#you are genetically built to last

[avianreptiles]

I'm thinking about that cunt again

[bakugoushotwife]

Daddy's Home

a/n: yes this is a repost!! it got com labelled straight at posting last time and didn't even crack a hundred notes! btw there is a continuation coming by request so get excited for baby daddy satoru :0

cw: breeding, unprotetected p in v, daddy kink, sorta rough maybe idk

wc: 2.1k

“You really should know better angel.” He growls, his large hands gripping the backs of your thighs so hard they were starting to burn. You could only choke out a moan in response, your eyes stinging with tears as he fucked into you relentlessly. Your hips hurt from the wide-spread angle your eager husband loves to take you in, keeping your legs by your ears and fingers clawing at his biceps. The pleasure was so intense it colored your vision, circular orbs of bright greens and purples floated across your sight, and you knew you were losing composure. Your screams ramped up deliciously, making the strongest man in the world let his head fall back with closed eyes to memorize the sounds.

He couldn’t help it, really, and it was all your fault. He came home earlier than usual, meaning his sister-in-law’s toddler was still at the Gojo residence. He was two, and just a precious kid. He was usually well behaved and was a massive fan of his Ti-Ti and Uncle Sato. But when he entered his home to see you passed out on the couch, the little boy curled up on top of you, his heart skipped a beat. The boy shared a lot of your features since your sister was the mother, but it took him aback to see you look so peaceful. You had your arms wrapped tightly around him, even in sleep. Your breathing was light, mouth parted slightly. The little boy had his thumb in his mouth  and head buried in your chest. There were soft nursery tunes in the background, and he could smell dinner simmering on the stove. Everything was right in the world, it seemed. The boy must feel someone staring, for he picks his head up and sleepily looks at his uncle. The boy smiles softly at him before turning over on you and going right back to sleep. Gojo smiled at the sight, heart warming in his chest. He snapped a picture for you, but he couldn’t stop staring at himself. 

It stirred something inside him, something that yearned to see you cradle a child he gave you, one that looked just like you. He never pictured being a father. Not even when he took in Tsumiki and Megumi, he felt more like a cool older brother rather than their dad since he was still a teenager himself. But he also never imagined being a committed boyfriend turned completely whipped married man, but here he is. He couldn’t ever possibly imagine the joy and love he feels with the life you’ve built so far. He wouldn’t even know how to tell his past self about it, if he had to. It made him wonder if children were the same. He could only imagine a tiny little mixture of himself and the person he loves most, and he knows they can’t lose that genetic lottery. How could that not be the best thing in the world? Spoiling you for an extended period of time? He does that anyway. The thought of you growing his kid, watching you swell month by month, god it was so perfect to him.

So don’t blame him for this, you had to go and make him think about a family. So it’s only natural that he’s keeping you locked in this position, all his weight leveraging his slender hips into your body. He always abused this power, smirking at you as you twitched and jerked beneath him, getting more and more sensitive with each orgasm he brought you. You looked so good like this anyway, his sweet pillow princess just laying there taking him oh so well. Your hair somehow always fell so perfectly around your head like a halo, lips swollen and bruised from his assault on them and your face pulled together in a picturesque pout. Your gorgeous tits bounced rhythmically along with his feral thrusts, sweet hands pawing at him to ground yourself. Not to mention the view he has of your glistening cunt and cute ass, his balls slapping up against your warm flesh violently. He loved everything about it, watching your ever tight pussy swallow his long curved cock, coating him in your arousal and arrivals so beautifully it made him moan. His noises were always so breathy and dreamy, you felt blessed every time he made one. 

He was impossibly pretty, his hair messy from the paths of your fingers, the tendrils that hung in his face were starting to stick. His eyes always shined brighter, filled with focus and admiration for his wife. His mouth was also slightly open, soft pants leaving his similarly-swollen pink lips. You feel your core tighten again, pulling like a rubber band while your eyes rake over your husband’s body; pale skin covered in a thin sheen of sweat and several fleshy pink scars. His physique was ever perfect, tone chest and tight muscles through his abdomen, you loved trailing your fingers down them. You felt hyper-aware of everything, the sheets tickling your back and the noise from the fan overhead. The moon lit up the scene, giving Satoru an ethereal glow. 

“So pretty Sato..” You mumble mindlessly, smiling to yourself at your magnificent luck in attaining the world’s most beautiful man. 

“Thanks, pretty mama.” He says, managing to pull his lips together in a smirk. He was close, feeling your choking walls spasming around him made goosebumps spring up on his skin. 

You moan softly at the pet name and squeeze down on his muscular arms and his throbbing erection. He grins at your reaction, leaning over your upper half to whisper in your ear. The feeling of his breath fanning over your neck makes you squirm, making him chuckle airily. 

“You like being’ called mama? I’m tryin’ to make you one.” He grunts, kissing the shell of your ear. You can feel him twitching inside you, the slight squelch of your fluids was the only sound other than your soft moans punctuating every roll of his hips and the lewd words he whispered in your ear. 

“Oh yeah?” You muster the willpower to say, getting absolutely punished by his force. “My hubby wants to be a daddy?” You coo, holding the back of his neck. 

He shudders, and you can tell he definitely likes that. You giggle and watch his cheeks flush as that sends him over the edge, pumping his hot seed into you and moaning quietly through his high. He leaves himself there even once he’s come down, intent to keep any of his cum from leaking out. He does let your legs rest around his hips, knowing you must be incredibly sore. 

“You would want that, right?”

You look down at his member keeping you plugged up. “Looks like it’s too late for protests.” You joke, giving him a soft smile after. “Of course I want a family, I just never knew when you’d be ready. I’d love to see you be a father. No doubt you’d be great at it.” 

He smiles in that arrogant way of his. “Just like everything else huh?”

“I would say my favorite quality of yours is your humility.” You groan, rolling your eyes at your lover. 

Things would just spiral from there, his craving to breed you not fulfilled until you present him with the evidence. He would bring you vitamins and you would make sure to track your cycle and dress in a more accessible way at home. If possible, his need to fuck you has skyrocketed, forcing you to be impaled on his cock at any given spare moment of the day. You’re not surprised when your dress is slid above your hips shortly after hearing the front door open and clothes. 

“Hey there pretty mama.” His voice rumbles in your head, his warm bulge pressed against your bare ass. 

“Hey there baby daddy.” You giggle, bending over the counter a little more, wiggling your backside in his grip. His hands press into your hips for a moment, and then you hear the sound of his belt. You grin, spreading your legs wider. 

His expression is similar as he slides his arm around your hips so he could reach the front of your pretty pussy. As eager as he was to plant his kids in your womb he always took the time to get you ready for him. Your body instantly starts to tremble when he begins to rub methodic circles around your bundle, sending jolts of electricity through you. He chuckles at you, making sure his other hand was holding your hips upright. 

“That’s my girl, I know you love this shit angel.” He coos, sliding his hand down to slip a digit inside your waiting entrance. You moan lowly, clenching around the one finger. You’re a whimpering mess shortly after that, his second finger added to the mix doing enough to you fuck yourself back onto them. He always curled them perfectly, tickling your pleasure spot so perfectly you were coming around his fingers in record time. 

You turn your head to watch him pull his fingers out of your cunt, slipping them into his mouth happily. You moan at the sight, wishing nothing more than to have the evidence of his love growing in you. He cleans his digits, pulling off his underwear in a swift motion. His hard member slaps his white happy trail, and you’re wiggling in anticipation at the sight of his pretty length. His tip was leaking and pink, what you guessed must be at least an hour’s worth of need pent up causing that color. Even his veins were pretty, slender and purple perfectly decorating his long shaft. 

“Ooh, mama’s feeling impatient today?” He asks, quickly tugging his blindfold down to rest between his collarbones. He hums, eyeing your weeping cunt happily. “All this after just my fingers? You wanna be bred more than anything, isn’t that right?” 

He spits on his cockhead, stroking the lube around himself. You nod, his words and touch doing unspeakable things to you. It was true, you wanted him to knock you up just as badly as he wanted to do it to you. 

“Yes, I wanna make you a daddy so bad.” You whine, gripping the sides of the counter when you feel his tip spreading your lips. You gasp sharply when he shoves his way in, bottoming out with no resistance. 

He hisses at the tightness, always mystified by your pussy. “You’re gonna, I know you are. Not gonna give you the choice, princess.” He groans, grabbing hold of your hips and using the grip to slide you along his cock. It’s filthy, the sound of skin on skin and your helpless wailing. 

It only takes him a few minutes to have you sputtering brainlessly, grip loosening on the counter, your ability to support yourself long gone. You’re seeing stars and calling out for him in a mumbled pant, letting him know you were adequately satisfied based on your body language. 

“My pretty girl. She’s being so good for me, taking all this cum all the time. Makes me s’happy…can’t wait for my pretty girl to get pregnant..” He voices, only making your walls squeeze down on him sporadically. “I’m gonna give you my kids, mama, you be good and keep it.” He grunts, your ass rippling with his thrusts. He only needed a few more thrusts before his sperm was fertilizing your womb, making you feel impossibly good. 

Your soft pants are music to his ears. He grins as he slides out of you, easily sweeping you off your feet and into his arms bridal style. “Now go lay down and hold onto this round.” He winks, just intent on spoiling you even though you’ve explained that that doesn’t necessarily matter. He refutes you every time, simply refusing to accept that there was nothing extra he could do to help you conceive. 

Luckily you didn’t need any more help. Not two months later are you bringing him a handful of different at home pregnancy tests that prove that all the hard work has paid off. And naturally, you're swept into his arms like a baby yourself, getting peppered with kisses and sweet whispers of his excitement and his oaths to take good care of you, as his latest fantasy has come true. 

He stays true to his word, you don’t want for anything and he keeps you as happy as can be, though his insatiable craving for your body doesn’t lessen now that his mission was successful. Now that he gets to watch you swell with his child, your body changing to become even more heavenly if possible, he can only think of keeping you this way.

[facelessoldgargoyle]

another reason that I can’t stop shaking Amy Dallon in a mason jar to turn her into butter. Is that. Her arc makes such a compelling critique of the nuclear family. Consider:

Carol not wanting to have a child, but “caving” to it because Mark promised he’d help. This isn’t stated in the text, but i think it can be reasonably absurd that they were trying to create the image of a family.

Carol’s obsession with feeling safe with a child because it came from her body. It reminded me strongly of Purity’s obsession with her own baby being free from the contamination of the world, and her ex specifically. That parallel immediately makes the ugly subtext clear: obsession with children being pure, and belonging to you, is Nazi shit.

the New Wave is built upon the image of the perfect nuclear family to the point of absurdity. It’s literally composed of two nuclear families, and they perform virtue while hiding dirty secrets. Additionally “the new wave” has always sounded reminiscent of “the third wave” to me. I’m not sure if that was on purpose, but the resonance gives the name an extra sprinkling of fascism.

So into this set of conditions enters Amy. She is mistrusted by her new mother and neglected by her new father and she doesn’t fit into the image of the perfect family. She resents her own power because it exhausts her, but I think that if she could be masked and maintain a civilian identity, she might be able to relax and recharge. This is not allowed by New Wave.

The nuclear family is thus the source of all her problems. Subsequently, Amy is positioned as the nuclear family destroying itself.

Amy’s incestuous feelings are a perversion of the love that the nuclear family is supposed to embody. They arise because the family has failed to embrace her, and shut her out of it. The family causes its own destruction.

Amy’s lesbianism is a perversion of the nuclear family’s ideal of heterosexuality. Changing Victoria’s mind so that she reciprocates is a replay of the homophobic tropes of fifties and sixties lesbian pulp novels, and it literalizes the straight fear that gay people will “corrupt” their children. By playing out a story from conservatives’ worst nightmares, we can see how the fear causes the problem to occur. Carol feared Amy because she reminded her of her father and because she was an intrusion on Carol’s designed family. This fear caused Amy to be shut out, which means she didn’t instinctively view Victoria as a sister, which left the door open for romantic feelings. In the real world, parents’ fear that their children will be corrupted and taken away from them causes them to be controlling and bigoted. This is what drives children away.

Amy’s destruction of Victoria’s body happens as a result of her loss of control, and it happens while the two of them are isolated from the rest of the world. Amy introduces stray cats and dogs and rats—vermin—to Victoria’s body. This literalizes Carol’s fear of contamination, and remakes Victoria so that she no longer came solely from Carol’s body. Amy’s loss of control here frames her more as a carrier of disease than an active agent, in contrast to the last bullet point. The fear of genetic contamination from diseased people plays on very old antisemitic tropes, and again, is Nazi shit.

It’s compelling on the same level that Greek tragedy is! It’s wildly homophobic, but it’s so deliciously ironic.

[astroboots]

EVERY YOU EVERY ME #11.5 SPECIAL

Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x female reader

Summary: Let’s start from the beginning one last time.

Word count: 5,800

Warning: Heavy angst and character death. Dead Dove do not eat.

Series Masterlist | Spiderverse Masterlist | Astroboot’s Masterlist | thirstworldproblemss’ Masterlist

[Previous] [Next]

Let’s start from the beginning one last time. 

My name is Miguel O’Hara, and in an experiment gone wrong, my genetic code was partially rewritten with Spider DNA, giving me superpowers.

My home is Earth 928-C where I was the one and only Spiderman... of my home dimension at least.

I invented and built a dimensional travel device that allowed me to jump between universes with the goal of exploring the limits of the multiverse. 

And then I met a woman in this other world who nearly died from a crazy freak accident.

I saved her of course.

Then I saved her again.

And again, and again.

... And again.

We fell in love, and I decided to stay with her in her world.

You know the rest. We got married. We had a life together.

I was happy. Really happy. 

For a while.

[Earth 383-D]

3 YEARS AGO

"Goddamn idiot bird," Miguel mutters under his breath.

Vulture is on the loose again, wreaking havoc on the city. The maniac is flying high above the city grounds, leaving a trail of mayhem in his wake. 

Miguel's been in pursuit for the better half of two hours. In that time, the bird has derailed the High Line, literally hit a traffic light and managed to knock over the spire on the Statue of Liberty as if he was flying under the influence.

Then somehow flew across town through Tribeca, along Lower Manhattan and Greenwich Village and now reached all the way to Midtown Manhattan. 

Dumbass ugly stupid bird. 

Miguel digs his claws into the exterior of the limestone and granite of the Empire State Building to steady himself, using the momentum to leap forward.

The Vulture crashes into a skyscraper 50 feet ahead of Miguel, and in the mad dash, he can see a man tumble out of the building head first to the ground from the 30th floor. 

Swinging forward, Miguel slings out a web from his palm, catching the screaming and sobbing office worker in midair and lands briefly against the windowpane. He ensures the man is secured to the building in a cocoon of webbing until the fire department can get him to safer grounds.

Miguel doesn't even get a second to catch his breath. From afar, he can pick up the sound of another window being crashed into by the unwieldy metal bird. 

Crap. 

It's impossible for Miguel to both chase the Vulture and keep everyone else in his path of destruction safe. One superhero can't be in two places at once (none that he has encountered).

Gritting his teeth, Miguel leaps off the building swinging freely into the air to make up on the lost ground between him and the metallic cuckoo bird.

He needs backup, and the backup is unfortunately running late.

Where is he? Why is he always late?

Does that man not understand that when someone calls for backup because of an emergency, the emergency part indicates that there's some urgency to it?

Flying through the air 100 feet above the ground, from the corner of his eyes, Miguel catches the familiar garish red flowing cape that billows from the cowl of the grand cloak and suit. 

Miguel would know that weird wizard get-up anywhere. 

"Strange!" Miguel calls out, and he can feel irritation rattle in his chest. "You're late! Where the shock were you?"

"The word you're looking for is 'fuck.' Where the fuck was I," the man responds with a sarcastic drawl.

Strange levitates through the air, effortlessly without expending any energy at all as he catches up with Miguel. "You gave me no notice. Be happy I showed up at all."

From a distance he sees the dumb bird soar high up into the sky and towards the all too familiar crowned roof of the Chrysler building. 

No. nononono. 

Why is he there? What is he doing there? Anywhere but there. 

His back flashes cold then burning hot as the Vulture makes a straight beeline for the familiar building.

It’s fine. Maybe he’s not going to fly in there. Maybe he’s just going to fly past it.

Miguel watches as the metallic bird soars up and up and up, past the midpoint of the building, past the 40th floor of your office and up to the 50th floor. The tight squeeze in his chest eases.

Then the vulture stops, mid-flight and looks down below, as if he changed his mind, before he descends again. 

Shit! Shit! SHIT!

He dives into one of the windows between the 40th and 50th floor. The sound of broken glass and shrill screams can be heard even from where Miguel is. 

Blood freezes in his veins and nausea overtakes him. Calm down. Breathe.. Maybe you’re not in. After all, Lyla’s security protocols would’ve been activated by now if you were. He would’ve been alerted. 

Soaring through the skies, Miguel reaches over to his wrist to punch in the dial for Lyla to check in and reassure himself you're safe. But his tracker blinks back in an alarming red, and he darts down his head towards the display.  

Error. 

His heart stops. 

The flying silhouette reappears through the shattered windows and the metallic harness strapped onto the vulture gleams bright against the sun.

It’s only then it hits him. Lyla's been deactivated by the madman's stupid Electro-Magnetic Harness. 

Why hadn't he foreseen that as a technical flaw?

Against the reflective glass panes, Miguel sees you, caught in the Vulture talons like a mouse captured by a large predatory bird. Every hair on his neck stands on end. His vision bleeds into red, blood roaring at the sight of it.

Kill him.

Miguel's gonna murder that freak for touching you. Crush his windpipe so he can't ever squawk again, then rip his throat out with his claws and feed it to the street pigeons for good measure.

Launching himself through the air, Miguel tears up the side of the building. The tempered glass beneath his claws and feet, shatters into sharp jagged pieces as he closes the distance. 

He is almost within reach. Only some 30 feet that still separates you from him. Leaping the final distance he slams hard into the side of the Vulture until metal crunches beneath his feet. 

Miguel roars until his throat burns with it. Palms gripping at the man’s jaw and prying it back to get at his bare throat. His fangs are ready to sink into the jugular. He can see the dark pupil of Vulture's eyes dilate with fear. 

Good. Miguel's anger will be the last thing this freak sees.

"Miguel calm down," Strange shouts at him from behind. "You're gonna knock her off."

Miguel freezes at the warning, forcing himself to hold still as he looks down to where you are dangling precariously from the Vulture's claws.

"Be ready," Strange shouts, and Miguel looks to him, not understanding what the hell he means. 

Strange rests his hand over the shiny blue gem hanging around a chain from his neck.

What does he mean by be ready? What is Strange going to do?

"What'd you mea–"

Miguel doesn't have a chance to finish the rest of his sentence. An unnatural force vibrates through him. A pulsating wave that pervades his senses, punching through his lungs and knocks him back. 

In an instance, you're propelled away from Strange and the Vulture, and you are freefalling towards the ground below.

Miguel leaps mid-air, arms outstretched to catch you as you plummet towards the ground below. His fingers clasps around your wrists, your warm skin against his fingertips.

He's got you!

Taking hold of you by the arm, Miguel pulls you into his chest as he wraps one arm securely around your waist.

Immediate relief fills him from the inside out as the adrenaline and the searing anger is already starting to fade now that he knows you're safe.

"You okay, nena?" he asks.

You nod, arms finding purchase around the back of his neck, and squeeze down tight. He swings you both to the safety of a nearby rooftop.

There's barely time for him to touch the surface, he hears the nearby explosion and sees Vulture crash into the concrete wall of the nearest building. 

Strange is levitating nearby, hands making wild gestures, presumably to perform some hocus pocus ritual. There’s a magical glow as strobes of light manifest out of thin air surrounding the Vulture from all sides and wrapping around him in a restraining bind.

Miguel sets you down. You're a little bit wobbly on your feet, and seeing you stumble the way you do has that protective streak spark anew in his chest.

Stupid Strange. He can't just do shit like that. 

What if Miguel hadn't reacted in time? What if you had fallen? 

This is why Miguel hates working with the guy, even if they’re friends. Always on his moral high horse about Miguel being reckless, then he pulls shit like this.

"Everyone alright?" Strange asks as he levitates through the sky to set feet close to you both on the rooftop.

Miguel grits his teeth with annoyance at the man’s casual demeanor when he nearly threw you out of the sky.

"Shock you, Strange," he spits out.

"Miggy..." you sigh in a reprimanding tone next to him. 

Stephen shakes his head at him. "I told you. It's fuck"

"Fuck you, Strange."

Sanctum Sanctorum is closer than home and Strange has, comfortable sofas in his ridiculously big mansion. Big enough sofas that Miguel can actually lounge in them comfortably without it feeling cramped. It's why, given the choice, he always prefer to regroup there, over your tiny apartment.

Besides, while the man's control over his magical powers can be suspect at times, he used to be a doctor. Supposedly one of the leading brain surgeons in the world, and Miguel is a lot more comfortable at the prospect of Strange giving you a checkover to make sure you don't need further medical attention than trying your luck at one of the local ERs.

"Follow my finger," Strange says as he shines a little flashlight into your eyes and moves his index from side to side. 

Your eyes follow him dutifully, and Strange proceeds with the rest of his medical check, asking you the boring standard questions. "Any symptoms of dizziness, lightheadedness, or a sense of vertigo?"

