#Anyone who has even longish hair knows this is a problem

[allaganexarch]

WIP Whenever! ♥

Absolutely blest by the tag from @myreia !!

As some of you may have noticed i have been in the TRENCHES with schoolwork the last few weeks LOL so all I have that is not just barely-coherent 4 am hallucinations is this jkdsfkjnfk. I've been holed up in my room being insane + I'm very eager to share so it's a longish snippet, hopefully tumblr dot website does not DESTROY the formatting.

I was thinking aaahhhh i can't tag ppl again I JUST tagged them in a thing but even if that were a thing it is not true I have been eaten by school for so long LOL @thepapernautilus @yourlocaldisneyvillain @delirious-comfort @eemamminy-art and anyone else who would like to pls feel free to tag me!

Wheel of Time, Liandrin x Reader 🤪🥰

--

The first time you meet Liandrin Sedai, it is not in your proudest moment.

You are a lady of perfectly average talents.  And although you work hard and perform your weaves well, yours is not the sort of power that gets noticed.  One must be noticed in order to be offered the trial of the Arches.  And so it is that each of your classmates, each of your friends, each of your enemies, becomes Accepted one by one, and leaves you behind.

You have been a novice for nine years when your best and last friend goes through the Arches.  And Light help you, you cry.  You go out into the abandoned courtyard, you shamble down onto a stone bench, and you cry.

This is how Liandrin Sedai finds you.

“Oh,” says an unfamiliar voice, high and clear, surely put off by your discomposure.

You wipe furiously at your face, but you hadn’t expected to be interrupted.  You cannot stop crying.

You feel her approach.  “Oh, there now—“ she says awkwardly.  You think you feel her hand hovering just shy of your shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” you sniffle.  “I’m sorry, I’m just—“ but you have no words for what you are.  You are a lady of perfectly average talents.  You are a Novice.  You are all alone.

In your periphery, you see the red skirts of the Aes Sedai trying to comfort you.  This is, to your mind, even worse.  At last you get the attention of one of the Red Ajah, and it is for this!

“There now, little sister,” says the Aes Sedai, and she sounds more confident now, as though she has steeled herself against your onslaught.  “What’s all this?  Surely nothing we can’t fix, yes?”

This is, somehow, the worst thing she could have said.  You cover your face with both hands in a poor attempt to stifle a sob.  “No!” you wail miserably.  “No, it can’t be fixed!  I try so hard, but it doesn’t matter!  The problem is me!  I’m—“

You are a lady of perfectly average talents.  A Novice.  Alone.  Abandoned.

“I’m weak!” you cry, your hands falling uselessly into your lap.  “I’m weak, and I always will be!” 

Once more you scrub your white sleeve across your face, but the tears won’t stop flowing.  The mysterious Aes Sedai sits at your side.  “Weak?” she wonders after a long silence.  “Weak in the One Power, you mean?”

“Mhm,” you sniffle horribly.  “Everyone’s gone through the Arches without me.”

“Ah.”  She draws out the syllable, low and rich, knowing.  “I see.  And you’ve been a Novice for how long?”

“A little over nine years,” you say.  Somehow, recounting this information calms you, rather than making you more upset.  At last you manage to dry your eyes enough to see.

“And you work hard, yes?  You’re sure it’s not your form that’s lacking?”  She asks the question without accusation.

You look up, meaning to nod your affirmation, but you are wholly unprepared for the sight.  The Aes Sedai sitting next to you has an unearthly beauty about her, something indescribable that you don’t see every day.  It’s not any one feature—her honey-blonde hair, her doll’s lips, her prominent cheekbones, or her wild, piercing eyes—but rather something more than the sum of her parts.  Awe and apprehension course through you in equal measure, and you almost forget to respond at all.

“It’s true,” says the mystery woman, “this Tower often values raw power over actual skill.  And I expect it’s also true that you’ve reached the limits of your raw power for the time being.  And so I suggest—“  Without warning, she reaches up and wipes the tears from your cheeks.  “—you stop wasting your energy on the things you cannot change.”

You are too stunned to speak.  She inclines her head, as though studying something, but there is something off about the gesture.  “After all,” she says.  “There are so very many things that you can change.”

There is something unsettling about her, a distinctive undercurrent of unrest you don’t see in most Aes Sedai.  You are reminded of a cat poised to spring upon an unsuspecting mouse.

“You know your weaves well?” she asks you.  “If I were to test you, I would not find myself disappointed?”

“Yes,” you nod, perhaps a little frantically.  “I mean—I know them well.”

The mystery woman nods, as though to say, exactly as I thought.  She stands and brushes her hands over her bright red skirt.  “Take a few days to collect yourself, little sister.  Come and find me when you’re ready to make a change.”

You stammer.  “Oh, but I—“

“Liandrin Sedai,” she clarifies.  Then, just shy of turning to leave, she amends, “Oh, and keep this between us, hm?”

You nod, dumbfounded.  And then she is gone.

You take Liandrin Sedai’s advice, and you spend the next few days in deep contemplation.  You know you have not overstated your familiarity with the weaves, but you worry she will still be disappointed.  In your heart, you yearn to move forward, but you worry that you are being prideful, that being a Novice still has something to teach you, and that you are ignoring it.  You write to your mother, a letter that reveals little but says much, if one reads between the lines.  You are profoundly lonely, deeply self-conscious, and yet you know you cannot possibly refuse Liandrin Sedai’s invitation.

Liandrin does test you, hard.  In a way it feels good to finally show the full breadth of your dedicated practice.  But you are unused to such rapt attention.  Yours is not the kind of power that draws a teacher’s eye.  You weave what you can with practiced precision, but what you can weave is not impressive, and it takes hard work every single time.

But Liandrin watches you anyway, her gaze piercing, her stance not a little unsettling as she prowls about the small room like a hunting animal.  She doesn’t say much, just tells you what to weave and then watches, again and again and again, until you’re sure you just simply don’t know anything else you could possibly show her.

“Good,” she says, with a curt nod.

You drop your weave and stagger a little, out of breath and reaching for something to lean on.  Your hand finds the hard stone wall behind you, and you take in a gasping breath.  You’ve worked yourself to exhaustion before, but never quite like this.

“I think I see what you mean,” says Liandrin contemplatively.  “You perform the weaves well, but it’s not the kind of thing that catches the eye.  Pity, really.  Raw power is all fine and well, but it’s nothing next to perseverance.  One would think the Teacher of Novices at least could appreciate that.”

Your vision refocuses, but your mind is slow.  You’re still stuck on ‘you perform the weaves well.’  You smile foolishly.

Liandrin regards you with an unreadable emotion.  She squints as though studying you, but again there is something off about it, just like before.  Half-consciously, you think that she is only affecting the mannerism of studying you, pretending to contemplate something even though she’s already made up her mind.

