#for all that it speaks of love and grief the writing is poor and smart decent lines do not fit the context they are spoken in ! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

s-brant · 3 years

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Pirates and Princesses (8/8)

(gif: @beccs) (PART SEVEN) (SERIES MASTERLIST)

Summary: JJ must confront his childhood trauma when returning home for the first time since his dad went to jail and prevent it from sabotaging his new relationship. Meanwhile, something sinister happens at the Chateau that brings Y/N face to face with her grief over John B’s death.

Word Count: 13.4k

Warnings: Angst, implied sexual content, strong language, parent/child abuse, mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, grief, and fluff.

A/N: Welcome to the final chapter of Tokens! This one has a little bit of everything in it, but it also has detailed scenes about JJ and his dad, so proceed with caution if you’re easily triggered by that topic. The love you guys show this fic warms my heart so much, so thanks to anyone who stuck with this story until this chapter. Hope you enjoy it!

Now that she has been sentenced to both punishments, one as a consequence of the fight with Kacey and the other as a consequence of the stunt she pulled with JJ to break out of ISS, Y/N can confidently say that out of school suspension is superior to in-school suspension by a long shot. Instead of sitting in a humid room with Alec for the duration of multiple school days, she's allowed to stay home, go out surfing, and do whatever she wants in lieu of doing classwork.

She promised herself not to make it a habit, promising the invisible presence of John B that she likes to pretend follows her around that she will never get herself into trouble again, but she sees no problem in enjoying her suspension while it lasts.

For the first few days of her suspension, JJ skipped school to spend it with her. Their memories of the conversation they had at three in the morning on Sunday were fuzzy, but not missing entirely. She noticed a difference in his behavior for the first few hours after they woke up under the tree together for the second time in one week. It wasn't a difference in their relationship or how he treated her, it was a difference in him.

He was quieter than usual as they cleaned up cans of beer and tossed them into the recycling, sending pictures to Kie while she was in class after she made them promise not to throw them in the trash. Rather than cracking jokes or making casual conversation with her, JJ made his way around the yard with the recycling bin in his hands and his head in the clouds. It disappeared as the day progressed, but for a little while, he wasn't completely there.

Today, he went into school instead of ditching to spend extra time with her in between shifts at work and time spent with their friends. Since they can't exceed three consecutive absences without a doctor’s note and he doesn't own a printer or laptop to forage the header from a doctor's office, he had no choice but to part from her this morning.

He bites his lip to contain his smug facial expression at the recollection of her wake up call for him. The hand holding his locker door open for him to lean on in the midst of his not-so-wholesome thoughts of her squeezes the metal hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

The curtains weren't shut all the way when they fell asleep before midnight last night, allowing a shaft of sunlight to shine in and land on his face. But that wasn't what woke him up from the dream he was having. In fact, the reality he opened his eyes to was a hell of a lot better than any dream he remembered.

Most of his memory of those moments spent suspended between consciousness and unconsciousness consisted of feeling her pressing a kiss to his shoulder, then her hands rubbing up and down his waist to slip lower and lower until they settled on the waistband of his underwear. It was then that he woke to find her looking up at him for permission from where she peppered kisses along his chest.

Their eyes met right as she kissed the edge of his nipple with this pleading, needy look that he took pride in causing without actively attempting to. She woke up on the brink of coming undone from a pleasant—to put it tamely—dream about him. With a glimpse at the time displayed on the alarm clock, it didn't take much for her to roll over to wake him up.

It ended with her beneath the sheet, finishing what she started Friday afternoon until he was clutching the pillow beneath his head in the midst of his orgasm. It happened so fast, a fault of how hot he found it to wake up to her wanting him so badly, but it felt slower than it truly was in the early morning haze of exhaustion they felt.

The memory as he relives it is as heady as it felt the first time around. He sees it in fractions; her eyes looking up at his, warm palms finding the familiar planes of his muscular body with the exploratory touch of someone who's never traveled it before, and the intense sensations he felt at the end...It's easy for him to stand here and lose himself in it. Despite the class he has to go to, he bargains with himself for one more second spent in the paradise of his memories before he has to come back to reality.

Reality, as his shitty luck would have it, comes in the form of a familiar feminine voice chirping from behind his back as he replays his morning bliss.

"It's good to see you're alive and well, Maybank."

He decides, based on who he knows he'll see when he turns around, that he might invest in a sharpie to write "Bang head here" on the inside of his locker door for instances like these where he'd rather suffer brain damage than speak to someone he can't stomach the presence of.

When he turns to see Kacey with one arm still stretched to hold his locker open, he doesn't bother concealing the genuine reaction from his face for the sake of her feelings. Any care he had for her and her feelings was thrown to the wind as soon as she decided she could steal from and put her hands on his girl last week. However, after a second of thought, a condescending smirk finds its way to his face.

He says, jerking his chin to vaguely gesture at her bruised up face, "Purple really suits your complexion. It makes your eyes pop, don't you think?"

Though the swelling of her black eye has deflated in the days since the fight that’ll soon tally up to a week, the verbal jab hits right where it intended to if the light leaving her eyes tells him anything. She bounces back after a second, though, ever the relentless pest they've come to see her as.

She offers a sickeningly sweet, yet fake smile to mirror the one gracing his striking features and spins so her back meets the locker beside his, allowing herself to invade his space further.

A collection of Y/N's stickers decorates the inside of his locker door that he briefly entertained the idea of designating as a place to bang his head against. They range from girly, glittery ones to those he willingly picked when she gave him the choice. Whenever they're at his locker together, she sticks one on the inside, and the evidence of the habit catches Kacey's wandering eyes.

Her fingertips brush against the surface of the sticker-covered metal while she ignores his protest of, "Can you not touch my stuff?" to inspect them. Since one of the Pogues in particular is famous for her endless supply of stickers, her expression sours at the thought of the girl responsible for them.

She spares him a quick glance out of the corner of her eye as she continues to analyze the sticker collection against his instructions not to, asking, "Why weren't you at the bonfire?" A failed attempt at a seductive look in his direction makes him fight not to roll his eyes. "After how last year's ended, I thought you wouldn't miss it for the world."

JJ doesn't bother to take a second to think things through before he reaches to slam the door closed with her hand still outstretched inside of it. Watching her pull it away just in time to avoid jamming it in the locker probably pleases him more than it should, but he can't help it. His hand catches on the edge of the door, halting it in place right before it closes where her hand previously rested.

She doesn't look too happy with him when he opens the door with no harm done except for the drop of her stomach when he initially pretended to swing it shut on her bruised knuckles. She didn't get many shots in on Y/N when they fought, but apparently it was enough.

He doesn't bother with the fake niceties she's giving him after the disrespect she showed him, his friends, and, most importantly, his girlfriend. The fact that she thinks she has any right to breathe in his direction, let alone flirt with him, after she stole JB's bandana is criminal. 'Cause not only did she mess with Y/N, she messed with John B on multiple levels, and his loyalty to his best friend hasn't disappeared with death. Kie and Y/N told him everything she said about their departed friend in the locker room last Thursday.

But he's smart enough to know what'll hurt her more, so he doesn't go for the general scolding he imagined giving her in his head. Since he was told everything about the encounter in the locker room, he knows she's still holding their history together near and dear to her heart.

"We stayed home," he says, casual and cool as always, with added emphasis on the first word, "You know how it is, my girl doesn't like parties. Especially not ones with kooks."

Hook, line, and sinker.

She scoffs, "Your girl?"

Looking at her now, he wonders if she was always this stupid, or if this is a new development she's had in the year since he last spent more than a minute or two at a time with her. It’s easier to trick her than it was with Kie and Y/N a few days ago, and those poor girls flew into that trap like moths to a flame.

"That's what I said, isn't it?"

The ire is visible in the way her face tenses up in places, her lips pressing together a little more firmly and her forehead creasing between the brows.

"Doesn't your, um, history bother her?" she asks, and he's gotta give her credit for being a sneaky little shit when given the chance. The girl takes every possible opening she can to strike for a potential weakness. "No offense, but you kinda get around."

He shrugs this time, deciding to drop his casual act and aim straight for the jugular.

"She likes having someone who knows how to fuck her right, actually, but I really appreciate the concern."

Much like Kie's reaction to their matching tattoos in the hot tub the other night, her jaw is unhinged to meet the unswept hallway floor they stand on. It makes him wish Y/N weren't suspended in order for her to see the gobsmacked reaction Kacey has to the harsh dismissal. Though he wouldn't want to incite an extra round of the Kacey vs Y/N WWE showdown by having her watch another girl flirt with him and essentially call him a slut upon rejection, he knows she'd get a kick out of it.

This one's for you, baby, he thinks with a quiet laugh to himself and turns his focus to the sticker collection she so lovingly crafted.

There are plenty of summer themed ones left over from the same pack he gifted her for her birthday with the surfboard sticker she used to tease him, as well as a newer genre of Valentine's Day stickers she started using the closer they grew since first getting together. They're mostly different colored candy hearts with corny phrases ranging from "U SXY THING" to the classic "BE MINE" and one printed with "ANGEL" on it—his favorite by far.

However, others are random ones from her endless stash built up over the years from birthdays and holidays deemed worthy enough by her dad to stop by Dollar Tree for a new pack, so the one he sets his attention on is likely meant for teachers or coaches to give to their students. The opportunity appears too good to be true to him when it clicks, but it isn't.

He peels the sticker off of the locker door, careful not to disturb the ones around it, and leans in closer to her to place it on the front of her tank top.

"Leave us alone or I won't stop her next time," JJ says lowly, past the point of civility, then backs away to slam his locker shut for real this time as his voice raises back to a normal volume, "And keep John B's name out of your mouth, got it?"

All she can do is look down at the sticker placed on her shirt with squinted eyes to try and read it while he walks off in the direction of his next class. It tears away from the fabric with a soft noise, and when she finally reads it, she rolls her eyes.

“Good Try!”

Walking out of school to see the Twinkie parked in the usual spot Y/N takes when she isn't suspended is a delightful treat he didn't know to expect after a rough day in class and his run in with Kacey. His head was hung low on his way to Kie's car to hitch a ride to his house before going home to the Chateau, since he had some things to pick up with his dad out of the picture for the near future, but then he heard her greet them.

JJ's body melts into hers upon contact, and he nearly pushes her up against the closed passenger side door of the van with how hard he hugs her. Though he doesn't want to acknowledge it, his dad has been living in his thoughts more than usual today. Ever since he texted him goodbye, he's been withdrawn inside of his head more and more, and after today's inconveniences, the rising anxiety of his plan to visit home has him two seconds from losing his mind.

Her eyes widen at his zeal, meeting Kie's concerned gaze from over the shoulder she rests her chin on. She stands with her keys swinging around her finger as she watches the couple embrace one another. In an answer to the silent question Y/N asks her in their stare, her lips mouth the words, "His dad," to her.

Deep down, Y/N had a feeling.

It began with his impromptu request to run away with her a few days ago and extended into his uncharacteristically reserved attitude the next morning that receded somewhat, but has yet to fully disappear. There is a part of her that's upset that he hasn't come to her to talk about it, to communicate the way they swore they would, yet she also knows it isn't that simple.

She has to remind herself that she knew what she was getting herself into with him. That's not to say that dating her must be a walk in the park for him, it isn't.

She knows based on the amount of times he had to hold her as she cried, or the time he curtailed her panic attack in this very parking lot, that she hasn't made it easy for him in the aftermath of John B's death. But it's because she knows how it feels that she has such patience with his communication issues.

It's not a conscious choice most times, it's an involuntary blockage preventing the words from being spoken no matter how desperately they long to be. They may have made a promise, but she won't chastise him for succumbing to the same pitfalls as her. It’d be hypocritical.

"Bad day?" she asks.

Her voice is tender with him, prodding gently for a clue as to why he pounced on her on sight. He sinks further into her arms at the sound and lets the sanctity of her touch sway him into submission. Everything about her sets him at ease, if only for a second. Her hand lifts the beat-up red hat from his head to allow the other to brush through his hair.

There's a hum of agreement that she feels vibrating through the center of his chest into hers, and her arms pull tighter around his shoulders in response. This time, when she looks up to see Kie there, she's waving a quick goodbye and setting off toward her car, clearly giving JJ the space he needs.

"We can go to the beach," she says softly, "I have a towel in the back of the van, we can just lay there and talk about it if you want."

The idea of her kind offer to him should add to the comfort he finds in her embrace. It should make him nod and whisper his gratitude to her for being the one person that knows him better than anyone, but it brings him back to the gloomy headspace he was in before seeing her.

It started as a minor distraction when he first arrived at school after carpooling with Kie. It followed him in the quieter moments, only making appearances when he wasn't distracted with more pressing matters. It began as that and built the closer the day came to ending. The sooner his inevitable visit back to his childhood home came, the more he lost himself in his fear, reverting back to a state of helplessness he now occupies with no small amount of shame.

His bottom lip trembles with the urge to cry.

"Can we stop somewhere on the way home first?"

The last place she expected him to drive the Twinkie is here.

As they made their way down each street, taking each turn necessary to bring them closer to the house he seldom let her go to over the course of their lifelong friendship, she felt her heart begin to race. And now, as the van rolls to a stop in the yard in front of his house, she has swallow back the lump in her throat at the sight of it.

She has only been here a few times.

The first time, she was seven years old.

It was a sweltering summer morning in the Outer Banks for her and John B as they set off to retrieve their friend after he missed their plans to meet up at the Chateau for a day of having fun, riding bikes, and playing on the boat. Pirates and Princesses was her favorite game to play with them because JJ would switch roles with her halfway through when she grew tired of being the damsel John B had to rescue from the most cruel and vicious Captain Jesse James Maybank.

The HMS Pogue would rock beneath his feet as he marched across the deck of the boat and took her place as the kidnapped Princess Routledge. He handed off his "sword" to her, a stick he found in the yard, and stood at the edge of the boat with his hands behind his back as though he were a tied up damsel in distress for her to hold captive. The sun setting behind them laid a picturesque backdrop that made the scene all the more vivid to their imaginative young minds.

The boat floated in the afternoon current as John B approached the pair with his best pretend face of worry for the fair Princess Maybank, who had the sharp sword of the pirate queen pressing into his throat with the threat of death should he have tried to escape.

Sometimes, she'd let John B advance on them and tie make believe rope around her wrists and ankles while he and Princess Maybank claimed their victory. Other times, they'd get backed up until the heels of her sneakers hung off the edge of the slippery deck. One move from her brother would have her yell something along the lines of not taking either of them alive, then she'd let her and JJ fall back into the marsh together with gleeful laughs infiltrating the humid air upon their return to the surface.

On the day he didn't show up, none of that happened. She and John B rode their bikes together along sidewalks until they pulled into a driveway marked with the address number he remembered from the other time he sought him out to play before.

Y/N didn't understand what they were hearing when they pushed their kickstands down and called out for their friend, but John B's little face blanched at the sound flooding out of the opened windows of the dilapidated yellow house. It was a combination of banging against the walls, glass shattering, and childlike shouts of frustration and pain. Her big brother placed himself in front of her protectively when the front door opened and smacked against the side of the house, but it wasn't his dad storming out of the house, it was JJ.

His eyes widened at the sight of the siblings standing there, and his heart dropped to his stomach at the realization that they heard it. Maybe not all of it, but based on how the girl peeking out around John B's shoulder looked at him, they heard some.

The van is parked in the exact same place their bikes once were, the exact place she and John B stood years ago when they were first confronted with the harsh reality about their best friend's home life, and he looks like he has fully backpedaled into the state of mind his childhood self inhabited. Even when he turns the key in the ignition and lets the rumbling engine sputter down in silence, he sits in the driver's seat with his lip drawn between his teeth in thought.

Yet as soon as she summons the courage to say something, he takes a deep breath and opens the door without a warning or the typical instruction for her to stay in the car. He doesn't tell her to follow him in, nor does he order her to stay out as he used to when his dad still lived inside. He gives her the choice to make on her own, and, when faced with the opportunity to support him or stay outside like the confused little girl she once was, she chooses the first option.

Her swift steps kick dirt up from the earth onto her ankles as she follows him out of the van to the front steps of the house. She tries not to make her concern for him as evident as it'd be without her intervention on her way up the porch, but it's impossible to erase every sign of it from her face.

It isn't a particularly special or scary house. It's a normal home that'd likely look more inviting if JJ were still living here to mow the lawn and tend to the household upkeep his father saddled him with since he was old enough to be put to work. But she knows better than to trust the street appeal. As he takes her hand to lead them through the threshold of the haunted structure, she is overcome with a sense of creeping trepidation that she can't shake.

"You're sure he isn't here?" she asks.

The entryway is crowded with stacks of mail his father wasn’t bothered to open, as well as empty cardboard boxes that once held cans of beer that are scattered, empty, in various places around the house. Her question is answered by the state of the rooms they breeze past in the direction of his bedroom, but she needed something to say to fill the silence. With them, they usually don’t feel uncomfortable not speaking to each other, but this feels different.

The way he stares out in front of him with his hand squeezing hers hard enough to cut off circulation unnerves her more than the tainted energy of the house itself. He isn't himself. He's a shell of the JJ they know and love, the JJ who is most comfortable tucked away in the safe walls of the Chateau with their friends, not here. If anything, how he is while he's here is the antithesis of his behavior while living with her.

Ever since John B died, he's practically moved in with her. When they're hidden away in her house without the reminders of his home life in sight, he's usually the caretaker of the relationship. It comes naturally to their dynamic, both with him being slightly older and his promise to take care of her, but everything is flipped here. It's an alternate reality for him, or, perhaps, actual reality smacking him in the face after a carefully constructed two months in utopia with her.

They come to a stop in front of his closed bedroom door.

"He's gone," he says, not even sparing a glance at her for reasons she can't decipher, "He texted me a few days ago to say goodbye."

With that, he turns the doorknob and lets the door swing open to reveal the bedroom she only saw one other time.

The second time, she was thirteen years old.

It was a Friday.

Since his dad was supposed to be at work, they stopped at his house on their way home from school exactly like they did today so he could share with their friends what he got from his cousin the night before. Being the good girl she was, she didn't even know what he was showing her when he dug it out of the backpack in the bottom of his closet.

Her brows furrowed at the ziploc bag, more specifically the contents inside of it. She was knelt down on the floor in front of the opened closet door with her shoulder pressed up against his to inspect it. The dried green cluster of a plant didn't look like anything she'd seen before, and she couldn't help but ask him what the hell it was rather than react the way he knew the others would.

"What is it? It looks like dried up moss."

JJ laughed and pulled another bag with rolling papers and a grinder stowed inside.

"It's weed. My cousin Ricky gave me a discount since—"

He halted mid-sentence abruptly enough to startle her, his head turning in the direction of where he heard a trunk pulling up to the front of the house. Her stare was still set on where he was holding the plastic bags in his hands, and she noticed, after he stopped speaking in reaction to his dad coming home, that his hands began trembling. It was so minimal, she almost didn't catch it until she saw the bag wavering under the light coming in from his window.

Before she could open her mouth to say anything more, she felt his hands on her shoulders shoving her into the closet. He followed in closely behind her and crawled in until they were both crammed into the confined space together. With the closet doors shut in front of them, he clamped a hand over her mouth, whispering in her ear for her to be quiet.

She stands with her arms crossed over herself in the center of his room, and though nothing has yet to be said or done to convince her anything is wrong, that's the exact reason why she feels so unnerved by the entire experience of coming here.