He fires them out in rapid succession, and a bit too perfunctory for Miguel's liking.

"Noticed any changes in your vision, blurriness or double vision, etcetera etcetera?"

Miguel's jaw tic in irritation at how Strange is putting in minimal effort and just going through the motions.

"Yeah, you're fine." Strange pats your knees, then whisks the flashlight away into nothingness with his cape.

That medical check wasn't anything close to thorough. Miguel crosses his arms over his chest. "Are you sure? Her feet were wobbly before, I wanted to make sure she didn't sprain her ankle."

"A little bit overprotective as always aren't we?" Strange says.

Miguel shoots the man a glare and Stephen sighs, "Her reflexes are fine, I don't think anything's sprained."

"Check again, you seemed sloppy," Miguel accuses.

"You know, I'm doing this as a favor because you’re a friend. Do you have any idea how much a medical examination by one of the leading neurological surgeons in the world would cost you normally?"

"I'll have Lyla transfer the money."

“No, it’s not actually about money just–" Stephen shakes his head, then sighs. "Nevermind.”

He gestures for you to drape your leg across his lap, then he reaches over to gently assess your ankle as requested.

"What is this necklace?" You ask. You lean closer to Strange, inspecting the blue gem where it rests against his chest.

Strange swats at your hand, the way an adult scolds a child with sticky chocolate smeared hands trying to touch the fine china.

"It's a protection amulet. When activated it forms a protective barrier that forcibly repels everything within ten feet of you."

"Huh," you reach back for the amulet undaunted by the earlier reprimand, fascinated and clearly enamored by it. "I'll give you fifty bucks for it."

Strange looks offended. "It's not for sale, and if it was it would certainly be worth a lot more than fifty dollars. It's a genuine magical artifact, not fake costume jewelry from the theater department."

You purse your lips, considering the amulet.

"Forty," you offer.

Miguel has to choke back a snorting laughter in his throat at the way Stephen's eyes goes wide in confused outrage.

"Wait, why is the price going down?"

“We’re in the middle of an economic crisis, Stephen,” you counter.  

Strange's head darts over to where Miguel sits, presumably for backup, but he's knocked on the wrong door. The man must be mad if he thinks that there is ever a world where Miguel would side against you.

"Strange, we both know it’s easier if you just give her the amulet." Miguel says. 

The man sighs, shaking his head in defeat.

"Be careful with it," he says as he drags the chain over his head to place it in your awaiting palms. "And don't lose it like the invisibility amulet with Mysterio. Had to spend a whole month clearing up your mess when that creep used it to get into the women's locker rooms at every local gym in Greenwich!"

"That wasn’t my mess! Miggy lost that one during an aerial fight. You can't blame that on me."

"You married him, so you're responsible for him. I consider you two jointly to blame."

"Now you're just lashing out," you shoot back.

Miguel watches the two of you in patient boredom, his head propped up by an elbow on the arm of the sofa. He expended way too much energy during the fight, and now he needs to refuel. 

If Miguel leaves you two to it, you'll spend an eternity bantering, the way you do. His stomach growls. He wants food. Wants wantons and beef ho fun and a dozen custard salted egg buns for dessert. And the longer you two are at it, the longer it's going to take for him to get it.

"Nena," he calls out, "I'm hungry. Are you two done? I want to go for dinner."

You shoot Miguel a quick smile, pulling out your wallet and take out a wad of green bills then fold it into Strange's hand with a happy grin.

Strange looks down at the crumpled up money in his hand. "Wait, you're only giving me thirty? I thought we said forty."

"You still owe me like ten bucks from mini golf last week."

Strange pockets the money with a grumble. "Unbelievable." 

“C’mon,” Miguel says as he stands up and gestures to the both of you with a curt nod of his head towards the door. “Let’s go. I’ll pay for dinner this time,” Miguel says, and that seems to abate Strange’s outrage somewhat as the man grabs your coat from the sofa cushions and offers it to you.

Life on Earth 383-D is strange.

Life here is borderline primitive. The technology is something out of the stone ages.

Social media is a wasteland. Reality TV is a dystopian concept. And he doesn't understand who Kardashian is or why everyone is obsessed with her and her family. 

He does like fax machines though. They are basically teleportation machines and it boggles him that the people of your dimension do not seem to understand its potential.

The one thing he will give this version of earth credit for is that the food here is nice. Everyone in his home dimension is too health conscious, and fried food has long been banned by the government for the long term damage it does to the cardiovascular system. 

He also likes the life that the two of you have built together here. You have a home in that tiny shoebox apartment. You have friends. Strange friends. Like the Doctor who flies around with the help of a magic cape and now practices the mystic arts after a gap year in Asia. A young girl whose main superpower is the ability to communicate with squirrels. Then there’s that ugly red-masked wise-cracking, katana-wielding maniac who never dies.

Sadly, your friends are not the only thing that is strange about your surroundings.

Miguel perches himself on top of the Chrysler building sitting hunched over on the ledge of the roof. He’s drained and bone-tired, chasing down a helicopter that had gone haywire and was hurtling towards your office building. 

Luckily Strange was able to assist and sent it through a magic portal to crash into the Atlantic without putting any lives at stake. 

"Just had to do some cleaning up," Strange says as he sets his boots back down on the ground. 

Miguel doesn't answer him, staring out at the city view and the setting sun as he takes a well earned breather for a moment or two. New York is a bit of a shit hole, but it does look pretty from a high viewpoint, especially when the sun is setting, Miguel has to give this city that.

It's silent between the two of them. Or at least it is until Strange decides to break it with a harkle of his throat. When Miguel doesn't react the man does it again, coughing discreetly in a clear attempt to get his attention.

Miguel doesn't say anything about the man's sore throat. He ran out of the lemon drops you bought him as snacks hours ago, but he does tilt his head up at the man.

"She's been getting into a lot of these incidents lately. More than usual, more than any normal human for it to be a coincidence" Strange says.

The whole of Miguel's back stiffens.

"Have you noticed the abnormal uptick in strange unexplainable supernatural occurrences lately? Indoor tornadoes. The rain of poisonous frogs outside of whole foods. A sinkhole appearing right next to the cafe your wife frequents."

Miguel doesn't love the insinuations. Even with his lips pressed tightly together, Miguel can feel the small muscle in his jaw flex like a nervous tic at the mention of it. Because yeah, he's noticed, kind of hard to miss when your wife's life is in constant peril at all hours of the day.

Ice storms in July that hit right outside your workplace. An inexplicable solar flare causing a blackout that had every single vehicle within a 5 miles radius go haywire in the dark near your apartment. A swarm of mutated mosquitoes with a venomous bite that chased you down Central Park. 

The incidents are occurring more frequently. They are also getting increasingly bizarre and dangerous.

No one can say it’s just bad luck when the daily occurrences around you are defying the very laws of nature itself. Something isn't right with the universe, and he's not sure what else there is to do except pretend that everything is still ok.

"What are you implying?" Miguel asks through gritted teeth. 

But for the first time in the years that Miguel has known him, Strange's talkativeness is nowhere to be found. He doesn't answer Miguel. He's smart that way, the clever bastard. Knows that if he says one wrong word, Miguel is going to unhinge his jaws like a feral alligator and snap at him. 

Strange has said what he needed for Miguel to know exactly what he's getting at. The man just meets his eyes with an intentional stare, not shying away from Miguel's glare.

It's not like the thought hasn't crossed Miguel's mind. Not like it hasn't been keeping him up at night, every night.

Even though you've always been accident prone and suffered from bad luck, at this point it's a mathematical impossibility that anyone would run into as many near death incidents as you have.

This isn't by chance. It's by design. Miguel's suspected as much for a while now. He just doesn't know whose design and why.

"It's not her fault," Miguel spits out.

"I never said it was."

"Even if what you are saying is true..." Miguel stops, and stares down at his fisted palms with a sinking feeling in his guts. "There's nothing she can do about it to stop it. You can't put that on her."

"Whether she knows about it or not, if it's true, none of this is going to go away.

Strange walks over to where Miguel is, sitting down next to him.

"It’s been escalating in severity," he continues. "There are strange universal energies attached to her. There’s warping of the universal order and space around her. We don't know how bad this can get, if we don’t do anything about this, it could unravel the fabric of reality itself."

Despite the calamity of what Strange is implying, his voice is even and calm as he says it as if he might as well be discussing the weather. That trait has always annoyed the shit out of Miguel.

"What are you planning to do if this continues?" Strange asks.

It's such a silly question. Strange says it as if this is a multiple choice question. But for Miguel there's only one correct answer. 

"Protect her. I have to. She's everything to me."

Miguel is staring into the sunset bu all he sees before him is your face even though you aren’t here. The happy smile that he wants to preserve forever. He tries to fight the ache that's building in him at the thought that it would go away.

"Strange, don't tell her. Please. She doesn't need that burden."

He fists his palms into his side.

Miguel never liked asking for help, but even he knows that if what Strange is saying is true. That if the universe for some unfathomable reason wants you dead, then he's going to need all the help he can get.

If Strange has figured it out. Then it's only a matter of time before others do as well.

Soon enough, you won't just have the universe coming after you but every superhero and villain combined in a united front to take out the common threat that you pose to this entire universe.

Even Miguel knows he can't do this alone and as much as that helplessness tastes like failure and bile in his throat, he can swallow his pride if it helps keep you safe.

"Stephen, you have to help me save her."

From behind, Strange rests one hand on the corner of his shoulder. The weight of it feels like a promise being made. For the first time in a long time, Miguel feels like he can breathe just a little bit easier.

"I will do what I can, my friend."

Weeks go by. There are more incidents. Runaway vehicles that go haywire. Electrical storm fires. Rain of poisonous locusts. 

Somehow he manages to protect you from it all. 

It just means that he has to be more vigilant, that's all. The universe doesn't rest and neither does Miguel now. Lyla has been set on constant alert to wake him up whenever he's napping at any small signs of abnormal occurrences happening near you, with an electric shock to make sure he wakes. Something the A.I. is taking a worryingly amount of glee in (which probably means he needs to retune her programming when he has time).

And today, today Miguel was meant to have a Sunday lie in. Universe be willing, his goal was to sleep all the way into the late afternoon and then you had promised to take him to IHOP and get him all the pancakes he could eat for late breakfast.

But right now he's not asleep. He's trying to. But there are hushed words and whispered murmurs, buzzing in his ear that keeps trying to drag him away from sleep.

It's you and Strange.

Judging from the distance of the noises, you're both standing outside in the hall. The fact that you two are trying to be quiet makes it worse. If you'd spoken in normal volume he could tune it out as white noise, but the conspiratorial quietness of it all makes the hair on the back of his neck tingle with alertness.

Fuck's sake. He swears to god if you two are gossiping and making fun of Hercules’ costume (or the lack of it) again.

It's too early for this crap. Don't you two know that people are trying to sleep? He was up all night chasing crazy Kraven worshippers releasing animals from the Brooklyn zoo. Miguel had to gather wild zebras and crocodiles all the way down East Village til 4am.

With a groan, he drags himself halfway up along the mattress, about to go and growl at you both to be quiet, when the cluttered noises register as words and the fuzziness of sleep clears momentarily.

"He'd destroy this world for you."

Huh? What are you two talking about?

Miguel's too groggy to make sense of the context of what's being said. Even with his super hearing he has to focus to make out the words.

"You can't let him."

Irritated, he gets out of bed and walks to the front door to swing it open. The first thing he sees is you standing with Strange in the hallway. You jump at the suddenness and look up at him with wide eyes.

You have the worst poker face of anyone he's ever seen in his life.

"What are you two jabbering on about this damn early?" he asks.

He'd expected the two of you to act coy, maybe a clever 'wouldn't you like to know' retort back from the Mystic. Instead, Strange's face is entirely inscrutable, tone serious as he responds.

"We were just catching up. Nothing important. I need to head back," Strange says, then he turns to you with a meaningful tilt to his head. "Think about what I said."

"What was that about?" Miguel asks you as he watches Strange step through a portal and disappear.

You don't say anything. There's a worried frown etched between your eyebrows as you bite down on your lip.

Something crawls under Miguel's skin at the whole interaction.

You're oddly quiet the whole afternoon. Deep in thought and walking around as if in a daze, which unsettles him.

It's not difficult for him to guess what's wrong. He might have been half asleep when you and Strange were whispering in the corridors, but Miguel can put one and one together. Having two PHDs and a lifetime's experience of working in theoretical physics gives you that leg up.

In a last ditch effort to get you out of the uncharacteristic blues, he orders a dozen of your favorite cupcakes from that tiny shop in New Jersey. It costs an arm and a leg to have it couriered, but it'll be worth it if it makes you smile. 

Then he sits down next to you on the bed and places the pink pastry box down on the mattress. It's your favorite place to eat cakes and it’s why you two always end up with crumbs and frosting all over the sheets.

You happily cram half a cupcake into your mouth in one bite as you eat, and he watches you contently. If there was any fairness in the world, this quiet idyllic moment could last forever. In a good world, Miguel wouldn’t have to burst this perfect bubble. 

Sadly, this world is neither fair nor good sometimes. 

"Strange said something to you right?" Miguel asks. 

You still next to him, clearly torn between whether or not to share what was said to you, probably in secret with the very intention of being kept away from him. 

“Nena,” Miguel tries again, and you close your eyes taking a deep breath, caving into his prodding. 

"Strange thinks that my incidents might be correlated with the strange natural occurrences lately."

That fucking asshole. He knew it. Irritation pings across his jaw, and Miguel bites it down. He tries to reel it, forcing back the rant that wants to surface. Instead he tries to focus on you instead of his own anger. 

"We don't know that. It could just be a series of coincidences," Miguel tells you. 

You nod, but Miguel's not an idiot and neither are you. He can see the worry creasing your eyes as you look down to your lap. 

Putting down the cupcake, he reaches over and links his right hand with yours. 

"Nena, don't worry.” He cups his free hand over your cheek to drag you up to meet his eyes.

“I'll fight the whole universe to keep you safe if I have to. Nothing's ever going to harm you so long as I'm here. I'm not gonna let anything happen to you. You're the most important thing to me."

You smile at him at the words, but there's a wistfulness to it that embeds a dull ache in his chest that he wants to physically rub away to make it stop.

You lean into his touch, until your forehead presses up against his and the physical touch blunts the ache in him for a moment, putting it on pause. 

"You’re the most important to me too," you say.

The sky itself cracks open not long after. 

It doesn’t take the combined forces and intellect of the entire world too long to hone in on you being the root cause. Soon enough every superhero, mutant, villain and alien starts coming after you. Because hero or villain alike, no one truly wants their world to end, not if it’s not on their terms. 

Mysterio tries to kidnap you by the elevator in your apartment building. The Human Torch even tries to burn the whole building down. The Punisher tries to murder you point blank outside your office.

Miguel can’t remember the last time he slept. He’s running on fumes. Day after day, he feels like he’s getting by on borrowed time. 

The friends and allies you have thin out fast as the threats to the world increase in severity. Miguel never imagined having Deadpool standing outside his door stating that the life of one single person cannot outweigh the universe itself. 

It’s all so stupid. None of them know what they’re talking about. A lynching mob with their torches and pitchforks. Never stopping to think whether harming you could trigger something much worse.

If Strange is right and you are the knot at the center of the fabric of reality that is coming apart, then ripping that out leaves a hole. Miguel gave up on explaining that fairly quickly because he realized that theoretical consequences doesn’t matter to an angry mob scared of facing the reality of extinction. 

It all becomes a blur. 

Exhaustion eats into his bones, until he can no longer tell the days apart. No matter how many times he saves you, disaster is always waiting just around the corner. 

And now he’s chasing down the Green Goblin to the top of the Chrysler building from the 61st floor, where the green freak has cornered you to the edge of the rooftop.

Miguel is already out of breath, running away from the coalition of superheroes and villains that are hot on his heels, trying to stop him from saving you. 

Adrenaline beats fast in his veins as he keeps running. Miguel is only able to make out those in pursuit in brief glimpses. The bright blue spandex suit of Reed Richards as his freakishly long elastic limbs stretch towards him. The blocks of metal hurtling towards Miguel, missing by inches and crashes into the side of a building as Magneto’s form hovers nearby. 

He ignores them all, not sparing a glance behind him. He just has to keep moving. It doesn't matter that his muscles scream and burn in exhaustion. Doesn't matter that his head dulls with a heavy ache from lack of sleep. He has to keep going for you. Has to save you.

He's so close, he's almost there.

From the corner of his eyes, he makes out the familiar garish red flowing cape fluttering against the blue sky.

Strange.

Miguel marginally relaxes, at the sight of the sole ally he has left in this universe. He leaps across the rooftop, into the temporary safety of the observatory deck.

His feet doesn't even reach the ground. Something restrains him from behind. Bright lights materialize out of thin air. It wraps around Miguel's limb with the strength of unbreakable manacles, hugging him so tight it restricts the flow of blood to his fingers. Then he’s brought down to his knees. 

Miguel whips his head back and Strange stands there, hands formed in a holding gesture.

“What are you–”

"I'm sorry," Strange says.

Miguel snarls at his restraints, wrenching and twisting in every direction he is able to even with the limited range of motion, but it's to no avail. The harder he struggles the more forceful the restraints seem to close in on him, mirroring his strength.

"I'm sorry it had to come to this. I really hoped there was another way but every life in the whole of the universe is at stake, Miguel."

Hot burning anger spears through him, and if he could he would raze it all to the ground with it. This place, this world and this fucking traitor standing there can all fucking burn. Miguel is gonna kill him. He's gonna kill this fucking bastard. He can't believe he trusted him.

“Strange, fucking let me… Stephen!”

He hears your pained shout and snaps his head towards the sound.

Miguel is only ten feet away from you. Ten measly feet from where the Green Goblin is holding you by the ledge of the rooftop. He can still reach you, if he can get free he can still save you. 

Tearing through the magical binds, there’s a bone-cracking sound in his shoulder. Searing pain spreads through his arm. For all his struggles, he doesn't know if he’s even an inch closer towards you. 

He watches you drop from the ledge. 

It's a pin drop moment where everything stops. His heart is no longer beating. 

No. This can't be how it ends.

He's moving forward, even as the sharp restraints digs into his limbs and flesh and burrows in with an excruciating ache. But the pain doesn't matter. All that matters is you.

It claws into him, and digs and tears, until he is sure that his entire limbs are going to be torn off, but he doesn't stop, keeps pulling against the resisting strength that surrounds him, rips against the hindrance embracing every ounce of the pain until finally, the pressure gives.

There's a cacophony of sound that's left behind him as he leaps through the air. He slingshots downwards, cutting through air as he tries to reach you.

Miguel catches your hand and relief fills his chest.

"I got you. I got you," he murmurs. He's not sure if those words are to calm you or himself.

Pulling you up in defiance of the pull of gravity, he tries to haul you up towards him. Your hand squirms in his, and if you keep going you're going to slip out of his grasp.

"Nena, don't move," he shouts in alarm, but you don't stop, twisting in all directions, making it harder for him to get a better grip.

What're you– You're resisting against his strength, why would you...

It hits him with a sickening realization.

You don' want him to save you.

"Stop!" he shouts. “Stop!”

You shake your head, tears filling the corner of your eyes that flow upwards and everything is upside down to him. 

"We’re out of time. You have to let me go,” you say. 

His fingers squeeze down even harder at your words, refusing to hear it. 

“There's still time. There are still other options. I can still save you!” 

Your hand reaches for the amulet pressed against your collarbone. Dread floods every nerve in his body as he sees your fingers squeeze around it.

"No!" He shouts. Screams it so loud it burns in his lungs. But deep down he knows it's not going to make any difference. "Nena, don't!"

The wind whips too loudly against his face. The sound of your heart pounding so painfully hard in his ear that it's deafening and he knows that sound will haunt him forever. 

You're scared.

He sees your lips move, but he can't hear what you're saying.

But he's heard these words so many times before from your lips that he knows them by heart. 

''I love you.''

An invisible force blasts away at him, it shatters through him through his limbs and torso into the very soft tissue of his stomach and makes his teeth shake. He's propelled upwards, unable to control his movements or defy the gravity that he's learned to navigate after all these years mid-air.

He holds on as hard as he can to your hand, but it doesn't matter. His fingers slip, his grip is lost.

You're falling through the sky.

Miguel doesn't remember much after that.

Somehow he makes it back onto the ground.

Somehow he finds you amongst the cracked dirty concrete. 

Somehow, despite falling from over a 100 feet your body is still intact where it lies lifeless on the ground.

Your bones are broken though. Body limp and soft in his arms in a way that has never felt more wrong to him. His only consolation is that you're still warm in his arms, and he thinks that maybe if he just doesn't let go, if he holds you tightly pressed to him the way he is doing now, it'll remain that way forever.

The sky has cleared above. There are no cracks in the azure blue canvas.

This world is saved. 

His world has ended. 

~ Next Issue

Dedication & Credits: To @thirstworldproblemss who has been with me on this journey since chapter one without her enthusiasm and her companionship and friendship and listening to my wild ramblings about this story, I would never have set out to write this thing. She gave me so much joy in the process, she also gave me her time and her skills and brainy talent to help me process and brainstorm this into a shape that I was excited to share with you all! You also have her to thank for that devastating last line.