“No matter,” she says at last.  “Run along and rest up.”

You hold a moment, baffled, waiting for something else that will explain what she is thinking.

She raises her eyebrows.  “Go.”

You do not need to be told again.

#exciting tag for writing things #wheel of time fanfic #liandrin x reader #liandrin #wheel of time #sorry for preparing to become the x reader tag menace this is my villain arc sdkjfnjfkf #i have like a whole plan for the fic it is not sane #i am also picking and choosing my liandrin lore bc she deserves to be a misandrist in peace #i was gonna say ty for coming to my ted talk but this is decidedly not my ted talk #you will KNOW when it's my ted talk

[bland-psychonauts-headcanons]

Heacanon:

You just know Milla’s hair is e v e r y w h e r e. Sasha travels with a lint roller specifically because of this. 

#Anyone who has even longish hair knows this is a problem #and Milla's is super super long #Psychonauts #Milla Vodello #my headcanons #Sasha sighs as he pulls them off his coat sleeves again #Sasha Nein #does this count as #SashaMilla

[ohmypreciousgirl]

Xicheng AU Rec List

This time I compiled my favorite AU fics for @waterandsilver! Hope everyone will enjoy this list too ♥

Just Two Lost Souls 46,978

Even if it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, husband, or companion, all Jiang Cheng really wants is to run his company, take care of his pets, and maybe get some sleep. Unfortunately the new job promotion to CEO comes with a loaded social calendar and a need for some sort of companion.

So clearly the most sensible answer is to start dating the man he's had a crush on since he was a teenager.

Because nothing could go wrong there. Sequels: Hold Me Like You Want Me; I Am Yours, If You Are Mine; Jiang Cheng and the Lans; You Get a Torch and a Flame and Burn The Path You Want.

i don't really care how much silence kills me 15,611 [Part 1 of all the lights couldn't put out the dark] It’s been around 2 years since Jiang Cheng has last seen to his brother, and a little over a year since the last time he spoke to him, when they locked eyes at Nie Huaisang’s art exhibition. Jiang Cheng had only come because Huaisang had explicitly promised him he wouldn’t be here. He knows Wuxian and Wangji have just moved back into the area after traveling, and he has every intention of avoiding them at all costs, just like he avoids his college-era crush Lan Xichen. 

But it would seem that the universe has other ideas.

charcoal on newsprint 2,151 [Part 1 of fine art] Xichen distantly realizes that there is no way Huaisang had actually told Jiang Cheng that this is a nude modeling session. He can already hear Jiang Cheng’s clear baritone, dripping with sarcasm, telling the entire dinner table “So, Zewu Jun wanted me naked in front of all his students.” at the next Lan-Jiang family dinner.Uncle is going to have his head. 

Madam Yu is going to skewer him alive before that. Or, Jiang Cheng models for life drawing in his spare time.

Family 2,514 [Part 1 of The Lan-Jiang Family] Jiang Cheng stops dead in the doorway as he takes in the horrendous state the apartment is in; toys and clothes everywhere, new furniture, child-furniture, all over the place, and no matter where Jiang Cheng’s gaze drops, it’s been taking over by stuff that belongs to a child.

A child that is still screaming, almost drowning out Lan Xichen’s attempts to calm it down.

“What the actual fuck is happening here?” Jiang Cheng blurts out and while it does nothing to stop the child from screaming, Lan Xichen freezes.

Worthy of a god 1,859 [Part 1 of The most faithful] Jiang Cheng knows that there is a chance Chifeng-zun will choose him; he is the god of war and rage and ever since Jiang Cheng was old enough to scowl there had been talk at Lotus Pier, how well he would fit with that.

But Jiang Cheng also knows that there is a bigger chance of no god choosing him at all.

Not just a vacation [Part 1 of The best catch] The next night Lan Xichen goes back to the beach. He keeps out of sight at first, hoping to catch the man unawares first, his mind still reeling from the research he did during the day.

It’s probably not what Lan Qiren and Lan Wangji wanted for him when they sent him on this vacation, but Lan Xichen needs to know what’s going on here. The only thing his research turned up were tales of mermaid and Lan Xichen is not ready to believe that.

Until he catches sight of a rather huge tail, flapping out of the water.

What Happens in Vegas Comes Home to Taiwan 3,120 [Part 1 of What Happens in Vegas] What do you do when your brother is getting married to someone you can’t stand?

The answer probably shouldn’t be to marry his brother, but in Lan Xichen’s defense, he didn’t know Las Vegas would allow drunk people to tie the knot at three o’clock in the damn morning.

A Lionheart 19,916 Wherein Xichen is a Crown Prince and Jiang Cheng is his bodyguard.

Emergency Help Wanted 76,819 EMERGENCY HELP WANTED I lied when I got my job. I told them I had a kid so I could leave early from work to pick him up from daycare, take him to doctor's appointments, and occasionally miss a day when he's sick. Long story short, I'm in too deep. I didn't think it through. Looking to rent a kid for bring your child to work day. Must be a boy ages four to six, longish dark hair, likes soccer. Must also be artistic as the macaroni noodle paintings I made seem a little advanced for his age. Also, I will pay extra for someone willing to play the role of husband when dropping him off. He's a prosecuting attorney who often brings his work home. Message me for further details. Serious inquiries only.

how to not fall in love in a broken elevator 2,741 [Part 1 of a guide to falling in love (for runaways and heirs)] Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen get stuck in an elevator together.

Stream 4,494 He’s in love with Lan Xichen.

Jiang Cheng blinks once, twice and allows the feeling to fill him completely, at least once, before he ruthlessly squashes it down and locks it into the deepest parts of himself.

By the time Lan Xichen stops laughing and turns his attention back to Jiang Cheng, it’s as if nothing ever happened. Sequel: Umbrella - Savor

Jiang Cheng knows what he’s worth, after all, and it’s definitely not enough for the First Jade of Gusu.

How to get revenge on your brothers: A Guide by Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen 8,339 “That’s it. That’s the solution.”

Jiang Cheng opened an eye confused. “What do you mean?”

There was a weird light in Lan Xichen’s eyes and for a moment Jiang Cheng thought the other had gone crazy. “We will make them understand what it feels like seeing their brothers being… intimate with each other.”

Talent Hunt Crew Finds Angry Guy Shouting On College Campus, Recruits Him For Vocal Projection Abilities 80,575 Jiang Cheng, resident Angry Guy and heir to a conglomerate empire, has never been the apple of his father’s eye. Quashed under the shadow of his brilliant brother, the music prodigy Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng sees his chance to turn things around when he is recruited by the All-Stars Lan Talent Hunt. One problem: he can’t sing to save his goddamn life.

do you eat pringles with or without the shell? 32,291 Wei Wuxian smiles at him, the bastard. “I’m proud of you for figuring this out. That means Xichen-ge is your gay awakening.”

