#varian has a panic attack and its not pretty

[hardtobethebardbitch]

*munching on popcorn for this amazing drama* so, more vat7k × helluverse au pretty pls? 🥺🙏

Okay so before I start @immadatdisney2 made a really good post of all our findings so I’ll mostly add my thoughts to it.

Considering we’re having his cause of death be Ulla’s possession his powers would include things she could do, like telekinesis and idfk fire?

After leaving Hugo he kinda just wanders for a few days before just completely running headfirst into the Vee Tower and then fighting someone there. Of course Vox is watching and is like “Who is this child”

He sees the power in Varian, helps him out during the Extermination cause thats literally in a few hours

Vox: Kid why aren’t you hiding?

Varian: Why do I need to hide?

Vox: …If you don’t wanna die get inside.

Then Vox does his thing, Varian feels happy to have someone who’s not hostile for once. Definitely info dumps about Hugo. UNTIL OF COURSE he realizes Vox is manipulating him, cause they’re the same tactics that Andrew used

It’s been probably a week now since the Extermination, meaning that it’s Episode 1! Varian sees Alastor’s terrible ad but despite its bad quality it’s still a chance of salvation so he goes.

It’s after Charlie has left so Vaggie answers the door and is actually surprised to have a dude that actually wants to get redeemed.

I think when Charlie appears Varian has either a panic attack or just a complete spike of fear and disbelief-he ENTIRELY believes this chick is Rapunzel at first.

He's still gonna have a blue outfit so it’ll stick him out of the crowd and eyesore of red, but I do think having his old s3 bandanna would be nice cause I really liked that

I think a pivoting moment that would actually add to Charlie’s development in this is when Varian actually opens up he finally admits that he’s a CHILD (18 but you stop being a teen when your 20 fight me)

Angel post Masquerade would probably talk to Varian about smth they have in common- their families are pretty similar if ya think about it: Kind sister, annoying older brother and not the best dad.

I think Varian and Lucifer would get along a lot. (Not just my JJ bias or my favorite character bias) In Varian’s words: “Dads, am I right?”

Hugo would be just Angel but a rat, maybe 4 arms included

After they part ways Hugo would kinda just vibe till he runs into I.M.P. I think during the Extermination he kinda just hid behind Carmilla because I really want them to interact for some reason.

He meets Moxxie first and just can’t help but think of Varian cause like dude they are pretty similar right I’m not crazy

Anyway he gets to meet Blitzø and he’s like, “Do ya need someone killed?”

To which Hugo is like, “Wait that’s what this business does? Can I join?”

Blitzø: Fuck no youre a sinner can’t exactly get you up into the human world bitch sorry

Hugo: And uh, are you supposed to be going up there either? BITCH?

AND THEN HE GETS A LEATHER JACKET WITH THE IMP LOGO MAYHAPS??

I think he’d get along with Millie a lot, and he’d start going to her when he wanted to rant. I JUST WANNA SEE MILLIE AS HIS MOM OKAY IS THAT SUCH A CRIME

Moxxie would be EXTREMELY against it at first but he’d get used to Hugo being around.

I think to “keep an eye on him” Blitzø would force Loona to bunk with Hugo to which makes them even more insufferable as a duo-when they stop bickering with each other Moxxie better fucking run. I think what’d be perfect is the events of Mastermind make Hugo realize he wants to see Varian again

Idk the timeline between HB and HH but let’s just say the finale of both shows have happened-s1 for Hazbin and s2 for Helluva. Lucifer finally notices all the shit that went down with Blitzø and Stolas so he invites em over to say “Hey my bad”

AND GEE I WONDER WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

(I do know exactly what I want to happen, but it would be a pretty big thing I want to keep secret if we actually write this damn thing)

[honeyxmonkey]

Variantology Day 21: Snow Day

"Varian?" He heard Eugene's voice call from down the hall.

The alchemist tried to ignore it, knowing that his brother would only prompt him to know what was wrong. He really didn't want to think about what was wrong.

A snowstorm raged outside, merciless and out for blood. It beat wickedly against the windows, occasionally blowing them open with its furious wind. It hadn't snowed this badly since... since his dad...

Varian choked back a sob at the memory. He tried to push down the thoughts. The way every instinct in his body was telling him something was wrong and he needed to run. The alarms going off in his head.

His dad was fine. He was with the other members of the Brotherhood in the Dark Kingdom. His dad was safe, so why did Varian still feel so panicked?

Eugene pushed open the door of his lab to find Varian curled into a ball against the table. How long had he been like that? When had he even gotten into that position?