@guruan who has been a constant well of inspiration with her amazing art, her bright sense of humor and her sharing of theories of what's going to happen! You've made writing this story so much fun!

Author's note: Here we go guys, we've officially entered the final arc now. With only three chapters to go! I am so excited to share the remaining puzzle pieces with you all!

[thelordofgifs]

Ranking all the Kings of Gondor

Based on what, you may ask? Vibes. Let's go.

Eldacar. Twenty-first King. THE bestest boy in the legendarium. The hero of the Kin-strife, the archetype of immigrant child trauma, the exiled king, the vengeful father... we love him so so so much ok!!

Aragorn. First High King of the Reunited Kingdom. Yes I know your list would put him at the top but this is my list and I do what I want. Anyway he's wise and kind and "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer" and he's brave and clever and has an excellent fairy-tale romance going on and I am very much not immune to Viggo Mortensen covered in blood with unwashed hair.

Elendil. First High King. He's brave he's cool he's wise he DEFEATED SAURON. Love him.

Isildur. Second High King (co-ruler). Justice for my boy the movies did him so so dirty!! Anyway he saved the line of the White Tree and fought so so bravely and he did his best. I will not countenance Isildur slander actually.

Valacar. Twentieth King. Ranks this highly mostly because he's my blorbo Eldacar's father, but Valacar is cool! His father sent him to the Northmen to build an alliance and Valacar promptly fell in love with their chief's daughter instead. And then Vidumavi died long before he ever even became King and you have to wonder if Valacar feared he would outlive his children too :(

Aldamir. Twenty-third King. Also ranking highly mostly because of genetic proximity to my guy, but Aldamir is sooo tragic actually. He's a second son who never should have become King except his older brother was MURDERED and maybe he spent the rest of his life trying to live up to him!! Also he was also killed in battle which I am sad about. This family cannot catch a break.

Eärnur. Thirty-third and last King. This is the idiot who challenged the Witch-king of Angmar to single combat and was never seen again, but I have a soft spot for him on account of. that was really sexy.

Eldarion. Second High King of the Reunited Kingdom. We don't know much about Aragorn and Arwen's son, but movie!Eldarion is very cute which is enough to earn him a high rank.

Rómendacil II. Nineteenth King. An all-round competent guy who ruled as regent for years for first his lazy uncle and then his lazy father. Built the Argonath!! Also he's Eldacar's grandfather which again earns him points.

Eärnil II. Thirty-second King. Ended up with the crown after his predecessor and both his sons were killed in battle (although NOT his daughter. JUSTICE FOR FÍRIEL). Anyway Eärnil strikes me as a decent guy who was doing his best. Props to him for taking pains not to alienate the Dúnedain of Arthedain.

Ondoher. Thirty-first King. The aforementioned predecessor, who is mostly ranked highly because I feel bad that he died :( and he tried to ensure Gondor would still have an heir to the throne if he and his eldest son were killed! But his youngest son joined the battle in disguise and got killed anyway!

Minardil. Twenty-fifth King. Another tragic one, he was Eldacar's great-grandson and was slain in battle by the descendants of Castamir. I am upset about this.

Meneldil. Third King. We don't know much about him, but he was the first solo ruler of Gondor and also the last child born in Númenor before the Downfall, which is cool.

Telumehtar. Twenty-eighth King. Finally got rid of the last descendants of Castamir, excellent work.

Calimehtar. Thirtieth King. Defeated the Wainriders attacking Gondor in a great alliance with the Northmen, which we love to see. Also he built the White Tower of Minas Anor! Good for him.

Anárion. Second High King (co-ruler). He was initally a lot higher on the list because I feel for him always being overshadowed by his father and brother, but then I learned he was killed by a THROWN ROCK which is kind of pathetic ngl. Sorry, Anárion.

Tarondor. Twenty-seventh King. Had the unenviable task of rebuilding the realm after it was ravaged by the Great Plague, but unfortunately he moved out of Osgiliath for good (which makes me unreasonably sad. I love Osgiliath) and also allowed the watch on Mordor to lapse for good.

Eärendil. Fifth King. We don't know much about him, but his name is nice.

Anardil. Sixth King. We don't know much about him, but his name is also nice.

Telemnar. Twenty-sixth King. Died in the Great Plague, sad for him I guess.

Narmacil II. Twenty-ninth King. Slain in battle with Wainriders, made no impression on me at all.

Siriondil. Eleventh King. We know very little about him, but that's a good name.

Cemendur. Fourth King. Boring and doesn't even have a good name.

Turambar. Ninth King. Mainly this low down because THAT'S A TERRIBLE NAME WHAT ARE YOU THINKING.

Hyarmendacil II. Twenty-fourth King. Defeated the Haradrim in battle, good for him I guess.

Atanatar I. Tenth King. No personality. I don't like his name either.

Rómendacil I. Eighth King. Defeated some Easterlings in battle, but apparently not very well because they later killed him. Oh well.

Ciryandil. Fourtheenth King. A Ship-king, and I don't like Ship-kings (mostly because Castamir tried to be a Ship-king).

Ostoher. Seventh King. Didn't do much, although he started the practice of the King spending his summer in Minas Anor. Good for him? I guess?

Eärnil I. Another Ship-king. Died in a great storm, which is one of the perils associated with being a Ship-king!

Calmacil. Eighteenth King. Generally incompetent. Gains a couple of points for being Eldacar's great-grandfather.

Narmacil I. Seventeenth King. Also pretty incompetent. He let his nephew do all the work of ruling for him.

Atanatar II. Sixteenth King. Lived in indolence and splendour, and neglected the watch on Mordor which was not very wise of him!

Hyarmendacil I. Fifteenth King. Ok he actually sucks. The King who defeated the Haradrim and instituted the practice of taking their sons as hostages to live in the court of Gondor.

Tarannon. Twelfth King. The first of the Ship-kings, also known for his loveless marriage to his wife Berúthiel who gets blamed for everything for some reason.

Castamir the Usurper. (Technically) twenty-second King. Should not be on this list and is here purely so that I can say. FUCK. THIS. GUY.

[gallifreyanhotfive]

Random Doctor Who Facts You Might Not Know, Part 13: Gallifrey at War Part 2

TW: more gruesome Time War shit, lots of death, disturbing stuff

Both the Daleks and the Time Lords investigated genetic manipulation to create new creatures to use during the Last Great Time War. This includes the highly psychic Time Lord called Quarren Maguire, who was altered to have reality changing abilities. He used these abilities to erase the evidence that he existed and then Chameleon Arched himself to pass as human, unaware of his nature as a Time Lord.

Marie is a sentient humanoid Type 103 TARDIS. The Time Lords kept her in a box for more than a year screaming and thrashing. Eventually, the High Council allowed her to mate with a Type 105 TARDIS, and she bore a baby TARDIS. After the baby was born, the Time Lords took them away from Marie immediately.

The Last Wave was a generation of soldiers in the War in Heaven. The officers in this group were older individuals who forced regeneration until their skin was coated in this black organic blastproofing.

Dalek technology possessed regeneration inhibitors.

The Time Lords would often splice different species together in the Time Vortex to create increasingly impossible and mindless beings.

Leela was fitted with a compliance collar during the Last Great Time War to force her obedience.

The Fifth Doctor became involved in the Last Great Time War by accident after crashing his TARDIS into a Dalek time machine.

During the War in Heaven, the Nine Gallifreys project concerned cryptoforming planets into Gallifreyan cloneworlds. Some envisioned every planet in the universe eventually being transformed. These clone Gallifreys would eventually be used as ballistic projectiles as the war escalated among other things.

In the Last Great Time War, mutated Time Lords dubbed "Interstitials" were living in the Death Zone. They were the results of experiments by Rassilon to create a possibility engine. This involved retro-evolving the timeline of these Time Lords to connect to the time vortex and enter a loop of iterative regeneration. This meant they had no constant appearance and were instead in flux between different bodies. Rassilon and Borusa eventually managed to build their engine using them.

In the beginning of the Last Great Time War, the War Council built munitions factories underneath Gallifrey's surface. They employed children.

It was said that a soldier in the Last Great Time War could die a thousand times in a single day only to learn that they had never been born at all the day after.

The Cold was a weapon created by the Time Lords during the War in Heaven. When activated, it breaks through the time-space continuum, so everything nearby gets sucked into an alternate universe and destroyed. If introduced to an inactive Cold, a subject could be held in stasis for centuries, like Fitz Kreiner was.

During his time working for the Faction, Kreiner spent centuries killing Time Lords, including the Rani and the Master although these may have been clones. He collected their severed heads.

Saturnyne was a water world until it was hit by a shock wave of temporal disruption from the Last Great Time War. This caused the planet to change to one where the inhabitants evolved with no natural laws of evolution, becoming odd beings that could move from the deepest depths of the water to land. The Saturnyne matriarch Rosanna Calvierri would later meet the Eleventh Doctor, Amy, and Rory in Venice.

The Time Lords began to seriously alter their biology during the War in Heaven, often becoming what the Eighth Doctor termed to be "monsters."

The biodata virus altered its victims biodata to become members of the Faction Paradox. It infected the Third Doctor while he was regenerating on Dust after being shot, thus dramatically altering the timeline. Now infected, the Doctor would be corrupted into a member of the Faction by the end of his Eighth self.

River Song used a therapy bot to erase the Eleventh Doctor’s memory of counting how many children were on Gallifrey at the end of the Last Great Time War. This same therapy bot would one day belong to Cass Fermazzi, but instead of taking her memories, it just spewed out the Doctor’s. This had a great effect on her childhood and inspired her to fight for what is right. Discovering this confirmed the Thirteenth Doctor’s belief that they caused her death.

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28

[suzukiblu]

join, scent, sorry

"Wait, so you just . . . ditched Superboy? Like right after he got out of Cadmus?" Captain Marvel sputters right in the middle of a League meeting, looking startled. "Why?"

"Batman is handling the Superboy situation," Clark says as neutrally as possible, resisting the urge to grit his teeth or rub at his temples or glower over at Bruce or just–anything, just anything. He isn't Superboy's father, though, and five minutes into this nightmare he's already more than sick of people making the assumption that he should be. He didn't volunteer for anything or consent to anything or even just make a mistake; he had his DNA stolen by people who built a weapon out of it, and just because that weapon's aging process got interrupted and it therefore currently looks like a minor, Clark is supposed to . . . supposed to what, exactly? Sell out his secret identity and his family and his whole damn life to something that only knows what some deluded mad scientists and enslaved genetic experiments thought it should know?

They're not even sure if Superboy is actually a real person. If the personality that's been presented so far is anything more than programming or puppetry or . . . or who knows what, exactly.

Clark can't take that home with him. Can't introduce that to Lois or Ma and Pa or hell, even Jor-El's AI or Krypto. He just can't trust that.

Who could?

And building a weapon that just so happens to look like a kid in a lab and conveniently getting that weapon found and broken out "early", and having that weapon be so eager to join the good guys despite its origins and education and so eager for specifically his attention, so eager to learn about specifically his powers and all the best ways to use and abuse them straight from the source, to try to make specifically him feel some kind of . . . of attachment or affection towards it . . .

Well, Clark's seen much more convoluted and improbable plans from supervillains than that, frankly. They don't know if anything they've been told about Superboy is true. They don't even know if the files Cadmus let them access are accurate or unredacted. They know nothing.

But everyone else seems to think that Clark shouldn't care about that, and that it shouldn't be making him crazy to see his dead birth family's crest in blood red on the chest of a weapon who won't answer to any name but "Superboy".

.

.

.

Dubbilex is a null and doesn't ever scent anyone at all, but sometimes Rex will give him a quick little scruff of approval or Tana or Roxy will give him an affectionate pat or two, and Knockout likes to find excuses to flirt-scent him whenever they end up having a throwdown or whatever, but none of it's ever . . . it doesn't ever . . .

It's embarrassing, but Superboy doesn't–he appreciates it all, obviously, appreciates anyone thinking he's worth any kind of scenting, but it's not what he really wants. He wants something–deliberate. Purposeful.

Lasting.

He wants something heavy, and steady, and certain. Something committed.

Or Superman's attention, just for a minute or two.

He wants to belong to somebody. He's not a real person anyway; he's a thing more than anything else. And if he has to be a thing, it's not fair that he . . . that he isn't a thing that belongs to anyone.

At least, not anyone that he wants to.

Technically speaking, he's Cadmus's IP. Technically speaking, he belongs to Cadmus. There's paperwork that says he does. A lot of it. Cadmus has "custody" of him, legally speaking. He's . . .

He doesn't want that.

He hates that.

.

.

.

"It wasn't . . . it just never felt like–like the right time to tell you, that's all," Kon stutters, feeling like an idiot, and Clark looks . . .

Clark looks pained.

"You mean you never felt safe enough to tell me," he says quietly.

Kon . . . swallows.

Because–that's true, yeah. He's trusted Clark to save his literal stupid life before, but . . . but he never felt safe enough to tell him this.

That's kind of fucked up, isn't it.

"I'm sorry," Clark says, and that suddenly Kon is too bemused to do anything but stare at him. "I should've made sure you knew you could tell me things like that. I shouldn't have just assumed you would."

[teyamsatan]

Illicit Affairs | Chapter III: Exile

Pairing: Neteyam x Human!Reader (later Avatar!Reader)

Chapter I Chapter II Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X

Synopsis: Your 18th birthday has finally arrived, and with it, a gift that will change your life and your relationships - forever.

Warnings: angst, mentions of death, cursing

Word Count: 3,9k words

A/N: Hi Guys! The 3rd chapter is finaaally here, and 'm happy to say that whilst so far everything's been mostly intro and world building, things will be picking up very quickly. Hope you enjoy this story of two very broken people finding each other <;3

"You were my town Now I'm in exile, seein' you out I think I've seen this film before So I'm leavin' out the side door"

You didn’t dare look back at Neteyam. No, you kept a straight face and your gaze forward as you walked towards the village, engaging in small talk with your 3 friends, who were more than willing to fill in the silence by themselves. They knew you liked to keep to yourself and knew better than to take it personally. 

Your friends also knew, despite not mentioning, that this is a colossal feat, getting you out of the lab, getting you to leave your comfort bubble that you, willingly or unwillingly, built for yourself the past 18 years. Kiri fondly remembers you as a child, wild and free, running around barefoot on the grass and mud as if Pandora and her trees were just your own personal playground. She took a small gander at your feet, now safely covered with a pair of black Converse sneakers, the likes of which she’s seen other humans wear before and tried not too dwell on all the moments that lead you here.

You arrived at the village after a long, pleasant walk. You were fascinated with the Pandora flora, and wondered if you were ever going to get used to it, ever not have your breath hitch in your throat at its beauty. You hoped not. Your heart started to race as the sound of people idly chattering filled your ears. Soon enough, you began to see fire and tents, as the Na’vi were making their way back home at the dusk of another day. You saw some of them removing game from the back of their pa’li, others filleting a huge fish that you recognised as a dinicthoid, and as you walked further in, saw kids running around playing with toy ikrans and laughing amongst themselves, as their mothers lay on the ground watching them in adoration. 

This place filled you with so much warmth. It was clear to you the bond these people had to each other, to the clan, to the nature surrounding them, was something you will never experience for yourself, something your mum talked incessantly about every day, and you suppressed a small cry at the sudden loss of a connection you didn’t even know you longed for until now.

You made your way to the biggest tent you could reasonably see, one that you quickly recognised as the Sully family tent. It was ornate and adorned with intricate designs and two large fire lamps framing each side of the opening. It was a sight to behold, and you realised that it hasn’t changed much since you last visited. You also started to take note of the stares boring into your side from all around you and felt grateful at how close you were to the tent’s entrance. 

Almost on command, Jake Sully peered out of the tent and you watched as a wide smile replaced his previously confused expression. He was a handsome man, as much so now as he was in the still frames of your past. He was dressed in celebratory garments, a fiery red loincloth dropping from his waist and a dazzling beaded neck piece that matched. He had several arm bands circling his arms, and you took note of the way the colour palette matched that of Toruk, and how well that seemed to compliment him. He was a handsome man, you thought to yourself. Damn the Sullys and their genetics.

“Y/N, my God you’ve grown. What the hell happened??” He said, enthusiastically. He circled you curiously and eyed you intently. You tried not too blush at the sudden scrutiny and how it mirrored your own just a few moments ago. “You have time to lift weights in between experiments??” 

You let out a small laugh. “Hi, Jake. It’s good to see you, it’s been a while.”

“It’s been too long. You never visit, but we’re hoping that will change soon.” He said, then eyed the kids behind him, and whatever expression he was met with made him quickly bite on his bottom lip and turn around, as if to stop himself from saying any more. 

A small shriek came from behind him, one that you instantly recognise and you smile widely at the little girl, who, since you last saw her, somehow became as tall as you.

“Tuk-tuk”, you say warmly and watch the animated figure jump up and down and encircle you roughly in a bear-hug. Damn, she’s stronger than you already, you sighed. 

“Y/N! I have missed you so muchhh, you have to ask mum and dad to let me come to the lab more often, I never get to see you anymore!!” She cried in your neck, still holding on to you for dear life. 

“I know, dear girl. I missed you, too. I’ll make sure it will never be this long before we see each other again, how does that sound?” You speak to this child you love like your own sister in Na’vi, her English skills the least proficient. She nodded her head vigorously and with that, let go. 

She took your hand in hers and made her way into the tent, and you felt relief flood your being at finally being out of people’s sights. Two majestic women, tall and mighty as the Valkyries in your mum’s Norse Mythology books stood by the fire. They were chatting softly to each other and stopped as they heard you come in. 

Neytiri and Mo’at looked at you intently and you felt yourself cower under the intensity of their gaze. Neytiri slowly approached you with movements so nimble and fluid you were thinking she could have made a career as a ballerina back on Earth. 

After a while, she kneeled on the ground in front of you and placed her long, toned arm on your much tinier shoulder. 

“My Child, you have grown so much.” She smiled kindly at you, and you felt yourself tear up at her choice of words addressing you.My child…

Before you could stop yourself, you felt your arms cross the space between you and circle her neck. The necklace she was wearing scratched your skin painfully, but you didn’t care. “I see you. I’m sorry.” 

Neytiri’s arms tightened around you and you heard a smile in her voice as she said “Oh, my sweet child, you don’t have to be sorry.” 

You spent the evening catching up. You told them about your work in the lab, about how you all scrambled to find any cure or at least partial treatment to the illnesses that seem to have escalated recently among the tribes’ people. They tell you about training, Lo’ak and Neteyam’s training as well as Kiri’s, who has been spending most of her time learning the ways of the Tsahik, having a natural skill for it. 

You find yourself drooling at the delectable food, and are happy when Mo’at calls everyone to the meal around the fire pit in the centre of the tent. You wait for everyone to get a portion first, and smile fondly when Neyriti passes you a leaf with all the goodies on it. You dig in, realising how famished you actually were. 

“So, Y/N”, Jake starts, “how does it feel being 18? I remember turning 18, don’t remember much else about that day though”, he says, smiling proudly to himself. 

“Feels just the same as being 17, I’m afraid. Was really hoping the Universe might give me some sort of sign or epiphany or, anything, really, but, in reality, I feel the same as I did yesterday, and all the days before that. The food’s much better today, though” You finish with a grin, as you dig into another piece of teylu. 

“Right, well, about that.. us and the kids thought, with you spending so much time on your own, you deserve a special birthday and some special gifts. Now you can see them in the corner of the tent there, but I warn you, you’re not allowed to open them until back at the lab.”

You peered over his shoulder curiously, and were again disappointed to have to wait for a surprise you didn’t want in the first place.

“After dinner, we can all go back to the lab, and you can open them in the hub while we watch, we know how much you love being surprised!” 

“Wow, going out after curfew, I actually do feel kind of special.”

“You should, kid.”

Putting all the wrapped objects on the back of a Pa’li, you watched as Jake mounted his own and motioned for you to get on, in front of him. You did as you were told quietly, and the entire family made its way towards the lab. It was a much quicker journey back, and soon enough you found yourself dismounting in front of the cold heavy walls of the hub. Before you could enter though, Lo’ak passed you a cloth of some sort, and wordlessly asked for you to tie it around your eyes. 

“Oh, come oon!”, you said with a deep groan, but obliged regardless. What was the point of resisting now. You knew one thing though, you were very excited to go back to bed tonight, as the emotional toll this day was taking on you was, although not worse than expected, heavy enough for you to feel its weight for days to come. 

As soon as you entered the lab and removed your mask, you put the covering over your eyes, and felt Lo’ak, you knew, pick you up from the ground and carry you bridal style through the halls of the hub. You couldn’t quite tell where you were going, but you heard snickering behind you, and soon enough, Lo’ak put you down carefully and turned you around to face him.

“Now, Y/N, you’re gonna turn around and we’re going to need you to not pass out. Deal?” 

“What? This is strange, guys.” 

You felt him turn you around and felt gentle hands unwrap the cloth covering your eyes. Your eyes took a minute to adjust to the bright artificial light of the lab, and then pause.

One. Two. Three. 