“Don’t put it like that,” Jiang Cheng sighs but he isn’t wrong.

All This Could Be Yours 17,337 After transferring to the main branch of his family’s publishing business and into his newly-acquired responsibilities as its CEO and managing director, Lan Huan finds himself stressed and burnt out. His brother recommends a solution.

Jiang Cheng is too gay to deal with this shit.

how should i know what tomorrow will bring 1,630 “If they can’t accept the fact that Jin Ling will always be there, then they might as well fuck off.” Jiang Cheng points out.

“Well, sure.” Wei Wuxian concedes. “But you don’t even give them time to know if they want to be involved with you before you’re kicking them away. That’s not how first dates are supposed to go.”

“How would you know,” Jiang Cheng grumbles, annoyed that Wei Wuxian is right. This time. “You haven’t been on a date since like, 2002.”

Children's Secrets 5,225 Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen swap nephews for a weekend. Some revelations are made.

the Magical-Realism of Awkwardness 10,168 Jiang Cheng thinks things can't get worse when he is forced to third wheel Wei Wuxian and Lanzhan's date.

Then Lan Xichen shows up and proves that things damn well can.

(Or, what shapes up to be one of the worst days of Jiang Cheng's life takes an entirely different turn.)

in the incense is tangled a cool moon 3,614 Some loves aren't meant to be, Wanyin knows. 

Pay me in love 2,770 Madame Yu watches Lan Xichen walk away, until he is out of earshot, before she turns towards Jiang Cheng.

“What are you paying him?” she wants to know and Jiang Cheng can do nothing but stare dumbly at her.

“What?” he asks when she doesn’t say anything else.

“Did you really think I would believe you’re dating Lan Xichen, CEO of Lan Enterprises? Nice try, Jiang Cheng. Now tell me what you’re paying him.”

a slight tilt of perception 5,238 It was just a dance. 

Jiang Cheng, trying to avoid the society matrons and their matchmaking-themed whispers, accepted a dance invitation from Lan Xichen, an old friend.

He forgot that his dance partner was probably the most eligible bachelor in the room.

He forgot that was all it could take: a moment, a look, hands intertwined in a dance—and everything could change.

Not at all fake 3,070 “Tomorrow,” Jiang Cheng gives back and then makes a noise as if he’s dying. “Fucking hell, I’m a dead man. If I show up tomorrow without anyone in tow—without someone in tow who can give Lan Wangji a run for his money—then I am dead.”

There’s a beat of silence and then Lan Xichen says “Take me.”

Jiang Cheng blinks a few times, processing the words, but even after a full minute they don’t make any sense.

For better, for worse 6,713 People forget marriage vows are more than pretty words. It's easy to honor them when it comes to good things but they're easily forgotten when it comes to darker times. Lan Huan, however, always keeps them in mind. To love someone like Jiang Cheng, who wears his emotions on his sleeve due his terrible parents, is to remember that love is not simple.

Glow 3,033 [Part 1 of Eldritch!Lans AU] Jiang Cheng carefully turns his head, maybe the absence of his boyfriend is what woke him up, but when he looks at Lan Xichen’s side, he’s met with something so dark it even stands out against the darkness of the night.

There’s a void next to him in bed and Jiang Cheng throws himself out of it, Zidian already crackling and sparking, illuminating the room in a faint purple.

White Lotus in Bloom 7,147 As the Crown Prince from Gusu Lan visiting YunMeng Jiang, Lan Huan was beyond excited to attend the region's famous Lotus Festival, where he meets a boy in purple and black.

Never Had I Ever 56,263 Nie Mingjue is almost certain that Jin Guangyao has an ulterior motive for dating his best friend, Lan Xichen. However despite voicing his concerns, his best friend seems unconvinced and Lan Xichen continues to date the said man. Unable to give up just yet, Nie Mingjue tries a different tactic--convincing his best friend the man is not the right person for him by setting him up. Fortunately for him, Wei Wuxian's youngest brother is very much single and seems to be just the kind of person his best friend needs. Can Jiang Cheng truly change Lan Xichen's mind, or will Nie Mingjue's plan is a disaster from the beginning?

As he struggles to develop his nascent singing abilities, Jiang Cheng finds himself sucked into the whirlwind drama of reality TV, helped along by his adoring siblings, his irritable vocal coach Wen Qing, and strangely enough, the unfairly attractive host of the All-Stars Lan Talent Hunt, Lan Xichen. Somewhere in the glare of the stage lights and an unexpected first love, Jiang Cheng stumbles upon the thing he was searching for all along: the courage to dream — and to attempt the impossible.

Comfort 1,838 Wei Wuxian always pisses him off, this is common between them. Some fights, however, make Jiang Cheng sad enough to lock himself away from people and Lan Xichen has taken on the role of always being there to comfort him.

midnight comforts 1,946 At 11:36 his phone buzzed next to his ear. Lan Huan had a strict sleeping routine, but even so he was a fairly light sleeper. He answered the call—no one he knew would call him this late without reason—and murmured a groggy greeting.

“Lan Huan?”

He sat up, already rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“A-Cheng?”

“I know it’s late,” he started, voice sounding odd through the phone, “but you,” he stopped again with a gasp. Now that he was more alert, Lan Huan realized with mounting horror that the hitch in his breath, the odd thickness, was from crying. “You said I could come over whenever,” he finished, voice much shakier.

To The Beat 1,859 [Part 1 of Fever]

"The bathroom is over there you fuc--"

His words caught in his throat as he saw the person on the other side. He looked a lot like Wei Ying's boyfriend, but he was smiling and his eyes were somehow kind; comparatively, the most expression he'd ever seen on Lan Zhan's face was mild disdain.

Jiang Cheng must have been staring dumbly for a while because the man cleared his throat. There was a blush rising on his cheeks, and oh fuck, that was kind of cute.

"I apologize for interrupting your night. I was told that this room was where the people who were 'no fun' were supposed to go," the man said. His voice was deep and somehow just as smooth as his skin, which was flawless.

It Took Me So Long To Find You 6,349 [Soulmate AU]

But it didn’t take him too long to realize that he was simply not worthy of the other.

So he hoped at least that they could become friends.

Lotus Pier burned down before Jiang Cheng could think of telling Lan XiChen. And after the Sunshot Campaign, he understood, being Lan XiChen’s soulmate would not just be a burden to the other, it would be a curse.

paint my skies with your skin 15,473 [Soulmate AU] “There’s no point in this, is there?” Jiang Cheng scoffs, “We both know I am not who you want your soulmate to be.”