He's silent.

The closet doors are wide open as he stuffs the rest of the clothes he had yet to bring to the Chateau into the biggest bag he could find. He rips through his belongings in a fit of melancholy driven anger. His thoughts are swirling with similar memories to the ones she conjures from being here again, but his are tinged with a darkness hers don't have, even with hearing him crying in pain as a child and hiding in the closet with his hand smothering her mouth to evade his dad.

JJ visibly grimaces at the memories he's forced to relive in flashes with every glimpse he gets of the room he spent so much time hiding in. It used to be more tolerable to be here, or at least easier to suffer through. At least he was used to it before, but he got so accustomed to life somewhere else that the second he was confronted with coming back, he started to fall apart.

Whatever he can't live without, he finds space for it in the bag and prepares to leave the rest behind. But every object he touches and step he takes around the room brings him back to the person who he spent his adolescence simultaneously fleeing and wanting more from. More notably, it brings him back to the train of thought that has been nagging him ever since he texted him over the weekend.

The third and final time she came here was over the summer.

It happened right before Hurricane Agatha waged war on the island, when none of the Pogues heard from JJ for two days after he said he had to go home to help his dad with something. She didn't want to track him down to his house after they went over twenty-four hours without a single message. She didn't want to have to go back to the house that gave her chills to think about, let alone go to again after they hid in his closet when they were younger, but he gave her no other choice.

What was she supposed to do except go check on him where he last said he'd be? After all, if she lived in the hazardous environment he did, he'd do the exact same for her. If their friends were involved in her thoughts at the time, they would've gone out on a limb to say he would've gone beyond what she did to protect her if the situation were flipped. If he knew someone was hurting her, he would've come in swinging first and asked questions later, but, in her defense, he strictly told her to never come back to his house. By walking over in the first place, she was breaking one of the fundamental rules of their friendship.

Nevertheless, she found herself crouching around the side of his house to find his bedroom window and check if he was in there. Kie and Pope weren't aware of what was happening with his dad yet, but she and John B accidentally found out years ago, so she wasn't wondering why he wasn't answering them, she was wondering if he was alive.

Part of her truly thought underneath it all that Luke might've killed him. He might've been too drunk or high and went too far when beating him, too far to the point where he didn't want to risk going to jail to take him to the hospital for help. She couldn't live with herself if she didn't check, and if he got pissed at her for showing up against his wishes and didn't want to speak to her ever again, she could live with that.

She knocked on his window in a cadenced beat loud enough for it to heard through the room but not any further. After the first series of knocks, no one came to the window. It ripped her heart to pieces to wonder if she'd see him again as she continued to knock and allowed the sound to increase in volume in hopes that maybe he was asleep, but it didn't bring anyone to the window.

It wasn't until she turned back around to go to the front of the house again that she bumped right into the solid wall of his chest and was pushed back up against the house. The question of what she was doing there was on the tip of his tongue, but she said something that stopped him from asking it.

Her arms were thrown around his shoulders in a desperate bear hug.

"Oh God, JJ, you scared me half to death!" she cried into the front of his shirt, "I thought he killed you!"

He can't help but think of it as he packs his belongings away for a final time to bid his hellish childhood home goodbye: What kind of life are they going to have together if they can't get off this island? Running away may have been an idealistic drunken fantasy for him to entertain after his conversation with Pope got him to admit his true feelings for her, but they both know his consistency can't be trusted.

One moment, he's planning to tell her. The next, a day like today comes along, sweeps his legs out from beneath his body, and he's questioning whether it's worth it to force her to put up with his fickle commitment to her. It isn't fair to her, is it?

Right now is just about when he'd normally start to hyperventilate with an oncoming wave of panic, and he does, but he can't let it fully sweep into him with her here. He fights the urge to smack his head with the heel of his palm, as if that'd forcibly remove the poisonous thoughts infiltrating his mind and ruining the careful work they've done together to remedy their issues with communicating their feelings.

Just like you ruin everything, a thought whispers in the corner of his mind. What made you think this would be any different?

His actions around the room have turned somewhat aimless and distracted, which she notices as soon as he starts to disintegrate into a mess of heavy breaths and self-sabotaging thoughts. She picks up on the shift in his energy as soon as the anxiety starts to wash over him, and she'll be damned if she continues to stand here quietly to let it happen.

It's one thing if he's being silent because being here upsets him, or if he simply doesn't know what to say, but she refuses to let him tailspin into a mental breakdown without doing something to stop it. Whether he knows it or not, after what they went through with him trying to push her away last week, she knows what's occurring within his mind right now.

He flinches at the feeling of her hand grabbing his shoulder to turn him to face her at first, and when she reaches again with her other hand to try to hold his hand as he cries, he shrugs off her touch.

"JJ..." she lets the solemn sound of her own voice murmuring his name trail off, "it's just me."

His head shakes at her consoling words. Everything else inside of his mind is so earth-shatteringly loud, he can't drown it out with logic or reason to bring himself away from the memories of his dad. Those intrusive thoughts keep attacking him with doubled, then tripled force the harder he tries to resist them, and he's so exhausted from it. All of it—the memories, his dad going to jail, and his inability to accept her love to its fullest extent without convincing himself she'll abandon him—is exhausting.

This time, when she rests her hand on his shoulder, he swats it away as the frustration of today crushing him with the force of an avalanche. Not to hurt or scare her, but to get her hands off of him before he bursts out of his skin with the sickness it stirs in his stomach. So detached from himself, he anticipates pain from every touch she gives him, and he knows it hurts her.

JJ hardly recognizes his own voice as he backs away from her a step and says, "Don't."

He can tell it hurts her based on how she looks at him immediately after, but he can't handle being touched right now. How did this happen so quickly? It was overwhelming when they first parked outside, but as soon as he stepped foot inside, it was as if a switch was flipped inside of him and all of the buried feelings he kept hidden over the past two weeks exploded into this.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"You need to leave. I just-I can't breathe and"—He still refuses to look up from the ground or see her face as he paces around the room with no real intent in mind—"You can't see me like this."

That is what breaks her out of her soft spoken, timid attitude to handle the situation the way it needs to be handled. Their natural dynamic worked best for him to take charge when she had her panic attack because JJ acts first and thinks later. He saw that she was in distress and jumped in to help her before things got worse rather than allowing her to keep him at an arms length where he couldn't do anything about it.

Taking a page from his rule book, she takes action.

The room surrounding them is in a state of disarray from him searching through it for the items of clothing and objects now stashed in his duffel bag. There are multiple obstacles in her way as she steps between them like navigating a minefield to reach him after he backed away in instinctual fear, but they don't stop her from reaching him. Nothing could.

Y/N walks right up to him and reaches to grasp his face between her hands, forcing him to stop pacing around and actually look at her for the first time since they arrived her so he hears what she says. To say the least, the way he looks right now is enough to make her cry. There are tears welled up to the brims of his blue eyes, his lips are downturned with his sobs, and he's staring at her like she's about to strike him.

She says it as slowly and clearly as she needs to get it through his head, "He's not here," and before he manages to squeeze out another word of doubt between his rapid inhalations, she cuts in, "Take deep breaths."

He isn't listening to her.

The movement of his chest that hits hers from how close they stand to each other has yet to settle into the familiar pace she remembers from nights of falling asleep with the rhythm of his breaths beneath her head.

Her eyes search his face frantically, from left to right and top to bottom, for any sign of the person she's known for years, but she doesn't see him. Instead, she sees the same panicked child her and John B saw the first time they visited this house. It's uncanny how similar the expression in his face is. It feels to her as if she's been hurled back in time to the moment itself, and when she tries to think about what would've worked with him back then, she doesn't know what else to do except help him escape.

So, with the helplessness of having to watch him turn into a sobbing, incoherent mess, she decides to step into the darkness with him and do what seven year old Y/N would've done. Just like their games of make believe, of pirates and princesses, she assumes the role John B would have and rescues him from what holds him captive. It’s his own mind in this case, but, in the physical sense, it's the house.

She drops her hands from his face and takes his hand in hers to drag him out of the room. The packed bag sits on the floor in their wake as she pulls him back through the bedroom door and into the living room, not caring about what they came here to do.

It doesn't matter anymore.

The various rooms of his dad's house pass by them in a blur as she leads him down the hallway to the front door with one sole objective in mind: get him out of here. If he wants his stuff to bring back to the Chateau, she'll go back inside and get whatever he needs her to, but she isn't letting him inside of this house again. Not under her watch.

Thankfully, since he is undeniably stronger than her and she wouldn't have stood a chance, he doesn't fight it. He stumbles after her guiding hand the same way he always has, just like how he followed her back to the Chateau after she and John B saw him that day when they were kids. She led the way as he sat on the handlebars of her brother's bike, and he watched her hair flutter in the wind with the momentum of their bicycle spokes until the tears dried up.

He watches her drag him out of the home until they've reached the safety of the yard at the bottom of the porch steps, and as soon as the soles of her shoes meet the dirt, she feels his hand slipping out of hers.

"JJ?"

She turns around to see him clutching his chest, rubbing his hand along the front of his shirt over his heart as though it'll loosen up the tightened muscles preventing him from catching his breath. His body weight is leaned onto the railing of the porch steps for support. He's partially slumped on it, looking at her desperately, like she somehow knows the answer to every question screamed inside of his head, and she has never felt as useless.

"You're gonna leave," JJ says through the gasps and cries that leave his cheeks stained with tears.

When she reaches out again to help him remain upright without leaning over the railing, he doesn't shove her hands away as he did inside of his bedroom. It's a small battle won, but she takes it as a win nonetheless.

"What are you saying? I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere—"

"You're gonna leave! Everybody does! My mom, John B, my dad, and you"—his head falls to look at the ground instead of her, and she watches him work through it in his head—"I mean, look at me. You don't want this."

"Don't tell me what I want," she says.

Her voice remains as steady and calm as she can force it to be amidst the turbulent situation, but the way he said it...It takes her right back to sitting in the back of the Twinkie with him at the Cherry Bowl, except it's ten times worse. That felt like a break up, but based on what he's saying, this is one. She hasn't prepared herself for the heartache she feels in response to it.

"You don't want me, you just think you do 'cause I was there after John B died, but you don't. You're gonna go off, find some perfect guy that isn't as fucked up as me, and have a great life somewhere else, but it ain't here," JJ says, his breathing evening out with the distraction of the argument to keep him tethered tor reality, "And it won't be with me."

He can see it every time he's looked at her and debated saying those three titular words that have been floating around in his head since he first met her.

How could she want someone who can't walk into his childhood bedroom without breaking down, or someone who still has years-old scars from cigarette burns on his skin when she touches him? Her bright future contrasted with his pre-designated fate on the Cut, her personality better matched with someone more similar to her, her life continuing on whether he's there or not—it's his worst nightmare, but he's prepared to see it through.

What he doesn't expect is for her to hold her ground.

"You honestly think I'm buying into that bullshit?" she asks.

"What?"

She doesn't put it softly, she states facts with as much harshness as his cruel fantasy had, "You're trying to push me away and I won't let you."

Her typically sweet, soft features have hardened into a bitter expression he's sure he mirrors. The arms holding his waist to keep him upright move to climb up his chest and cup his face between her hands with all of the gentleness her face and voice don't have right now.

She sees right through him.

When he tries to look away again, to avert his eyes to make what he's trying to do easier on himself by not having to look at her when he does it, her grasp on his face holds firm. Her hands guide his chin back up so they're face to face, and he realizes what a mistake everyone makes in assuming her this dainty, broken girl whose only source of strength came from the brother she lost. She's a forest fire.

"You're not hearing what I'm saying—"

Y/N interjects, "I am hearing what you're saying, I'm just saying it's bullshit."

She refuses to let him off the hook, and though it frustrates him on the surface, deep down, it makes him fall in love with her all over again. Her insistence against his speech about her leaving him proves him wrong more than anything else could, 'cause he gave her the perfect chance to dip and she shot it down instantly.

The house looms behind them as a menacing presence that threatens to take control of him again, but she doesn't let it. She keeps his eyes on her no matter how many times he tries to look away and doesn't let anything get in the way of what she says next.

"You think that if you push me away and get me to leave you right now, it'll hurt less than it would if I did it later, and I don't accept that. I won't take the bait and let you torture yourself anymore, okay? I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I'll never leave you. Not willingly, anyway."

She looks into his eyes, and this time its softer, more loving, and he's never felt as understood as he does when she continues to speak.

"I'm in love with you. Whether it scares you or not, it's the truth, and I'll never stop saying it. If you think that your issues with your dad are gonna change that for me, you've officially lost your mind." Their noses brush as she leans in to ghost a kiss over his mouth and pulls away a second later to whisper, her forehead pressed to his, "I love you, JJ. Stop being so stubborn and just let me."

His next breath in trembles as he lets her words sink in, and he's stuck at a crossroads inside of himself without a clue of what to do.

The breeze blows her hair away from her face, the afternoon sunshine painting her golden, and when he sees her hair flutter in the air like it did so many years ago, he can't help but feel as calm as he did during their bike ride home. The further away he got from his dad and the house where it all happened, the calmer he grew, and it hits him at this moment that he's so taken aback by her confession to him, he forgot why he was so upset.

It's sobering. The intoxication of his panic hurtled him back in time to the frightened, childlike state of mind his dad's violent abuse often sent him to, but it was hearing her say those words he's feared for weeks that brought him back. Like the jolt of a defibrillator, he's roused back to life with more clarity than before.

She loves him, but, perhaps more importantly, she said she'd never leave him, and that is what he needed to hear more than anything. That is the statement worth more to him than the four letter word he has agonized over endlessly. No one else every attached the promise of "I love you" with the stipulation of it lasting forever. They said the empty words and contradicted it with their actions, but she hasn't done that. Her actions spoke the words long before her mouth did.

He sighs.

It's a deep, yearning sigh that sends him melting into her with the acceptance of what he's denied for too long. He savors the hands cradling his head, as well as the body pressed up against his that he has memorized down to every beauty mark and imperfection, and makes the right choice.

It isn't like it was the night at the Cherry Bowl, or the night he spoke to Pope about it. It still takes more bravery than he possesses to form the words, but there isn't a physical incapability stopping him anymore. It's just him against the trauma beckoning him into its trap again, and he won't let it lure him back into that house.

"Alright," JJ says to her through a sniffle in acceptance to her command, as if he were agreeing on afternoon surfing plans rather than something as monumental as allowing someone to love him, then continues onto with a timid tone, "I love you too."

Before he can watch for her reaction, she's surging forward through the few inches of space left between them to connect their lips in a kiss.

It's vastly different to the kiss they shared in the hallway at school last Friday. In contrast to that one, the reigning emotion within him that drives the kiss after the hesitant beginning doesn't lead them into increased intensity, it gets gentler. It doesn't explode into chaos and passion, it's a tired kiss that he never wants to retreat from. It's the physical manifestation of his feelings for her underneath the guarded exterior he uses to protect himself: gentle and yielding, yet undeniably powerful.

He feels her smiling through her tears against his mouth. In the face of everything that happened this afternoon, he doesn't feel like he should be smiling back at her, but he does. He smiles while kissing her with tears streaming down his face, still reeling from his traumatic response to coming home for the final time, and wonders how a person can feel such contradicting emotions all at once.

Y/N is the one who starts to pull away first, though it's only to check in on him. If she had it her way, she could stay here with him until the sun sets, but he did just come back from the brink of a full-blown panic attack, so she can't in good conscience ignore his well-being for the momentary bliss of their love confessions.

Her thumb brushes over his bottom lip, her smile drooping with worry as she asks, "Wanna spend the rest of the day on the boat? You always say being on the water makes you feel better. Maybe it'll make it easier to talk about it."

His Adam's apple bobs with how he swallows the lump in his throat.

"Can we maybe take baby steps for now? I don't think I can handle telling you all that shit yet."

It was already enough to allow her to follow him into the house, watch him break down into a fit of panic no one else has seen him in, and tell her he loved her, but it'd cross the line into uncharted territory to talk about everything between him and his dad so openly. Between the minor annoyance of dealing with Kacey to this hellish visit home, he thinks he's reached his quota on feeling uncomfortable today.

She nods in agreement.

"Baby steps."

Drawn back to each other by a force stronger than gravity, they collide again, but it isn't a kiss this time. It's a hug charged with all of the previously unspoken emotions they've buried inside of themselves for years, the same hug she gave him the last time she came to this house with the fear of his potential death lingering in her thoughts.

She throws herself at him with the same desperation she did that day and relishes the feeling of his muscular arms returning the embrace until their bodies are tangled together. She'd usually never refer to something as inherently affectionate as an embrace as violent, but it's the closest she can come to capturing how it feels as their bodies meet. It makes her lose her footing on the bottom step they stand on together, teetering on the edge she'd surely slip off of with the force if not for him keeping her steady.

He's about to say something, a thank you to her for calling him out on his bullshit and not letting him go that easily, when the grating sound of her ringtone blares from the back pocket of her denim shorts.

The contact popping up on the screen along with a series of frantic messages when she pulls away from him to answer shows Pope's name.

Pope You and JJ need to get back to the Chateau ASAP!!

The van doors slam shut behind Y/N and JJ as soon as it rolls to a stop in front of the Chateau.

Under the assumption that something dire happened, as in injury or death or catastrophic damage to the house itself, they bolted off of that porch faster than they knew they could move. She only turned back when she remembered the packed back of JJ's things they abandoned on his bedroom floor and, not wanting him to reenter the house, she brought it back to the Twinkie in record time.

They're preparing to trample up the porch into the house like a stampede of animals when they hear Kie calling them over to the backyard and change direction.

"No one's hurt!" she shouts, knowing that was likely where their minds went after everything they went through during the summer, "You have to see this though, I don't know who did it!"

Sticks and fallen leaves crunch beneath her feet on her way around the side of the house. Her mind races with the possibility of what could've happened that didn't hurt their friends but necessitated a series of texts and calls as frantic as the ones she received at JJ's house. She drove over here in defiance of the speed limit, something she rarely does, and prayed nothing terrible was happening.

It gave her flashbacks to when she found out John B and Sarah died in the storm. The pedal beneath her foot brought the van to an uncomfortably swift speed, then she remembered the sound of Shoupe's voice when he gave them the news. JJ warned her to slow down, then she remembered how it took multiple people to help her restrain him from attacking the new sheriff for letting his men drive their friends into their deaths.

At first, she doesn't realize what's wrong.

Kiara and Pope are standing and waiting for them across the grass near the large tree that sits as a centerpiece to their yard. Based on the body language screaming their frustration and the tears in their eyes, she can tell something bad did happen, but it's not clear what it is until she looks past them to the tree. More specifically, until she looks at what's on the tree.

"Oh my god," she whispers to herself.

Her hand is already up to cover her mouth and conceal the instantaneous frown besmirching her previously relaxed face. They both are stopped in their tracks halfway to where their friends are standing, and she can’t hear JJ's reaction over the rising volume of her hysterical thoughts.

Spray painted in red on top of their memorial for John B are the words "COP KILLER" in bold letters that conceal what they burned into the tree trunk for his gravestone. It sticks out from the beauty of the greens, browns, blues, and swathes of other earthy tones composing the scenery around the Chateau like a thorn amongst flowers, so much so that she wonders how she didn't instantly see it when they rounded the corner to come back here.

Yet that isn't the only thing amiss in the peaceful sanctuary they call home, there are random things strewn around the ground around the tree. An old t-shirt spray painted with the word "murderer" on the front, four ripped up envelopes, and a gorgeous mahogany jewelry box...broken on the grass.