"Varian!" Eugene rushed forward, placing a hand on his head, trying to gently coax him out of the ball. His head was tucked behind his knees so Eugene couldn't see the tears rolling down his face. "Varian, buddy. Talk to me. I need you to focus on my voice."

Eugene knew he was having a panic attack but he didn't know what had triggered it. Everything in the lab seemed fine and Varian had been fine a few hours earlier. He'd even been messing around with him.

Not knowing what to do, he left to get Rapunzel. She'd know what to do.

When they got back, Varian still hadn't moved.

Rapunzel immediately knelt in front of him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

"Varian, what's wrong? You need to talk to us."

He started muttering under his breath. He sounded desperate. Scared.

"It's not my fault. It's not my fault." He whispered over and over again. "It wasn't my fault. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"Varian, look at me." Rapunzel finally got him to look up. She smiled a gentle smile. "There we go. It's me. It's Rapunzel."

His breathing suddenly quickened as he stared at her. Reality crashed with memories, awful, awful memories and he shoved her away from him.

"No! No, no! You promised!" His voice and breathing were ragged and heavy. His eyes were unfocused and his mind was somewhere else entirely. "You promised." His voice broke and he curled in on himself again. "You promised, you promised."

Rapunzel reeled back in shock of his sudden outburst. This wasn't just a panic attack, this was... oh god, he was reliving his past. Every single memory and feeling of the last snowstorm were raging through his mind and Rapunzel didn't know what to do. She probably made it worse. She was part of those bad memories.

"Eu-Eugene," she looked back at her husband who looked just as shocked at Varian's sudden aggressiveness and breakdown. "Get him out of here. Take him to a different room."

Eugene nodded and pulled Varian up and led him out of the room. The kid hadn't even seemed to register he was being moved.

Rapunzel picked up Ruddiger and followed them, walking a little further behind.

When they reached a room with a fireplace Rapunzel instructed Eugene to sit with Varian. She placed Ruddiger in the alchemist's lap and went off to get blankets. Lots of them.

She returned shortly and started to wrap Varian with them as Eugene brought him back to reality. It took awhile but Varian slowly came back to them.

He was still crying but it was more of an apology cry at lashing out earlier.

"Hey, buddy. It's okay. No one blames you for what happened." Eugene rubbed his back as Varian stared numbly into the fire, his tears spent.

Rapunzel warily sat next to him. "Are you okay now?"

Varian nodded. "Yeah... thank you."

He didn't say anything else and that worried Rapunzel a little.

"Are you sure?"

Varian shook his head this time and looked down at his hands.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong."

Rapunzel hugged him. "It's okay. You don't have to be okay yet. I know that it's hard to come back from an attack like that. The only important thing is, you're doing a little better."

Varian nodded and he leaned into Eugene who let him lay his head on his lap. The kid was exhausted after that. His panic attacks often were emotionally and physically draining.

"Just go to sleep, Varian. We'll be here when you wake up."

Varian closed his eyes, letting his exhaustion take over. He fell asleep feeling safe and secure with his family.

[antihero-writings]

Stolen Sunlight (Ch2)

Fandom: Tangled | Tangled the Series | Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure

Fic Summary: Arianna never thought she'd find herself afraid of a fourteen-year-old boy, but the events of Secret of the Sundrop won't seem to leave her.

She needs to talk to Varian in prison. Not for his sake...but for her own.

Character focus: Arianna 

Notes: Oh my GOSH you guys, thank you SO MUCH for that incredible response to chapter 1!! My writing rarely gets into the double digits as far as notes go, and I'm lucky if I get one comment... You have no idea how happy it made me to wake up this morning to so many notes, including a bunch of super nice comments...I really can't thank you enough. I hope you guys like the second chapter too! ...I know it's pretty different from the first one, haha!

(Fyi, I'm not usually this fast in posting the next chapter of something, I just happened to have the two beginning parts all edited together XD)

Chapter 2: The Cracks in Their Hearts 

Arianna’s eyes flare open, her heart firing and misfiring, taking its panic out on her own ribs. And for a second she can still feel the stone beneath her, the shackles around her ankles, can still hear his voice, feel the weight of his gaze.

The world behind his eyes then was so cold then: all hate and no hope. So different from the world she lived in. She didn’t want that world to infect her own view.

She clenches her fingers into the sheets.

It wasn’t a dream. That much she doesn’t have to question; at some point in a twisted history, it was real.