“Soulmate or not, you have my heart and my ribbon. Only if you want it, Wanyin.”

once upon a dream 18,438 [Part 1 of once upon a dream] An au where your dreams are small snippets of your soulmate’s day. They’d show small things like buying coffee, reading a book, or hanging out with people from their perspective.

The problem was that people always have expectations and Jiang Cheng knows he always falls short of them. Time and time again.

#xicheng #lan xichen #jiang cheng #mdzs #the untamed #rec time

[nevertherose]

One Hundred Seconds to Midnight: Chapters 1-8

"All Roman wanted to do was take Logan on a Doctor Who LARP within the Imagination.

But with Thomas's Sides at their figurative breaking point after the disastrous wedding, the Imagination may just have a few ideas of her own..."

Hello, Tumblr fanders, it has been a while since I've poked around in here...mostly because, I've been writing another story!

Do you like Sanders Sides? Do you like Doctor Who? Do you like the idea of the Sides playing Doctor Who characters? If so, this story was written especially for you.

I found that the process of cross-posting Mahogany and Teakwood across three platforms, one chapter at a time, involved a lot of me spending too many hours squinting at html code. Not especially fun. This time around, I've only been posting on AO3 and Wattpad.

But I wanted it to exist here as well.

So! Today I'm going to post the first half (in two posts, because apparently Tumblr has a post size limit, who knew?), all the chapters that are up so far. Then, when the whole story is up on the other platforms, I'll post the other half.

Of course, you could head to either AO3 or Wattpad, if you want to read as the chapters go up.

But if you're like me, and like to read stories in nice, big, juicy chunks...here you go:

One Hundred Seconds to Midnight

Chapter 1- The Eleventh Hour

“Who are you?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m still cooking.”

Midnight.

The witching hour.

Or was that 3AM? Roman wondered. No, that’s the devil’s hour…damn it, Virgil! You had to get them all mixed up!

It was nearly midnight on the Imagination’s border.

Moonlight, pearlescent and brighter than it could ever shine in the real world, streamed feather-light through the tall windows on Roman’s side of the Dream Palace. It made patterns of light and shadow over the black marble floors, made nighttime caricatures of the white ivory statues that lined the corridor.

Roman’s heeled boots echoed in the silence; Logan’s dress shoes, in comparison, were whisper-quiet.

Logan himself had been uncharacteristically quiet since they entered this place, Roman noted, glancing back. Normally by now the logical Side would have asked a million questions, made a million plans, or be several bullet points into a lecture about palace construction or the history of measurement units or some other nerdy, obscure subject.

And Roman would either pretend to be annoyed, or would interject witty counterpoints to make Logan stop and bluster and…

But not tonight.

Maybe he’s nervous about being here, Roman told himself, smoothing a hand over his red sash. He’s only pointed out a million times that Logic and the Imagination are anathema to one another. Maybe I should have planned something else…

Or maybe he’s just annoyed at you for dragging him out of bed in the literal middle of the night, a more insidious inner voice whispered. When you know he likes to keep a consistent sleep schedule.

Roman pressed his lips together, lifted his chin…he might be a mere facet of a single personality, but he was also a Prince, and Princes do not listen to inner demons. However, he also looked back for the dozenth time to make sure Logan was actually still following.

That was the only reason Roman kept looking back.

It had nothing to do with the way the translucent moonlight caught the other Side’s dark, immaculately kept hair, or glinted off his glasses.

In the real world, of course, and whenever they manifested near their Source, the Sides all had precisely the same face and body as Thomas. But deep inside the mind, where physical appearance was an illusion anyway, the Sides exercised much more control.

Thomas remained their base template, but each Side also tended to portray himself with features that Thomas associated with their core function. Like Patton’s fluffy curls and childlike freckles, or Virgil’s anxious, ever-changing eyeshadow, or Remus’s abominable comic-book villain mustache.

Like Deceit’s…no, Janus’s very real scales.

Damn that snake. Why did I have think of him now?

Hopefully the lying bananaconda had better things to do than pop up and spoil things tonight. Because tonight, Roman was finally fulfilling a longtime promise to Logan, and taking him on a grand adventure.

The thought made his heart flutter in anticipation, and he looked back again.

Logan within the mindscape was leaner than Thomas, an inch or two taller, and his neatly trimmed hair and intelligent eyes were almost black in the low light. His face was narrow and intense, the nose more aquiline, and he had a habit of standing straighter than any of the rest of them.

(A habit which constantly showed off his trim waist and chest muscles…not that Roman paid any attention to that…)

Roman, by contrast, was a bit shorter, but his shoulders were broad and he was more muscular, due to all the questing and sword fighting he did here in the Imagination. He wore his hair in longish disarray that paired devastatingly with his clean, square jawline; hair that could be turned loose and wild on quests, or pulled neatly back as befitted royalty. His hands were strong; with long, artistic fingers, as skilled at wielding pens and paintbrushes as they were at wielding swords.

He liked to think he was handsome.

He was also painfully aware of how little it mattered when a certain someone…ehem…never seemed to notice.

“Roman, I confess to still being a bit lost as to the purpose of this journey,” Logan said at last, breaking the high-ceilinged silence. “You said you were taking us on a…’lark’? If so, why are we wandering around the Dream Palace?”

“LARP,” Roman corrected, flashing him a smile. “L-A-R-P. It stands for live action role play, Specs.”

Logan’s nose wrinkled at the words “role play”, and Roman’s stomach lurched. He hates it, he hates the very idea of it, you haven’t even started yet and you’ve already failed…

“Oh, don’t make the scrunchy face!” he added, a bit louder than necessary, and waved a hand. “At least wait until you’ve seen it.”

Roman had only been planning this for weeks.

“You know, when you promised to take me on one of your ‘adventures’,” Logan said, making finger quotes. “I was not expecting to be roused from bed in the middle of the night.”

“That’s because this isn’t your average adventure.” Roman gestured around them. “I constructed a special dreamscape to get all the details right, and we can only use the Dream Palace when Thomas is asleep.” He turned and dared a wink. “Only the best for you, my detail-oriented friend.”

Logan adjusted his glasses.

“Let it be known that I am indulging your antics right now because you have, on occasion, had some good ideas. You will, in turn, have to indulge my skepticism.”

“I have no idea what you just said, but I’m gonna pretend it was a compliment,” Roman said with a wink, which Logan rolled his eyes at.

“Ah ha, here we are!”

Roman stopped at a set of iconic blue doors, nearly vibrating in excitement as he waited for Logan to recognize them.

The nerd did not disappoint.

“Roman…” Logan murmured, stepping forward to touch the white PULL TO OPEN sign. “They look just like the doors to the TARDIS. The attention to detail is exquisite. But why?”

“Because I’m taking you on a Doctor Who LARP!” Roman exclaimed, flapping his hands. “All we have to do is step through, and the Imagination will make us Doctor and companion, and whisk us away through all of time and space!”