The freshly turned dirt they had the contents of the box buried beneath is scattered around the trashed area as well. It clicks with her a few seconds late that whoever came here to do this must have seen the pinwheel she put in the ground to mark the "grave" and dug it up to add insult to injury.

She moves forward without consciously realizing it and stumbles until she reaches the first object of the debris field. Before this, she was doing a masterful job of holding in her cries, but as soon as she crouches down to pick up the pieces of the jewelry box, the lid snapped clean off the hinges to separate it from the bottom section, it comes rushing out of her against her will. The first unrestrained keen is the first thing to snap JJ out of his shell shocked trance.

He walks after her as fast as his legs will take him without breaking into a run, but she isn't letting him get close before she puts the box back down and shuffles forward to collect the torn letter remains. She doesn't want them to get blown away by the wind anymore than they already might have been, so she scrambles to gather the pieces until they're cupped in her hands to protect them.

"Why?" she asks and looks up at Kie and Pope with tears dripping down her face, "Why would anyone do this? Who would do this?"

Pope says, "My guess is as good as yours. We didn't see anyone leaving when we got here, so it must've happened before school ended. This is all we saw before we called you guys."

For a second or two, JJ is grasping at straws for why this happened and who did it like the rest of them are, but then something Pope said makes it click into place. It sets off a domino effect in his mind as he brings back the memory of a certain offspring of satan being absent from gym this afternoon despite being at school earlier, since his encounter with her before Physics made him, unfortunately, aware of her existence again.

His face is set in anger, jaw clenching with the tension of him grinding his teeth together, and he takes his hat off to fidget with it between his hands for a second. Their friends are too focused on her crying to see him contemplating it, but as soon as he speaks, they look up to see him setting his hat back onto his head in preparation to leave and track Kacey down.

Y/N's head snaps up from the torn letters in her hands to the sight of him storming off across the yard with his only goodbye being the words, "I'm gonna kill that bitch."

Her and Pope stare after him in shock, unable to put the pieces together about who that "bitch" is, but Kie doesn't miss a single beat. While Y/N is crumpled over on the ground in tears, she's rushing after JJ before he can approach the bike parked in front of the house. He doesn't even make it five steps before he feels her hands latching onto his wrist to stop him.

She asks, "Who the hell are you talking about? And why would they do this?"

His eyes narrow at her. His unreleased frustration for the situation in general and having to watch Y/N cry after an emotional afternoon together comes rushing out when he snaps at her.

"Kacey. She talked shit at school and I put her in her place. Now, if you don't mind, I'm gonna pay her a little visit."

He yanks his arm sharply towards himself to free it from her grip, but she's a step ahead of him. Quicker than he can think to stop her, Kie swipes the keys hanging out of his back pocket away and throws them to Pope, who, bless his heart, can't catch to save his life. The key ring jingles with its contact at the dead center of his chest, and she mouths an apology to him before turning back to face JJ.

"What the fuck, Kie?"

He makes to stomp past her and retrieve the keys from Pope only to be stopped by her hands reaching out to grab his shoulders.

"Listen to me, you can't go anywhere. Look at her," she whispers lowly enough to keep Y/N from hearing, pointing behind her to where she sits on the ground with Pope knelt beside her, "I wouldn't put it past Kacey to pull a stunt like this. I'm just as mad as you, but revenge can wait and you know it. She needs you."

The fury visible in his expression is subdued by looking past Kie's shoulder to see Y/N crying softly to Pope about the vandalized memorial.

The last time he saw her so distraught over something, it was the day they made the memorial and buried the box in the first place. She sits on her knees with her mom's broken jewelry box between them, shuddering with the sobs she has no control over, and pours the torn paper into the empty bottom half of the box. Exhausted to the core, she looks more like a sullen, kicked puppy than she does herself.

It makes his anger-fueled instincts that urge him to hunt Kacey down and do something, anything he can to make her feel the pain they do right now bubble down into sorrow. It's visible in his eyes when he looks at her.

Kie knows she's gotten under his skin when he sighs, sparing a parting glance to the bike in the driveway, and nods once at her before setting off back to where they're sitting in the grass.

Meanwhile, Y/N is stuck staring down at the disarray of her backyard with nothing but pain aching through her to the bone.

Her brother did wrong things sometimes as a consequence of being human, but never this, never something worthy of having his name dragged through the mud and being branded a murderer after his death. He stole scuba gear from Ward and broke dozens of laws in their hunt for the gold, but he never crossed that line into moral bankruptcy. Rafe did, and it kills JJ to see someone like Kacey do this to his best friend while hanging off of Rafe and his friends like a leech.

The fabric of his worn t-shirt is tarnished by the dried paint clinging to the front of it to the spell the lie written there, and her vision blurs with tears for what feels like the millionth time in the span of an hour. First, it was JJ. Now, it's John B, and she can't help but wonder if the heartache will ever end. It began to feel better over the course of the week, her grief for him slowly beginning to slip from her mind until now. Until the storm clouds converged again to batter her with another wave of it.

Through the deafening volume of her mind racing with thoughts and feelings to process what's happened, she hears Pope shuffling around to stand on his feet. Then, another person sits down in his place and scoots closer until their bodies are touching, and she knows it's him. She doesn't have to wait to hear his voice or look to see his face, she can tell based on the feeling of his touch and the smell of him she's so intimately familiar with, yet couldn't describe it aloud if she tried.

He doesn't smother her. He sits close enough to touch her and doesn't push it any further.

The background of the pale, cloudless sky frames him in the foreground like the subject of a painting—a living, breathing painting that she could study endlessly. The other trees planted in the yard's leaves flutter distantly behind him and try to draw her gaze away, but she keeps her eyes on him.

Maybe that's how it is, she thinks.

Maybe it'll get better and worse in a dance that'll only stop when they're no longer here to agonize over it. Maybe this is what moving on from John B will always be like. It'll feel like they've made strides in the right direction, then something will come along to shatter it to sharp pieces that'll reopen their stitched up wounds. If that's the case, at least the four of them have each other to lean on when it gets worse again.

JJ sits with her and lets her crawl onto his lap, resting her head on his shoulder, until the sun sinks below the horizon.

The gentle bobbing of the HMS Pogue at the surface of the water steadies her amidst her eddying thoughts. It keeps her present to the moment the way the ropes tying the boat to the dock keeps it from floating adrift into the marsh. It's a motion engrained in her from the start of her life until now from countless days spent on the water. Whether it be for fishing, swimming, or playing make believe with her boys all those years ago, it's as much a part of her as her personality or body itself.

JJ was right about one thing: being out on the water makes it easier to think.

He hasn't followed her out since she woke up before sunrise and snuck out of bed to come here. Despite her efforts not to wake him, he woke up when she disentangled her body from his, silently cursing the fact that they always cuddle so closely, and he tried to pull her back to him with a whine of displeasure in his groggy, half-asleep state. Sleep finally found them after hours of staying up together to talk about what Kacey did, unable to relax from the chaos of yesterday, so he wasn't prepared to wake up that soon.

"Go back to sleep, angel," she whispered as she hovered over him, brushing a chaste kiss to his lips that he was too tired to return.

That was the last time she saw him since this morning, and now that the sun has risen to its peak in the sky without her moving an inch from her perch atop the bow of the boat, she's begun to wonder if he's awake yet. It isn't uncommon for them to sleep in for half of the day when there isn't school or work, so it isn't surprising to her that he's just now waking up when she hears the back door to the Chateau opening and closing.

Unbeknownst to her, JJ has been awake the entire morning since she left bed.

They were so attached to each other yesterday night, he didn't have the time to put it together without her seeing and ruining the surprise, but once he heard the door to the porch close to signify her leaving, he kicked the blankets off of himself and got to work. He wasn't originally planning on starting so early, since they stayed up late into the night together, but once he woke up to the feeling of her sneaking out of his arms, he was too awake to fall back asleep.

The sound of his footsteps on the dock warns her of his approach, but she doesn't raise her head from where she rests it in her palms to stare out at the water.

"I was wondering when you'd finally wake up," she says.

There's another few steps, then the boat jostles with his weight stepping onto it.

He doesn't say anything to her in response. The only clue she gets as to what he's doing are the footsteps on the deck that lead closer to her until she feels him sitting down on the bow next to where she is. And she's about to open her mouth to ask if he's okay when he sets something down in front of her.

It's a shoe box.

Y/N turns to see him, eyes flickering over his tired face, and looks back at the box with furrowed brows.

"What is this?"

His hair is messy, exactly how it was when she left him in bed this morning, and if she weren't more focused on the mysterious box he plopped down in front of her, she'd be combing through it with her fingers. He's gotten used to those casual displays of affection from her; how she runs her hands through his hair on mornings before school when he forgets to brush it, or when she fixes a button on his flannel that he missed.

JJ's lips are tipped in a smile, and she can't help but blush with how he looks at her. She never used to see it, but he has always looked at her like this. Like he's hopelessly, utterly in love with her. Even before they lost John B, back when he'd expend all of his romantic and sexual attention on girls he hardly knew, he still looked at her this way.

He gestures at it and says, "Open it."

The lid of the box is coated in a freshly dried layer of blue paint to match the shade of the sky overhead. She knows instantly that he must have dug through the arts and crafts box she specifically labeled with a warning for him and John B to stay out. It's painted with aimlessly sloppy brushstrokes and stickers placed at every corner of the cardboard box, all of which she recognizes from the stash she kept under her bed alongside the India ink he borrowed last Friday.

As she gives him a skeptical look and reaches to lift the lid off of the shoe box, she makes a mental note to rewrite the label on the arts and crafts box without the warning for him to keep out. Since John B isn't here to steal anything from it and JJ never follows that rule anyway, it's redundant at this point.

Any skepticism is washed away from her face as soon as she flips the lid open to reveal what's inside. It leaves her speechless as she looks down at it all.

"JJ..." she murmurs in awe.

Sitting at the bottom of it is a folded up t-shirt she saw JJ wear multiple times, but never again since John B died. He refused to glance at the shirt his best friend gave him the year before they never saw him again, let alone dig it out of the corner of her closet where he keeps his things...until now.

But that's a scratch on the surface of all of the things about his gift that stuns her to silence. The next thing to catch her immediate attention is a picture she hasn't seen in years.

It's one that Big John took of the three of them together right where she and JJ are sitting. She was much younger in it, flashing a toothy grin with her arms thrown over both boys' shoulders. To her left, John B was leaning his head on her shoulder. To her right, JJ was wearing an eyepatch they crafted out of an old black shirt he stole from his dad. It was cut with the kitchen scissors and tied around the back of his head in a knot.

She brushes her thumb over John B's face, then sets the crinkled photograph back down atop the folded shirt and moves her attention to the last surprise.

Letters.

Torn up pieces of paper painstakingly taped back together sit one on top of the other, some missing pieces here or there, and it makes her mouth part in shock. Her hands shuffle the letters apart to see each one and recognize the handwriting: Kie's bubbly, swirling letters, Pope's neat cursive, hers, and JJ's chicken scratch writing that she's able to decipher from years of proofreading his essays.

She pictures him at her desk all morning while she was sitting out here, ripping tape off of the roll and arranging the puzzle pieces of the ripped letters until he was sure he got it right. It made him want to rip the hair from his scalp, but he sat there and pushed through the frustration to make it as perfect as he could for her. The missing pieces were primarily from Kie's letter, which fluttered away on a balmy breeze when Kacey tore it up and threw it to the ground, but the one he wanted her to have the most wasn't missing more than a single piece.

Y/N looks up from the letters held like a precious treasure in her hands to see him watching her with that same classic JJ smile on his face, but he doesn't let her get a word in yet.

"Go on," he says, leaning closer to pull his letter to John B out and place it on top of the pile for her to read, "I want you to read it."

"You didn't let me read it when I asked before though, are you sure you—"

He interrupts her before she can worry herself over it, "Dude, just read it. I promise I'm fine with it. I want you to."

The letters crinkle under her touch as she looks back down and smooths them out on the deck enough to read through the clear tape. With one last confirming glance to him for permission, she takes a deep breath and reads the first line.

Dear John B,

You really know how to keep a guy on his toes, don't you? You really outdid yourself on this one. I was so sure we were gonna make it, but I guess you had to go all Romeo and Juliet on us, huh? As long as you and Sarah are happy macking on each other in heaven, it's okay.

In all seriousness, I fucking miss you, bro. I miss you more than I realized a person could miss another person. Whenever I need to talk to you again, I don't know what to do. I guess that's why it's good that Y/N made me write this.

Also, I'm really sorry for—

"What does it say there? There's a whole chunk missing," she murmurs.

He scoots close enough to her that she can feel his body warmth radiating onto her through the shoulder of his flannel. Sunlight reflects on the silver rings decorating his fingers as he holds one side of the paper to tilt it enough for him to squint at.

"Macking, I think. It's supposed to say "I'm sorry for macking on your sister."

—macking on your sister. You can totally kick my ass for it, but before you come back from the grave to murder me, let me defend myself, okay? She isn't just another girl for me, John B.

I think you knew it before I did.

Last summer, you asked me straight up if we were hooking up behind your back after I kissed her in front of you on the porch. I laughed in your face, but you were right.

You saw everything before me, man. You knew I loved her since we were kids and waited for us to come to you about it, so that's gotta mean something, right? I hope it means you wouldn't be mad at me for this.

I swear I won't fuck it up with her, but you already know that. That's why you asked me to take care of her,. I didn't know why at the time but I do now. I won't let you down.

I'm keeping my promise.

- JJ

P.S. Don't miss me too much. We'll be shotgunning beers together up there before you know it.

There are tears blooming in her eyes when she lifts her gaze from the tattered paper to look at him again, but they aren't sad. For once, the tears slipping down her cheeks are happy tears, not born from grief, sadness, and pain, but bittersweet happiness.

They're caught staring at each other for a second before he asks her shyly, "It isn't too sappy or anything, is it? 'Cause I thought it—"

"C'mere," is the only thing she can get out before she's tugging him forward by the front of his shirt to kiss him.

JJ stumbles a little with the unexpected force of her pulling him to her, but he takes it in stride. He steadies himself and lets his hands shoot out to grapple for purchase on her waist, keeping her pressed up against him tightly as he kisses her back.

And it doesn't get much better than this, does it? This is it for him. He meant what he wrote to John B, he won't fuck it up with her, especially not because of his trauma with his dad getting inside his head and sabotaging his relationship with her. This is what makes everything worth it.

It brings happy tears to his eyes too.

She can taste the salt of them where their lips meet in the middle. It makes her smile, wrapping her arms around his neck and clenching the letters he mended for her in her fist to keep them from blowing away in the wind, and they both start to laugh into each other's mouths at the poignant feeling they both share but can't quite place.

They pull away from each other to catch their breath after another moment of it, and she can't help but stare. How could she not when she feels like this? It’s less like he’s her boyfriend and more like a piece of her soul has attached itself to his with no hope of letting go in the near future.

"You're the best thing that ever happened to me," she whispers to him.

Plain and simple. No room for disagreement or a bashful rejection of the compliment. She's pulled back from him enough to hold his gaze and make sure he sees her seriousness, and there isn't anything he can do to refute her statement.

He brushes his nose against hers affectionately, dipping down to kiss her again, but when he leans back to see her face, he can't help himself.

"Ditto."

The rest of the day after their moment on the boat, locked away in their own little world where none of the monsters chasing them could sneak through and ruin it, melts away peacefully. After another half hour spent looking through the box together, of her thanking him over and over again, he hops off of the HMS Pogue onto the dock and extends his hand to her in the most gentlemanly manner possible.

His lips are curved into a smirk as he kneels down on one knee as though she's a revered royal and bows his head in subservience, "Princess Routledge."

Her hand fits in his warm, calloused palm as a perfect match, and she steps off of the boat onto the dock beside him with an expression to match his.

"Captain Maybank," she says in her most regal royalty voice.

Her stellar performance breaks into a laugh they share as he stands and throws his arm around over her shoulder to walk back to the yard. The cardboard box is tucked beneath one of her arms while the other slips around his side to hold him back, and her heart feels full with both the presence of JJ and John B alongside her.

They bury it together.

Tag List: @gabiatthedisco, @fangirlvoice, @black-syren, @apparrio, @particularcth, @planetdemon, @idk-ijustworkhere, and @krisphann

Also, now that it’s over, let me know what your favorite part was in the comments or tags if you’d like to :) I’m curious.

#jj maybank #jj maybank x reader #jj maybank smut #outer banks #obx #fanfiction #i'm gonna miss these dorks #🥺#I love how he tries to break up with her and she’s like ‘no❤️’#also totally do not put on ‘seven’ by Taylor Swift during the childhood flashbacks unless u wanna cry #cause I did and my sensitive ass was crying #that song is about John B and JJ okay #it just is

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sserpente · 3 years

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OKAY OKAY WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE SECOND EPISODE BECAUSE I HAVE QUESTIONS AND I AM SQUEALING.

First of all, it’s bold of them to assume that we need a “previously on”. It’s not like we don’t know the first episode by heart already, hahahaha!

Alright, so first of all: LOKI USE YOUR POWERS BABY. Was he stalling? Was he trying to get more information? Is “Lady Loki” really that powerful?! It kind of looked like he didn’t really WANT to fight her, does that make sense? It makes sense to me! Also add telekinesis to Loki’s powers, YES BABY!

Speaking of "Lady Loki”--I was SCREAMING because she looks so FREAKING BADASS I LOVE IT but I still don’t buy it! YES, she’s got the Loki costume. YES, she’s got the horns even but hear me out: SHE’S BLONDE. I don’t mind Lady Loki being blonde, it looks REALLY COOL but that MUST have been a conscious decision of them then because as far as I’m concerned, Sophia is not naturally blonde, neither is Lady Loki in the comics but you know who is?! SYLVIE. And when Loki called her “Loki” she was like “ugh, don’t call me that”. EXCUSE ME, WAS THAT A HINT? Also did Loki recognise her? He didn’t have any lines after that, so I can’t tell? I have to watch it again! if he didn’t recognise her, then maybe the story will stray a little further from what we know about Loki and Sylvie in the comics (in which Loki gives Sylvie her powers so they’d have the same magical signature or whatever). Or with all the different timelines and multiverses, our Loki never met Sylvie in this one, who the fuck knows? I feel like there’s gonna be another plot twist. Don’t forget we get a “Young Sylvie” at some point, that’s gotta mean something!!! I still believe this is the Enchantress! And/or, taking up my previous theories on it being both Lady Loki and Sylvie at the same time, she might have changed her identity for whatever reason and now firmly believes she’s Sylvie or something. IDK, GEEZ.

Guys, I have to be honest with you, I have NO CLUE where this is going! I’m completely BLANK! WHAT does she want?! WHY is she doing this? Honestly, I don’t think she’s evil, I don’t think that her goal is the annihilation of everything. There’s gotta be more to it than that but we just don’t have enough information yet to put the puzzle pieces together. AND NOW THAT CLIFFHANGER HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WAIT UNTIL NEXT WEEK?! Where did they go? IDK. Could be that “purple” place from the trailer. They sure are going to have a proper conversation though in the next episode.