You couldn’t quite comprehend what was clearly displayed in front of you. You recognised your surroundings quickly enough. The Morgue, the other humans called it. A room where the avatars of the dead humans, now serving no purpose, were kept in their respective incubators. Your eyes were immediately drawn, as if on instinct, to your mum’s avatar. You never came here, you couldn’t. Your gaze then shifted to the incubator to the left of your mum’s, the one that hosted Grace Augustin, Kiri’s mum. On the right of your mum, though, there was usually an empty incubator. There, now floated and twitched a body, blue, tall and strong, connected to an artificial umbilical cord. You peered at it intently, something about it making you shift uncomfortably towards it. Suddenly, you felt yourself stiffen in shock, and heard a loud thud as the mask and the connecting oxygen pack dropped to the ground. The new blue body looked like… you.

Neteyam couldn’t stop staring at his baby brother’s back as he carried you in his arms, and he couldn’t stop the twinge of jealousy that bubbled deep beneath the surface.He got to carry you, he got to touch you, he got to laugh with you every damn time he pleased, and now he gets to introduce you to your new life. 

Neteyam, just like the rest of his family, has known about this for months, maybe longer. Norm, his dad’s closest friend, came to the village one day and announced to the family that him and the rest of the scientists worked tirelessly for years to figure out a way to make you an avatar, and with a lot of help from your deceased’s mother’s work and research, as well as some of her DNA, they cracked the code. The newly made Avatar was a miracle of sorts, nobody having thought it would be possible to create on Pandora, so far from all the resources normally used to make one back on Earth. But they did it, and it will be ready in time for your 18th birthday. Norm wanted to make sure, if it succeeded and you accepted it, they will in turn accept you in the village, just like they accepted Jake so many years ago. He wanted you to be able to have a life, not just a body, and be able to finally be free of the shackles you have created for yourself for years on end. 

Neteyam couldn’t tell how he felt about it, partly due to the fact he’s stopped himself from thinking about it since he’s found out. Whilst his siblings and even parents were buzzing in excitement, he was scared. If you were to now be there, in the village, in his life, every day, he will be forced to deal with you, with the two of you, and the feelings he knew were buried in him for a reason. He stopped at the top of the stairs of the room where he knew the Avatar lay. Nobody cared about him at the moment, and, as a result, was relieved to figure out he doesn’t have to join you in the room and see your future body, currently inanimate and floating in liquid he didn’t know or didn’t want to know the origins of. If this was to happen anyway, he’d rather meet you properly, and see if the same flicker of curiosity and unruly smile could ever reflect in the same way it does on your current face, the one that still haunts his dreams.

You couldn’t formulate words… or thoughts, for that matter. You stared at the Avatar for what it feels like hours, and finally, Norm cleared his throat and spoke.

“I know this is a lot to take in. But we wanted your 18th to be special, Ace. We have been working in secret for years to get this done, because you deserve it. You deserve the world, and you can’t have it in this lab. This world also deserves you. So now you can go and show it what you’ve got.” 

“We’re so happy for you to join us, my child.” You heard Neyriri join in. 

“Do you want to see the gifts we made for you?” Tuk jumped in, enthusiastically.

With a last look at your Avatar, you turned around and faced the people you knew would be looking at you expectantly. You didn’t know what the feelings you were feeling were, but they were all fighting to take over, and you felt yourself becoming dizzy. Steading yourself, you recognised that words will have to appear on your tongue sooner or later, and you managed to get out a whisper “Sure, Tuk-tuk, let’s go!”

Everyone around you exchanged weird looks; they really thought you would be a lot happier about this than you were. You tried your best to put on a happy smile and react in the way you knew people would be wanting you to; after all, this was indeed an incredibly nice, thoughtful and attentive gift, not to mention damn fucking impressive, and whatever trauma the thought of having to pilot this Avatar brought in you, it was something you were going to have to deal with by yourself, later. 

“Guys, I know I have not reacted in a way appropriate for the sheer insane size and meaning of this gift, but I promise that despite my very slow processing times, I am incredibly grateful and happy for this. I cannot believe something like this is even possible, and I can believe even less that it was done for me! But while I struggle to comprehend the magnitude of what’s going to happen to me, let’s open some presents!!” 

You made your way slowly towards the recreation hub where all the packages were placed on one of the long tables. You chuckled awkwardly and took one of them in your hands. The wrapping, you realised, was the same material like the one used to make the Na’vi loincloths. 

The one you held in your hands currently was blue. You unwrapped it, careful as to not damage it at all, and was shocked to see a dazzling necklace, one of the most beautiful ones you have even seen. It was a leather chocker, which adorned green and red stones, and it reminded you a lot of the bracelet you were currently wearing. You turned around and looked at Kiri, whose masterful hands you knew crafted it. She was sitting on one of the benches and you couldn’t help become emotional looking at your friend, your amazing friend, who you have known all of your life, and who always collected trinkets from the woods, trinkets that now will decorate your new body. 

The next package was heavier, and upon opening it, you were shocked to discover a rider’s mask, like the one the Na’vi wear when flying an Ikran; it was brown and braided and had bones adorning it. The lenses were translucent and shone in iridescent hues as you looked at it from all angles. You were in awe at the inadvertent admission that someone thought you capable of one day passing the Iknimaya, and you felt quite confident in saying Lo’ak was the master behind this gift. 

“I thought, you will definitely need it one day, and I wanted to get a jump start.” He says, as if reading your mind. “You may not know it now, but I think you were born for this, Angel.” 

You had no words to say to that, but were touched at how Lo’ak always seemed to believe in you more than you believed in yourself. You took a silent oath to try to live up to the version of you Lo’ak kept with him in his heart. 

The second to last package was also quite small and seemed to rattle as you picked it up. As you unwrapped it, you didn’t quite make sense of the bundle of feathers and chains, but eventually Neytiri kindly stepped in and untangled it, and you realised it was a top, a beautiful, sheer top, and you found it hard to believe this will actually cover anything. You were excited to put it on though, and felt a tingle of anticipation for tomorrow that was not there before… these were yours, for your body, for your future, a future where riding your own Ikran might be more than just a dream of an out-of-reach fantasy.

“Thank you so much.” You wanted to say more, you wanted to tell them the turmoil in your heart and how scared you truly were, and how you wish they would understand and reach over and heal the broken mess that was your mind so you could finally just go, get out of this place and make your life something actually worth living, but you couldn’t make any other words come out. So you just said thank you.

As the family and the scientists continued chatting, you managed to slip by unnoticed out of the recreation hub and made your way down the hall, looking for the missing Sully you knew would be somewhere in here, by himself. You were so mad at him, so much resentment had built up in you from the year you’ve spent apart, from the less than ideal reunion, and from his continuous attempts to avoid you at all costs. It was your birthday, for god’s sake. He could at least pretend to be happy to be here, even if only for the sake of the memories you shared. 

You found him in your room, looking over the books in your makeshift library, mindlessly playing with something in his large hands. His ears twitched as you approached, an obvious sign he heard you, but made no effort to acknowledge your presence. You half smiled at the view, and tried not to remember all the other times he has been in your room, just like he was now. You sat on your bed and waited patiently for him to speak, like you once used to do. It might take some time, but he always spoke.

“I don’t think you should do it.” He says, without looking at you. 

“You think I shouldn’t do what?”

“This, the Avatar thing. I think it’s a bad idea.”

You sat there, in silence for a while while his words twirled in your mind like his green bracelet was twirling in his hands. You didn’t realise your mouth was wide open until you felt it dry up and you swallowed involuntarily in response.  

“Excuse me?”

He turned around to face you and you saw a hard look mark his features, the old Neteyam, your old Neteyam merely a long-forgotten dream. 

“You’re not going to make it, Y/N. You haven’t spent more than a week outside in the past 3 years. You may think you got this, cause you work out in a dark stuffy room with some weights and jump a rope, but it’s not going to mean jack shit when you’re out there, in a wilderness so harsh it claims brave Na’vi men and women’s lives every day. You may think you know everything because you sit here hunched over books written by humans who couldn’t see even if it hit them in the face with a stick, but you know nothing about the real world. Nothing about what’s waiting for you starting tomorrow, if you do this. Tell Norm no.” 

The rage you felt blossomed like deadly nightshade and you knew whatever it was you once felt for Neteyam was dead and buried six-feet-under in that moment. You let out a bitter chuckle and rose up from the bed, placing your body in front of him.

“You know, when I saw you standing here, in my room, after all this time, I felt some sort of sick hope. I hoped you had finally come to your senses and decided you would apologise for the way you’ve treated me. For the way you left. I’m not stupid, believe it or not. I never expected whatever we had to last. After all,  it was only a matter of time before the mighty future Olo’eyktan realised his attentions are better focused on more worthwhile things, like training, or, I don’t know, finding the best future Tsahik. I always expected you to outgrow me. I just had an ounce of hope you would have enough decency to do it while looking me in the eye. I felt like I earned that, after all the blood, sweat and tears I gave you.” 

“You know, I fucking hate surprises. I just never thought you’d be one of the reasons why.”

The silence felt heavy and all you could hear was your panting breath, as you were trying to reign in your tempestuous emotions and the tears that were threatening to spill from your eyes. 

“Get the fuck out of my room, Neteyam.” 

You found yourself forcefully taking the bracelet from his much larger hand and removing yourself from his path, motioning towards the open door. He left without saying a word and you shut the door behind you with a loud thud.

So far 18 was not your favourite age. 

[squidwen]

💡Brace Yourself, Glassfish💡

•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•

Summary: You can’t stand Floyd Leech. Who does he think he is, squeezing you within an inch of your life all the time? You question whether you’ll be able to last much longer and devise a plan to deter the eel for good. 

However, perhaps you go a bit too far? After all, ending up in a back brace is never a good thing, and Floyd isn’t unscathed by your antics either. 

•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•

Floyd Leech was a bear trap in a blazer: sharp teeth, powerful arms, and a proficiency for clamping them around anyone he fancied. When he swaggered down the NRC corridors everyone made way for him. It was the only time Riddle was grateful for his shortness, using it to hide amongst the crowds.

However, you were Floyd’s favourite thing to hold. A human from another world? How fascinating. How far could your bones go without breaking? How hard would you fight to get away from him? Were humans built differently in your world to Twisted Wonderland? There was only one way to find out, and Floyd used every opportunity to answer his questions.

•~•~•~•~•

The lamps dimmed across the Monstro Lounge, blanketing the polished surfaces in milky blue light. The end of your shift was minutes away. Your hands ached from cleaning tables, your socks pooled about your ankles, and condiments stained your waiting uniform. You couldn’t wait to slide into your broken bed back in Ramshackle. Lumpy mattresses and sharp springs are surprisingly comfortable when you’re exhausted.

“Ne, Shrimpy~”

You winced. No, not him. Not now.

Floyd’s voice sounded like a cheese grater was being rubbed against his larynx. Not wanting to provoke him in any way, you spun on your heels – a smile prepared on your face. But Floyd was closer than you thought. Your nose stopped centimetres from his chest. He towered over you, a dish rag slung over his shoulder and a serving tray tucked under his arm.

How could you have forgotten?

Floyd had his shift after you on Tuesdays. Usually you would have bundled your things into your bag and slipped away before the eel could make it onto the restaurant floor. But Monstro Lounge had been so busy this evening that you’d not had time.

“You look tired, Shrimpy.”

You shrugged, cracking your neck. Bad move.

Floyd’s fingers twitched at his side, like they itched to get a hold of you. “Ne~ you’re like an instrument. Oh! Does your neck make one note, and perhaps your back another? Could I play ‘Under the Sea’ just by squeezing you a certain way?~”

You jumped back. “No. Floyd, please. You grew up underwater. Your bone density is greater than mine. You can’t bear hug humans and expect them to hold out as well as Jade, or Azul.”

“I’m human now, too.” His voice became dark. “Compared to my eel form, I barely have any strength.”

You took another step back and collided into something. An identical pair of gold and grey eyes stared down at you, cruel and calculating.

“Floyd, you shouldn’t tease our colleagues,” mused Jade. “Azul needs all the help he can get on busy nights such as this. We can’t have people resigning because the conditions aren’t workable.”

Floyd slouched and rolled his eyes. “But look at them, Jade. Shrimpy looks so tense and tight.”

Jade glanced at you briefly. There was no pity in his face. In fact, there was nothing at all. Just bland contemplation, as if dealing with his brother’s whims was written into his genetic makeup. “You can play chiropractor tomorrow.” Your eyes widened, pushing a tiny grin onto Jade’s face. “For now, Y/N is free to go. Azul doesn’t pay people for working over their contracted hours. This isn’t a hostage situation.”

Floyd grit his teeth.

“Is it?”

You took the opportunity to slink away. Inside the kitchen you bumped into a student cooking pasta. He cursed as uncooked shells fell to the floor, snapping under your shoes like bones. After apologising you threw your dirty rag into the laundry bin and made for Ramshackle.

•~•~•~•~•

Your mind buzzed.

You had to do something. Anything. You knew Floyd would never respect your boundaries not to be squeezed. What was it about Jade that always made his brother listen? Both brothers were sadists, that was for certain. But Jade got inside people’s heads - even his own brother’s. Perhaps you ought to take a leaf out of his notebook, and traumatise Floyd into leaving you alone?

You had your plan before you got home. First, you needed to visit Ortho Shroud.

•~•~•~•~•~•

Tomorrow came too quickly. After washing your serving uniform you returned to Octavinelle to put it to your locker - a perfect excuse to be near the kitchen.

The packets of uncooked pasta were where you remembered them. Checking that the coast was clear, you slid a handful into your pocket and slipped through the door into the Monstro Lounge in search of your target.

Despite being closed for service, Octavinelle students still used the lounge as a communal area. Third years swilled alcohol in tumblers, while younger students contented themselves with mocktails and table snacks. The hubbub was cordial and gentle with profanity occasionally coming form the snooker table.

Floyd was draped across the bar as Jade mixed drinks. You paused to study him: he couldn’t have looked more bored. Periods between lessons – excluding club time – left the man with very little to occupy himself. Perfect, you thought. He’d likely jump at the chance to make good on his brother’s declaration yesterday.

You discreetly slid two of the pasta shells inside your mouth, positioning them over the molars.

“Hey gents,” you cooed. Jade’s eyes widened with surprise as you sat on the bar stool. No doubt he was stunned that you’d place yourself near Floyd so willingly.

“Ahh, Prefect. Can I get you anything?”

“Just a cup of ice, please. I need to put something on my neck.”

Floyd snapped up, like a rake handle when the bottom is stepped on. “Still having trouble with it, Shrimpy?”

You pretended to seethe as you rubbed it. Floyd didn’t need any further provoking. He slid off the stool and wrapped his long arms around you. You feigned panic, shifting to try and get away from him. As effortlessly as picking up a chair, Floyd swung you into the air and pressed you against himself. You felt his muscles tense around you, practically solidifying into stone.

He held you tighter, and tighter, until-

CRUNCH!

You bit down on the pasta.

Jade dropped the glass he was polishing. The whole room stilled. No one dared breathe as they watched you go limp in Floyd’s arms, thinking the worst…thinking Floyd had finally snapped someone’s spine.

Floyd was deathly still. But then his arms started to tremble. Shake.

“Well don’t just stand there!” cried one of the students. “Get them to the infirmary!”

If you hadn’t been looking straight at him, you never would have guessed the person holding you was Floyd. His arms drew you so tenderly to his chest, cradling you as if you were made of glass. He tried to keep you as straight as possible in fear of making your condition worse. You felt wicked but if you didn’t follow this through things would never improve.

Within moments Floyd was heading for the portal mirror. Jade took off his apron and followed him.

•~•~•~•~•~•

Ortho was waiting in the infirmary as you’d instructed. The school nurse was often absent, so it wasn’t uncommon for the robot boy to take up her shifts. Idia had installed endless medical data into his hard drive. Acting ones, too.

“Y/N!” Ortho gasped when Floyd brought you in. He was white as a ghost, his heart thrumming in his chest as if it might burst out of him.

“Set them down,” Ortho instructed. “Gently.”

Floyd slipped you onto a hospital bed, still giddy with worry. Sensing his fragility, Jade dropped a hand onto Floyd’s shoulder. The weight helped to steady him, but by no means distracted from the situation. Stale sunlight filtered through the dusty windows, catching on Floyd’s dewy eyes.

Ortho took your hands and laid them palms-up at your sides. “I’m going to x-ray you now, Y/N. You don’t have to respond. Just stay very still.”

You obeyed. The robot took to the air and hovered above your bed, his eyes turning blue as he scanned you from head to toe. It was a challenge not to laugh at his grave little face. 

“It’s not good news,” he sighed, blinking off the scanner. “Y/N has two ruptured discs.”

Floyd let out a mournful wail and dropped to his knees. His shaking fingers found yours and curled around them, a silent beg for forgiveness. “Can you fix them?”  

You could see the guilt on Ortho’s face from this charade, but a discreet wink encouraged him to keep up the act. “Hard to say. Big brother is clever, but he doesn’t know everything. And so, nor do I. I’ll have to start working while the injury is fresh. So if you two wouldn’t mind leaving-“

Floyd bounced back up and dragged Jade by the collar out of the infirmary.

•~•~•~•~•~•

You didn’t move until their footsteps – and Jade’s irritated scolds – fell quiet.

Sighing with relief, you spat the pasta shells into a glass by your bed and high-fived Ortho. The little robot seemed very pleased with himself. “I suggest we put you in a back brace to make it seem extra convincing.”

“If you want to be an actor I can put a good word in to Vil for you. That performance was seamless.”

“Oh stop!” The tips of Ortho’s hair turned a bashful pink. “That was luck. I still don’t understand the nuance of faking emotions. I’m still trying to understand them in general. But, I have to say, Floyd did seem very distressed. Which is…bad?”

That made you chuckle. “Not at all. You still have much to learn.”

•~•~•~•~•~•

If you thought Floyd wouldn’t leave you alone before, he certainly didn’t now. While you were around him he watched you like a hawk, offering to carry you up flights of stairs and hold your books. He could also barely get through a sentence without sliding in the word ‘sorry’.

You’d returned to working at the Monstro Lounge a few days later and Azul had rewarded your tenacity with a dinner on the house, complete with dessert. Did your lies make you feel bad? Not at all. You’d become quite the celebrity around NRC. Many students had come up to thank you for ‘taking one for the team’, because apparently Floyd hadn’t squeezed anyone since the incident.

“Maybe Glassfish would be a better name for you, Shrimpy,” he teased as he brought your free meal over to you. You’d gotten to sit in a booth right by the fist tank, the most comfortable and aesthetic in the house.

But…

Perhaps the universe wanted to punish you for traumatising the poor eel?

Suddenly, Floyd skidded on a serviette. He clumsily set the plate down before falling onto you, throwing his hand out to stop himself. You’d forgotten to take the spare pasta shells out of your pocket.

When Floyd’s palm struck it there came that familiar crunch.

“Did I do it again? Are you alright?" Floyd staggered back, mortified. "Was it your hip? Your leg? Do you need Ortho? Shall I get Azul? Or even Malleus? I don’t care if he’s big and scary, he’s good at healing magic…”

He trailed off when he saw your face. Why weren’t you writhing in agony? You just looked shocked. Like a deer caught in headlights. Floyd raised his eyebrow as he stalked forward, bracing his hands on the back of the booth and the table to block your escape. 

You jerked backwards at his closeness, a move far too energetic for someone with a damaged back.

Floyd didn’t ask permission before diving into your pocket. At first he seemed bemused to find uncooked pasta, but then he stared ruefully into your eyes as he slowly clenched his fist.

•~•~•~•~•~•

You didn’t remember hearing the pasta break. Within seconds you’d vaulted over the back of the booth and were running towards the Monstro Lounge door. Your cover was not only blown, it was in ashes.

Floyd stared after you in bewilderment. How cunning and clever you had been. How exciting...

“When I get my hands on you,” he cried, jumping out of the booth, “I’m dragging you back here and squeezing you in my eel form!” A crazed smile was on his face. “I bet I can play ‘Under the Sea’ with your back, but there’s only one way to find out.”

•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•

Author Note: My second favourite Octavinelle now takes the stage. I hoped you liked this :)

Something silly…violent and deceptive…but still utterly ridiculous.

Do let me know what you think by commenting/reblogging with comments. Reading your messages always makes my day!!

Squidwen x

[blouisparadise]

Upon request, today we have a rec list of bottom Louis fics that feature breastfeeding or lactation. If you enjoy our rec lists, please be sure to like and reblog this post to help spread the word. Happy reading!

1) Come Here (And Rescue Me) | General Audiences | 2,139 words

“It’s because of people like you that the world is going to the dogs.” The woman barked with scorn. Her eyes were as dark as her soul and Louis held Apollo closer when he started to whimper, being very in tune with his surroundings. “Breastfeeding in a park? Where do you think you are? We’re not in one of these poorly developed countries where you can act in such a discourteous way and…” “I’m sorry, but could you get lost?”

2) Effervescent Opal, Say My Name | Mature | 3,463 words

Louis has an oversupply of milk after his first pregnancy and Harry wants nothing more than to suck him dry.

3) Stuck On Me, Stuck On You | Not Rated | 8,738 words

It’s not a big deal that Harry and Louis grew up together, and not a big deal that Harry is in love with Louis since he can remember. But it’s a big deal that Louis is pregnant and has no idea who the father is.

4) Could Start A Cult | Explicit | 8,750 words

He lowers down the top that Louis is wearing, successfully unclasping his nursing bra as well, letting Louis’ tits bounce at the sudden movement. Harry massages both breasts to stimulate the milk flow, and he can feel his cock hardening inside his pants.