How the scene of the boy who smiled and laughed, helping Cassandra with her chores, making the library gleam for little recompense, and the scene of the boy who created a metal monster as a diversion, wrapped chains around her ankles, and teased death and amber before her eyes, could both exist in the same timeline…How the same boy who created machines and compounds to forge solutions, could turn around and use them to manufacture problems, could be played by the same actor, that the only thing that had changed was time…and, at the very end, the same voice that once laughed, and spoke so happily of alchemy and friendship in these castle halls could scream no and I’ll make you proud from a prison cart…she doesn’t understand. It all seems like some sick joke, played with a trick of the light.

The Queen tosses her legs over the side of the bed, pushing back her hair, careful not to wake Frederic, whose chest is rising and falling to the rhythm of uninterrupted sleep.

This isn’t the first time. That is, it isn’t the first time her mind parroted and parodied her memories as nightmares.

She tiptoes up to the door and slowly turns the knob, glancing back at Frederic to be sure he doesn’t wake, and quietly shuts it behind her.

She needs to walk the halls, clear her mind; if she lays back down to sleep now, her heart won’t be able to stop its war march.

She knows from experience.

The castle halls are quiet, doused in a blue-violet tinge, spilling through the windows. She steps up to one of these panes, sighing to the night sky speckled with stars.

The same stars she and Willow chased the sunrise under. The same stars she kissed Frederic under. The same stars, worlds she and Rapunzel gazed at, charted together, asking each other what was out there.

The same sky he kidnapped her under.

The same sky. The same boy. The same queen. The only difference is time.

Time is a funny thing, isn’t it? Likes to play pranks. Heals things. Makes you forget things too. Bad things, yes, but also good things; makes you forget what you lost…and consequently less grateful for what you have. And sometimes it only makes the bad things worse, when your mind won’t let go of them.

She glances down the hall—the same hall she had met that chipper voice and those eyes so full, so accepting of sunlight.

The same hall he captured her in.

She recognizes too, it’s the same window she was looking through that day, down upon the town square, watching those she loved be attacked by a beast of the alchemist’s making. The same window at which he threw sleep into her face.

He looked so different that night. He wasn’t the cute little boy with the gloves, and the apron, and the stripe in his hair, and the glint in his eye. This was a masked criminal in a large, dark coat, which hid weaponry. No boyish twinkle in that blue this time; now the goggles glowed green, like a demon, no soul or sunlight behind them. His raccoon wasn’t the only one he morphed into a monster that night.

How could a person so easily shut himself off from the bright light inside himself, and turn to such immense darkness? As if the shadows had been asking to play this whole time, and he finally accepted their invitation. That was the question she never could quite wrap her mind around.

How could he treat those he once loved like that?

Is that sweet boy still in there? Is he trapped somewhere inside the darkness, within that prison of blue, crying for mercy?

She couldn’t imagine any circumstances that could drive her to treat those she loved like that, no matter how angry she was, or how much she had lost.

Her heartbeat picks up the pace.

She knows she is safe. Her family is safe. Or at least, she has no reason to believe otherwise. They made it out of that lab, and Varian is just a boy swearing vengeance in the dungeons below her. She knows he cannot come back to haunt her. She knows she is safe.

He’s just a boy.

So why does she still feel so...uneasy? Why does the thought of him in the dungeon feel, not like the end of a story, the end of a nightmare, like justice…but instead like the beginning, like a crime in and of itself? Why does she still feel sick, and cold, and far too old thinking of him?

When Rapunzel was taken from them, so long ago—(though it always felt like yesterday)—sorrow was a constant reminder and companion. A quiet buzz of tragedy in the back of her brain. A crack in her heart, making it so she was never fully whole, never fully satisfied. Today’s melancholy, tinged with tomorrow’s hope, tomorrow’s despair. Now the tragedy, the threat, is over. Nothing is missing from their lives. Their hearts are whole again. And Rapunzel has faced many villains on her own, and defeated them with flying colors—him included.

But Arianna still feels something isn’t right.

Maybe it’s because this has happened before. Because she had spent so much of her life grieving the loss of their daughter, hoping in the deepest corners of her heart she would come running into the castle one day.

Maybe because, when her lost princess did come back there was this new thing in the back of her mind saying Maybe you don’t have her back forever. Maybe she’s not safe. Maybe she’ll be taken from you again. A part of herself she had to willfully soothe each day. …A voice Frederic was unable to quiet within himself.

Is it because Varian gave credence to this voice inside her? Because he took their own personal demons and brought them to life in a lab?

But it wasn’t Rapunzel he took…it was her.