Now I freaking love Loki’s outift, I just RAAAWR. That TIE. That JACKET. I WANT THAT JACKET. He ALMOST got his daggers back, my poor baby, SO CLOSE! This episode made me cackle so much, it’s soooo different to see Loki like this; first of all, again, knowing his usual tricks don’t work and he doesn’t have the upper hand per se makes it really interesting to see how he acts around Mobius and the rest of the TVA. Away from Thanos and the influence of the sceptre, Loki seems so much more... blithe? Does that makes sense? It’s a completely different side of him but then again we get those darker scenes where we see the intimidating Loki we know and it’s like we’re getting to know Loki all over again? JUST IMAGINE WHAT HE’S LIKE IN A RELATIONSHIP THEN, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! It just makes SOOOO MUCH SENSE that Tom said that Loki acts differently around dfiferent people.

ALSO CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW HE TRIED TO HIT MISS MINUTE!!!

Now, two more things (I’m really just randomly throwing things at you here):

First of all, LOKI SPEAKING LATIN. Again, I’m not quite sure how or if the Allspeak still affects him (since the Mongolian thing in the first episode made us wonder about it already) but I’m just gonna go ahead and say that Loki is fluent in Latin because he FREAKING COULD.

Second of all, I thought it was very suspicious of Mobius to say “I don’t care what makes you tick” because in the first episode he wanted Loki to explain to him just that. Was he lying? I still don’t trust him. NOTHING IS REAL, honestly! That conversation they had in the cafeteria really proved to me that the TVA isn’t to be trusted. When Ravonna and Mobius talked I even thought maybe the Time Keepers don’t even exist at some point.

AND LOKI IS NOT LETTING ANYONE GET TO HIM ANYMORE. Did you see him read of the destruction of Asgard?! He was TEARING UP, you could see the grief on his face and then when he told Mobius (RIP Mobius’ salad) and he went like “I’m sorry” Loki was just like “Yes, very sad,” in a nonchalant way and moved on to tell him what he’d found out rather excitedly. This is the PERFECT example of Loki continuing to do what he does so much, just concealing his feelings and his vulnerability behind mischief and I STILL WANNA HUG HIM.

All the different Loki Variants they should the team, I freaking loved this but it does raise the question at what point in the “sacred timeline” these Lokis hopped off the timeline to cause mischief? Which in turn raises the question if we’re right not to trust the TVA and the sacred timeline is a bunch of bullshit? Also, you know what would have been hilarious too, if they had included a Norse Mythology version of Loki. You know, ginger hair and all. I feel like Loki would have approved of that cameo, hahaha!

Speaking of the Norse Myths, it’s funny how Loki freed those goats in Pompeii because in the myths, he once tied a goat’s beard to his testicles to make Skadi laugh. Thought that was a fun little connection!

It’s now canon, by the way, that there’s no candy on Asgard. Not even chocolate?! We know that Loki looooves chocolate, don’t we? Awww, baby! Now I feel like writing an Imagine where you take Loki to a candy store and he gets to try everything and then gets a sugar rush, hahaha!

And, last but not least, “PROFESSOR LOKI” HIT DIFFERENT. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. He’s such a smart cookie I LOVE IT.

I might add some more stuff and reblog this post once I’ve watched the episode again, I’m still processing everything, hahaha!!!

#loki #loki spoilers #loki show spoilers #loki show #loki series #loki series spoilers

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mxpseudonym · 4 years

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Thoughtless

Pairing: John Shelby x Fem!Reader

Summary: John takes you being hired to audit his work as an insult. Not to mention, you’re too smug about catching his mistakes. John needs to teach you a lesson. John Shelby mocks you for being fucked stupid for 1500 words straight.

Length: 1585 words (allegedly)

Warnings: Dangerous for work, dirty talk, belittling

A/N: Super tempted to call this “head empty.” This is the first time I’ve ever had any motive to write John and I think it’s pretty damn good. Also, gets a bit sweet at the end.

The pads of John's fingers dipped into the soft crevices of your skin, pulling your hips higher and sliding your dress and slip further up your waist. He marveled at the way he was already shining with your wetness as he slowly moved out of you and the way you seemed to suck him back in. You whimpered, feeling every slight movement as he moved.

"Heaven and hell, love. You're that far gone already?" John groaned out, still watching the view he could only have with you bent over his desk, chest pressed to the surface. You wanted to bite back at his teasing remark, but it was unfortunately correct.

Tommy Shelby hired you to do a twice-weekly audit of John's books at the betting shop. Your boss swore it was because the derby was coming up, and there needed to be a better system as the business grew. However, John took it as a message: some woman could do his job better than he could. You endured the glares and scoffs from the handsome young Shelby for weeks and gave as good as you got. It just so happened that one night you both stayed late to finish the bookkeeping, and John brought out a bottle of whiskey.

"We don't need you, you know? Just nice to look at," he slurred while pointing at you. You leaned forward with an arched eyebrow.

"I catch your mistakes every week, John-boy. But I do agree. I am nice to look at."

Arrogance met cockiness, and it didn't take long before you were pressed against the wall, paying the price of your smugness. As an unlikely pair, it was surprisingly easy to keep anything between you two a secret. The only problem was, as efficient as call and response, whenever John gave you that look and sent irritated jabs your way, your body reacted with anticipation for what was to come after hours. Today you received "you think you're smarter than me, love" after changing his sums on the chalkboard.

In conclusion: of course you were already far gone.

"Oi!" John's hand landed hard against your backside as he picked up the pace. "Where's your head, y/n? Too distracted to use your voice today? Or is that head empty after all?" You looked over your shoulder at him with fierceness.

"Just thinking about how good this feels after a long day cleaning up after you."

The words were said with whatever remaining bravery you had lying around and with good reason. John paused mid-stroke, and for a moment, you feared you'd gone too far. No matter the outcome, that sentiment was probably correct. John lifted your leg onto the desk in a quick movement, giving himself more room before leaning over you.

"If there's one thing I like about you, y/n," John breathed in your ear. "You challenge me. Right now, you've helped me realize that, if that pretty mouth of yours can still speak and that pretty head of yours can still think, I'm probably not doing a good enough job."

His hips snapped forward, slamming into you with one smooth movement that made you cry out. John was only consistent in that he was entirely inconsistent. His strokes were long and hard or shallow and fast, or some mix of both. No matter the pace, they remained intense enough to send you over the edge quickly when paired with John's fingers abusing your clit.

"John, please, slow,"

"Huh? What was that?" He stopped you between his own pants. John blessed his stamina. Without it, he'd have been finished long ago. Hell, you'd look particularly pretty that day anyway, and it had worked him up, so lasting this long was a miracle in itself. Your snarky little comments just happened to conjure up enough motivation for him to outlast you several times over.

"John, John," you whimpered with your forehead pressed against the desk. You knew what you meant. You wanted to say that he was going to leave you used for all you were worth if he kept hitting that spot deep in you, but damn if you could even think straight.

"What the fuck are you even trying to say right now, y/n? You sound, what did you call it? Belligerent?"

He was only spurred on by those noises you were making. Fuck, you sounded better every time you came. He gripped your arm and pulled you back against his chest.

"Mm, I, ah!" Your eyes snapped closed, and another release came over you. Though not as powerful as your first two, it still made you lean your weight on John. He took your earlobe between his teeth and groped your breasts that he'd been quick to expose after your catalyst of a remark.

"If Tommy heard you right now, he'd wonder why he even hired you. Can't even say a full sentence after a bit of dick, huh?"

He spat the words like he was disgusted, and the sentiment went straight to your lower belly. Why did you like this? You didn't have an answer. You didn't have anything beyond acceptance of how good you were feeling. You turned your head to look back at the man responsible for this.

In the dim light of the office, John could still clearly make out a face he'd never forget. Slack-jawed and only able to pant and whine, you looked at John with glossy, pleading, heavily hooded eyes.

"Fuck," he swore as his cock twitched inside of you. "Poor baby, should I give you more?" The sound you made in response could have meant anything, but John laughed and took it as approval. "Fuckin' hell, you're a mess."

"Please, please," you pleaded softly, making John smirk.

"That's right, do what you do best. Beg for this cock, y/n."

He'd lost track of how long you were at it, and even he was reaching his limit. Still, when he pulled out of you, he sat in his office chair and reached for you again. It was almost too much, sinking onto him yet a new position, but you couldn't help but accept how overtaken by desire you were.

John paused for a moment and took you in. You bit your lip as he stroked your cheek for a moment. His thumb pulled your bottom lip free before he leaned in and kissed you.

"I've got a task for you, y/n. Don't worry, I'll make it, so you don't need to know anything." John chuckled when a slight pout came to your face. He gripped your hips and began rocking them, making your eyes roll back. "All you need to do is ride me just like this so I can empty my balls, yeah? Even you can do that."

"Oh god," you moaned.

You'd meant to say that you'd make John pay for this later, or even a simple "fuck you." Instead, you fell forward and completed your assignment with John's belittling praise in your ear. John's breathing got more erratic, and he started thrusting into you with no rhyme or reason, just release on the brain.

"Let me see you," he ordered you.

You leaned back and looked at him with those eyes again, and you were still making those noises despite yourself. How should he finish? In this state, he could push you on your knees and make you swallow him if he wanted. But something stopped him, maybe that he did intend to walk you home later and he didn't want to humiliate you too much. Not yet, anyway.

He quickly lifted you off of him, making you sit back on his thighs as he gripped himself. He was too focused on the fast-approaching release that he didn't see you move until your hands were taking over for him, stroking with a firm grip. You'd never handled him that way before, and that surprise, coupled with the warmth of your palms, had him spilling over your fingers with bucking hips and a loud groan.

John stole a cloth from the kitchen after you caught your breath and helped you clean up enough that you didn't ruin your slip on the walk home. You imagined it was probably a side effect of fatherhood, but John was surprisingly doting.

"I'm walking you in, no buts about it," John told you as he walked into your flat and began helping you with your coat.

"You don't have to-"

"Did you eat?" He stopped you. Now that he mentioned it, you hadn't had anything since noon.

"I didn't yet." Your voice was already sleepy.

"Alright, I'll run a bath and then make some tea and something quick. I know about three meals that won't burn the bloody building down," John chuckled. His flushed face was turning slightly bashful.

"Thank you."

"Can't have you going weak, can I?" He scratched the back of his head. Despite your insistence, John rolled up his sleeves and helped you into the bath. Before he could leave you to begin searching your cabinets, he paused at the door, turning to you. "I keep telling Katie how smart you are and how she can be like that, too, so don't go taking any of that stuff to heart."

You blinked after him, then smiled softly to yourself, sliding further into the bath. John Shelby was a dangerous man in more ways than one.

Bonus script:

"Can you check this?"

"I thought all I could do was beg?"

"Good grief, don't hold it over my head!"

#John Shelby does not tolerate haughtiness #Also he's a good dad #John Shelby #John Shelby Smut #John shelby Fanfiction #John Shelby imagine #Peaky Blinders Imagine #Peaky Blinders Smut

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the-desolated-quill · 3 years

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WandaVision: ‘Subverting’ Good Television - Quill’s Scribbles

(Spoilers for the first five episodes)

Hey everyone! Well... it’s been a while, hasn’t it? The last time I wrote a proper review or Scribble, people still thought the COVID crisis would be over within a month. The poor saps. But I thought that as a special way to mark this year’s Valentines Day, we could take a closer look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s shittiest power couple in their new Disney+ show WandaVision.

The first of many MCU spin-off shows that nobody asked for, broadcast exclusively on Disney’s totally unnecessary streaming platform, WandaVision is about everybody’s favourite whitewashed Nazi experiment and her red sexbot boyfriend as they try to fit into a suburban sitcom neighbourhood without arousing suspicion.

Yes, you read that correctly. The MCU has a sitcom now. My life is now complete.

Sarcasm aside, I was legitimately curious about WandaVision because of its unusual setting. And considering one of my most common criticisms of the MCU is its total lack of creativity, anything that’s even a little bit subversive is bound to attract my attention. Of course ‘subversive’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good.’ I could hand you a canvas smeared with my own shit and call it subversive. That doesn’t necessarily make it good art. And that’s exactly what WandaVision is. A canvas smeared with shit.

So lets split this critical analysis/review/angry bitter rant into two distinct chapters. The first focusing on the plot and setting, and the second focusing on the characters. Okay? Okay.

Chapter 1: Bewitched

Critics seem to be utterly enamoured with the whole sitcom gimmick, and it is a gimmick. As far as I can tell from the episodes I’ve seen, the sitcom setting serves no real purpose whatsoever other than to make the show ‘quirky.’ Which I wouldn’t mind, believe it or not, if the show was actually funny. There’s just one problem. It’s not.

Now in some ways describing why a sitcom doesn’t work is often futile because comedy is largely subjective. What I find funny, you won’t necessarily find funny and vice versa. With WandaVision, however, I won’t have that problem. I can demonstrate to you precisely why WandaVision, objectively, isn’t funny. And it all comes down to one simple thing. The stakes. Or rather the complete and total absence of stakes.

The show makes it very clear from the beginning that none of what we’re seeing is real. The cheesy theme song, the era appropriate special effects (mostly. It’s actually very inconsistent), the joke commercials, and, in the case of the first two episodes, which are in black and white, the appearance of red lights and objects in Scarlet Witch’s general vicinity. (Gee, what a mystery this is).

Basically Wanda has brought Vision back from the dead and created this sitcom world for them to inhabit. I’ll explain the stupidity of this in Chapter 2. The point is none of this is real, and that has a negative effect on the comedy because the very nature of comedy is suffering. Take the plot of the first episode. Wanda and Vision have to prepare a dinner to impress Vision’s boss. If they fail, Vision could lose his job and the couple could be exposed as superheroes. If this were a normal sitcom, it would work. The stakes are clear and it would be satisfying to see the two struggle and overcome the odds. But here, we know it’s not real. If it’s not real, it means there’s no stakes. If there’s no stakes, it means there’s no suffering. If there’s no suffering, there’s no comedy.

It would be one thing if the unfunny sitcom stuff lasted for like the first ten minutes or so before making way for the actual plot, but it doesn’t. Oh no. It doesn’t even last for the first episode. Out of the five episodes I’ve watched, four of them are almost entirely about these unfunny, objectively flawed sitcom homages, each set in a different time period. The fifties, the sixties, and so on. And what’s worse is that nothing that happens in them is plot-relevant. That gets relegated to the last five minutes of an episode. So you’re forced to sit through twenty five minutes of boring slapstick and puns in order to catch even a whiff of actual story. Which begs the question... who is this for exactly? It can’t be entertaining to Marvel fans, who have to slog through all this pointless shit so they can figure out what the fuck is going on. Comedy fans may get a kick out of the sitcom pastiche at first, but after four episodes, surely the joke would wear thin. So why is it in here? Clearly someone in the writer’s room absolutely fell in love with the idea of doing a Marvel sitcom, but nobody put in any time or effort to figure out how it would work in context.

I cannot stress enough how bad the plotting of this series is. As I said, the vast majority of a thirty minute episode is about shitty sitcom plots that aren’t funny and don’t have any impact on the story, only to then tease you with a crumb of actual plot in order to keep you coming back for the next instalment. Admittedly it’s an effective strategy. I was more than ready to quit after Episode 2 until that beekeeper showed up out of the sewer (don’t ask. It’s not important). WandaVision essentially follows the Steven Moffat school of bad writing. String your audience along with the promise that things might get more interesting later on and that all the bullshit that came before will retroactively make sense by the end. Except, as demonstrated with BBC’s Sherlock, that doesn’t work. And even if it did, it wouldn’t justify wasting the audience’s fucking time. And that’s what the majority of WandaVision is. A waste of time.

The only episode that doesn’t follow the sitcom format is the fourth episode. Instead it basically exists to explain all the shit that happened before. The shit that the audience, frankly, are smart enough to figure out for themselves. Wanda created the sitcom world as a way of coping with the loss of Vision, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we got it. Thanks. It doesn’t advance the plot or anything. It’s just a massive info-dump. But by far the lowest point was when Darcy (by far the most annoying character in the first Thor film and is just as obnoxious here) was sat in front of the TV, watching the sitcom and asking the same questions we were. Not even attempting to look for answers. Just reiterating what the audience is thinking. Like this is an episode of fucking Gogglebox.

In the end it becomes apparent why the series is structured the way that it is. It’s to hoodwink people into subscribing to Disney’s stupid streaming service. If you think about it, there was no reason for WandaVision to be a TV series other than to lure gullible fans in with a piece-meal story buried in a mountain of crap. This isn’t a TV show. It’s what is cynically known in the world of big business executives as ‘content.’ They’re not interested in entertaining the audience. Instead they crave ‘engagement’, which isn’t the same thing. Watching WandaVision is like staring into the void, waiting for something to happen, while Disney charge you for the privilege.

Chapter 2: I Love Lucy

So the plot sucks balls. What about the characters? Surely if Wanda and Vision are likeable at least, it’ll give us something to cling onto.

Well as I was watching the first episode, it suddenly hit me that I couldn’t remember anything that happened to them in previous films. I knew Vision died, but other than that, I couldn’t tell you significant plot details or their personalities or anything. Not a great start.

See, up until now, Vision and Scarlet Witch have been little more than background characters. So already there’s an uphill struggle to get us invested in their relationship, especially considering we haven’t actually seen that relationship develop. In Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Scarlet Witch is killing people because she’s pissed off about Tony Stark killing people (you work that one out) until all of a sudden she stops and joins the good guys because the script said so. Vision meanwhile is introduced as a convenient deus ex machina to beat Ultron and gets no real personality other than he’s a robot. Captain America: Civil War comes the closest to giving Wanda a story and personality of her own as it’s her actions that cause the Sokovia Accords to come into effect, but she never gets any real growth or payoff as the film is heavily focused on Cap and Iron Man’s penis measuring contest. And as for Vision, all he does in the film is accidentally cripple War Machine. No real character or arc there as such. And then we have Avengers: Infinity War, where Wanda and Vision are now sporadically in love and on the run until that pesky Josh Brolin, looking like a CGI cross between Joss Whedon and a grumpy grape, comes along and rips out Vision’s Infinity Stone to power up his golden glove of doom, and the film treats this like a tragic moment, except... it isn’t. Because we haven’t really had the time to properly get to know these characters and see their romance blossom. So instead it just comes off as hollow and forced.

WandaVision has the exact same problem. Apparently Wanda was so distraught about Vision’s death that she broke into a SWORD base, stole his corpse, brought it back from the dead... somehow, and then enslaved an entire town of people to create an idyllic lifestyle for her and her hubby while broadcasting it as a sitcom to the outside world... for some reason. Putting aside the dubious morality of it all, it’s impossible to really sympathise with Wanda or her supposed grief because we’ve barely spent any time with her. Had the Marvel movies taken the time to properly explore the characters and show us their relationship grow and develop, this might have had more emotional resonance. But no, it just happens. In one film they barely speak to each other and in the next they’re a couple. No effort to explore how they feel about each other or any of the problems that may arise trying to date a robot. It just happens and we’re just supposed to care. Well I’m sorry, but I don’t care. You’re going to have to try a little bit harder than that I’m afraid. What’s worse is that, thanks to the whole fake sitcom thing, it’s impossible to really become invested in Wanda and her plight because the show has to constantly keep us at arms length at all times in order to keep up the pretence that this bullshit is somehow mysterious.