5) I Don't Want To Close My Eyes (I Don't Want To Miss A Thing) | Explicit | 13,605 words

Note: This fic is locked and can only be read by AO3 users.

Louis is married to Liam and pregnant with his child. Liam isn't ready to be a father, but Dr. Harry Styles is more than willing.

6) Three's A Crowd, Four's A Party | Mature | 16,569 words

"Morgan, sweetie, mommy and daddy have something we want to talk to you about." The little girl looks at them confused, having no idea what's about to happen. "First I want to tell you that we love you very much and nothing will ever change that, okay?" "I love you too!" Louis smiles. "What we wanted to talk to you about is that there's going to be some changes around here soon." "Why?" "Because mommy's having a baby."

7) Mob Boss Omega | Mature | 16,786 words

Mafia "any organized group using extortion and other criminal methods" In all definitions, I am in line for the throne. As the son of a mob boss I'm set to inherit everything my father has built up. He's always been set on expanding though and who better to use than his overprotected omega son. That's me in case you're wondering. The crown omega prince of the mob.

8) Baby, Loving You’s The Real Thing | Explicit | 21,011 words

Harry never thought he’d be taking care of a child at the age of twenty-one—well, trying to anyway.

9) Fell For You | Explicit | 26,136 words

A crime investigation fic in which Detective Louis Tomlinson and Detective Harry Styles are tasked to solve a case together where Louis hates Harry Styles or does he?

10) For Your Eyes Only | Not Rated | 26,501 words

Note: This fic is locked and can only be read by AO3 users.

Louis likes to feel beautiful and taken care of. Harry is just the person to help. They figure it out together.

11) Just Forget The World | Explicit | 42,861 words

Note: This fic is locked and can only be read by AO3 users.

Louis is the last person on earth who can get pregnant after the birthrates decreased then completely stopped twenty years before and in search for someone with good genetics and a family tree Harry is chosen to mate with him.

12) I'm Me When I'm With You | Mature | 86,123 words

AU in which Louis finally is able to attend the University he’s been dreaming off: Queens University. But fate works in mysterious ways and it certainly doesn’t care about your dreams nor your plans. No, fate had a whole other future planned for him the moment he met the popular, gorgeous and mighty Alpha named, Harry Styles who accidentally impregnates him after a one nightstand… Accidents happen, but not all accidents are bad.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

[red-moon-at-night]

An Analysis of Haruka’s MVs: Distance and Disability

Hello! I’ve recently fallen down the rabbit hole that is Milgram and I have been itching to make some completely normal and sane analysis posts. My silly alternate title for this was gonna be “Things About Haruka’s MVs That Just Make Sense: A Hyperfixation-fuelled Analysis”, because honestly my autistic brain has been having a field day over here.

I am in awe with just about every single music video in this project; the animation is incredible and each one packs so much carefully laid out information. But I have been rotating Haruka’s in my head constantly since I first watched them, and I have a lot of Thoughts. Not about whether he’s guilty or innocent/forgiven or unforgiven. Not about whether or not I can justify his murders. Just some straight up imagery and symbolism analysis, through the lens of disability.

Haruka’s disability has not been specified, but I am confident we can at least say he is neurodivergent. I feel like the cultural differences in names for several things e.g. ‘learning disability’ vs ‘learning difficulty’ will just invite unnecessary drama, and is a little pedantic. What does matter here is that Haruka's experience as a disabled person is heavily intertwined within his story and his motives. 

So, without further ado... let’s get into this!

Trigger warnings/TW: I will be discussing ableism, eugenics and harm towards disabled people. Everything else will be related to the music videos ‘Weakness’ and ‘All Knowing and All Agony’, so any triggering content within them may also be mentioned. Read at your own discretion and stay safe!

Disability: some brief (important) historical context

It is only within the last few decades that those who are disabled have been ‘seen’ for the first time. A modern society is (ideally) expected to be built to include and accommodate for disability, and to acknowledge disabled people’s existence. But for many countries (even the ones making steps outlined above) this is still not the case. For a very, very long time, globally, that has not been the case.

For most disabled people, society makes it very clear that they are a burden to it and are better off not existing. 

I’m going to make this section as succinct as possible because...it’s heavy stuff. But it’s important, and I want you all to get the gist of what I’m saying. The weight of it.

Let’s highlight a piece of history regarding IQ and eugenics, surrounding the publication and subsequent worldwide reception of ‘The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-mindedness’ by Henry Herbert Goddard in 1913:

“In 1927, it was used as evidence in the case of Buck v. Bell, which culminated in a Supreme Court ruling that the involuntary sterilization of ‘mentally defective’ persons was not unconstitutional in the United States. By 1938, thirty-three US states had passed laws allowing for the forced sterilization of women with learning disabilities and twenty-nine had made sterilization  compulsory for people who were thought to have genetic conditions. Many European countries followed suit: Denmark in 1929, then Norway in 1934, and after that Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Hungary and Turkey.”

— Limburg, J. (2021) Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism, p. 126

This history of a ‘sterilization law’ includes Japan, who between 1948 and 1996 enacted the Eugenics Protection Law which “authorised the sterilization of people with intellectual disabilities, mental illnesses or hereditary disorders.” According to the government, about 25,000 were sterilized.

SO. It’s important to bring this up. To establish how much disabled people are not wanted, just from their governments. Let alone society. To this day, disabled people are hidden away from the public by families that are ashamed of their existence.

Japanese culture values collectivism, and maintaining the harmony of a group...to the extent of excluding those that don’t fit into the mould. That are different.

The question is: where do they go? The ones that are publicly rejected?

Haruka and The Curious Case of Distant Waters

Okay that’s enough of the heavy real-world stuff! Time to delve into some...*checks notes*...heavy fictional stuff. Fun!

Haruka’s MVs prominently display themes of distance and separation through the motif of water, specifically being submerged underwater. 

The name Haruka reinforces this concept as the specific kanji used (遥) translates to ‘distant’, ‘remote’ or ‘far away’. As there are many, many kanji choices for the name (including but not limited to: ocean/sea, eternity/permeance, clear/distinct/obvious, and spring/growth/cherry blossom) it feels like a particularly cruel and intentional choice to go with that one.

Through the exploration of this motif, we can see the extent in which Otherness/the state of being ‘Other’ drives Haruka to great lengths to close the distance and escape it.

What I noticed throughout both MVs (particularly AK&AA but note the beginning scene of Weakness), is that whenever Haruka looks at himself in a reflective surface (e.g. the vanity mirror, the fish tank), water either begins to rise and overwhelms him, or is already there and he appears submerged:

I think this is the “All-Knowing” part of AK&AA. He knows he’s different, and he knows there’s a huge ocean between him and his peers, his family, everyone. A disconnect when trying to listen and understand, but also when trying to be understood by others and listened to himself.

You know when you submerge your head in water, and your hearing gets all muffled and incomprehensible? And have you ever tried speaking underwater? You can’t, because if you open your mouth you’ll drown. It’ll just come out as bubbles rising to the surface.

I also think the bubbles symbolise rising tension, between what he wants and what he currently has. Bubbles are everywhere in these MVs, even in places where they shouldn’t logically be? Such as this scene, following the line “don’t wipe me out, don’t wipe me out”:

Immediately pans up to Haruka gasping for breath, droplets of water rising from...somewhere. For about a split second, and they’re gone. 

This boy is really going through it. I’m getting an ‘emerging from the ocean before I drown’ vibe from this one folks. When the line that follows this scene is “I can’t stop, I can’t stop”, what I’m REALLY hearing is “I can’t stop (killing) or I’ll drown”. This is his lifeboat, pulling him out from the depths of being neglected and hidden away, into the spotlight.

Some interesting images from Weakness in relation to that (of spotlights):

Anyways, onto the next point:

Blue to Orange: Water to...Nectar?

So, the orange liquid. It’s clearly representing blood, but I don’t think this is just a “danganronpa pink blood” situation of censoring/getting this video onto youtube without restrictions.

I think it’s most likely honey, specifically nectar.

The etymology of the word nectar shows its compounds translate to “death” and “overcoming”. Nectar is also called the drink of the gods, so it would make sense for it to be a ‘death-defeating’, immortalizing liquid.

For Haruka’s victims to contain nectar is very interesting. It reinforces that necessity to kill, to take the life of another, to sustain himself. To overcome the ‘living death’ he is experiencing by being hidden away from society. 

This is his means of escape from drowning.

However, as we all know, things don’t turn out great for him. By the end of AK&AA Haruka is rejected once again by his mother, after which the door is shut (the light with it is gone too) and we’re met with this imagery:

The nectar floods the room, engulfing him much like the water from earlier. 

There are many things we could take from this. One being that the nectar-gathering/killing-spree has clouded his vision; it’s so sweet, so sickly sweet and he’s addicted to the taste of attention, even if it’s very bad attention. 

Who else has honey imagery in their MV again?

Oh, right. 

Anyway, the nectar/honey situation could also be representing submerging into an even further level of distance. All that murder is gonna push people away, despite his motive being to close the gap between him and normal people. The 'ocean’ has lost clarity and become a maddening, delusional substance. After all, there is a type of honey literally called ‘mad honey’ known for its medicinal and hallucinogenic properties.

That’s enough about honey, though. Let’s move onto less unfortunate... oh, sorry, what was that? *checks notes*...Ah, yes. I meant to say, let’s move onto even more unfortunate symbolism:

The Necklace

So, this necklace. Haruka steals it from his mother’s belongings, and is his only material, physical connection to her. It is taken on the declaration of “making (her) love me again” and getting her attention once more, now he is no longer a child but a teenager closer to adulthood (at least, that’s what I consider the ‘shirt with a vest sweater and tie’ to represent. child him = the blue polo, teenager him = this one, adult him = an amalgamation of his teenager clothes).

I wasn’t sure if this was an opal or pearl/mother of pearl, but I’m leaning towards opal from the other depiction of it in Weakness:

Opals are fun because they can symbolise both good luck and bad luck, usually to do with whether it’s your birthstone. There’s something to be said of Haruka’s belief in his ‘misfortune’ and the superstition surrounding these gemstones.

But they are even more interesting for the powers they supposedly have; in medieval times the opal was considered the ‘patron of thieves’ for their ability to grant the wearer invisibility.

There is a deliciously sad irony to Haruka’s theft with that titbit of information.

Now, if this isn’t an opal, and it’s a pearl/mother of pearl there’s still some fun interpretation to be had! A little less sad, even. Pearls invoke strong imagery of the sea, of purity, and of a connection to the maternal. If this is the last thing he has relating to his mother, I can see this necklace representing a lifeline when he’s deep in the ocean. A reminder of why he’s doing all of this killing, and who it’s for.

His mother’s attention (or the idea of having a mother at all, any mother) is his driving force in life.

Speaking of that...

So We Really Need To Talk About That Fish Tank: AKA, Why Haruka’s Mom Wins ‘The Worst Parent of The Year’ Award

This fucking fish tank.

Okay, I’m gonna start by saying: I don’t think this is reading too far into things. When it takes an animation team months, sometimes years to create a 3-5 minute music video, and one as detailed as this...you don’t just wing it. There are storyboards, there are key frames and there are choices made down to the smallest of details.

From the sheer volume of animal/insect/fish décor that resides in the Sakurai household, you bet I’m gonna pay attention to what type of fish are in that fish tank.

For one thing, they live in saltwater. This is a marine tank, aka the harder choice of aquarium to have. I mean, way, WAY harder. For the experienced only.

These fish right here? One is a clownfish, and the other is a yellow boxfish.

Boxfish are a nightmare to keep alive. This article goes into more detail than I will, but all you need to know is: if there was ever a fish out of all the fish you could possibly want in your tank, this is the one to avoid like the plague.

They release deadly toxins when stressed, as a survival instinct. Boom. All your fish are dead. They need to eat a shit ton of food, but are notoriously clumsy swimmers and slow eaters. Boom. Starving, stressed out boxfish. Boxfish either dies from starvation or dies from stress and toxins.

For Haruka’s mom to have not just one of these fuckers, but a tank consisting ONLY OF MULTIPLE BOXFISH AND CLOWNFISH...

This is a high-maintenance tank. And it shows how much time and effort, how much care she puts into the things she loves.

How neglectful she is as a parent of a disabled child in contrast.

There’s something about the last scene between Haruka and his mother that reinforces this for me:

Haruka’s relationship with animals and himself: AKA, “why don’t I just become the damn fish tank?”

Let me backpedal a little bit. This subheading will make sense in a minute.

So, like I said earlier we have a lot of décor in this house relating to insects and fish. We also have a lot of pets. Both living and dead, taxidermized creatures in one household, proudly on display.

I think this may have created some confusion for Haruka regarding the value of animals being alive or dead, as in his perspective his mother values both equally. The fish in a tank may be full of alive creatures, but they’re still on display as if it’s artwork. Isn’t breaking the glass of a framed picture of a fish equal to breaking the glass of a tank with a ‘picture of living fish’?

(This isn’t to say Haruka is clueless to the impact of his actions, nor to justify any harm to animals. I just find the train of thought to be intriguing.)

So when considering these ‘objects’ are proud trophies of his work:

This is a carefully arranged display, which by the way, doesn’t contain a single fish. In fact the only piece of that moment visible here is the...large piece of driftwood? Okay. Keep that in mind.

We proceed into Haruka’s mother opening the door and seeing her son, for the first time in any of the MVs. Note the way they composed this shot:

I’m obsessed with this scene. The blue eye framing Haruka, with a literal fishbowl effect on him...

He is the goddamn fish in the aquarium now. His mother’s full attention is on him and him alone, with only the dead animals, the books, the lamp and the driftwood as window dressing to this wonderful display.

Doesn’t it just scream “Look at me! Look at what I did, mom!” to you?

That blue spotlight is on him once more. He is not just drifting deeper into an endless ocean, but contained in a vessel to be stared at.

One Last Observation

I didn’t know where to fit this in but I think the end feels appropriate.

His clothing here:

Is a frankenstein-esque mash up of clothes from his younger years. He wears this throughout AK&AA, and as I mentioned before it signifies him as an adult. However, I should clarify what I mean here as Haruka says “he thinks he’s 17″ and “doesn’t care about his age”. So... not an adult, but on the cusp of adulthood.

But I think he actually does care about his age, and quite a lot too.

This outfit feels symbolic of refusing to let go of the past, and of himself as a child. He’s literally grown out of his clothing, but he still clings onto it. He’s attached to the past because it not only contains his happiest moments, but the change from being loved to becoming neglected.

As a disabled person, you’re often treated with a lot more forgiveness when you’re younger. That is to say, some people don’t realise that children with disabilities grow up into adults with disabilities. There is a point where even support from medical and social services drops off like a cliff edge once you turn 18.

The ill-fitting clothing in this context becomes more than a reflection on Haruka’s feelings, and extends to reflecting society’s feelings on disabled adults ‘refusing to grow up’.

I don’t blame Haruka for holding onto his childhood like this. He’ll be even less publicly visible and seen once he is no longer a pitiful child, but a ‘weird’ adult in ill-fitting, children’s clothes.

[hellsite-proteins]

In addition, recent studies have revealed that some organisms naturally encode for two additional amino acids: selenocysteine and pyrrolysine (Zhang et al. 2005). UGA can code for selenocysteine and UAG for pyrrolysine if the associated signal sequences are present in the mRNA. The amino acid repertoire can even be expanded under different growth conditions from 20 to 21 amino acids (to include pyrrolysine) as shown in the archaea Acetohalobium arabaticum (Prat et al. 2012). While there is thus some variation and more flexibility in the code than thought just a few years ago, the fact remains that all organisms have three nucleotides in their codons and utilize tRNA and ribosomes to read the code in the same direction for translating into a specific sequence of amino acids. One interpretation of the observed variations is that the genetic code is still evolving, or at least still capable of evolving. This is also supported by experimental efforts to incorporate non-canonical amino acids into the genetic code, with varying degrees of success (Xie and Schultz 2005; Wang et al. 2009; Hoesl et al. 2015; Lin et al. 2017).

i think selenocysteine and pyrrolysine are so neat, and i'm sad that i can't include them in my structures on this blog :( if anyone knows of a free tool that will let me build pdb files including either or both of those please let me know! here are the structures if anyone was curious:

overall, i think any sort of variation in codons is incredibly cool, and such an awesome demonstration of how complicated and fantastic biology is! looking at examples of evolution on a biochemical level is a much more interesting way of thinking about how life is built and all connected than any 'intelligent design' claims i've ever seen.

i also think looking at non-canonical amino acids is so cool, and comparing what sort of structures end up in proteins versus those that don't – especially with reference to metabolic pathways – is both mind blowing and a great way of thinking about how everything in a cell comes together. i would love to learn more about what happens when these get incorporated, and previously i had only heard about this in the context of organic chemistry while learning about solid phase peptide synthesis. i will absolutely be bookmarking those articles you referenced to look at when i have time

okay now that i've managed to make myself sound like even more of a nerd, here is the part that y'all care about

letter sequence in this ask matching protein-coding amino acids:

whatdoyoudowheneverlifegetsyoudownkeepsyouwearingafrownandthegravytrainhasleftyouehind

protein guy analysis:

we actually got something that looks almost real! there are so many alpha helices, if i look from far enough away i can pretend this won't utterly decimate a cell. of course, none of this is predicted with any real confidence, and looking at the surface reveals how spread out all of those unstructured loops really are. some proteins may have pockets or channels with water inside, but this one is probably closer to water with some protein in the way (even if we can't actually see the waters here), and so i imagine this is actually supremely unhappy. well, that brief moment of enthusiasm was fun while it lasted!

predicted protein structure:

cartoon representation

surface representation

[darkphoenix5037]

Home

Hey guys, I am a bit new to the fandom and this is my first fanfiction about any BTS members. Please be kind.

I hope you all like it.

TW-Mafia, Yandere, Non-consensual touching, breaking in, Kidnapping, stalking, threats.

..........................................................................................................................

The weather was exceptionally warm as the sun slowly went down. It was sunny, and you had to squint your eyes as you watched the children at the swings in the playground. It was already 4:30 and most parents were late.

This was not a perk at the rich day care/school you worked at. Even though most parents had hours for personal grooming, poker at the country clubs or golf games, they were late to pick up their kids.

Always late with the same lines.

“It was a rather interesting game at the club!”

“The traffic was atrocious!” (Lies, It was far from rush hour)

Blah, Blah, Blah.

It was the same, every day.

As you was lost in your thoughts, you felt a hand on her shoulder. you looked up to her fellow teacher, Nicole.

“Have you seen that gentleman here before?” She asked pointing to a man on the other side of the playground’s fence. The man stood a few meters away, dressed in all black with a blond mullet. His long black coat accentuated his height making him seem like giant, you could tell he was well-built even at a distance.

“No. Should I ask?”

“Yeah”

You walked up to the man slowly, who looked at you as you neared, he took off his sunglasses as you neared. He was attractive, very attractive, dragon eyes, plump lips, smooth skin and jaw that could cut diamonds. He definitely won the genetic lottery, you thought.

“Hi, I am a teacher here. I was wondering if you were looking for someone, I haven’t seen you here before?”

The man smiled at her genially and said,” No, no I was just waiting for a colleague, his son studies here. I think his name was Mingyu? He was supposed to pick him up and drop him at home before we headed for a drink. It seems he is late.”

Gods, his voice could make men and woman weak in the knees.

“Oh, yeah Mr. Lee comes a bit late, I think he is stuck at work or that’s what he says. Anyways, I must get back to the kids. Sorry for bothering you.”

“No problem” His eyes had a strange glint in them.

You turned and headed toward Nicole quickly.

“He is waiting for Mr. Lee, Mingyu’s father, they were supposed to meet here.” you reassured Nicole.

“He is quite handsome, isn’t he? He was staring at you the whole time you were walking towards me.” She mused.

“I suppose he is.”

Nicole was about say something when Mr. Lee hurriedly neared the fence to pick up Mingyu. He didn’t notice the man as he picked his son up.

As soon as he did notice him, he went a bit pale. As if he had seen a ghost, he spoke something to the man. you couldn’t make out what he spoke. But the other man responded cheerfully and took Mr. Lee by the shoulders and walked him towards the direction of his home.

“Well that a bit strange.” Nicole murmured.

“Maybe he was a bit embarrassed to be late? Who cares?” you said.

“Yeah”

Nothing was said after that.

………………………………

“Don't turn around,” you whispered to Nicole and Hari, eyes firmly set on the tall frame of a familiar man that walked into the small coffee shop you and your friends had met up at. When they moved to turn, you hissed at them and they stopped mid-movement. Hari raised a brow at you in question.

“You remember the guy from last Wednesday? He's here, standing in the line. Second to last, tall, wearing a leather jacket and black boots. Don't make it obvious,” you said in a hushed tone.

You and Nicole had told Hari everything about the handsome mystery man and had listened to her moaning about how she would've loved to see him too because he sounded like a real snack from the way you were describing him. Well, now he was here and you weren't about to deprive her of the sight that he was.

“Damn, those shoulders are looking really-” Hari started as she swivelled in her chair to sit sideways on it and glance at the man. But she trailed off when she saw his face as he turned it in their general direction. She visibly blanched, immediately turning on the chair and facing you again.