Is that the point? Is it because she herself was the one who was kidnapped, for the sake of her daughter? That he used her to get to, to hurt, to in turn use, Rapunzel, too? Because she hadn’t anticipated that? Because the shock of it brought new ammunition to that voice? That now it was clear her daughter wasn’t the only one who could be taken, that any one of them could be stolen away, and used by the opponent? Was it that act of both of them being used as chess pieces in a grand game, instead of people with souls, who were hurting, that keeps her up at night?

It could very well be. But even so, together they had won against him. Arianna was confident that together—be it the three of them, or Rapunzel and her friends—they could face whatever came their way. She wasn’t afraid of him that night, when she was sitting handcuffed to his laboratory floor. She knew they would win. They always did.

Is it because he was one of her friends, a friend she thought could help Rapunzel face the darkness, a friend who had such light in him? Because he made it so terrifyingly clear that our worst enemies are not faceless monsters in the dark, not really…they are the friends we couldn’t save. His greatest offense was not treason against his kingdom, but against his friend. Is it that thought, that tomorrow’s villains are today’s heroes that sends her heart reeling?

But he is down there, in the dungeon, she repeats to herself, as she walks down the hall. She knows where he is; he cannot surprise attack her at any moment. He was not the first villain they faced, the first traitor, to Corona, nor will he be the last. That prison is filled with people who tried to take their sunlight away, and lost.

But she does not feel sick thinking of anyone else down there.

So why, when he is put behind bars—

Or says a voice in the back of her head, a very soft one she’s been trying not to listen to, maybe it’s because he’s down there.

…Because he’s down there, so close, and if he were to escape it would be so easy for him to strike where it hurt?

—(No, says the voice.)—

Or—(dare she admit it?)—Maybe it’s because he’s down there, when she knows he once was, and still could be, more than this. Because he’s down there, wasting away, repeating threats to empty walls, while she walks safely in her golden palace above, not caring what happened to him, what’s still happening to him, even now…how much pain he’s still in….

How much his mind is surely tormenting him.

(Just like her.)

Two scenes, one boy. But maybe it isn’t the way he turned to the dark…maybe it’s because she knows the dark isn’t all he’s made of.

Corona isn’t a place where villains and criminals are shut up, or beheaded for their crimes. It’s a place where they’re taught to be better.

She hadn’t given all that much time to mull in her head before, but now it gives her pause, sinks into her brain. Perhaps this unease is not entirely for herself, her family. Maybe its not fear…it’s guilt. Maybe some part of it, even if it’s small and cowering, is not for herself, but for him.

They all looked away. Frederic looked away when the rocks were destroying their kingdom. Rapunzel looked away when he came to her for help. They all didn’t go to him; looked away when the storm ended, assumed he was better, for fear of facing the fact that he wasn’t, that the storm had left wreckage behind after all, wreckage they would have to clean up. It was easier to look away.

Maybe this isn’t about the way he treated her…maybe it’s about the way they’re treating him, when she knows he was once a boy who cleaned libraries, fixed problems, helped people. When she knows he is still human…and they left him there to rot in the dark.

They’re still looking away.

What does she know? Maybe they’re right to leave him there. She doesn’t know him well. All she knew were the stories Rapunzel told, and the brief interactions they had. And the stories proved he was dangerous when good, and the interactions proved he was deadly when evil.

—(But…was he ever truly evil?)—

She met him twice, and their second, longer meeting was made of metal, and amber, and moonlight. If he could cross straight into the night without a sunset, then maybe she didn’t know him well enough to say they shouldn’t have looked away.

Still, even though she didn’t know much else, she knew—when she did look at him—the look in his eyes. She was certain that, though his gaze was harsh and unrelenting at those times…there was tragedy behind that ice, frozen in time. She could see the cracks in his heart. Could hear the voices in his head saying Maybe you can’t save your father after all.

A criminal was not all he was. A cell was not all he deserved.

He was just a boy, lost and hurting.

Like she was, once.

She paused, peering around a corner at two guards posted at a door. She knew behind it was the staircase to the dungeon. To …him.

She’s so close…

She could go see him right now. Sleep deprived and unsteady in mind she could march down there.

What would she do if she did? Yell and question him? Lecture him on the merits of a non-criminal life? Demand answers, or expect no answers, just want to see him hurt like he hurt her?

She tempers her breath. The thought fades quickly as it comes.

That is not who she is. That is not who she wants to be, to appear to him as; all fear and anger. If she does, if she wants him to hurt, she is no better than the darkest parts of him.

And it is not what either of them need.

She turns away, deciding the bed is more inviting now that her thoughts have coalesced into resolve, and her bare feet take her swiftly back to her room.

Not tonight. Not now.

She will talk to him again. She needs to, for both their sakes. She’s not going to look away anymore.

Because she knows they are the same.