Logan’s face was a mixture of confusion and curiosity. “Again…why?”

“Because it will be fun?” Roman bit his lip, looking at his toes. “I…I know you aren’t into swords and sorcery and dragon-witches and whatnot. I wanted this to be something you might actually enjoy.”

Logan’s brow furrowed, as it often did when he tried to process something that didn’t fit neatly into his graphed, notated, logical worldview.

Usually, it was an emotion.

“But won’t us enacting such an intense scenario at this time of night negatively affect Thomas’s sleep?” Logan asked.

“That’s the genius of adventuring in the Dream Palace,” Roman explained. “You can do hyperreal, immersive stuff, and if Thomas does happen to remember anything, he’ll just think he had a weird dream. The worst that could happen is he might post about it on Twitter.”

“Hmm. I can see you’ve thought this through. I am…flattered that you went to all the trouble,” Logan said in a quiet voice.

Roman had to bite back an ecstatic giggle.

Not…not because of the way his nerves skittered below his skin when his gaze caught Logan’s black eyes and soft expression. No, Roman was merely…excited! That someone like Logan appreciated his hard work!

It wasn’t like he was trying to impress anyone, like some middle school boy with, you know, a crush or whatever. For the last, well…two years.

…and then some.

Ugh. There was little point in denying his feelings; he’d only accidentally summon Janus and his oily smirk, and if that happened, Roman would most certainly die of embarrassment and that was not a lie, thank you very much.

The truth was, ever since Thomas had placed that jar of Crofters into Logan’s hands and inspired him to sing…not just rap, or begrudgingly harmonize, but actually sing…Roman had fallen, and fallen hard.

How could he not?

Logan’s words and ideas had always challenged him, pushed him to be smarter, sharper, better, just to keep up. Logan was the grounding anchor to his sails, the clarity to his excess. It used to infuriate Roman, the way he and Logan always came at problems from opposite sides and fought, sometimes bitterly, over the best way to meet in the middle.

But now?

Now Roman relished the way they traded words in a good fight, like blades in the hands of expert swordsmen. Logan, despite his dislike for anything fanciful, was a natural wordsmith…and Roman was a great lover of poetry. Even better, it seemed like Logan was also starting to enjoy their verbal sparring matches…

And then these last few months had happened.

The Decision, and Deceit, and the way that snake had let Remus out of the shadows to wreck havoc, and then the disastrous wedding itself…and Roman knew that Logan, through all of it, had been feeling pushed aside.

Goodness knew the logical Side hadn’t deserved to be shoved to the back of a courtroom, or relegated to a pixel-y shadow of himself before being removed from the discussion entirely. Worse, in both of those scenarios, Roman had either done nothing…or actively made things worse.

Roman knew he was guilty of letting his mouth run wild in his zeal to solve Thomas’s dilemmas…or in desperately hiding his true feelings. He knew his nicknames often came with barbs, his insults sometimes hit too close to home, that he often ignored or dismissed Logan’s cool, much-needed perspective.

He knew he needed to be better.

I’ll make it up to him tonight, Roman told himself as he laid a hand on the rough wooden blue doors and glanced back at Logan. The logical Side nodded, giving Roman a tiny burst of confidence.

He’ll get to play his favorite character and be his best nerdy self. This is going to be great!

Roman took a breath, and shoved open the TARDIS doors.

Chapter 2- Human Nature

“It’s all becoming clear now. The Doctor is doing the things you’d like to be doing.”

The blaring of a dozen sirens burst in Logan’s ears.

He was yanked across the threshold, Roman’s hand practically a vice around his wrist. Logan inhaled the sharp scent of metal and warm electronics, and a million figurative lights went off in his brain.

Being the physical incarnation of Logic, this wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar sensation.

The TARDIS shuddered…wait, TARDIS? We’re actually on the TARDIS?…under impact. Lights flashed; reds and greens over an ambiance of steely blue-gray, and Logan knew exactly what to do.

He shook free of Roman’s grip and strode to the center console…console, how do I know this is a console?…flipping several switches and turning the green dial to precisely 3.56 degrees to offset the radiation sheer from the M-class star they’d just spun past.

Because naturally they happened to be careening through an asteroid field.

The time rotor rose and dipped, Gallifreyan symbols whirling overhead; Logan adjusted shields and dodged rocks, striding confidently from station to station. He guided his TARDIS around the last large asteroid, one that easily could have smashed his beloved ship to bits, and then they were clear.

The TARDIS chimed reassuringly under his hands, relieved to be in empty space again.

Roman screamed.

The sound echoed off the metallic walls, causing Logan to whip around and nearly lose his balance.

“What happened?” he said sharply, leaving the console. The creative Side stood near the railing, staring down at himself in obvious dismay. “What’s wrong?”

“Look at me, Logan!” Roman said shrilly and gesturing at his body. “Just look!”

Logan examined his fellow Side. There were no obvious injuries he could see, no blood, no bruising, nothing that would merit a scream. There was just Roman, unfairly handsome as always.

(He still wasn’t sure how Roman managed that feat when they all literally, at least some of the time, had the same face.)

“I…don’t see a problem?” Logan asked slowly.

“I meant, look at what I’m wearing, Calculator Watch,” Roman snarled, and turned to yell nonsensically at the ceiling. “Am I a joke to you? When I said I wanted to be a companion, this is not what I meant!”

Logan focused on Roman’s clothing, which had shifted rather drastically since passing through those doors. His normal princely attire was replaced by a denim cutoff skirt, overalls, pink leggings, and a tight pink blouse that clung to his muscular chest and arms...

“I look ridiculous, don’t I?” Roman murmured, scuffing a combat boot against the metal grated floor. The motion drew Logan’s gaze again to the way the cutoffs hugged his hips and wow, that skirt was really short, wasn’t it?

And those tights, the way they accentuated Roman’s legs...

Logan frowned, his face feeling unusually warm. Why did he keep noticing these things? Of course Roman was more fit than the rest of them.

Perhaps it was simply that Logan didn’t usually see the evidence of it so…plainly.

Stop, Logan told himself sharply. You might be gay and allosexual, but that is no excuse to be disrespectful.

He cleared his throat.

“If I may, Roman?” he said, approaching, and made a closer examination of Roman’s outfit.

“I gather from your earlier ranting that you instructed the Imagination to cast you as one of the Doctor’s companions for the duration of this scenario?”

“Well, yeah,” Roman admitted, “but I was thinking someone like Jamie McCrimmon, or Rory Williams, or maybe even Jack Harkness!”

“You know there is some debate over whether Jack Harkness would be considered a proper ‘companion’, as he was never full time on the TARDIS,” Logan argued absently, still eying Roman’s ensemble.