“Do you know who that is?” she asked, her tone lowered as she leaned forward. You frowned, briefly glancing at the handsome specimen before shrugging and turning your gaze back to her.

“That is Kim Namjoon. I heard some nasty things about him from a friend. Haechan, you know him. He got involved with the wrong people and ended up being in Kim's debt. Let me tell you, that man is not someone you want to be indebted to,” she whispered frantically.

You would've shrugged this off as rumours, exaggerations or simply misconceptions and lies, but the scared look on your usually so collected friend's face made you stop. And the memory of this man, Namjoon, talking to the father outside the kindergarten. You knew something had been off. The way the man shifted slightly to stand in front of his child, his and the little one's discomfort. And Namjoon's imposing stance.

“I... are you sure? It does sound a little farfetched,” you tried weakly, but the look your friend gave you silenced any doubtful voices piping up in the back of your head.

“I'm serious. I don't know how Haechan got out of this unharmed, but he was really messed up afterwards. These gang people or whatever they are, mobsters, bikers, all the same, don't play games. You would do good to stay away from him if you ever come across him again.”

You nodded mutely, still watching Namjoon over Hari's shoulder. You froze when his gaze suddenly found yours.

“He's watching,” you bit out, trying not to move your lips and give yourself away, “What am I supposed to do?”

“Smile briefly and then look back at me, acting like we're deep in conversation,” she said quickly and then started to babble on about her week at work and the little fight she and her girlfriend had gotten into on Tuesday.

Meanwhile you sent a small smile Namjoon's way, acknowledging your recognition, and then turned your attention back to your still talking friend. You focused solely on her, nodding and laughing along as she told you about meaningless things.

You could still feel his eyes on you as you watched her talk.

………………………………

The following week was... anxiety inducing. You didn't know why, but Namjoon seemed to be following you around.

At first you tried to tell yourself you were simply paranoid and his appearances were mere coincidences. It wasn't uncommon to meet the same people at a supermarket or a coffee shop.

But the little book shop you'd discovered a few years ago, the one that was a hole on the wall, the one where you had never seen him ever, raised some concerns.

Then the tall menace started turning up along your way to work and back home, or lingered around the kindergarten, you were starting to grow restless and afraid. You had told Hari and Nicole about your observations and fears. After a talk with them, you had picked up the daily routine of texting one of them whenever you arrived at work and then got back home after.

Your suggestion to go to the police had been vehemently refused. It wouldn't be any good, Hari had told you. All it would do was get you more of his unwanted attention. So, you lived with your growing paranoia.

The aforementioned paranoia and anxiety skyrocketed at the end of the Monday after the first week of his eerie following you around.

You had just slung your backpack over your shoulder and were stepping out of the kindergarten building, your face turned up to the sky to soak up the afternoon sun, when a low hum from your right made you jump. Your eyes snapped open and your head whipped around. Your heart stuttered in your chest when you saw who had made the sound.

It was him. Namjoon stood casually leaned against the brick wall of the building you had just exited, his arms crossed over his broad chest. He smirked at your startled reaction.

“Hey there, princess. Didn't mean to startle you,” he said, not looking one bit sorry. You laughed nervously.

“Uh, it's alright. I wasn't paying attention,” you said quietly and glanced away from him. His staring was making you uncomfortable, the way he dragged his gaze over your body, taking in every inch before returning to your face. Nervousness made your heart beat a little faster.

“You're off to home then?” Namjoon asked, still watching you intently. You fidgeted on the spot, feet shifting and fingers digging into the straps of your backpack.

“uh-huh, just locked up,” you said and then cleared your throat nervously, “Well, I better get going.”

But when you started walking, Namjoon pushed away from the wall, matching your steps as you hastily scurried down the sidewalk.

“So eager to leave, sweetheart?” Namjoon joked, then added, “Oh, the name's Namjoon by the way. But I suppose you know that already judging by your behaviour. That's fine. I know yours, too.”

He proved that immediately by calling out your name again. Your heart stuttered.

You gulped, heart fluttering anxiously as you tried to come up with a response.

“Uhm, yeah. I've... heard of you,” you eventually got out, nervously glancing his way. He was still watching you with those dragon like eyes of his, a smirk curling the side of his mouth when he caught you peeking.

“No need to look so scared, sweetheart. I'm not going about hurting pretty things like you. Not really my style. You're perfectly safe with me.”

So, he knew that you had heard of his business. Or he at least suspected that you had. The lack of expression and your silence spoke volumes.

When you didn't reply to his utterance, he let out a low chuckle. It was a rich sound, full of amusement and something you would've enjoyed if it wasn't for the man making the sound.

“How about this, I take you out to dinner tomorrow and we can get to know each other better. You'll see that there's nothing to be afraid of. I can pick you up after work,” he suggested.

Your breath seized in your chest and your step faltered, almost making you stumble. Namjoon's hands shot out, grabbing onto your waist to steady you. His touch lingered as he told you to be more careful, palms sliding along your side and briefly settling on your hips and giving them a squeeze before he let the wandering appendages fall away.

“I- uh, I can't. Sorry,” you rushed out, your skin crawling from his touch. Then, without further ado, you rushed away, almost running as you rounded the next corner. You threw a look over your shoulder as you scurried over the sidewalk, but Namjoon was nowhere to be seen.

………………………………

To your misery and anger, your rejection didn't seem to deter Namjoon. He kept showing up at your work, joining you on your way to or from work. You were certain he knew by now where you lived. He would talk when he walked beside you, his long steps always catching up with yours no matter how fast you were walking, trying to escape him.

Namjoon didn't seem to mind that you didn't answer except to decline another offer at dinner or a drink. Every time you told him no, he merely chuckled in that amused way, as if you were just being silly, as if you were playing had to get  and would eventually come around.

Well, you weren't.

Not if you could help it.

As if his oppressing presence wasn't enough Namjoon started to get handsy. Nothing serious, but the lingering touches on your waist or the way his hand would brush against yours when he was once more harassing you on your way to work were making you uncomfortable.

It was like a promise.

A promise of more than just slight touches and caresses. The thought made your skin crawl.

It made you nauseous with fear and anxiety.

It got worse when he started waiting outside your apartment building when you left for work in the morning. He even stood right in front of the door to your apartment, scaring the shit out of you when you swung it opened and stepped outside, only to leap back inside and slam the wooden barrier in his face. You'd waited for several minutes, but he wasn't leaving and you had to get to work.

“Come on out, princess. You'll be late to work,” he had taunted through the door, mocking you until you opened it again and stormed past him without sparing him a glance.

He upped his game by sending you flowers and other presents, jewellery, gift cards. A set of lacy underwear and bra was by far the most unpleasant one.

All of it was eating away at you, especially because you had no one to talk to about this madness. You had stopped telling your friend, assuring her you were fine and Namjoon had moved on because you didn't want her to worry about you constantly. You regretted your decision more and more with every day that passed, each one taking a bit of your sanity with it.

You were slowly going mad, paranoia a constant companion and your anxiety too happy to remind you of the looming presence of the dubious man every time you managed to push the thought of him out of your mind for more than a couple of minutes.

The fourth week into the madness you had started sleeping with knife by your bed side.

You slept with one arm dangling over the side of the bed so you'd be able to quickly grasp the knife should it be necessary. You practiced it for hours.

Your sleep was light since this whole thing had started, disturbances not uncommon.

That led to you being sleep deprived, agitated and short-tempered most of the time. But you had to reign it in at work. The children weren't at fault and they didn't deserve any harshness from you. So, you kept it bottled up, the toxic mix of frustration, anger, fear and lack of sleep festering away inside your chest.

………………………………

The deadly cocktail boiled over after a long and particularly trying day at work. The children had been disobedient and out for trouble, stirring up fights and causing all kinds of mischief. The only reprieve you got, was when you stepped outside after work was over and there was no sight of Namjoon. He didn't appear on your way home either.

But even that tiny bit of peace was destroyed when you unlocked the door to your apartment and stepped inside to find a bouquet of flowers sitting in one of your vases on the counter of your open-plan living room.

                                                           

You certainly hadn't put them there.

He had been in your home. He had gone through your stuff to find the vase and then placed the flowers in it, putting them right there in your kitchen. He had been in your home.

The one place you thought could be safe.

The terror inside you spiked and you sprinted into the bedroom, grabbing the knife from your bedside table and then searching your apartment inch by inch to make sure the horrible man wasn't anywhere in your not-so-safe-anymore place.

When you returned to the kitchen, you slumped into a chair that stood by the counter with the flowers on it. You put the knife down beside you and glowered at the pretty bundle of colourful flowers. You chewed on the inside of your cheek, angrily staring at the bouquet. The longer you looked at it, the angrier you became.

How dare he to come into your life and turn it upside down?

How dare he harass and follow you, touch you without your permission?

And most of all, how dare he break into your place?

You were mad. The lack of sleep, anger, frustration and fear of the last weeks finally becoming too much as you sat there and stewed in your own dark thoughts.

A loud knock startled you out of your vengeful thoughts, your gaze snapping up and zeroing in on the front door. Another knock came and you growled.

“I swear to god, if that is his bitch ass on the other side of that door...” you cursed under your breath, grabbing the knife and tucking into  the waistband on your jeans at your back. You felt like a criminal yourself as you stomped over to the door, ready to do whatever was necessary to finally get the obsessive man to lay off you.

You ripped the door open and your nostrils flared at the sight of Namjoon. It was indeed him, his usual smirk peeking out and taunting you as you stood in the door frame, shaking with rage. But before you could utter a single word, the man stepped forward, shouldering his way past you and into your flat. He pushed you out of the way and closed the door behind himself.

“How do you like the little surprise I left you?” he asked as he casually strolled through the room as if he owned the place. It made you snap out of your stupor.

“I don't give a shit about you or your presents. Leave my fucking home,” you growled and pointed at the door, your hand trembling.

Namjoon just laughed, tilting his head as he eyed you with slightly raised eyebrows.

“My kitten has claws after all. Where does that courage come from all of a sudden?” he taunted. “Not that I don't appreciate it. I enjoy a little fire in my woman. What I don't appreciate however, is that attitude you have going on, baby girl.”

“Don't call me that, asshole. I'm not your woman. I'm not your sweetheart or baby girl. I'm not your anything. All you are to me is a nuisance and I would appreciate it if you got the fuck out of my home and my life,” you hissed, voice wavering with rage.

“Careful, doll. Don't test my patience,” Namjoon said, the smirk gone and a steely expression in its place. You gulped and took a step back. But you didn't give up. You wouldn't, not so easily.

“I know you're probably not often told no, but I will do so, have done so. I am doing it right now. No, I don't want to go out with you, I don't want anything to do with you. Now please leave my home,” you pressed out between gritted teeth, forcing yourself to be firm but as calm as possible.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Namjoon started, slowly walking closer with his hands in his pockets, “You sound like you believe you have any say in this. One thing you are right about though. I'm not told no. I haven’t been told no since I took these streets, this city, this country. No one tells me no. You certainly don't tell me no.”

He came even closer, closing the distance between the two of you.

“And I will have you one way or another. You're mine and I decided as such, whether you like it or not. Accepting it makes it easier for both of us. Be good for me and I'll be good to you.”

He was closer now, almost at an arm's length. He pulled his hands from his pockets.

That was the last push you needed. That man wasn't going to give up, he had told you as much. You reached behind your back and pulled the knife out of your jeans. You brought it up in front of you, and brandished it threateningly at the blonde .

Namjoon's eyebrows rose up so high it looked like they were trying to escape into his hairline. It seemed you had managed to take him by surprise. After overcoming his initial surprise, Namjoon chuckled. This time it sounded almost impressed.

“When I woke up this morning, I certainly didn't expect my day would end like this,” he admitted, staring down the knife at your angry, but afraid face.

“You certainly have more guts than I gave you credit for. But who can blame me, really. You always seemed like such a timid thing. So sweet and friendly.”

You huffed. As if he knew anything about you. He only knew what he could gather from his obsessive stalking. He didn't know the first thing about the real you, the you, you were when you were alone or with your friends.

Namjoon's next condescending words pulled you from your upset musings.

“Do you even know how to use that, princess?” he asked, his tone obviously implying he didn't believe you did.

“My mother taught me,” you answered curtly.

“Did she now?” Namjoon said in a low voice, a threatening edge lacing his words. You didn't miss the dangerous glint in his eyes. You tried not to be intimidated by it.

“Find something fleshy and push.”

Your mother hadn't taught you how to stab. You didn't know the first thing about it. Your knowledge extended exactly to what you had just said. 'find something fleshy and push'.

“Is that so...” he said, his voice still threateningly low as he stepped closer, startling you when he approached until the knife was pressed right up against his throat.

Your hands trembled, fingers sweaty on the handle as you stared up at Namjoon, trying hard to hide your terror. It became stronger with the second, replacing the mindless rage that had guided your actions when you pulled the knife in your grasp.

Now you weren't sure about this anymore at all. And Namjoon knew it. You could tell by the victorious look in his eyes, the way the corner of his lips tilted up ever so slightly. Before you could further ponder and weigh your options, several things happened at the same time.

Namjoon moved, grabbing your wrist and twisting it until you let out a cry of pain and let go of the weapon. It was ripped from your grasp, the safety put on and then tossed to the other end of the room where it clattered noisily to the ground. Your legs were kicked out from under you and you fell to your knees. Namjoon's weight came crushing down on you, both your wrists gathered in one of his big hands and held above your head as he took you off your knees and pressed you flat to the ground, facing him.

Your lower half was restrained by his heavy body, legs tangled in his and unmovable. Your breath was coming in harsh pants as you tried to come to grips with what had just occurred in the span of the last five seconds. When you did, you began to struggle, shaken out of your shocked stupor.

“Let go,” you wheezed, his weight pressing down on you not only immobilising you, but also making it hard to breathe properly.

“No can do, baby,” Namjoon said, his breath puffing over your face as he held himself above you. He shifted, keeping your legs immobilised as he sat up, taking your upper body with his and pulling you up by your wrist as he got up fully. You stumbled to your feet, losing your balance from the sudden change in position and his impatient jerking.

Unable to catch yourself with your hands, you face-planted into his firm chest with a little 'oof', making him chuckle as he pulled you back and shifted your wrists from one hand into the other. His free hand reached up and brushed your dishevelled hair away from your flushed face.

You cringed away from his touch, shrinking in on yourself and pulling your shoulders up. He ignored your obvious distaste, grasping your chin between his long fingers and keeping your nervous gaze directed at his.

“I would really hate to punish you, princess. Behave,” he said coolly as he eyed you intently, taking in your dilated pupils and the fluttering of your pulse beneath the thin skin on your throat. His eyes followed the bob of your throat when you gulped.

All your earlier bravado was gone, the rage fuelled resistance and bravery all but obliterated by the man standing in front of you.

“I couldn't stop thinking about you after you approached me that day at the fence,” he said, still staring down at you. His touch on your face wandered, fingers drawing along your jawline and then tracing the shape of your cheekbones. You didn't dare move, your breath shallow as he kept touching you.

“Your pretty smile and beautiful eyes... I knew I had to have you,” he continued, his thumb tracing your bottom lip. “So, I watched, I waited. I had to learn more about you before I could take you. Gotta make sure I know all I can so I can take care of my woman properly.”

A shiver wrecked your frame at his sick and twisted words.

“As for the things I couldn't find out...” his touch wandered lower, caressing your throat and then moving even further to drag his fingertips across the tops of your breasts, “Well, I'll just have to see for myself. I'm a fast learner. Adept. I'm sure you'll come to appreciate it very soon, princess. I may not be a good man princess but I will be good to you. In all ways possible.”

You shook your head weakly, a whimpered, “No, please” leaving your lips. Namjoon shushed you, hand coming to rest on your throat. He didn't squeeze, but you knew he would if you made a wrong move.

“Now, don't act up baby. I know you're a good girl, so I will forgive your earlier outbreak. Continue being bad and you'll come to regret it very soon,” he said, slightly tightening his grip on both your wrists and throat.

Tears rose in your eyes. They were tears of despair as the reality of the situation finally sunk in. You weren't going to get away from him. He wasn't going to stop even if you did manage to escape his clutches in some miraculous way. He had claimed you as his, chosen you and decided to take you without asking your opinion or stopping to take your feelings into consideration.

Kim Namjoon took what he wanted and he wasn't told no. He was never told no.

You didn't struggle when Namjoon dragged you over to your front door, pulling you out of your apartment and guiding you down the stairs, catching you several times when you missed a step or two in your haze.

He was muttering quiet reassurances the whole way, brushing his hands across your body, squeezing and grabbing without your consent. When you stepped out onto the sidewalk, your gaze rose from the ground and landed on a black car standing on the side of the street a couple of feet away.

Namjoon followed your line of sight, reading the silent question on your features.

“I'm going to take you home, princess. Our home.”

[hotreadingwitch]

MADE TO LIE - the drive

BUCKY 

Bucky woke up early that morning, his unnatural body bouncing back easily despite the amount of alcohol he’d consumed mere hours ago. Looking at the ticking hands of his old-fashioned clock with a huff, he got up and put on his running gear before heading outside. When he was stressed like this, when that ball of feeling inside him threatened to boil over and ruin the entire life he’d built from the ground up since he’d reconnected with Steve, running was the only thing that helped. The secluded property Tony owned was free for their use at all times and it was on days like this where he was particularly grateful that he could complete five laps around the acres and acres of surrounding forest. 

Stopping in the middle of the woods, his heart beating hard, though not from running, Bucky pulled out his phone. 

“I’m scared Doc” Bucky’s quiet admission filled the silence when Dr.Pashia picked up. 

“Scared of what exactly Bucky?” She questioned, her calm voice soothing his racing heart, despite the fact that he was calling her unprompted at 5 o’clock in the morning. 

“You know” he gulped. 

“I do” she answers sagely, “But I’d like to hear you say it. I think it would be more helpful for you that way, don’t you think?” 

“I’m scared of what I’m feeling, of the thoughts I’m having…” his voice was thick. 

“Yes, and what else?” 

“Y/n is so special and I’m scared the closer I get to her the more potential I have to hurt her. We started this mission on the wrong foot and I’ve already harmed her just by trying to keep my distance. I keep fucking up and I’m scared it’s only going to get worse the closer we get” he gulped before confessing, “…You know how long I’ve liked her” 

Dr.Pashia was silent, prompting him to continue. 

“I’m worried that it—that everything I’ve been through has taken all the good out of me. And she deserves someone better than me, I know it” 

“I believe that’s Y/n’s choice to make”

He swiped his hand over his mouth in frustration. 

“I—I’ve got to go—” Bucky strained before moving to end the call. 

“Bucky?” Her voice crackled through the line with a small sigh, “I know this all feels like too much for you to handle but before you go, I want to remind you of who you are and who you’ve been, and no, I don’t mean the Winter Soldier. Remember you’re a good man, a good soldier, a good brother, a good son, a good teammate, and a good friend. Please don’t forget that you are good and deserve to be happy despite what you might think and no matter what you’ve done.”

“Thanks, Doc, as always” 

“You’re welcome Bucky” 

Taking a deep, shaky breath he shut down the call before taking the long walk back to the compound. 

Y/N 

Y/n’s alarm went off and she was quickly awakened from her groggy slumber. She slapped her hand over her phone to turn off its incessant buzzing. Past the large windows, Y/n could see the grassy terrain just outside of the compound as well as the large forest and small lake beyond. She sat up, stretching her body before getting out of bed to get herself ready for the day ahead.

When she finally stood, she felt as if her head was going to explode, her vision going slightly blurry around the edges. She knew she and Bucky would be driving down to the city today and yet she’d drank as much as she did last night anyway, without a care in the world. The truth was it was all the caring that had made her drink that much in the first place…and now she was suffering the consequences. 

“Fuck” she grumbled to herself before slipping into a cozy outfit. 

~

“Morning” Y/n announced as she walked into the gray modern kitchen of the compound, wincing as her cheery tone rang loudly in her ears. 

“Ugh” Wanda groaned back as she saw her friend enter the room, “Not so loud, please” 

“How many times have I told you both to pace yourselves? To not drink so much?” Natasha chided with an eye roll. 

“It’s not our fault that you’re somehow biologically immune to vodka” 

“It’s more of a talent than a genetic thing really” she quipped back before wiggling her eyebrows at Y/n, “Excited for today? 

“Not exactly…” Y/n paused over her bowl of cereal. 

“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’?” Wanda pressed, her head tilting, “Don’t you want to get to know your new partner in crime?”

“Well, I guess I hadn’t thought of it like that” Y/n replied pensively. She had been so focused, first, on her anger at Bucky for being so rude and then on the new budding feeling inside her. She hadn’t even considered today could be an opportunity to learn more about the mysterious James Buchanan Barnes, “By the way, I haven’t had the chance to tell you both, last night—” 

A low, gruff voice from behind them interrupted their conversation, “Ready to go Y/n?”

Y/n turned her head to see the Bucky’s tall form lurking in the doorway to the kitchen. 