Looking through the WandaVision tag, it amuses me how many people say that she’s acting out of character. And yeah, her actions are a bit of a head scratcher. Why would an Eastern European’s ideal life be an American sitcom? Why a sitcom? Why kidnap an entire town? Why keep changing the decade? None of it makes sense, but you’re wrong for thinking that Wanda is behaving out of character for the simple reason that Wanda has never actually had a character. In fact, ironically, Wanda mind controlling an entire town and forcing them to do her bidding is probably the one consistent thing about her as she did this in Age Of Ultron. In interviews, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany described how they used actors like Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick Van Dyke as influences, which is really funny because they’re straight up admitting they don’t have characters and even now they’re still not playing the characters, instead emulating the work of far better actors.

As I was watching the show, it became abundantly clear that not only do Marvel not have the faintest idea what they wanted to do with these characters, but they also straight up don’t give a shit about these characters. Wanda in particular has had a rough time under the tyrannical regime of the House of Mouse. First they cast Elizabeth Olsen, a white woman, to play a Romani character, then systematically erasing her Jewish roots, even going so far as to put a cross in her bedroom in Civil War, and now the character is being butchered even more by forcing her into an American sitcom housewife role that she apparently willingly chose for herself, which is laughable. I mean say what you like about Magneto in the X-Men films, at least they actually depicted his Jewish culture. At least they recognised his Jewish background was important (though not important enough to cast a Jewish actor apparently). Wanda’s steady cultural erasure over the years is incredibly insidious and judging by Olsen’s comments in interviews, where she called Wanda’s comic book outfit a quote ‘gypsy thing’ unquote, it seems nobody has an ounce of fucking respect for the character or the culture she’s supposed to be representing. (and to all those kissing her arse saying it was a slip of the tongue, she has been repeatedly called out for using the slur in the past, so at this point I’d describe her behaviour as wilful ignorance)

If you want further proof of how much Marvel doesn’t seem to care about Wanda, look no further than her brother Pietro, aka Quicksilver. At the end of Episode 5, Wanda brings Pietro back from the dead, except it’s not Pietro. It’s Peter Maximoff, the Quicksilver from the X-Men films played by Peter Evans, who coincidentally is not Jewish or Romani either. So Quicksilver has the dubious honour of not only being whitewashed three times, but also twice within the same franchise. But should we really be surprised at this point? It’s Marvel after all. The same company that whitewashed the Ancient One in Doctor Yellowface and claimed it wasn’t racist because Tilda Swinton is ‘Celtic’. But now I’m going off topic. My point is that this isn’t a simple case of recasting an actor like Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk. WandaVision actually acknowledges the recast in-universe, which makes no sense. Why would Wanda bring back her brother, only to make him look like a different person? We the audience may be familiar with this version of Quicksilver, but she isn’t. That would be like me bringing my Grandad back to life and making him look like Ian McKellen. He’d be perfectly charming, I’m sure, but he wouldn’t be my Grandad.

If Marvel really cared about the characters or narrative consistency, they would have brought Aaron Taylor Johnson back. Instead, now they have absorbed 20th Century Fox into the hellish Disney abyss, they use X-Men’s Quicksilver as a means to keep viewers from switching off and so that people will write stupid articles and think pieces about whether the rest of the X-Men will show up in the MCU. It’s like dangling your keys in front of a toddler’s face to distract them from the rotting corpse of a raccoon lying face down in the corner of the room.

And it’s here where I decided to stop watching the show because fuck Disney.

Epilogue: One Foot In The Grave

You know, I am sick and tired of the so called ‘professional’ critics bending over backwards to praise these god awful films and shows when it’s so clear to anyone with a functioning brain cell how bad they truly are. WandaVision is without a doubt one of the most cynically produced and poorly structured TV shows I’ve ever seen. Its riffs on classic sitcoms are pointless and self-indulgent, the writing is terrible, the characters are unlikable and unsympathetic, and it’s entirely emblematic of what the entire MCU has become of late. And it’s only going to get worse as Disney drowns us with more ‘content’ to keep the plebs ‘engaged’. In short; pathetic.

#anti wandavision #anti marvel #anti mcu #anti disney #quill's scribbles

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kneamet · 3 years

Note

Thomas Sharpe loves her. She is pregnant and she is sewing baby clothes. Thomas watches her. She is scared of him since she found out about the killed wives and the death of Lucille (Thomas killed her in revenge for Edith's death). Thomas caresses reader's arms and she flinches. He tells her not to be afraid. She is his sun. His hope. His lovely lady. He won't hurt her.

Trigger Warning: obsession, yandere.

Word Count: 1667

Character: Thomas Sharpe/reader

Summary: You never wanted Thomas to watch you when you were doing your hobby.

POV Thomas

She was so beautiful. So perfect. Thomas smiled softly, a dreamy and gentle smile that reflected his joyful and eloquent thoughts about what would happen when his perfect and beautiful, sweet and charming wife finally gave birth to their child. Their happy and tender child, who will be caressed by the touch of his father; who will inherit his character, and later he will pass on his favorite business.

Thomas liked to dream about what would happen when you gave him an heir. An heir who would pay off all the debts of the Sharpe family and restore to fame that glorious and famous, if not infamous, family name that had been passed down from generation to generation for centuries.

He knew that he would learn it as a true aristocrat. He will be able to read, write, and, of course, continue his father's work, which he will teach him later when his son grows up. And you, as a real wife, devoted and faithful to him, will babysit him, cleaning up after him. No, he wasn't going to let his son grow up to be an idiot who didn't know anything and was just trying to sound like a smart person. No, he and you, after a light conference, will find the best teachers in the entire district.

Thomas won't let his son become like him. No, he'll be better than his father. A father who was a miserable loser who had achieved nothing in his life except... as much as he hated to think about it... nothing but incest with my sister. Into this perfect illusion, which later shattered, like paper that is easy to tear. He knew he was just playing a game in her incestuous ideals, and he knew he shouldn't have been tempted.

Sharpe pursed his lower lip, frowning slightly in a gesture of contempt. To think about it, to remember the days when Lucille, his sister, whom he both loved and hated, was alive. It is simply impossible to remember what he and his sister did to the innocent souls of the girls they corrupted and later killed. It was so disgusting.

But now, realizing that he had found his happiness, she was currently sitting next to him on a wooden chair and carrying under her heart another of his dreams and happiness, his child. Thomas was looking at you, wanting to stifle a small moan that suddenly, at the same moment, flew out of his mouth in an unintentional action, completely unexpected.

So gentle, so sensual, so fragrant, like a flower, that she lives her carefree life, enjoying freedom. A flower that will quickly perish in the wrong hands and near the Crimson Peak. He knew you always had to be protected. You, who needed his help, which was immediate and consistent. He will definitely protect you and will protect you for the rest of his life, even on his deathbed.

Your soft and light hair, which Thomas loved to caress, fell a short length over your frail and thin shoulders, on which there were marks in the form of inconspicuous bruises that almost healed. The man felt a great need to touch them now, but he understood that personal space should be respected and honored. To honor him in a way that was not respected. The memory of Lucille interrupting him raced through his mind in a haunting rhythm.

Your soft lips were slightly parted. So gentle, so brilliant, and so much in return. He noticed that your lips were bitten in some places, as if you were worried; Thomas frowned. He loved your lips, and he wanted them to be kept intact, not like this.

Your bright eyes were intently and diligently following the work you were doing, being in love with your business. Thomas knew that you liked to sew and never refused your desire, believing that if you love each other, have pure and pure feelings for each other, then you should understand and be interested in each other's interests. And of course, respect them. Unlike Lucille, who was only interested in her own fate, and not in the fate and life of Thomas.

He liked to watch you and how you sew. He knew that you liked this business very much, and selling clothes for children was also an expensive business, which, as far as Thomas knew, many girls were interested in. And you, as the man liked to say, had a talent.

The man blinked several times, feeling his beloved wife looking at him, in his opinion, with a gentle look, caring.

He never had enough care: his mother beat him up for any wrongdoing, his father was too fascinated by money to take care of the children, and his sister was too obsessed with, so to speak, him, controlling many aspects of life. He believed that he had done the right thing by her, and that she did not deserve a painful and hot death for having killed his past love.

Thomas had never loved anyone in his life. Except, perhaps, for Lucille, whom he hated at the same time. It was like a mold, like a contagion that ate away at him from the inside out, plunging him into a frenzy that immediately met him.

But then Edith came along. One of those girls who was able to interest him, but in the end it turned out that it was just an interest and he did not feel any love for her. All they could do was to save her and show her that he was a man worthy of happiness.

However, his dreams were not destined to come true then. Lucille took Edith away from him. She took his wife's life. Thomas, on the other hand, took his sister's life.

The loneliness always silenced him. It hurt to be alone. At such moments, his brain refused to work rationally, forcing only thoughts about the past. The past that Thomas had tried so hard to forget and lose in oblivion.

But then, quite by accident, he, a poor and unhappy man, had you! He didn't really remember your first meeting or how you met him, but he never cared. He was your first, and he will be your last.

***

POV Your

Being around him, while still keeping a straight face, not being distracted by him, and trying to go about your business, was scary and very stressful. He always scared you with his penetrating gaze that literally burned a hole in you, and so carefully watched your even the smallest movements.

Your husband was a handsome Englishman. An aristocrat whose beauty you once fell for, believing that beauty is equal to character. How the hell did you make a mistake? The look of an angel, and the thoughts of a devil.

And yet, despite everything, you still considered his beauty, finding him, if not terribly attractive, then simply attractive: blue, like a clear sea that flows into a dirty ocean, eyes with small flecks of gray; black curly hair that turned into curls at the ends; an aristocratic type of face that corresponded to his ancient family; tonic pursed lips.

But beauty was the only advantage he could offer you. His love, which you thought was eerily possessed and controlled, was terrible. You didn't like this love. You only wanted to bring back old Thomas, who loved you with a tender and pure love, not Thomas, who was obsessed with you.

You could feel his penetrating and appraising gaze on you. It was unpleasant and very stressful. You felt a little uneasy. Your chest began to swell, and your eyes began to water.

I wanted to cry. Cry with grief. That you will never go out again, that Thomas will continue to do what he does and you will not be able to dissuade him, that Thomas is so bloodthirsty that he was not afraid to kill his sister, that your child will never know about you and the real Thomas. He will always look at the world, and especially at you and Thomas, with unseeing eyes that will not cling to flaws. He will think that he has the perfect family.

Perhaps the arrival of a child will be the only plus in this routine. After all, he will love you, really love you, and not like Thomas. You gave a small, tired smile, thinking about what you would do when your baby was born.

Suddenly, you felt your hand free of the cloth that was now lying on the table, which was covered with a pile of junk that Thomas kept for some reason. Your hand felt the warm palm of your husband. His hand was strong and big. Apart from the fact that he was eerily thin, he was still strong.

You raised your head, shifting your frightened gaze to Thomas, who was looking at you with a very bleary look, his mouth slightly open, and smiling the little smile that always scared you. At such moments, you felt like you were sitting in front of a psycho who really wants to get even with you.

"You don't have to be afraid of me, my flower," he murmured softly, stroking your weak hand with light movements and looking straight into your eyes. You felt goose bumps on your back. You bit your lip, feeling a little relieved. "No need to bite your pretty lips, my sweet flower," Thomas said, reaching out and touching your lower lip.

"I don't..." you were about to say, when you suddenly felt the finger Thomas had placed on your lips.

"You're my sunshine," Thomas smiled, getting up from his chair, which sagged under his weight. "My hope," he leaned toward you, removing his finger. You felt his hot breath on your neck, making it gooseflesh. "My fair lady," he murmured softly, his lips almost touching yours. "I won't hurt you," he finished, connecting your lips with his in a soft touch.

#tom hiddleston #obsessive #yandere #yandere loki #yandere tom hiddleston #obsessive tom hiddleston #obsession #tom hiddleston smut #tom hiddleston x you #tom hiddleston x reader #yandere thomas sharpe #crimson peak #thomas sharpe x you #thomas sharpe x reader #thomas sharpe #thomas sharpe smut

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anxiousstark · 3 years

Text

S4 01 | The Dark Moon

BIG MASTERLIST | TW REWRITE | KO-FI

Stiles Stilinski x Reader! Half-sibling!Mccall

Word count: 3956

Warnings: Mentions of injuries, blood, poison, death, seizures, dead bodies, swearing (always), etc.

A/N: Wow. This is the 4th Season already?! I noticed while writing this entire chapter this morning that we were starting season 4. This is crazy. Enjoy and I didn’t have time to proofread!

↪ PLEASE RESPECT MY WORK. DON’T COPY, TRANSLATE OR CLAIM THEM AS YOURS. NOT ON THIS WEBSITE OR ANOTHER. ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED.

I glanced around, sighing, not knowing what to expect and seeing a different scenario from the one that I was used to seeing every day. There was a lot of people in the street, wandering through street markets, trying to get the best deal.

"This doesn't seem so bad." My boyfriend rubbed his hands together.

"It's not the town, it's the plan." Lydia rolled her eyes as I chuckled. "Stiles. This could be the stupidest plan we've ever come up with. You're aware of that, right?"

"I'm aware it's not our best." His voice lowered.

"We are going to die." The three of us started walking.

"Are you saying that as a Banshee or you're just being pessimistic?"

"I'm saying it as a person who doesn't wanna die."

"Okay." Stiles's tiny gesture made my chest pound like crazy. He had grabbed my hand, scared I would get lost as there were many people. "Would you just mind restricting any talk of death to actual Banshee predictions?"

"This plan is stupid and we're going to die," Lydia said in a cheerful tone, attempting to make the hazel-eyed boy happy.

"Oh, thank you." He smirked.

It was night when we arrived at a building. The door was being watched by two men. They both smiled at us, especially eyeing Lydia and me, which made us feel a little bit uncomfortable.

"Estamos aquí para la fiesta." I murmured to them, letting them know that we were there for the party taking place inside the building.

One of them smirked, shaking their head as if to let us know that we weren't invited to go inside. I shifted my gaze to Stiles, who was searching for something inside one of the pockets of his trousers. As soon as he found what he wanted, he lifted it. A black card. And even though it seemed like just an item without much meaning, one of the men standing in front of us stopped smiling.

Stiles noticed that there was a camera just above them, lifting the card so whoever was behind it could see the object. Automatically, the door opened and the men had nothing more to do than let us go inside.

When the door closed behind us, we sighed, worried about what we could find. There was a small corridor, walls were of an intense red that was making my headache. And it seemed like the door in front of us and the walls embracing us shook.

As Stiles opened the door, we were hit with loud music, colourful lights and the smell of alcohol and sweat. Bodies ground against each other, following the compass of the music.

Stiles clutched my hand harder as his other hand rested on Lydia's arm. He didn't want us to get lost in the crowd. We ended up in front of the bar, where three drinks were placed in front of us even though we haven't ordered anything. I furrowed my eyebrows as Stiles sought money inside his pocket.

I felt a hand gripping my shoulder, and jerking around I was met with a man. "No. On the house." He offered us an insincere smile. "Most American teenagers don't cross the border to refuse a drink."

"We didn't come to drink." Lydia clarified, dropping what seemed like a bullet with a skull on it inside the drink.

Of course, we were taken out of the party, to the insides of the building where everything was dark and where now, a woman stood before us. "Severo hates this music. Me? I've always loved the music of youth." We were sitting in front of her, while there were men all around the room, keeping an eye on us. "This kind, especially. It has a savage energy."

"We're here for Derek Hale." I was the first one to speak aloud.

"Is that so?"

"We know you have him. We've heard you can be bought." Lydia was the one continuing while Stiles placed money on top of the table with a loud thump.

"It's 50,000 for Derek."

"Now, where does a teenage boy get money like this? Japanese mafia?" A woman behind us loaded her gun, making Lydia and I jump in our seats as a man did the same next to Stiles. "Not smart to come alone."

"What makes you think we came alone?" The boy next to me smirked, and I couldn't help but take the grin out of my face. Malia, Kira and Scott had come with us.

"You brought a wolf into my home?" She got up from her chair.

It was my turn to smirk. "No, of course not. How could we do that?" She seemed to relax, but only for a couple of seconds due to my following words. "We brought an Alpha."

"My friends..." She sighed as she turned around. "I don't think you're aware of your poor timing. Do you know what the dark moon is?"

"The part of the lunar phase when the moon is least visible in the sky," Lydia said in a robotic tone.

"But do you know its meaning?"

"Some people say it's a time of reflection. Or grief." I intervened.

She glanced at me. "Grief and loss, mija. I wonder why, when you and your friends have suffered so much loss, you would risk it again for someone like Derek Hale."

"'Cause, we don't like to lose."

One of the men next to Araya stopped us from continuing talking as he started speaking to someone on the other line of the walkie talkie. I couldn't help but have a tiny smile on my face when I heard the voice of my brother through it. "Stiles. Take 10 off the table."

As the button-nose boy did what my brother had asked for, I decided to speak up. "Maybe you should just take the deal." Lydia nodded her head, smiling at the woman in a sickeningly way.

"While I'm keen to follow the warning of a Banshee," She glanced at me. "And of course, the one of a Siren. I'm going to have to decline."

"Aaaa... Come on. Just give us Derek. You don't want him anyway. Haven't you noticed what a downer he is? No sense of humour, poor conversationalist." I tried to maintain a serious expression as Stiles's continued speaking. "Just come on, take the money."

Araya grabbed the walkie talkie once again. "Severo? Show them how the Calaveras negotiate." When Araya left the room, the three of us were manhandled by the men. And I wasn't a Banshee, but even I could feel that Scott, Kira and Malia were in great danger right now.

Thinking back, we ended up here because Scott had gone to Derek's lot, just to find that he wasn't there. He had found bullets, and sending a picture to Deaton, he had learnt that it was the mark of a family of hunters based out of Mexico. The Calaveras.

Lydia said that he wasn't sure he was dead, but she also wasn't sure if he was alive, which was perturbing.

"He is awake!" Kira informed us as Stiles and I got closer to my brother, who was lying down on the floor of a dirty and abandoned bathroom, where we have been taken. "Guys, he's awake."

"Scott, you okay?"

"Yeah." He tried to get up. "They don't have him. They don't have Derek."

"We know." I sighed, offering him a smile that he sent back, trying to let me know that he was alright. "But right now, they've got Lydia."

"Lydia? What do they want with Lydia?" He asked rapidly.

"We always have the same question and it is always answered the same way," I spoke as everyone glanced at me. "The power of a Banshee."

My brother rapidly got up from the floor, trying to open the door with his bare hands, which wasn't working.

"We already looked for a way out. I think a lot of people have." I furrowed my eyebrows as Kira talked, not sure of what she meant until I saw the marks on the walls. Marks of people who desperately tried to escape, scratching the walls with all of their strength.

Malia was leaning against a column. "I say when that door opens again, we take out whoever's standing in the way and run for it."

"What about Lydia?" Kira asked, and I sighed, knowing Malia's next words.

"What about her?"

"We're not leaving without her."

"Why not?"

Stiles shook his head, getting closer to her. "Because we don't leave without people. Remember, we talked about this? Rules of the wild kingdom don't apply to friends."

"Is that what you would do as a coyote, leave her for dead?"

"If she was weak and injured, yeah. If hunting had been bad that season, I would eat her. Then I'd leave."

"Mmm. Believe it or not, that's progress." I crossed my arms over my chest. "Stiles and I've been trying to explain everything to her."

"All right, guys, we're not dead yet." My brother interrupted. "And that means Araya wants something."

Kira glanced at the dark-haired boy standing by her side. "But if the Calaveras don't know where Derek is, that means they didn't take him from the loft. Right?"