It was attractive but also familiar; he just couldn’t quite place it…

“Neither was Clara Oswald at first, but nobody had a problem handing her that label from the start!” Roman folded his arms and Logan had to look away because wow, short sleeves and arms…

“Just because she was a girl and the writers obviously intended for her to be a love interest—”

“A girl, of course!” Logan snapped his fingers. “Roman, you are a companion. Specifically, you are Rose Tyler.”

“What?” Roman frowned, smoothing the overalls across his middle. “I…Hmm. You might actually be right.”

“Of course I am right.”

The creative Side scoffed at that, but continued to frown.

“I think it’s a good choice,” Logan added. “Rose is arguably one of the most beloved companions in new Who; bold, kind, and intelligent in her own way. She was pivotal to the Ninth, Tenth, and arguably the War Doctor’s character arcs.”

He laid a hand on Roman’s shoulder. (To convey reassurance, of course. Not because he suddenly wanted to touch…)

“Hers are not the worst shoes you could be given to fill,” Logan said, “idiomatically speaking.”

“Only you would drop a word like ‘idiomatically’ in everyday conversation,” Roman grumbled, but some of the spark returned to his caramel eyes.

“But look at you!” Roman said in a brighter voice, gesturing. “All proper and Doctor-ish. At least the Imagination let you keep your tie, or, whatever that thing is around your neck.”

Logan glanced down at himself for the first time.

His sensible polo and jeans had become a clean-cut black suit, with a warm grey waistcoat, a crisp white undershirt, and a silver pocket watch. A navy cravat was knotted around his throat.

His knee-length suit jacket was also black, with a striking cerulean lining.

He retrieved a slender, metallic something from the jacket’s inner pocket: of course, the Doctor’s signature sonic screwdriver. Specifically, the Tenth Doctor’s screwdriver.

Logan chuckled, remembering all the times he’d ranted to Roman about how impractical and flashy Eleven’s screwdriver became, and don’t even get him started on Twelve’s, it was practically a lightsaber…

“Interesting,” he murmured, stretching his arms to turn in a slow circle, letting the jacket flare. “Fashionably, I appear to be a cross between the Eighth and Twelfth Doctors, which I appreciate, as they are the two most sensible dressers of the bunch. And by the way, Roman, this is a called a cravat, not a tie…”

He’d lifted hands to his neck but the words died on his tongue.

Roman had summoned a mirror and was, quite literally, checking himself out. He swayed his hips, tilted one toward and then away from the mirror, pouted, did a tongue smile, and…and Logan realized he had been watching for more than a socially acceptable length of time.

He swallowed hard and cleared his throat again. But he was saved from having to speak by a loud crackling at the center console.

Both Sides rushed over, Logan seizing the TV screen and pulling it down. Gray static skittered over the polished surface. He flipped two switches and turned a dial, trying to zero in on the signal.

“I meant to ask earlier…how do you know what to do?” Roman asked, tilting his head. “You were piloting before I think you even realized we were on a TARDIS in the first place.”

Logan froze in the middle of winding one of the cranks.

“I…I really do not know.” In fact, the more he thought about it, the less sense any of the controls made. “Now that you’ve drawn my attention to it, you are correct: rationally, I should not know the function of any of these…gizmos.” He gestured at the crank he’d been winding.

“Yet somehow my hands just…know.”

Roman leaned casually onto the console.

“When I built this LARP, I gave the Imagination quite a bit of leeway in how it wanted to construct our characters,” he said. “I’m thinking it took things a step further than costume changes, like making me the companion it thinks I most resemble instead of the companion I wanted to be.”

Roman bit his lip as though troubled, then clearly shook himself out of it.

“And it must have imparted some of the Doctor’s knowledge upon me.” Logan added, not sure how he felt about the Imagination having such a direct influence over his mind. He supposed if it didn’t get too invasive, and was confined to this one night, he could deal with it.

It had proven useful so far, after all.

Roman shot Logan a fierce grin.

“Indeed! So engage that big Doctor brain and let’s see who’s trying to call us. Allons-y, adventure awaits!”

“You know ‘allons-y’ is my line, right?” Logan said dryly.

He had to use his screwdriver on the screen before the picture came clear. The stream of static acquired the cadence of a voice…and then a disturbingly familiar face stared back at his own, looking equally shocked.

Roman, for the second time since entering the TARDIS, let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Chapter 3- The Witch’s Familiar

“If you’re going to take my stick, do me the courtesy of actually killing me. Teamwork is all about respect.”

Janus had just settled into his favorite chair with a mug of chamomile tea and a political science book when he was yanked…rather rudely, he might add…onto the deck of a spaceship.

He sighed, and dismissed his drink.

When one lived in the same mindspace as the literal embodiment of chaos, one unfortunately learned to expect such interruptions.

“REMUS!” he roared, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Did I not specifically ask to be LEFT ALONE tonight?”

Silence.

Deeply annoyed now, Janus took a moment to look around himself. This was not a normal spaceship; no windows, for one, and it was laid out in levels around a translucent column at the very center. His mismatched eyes followed the center rotor up and down, his mind almost placing it…

Something clumsily rose up from the deck with a clatter, causing Janus to summon his crook with a yell.

Only…the object that dropped into his hand wasn’t smooth wood, but a slender metal instrument just barely longer than his hand. A…sonic screwdriver? What the actual heck?

Well. It was what he had.

“Get back!” He pointed the instrument at the…figure…who still slowly climbed to its feet. It was an android or robot of some sort; humanoid, and the same kind of weirdly familiar as the ship.

“Janus?” the robot said, tilting its head.

Janus froze, all the scales standing up on his body. That was…that was Patton’s voice. Flat, mechanical, but unmistakable.

After all, Patton was the only Side who consistently called Janus by name.

“Patton?” Janus whispered.

“Oh, that was so weird-feeling! Thank goodness I’m not all by myself,” Robot-Patton said, putting a hand over his…well, where his heart should have been…in obvious relief. “But why are we both suddenly on the TARDIS?”

Janus drew in a sharp breath.

Of course, he should have recognized the stupid time rotor immediately. He’d never admit it to any of them, but he was as much of a Doctor Who nerd as Logan or Roman, sometimes going so far as to spy on them when they argued over episodes together.

To learn their arguing styles, of course.

Not because he had any desire to join those discussions.

And now, looking at Patton with a sinking feeling in his stomach, Janus deduced exactly what he was: a Mondasian Cyberman. They were older and cruder in design than the reboot versions…no wonder he hadn’t put a finger on it right away.

That wasn’t really the issue.

“REMUS!” Janus shouted again, more angrily this time. Bad enough his pleasant evening of solitude had been interrupted by…whatever this was. But putting the sweetest, most emotional Side into a canonically unemotional shell, a robot?

That was cruel. That was insulting.