“You bet” she replied, trying to keep the atmosphere light between them despite the palpable tension. Y/n got up and headed towards the door, turning to her girlfriends and shooting them a nervous look before following him out towards the compound’s garage. Grimacing slightly at him, she added quietly, “As ready as I’ll ever be”

The garage was a very large white room with a slate gray floor and, of course, a gigantic Avengers logo mounted to the wall. Y/n rarely went in there except to get the jets for missions. She and Bucky walked past the rows of Avengers planes until they came to a door tucked away in the front corner that Y/n had somehow never noticed. It was the exact same colour as the wall and blended in seamlessly. Bucky unlocked it with a small silver key revealing a room full of vintage cars. 

“Wow” Y/n exclaimed at what she assumed was Tony’s collection, running her finger along the shiny side of a red convertible, “These are amazing”

“Well, this one is ours for the time being” Bucky gestured to a slick black car with silver accents. He caressed the car with an almost childlike wonder, taking in every detail of its exterior. Y/n had never seen him excited like this before, he was usually so closed off. 

“It’s a 1966 Ford Thunderbird”

“You like cars?” she assessed, smiling at him before slipping into the plush leather passenger seat. 

Bucky nodded, sliding in as well. As they backed out of the garage he gripped the wheel with his vibranium hand, the flesh one rested on the back of Y/n’s headrest. Y/n couldn’t help but inhale his scent as he leaned into her while he backed up. He smelt good and masculine like wood, smoke, and gunmetal all mixed together. 

As they drove away from the compound Y/n immediately became immersed in the scenery around them. The trees seemed to sway, beautiful with their various warm shades of red, orange, and yellow. Bucky stared at Y/n as she looked out the window, her knees tucked up to her chest. Her head then turned and she was startled to see Bucky’s blue-gray gaze fixated on her even as he drove. 

~1 hour later~

“We should listen to something” Y/n chirped. Bucky rolled her eyes but she ignored his grumpy response, quickly connecting her phone to the speaker, “Hmm let’s see. Well, what kind of music do you like?”

“I like 40s music so…” he replied.

“Any other decades?” Y/n laughed. 

Bucky gave her a stony look but remained silent. 

“60s? 70s? 80s?” She questioned but he continued to fight back with his silence. 

“Fine let’s go with the classics…” she thought aloud, “What about the Beatles?” 

“No” 

“Fleetwood Mac?”

“No” 

“Led Zeppelin?” 

“Maybe” 

“What about Marvin Gaye? Everybody loves Marvin Gaye” 

“I like Marvin Gaye” Bucky replied, earnestly. 

“Steve adores Marvin Gaye” she giggled, pushing him a bit further, grumbling, “You clearly don’t…”

His superhuman hearing picked up on her bait. 

“I like Marvin Gaye” he growled, practically pulling out the steering wheel with his tight grip. 

Though Bucky angry with his fists clenched should have scared Y/n it ended up doing the exact opposite. She broke out into a fit of laughter and couldn’t stop herself even when she saw Bucky’s eyebrows raise at her as if to say, what the hell. In a minute, however, his features softened. Somehow, even though she was technically making fun of him, the gentle laughter of the woman beside him made him smile, even if just a little. 

“Do you even know this song?” She quipped, continuing to playfully jab at him as she queued a track. 

Hey, hey, hey…Hey, what’s happening? Brother, what’s up? 

The intro to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On rumbled through the car’s updated system that Tony had no doubt paid too much money to install. The sweet croon of the saxophone, followed by the artist’s mellow voice, acted like a balm to Y/n’s soul. Relaxing further into her cushiony, leather seat, she softly sang the first few lines. 

Mother, mother there’s too many of you crying. Brother, brother, brother there’s far too many of you dying. 

“So, do you?” She poked again, a small smile drifting onto her face, “You’ve got to know this one at least” 

“I know it”

“Thank goodness” she blew out an overly-dramatic breath in faux-relief, turning in her seat to smile at him. 

“You do know I was technically alive in the 70s don’t you?” Bucky chuckled with a knowing smirk.

“How old are you even? Exactly, I mean…” 

“I’m 98” he stated easily, “I’ll be 99 next March” 

“When’s your birthday?” 

“God” he groaned, “Please tell me you aren’t asking ‘cause you want to know my sign. Wanda cornered me when we first met to ask, I couldn’t get away from her for two whole hours. She did my entire birth chart” 

He said the last words with semi-disgust causing Y/n to chortle. 

“So you’re not going to tell me then” she sighed before guessing, “Well let’s think, you’ve already said you’re born in March so you’re either a Pisces or an Aries. Guessing by how emotionally unavailable you seem I’m going to go ahead and say Pisces” 

“Hey! That shit is scary…” he barely repressed a shiver, “I don’t get how you can know these kinds of things about people, from what, the stars?” 

“I like to think it’s fate, the way that we end up that is” 

“You believe in fate?” He scoffed. 

She gazed at him, affronted, “Yeah I do, you don’t?” 

“I learned a long time ago not to believe in things like that” 

A beat of silence passed between them. 

“Well start believing, old man” 

Bucky scoffed again before a smile slowly spread across his face, like he was trying to suppress it but was failing miserably. It took Y/n all her strength to tear her gaze away from the bright expression that had appeared in place of Bucky’s typical stormy, hard-edged gaze. Only when she finally found herself able to do so did she realize that Bucky was parking their car in the mostly empty parking lot of a building just off the side of the highway they’d been on for the last hour. The orange-neon sign stated that they were at “Milton’s Drive-In Diner”

As Y/n stepped into the diner, the jiggle of the bell attached to the door made her jump. It was so quiet otherwise, seemingly no one in the space other than a small older man tucked away toward the back counter and a pair of girlfriends who Y/n assumed might be going camping due to their large packs. Bucky placed a comforting hand on the small of her back, the act easing the tension between her shoulders that she hadn’t even realized was there. She relaxed even more when the smell of pies, pastries, and shitty coffee suddenly filled her nostrils. 

“Not quite a Parisian café but it’ll do” Bucky smirked toward her. 

“No, not quite” she joked back before admitting, “I might just like it better”

Bucky made no comment, though he didn’t need to, the rise of his eyebrow was enough. 

“Hello, hello” a cheery older woman, maybe in her mid-60s, with a Southern drawl called out from the kitchen, “Sit wherever y’all like” 

Bucky shuffled them over to a table in the corner opposite the one the older man seemed to be now passed out in. Y/n sat down at the booth, her hands rubbing curiously across the cracked vinyl of the seat below her.

“Y/n” Bucky said then, something about the soft way he said her name drawing her attention back to him. 

Sometimes she forgot just how handsome he truly was. 

“Yes?”

“Before we get to the city, I think we should talk more about the mission…We haven’t really discussed any of it since Tony assigned it to us” 

“Very good Barnes, I’m sure he would give you a gold star if he was here” she chuckled to herself. 

“I’m serious” he gritted out, “And it’s Bucky” 

Her mind flashed to the night of the party, nodding silently before sighing, a bitterness coating her tongue as she spoke, “Well Bucky, I know this mission goes against everything I believe in and yet because of you and Tony I’m doing it anyways. I also know that, for some unknown reason, you’re just somehow fine with everything. Care to explain?” 

He shook his head in disbelief, ice seeping into his sharp gaze.

“You’re not going to tell me why you’re okay with this are you?” 

“No,” he said through gritted teeth. 

“No?” she huffed, eyes narrowing, “Okay right, real good talk partner. Next time you want to have a real conversation Barnes remember that it takes two to tango” 

“You think I don’t know that” he spat back, lowering his voice to a deadly rumble, “Listen Y/n, there are reasons behind my choices that you’ll never know or understand okay? That doesn’t mean you get to say I’m not trying cause I am, believe me, this is the hardest thing I’ve had to do in years. I’m trying to do the right thing for once in my fucking life, to start fresh, to do anything other than what I’ve done in my past. So please believe me when I say that I am trying, I’m trying to be better for you…” 

The confession sat on the linoleum table between them. 

“Don’t you think we should’ve had this conversation before we even had sex?” Y/n whispered quietly, hating how vulnerable she sounded, surprised at the bundle of emotions that were suddenly spilling out, “We got assigned the mission and you hurt me by being cruel, we filmed the tape and you hurt me by acting like it was nothing, we watched the news spread like wildfire and you hurt me by forcing me to deal with the aftermath alone…All you’ve done is hurt me Bucky and it just sucks, you’re supposed to be my partner in this. I want you to be with me in this.” 

“I’m—” he started, peering down at her with clear regret, only to be interrupted by the old Southern belle from earlier, who was ready to take their order. 

“What can I get y’all? You driving down to the city? Bet you’re staying somewhere nice downtown from the looks of yous” 

“Two Club Sandwiches, a Coke for me and a chocolate milkshake for her” Bucky ordered off, purposefully ignoring the other question about their plans. 

When she left them again, Y/n grumbled, “So now you’re ordering for me” 

“Did I not get you what you wanted?” he asked, cocking a brow, the tension between them slowly dissipating. 

“You did, congratulations you’re an observant creep”

Bucky laughed at that which only pissed Y/n off because that low chuckle of his and that bright smile which was as infrequent as the Sun on a cloudy December day, made her shamelessly grin. 

When their food arrived after a few minutes they ate in companionable silence. Despite their talk, it wasn’t awkward, it was the kind of silence that they both knew came after the storm. And for two people who rarely shared their deepest fears to anyone, let alone someone who could use it against them, that moment of honesty was pouring rain indeed. 

“Just the bill now, thanks doll,” Bucky said when they were finally wrapping up at the diner, his eyes widening as he realized he had just accidentally flirted with the older waitress, calling her by the old-fashioned nickname. 

With a huff, he wrung his hands before opening his mouth to apologize. 

“No need to apologize sweet thing…” she interrupted him with a bright laugh, her peachy skin crinkling with the movement, “Haven’t had much attention since my husband George died just around three years ago now, you’ve done made my day” 

“Oh” he smiled awkwardly, “Well I’m glad to hear—” 

“Paula!” she interrupted again, tilting her head back to call her colleague, “Paula you won’t believe it, this young man here is flirting with me” 

Bucky hung his head and Y/n barely surpassed a snort as she mouthed ‘young man,’ prompting him to glare exasperated daggers at her. Another waitress, who Y/n figured must be Paula, craned her neck out from behind the floppy doors that led to the kitchen. 

“Is that so Daph?” She looked over before throwing a sultry wink at Bucky. 

“Oh Lord” he huffed quietly so that only Y/n could hear. 

When they got back to the car, Bucky caught her hand as it reached for the music dial. 

“Listen Y/n about what you said—” 

“Don’t bother” she responded, “It’s okay, I’m just being overly emotional…” 

It was okay to her in that moment, she didn’t even think she really needed to hear him say it. Just from the sorrow in his blue eyes, she knew he was sorry. 

“But I’m going to anyways…” he continued, “I’m sorry for how I treated you, how my actions made you feel. I never should’ve been so cold. Just because it’s how I operate when I’m nervous doesn’t mean you deserve to be on the other side suffering. I’m truly sorry Y/n and I hope you can forgive me eventually.”

“I do” she whispered before clearing her throat a speaking with more confidence, “Forgive you I mean, I do” 

He nodded roughly before cranking the key in the ignition and pulling out of the Milton’s Drive-In Diner parking lot. 

~

“We’re here,” Bucky said. 

Y/n glanced up at the tall building, admiring the carved white stone walls, the stained glass entrance and the fancy red carpet leading up to the doors. Bucky gave the car over to the valet before sweeping Y/n through the heavy doors and into the ornate lobby. They checked in quickly and then headed upstairs to their suite. 

The room was fancy, to say the least, French in style, and huge. There was a general living space just past the foyer the main set of doors opened to, multiple bathrooms, a study, and even a wide terrace that spanned the entire length of the suite. 

“Alright let’s get ready then” Y/n stated, the plush carpet beneath her feet muffling her steps as she searched, “Where are the bedrooms?”

She moved through the large main room and towards what appeared to be the only remaining door in the suite on the right-hand side. Her mouth parted slightly as she opened the double doors revealing one giant king-sized bed. 

“I’m gonna kill Stark” she growled through gritted teeth. 

“What is it?” Bucky questioned, coming up behind her so that his front was an inch from her back, “Oh”

The proximity sent a shiver up Y/n’s spine. She quickly shook off the memories of Bucky’s soft lips on her skin. 

“Well, anyway” she sighed distractedly before gesturing to the bedroom, “I’ll get ready in here, are you okay to use a bathroom?” 

He huffed before grabbing the bundle of his clothes for the night, “Sure”

Y/n closed the doors to the bedroom and unzipped the garment bag that contained her clothes for the date which she had let Wanda and Natasha pick out for her. Her fingers quickly caressed a dress made of silky red fabric, admiring its quality. She then gasped as she saw what was hanging in the bag underneath it. Instead of a regular bra and panties, the girls had selected a lacy black set of mostly sheer lingerie to go under her dress. “Oh for fuck’s sake” she breathed. 

“Almost ready?” called Bucky’s voice from the other side of the door.

Y/n quickly put the set on and slipped the dress on before realizing it needed to be done up at the back. “Yep!” She responded, “But can you zip me up?” 

Bucky’s lips parted slightly as Y/n opened the door. Her silky red dress hugged her curves in all the right places and they were only enhanced by the tall black heels that she was wearing. Y/n turned, exposing the super soldier to her mostly bare backside. Bucky’s eyes flitted from the exposed small of her back to her lacy black lingerie before focusing on the zipper. 

“Done” he asserted gruffly as Y/n heard the crisp sound of metal fastening. 

Despite Bucky’s past attitude towards her, Y/n couldn’t help her breath from hitching when his hands lingered a little too long on the small of her back.

“Let’s go,” she said, turning to face him. For a second they remained close, both of them breathing in the other before Bucky walked towards the foyer. 

“Right” he replied gruffly, before looking at her and smirking, “We’ve got a date to go on” 

A/N - if any of you were interested in where I got Bucky’s scent from, it was based on Tom Ford’s cologne called OudWood. 

Requested Tag List: cjand10 identity2212 bucky-jbb-sunshine unaxv hnnhbananananana

[wanderinginksplot-writes]

Gar Cyare Chapter Twelve

Finally back after an unexpected year-long hiatus!

Word Count: 4,400

Warnings: Implied threats, definite threats, mentions of genetic experimentation, suspicion, mentions of the Attack on Kamino, fear.

Previous | Next | Masterlist

---

Ca'tra (Night Sky)

Your office looked roughly the same as it always had. Bland Kaminoan architecture dressed in shades of white, gray, and black held a collection of furniture that had been built with the clear emphasis of function over form. Your datapads were untouched, as were the slight hints of mess around the edges of your desk. 

But everything seemed a little strange with the light… or, more accurately, the lack of it. 

The shutters that covered all of the exterior-facing windows on Kamino were closed, both protecting you from any attempt to break through the transparisteel and keeping you from seeing anything that might be happening outside. 

Though nighttime had fallen and the Kaminoan skies had been dark with clouds when the shields lowered, there was still plenty to see. The GAR had recalled all personnel in the sector to Kamino. There was too much chance that the Separatists could come back. This time, they could use the knowledge they had gathered during the last invasion - plus any new intel - to destroy the Fett genetic sample for good. 

The arrival of new ships was nearly constant, and you had heard chatter from the cadets that at least two Venator-class Star Destroyers were guarding the areas just beyond Kamino’s atmosphere. Any ships that intended to land had been issued special clearance codes. If they failed to deliver them at the right time or on the right frequency, they would be shot down upon breaking atmosphere. 

You hadn’t heard the anti-aircraft guns fire yet, so you were fairly confident that there had been no actual invasion. 

Still, you itched to see beyond the barriers, though you knew your reasoning was senseless. You wouldn’t see Alpha coming back. General Ti had told you that he would be gone at least another twelve hours, but your mind kept insisting that you would be able to watch him land in relative safety. 

If you were being honest with yourself, that was why you were still in your office instead of your bedroom. Sure, you could pretend that you were there in case General Ti or Commander Colt needed something from you, but in all reality, it was because you were filled with dread at the idea of returning to your empty quarters.

You already hated the idea that Alpha was out in the galaxy when there were potentially Separatists in the area, but to be reminded of it every time you looked around your bedroom? No, you were perfectly content in your office. 

A knock on your door made you sit upright. “Yes?” 

Your hammering heart gradually slowed as Commander Colt peered inside. “Why are you still awake?” 

You shrugged. “Too nervous to sleep, I guess.” 

A frown creased the space between the commander’s eyebrows as he stepped into your office. “You should get some rest while you can. If we are invaded, you need to be at full awareness.” 

That wasn’t exactly comforting, but you nodded. 

“Sorry,” Commander Colt said abruptly. “Probably didn’t help anything, huh?” 

“Not exactly,” you admitted. The concern for your nerves was surprising, more something you would have expected from Alpha. Suddenly, you wondered if the commander had come to find you because Alpha had asked him to. “Have you heard from Alpha?” 

He shook his head. “No, why? Have you?” 

“No.” You sighed. “I thought that might be why you’re here.”

“Limit asked me to check on you,” he told you. That made more sense, but before you could say so, Commander Colt added, “I was already on my way.” 

“Oh.” You toyed with a datapad on your desk to distract yourself from how slowly time was passing. “Why?” 

“Alpha cares about you,” he explained slowly. “More than anyone else.” 

You chuckled softly. “I know I’m his favorite nat-born.” 

Commander Colt shook his head slightly. “You’re his favorite person. He cares about you more than anyone else. Between how much he likes you and how much you’ve done to take care of him - and all my brothers, actually - you’re vod’ika.” 

Little sibling. 

The term made your chest warm with pleasure. “Thank you, Colt.” 

Colt cleared his throat. “Anyway, how are you handling all of this?” 

You took a deep breath. “I’m fine, I suppose. I’m just so… sick of being on Kamino when it goes on lockdown.” 

For a full beat after you had finished speaking, Colt stared at you. At last, he burst out laughing. “I thought you were going to be scared.” 

“I might be eventually,” you said with a shrug. “But right now, I can only think about how I’ve been here every time the lab has been locked down. I understand it’s important, but it’s getting old.”

Colt nodded in commiseration and you gave him a considering look. “Are you okay?”

“Me?” he repeated, seeming stunned when you nodded. “What do you mean?” 

You glanced at your desk, trying to buy some time to find the right phrasing. “The last time there was an invasion, you were hurt pretty badly. I don’t remember it, but Alpha was shaken up and that takes a lot. I gather that it was… close. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I’m fine,” Colt insisted. You weren’t sure about that, but if pretending was how he got through things, you weren’t going to begrudge him the coping mechanism. He turned as if to leave, but stopped before he stepped through your door. “Go to sleep soon, yeah? Limit’s working a long shift to get the medbays prepped, but he asked me to pass on a warning. If he comes by and you’re still here, he’ll tell Alpha.” 

You laughed at that despite yourself. “He probably would.”

Colt chuckled too, patting the doorframe in a gesture that seemed to punctuate his departure. “Goodnight, vod’ika.”

“Goodnight, Colt.”

When you were alone once more, you started getting everything put away for the night… but paused when your datapad slipped from your fingers and clattered against the surface of the table. The screen flickered on in the collision and you frowned, pulling it closer. 

Displaying on the screen were the records that you had been digging into before all of the investigation and shutdown chaos, records you hadn’t been able to finish accessing because you had run out of time. You had told Colt that you would go to bed and you didn’t intend to lie… but this was too intriguing to leave for the next day. 

It was fine, you reasoned. You weren’t tired yet and there was finally time to do some digging. 

Hidden behind a maze of misnamed file pathways and a selection of different passcodes, you found it: records of the clone trooper gene isolation process. The records were old, written when Ko Sai was the Chief Scientist of Kamino. She had been an integral part of creating the clone trooper genetic blueprint. 

That had confused you at first. They were clones of Jango Fett - why would the genes need to be altered at all? But even skimming the notes had been enough to give you an answer: the clone troopers weren’t exact genetic copies at all. Ko Sai had made some changes to make the troopers more loyal, less independent, and less vicious. 

There were a few outliers - especially in the early batches of troopers - and creating any living thing came with risks of aberrations in the genetics, but the experiments had been successful. That was according to Ko Sai’s notes, of course, but they were dry and scientific enough that you assumed the wasn’t much risk of them being exaggerated. 

The changes to trooper personalities were in a group Ko Sai referred to as ‘behavioral traits’. The more chilling half was designated as ‘genetic traits’. 

Genetic traits seemed to be the way the Kaminoans referred to the changes they made to keep themselves in business. Not only did they control things like troopers building muscle faster, but mercilessly capitalistic qualities like the troopers’ accelerated aging process. 

You didn’t like the idea of the changes that had been made to the troopers genes. You were self-reflective enough to realize that part of your aversion was because you didn’t like the idea of gene manipulation in general. The accelerated aging was particular egregious to you since it was actively working to decrease the amount of time you could possibly spend with Alpha. 

But the notes fascinated you - not because of their content, but because through them you could tell that Ko Sai was a deeply paranoid being. 

The records were sealed with a virtual warning: if someone without the proper security codes attempted to slice into them, the files would self-destruct. And not just the files on the record you were viewing. No, the trap would wipe every known copy of the records from any device. The trigger had been built into the file transfer itself and could be detonated at any time.

Your interest was piqued. You had been given full access to everything you needed for your report and had the highest possible security clearance, but you still held your breath as you typed in your access code. 

Thankfully, it worked and you spent a blissful hour reading through all of Ko Sai’s notes and records. A lot of it was gibberish to you and - you suspected - would be to anyone other than a highly-trained geneticist. 

