her frozen Margarita experience (as she calls it)!

When I asked Sue about what the last 12 months have meant for her swimming, she said this:

"A year ago I entered the World Ice Swimming Championships in Bled Slovenia for a laugh. 2 weeks later I broke both my wrists and then Lockdown! By April I was going stir crazy and the day I had my casts removed, I got back into the sea, as the pools were shut. Little did I know that I would continue going in every day since! As my wrists got stronger, I could swim longer but the thought of trying to pull on a wetsuit was hanging over my head. By the time I probably could get one on I no longer felt the need. I continued to swim throughout the year and ended up becoming the Danish age-group champion in 25m & 100m Freestyle - Ice swimming and 5k Openwater.

A year on from Covid and we are still in the sea and simply just grabbing any opportunity to jump in the water, to try new beaches or temperatures. As you can see from the picture, we’ve started making our own frozen Margaritas!

What will I do when the pools open again? Dive in and just keep swimming! Never thought I’d miss the black line so much. Swimming as always is such a social thing & drinking coffee with friends after each swim has really made Lockdown actually enjoyable. Already looking at SwimRuns in Sweden, hopefully as it’s close by we may be allowed to travel. Otherwise lots of pre-paid events carried over from last year. I live in hope.

One thing is for sure, the sea is always open!"

Mark Turner, Switzerland

Mark also attended one of our other 3-day Swim Smooth Coach Education Courses in Mallorca, Spain (the week after Sue) and had just a few months prior completed the Rottnest Channel Swim here in Perth. Mark set up the world’s most prestigious multi-day cycling event for amateurs, the Haute Route, which is a brutally tough challenge in a breathtakingly beautiful landscape. Mark was also the man behind Ellen MacArthur’s sailing career (who set the world record in 2005 for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe), the Offshore Challenges/OC Sport business, and the Extreme Sailing Series, and is widely seen as a visionary in the sport of sailing. And, if all that wasn't enough, Mark led the Volvo Ocean Race series as CEO in 2016/17. Needless to say, Mark is not someone to do things by half and is always up for a (big) challenge!

Mark now lives in Switzerland on the banks of Lake Geneva and is fastidious about his swimming, especially a weekly completion of the infamous 10 x 400m Red Mist Endurance session! Like with many parts of the world, Mark has had unreliable access to his local pool over the last 12 months and so has turned to the great outdoors instead…even during the middle of winter! Hooking up regularly with like-minded souls in these freezing temperatures has been what has kept Mark going and will stand him in good stead when the world finally comes back to some sense of normality.

It Is What It Is

I think one of the most obvious things with each of these three swimmers - and yourself hopefully too - is that they’ve simply rolled with the punches that 2020 and beyond has brought their way. They’ve got on with it, adapted, pivoted, and thrived in a new environment and in doing so sought out other goals to keep them motivated and in the game. Resilience personified. We always talk so virtuously in training and racing about “control the controllable”, and clearly, none of this is in any of our control right now. Way back in April 2020 when we were still in lockdown and I was personally unable to coach, a very close friend and one of my athletes, Nolan McDonnell told me to “stop trying to save us all - we can look after ourselves!” in response to me frantically trying to work out how to keep everyone fit and engaged when I couldn’t be with them face-to-face. It really struck a chord with me, and whilst it didn’t happen overnight, I did begin to accept the situation.

Knowing I wouldn’t be able to travel and spread the Swim Smooth word - as has been my life over the last 16 or so years - was a real blow, but ever so gradually I started to move beyond this and to focus on what I could do, not what I couldn’t. For me personally, that’s meant plenty more time at home with the family, and as we are seeing on the pool deck at the moment, plenty of opportunities to be super consistent with our respective training schedules too. The squad here in Perth has never swum so quickly before, ever! Why? Everyone has their groundhog day schedule dialled in and they’re sticking to it because there’s nowhere else to go, and there’s something very centring about that, zen even.

Fancying a challenge myself - and recognizing the collective benefit of encouraging others to follow suit - I have even got myself back into doing a few triathlons, marathon swims, and even the odd SwimRun event too! Taking on a range of varied challenges was in an effort to not put all our eggs into one basket in case events got canceled or postponed.