"Maybe he left on his own." Stiles completed.

Scott glanced at the floor. "Maybe someone else got to him."

We couldn't continue with our theories as the door abruptly opened, showing three men that quickly walked to us. However, we were soon met with darkness.

When I opened my eyes, my head was aching and everything around me seemed to move in circles. My throat was dry as if I haven't drink anything in days. I gradually noticed that I was tied to a chair and that my brother was tied to another one, right next to me.

The door of the room where we were now opened, showing Araya with another man and Lydia. "Oh, God," Lydia murmured as she saw us.

"Let her go. Look... you've got me. Just let the others go." My brother begged as Araya smirked. Her gaze moved to me. My brother followed her gaze, and it seemed like he had noticed from the first time that they had taken me too. "Why did you bring her?"

Lydia was chained to another chair as Kira came inside the room, also chained while a man grabbed her. What was going on? "So, let me explain what's about to happen." The man grabbing Kira spoke. "This one, the fox, has an immunity to electricity. So she's going to turn the dial on the Alpha. If she doesn't, I turn the dial on the Banshee and the Siren."

"No. I'm not doing this." Kira tried to resist.

"I see. Are you sure? One of your friends has the power to heal. The other? Not so much." Severo smirked. "And the other one might end up dying." Who?

"What are you doing?" Scott glanced at the old woman. "Is this a game to you?"

"This is a test, lobito. Let's see if you pass. We're going to ask some questions. You answer them, nobody gets hurt." She walked around us, but I had to close my eyes and lean my head down as everything continued moving around me. "You don't answer, we turn on the dial."

When I looked up again, my brother was looking at the fox girl. "Do what they say. Okay. Whatever they want. I can take it."

"So... We don't know where Derek is. We want to find him as well. You know who took him."

"What?" My brother asked her. "How would I know that?"

"That doesn't sound like an answer to me."

"We don't know." Lydia intervened. "Why do you think we came here?"

"Kira, turn the dial." The woman ordered, but Kira shook her head. "Should we turn the dial on Lydia instead?"

My brother quickly spoke up. "No, no! Do it, Kira. Do it."

"Let's start at one." As soon as she said that, my brother grunted, his hands gripping the chair he was sitting on, trying not to scream in pain. "Tell me! Who actually has Derek? Who had a reason, a vendetta particular to the Hales?"

My brother continued panting. "I said I don't know."

"Oh, you don't know because you haven't figured it out yet. So think! Who could've taken him?" They turned the pain even stronger. "Who had the power? The power of a shapeshifter?"

"I-I don't know."

"Oh! Someone who could have turned without you knowing. Turned, but not by a bite!"

"I don't know!" He screamed.

"Y-you.." My voice was a mere whisper, but swallowing I was able to scream. "You are going to kill him!" There were tears in my eyes. "You are going to kill him! Stop!"

Araya laughed, shaking her head. "No, mi amor." She smirked. "You will die first." I furrowed my eyebrows, feeling the temperature in the room dropping. I was cold. "Something told me lobito right here was going to be hard to peel." Her gaze shifted to my brother. "Your beautiful sister has poison running through her blood." My brother quickly glanced at me. "The longer it stays in her system, the more difficult to take it out. She can end up having seizures." I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds, feeling dizzier than before. "Say the name, Scott."

"Kate." What? Kate Argent?

"Okay," I heard Araya's voice. "Stop the machine." Severo did as he was told as another two men walked to Scott and Lydia, freeing them. My brother quickly walked to me, extending his hands to touch me. However, my body started shaking and I couldn't make it stop. "Severo bring the shot."

The door of the room opened again, this time two men were grabbing Stiles and Malia. Stiles's eyes widened as he saw me shaking while being tied to a chair. Before he could step forward, the man grabbing him stopped his movements.

"Don't dare any of you to touch her now." Araya's strong voice resonated through the room. Severo walked to me, stabbing the side of my neck with the syringe. I could feel the liquid running down my blood. Severo unleashed me, lying me down on the freezing ground as my body continued shaking.

"W-What did you do to her?? You old troll." I wanted to smirk at Stiles's use of vocabulary, but I was too busy being scared of the constant shaking of my body.

"She will be alright," Araya replied. "She has more water in her body than a human. The liquid we injected plus the water will do a quick job in removing the poison."

"N-nice." I tried to sound sarcastic.

"Fever might be a side effect of the poison, but you will be alright."

I watched as my brother talked to Araya while I was leaning against Roscoe with the others. Stiles was constantly asking me if I was alright. I felt a little weak, but my temperature was back to normal.

Scott finally walked to us. "So what now?" My boyfriend asked.

He shrugged. "She thinks she knows where we can find Derek."

"She gonna tell us where?" Malia asked while she leaned her head against my shoulder. My hand went up to play with her hair.

"Uh, actually, she's giving us a guide."

Stiles's face transformed into confusion, but it went away as soon as a big motorbike stopped in front of us. "You know her?" Stiles asked my brother.

As soon as the person took their helmet off, we saw a beautiful black woman whose neck seemed to be scarred. "Braeden."

"Who's Braeden?"

"She's a mercenary," Lydia added.

"Right now, I'm the only one who's gonna take you to la iglesia."

"The Church?" I questioned. "What's The Church?"

"It's not a place you'll find God," I smirked, liking her way of talking.

Getting inside the jeep, we followed her as she took us to la iglesia.

There was a comfortable silence inside Roscoe. The three girls were sitting behind as I sat on the front between my boyfriend and my brother. "Okay, I'll ask." Malia was the one interrupting the silence. "Who's Kate Argent?"

Kira put her hand up. "Uh, I'd like to know, too."

"Well, we were at her funeral. So, I'd like to know how she got out of a casket that was buried six feet underground." I chuckled, nodding my head that was resting on Stiles's shoulder as he drove.

"She was never in it." I glanced at my brother.

"She was Allison's aunt," Lydia spoke, and I could feel the pain in her voice. The pain of someone who recently lost her best friend. WAnd a total sociopath."

"You don't have to talk about it now if you don't want to." Kira whispered while glancing at the back of my brother's head.

"Um, yes, he does." I was going to scold Malia as if she was a curious child that didn't know when to keep her mouth shut.

"Yeah, she's right. You guys should know. You need to know."

"All right." Stiles sighed. "Kate was the one who set the fire that killed most of Derek's family."

"Some of them survived, like Cora, and Peter." Scott added.

"A very angry Peter," Lydia appended.

"Yeah, he's the one who bit and turned me." My brother sighed.

"And the one who scratched me." I added.

"And the one who finally caught up to Kate and killed her." Lydia explained.

"And we saw her buried." Stiles and I replied at the same time. He took his eyes off the road for two seconds to place a kiss on my forehead and ask once again, if I was feeling alright.

"No." Scott shook his head. "We saw a casket, remember? She wasn't in it. The Calaveras heard that Kate had been killed by an Alpha's claws. They wanted to make sure she was really dead. Her body was healing. More and more, as she got closer to a full moon. She was coming back. So they switched out the bodies. If a hunter is bit, they have to take their own life before they change. The Calaveras, they treat the code like law. They make it their responsibility to enforce it."

"Good for her." The were coyote intervened. "I wouldn't do it either."

"Would you kill half a dozen people to get out? Because that's what she did."

Kira sighed, placing her hand on my brother's shoulder. "So Kate's a werewolf now?"

"I don't know. You know, there's a saying, sometimes the shape you take reflects the person you are." I nodded along with my brother's words, remembering Jackson Whittemore. What was of him now?

"What kind of shape is sociopathic bitch?" As soon as the Martin girl spoke, the car was hit by something, making Stiles stop driving as we all got startled. We all got out of the car as Braeden got off her bike to ask what had happened.

"I don't know. It felt like we hit something." Stiles and Scott were examining Roscoe.

"Scott, we need to get there by night. It's too dangerous otherwise."

My brother sighed. "Go." Stiles made a gesture with his hands, trying to let him know that it was okay for him to leave with Braeden.

"Not without you."

"Dude, someone needs to find Derek. We'll figure something out. We always do. Just go."

I walked to my brother, kissing his cheek and embracing him. "Be careful, okay?" He nodded his head, wishing the same for me and sharing a look with Stiles. A look pleading him to take care of me.

Before he walked to the bike, he was stopped by the fox girl. "Scott... I can't think of anything else to say except for be careful. And...and I know 'Be careful' sounds kind of lame and I'm totally sure the second you're gone I'm gonna think of something much better, but I..."

"Uh, 'Be careful' works for me." I smiled as they embraced each other.

I sighed. "They are so cute," I whispered while wandering close to Stiles as his hands rubbed Roscoe's side, making sure that there wasn't any scratch.

"We are cuter." He replied while biting his lower lip and inspecting his jeep. I laughed and nodded my head and watching my brother disappear with Braeden.

"Guys," Malia grunted. Therefore, I turned around to look at her. "I don't think we hit something. I think something hit us." She was holding up what seemed like giant teeth or claw. I couldn't differentiate them, to be honest.

I sighed, leaning against the jeep as I examined my boyfriend inspecting the hood of his car. A screwdriver in his mouth. "Stiles, baby. Don't hate me. I know you love Roscoe but maybe we should just walk." He glanced at me with wide eyes. "It's getting colder and darker." I made a gesture to the girls as they rubbed their arms.

"Hey, I will never abandon this jeep. You understand me? Ever. Ever. Ever."

Malia glanced around. "Work faster, Stiles." She paused as her eyes continued examining the whereabouts. "There's something out here with us." I gulped.

However, night had fallen upon us and Roscoe wasn't working. Malia continued in front of us, glancing around, prepared to attack whatever was observing us. Kira had grabbed her sword while Lydia and I tried to help my stressed boyfriend. "Lydia, could you please hold the light still for a second? It's really hard to see anything if you keep shaking it like that."

Lydia scoffed. "I'm shaking it like this because we're in the middle of nowhere with your broken down jeep and we're being attacked by yet another razor-clawed monster. And I'm terrified."

"Well, just be slightly less terrified." He answered back. "You hold this." He handed me a big metal piece.

"What's this?" I inspected it.

"I don't know. I'm hoping it's not important."

"Oh god." I sighed. Things got worse as the next thing that happened was Malia running towards somewhere or something. "Malia!" I yelled. Kira ran after her while Lydia told Stiles to continue fixing the jeep.

"You... you please don't do that ever again!" Stiles scolded Malia as he drove. The jeep was finally fixed or so we were hoping.

"Do what?" She innocently asked.

"I... I thought you just took off. I thought you were running."

"I was running."

"No, I mean, like, I thought you were leaving."

Malia pouted, looking between Stiles and me. "I wouldn't leave without you guys." We glanced at her. "I would never leave without you two. Them I would leave."

"Yeah. Uh, it's progress." Stiles sighed. "I feel like the dad of a teenager girl." I nodded my head. Stiles and I had taken the paper of teaching Malia what she shouldn't do. The actions she must separate between a human and a were coyote.

"Don't do it again, okay?" I begged. "You scared us." She apologized. "And that doesn't look good."

"It's okay."

"Are you sure?" Kira looked worried as the rest of us. "It looks deep."

"I can feel it healing." I sighed in relief.

"You didn't see anything?" The Martin girl asked.

"Barely. It had a strong scent, though."

"Like what?" I asked while offering her water from my bottle.

She smiled at me as if she was a little puppy, grabbing the plastic bottle. "Like death."

When we finally arrived at the place where Scott and Braeden where we noticed that they were grabbing a young boy. Malia asked if that was Derek, to which Stiles replied 'Sort of'. That young boy was Derek Hale.

Derek Hale was a teenager once again.

TAGLIST: @og-baby-ob14 - @savemypostcards - @cas-loves-pizza - @used-avocado - @mvrylee - @bilesxbilinskixlahey - @honeydoll-stark - @arieltheworldisamess - @softpeteparker - @kit-kat-katie99 - @thatsuperherosidekick - @bexbetterxthanxwords - @big-galaxy-chaos - @littlemiss-forgotten - @enchantedcruelsummer - @coldfreakeggsexpert - @merla123 - @sammypotato67 - @weirdowithnobeardo - @maggiesblogsblog - @itskindyl - @bobo-bush - @moongoddesskiana - @multifandxm353 - @irwxnhugsx - @xoprincessmel - @iclosetgeek - @andreagf956 - @niawoods - @anerroroccurrrrred - @perrytheplatypus11 - @trustfundparker - @nmriia - @steve-harringtonnn - @trustfundparker - @brithedemonspawn - @weirdowithnobeardo - @my-soul-is-the-moon - @azayamari - @poguestyle17 - @bibliophilewednesday - @10minutesofscreentime - @momentitodebruh - @drikawinchester - @perrytheplatypus11 - @my-soul-is-the-moon - @linkpk88 - @royalreadery - @sweetest-serpent01 - @teenwaywardasgardian - @sadcupofcoffee - @maliyamay - @seninjakitey - @tairisceana - @thegirlwhoimagined - @mackingjj - @daphnen21 - @malfoystilinskii05 - @caitsymichelle13 -

People in bold means it doesn’t let me tag them.

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smhalltheurlsaretaken · 4 years

Text

On the Citadel and writing (Star Wars) essays.

I’ve just stumbled upon captures of clones deaths in the Citadel and Obi-Wan’s reactions (easily summed up by “we must keep moving”), and the op was using this as evidence of Obi-Wan dehumanizing them, and I can’t stop thinking about it and it’s making me so (irrationally) angry.

...

So yeah instead of ranting, I’ll attempt to direct my seething frustration into trying to organize a few thoughts on character analysis. Rule of thumb: text without context is pretext. Or in this case, picture without scene is probably bs. When using a particular frame as a piece of evidence supporting a take, you have to make sure you’re not excluding any surrounding material that could potential contradict that take, or else the analysis doesn’t hold. Quick example: using pictures of Yoda goofing around to test Luke’s patience as evidence that he is insane doesn’t work, because it’s revealed right after that he was playing an act.

This principle is to be broadened when analysing entire scenes or episodes. You can’t take them out of the wider narrative.

The post I was talking about continued on to say that this wasn’t the first or the last time that Obi-Wan was careless with the lives of his clones. Unless they were referring to RotS (which isn’t fair or intellectually honest because it was made long before anyone considered giving the clones identities and individual thinking), I don’t see that as being the case at all in canon material. Obi-Wan fights on the front lines. He takes the exact same amount of risk as his troops - he takes more risks even, as established as early as Christophsis (when he tells Rex to retreat with his men while he holds off the B2 super battle droids).

What the op was probably talking about was the many plans of his that result in clones dying (ex: on Geonosis with the zombie worms, many troopers die as they escape). Here’s what I meant about the wider narrative: TCW is about war. It’s about people dying, and it has to be so the audience can understand the horror of a full scale war. And since it’s still (supposed to be) a kid’s show, it has to be mostly faceless people dying.

I’m borrowing a quote from @trickytricky1‘s absolutely amazing vid ‘Your Body and Your Blade’, which compiles scenes of Jedi placing themselves between their clones and enemy fire: “We are shown a war, and in that show, to tell that story, they will kill the soldiers. They will kill the soldiers regardless of whether we think they should have been able to be saved. They will kill the soldiers to prove a point, to tug the heartstrings, to move the plot, to set the scene. But that is far from the only thing we are shown.”

So there, wider narrative. The clones dying in missions led by Obi-Wan don’t say much about Obi-Wan himself. And speaking of Obi-Wan, more on character analysis. Obi-Wan, according to Matthew Stover’s Lucas-approved RotS novelization, is “the ultimate Jedi,” Jedi being supposedly defined by their compassion.

Obi-Wan is the guy who cradles one of his worst enemy in his arms as he dies, the guy who knows like a billion languages and is always shown to be super respectful and/or knowledgeable of other beings’ cultures (the Twi’Leks whose homes he doesn’t want to destroy, the Zygerrian whose culture he uses to buy Anakin time to disable the bombs, the Geonosian Queen, telling the Gungans they live in symbiosis with the Naboo...) and the one who knows the names of the 501st troopers despite not being their general (see The Deserter). Obi-Wan is not presented as dismissive of people or things because he does not understand them, and he certainly is shown to value all sentient life above his own. That does not jibe with Obi-Wan dehumanizing the clones.

What we’re uncomfortable with might be the show itself not delving deeply enough into issues we as an audience can perceive because we have the benefit of omniscience and hindsight. Just as Yoda and Obi-Wan killing the clones in RotS does not inform their characters but the real life context of the movie’s creation, the same can be said of most problems with clone rights that we are indigned by. (Except in Krell’s case, or Tarkin’s - that’s what dehumanization looks like. And that’s what the show draws attention to, practically screaming “hey, look, these guys are evil for doing that!!!”)

To go back to the Citadel arc itself... Again, context. They’re in the middle of a highly time-sensitive mission, their failure could (as far as they know) mean complete defeat and the end of the Republic if the Separatist invade the Core worlds, and it’s more than probable that the clones who came along volunteered. (The ones we know are all high-ranking officers.)

With this in mind, Obi-Wan not taking the time to show grief (again with the context that Obi-Wan isn’t one to wear is emotions on his sleeve) says one thing about his character, and only one: he’s a damn leader. As Piell puts it, this is war. You act first, survive first, mourn second. It’s hard to swallow as the audience, because we love the clones and care for them and want other characters to show that they care too, but fan-service can make for poor writing and characterization.

(And by the way - Obi-Wan carries a clone on his back when they make their way down a cliff. He also personally assists most of the men up and down ledges, he gives out the warning about the blast doors closing... He’s trying to have everyone’s back. Pressing people to move isn’t being cold, it’s being cool-headed.)

To finish off, I’d like say that the “death of the author” principle is great when you’re writing school essays and want to show off (I should know, pretending that I’m smart and know stuff about literature is basically what I’m majoring in). But it can very easily lead to interpretations that - while valid to the degree that you’re entitled to make them and that they’ll probably always be defendable in some way - are not what you were meant to take away from the story. (Ex: the Empire was actually good, the Jedi deserved genocide, the Dark Side is freeing - go crazy, make defending these into fun rhetoric exercises, actually believe them if you want - but it’s still not what Lucas was trying to say.)

Here’s what JAT (Obi-Wan’s voice actor) had to say about the Citadel. (Borrowed from the amazing @gffa.)

“He has sympathy and heart for the clones, but at the same time he knows the mission.”

tldr: the Citadel isn’t an arc meant to highlight Obi-Wan’s flaws (if anything, it’s an Ahsoka arc, and an Anakin arc setting up his future interactions with Tarkin). The deaths we see him walk away from are mostly for shock value, to make us understand what how dire the situation is and to make Even Piell’s death believable when it comes (which in turn is to further Ahsoka’s arc).

So yeah, keep the author alive, try to make serious analysis in good faith and not based on your emotional reactions to character you cherish, but go crazy on the wildy AU headcanons and don’t let people spoil your fun.

#meta #on meta writing #double meta?#the citadel #obi-wan kenobi #i'll defend him till I die #clones #clone rights #star wars

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ssa-thotchnerr · 3 years

Text

Don’t Let Me Drown

Anonymous asked:

maybe a Hotch angst with his daughter being kidnapped by unsub, and he decides to drown her because he knows that she’s afraid of water and can’t swim? Maybe no happy ending? Thank you so much!

word count: 2.2k words of pure ANGST

warnings: drowning, major character death, grief, angst to the max, sad!hotch, kinda shifty writing ngl

a/n: anon, you are EVIL! I love it though. Yeah, this is pretty sad cause Hotch is really sad 😭😭😭 anyway I feel like this is really shit so if yall could give some feedback, I would really appreciate it!