It was too far, even for Remus.

“Janus, is everything okay?” Patton asked, coming closer. Janus shivered at the sound of that warm voice coming from a blank metallic face with empty eyes.

“Do you…feel all right?” Janus said in a hesitant voice.

“I’m a little chilly, but otherwise I’m in ship shape!” the other quipped, giggling. “Get it? Cause we’re on a ship?”

Is it…is it possible that he doesn’t know?

“Hilarious,” Janus deadpanned, but inside his thoughts spun.

He sensed they were in a dream construct within the Imagination, which meant this had to be Remus’s doing. Remus, who reveled in gore, despair, disturbing imagery, angst, and who was in charge of Thomas’s nightmares.

Remus could…and would, given the chance…recreate the experience of being a Cyberman down to the Last. Grim. Detail.

Maybe he hadn’t meant to ensnare Patton specifically to fill this role…Remus didn’t generally pull other Sides in for nightmares, come to think of it…but meanwhile, Janus didn’t want to find out what this might do to Patton’s head.

Worse, it was becoming clear that Patton was somehow oblivious to the state of his own body; he’d used his metallic hands to clutch at his metallic chest and found nothing wrong with either. He couldn’t hear the electronic rasp in his own voice, or the heavy clanging of his steps on the grated floor.

Should Janus say something?

Would Patton believe him if he did?

Ever since Thomas’s near mental breakdown after the disastrous wedding, Patton and Janus had orbited around each other in a state of tenuous truce. They talked now, sometimes, and those talks didn’t always end in arguments. Patton began to leave space for him by Thomas’s blinds when he was called up, and he…and by extension Thomas…occasionally actually sought his input.

But Janus, well.

Janus was still a liar.

The others still called him Deceit, either by accident (Logan) or out of spite (Virgil). Then there was Roman, who invented a colorful, wounding ego-jab for him every day, and Remus, whose fond nicknames tended to double as sex jokes.

Having no other real allies in the mindscape, Janus really, really didn’t want to screw up his tenuous alliance with Patton. Why sabotage his figurative “seat at the table” over one of Remus’s stupid nightmares?

Patton would assume Janus was slipping back into his old ways, lying just because he could, and Janus would never be able to prove otherwise. And later Patton would make that sour, pinched face he always made when he was disappointed, the one that made Janus want to crawl into a hole…

So.

Best to keep his observations close to the chest, for now.

“Do you have any idea what we’re doing here?” Janus asked, striding to the center console. True to dream logic, the controls made no sense and simultaneously made perfect sense.

Patton shrugged; a strange, clanky motion of his shoulders.

Janus sighed. “Although Remus has dragged me into dreams before, even he generally understands the concept of consent.” He casually flapped a hand. “And he always leaves you ‘light sides’ alone.”

“Honestly, this doesn’t feel like a nightmare to me,” Patton said, nearly making Janus choke. The Cyberman clanked over to stand by the console.

“It’s too clean,” Patton added. “Roman let me glimpse Remus’s side of the Imagination once, not long after he showed himself to Thomas, and it was…”

Patton trailed off.

“Fragmented? Chaotic? Disturbing?” Janus supplied.

“Sure, we’ll go with that,” Patton said quietly. “This,” he waved a hand around, “feels more like Roman’s work.”

“I suppose you would know.” Janus ran a thoughtful thumb over his face, tracing the ridge that ran from the corner of his mouth to his ear.

“And I would almost have to agree,” he added slowly. “If this was a nightmare, surely something ghastly would have happened by now. But my being pulled into one of Roman’s creations makes even less sense. He literally cannot stand me.”

“Maybe this is one of those dreams Thomas has sometimes after binge watching a show?” Patton suggested. “When there’s enough material in short term memory that the twins don’t get much input? Did Thomas binge a season of Doctor Who yesterday or something?”

And to think the others still view you as stupid, or slow-witted.

Janus bit back a smile.

“It’s a good theory, Patton, but no,” he said. “Thomas hasn’t really binged on much of anything lately.”

Patton ducked his head.

“You don’t…you don’t have to rub it in, you know,” he said lowly, the metallic rasp grating on Janus’s ears. “You and Logan have both made it pretty clear that I’ve been too strict with Thomas’s time.”

Janus fought to keep his expression neutral, but his stomach twisted.

Damn it.

Leave it to Patton to find guilt where none was meant. Even if Janus claimed he hadn’t meant it like that, Patton would probably not believe him.

Patton tilted his metal head as he examined Janus’s face.

“Did you know you have a mustache now? And a little goatee?”

“I have a what?” Janus felt at his face and groaned, his gloved fingers tugging at hair that most certainly did not belong on his face; with the scales, it probably looked hideous.

His entire outfit had altered in subtle ways, he realized. His usual plum tunic and trousers were now a brown suit and waistcoat ensemble, crossed with yellow pinstripes, with a black collared undershirt. A brown, knee-length suit jacket replaced his caplet, with subtle gold trimming. His yellow gloves were unchanged, thank goodness, and his hat…?

His hands flew up to his head and found something perched over his hair, sitting at an angle. Janus yanked down a screen at the console and stared. His beloved bowler had shrunk into a tiny, flat, rakish thing with a wide brim, festooned with a cluster of yellow rosebuds and black beads.

“What on earth, Remus?” he grumbled, turning his head from side to side. Well, if he had to be honest, pinstripes and a hatinator weren’t a terrible look.

“Well, if we’re on a TARDIS, I guess you’re supposed to be the Doctor,” Patton pointed out. “Which would make me your companion.”

Janus stroked his goatee and examined their surroundings in more detail. But am I a Doctor? he wondered. And if so, which one?

And whose TARDIS is this?

Because while it was clear they were on a TARDIS…what other class of spaceship had a time rotor?…he wasn’t almost certain this was not the TARDIS.

Every corner of the Doctor’s ship, no matter which face it belonged to, tended to overflow with bright, shiny, eclectic whimsy. By contrast, this one was plain, stark, with exposed metal beams and sharp angles.

Too dark, too full of shadows.

An awful suspicion rose up in his mind.

He crossed to one of the bookshelves, ignoring Patton’s soft inquiry, and his jaw clenched. There was the Necronomicon, shelved between the Liber Inducens in Evangelium Aeternum and The Black Scrolls of Rassilon, Book of Vile and its Black Appendix, The Ambuehl Lores and the Insidium of Astrolabus.

Janus finally looked at the sonic device he’d been holding all this time; seeing now that it wasn’t a screwdriver at all, and thanked every god he knew that he hadn’t tried to use it on Patton earlier.

It was a sonic laser.

Once again, even in a stupid, nonsensical dream, Janus had been cast as the villain.

His fist had collided with the bookshelf before he even realized he was moving, books falling to the floor. He punched it again, and again, until a cool rigid hand closed around his wrist and yanked him back.