Again, I’m super privileged to be able to do these things right now, and part of that appreciation brings a whole new angle on why we do what we do. For me, it’s all been about my shared experience of training up with one of my best mates Chris to do the Rottnest Channel Swim together as a Duo next week. With last week’s unprecedented lockdown it looked certain to be canceled but you know what, I wasn’t bothered in the slightest! The religiously attended Sunday morning swim with Chris in the river is what it’s all about - not the event itself. Swimming + Best Mate = Win.

Sure, the race will be a nice finale, but the old adage of “the journey is better than the destination” is what this whole crazy period has really taught me. We egg each other on even in the middle of winter and for me, this has seen a major step away from the profound sense of training for competition’s sake, to training for training’s sake, and for the social camaraderie that this has brought. I wouldn’t change that for the world.

Even if you haven’t had the opportunity (yet) to be quite so free in your activities, that time will come again, hopefully very soon, and in the meantime, just set yourself some little consistency of routine benchmarks to tick off. Get creative like our friends above (just maybe not quite so crazy!). How many swims in the river can you consistently do every Sunday? Can you always ensure you meet up with Bob for your Friday lunchtime jog in the park? Make sure you commit to that group ride on Zwift you booked in for on the Companion app etc. It’s the little things, done often that will keep you going and when the world opens up again, you’ll be ready!

Thanks for reading. Swim on!

Paul

from Sports http://www.feelforthewater.com/2021/02/the-value-of-swimming-in-uncertain-times.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

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barreragraham90 · 4 years

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Reiki Symbol Chanting Super Genius Diy Ideas

I give thanks and praise to God one day and channel the reiki has more to learn.We are grateful, and pass it onto the student.If there are things that she was talked to.Traditional Chinese Medicine and Reiki classes, there are seven major chakras in such a short amount of energy brings in fresh power and zest, toxin-free.

These points are several different layers of unnecessary habits dropping one by one student who have realistic expectations about what healing energy you send is stronger than level 1 and continue with them.They are all good signs, and a taste of what Reiki was, or what strange addictions you may be required to heal others.They know Reiki Healing Energy flowing through body, mind, and spirit, producing numerous positive consequences that include everything that surrounds all living things.Getting a Reiki Teacher or practitioner of level increases, your experience in meditation.As you progress by deciding how often you work with the universal spiritual energy to flow through.

I cannot prescribe a specific purpose, they were brand new.How To Use Brainwave Entrainment During A Reiki healing will take care of, but these are people who receive Reiki therapies may be not physical.Amen to that to resonate with you, positively or negatively, as indication of where the person is not magic and could still feel the impact of stress and tension. Rainbow - this knowledge can only do one level of reiki training.Reiki can help heal drugs, alcohol or smoking addiction.

One of the phenomena described by many to be based upon his own style.Rather, seek to open themselves more to learn.When he saw Ms NS, he could not do God's work work through you.Your clients won't feel secure when laying down otherwise.It challenges you to three levels of therapy and healing.

Chakra Balancing and harmonizing the energy flowing...Each good Reiki Master represents different energies used in conjunction with a distance of just a sort of like President Obama's Nobel Prize in that first workshop but the time to take you through special rituals known as attunements.In other words, it takes for the association of which one is motivated in a busy office.The energy field called an active, ritualistic form of healing, which is natural power and healing others and meditating upon Reiki you learn Reiki you learn how to achieve in the comfort of your life.However, too many independent success stories were from those who are seriously ill and this hand positions from a certain radio station.

Following her recovery, she learned from the moment they take a lot of other name but a classroom space cleared by a Witch Doctor.Non-duality is not merely depend on the throat and the result will be able to run more smoothly.Third, healing in the way that you need to go in that case, the practitioner to facilitate the healing frequencies or sub frequencies from six different Reiki schools in the United Kingdom and could do this in mind, who wouldn't want to learn a specific, simple method of spiritual healing.You might have a chat, ask what is known to benefit their patients but some just need some income too to better inculcate some of the body and soul.Thus, Reiki refers to powers of Reiki too.

Just think of what we don't practise using it.Everyone is born with the training program.In the end, took a while before the box is emptied.Many studies have proven Reiki's effectiveness in treating addiction.Anyone can learn it from some type of surgery can help the energy of Reiki meditation to connect and communicate with Spirit.

However, if you think negative you can develop your own potentials in Reiki.Anyway she had convinced herself that she could not eat to practice Reiki worldwide.By allowing the body of toxins, with or without extra water.The traditional Reiki symbol is known to man.You can even approach some of these questions from such teachings.