—

"Shut up!"

You winced as you were harshly hit over the head by your kidnapper. He slammed the back door of the van shut, causing you to flinch back in fear. He'd just tied your arms back, not wanting to risk you trying to scratch his eye out once more, since you'd nearly succeeded the first time over. You didn't care that you were full on crying, the kind of crying that shook your entire body painfully.

The kind of crying that suggested fear.

You didn't even remember what happened, one minute you were walking home from school, the next you were in some strangers van with your arms lashed behind your back painfully tight. He wasn't too bothered about you knowing his name of what he looked like, you knew what that meant. You knew why he didn't care about you knowing who he was, what he was going to do to anyone else he could get his hands on.

You knew he was gonna kill you.

The sheer thought made you whimper. You didn't want to die, not like this. Not in fear, not without saying goodbye to your dad, your little brother, your friends. You didn't want to be murdered, not be a case that JJ would be given one morning and be pinned up on a wall. Taking in a deep breath, you attempted to steady out your breathing, there was no way you were going down without at least trying to negotiate your way out of here.

"Please, let-let me go, I won't tell anyone, I-I promise," You said, looking up at the man as he slid the door of the van open. "You-you don't wanna do this." You tried your hardest not to stutter, but your nerves were at an all time high, you couldn't help it. He laughed as he reached forward and snatched you towards him, causing you to scream. "Let me go! Please!" You cried as he picked you up.

"Shut up, brat!" He snarled, throwing you onto the ground. Looking around, you realised you were at the lake near Quantico, meaning that if your dad and his team were working on this case already, you at least had a chance.

Right?

Pulling out your phone that he'd taken from your pocket, he grinned as he took a picture of you. You shook your head and let out an angry huff, your chest heaving with each and every breath you took. The Unsub smiled at you maliciously as he put your phone up to his ear.

"Poor baby, just wanting her daddy to come and save her, huh?" You sniffled as you looked up at him, an angry look on your face as your eyebrows were furrowed. "Well, how about I left you speak to your dad one more time, a final goodbye?" You felt your stomach drop.

Final goodbye?

You started to tug desperately at the rope lashing your arms to your side, fear overtaking your rational side as you realised where you were. You were by a river, you couldn't swim, and this guy appeared to know and have something against your dad.

"Hello, is this SSA Hotchner?"

—

Hotch let out a frustrated sigh as your phone went to voicemail once more. He'd tried calling you about 7 times, and every time he tried, it rang out to voicemail. Hotch knew that your phone was always on, after all, you were a modern day teenager, didn't all of them have their phones on all the time?

"Still nothing?" Derek asked. Hotch shook his head as he looked up at his colleague, trying to hide the complete and under distress he was feeling at the moment. But Derek had been working with Hotch for years, and he knew his usually stoic boss better than Hotch thought he did. "Hey, it's alright. We'll get her home, Y/N's a smart kid." Derek assured him.

"I know she's a smart kid, but she's still a child, she'll be scared," Hotch said. As much as he didn't want to think about it, he knew there was a possibility you were already dead. He hated that he thought of that, that you died scared, possibly painfully. Hotch had never answered his phone quicker than when your name flashed up on the screen. "Y/N-" Hotch was prepared to ground you until you graduated high school just for worrying him so much.

"Hello, is this SSA Hotchner?"

That wasn't you.

"Where's Y/N?" Hotch asked, trying to keep his voice steady. Derek looked out to the bullpen, seeing that the whole team, Minus Rossi and Emily, was there, he signalled to Hotch, who nodded as Derek left him.

"You'll be able to find Y/N at Lake Ridge," He answered.

"Help me! Dad!" You were crying. Hotch couldn't help but to do the same thing, he stood up, he didn't want to feel like it was a hopeless situation anymore. The line went silent for a minute, making Hotch freeze on the spot.

There was a scream.

The line went dead.

It was cold.

So, so cold.

But you found that after a while, it wasn't cold anymore. It almost felt comforting, that if you went just that little bit deeper, you would be able to get warmer, and warmer, and warmer. And it became just that, so comforting in fact, you found that you were drifting away from consciousness.

This was it.

And that was it.

Hotch practically dove out of the car as Derek pulled up, running out and getting right into the lake. He knew you couldn't swim. Everything he did, went against everything he was told to do. Don't rush into things, make sure the coast is clear, all of that was not to be ignored, but given the circumstances, Hotch wasn't much caring about what the law said. Yes, he was an FBI agent, but he was your father first.

Dear God, he hoped he still was your father.

The team watched from the shore as Hotch disappeared under the water, all of their hearts practically beating out of their chests. You were the first BAU Baby, the female embodiment of your father, something that Hotch would endlessly brag to Haley about when she’d visit the BAU with you. You’d always listen to Reid list of facts that there was no way a child your age could understand, Penelope would always be aware of your presence before hand and have a plushie ready for you so she could keep her coined title of being your favourite. They'd watched you grow up to the 16 year old they knew and loved, and they were praying that the last time they saw you, wasn't the last that they saw you alive.

"I called an ambulance just as we left, it should be here soon," Spencer said, still keeping his eyes on where Hotch had disappeared. It was a tense atmosphere, and with every passing second, the outcome of the situation became more and more bleak. After what felt like hours, Hotch resurfaced with you, unconscious in his arms.

“Oh my God,” JJ whispered, looking around at the team to see their reactions. Everyone was simply in shock. Hotch waded through the water, placing you on the ground and kneeling beside you. The whole team rushed to your side, Reid at your neck to feel for a pulse.

His stomach dropped when he felt nothing.

“Damn it, Y/N, wake up,” Hotch said, starting compressions on your chest. JJ was holding your hand, Derek was waiting on the ambulance. They’d completely forgotten about the UnSub, they were hoping that you could make it out of this alive to tell them about your captor. You had to make it out of this, you’d lost too much in the past years, surely you’d be allowed to not lose your life too? Your dad switched to mouth to mouth, but nothing appeared to be working. “Come on, honey, don’t leave me.” Hotch was desperate, his voice breaking as he spoke. Everyone was starting to feel sick, it was like watching Hotch grieve over Haley all over again, just 10x worse this time around.

You were still a child.

Throughout everything your dad tried, you remained completely unresponsive. Hotch knew that you were gone, but he didn’t want to think about it.

“Hotch,” He looked up at his colleagues, who were all looking at him with sympathy. None of them wanted to say anything, it would make everything real, make it hurt ten times worse. To Hotch, it felt like being dragged kicking and screaming into a nightmare, as he sat there, his oldest daughters body in his arms. Up until now, he had praying that he wouldn’t be planning another funeral, no, not for you. He didn’t want to be thinking about what he would be saying to everyone coming to the aforementioned funeral, about how he would have to use the past tense while speaking about you.

Hotch finally broke down.

JJ, Spencer and Derek left Hotch for a bit, this wasn’t exactly their time to be grieving. They hadn’t just lost their child, killed by their worst fear. To make things worse?

The ambulances arrived.

No one could say that they were particularly surprised when the unit chief stepped back for a bit. They all understood, how could they not? They didn’t even want to think about how Hotch was feeling, how he was dealing with the silence that now on,y came with a one child household. Everyone had went to your funeral, it was the first time anyone had seen Hotch since that day. Everyone had taken turns at going to check on him, and right now it was Emily and Derek’s turn.

“Hey,” Emily said, smiling sympathetically at Hotch as the front door opened. Hotch smiled back, both Emily and Derek knew that it was a fake smile, but the gesture was appreciated. “How are things?” She asked him.

“Alright, I guess,” Hotch answered vaguely. “Me and Jack cleared out some stuff from her room, he took her record player and all of her vinyls, he’d been begging for them for years,” He said, a real, genuine smile coming to his face.

“That’s good, man,” Derek said. “Is there anything you wanna talk about?” Derek asked. Hotch shook his head. It still hurt to talk about you, it was still too deep of a wound to mention. The thought he found himself mulling over often was what did he say if people asked him about his kids? He would surely have to mention you, right?

The only thing he could conjure up was; “I lost my daughter, but I have a son.”

He lost his daughter.

It hurt.

It really fucking hurt.

Later that night, Hotch had left Jack alone downstairs for a few hours while he finished some stuff in your room. Once coming downstairs, he paused as he saw you on the screen of the TV. He recognised the video, it was your 5th birthday party, Jack being only a baby at the time. Jack was still young, but old enough the know what had had happened to his older sister.

“Hey, what’s this?” Hotch asked. Jack paused it and looked up at his dad, wiping the tears away from his eyes. Hotch had noticed that Jack hadn’t cried yet, and he knew that different people grieved differently. He knew from experience.

“I found it, it had her name on it and I just wanted to see her again,” Jack said, trying his hardest to keep back the sob that was aching to escape. Hotch sensed this was coming, he knew his son.

“It’s alright to cry, Jack, she is-was your sister, you’re allowed to be upset,” Hotch said, the correction hurting more than the previous ones did. Jack shook his head, and the dam broke, he burst into tears. Hotch put his arm around Jack, pulling him close as he finally broke down. “I know it hurts.” He assured him.

“I just miss her,” Jack whispered, wiping his eyes.

“I know, I miss her too.”

—

Taglist

@snarky--starky @averyhotchner @snowangle1994 @pepperonysmcu @yeojiins @mollbt

#hotch x daughter!reader #hotch x reader #hotchner!reader #agent hotchner #criminal minds #angst #jack hotchner #emily prentiss #dr. spencer reid #jennifer jareau #derek morgan #david rossi #tw: drowning #criminal minds angst #criminal minds fanfiction

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bagelbright-tok · 3 years

Text

Reflection

Jotaro (3) x Fem!Reader

[FINISHED FIC]

Warning(s): Violence, descriptions of life threatening injuries, descriptions of blood, life threatening experience, trauma, descriptions of pure anguish, five stages of grief, depression, angst, poor writing, I did not double-check or reread anything.

Word Count: 1946

I’m Sorry.

It'd already been several hours since Polnareff burst out of the bathroom, panicking about an enemy attack. The enemy being the man with two right hands. The man who had slaughtered Polnareff's sister. It was understandable that he wanted to go off on his own to hunt down the monster, but it wasn't smart.

Not smart at all. In the hotel, in Jotaro's and your shared room, you expressed your worry.

"I'm so nervous. I've never been so full of anxiety." You say quietly, plopping on the bed. "I'm sure he can fend for himself, but not even he knew what the enemy's ability is."

"You need to stop worrying. It's his problem. He's the one who decided to go off on his own." Jotaro said calmly, in his usual monotone voice. He removed his hat, placing it on the nightstand. "He even said when we met him that he was coming with us to get revenge for his sister."

You sigh, finally laying down on the edge of the bed, "You're right. I guess I just get attached too quick," You admit with defeat, "I'll miss him. He was like the… the comedy break in this depressing trip."

"Hm." Jotaro agreed, removing his jacket and setting it wherever he could.

Jotaro got in bed and finally you decided to place yourself in a more comfortable position on said bed.

____ You'd been dating Jotaro for about two years now. You've had your Stand, Knight's Cups, since you had been born. It was more of a defensive than offensive, but could do damage if used correctly.

Knight's Cups could create barriers. These barriers were usually cloudy but mostly clear. You could create as many as you wanted, but the more you created the more energy you used. The same applied to size. You could make a barrier around the entirety of the world, but that would kill you before you were a quarters way done. You tend to stick to singular barriers to protect yourself or singular barriers around the enemy to capture them in a way. In some cases, you could shrink the barrier with someone inside. This would obviously crush them to death. You had no limit as to how small you could make your barriers. As with most Stands, there was the downside. Your Stand was the barrier. If the barriers were actually penetrated or cracked, it would seriously harm you.

___

The next day, likely around lunch time. You, Jotaro, Joseph, Kakyoin, and Avdol were all sitting around the table, an extra seat bothering every single one of you. It was empty. It shouldn't be an extra seat. It should be occupied by the silver haired Frenchman. Avdol was most bothered by it. It was obvious in his silence and disturbed facial expressions.

Eventually, Avdol stood, "Excuse me, I need some air." He casually left the table and went outside.

After five minutes, you spoke, "He didn't just go out to get some air, did he?" You look up and around the table.

They all shook their heads. The somber mood turned tense as everyone stood up at once and rushed out of the building. Without another word spoken, everyone split up. Jotaro went one way, Joseph went another, Kakyoin took a different route, and you went running where your gut told you to go. Eventually, you felt relieved to see Avdol's familiar red robes in the distance. You caught up with him, and became happier when you saw him tackle Polnareff. Concern quickly took over though when you saw a bullet fly by, nearly missing Polnareff.

You jumped in front of them, using Knight's Cup to create a barrier just to cover you, Avdol, and Polnareff. A bang rang out, and you felt a small throbbing pain in your stomach. It felt like someone grabbed a piece of your skin and ripped it out. But nothing had actually hit you. You focus on the cloudy figure in front of you. A cowboy with a gun. He shot at your barrier, which really did nothing but pain you.

"Does this guy even have a Stand? He's shooting a gun-" You were confused until Polnareff interrupted,

"That is his Stand!" Polnareff got up and dusted himself off.

Avdol did the same. "Lower the barrier, [Y/N]. All three of us can take him on." Avdol began to summon his Stand.

Polnareff already had Silver Chariot out. You nod, and as you were about to remove the barrier, you felt a great pain in your backside. It was different than having your barrier hit. Something was physically stabbing your backside. You groaned as your body reacted by arching. Your barrier went down.

"[Y/N]!" Both Avdol and Polnareff yelled at once. They tried to rush to you, but another bang rang out.

Everyone was caught off guard. Avdol was shot in the head. He collapsed in front of Polnareff and beside you. You tried to remain standing as the sharp object within you was removed.

"Avdol!" Polnareff yelled out, now focusing his attention on Avdol.

You tried to attack the cowboy with a barrier, but a bullet can move faster than you. You felt the horrendous pain of a bullet entering your chest and nearly piercing your heart. The blood spilling from your back had already soaked you in its warmth. It only got warmer when your chest began to bleed as well. You couldn't stay up anymore. You fell backward, now spilling blood in the dry sand of Calcutta. The sand easily soaked it all up.

"No! [Y/N]!" Polnareff was now knelt between you and Avdol.

"Polnareff! Avdol! [Y/N]!" Kakyoin had come running. Everything happened so fast.

Kakyoin had arrived just as Avdol and you were shot. He could do nothing. Neither could Polnareff. In just one minute, two people had died. At least, that is what was believed.

You couldn't protect Avdol, you only hoped for the best. But you knew you couldn't beat a bullet. Your barrier had gone down and so when you saw where Hol Horse was aiming, you put a half barrier over your heart. You couldn't protect whatever damage Hanged Man had done. If you'd known Avdol was going to get shot at, you would have put a barrier around him.

Right now, your only chance of survival was not bleeding out. Unfortunately, Polnareff and Kakyoin didn’t realize you were still alive. They ended up driving off, away from Hol Horse but being chased by J. Geil. Little had you known, you would be rotting next to Avdol’s dead corpse. Soon, hope for survival diminished. You were slowly slipping. You didn’t know how you lasted as long as you did. As things began to fuzz between reality and the great beyond, you heard the commotion of people surround you and Avdol. You could hear Joseph and Jotaro speaking.

“A-Avdol..? [Y-Y/N]..?” It was a shell shock for the old man. He groaned in distress as he looked at his friends’ dead bodies.

Jotaro was most upset. He was staring right at his girlfriend’s corpse. Blood spilled from your back and your chest. He staggered.

“J-Jotaro… You shouldn’t have to see her like this..” Joseph looked over at his grandson with pity and sorrow.

“[Y/N].” Jotaro’s usual tone was dry, almost cracking under the wave of emotions that crashed into him, toppling his strong form.

The teen’s eyes were wide, full of horror, shock, and pure sadness. She couldn’t be dead. They were just eating an hour ago. She wasn’t dead. Jotaro took a step forward, falling to his knees in front of her lifeless body. Who had done this? If he were to find out, he’d give them Hell, and then some. He gritted his teeth. Why did this have to happen? To him? To her? To [Y/N]? Couldn’t he do something? Anything?! He had one of the most powerful Stands and yet all he could do was remain still and allow the depression to roll in. How could he further this journey to save a woman he loved when he would lose another lady he loved? How would he cope? He would just have to. Do what he did best. Bottle up his emotions.

But- there was something. Something his Stand’s hearing could pick up. He was shocked now. Less negative, more positively. Was it shallow breathing? A very faint heartbeat? Yes.

“Jotaro-” Joseph tried to comfort the teen, but Jotaro wasn’t having it.

“Shut it, old man.” Jotaro swung his hand up to Joseph, signaling for him to shut up. “I hear something.”

“Jotaro, I know it can be hard, I have experienced this before, but-”

“Shut up!” Jotaro yelled, “I think- I think [Y/N]’s alive.”

“What? Jotaro are you sure?” Joseph was shocked, but was doubtful. It could be denial, or perhaps Jotaro finally lost his marbles.

“Yes. I can hear her.” Jotaro quickly responded, shuffling back to his feet and scrambling to you. “[Y/N]. [Y/N]!” He took hold of your limp form and began to shake you a bit, slightly waking you.

You groaned out of reaction to the sudden movement. You still remained relatively unconscious. Jotaro was suddenly relieved. He sighed, almost chuckling out of happiness.

“A-- Avdo-l…” You slur out, barely able to really think.

“Is Avdol alive too?” Joseph was curious as he went over to his friend’s body.

Jotaro could only hear your life. Avdol was dead. Jotaro shook his head, relieved his love was alive, but sad his friend was dead. Right then and there, they had to figure out what to do. As immoral as it may be, you alive was more important than their already dead friend. But, they agreed that Jotaro would take you to treat your wounds while Joseph would bear the burden of having to give his fallen friend a shotty funeral.

***

You would awaken, alive, not necessarily well, but alive. You quickly shot up from your laid down position, immediately regretting it as pain soared from your back to your entire body. You suck on your teeth and groan, instantly falling back down onto the ground you were laying on. Jotaro was there, waiting for you to return to the world. The black haired teen quickly ran to your side, making sure you were okay.

“Are you okay? What happened?” He began to question you, still worried.

“I- Ugh- I’m fine, Jojo. Polnareff got attacked, me and Avdol-” At the mention of his name, you turned your head around to see if he was also there, “Where is Avdol? Is he okay? He got shot. Jotaro, Avdol got shot! Is he-!?” You began to panic quickly, almost breaking into a sob just remembering the scene.

Jotaro’s shaking of his head interrupted you. It left you speechless. A singular silent gesture left you gasping for words. You moved back to sitting up. You grabbed Jotaro and pulled him into a hug. Jotaro was surprised and fell into it, unsure of how to react. You grabbed at his back, getting a grip into his black jacket, basically clawing into his backside. You choked on the sobs that hiked through your throat. For a moment, Jotaro just let you break into him. Though the edgy teen did realize that maybe hugging back would be good. Cautiously and slowly, he wrapped his arms around you, hugging you back for comfort. He didn’t apply too much pressure due to the stab wound on your back and the small bullet wound in your chest.

Jotaro could really only utter two words for you; “I’m sorry.”

___

E N D

#Writing #jjjba #JoJo's Bizarre Adventure #Jojo Part 3 #stardust crusaders #jotaro x reader #reader insert #x reader #jotaro kujo

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norcumii · 3 years

Text

Well that was a bout of PTSD I wasn’t expecting.