As the hour grew later and you started to worry that Limit really would come to kick you out, you tried to make a copy of the files onto your datapad, but were blocked. You weren’t sure what kind of scientist would keep her files from being copied, but she must have been very certain that she would be able to access that information in other places. 

Before you shut down the datapad entirely, you found a microscopic file attached in the shell of an unrelated topic. It was a simple document that you might have overlooked… if it didn’t force you to enter your password once more. From what you gathered once you could view the vague document, Ko Sai had made copies of all of her information. She had stored them on a collection of personal datapads. 

The description of where to find them was heavily coded, but you gamely copied it onto your own datapad. Then, feeling an echo of Ko Sai’s paranoia, you also jotted it down onto a nearby piece of flimsi. With other topics for the report running thin, maybe finding the original notes from Ko Sai’s experiments would be a good way to extend your assignment.

You spent a few moments staring at the code, jotting some preliminary guesses down beneath the characters. The most common letters were likely overrepresented among the words, unless Ko Sai had been using a rotational cipher. You wouldn’t put it past her, but even rotational ciphers weren’t impossible to figure out.

Cracking the code and extending your report-writing process were things that could wait. You tucked the datapad and flimsi into your bag and shut off the lights in your office. Too much longer and you were worried you really would run into Limit, but you were bringing the codes along for insurance in case it turned into a sleepless night.

Sometimes it was good to have an office so far from your quarters. It kept you involved in the day-to-day life on Kamino and took you through some highly populated areas on the trip. And with the hours you worked, you could use the exercise. But it was an unpleasant trip late at night, when all you wanted was to crawl into bed.

Perhaps you wouldn’t have minded walking through the main sections of Kamino if they weren’t full of cadets giving you suspicious looks. 

It seemed like you had just convinced everyone that you hadn’t caused the first invasion of Kamino. No one had told the cadets many details about what had caused this lockdown, but they paid enough attention to know that you were close to the situation. 

After a few hallways of those wary glances, you cut down a side path. The slightly longer trip was a price you gladly paid in exchange for avoiding all of the watchful eyes. 

You found yourself in a section of the city that housed the learning terminals. They weren’t currently in use - all flash training had been suspended while Kamino was on lockdown and there was no reason for anyone but a cadet to be in the terminal rooms. 

So why were you hearing adult voices coming from one? 

You peeked in through the partially open door, taking in the scene in a millisecond: There were six troopers in the room. Two of them were working at one of the terminals while the other four were observing the display screen at the front of the room. 

Surprisingly, you recognized the troopers. They had arrived on Kamino earlier that day. They weren’t the first to land on-planet after the lockdown had started, but they were one of the earlier groups. 

The reason they had attracted your attention was because of the reaction of the cadets. Most arrivals on Kamino before and after the six troopers were met with warm welcomes (and often a little teasing) from the cadets. But these six were given a wary distance. They didn’t seem bothered by it - in fact, they had seemed to accept that wariness as their due. 

Their attitude struck you as strange. The troopers were loyal, and that quality apparently went down to a genetic level. The idea of troopers who didn’t seem to feel that draw to be close with their brothers was unique, and you were very curious to know how that uniqueness had managed to survive long enough to leave Kamino at all. 

Of course, that curiosity was secondary to their motivations with the learning terminals.

You recognized the file pathways displayed at the front of the room: these troopers were trying to slice into Ko Sai’s private records. 

Perhaps it wouldn’t have been such a crisis if the Kaminoans hadn’t told General Ti that they intended to launch a full investigation of their information. They needed to find out what had been sliced, duplicated, or downloaded. And to get all of that done, they needed to shut down terminal access and cycle all codes and passwords. It was only with the General’s interference that you had managed to retain your own access. 

You were willing to bet that these troopers, whoever they were, didn’t have the same privileges you held. In that case, there was a very real risk that they were about to trigger a complete wipe of Ko Sai’s library of records. 

“Stop!” you cried, bursting through the doors before you could temper your reaction. 

Unsurprisingly, you were met with four drawn blasters. The two troopers at the terminal continued to work, but the others stared at you. 

“Who are you?” one demanded flatly. 

Your hands had risen instinctively, hovering palm-out as you tried very hard to look nonthreatening. “I’m an administrator. I was sent here by the Senate to write a report about the clone troopers.” 

“Proof?” another trooper asked. 

“You can ask anyone about me,” you said quickly, lamenting that you didn’t wear your Senate ID badge on a regular basis. You hadn’t since your first week on Kamino. “I’ve been here for a while.” 

They looked skeptical, but your attention was focused on the large display screen at the front of the room. 

“Please, you have to stop,” you warned them, your desperation rising as you watched a password entry box appear. “Don’t put in your password! Ko Sai-”

The trooper at the terminal had finished entering his password and submitted it without paying any attention to you. A moment later, the screen flashed red and an ominous timer started counting down. 

“Ko Sai put a self-destruct code into her records,” you finished lamely. 

One of the trooper holstered his blaster and turned to look at the display screen, swearing in Mando’a. “Jaing, can you stop it?” 

“Trying…” one of the troopers at the terminal replied.

You watched just as intently as the troopers did - the ones who weren’t aiming blasters at you, anyway. Only moments later, the trooper stopped typing, a slight slackening in his muscles serving as your only hint of the outcome. The trooper beside him swore colorfully. 

“It’s all gone,” one of the troopers summarized, still watching you for any sign of a fight. 

“Yes.” The one who had been working to circumvent Ko Sai’s trap stood - he had answered to the name ‘Jaing’ - neatly replacing the chair at the terminal. “What now?” 

“Now,” the trooper who had put his blaster away said grimly, “we find out a little more about our new friend.” 

“Always liked meeting new people,” the other trooper at the terminal said with a sharp grin, joining the others.

They were standing around you in a loose semi-circle. Three still held blasters aimed at you, so you stayed in your nonthreatening pose. 

“Who are you?” 

You took a breath, trying to keep from sounding scared. “I’m a Republic administrator, sent by the Senate-”

“You said that already,” a previously silent trooper told you, sounding unimpressed. 

“That’s because it’s true.” 

The one you privately thought of as the leader crossed his arms. “Never said it wasn’t. Doesn’t mean we should care.” 

“Ordo,” one of the others warned quietly. 

A chill went down your spine as you realized the rationale behind the warning: if these men didn’t care about your position as a representative of the Galactic Senate, there was something else motivating them. 

“Are you involved in the infiltration of Kamino?” 

One of the troopers laughed abruptly, the sound loud enough to make you flinch. “What are you talking about, civvie?” 

“How else would you have arrived so early?” you asked, voice soft as you fell into musing the convoluted pathways of logic. “You weren’t the first ones here, but you weren’t far behind. No one should have been traveling through this sector outside of official missions and you weren’t on one of those. And now you’re here, looking at top-secret information about the genetic basis of the clone trooper program. I told you I’m a Senate representative and you’re still thinking about shooting me.”

“See, this is what happens when nat-borns try to think,” one of the men said, chuckling. It was a good act, but you could see the utter lack of emotion in his eyes. “You’re seeing patterns that don’t exist.”

“No,” you refused decisively. “There are too many strange coincidences here. My gut is saying something is off. Why are you here?”

“I have a better question,” Ordo countered. “How did you know about the data wipe code in those files?”

“How did you know about those files at all?” another asked.

“Good point, Mereel,” Ordo congratulated, turning pointedly to face you. “How did you know about Ko Sai’s private holorecords?”

“I’m writing a report about clone troopers,” you repeated firmly. “I was given access to pull from all sources in order to make my report as complete as possible.” 

“Wait,” Jaing ordered, stepping forward. His gaze was intense as he asked, “Do you have a copy of Ko Sai’s data?” 

“No.” The tension lowered slightly, but Jaing was still watching you. “She built in a feature that doesn’t allow for any of the files to be copied.”

“So,” one of the unnamed troopers asked. “Should we neutralize her here or somewhere easier to clean up?” 

You struggled to stay impassive even as your stomach dropped. 

“Udesii, A’den,” Mereel said, holding a hand out. “Killing a Senate representative may not be the best move here.” 

“Why not?” A’den asked, grinning at you. “Planet’s already on lockdown. The long-necks’ll probably think their spy was the one who did it. I doubt if anyone has seen this one since things went dark.”

You straightened, giving him your coldest look. “Commander Colt would disagree with you. As would Captain Alpha-17.” 

The group had grown quiet at Colt’s name, but noticeably relaxed when you mentioned Alpha. 

“Nice try, civvie,” Ordo told you. “Seventeen is off-planet. Probably will be for a while, with the mess they walked into.” 

“What did you do to him?” you demanded, taking a furious and unwise step forward. The blaster barrels weren’t quite touching you, but they weren’t much more than a deep breath away. “If you hurt him-”

“Fiery little thing, isn’t she?” one of the others asked, grinning at the others even as his grip on the blaster stayed firm. 

“So much concern about clones,” A’den mocked. “Don’t you know we’re disposable?” 

“Speaking of,” one of the others interrupted, “she knows who we are and what we were looking for. We need to take care of this before we leave the planet.” 

Jaing lifted a brow at him. “Does that mean you’ve got an idea, Prudii?” 

“The balconies off the lower platforms were always useful. Cuts down on the mess and the body falls right into the sea,” Prudii said with a shrug. One of the others snorted and Prudii frowned at him. “Problem, Komr’k?” 

Komr’k shook his head, clearly fighting a smile. You waited with the others. Nothing seemed to be particularly amusing about the conversation, but perhaps it was just because it was your death that they were discussing. “Just thinking of all the applications of the term ‘aiwha-bait’.”

The reactions ranged from smirks to eye-rolls, but no one seemed to share your growing feeling of nausea. It probably wouldn’t hurt, so long as they executed you with a blaster bolt to the head, but you were getting a little dizzy as you thought about what would happen to your body after you died. And, of course, there were the people you would leave behind. 

No. 

It took some effort, but you pulled yourself out of the spiral you were drifting into. You had survived the Separatist attack on Kamino. You had faced down Ventress, working with some of the best soldiers in the galaxy to make it through the experience relatively unharmed. You could survive this, too. You would. 

The training terminals weren’t close to the lower balconies, not by a long shot. You had visited the balconies many times with Alpha. You knew the area well. There would be plenty of places to attract attention or slip away. And if you couldn’t manage to do either, you would make it loud and violent, enough to attract attention. 

“Let’s get moving,” Ordo ordered as A’den gestured toward the room’s entrance with his blaster. “Don’t do anything stupid.” 

You lifted your chin as you stepped toward the door. Could he see the determination on your face? You almost hoped he could. You wouldn’t passively accept being executed. A hand grabbed your shoulder, tugging so roughly that you stumbled forward.

“Someone should have given you the same warning, Ordo,” Alpha said menacingly, sweeping you through the doorway and behind him. He was in full armor, blocking the doorway with his bulk. 

“Alpha, no!” you urged him. “They have blasters.” 

“So do I,” he said, voice steely. “Plus enough detonators to make the first invasion look like a training mishap.” 

“We have some business with the civvie,” one of the troopers started. It was much more difficult to tell who was speaking when you couldn’t see any of them, but it didn’t matter. Alpha interrupted before anyone could say more than that. 

“Ulyc sushir,” Alpha said menacingly. Even from behind him, his voice rumbled through your chest. “You men are going to stand down. Forget whatever little geroya you had going with her. You’re going to let us walk away. If you think you have anything else to say to her - unlikely - you will go through me. Understood?” 

There was no answer. The next moment, Alpha repeated, “Understood?”

“Copy.” 

That single word seemed to be as far as the troopers were willing to go. Alpha took a step back, carefully keeping himself between you and the others until you were out of sight. 

“Who-?” 

“Wait.” 

You didn’t love being commanded like an animal, but considering that he had likely saved your life, you followed Alpha’s instruction. 

He activated his comlink, keying in a code from memory. 

The voice on the other end - male, older but not elderly - answered almost immediately. “Alph-”

“Call off your dogs,” Alpha demanded, durasteel in his tone. 

“If you’re talking about my boys, they’re on assignment on Kamino.” The voice was genial, friendly, almost paternal. Still, there was a sly undertone that warned you there was something more happening. “I have no say in what they do there.”

“They almost killed a civilian.” Alpha glanced at you, as if worried that you would be startled by his blunt appraisal of the situation. You didn’t react - you had known where things had been headed. “I need to be sure they won’t try it a second time.” 

“The only reason a civilian would be in danger is if they interfered,” the man said. “Dangerous thing in a warzone.” 

“Keep them under control or I’ll send you the tags.”

The staticky silence on the comlink turned deafening, almost icy. “We’ve never had reason to argue, Seventeen. If you push this, I guarantee that will change. You don’t want a revenge-driven mando on your shebs.”

“And you don’t want me to take a closer look at who wiped Dengar’s records from the Kaminoan databases,” Alpha countered. “The civvie is off-limits, Skirata. Tell them before we have a misunderstanding.” 

“You have to understand what they’re working for,” Skirata wheedled. “It’s important to them. To all of you. One civilian loss is a low price to pay.”

“Off. Limits.” Alpha bit out sharply. 

The quiet stretched as both sides battled for supremacy. Eventually, Skirata sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. But you know how clever my boys can be when they have an obstacle to get around.”

“Warn them,” Alpha advised, “or you’ll all find out how clever I can be.” 

“None of us are di’kutla enough to underestimate you, Alpha,” Skirata said, sounding a bit amused. “I only wish you’d find your way to working with us instead of against us.”

“Not as long as you’re trying to take out innocent civilians,” Alpha told him, severing the connection before Skirata could respond. 

“Now you,” Alpha said, glancing back over his shoulder. It wasn’t an easy motion to accomplish while wearing full armor and a helmet, so you moved to walk beside him. Just as well - trailing behind him like a lost tooka wasn’t your favorite thing. 

When you were next to him, Alpha removed his helmet and gave you a hard look. “How much do you understand about what just happened?” 

“Not much,” you admitted. “I know those troopers were trying to access Ko Sai’s records, even when I warned them not to. Who are they?” 

“They are known as the Null-class troopers,” Alpha told you slowly. “The first clones of Jango that the Kaminoans ever created.” 

“I thought the Alpha-class troopers were the first.” You were working from the assumption that no part of the conversation was going to offend Alpha, but you studied his expression for any hint of displeasure or hurt. 

“We were the first viable ones,” he explained. “The Nulls were too much like Jango. The Kaminii hadn’t figured out which genes to control for yet. The Null-class didn’t take orders, not to standard. Those six were slated for termination, but Kal Skirata saved them. He had just landed on-planet, a Mando mercenary hired by Jango to train the troopers.”

“Those six?” you echoed. “Were there other Nulls?” 

“There were twelve.” 

You swallowed against the bile that was trying to rise from your twisting stomach. “What happened to the other six?” 

“Embryos weren’t viable,” Alpha said shortly. “They never made it past that point. The six you just met are the only Nulls that ever existed and the only ones who ever will.”

“I… can’t say I’m upset about that,” you admitted.

Alpha huffed a near-silent laugh. “Why did you try to stop them from accessing Ko Sai’s files?” 

“She built a self-destruct trigger into them.” You were satisfied by the look of surprise on Alpha’s face. “Trying an incorrect password destroys all files on the system, and every remote copy that got saved. They didn’t realize their passwords had been locked down while the Kaminoans investigate their internal information.”

“And what was in the records?” he asked, guiding you around a corner with a hand against your back. You drank in the touch like it could sustain you. 

“Genetic information,” you answered. “I was reading it before I left my office. It was all about the way the Kaminoans had altered the Fett gene to create the ideal clone trooper personality. Ko Sai’s words, of course.”

Alpha grunted at that, but didn’t give any other response. 

“Do you think they’ll come back?” you asked after a few moments of silence. 

Alpha glanced sidelong at you. “Not if they know what’s good for them. But that’s why we’re going to your quarters. Better security.” 

You nodded. The two of you were close enough to your room that you didn’t feel the need to make any more conversation. As you entered the code to get into your room, you glanced back at Alpha. He was facing the hallway you had just come from, clearly keeping watch against anyone who might have followed you.

“I just need to brush my teeth, then the ‘fresher is all yours,” you said softly. 

Alpha grunted again, stepping through the door behind you. He worked on the interior panel, setting up additional security measures. There was no such thing as a slice-proof door panel, but those measures would give you some extra time if someone started working to get inside.

You left him to it, brushing your teeth and changing into pajamas before you left the refresher. Alpha had already removed his armor and dimmed the lights, sitting in just his body glove as he waited for the refresher. His leg jiggled with tension. 

As you stepped past each other, Alpha’s fingers rose to stroke down your forearm in a single gentle touch. Then he was inside the refresher and the shower water turned on as you listened. 

You had every intention of being awake when Alpha came back out, but you must have drifted off. The next thing you knew, the bed dipped as Alpha got under the covers behind you. His arm snaked around your torso, pulling you tight against him. You smiled, snuggling a little closer, but frowned. 

Alpha was trembling. 

There was a fine tremor running through his entire body, only perceptible now that you were close enough to feel it. His breathing was slightly irregular, easy enough to note now that you were looking out for it. 

Turning around in his arms wasn’t easy, especially when Alpha’s grip was so tight. But you managed, gently cupping his jaw when you were facing him. It was too dark to see, but the tightness of his jaw muscles under your palm was enough to know what he was feeling. 

“Alpha?” you asked softly. “Are you okay?” 

His breath left him in a shuddering exhale. “Almost lost you, neverd’ika.” 

“Never,” you assured him. “I would have found a way to get free. I wouldn’t leave you like that.” 

He laughed slightly. “You make it sound like a choice.”

“No choice at all,” you countered. “If my choices are between staying with you and letting someone take me away like that… I would have fought like hell.” 

Alpha was quiet, but you could feel the way his lips parted and closed over and over until he decided what he wanted to say. “The fact that you don’t seem concerned is enough to make me worry. Fear isn’t good, but it can keep you alive.” 

“You think I wasn’t scared?” you asked, letting your disbelief come through in your voice. “Alpha, I was terrified. Trem has been a great teacher, but I don’t think there’s much I could have done against six troopers. I think I’m in a bit of shock. When it all hits me, I’ll be a mess for a while.”

“I’ll take care of you if that happens.” 

Alpha’s vow made you smile. “I’ll gladly take you up on that. As long as you let me take care of you now.” 

He inched forward, searching blindly in the darkness until your lips met in a careful kiss. “I have a few ideas about what we could do.”

---

Author's Note - There will be a spicy mini chapter to follow this one. Nothing vital to the plot happens in it - you will not miss anything if you choose not to read it. It will be posted on my NSFW alt account. If you don't know where that is, send me a message and I'll give you the username as long as you have 18+ in your bio. If you're under 18 and find it of your own accord, you're claiming to be mature enough to read adult content.

For those who have not read the Republic Commando series, the Null ARCs and Kal Skirata are fascinating characters! You're seeing them at their most ruthless here, but they have a lot of depth. They're on Kamino to complete their own mission, which can make them come off as antagonists, but life is rarely that simple.

My loose plan is to post one chapter every month, but the spicy chapters don't count toward that number. So I'll see you in a week or two for some 'quality time' with Alpha, and next month to see what happens after this!

I'm so glad to be back! Thank you to everyone who waited so patiently or sent words of encouragement. <3 For anyone new to this story, that long of a hiatus is not typical for me. I don't anticipate it happening again.

[1yyyyyy1]

in regards to your last post about female heterosexuality... i have an observation i always find rather ticklish when talking with male partnered women about the risks of dating men. for example, when we would talk about the terrible things men can and do do to women in relationships, they would describe those men as "toxic" or "bad" men. it was like i could see the gears in their heads turning, trying to "not my man though" their observations.

it's actually funny as well as sad. or we will talk about the health risks of PIV sex and they'll say well it's only dangerous if you have more than one male partner and all i can do is just nod lol.

one of like a million reasons why i choose to have only separatists in my circle now.

I'm of the opinion that men are misogynistic at the baseline, and that men with a potential to be non-violent towards women are genetic outliers, so women insisting on it being the other way around strikes me as some kind of social unawareness. I keep my guard up around women like that because I expect the same unawareness to prevent them from seeing their partner's true character (or, from "picking the right man", if such a thing were possible) and even seep into their opinions on other social matters. Again, this is what I personally rely on when I meet other women because assessing people's social intelligence and knowing whether they can be relied on in difficult circumstances is important no matter how offensive people believe this to be.

Women refusing to acknowledge the dangers of PIV is its own topic, and its implications are much more sinister than "getting back at stupid women who are not as brave as us for facing the reality of PIV" (or whatever petty drama radical feminism positions it as). The very few conversations that surround the negative effects of semen (and the possibility of them being neurological of all things) are often framed as "misogyny" and not the valid concern they are, and while I understand that they are usually brought up in a derogatory context, it is still important medical knowledge that women should be aware of if they are to consent to heterosexual sex. I feel that much of the indignation towards these topics ends up preventing women from learning about female anatomy more than anything else.

Believe it or not, I've met several women who were seemingly aware of the "male nature" yet built their lifestyles around them all the same, and I no longer think that bringing awareness to these subjects is at all the ticket to a feminist society. I'm getting the impression that the only precondition to prioritizing women (and yourself) is, well... The desire to prioritize women and yourself.