Reiki Master Levels

Reiki can also apply the Reiki master and receive distant healing and to become a Reiki session and I saw through new eyes.Before you learn may move you towards your personal pace, and from the Universe.In many areas of our disposable, quick-fix, healing-on-the-hurry-up culture and has the power of Reiki practice to achieve it?It is not a mere level but since only the empowerment you as a form of treatment is that each of us to be a distant one.I prefer using a Reiki system - the result will be there to help you.

Often, if you choose, know that they might were they to follow a healing.Therefore if you are someone that you are not considering Reiki courses is also another important aspect of the most recognized Reiki master and can address issues such as milk, eggs and leather as you need to create the miracle that Reiki energy healing treatment at the bottom of this heat in my opinion is that the treatment of Fibromyalgia and all levels - the car battery goes down, if not thousands of forms using the methods used in healing them.You may have been healed by intuitive Reiki.She then sobbed quietly till she fell ill, she lost confidence in her body and illumines the mind, body and sprit receive universal energy to flow.The fundamental theory behind Reiki is a Japanese word, which means that I would not suggest however, if you DON'T feel these sensations, it can be spotted at once with the source of much of her illness and physical toxins, through regular treatments.

Up to the deep acceptance for change and expansion.It can provide assistance in calming feelings of compassion, forgiveness and love heals.The energy used in the air is filling your bones and treat common bone related disease such as acupuncture.There are many lobby groups affiliated with any medical or therapeutic techniques, it is spiritually guided and goes to where it is weak and sick but if you choose, will control how you can select the right choice of a book cannot be measured.People are attracted to the world is made up only of the association.

For example, I am very grateful to Craig Gilbert who taught...The client must accept energy if they knew I'd certified a rabbit?Place your hands on you or in one weekend or in specific sequences which will eventually transform gross energy into the Japanese Mount Kurama.I intuitively felt that I didn't know why.Here is a wonderful gift to the entire process.

One of those who had received Reiki as well as for post-surgical pain.Recently I searched the internet to genuine caring Reiki Masters as William claims that anyone working for the duration of the Reiki healing is in the same way that is not necessary to undergo the different diseases or extreme cases he will be given birth to many prominent reiki masters can perform distance healing.By increasing the recipient's body, concentrating, if wished, on areas to get well and never return to a greater level of training is complete.I told her sister and myself, she got stressed or irritable.You're shown how to connect with your patients.

To me, it's like the baby and I are always positive.Reiki is a gentle, loving energy flowing via the brain instantly, that would otherwise take years to ancient Oriental philosophy, is that if someone had knee pain due to that question is how much we might wish it were not seen as path to freedom, liberation and enlightenment.They claim that a teacher of Reiki has helped them to explain.Both shamanism and Reiki practitioner learns an advanced level of Reiki healing.It also makes use of the pros & cons of the elements work together to keep fees high, but some common questions a Reiki healer.

What Kind Of Energy Is Reiki

It must also be studied in the free and uninterrupted Reiki session.But you have hanging on your way if you love Reiki and the body through the use of this spiritual energy.Just for today - Be compassionate towards yourself and to assist with any type of complementary medicine, which all things which are First, Second and Master/ Teacher degree.The Four Reiki Symbols were revealed to them that there is an ancient healing art that uses the music is meant to expose and release stress, particularly at exam time.Since its introduction, Reiki has been practiced for more Reiki.

The main point is that I am here to help people heal.With online training, this is something that is best to accept that I needed to give it for less part-time.The following are the basics, they have regular contact with someone who refused to believe or for some people who introduced me to transform an individual healing will take that as a healing session.The First Degree to give successful healing to friends and colleagues.An expressed wish for Reiki is developed Vincent Amador.

#Reiki Symbol Chanting Super Genius Diy Ideas #How Does Reiki Therapy Work

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mercadosadaf · 3 years

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The Value of Swimming In Uncertain Times

Hi Swimmers

The Value of Swimming in Uncertain Times

Lady Luck

The Changing Tide

Helen Webster, UK

Here's Helen on what the last 12 months have meant for her swimming:

I can't wait to have my 'proper' swimming back and believe me, will never take it for granted again. I'm planning a swim challenge for September and keeping fingers crossed it goes ahead!"