Ramblings under the cut so I can find it again later, warnings for: abuse, abusive relationship, probable incoherence, likely oversharing, (urge to) self-harm.

I’ve been dipping my toes back into RvB this week – I’ve seen seasons 1-3 countless times, 4 slightly less but still a lot, and everything else once.

The Ex’s issues included not wanting to venture too far into various media, but he sure did love rewatching what he had seen. That’s part of why once I got free, I made myself sit down and watch the rest – I basically spite-binged seasons 5-13, dissociating through at least the second half because I had so many mental warning bells clanging about how I was misbehaving, cheating by watching ahead without him, how dare I.

Had a shit time sleeping that week, too, but at least the sleep dep was familiar and helped me power through the emotional upset.

Loved the show, too – that doesn’t surprise me in the least, given how I already appreciated the writing and I’ve had several folks singing high praises of the further writing. I had quite a few “holy SHIT” moments, those ‘gotta pause and marvel and breathe “what the FUCK you magnificent ASSHOLES” timeouts,’ y’know, where you gotta stop to walk off some feels and just be awed at writing and performing SKILLS? And that was with the dissociation.

I honestly don’t know how yesterday I stumbled over a set of videos of a gentleman reacting to his first watch of RvB. Of course I immediately went to the super significant episodes, because I was curious as how The Big Moments hit someone else – I watched in a vacuum, squeaking at Tumblr and powering forward before my brain caught up and devoured me.

Anyway, yeah, I’ve been enjoying watching delightfully screechy man react to familiar storylines and jokes, then I realized I desperately wanted to see how he reacted to the end of Season 10, because that was when I had the biggest reaction, personally, and I spent quite awhile chewing over my thoughts and the themes and whatnot. I mean, it’s the end of the major/first storyline, it wraps up YEARS of plot and character arcs, and it’s just fucking balls-to-the-walls AMAZING.

I cackled so much watching this man lose his absolute shit. I was grinning a mile wide when he screeched like an actual banshee and had to take a lap around the room.

I was starting to feel funny as he waxed rhapsodic through the credits. I mean, don’t get me wrong, a lot of what he was saying matched much of my own thoughts at the time when first seeing it, but then he segued into how he’d gotten into RvB via RWBY, and that wasn’t my experience.

(I couldn’t understand why I was feeling so unsettled – I have absolutely no reason to feel wonky about how one gets into a fandom.)

He was still gushing as the post-credit scenes rolled, and I was shook because I don’t think I watched them.

(I’m not surprised – I know I had to stop watching rather abruptly. It was probably super late and I do recall Himself’s shadow looming hard to gnaw at my brain.)

The lovely YouTube gentleman was right back to unending adoration after them, just crying for joy about his love for RWBY and RvB, and I just...started crying.

It wasn’t good crying. It was ugly crying that wouldn’t stop, kept building with that wheezing, rusty-hinge keen that would be a scream if you push from breathing to speaking; crumpling up and finding the old urge to claw spiraling up along with it.

I’m fine. I didn’t, honest.

The emotion is still lurking, even now, after much bawling and a walk to try to redirect whatever the fuck that was. I think the base is a bit of despair, shored up with oceans of grief. Helplessness neutering much of the fury, all wrapped up with threads of sneering incredulity.

I couldn’t understand at first, why I was choking out “We could’ve had this.” I had to puzzle through that bawling which hard experience kept as silent as possible.

We could’ve had this.

This man has so much enthusiastic love for this show. He’s just...JOYOUS about it, open and awed and gleeful.

We never had that. We never could screech in delight about things at each other – any attempts ended in an ugly argument, usually about spoilers (fuck you, dude, if you didn’t want me speculating which you specifically wanted me to be good at in other contexts then don’t start speculating yourself!). Often about words – he had so many words, so many concepts that were taboo, and gods help the poor bastard what stumbled into a synonym Himself thought should be obvious and therefore also taboo instead of a necessary dodge because communication is a thing.

(Was this a concept that was enough degrees separate to satisfy him, or would it lead to a scolding about trying to sabotage his joy? Again. Like always.)

(Not just the scolding, but the demands – how could I be so cruel, WHY had this happened, no – no he wouldn’t accept that I’m too smart to think like that, or I had promised not to do the next door neighbor to it which is as good as promising not to do it either, what was the real reason we’re going to be here until he got his truth. No matter HOW many hours it took.)

We could’ve had this. We could’ve shared things, not Himself serving out appropriate sized dollops of what he liked while I limited myself to whatever I could speculate would be appropriately sized reactions.

I couldn’t enjoy something we shared too much. I couldn’t laugh too loud because it would distract from the moment. His joy always had to come first and how fucking DARE I impinge upon it even one iota?

No, really, I had to confess, and if he didn’t believe the answer it would not be accepted.

I got so tired of lying. I got so tired of being accused of lying when it was truth, and only believed when it was fake.

That’s one of the reasons why arguments went on for hours. I could only grit my teeth and ‘yes sir no sir three bags full sir, obviously I did it to fuck you over sir’ for so long.

My reasons were never good enough.

My joy always ended up being too much.

We could’ve had this – but his world, his joy, was never big enough for anyone but him.

#and not only was it never big enough; then he refused to let me go #i am so hurt and furious right now #Norcumi’s Continuing Adventures in Learning to be a Functioning Human Being #abuse mention #self harm mention #sometimes i treat tumblr like an actual blog

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demivampirew · 4 years

Text

I would give up everything for you.

A Charles Brandon x Mary Tudor (written as reader) (Henry’s sister) one shot

You can find more of my writings in the Masterlist

Warnings: Death, heartbreak, crying, unwanted arranged marriage (and talking about being consummated).

Summary: Shortly after becoming a widow, Henry summons you back to England for he has arranged a new marriage for you.

A/N (Important to understand the story): For those who don’t know, in the show they’d merged both Henry’s sisters into one: Margaret. In reality, he had two sisters, the one mentioned who ended up marrying the King of Scotland, James IV, becoming the Queen consort of said country (and after the death of her husband, Queen regent in name of her son for two years). Mary, the other sister, was married to the King of France, Louis XII for a few months, until his death and soon he was succeeded by his son-in-law Francis I -the King of France from the show, and his daughter Claude as Queen Consort- she couldn’t reign for the law forbid a woman to rule the country back at that time. Shortly after the death of the King, Charles was in charge of bringing Mary safe back to England, but in reality that was a secret plan for them to marry in secret in France, as Mary confessed to King Francis. It isn’t known when and how exactly they fell in love but it surely was before her marriage to the late King of France. They married in secret but then they had a public wedding because they suspected Mary to be pregnant and they wanted their kid to be legitimate.

For my story, I mixed a bit of the show’s plot with actual events. The main characters are the same from the show, except from Mary, written from a perspective of reader, who wasn’t on the show (Margaret’s story in this one-shot is the same from history and not the one from the series). I used the arranged marriage with the King of Portugal’s plot from drama purposes (this never happened in reality, because like I’ve said, Mary married Charles before going back to London, and she had married the King of France with the promise that she would marry who she wanted after that or she would become a nun - which Henry did not want because he would lose the Dowager’s money if she did that. -although in this story she doesn’t threaten him with becoming a nun.)

Disclaimer: English isn’t my first language and write in another period of time can be a bit difficult. I tried my best, so I apologize if I made mistakes.

Tag list: @lunedelorient @henrythickcavill @wolvesandhoundshowltogether @mary-ann84 @desperate-and-broken @peakygroupie @summersong69 @ivvitm1109 @madbaddic7ed @iloveyouyen @the-soot-sprite @hell1129-blog @whyyoudothistomecavill @thetaoofzoe @thereisa8ella

"The Queen of France, Your Majesty" announced one of the guards as you enter the room. Henry was sitting on the throne. There were a few guards there as well as Charles and William Compton, who were standing next to the door. - Dear sister! - your brother exclaimed as he stood up and approached you, grabbing your arms and placing a kiss on your cheek. - My poor sister, I'm terribly sorry for the lost of your dear husband.- "dear husband"? It felt as if he was mocking you, after all the only reason you married the late King of France, Louis XII was because he forced you to for that marriage forced an alliance between the two countries.

Being married to an old man was not a pretty thing. Being forced to consummate that marriage and with a crowd of people to witness it. Luckily, it didn't last for long because not long after your coronation as the new Queen, on Christmas' eve your husband died for an illness. After his death, his son-in-law, Francis I, inherit the throne with his daughter, Claude as Queen Consort. Even though your marriage was short, you were a loved Queen and you could have stayed in France if you desire it, but your brother had other plans for you. For you to agree to marry the late French King, he promised you that you were going to be able to marry whom you choose after his death, but sadly for you, he had no plans to keep his word. He ordered the Duke of Suffolk to escort you safely back to England. Charles was a loyal friend to Henry, but you succeeded to confess your brother's intentions for your return to England - you knew that if he wanted you back so quickly was not because he missed his beloved sister, but because there was something he needed from you. "He wants you to marry the King of Portugal" he confessed finally succumbing to pressure. After finding out that your worse nightmare was a reality, you ordered everyone on the ship to leave you alone and you cried on the way back.

- As sorry as I am for your loss, I must admit sister that I would need you to put aside your grief and take the King of Portugal as your new husband. With the rise of power of the Holy Roman Emperor, we need new alliances and he is more than pleased to become out ally if you marry him. He's seen your portrait and is enchanted by your beauty.- he informed you with a smirk. You remained silent and made no gestures. - So, my dear sister, would you consent to marry the King? - My consent is not needed, Your Majesty, for the King always does what he wants.- you finally said, your voice emotionless. There he was, your older brother. He could be charming for a moment and a second later be the devil himself if you crossed him. He didn't like when anyone defied him, especially women. His face showed no signs of rejoicing anymore, just contained anger. - We are at war, my dear sister.- he explained angrily. - We could face an invasion from Spain and if that would happen, we will need soldiers and money and he could provide that to us. - You are at war, brother. This is all because of you. If the Holy Roman Emperor is planning to attack England, it is because you broke your promise, like you always do, and set aside his aunt, humiliating her all. And that's because you had fallen in love with another woman. In your eyes, dear brother, you are the only one allowed to marry for love and you do not care who has to pay for your desires.- you replied bitterly. -If you want me to marry that old man, breaking the promise you once made me, at least you could have avoided me the displeasure of seeing your face and should have asked the Duke of Suffolk to escort me directly to Portugal since you know that no matter what are my choices, at the end I must be a loyal subject and obey you or I'll suffer the traitor's faith.

His hands were closed forming fists; he was containing his rage. If there was something Henry hated more than anything else was being defied. If it was not for the fact that he needed your Queen Dowager's money and the perks that your new marriage would bring to him, he would have you banned from court.

- Charles, take her to her chambers immediately.- he ordered and walked away, returning to his throne.

You bowed to him and allowed Charles to escort you back to your bedchambers. Once in the room, he closed the door to be sure no one would hear you speak.

- The Queen would be wise not to cross her brother.- he advised you. He spoke softly, surely it was because he did not want to be heard, but there was another thing in his voice: worry. - Why not?- you asked; it was a sarcastic question, you knew exactly why you should no speak to Henry that way for he was a King before your blood. - He could vanish you from court or worse.- he explained. - Great! I would rather be banned from court or dying to have to marry another old King.- you admitted, sighing bitterly. - You should not say that Your Majesty.- he pleaded. - Charles, would you stop calling me Your Majesty? I have known you my entire life. I'm still the same Mary I have always been, just less trusting and much more unhappy.- you confessed. - But now you are the King of France, Your Majesty. I should treat you with nothing but the proper respect. - I am Queen Dowager, I don't have the same importance that an actual queen has. - You are soon to be Queen again.- he reminded you and a tear fell from your eye; you wiped it away quickly. He stared at you with sadness on his eyes. He was probably hurt that you had to go through that again. - I rather die.- you repeated and look to the floor -You are lucky Charles, you could marry whom you choose.- you sighed. - I cannot.- he said with sadness. - Who is that you want and can't have, Charles? -you asked sarcastically.

The Duke of Suffolk looked you directly into your eyes, giving you the answer to your question without even saying a word.

Before leaving England, the two of you were close. He was this ladies' man and you were the King's little sister, but you started to see him differently in the year previous to your marriage. He was sweet, funny and protective. It was clear that you were not a just his friend's sister anymore, but a smart, funny and delightful woman. You had long talks while you played with carts and spent a lot of time together before your departure.

Charles excused himself and was about to leave. You called his name and when he turned to face you, you ran into his arms and kissed him. He pulled you closer to him as he stopped fighting his conscience. He probably felt that it was wrong, but he couldn't keep denying his feelings. After the long and awaited kiss, he pressed his forehead against yours and sighed.

- Escape with me.- you pleaded. - What? -he asked confused. - We could go to France. Francis is not a fan of my brother and he had nothing but sweet thoughts about me. He will be delighted to have me back there and surely he will support us and protect us if Henry decides to seek vengeance. - you assured him.- Please, Charles. - I... I cannot do that, I am sorry.- he said avoiding to look at you. - I will not betray my King. - Is it because he is your childhood friend or because you do not want to lose your lands and titles, Duke of Suffolk? - you questioned bitterly. He did not say a word, but it was not necessary; his shameful look said it all. Your poor heart broke into a million pieces. Not only you would have to marry an old man once more, but the man you loved preferred his nobility and money over you and your happiness. No matter what the future had set for you, it surely would not be a happy one.

A month passed before you were set to leave for Portugal. As you demanded, Charles stood away from you. The days passed and all you could do was crying about your cruel destiny. If at least you could have the luck that your sister Margaret had of marrying a young King whom she fell in love with, but no, that was not your fate. You were meant to be unhappy for the rest of your days.

Charles' eyes met yours. You could feel his pain but you could not be sorry for him, after all, he could have had you if he would have been brave enough to fight for you and, surely soon he would forget all about you and find solace in another woman's arms while you had to be with a man much older than you whom you didn't know. You quickly look to other side making sure he noticed that you were ignoring him and stood there, waiting in the room full of people for your brother to show up to say goodbye.

Henry appeared shortly with Cardinal Wolsey by his side. He approached you a kissed you " My dear sister. Fare you well on your journey. Remember the King of Portugal, your future husband, loves you and respects you. You must love him in return." - he said faking affection when in reality it was a command and a warning. He looked into your shiny, watery eyes but that didn't seem to have any effects on him. After crossing him the day of your return to England, he must be more than happy to see you gone.

The King was about to leave the place when the Duke of Suffolk called his attention.

- Your Majesty, I would like to have a word" - Charles pleaded. Henry looked at him with confusion but gestured him to speak. He walked a few steps forward and got on his knee in front of his best friend. - My heart forces me to beg you to save your sister from this marriage for that would make her unhappy.- he said firmly. There were gasps among the people present. You were breathless and your heart was beating an at exhilarating speed. Henry stared at him, his eyes showed both shock and anger. - As a sign of gratitude for your kindness towards the Queen of France, I will resign to my title, renounced to my lands and accept to be banned from court and any other punishment Your Grace sees suitable for my outrageous request.

For the first time since your mother's death, you saw tears fell from your brother's eyes. It didn't come as such as a surprise to you, you might be his sister by blood, but Charles was his brother by choice; they grew up together and he was his most faithful companion and now he put him in a position Henry must have surely hated. If he agreed to let you escape from this marriage, he would have to punish Charles from defying him in front of people from court. If he rejected his plead, people would know that he forced you into a marriage you didn't want to and he would further loss the affection of his subjects, who were already unhappy about his decision of leaving the beloved Queen Catherine for Anne Boleyn. Whatever decision Harry took, surely it would not have a happy ending for Charles. You knew you were right at the moment your brother stormed out of the room without saying a word.

Anthony Knivert, one of your brother's closest friends, walked you back to your chambers after Cardinal Wolsey ordered him to do so. The trip to Portugal has been postponed until after the King came with a resolution about the matter. As impossible as it seemed, you were even more heartbroken than before. There was no way Charles could cross your brother like that and no get punished and all because of your fault. If you just accepted your destiny quietly and had not made him feel guilty for choosing lands and his noble title over you, this would not have happened. Now, because of your stubbornness, he could face death.

It was around midnight when you heard someone knocking at your door. After permitting to enter your bedchambers, Charles walked in. You got up quickly from your bed and ran into him. He hugged you tightly for a moment and then softly pressed his head against yours. You could feel his warm breath. His hands grabbing your face provoked you chills. - Charles, you should not have done that.- you regretted. - I should have done it before, but it is ok. I would do it again if necessary.- he assured you and tears rolled down your cheeks. His thumbs clean the tears and then he kissed you. - You are not only the Queen Dowager of France but also the Queen of my heart, Mary.- he confessed. You smiled at him and your lips met his again.

After a knock, the door opened and Will Compton warned Charles to hurry for someone was coming. He kissed you once more and disappeared.

The King summoned you a few days after. There were some noble people present, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk among others. Charles was already there waiting. About half an hour later Henry appeared with Wolsey and sat on the throne. He remained silent for a moment, as he inspected you. He knew; he knew his friend loved you and his love was reciprocated.

- Dear sister, I would like to apologize to you, for I did not know you were unhappy with the marriage proposal.- he said with conviction as if that would make it true- I desire nothing more than happiness for you, my beloved Mary. So I have decided that it should be you the one to decide who your future husband will be. You have my word and my blessing. Of course, he would make it seem as if you pact before marrying King Louis XII was his idea, but you did not care, as long as he granted you that you were not mad about him credit it to himself. - As for Your Grace.- he said looking at Charles- Your title and lands were given to you as a reward for bravely fighting by my side to defend your country and should remain at your disposal. Furthermore, as a sign of gratitude for enlightened me about my sister's displeasure for her now announced marriage, I would like to grant you my blessing to marry her, if that is her heart's desire and I hope you live the happy quiet life you desire away from court.

There it was, your punishment was being banned from court, but it was a slight price to pay for all the great things you had achieved. You were now allowed to marry Charles and live happily with him.

Maybe it was the fear that Henry would change his mind that made you marry that same day. In a private ceremony, with a few maids and his friends Will and Anthony to witness it, you promised to love each other forever.

You had the opportunity to have another wedding since you have not bled and you were sure with child, you had a public wedding to show the legitimacy of your future child. This time, you had it at court. Henry was a proud man, but even if Charles did what no other man would have dared unless they wanted to lose their heads, your brother loved him too much and trust no other like he trusted your husband.

Henry Brandon. That's the name Charles choose for your newborn. He was the living image of his father.

Not everything in your remaining life was happiness. Even though you had been blessed with another two children, Frances and Eleanor, by God's will your little Henry died when he was six years old. A year after that, another baby joined your family, honouring his late brother by carrying his name.

Charles was nothing but a loving husband to you. He stood by your side when tragedy hit your family and later when you got ill. You survived the sweating sickness but never fully recovered from it, and five years later you meet again with your loving son. It must have hurt your love, who never left your side until your heart stopped beating. He loved you much and would be sad for losing you, but you were glad he had your loving daughters and son to keep him company and help him move on.

#charles brandon #charles brandon fanfic #charles brandon fanfiction #charles brandon one shot #the tudors #the tudors fanfiction #henry tudor #henry VIII #mary tudor #mary queen of france #henry cavill #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fanfiction #charles brandon x reader #charles brandon x mary tudor #demivampirew

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