“Janus, Janus, stop!” Patton yelled in his ear.

Janus wrenched his arm away and stalked back to the console, running gloved fingers over his scales, pushing them up and smoothing them down. The familiar sensation grounded him.

“You were right, Patton,” he threw over his shoulder. “This is definitely one of Roman’s dreams, and he definitely fucking hates me.”

Patton’s heavy footsteps clattered behind him.

“Language. And how do you know that,” he asked. “…Doctor?”

Janus whirled, lips curled in a snarl.

“I am not the Doctor, Patton, and we are not on the TARDIS.” He spread his arms to encompass them both, gesturing to the dimly lit spaceship. “Look around. Look at me!”

He turned, slowly, and eyed his mustached visage in the dark view screen.

“Clearly, I am the Master.”

Chapter 4- Nightmare in Silver

“You think he knows what he’s doing?”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far.”

Patton rested his arms against the console and sighed.

Once again, someone I care about is upset, and I don’t know what to do. I guess I should be used to it by now.

It didn’t help that it was so cold in this TARDIS. He folded his arms around his middle, which felt strange and heavy, to combat the chill that seemed to have settled deep in his bones.

Janus stalked past again, grumbling to himself.

“Of course the Prince would pull me into one of his little ‘adventures’ without my consent. He probably needed an antagonist. And naturally the slippery snake would have been the first person to come to mind!”

Patton opened his mouth…though he had no idea what he was going to say…but Janus drowned him out.

“Come on, Roman!” he shouted, throwing his yellow-clad hands up. “You’ve had your fun. Yes, I’m evil, I’m the villain, I’m the bad guy, blah blah. Let’s have our epic confrontation or whatever nonsense you have planned, as I would very much like to get back to my reading sometime tonight.”

Silence.

Patton didn’t know what Janus was expecting.

“Look, maybe we should just play along for now?” Patton said aloud, wincing when Janus turned his murderous expression on him. The deceptive Side had such deep, cutting golden eyes, the human one so much darker than the other…cynical eyes that were, ironically, almost impossible to lie to.

They’d see straight through it.

“It takes a liar to know a liar.”

The glare quickly softened, though, which in Patton’s opinion said a lot about how far Janus had come.

“And how do you propossse we ‘play along’?” Janus said, hissing his s’s in frustration.

“Well, we’ve kinda decided this is Roman’s dream, right? And since we’re in his part of the Imagination, we know he won’t let anything bad happen to us…”

Patton trailed off at Janus’s pained expression, reminded of just how badly Janus and Roman’s last encounter had gone.

“What are you, a middle school librarian?”

“Thank god you don’t have a mustache.”

And I just stood there and did nothing…no, I can’t dwell on that right now. Patton shook himself out of the memory.

It was surprisingly easy; even his emotions felt a little heavy and muted. He supposed he wasn’t used to being in a dreamscape; unlike Roman, who played in them all the time.

I know Roman, Patton reasoned. He might hold a grudge for a while, but he wouldn’t actually be out to hurt Janus.

Right?

“So, if we’re on a time ship, on some kind of adventure leading up to a confrontation like you said, the first thing we’d have to do is figure out where we need to go,” Patton finished, shrugging.

Janus pursed his lips…which looked downright weird with a mustache and goatee, almost making Patton giggle…and began pushing buttons on the console.

“You are definitely incorrect, Patton,” he said, pulling up another screen and flipping a few switches. “If I have been cast as the villain in this ridiculous charade, that means Roman is likely prancing around as the Doctor right now, on the proper TARDIS. Which, as the Doctor’s nemesis, I should be able to contact…ha!”

The screen burst into static.

“Doctor, oh Doctor, do you read me?” Janus crooned, and if Patton hadn’t known just how angry he was in that moment…well, he would have never known.

Janus had tucked it away entirely, in half a second's time.

That’s the scary thing about him, Patton realized uneasily. He’s smart, nearly as smart as Logan. Smart enough to run circles around me, that’s for sure. And he’s easily as good an actor as Roman.

Those attributes, combined with his naturally manipulative nature, made it difficult to trust him.

Patton was trying.

He’d been trying since the wedding, and well, since everything else that had happened. (Patton still cringed when Thomas encountered even a picture of a frog.) He’d done a lot of thinking and growing that day (in more ways than one!), and he’d come to a disturbing, but inevitable conclusion.

Janus wasn’t evil.

He never had been.

Just like Virgil had never been evil. Mean, sure; and sarcastic, and spiteful…but at his core, Virgil had wanted what was best for Thomas.

They all did.

And then there was the uncomfortable corollary to that: Patton, despite his best efforts, despite his core Purpose…Patton wasn’t entirely and automatically good.

Two weeks ago, Janus had proven beyond a doubt that Thomas needed him…ruthlessly, cuttingly, but no one could say he hadn’t made his point. It had been Patton who’d inadvertently pushed Thomas to the brink of a breakdown, and Janus who had to pull them all back.

Despite Patton’s unease, and the little voice in his head telling him that Deceit couldn’t be trusted, could never truly be trusted because it was in his nature to deceive…Patton remembered how they’d pushed Virgil so hard he decided to duck out, and how much of a tragedy that could have been if they hadn’t all intervened to bring him back.

With a pang of guilt, he pictured Thomas lying on the floor, crushed under the metaphorical weight of everything Patton needed him to do to keep from being a bad person…

He would not make those mistakes again.

If Virgil could learn to work with them instead of against them, so could Janus. If Patton could learn to recognize when his own Purpose did more harm than good, so could Janus.

Patton had to believe that.

He’d made too many mistakes lately to believe otherwise.

The screen in Janus’s hands cleared to reveal…

“What? Logan??” Janus exclaimed, as a scream echoed somewhere in the background.

“D—Janus?” Logan countered, then looked over his shoulder. “Roman, for the love of Archimedes, will you stop shrieking? I cannot hear.”

The screaming cut off and Roman’s fuming face squished into the frame with Logan.

“Deceit! I should have known you would show up to ruin this!” he managed to shout before Logan shoved him away.

“Ruin…I’m sorry, what?” Janus glanced at Patton, looking honestly confused. “Is he roleplaying right now? We assumed this scenario was Roman’s creation.”

Onscreen, Logan placed his whole hand against Roman’s mouth to prevent him from interrupting.

“It is. But to my understanding, it was only supposed to involve myself and Roman, and…wait. You said ’we’.” Logan peered around. “Who else is with you?”

Patton started to wave, but his view was blocked by Janus bending close to the screen to whisper something. Suspicion flared in Patton’s stomach; old, familiar, but after the talk he’d just given himself, he purposefully pushed it down.

I won’t assume he’s being shifty unless he actually gives me a reason to.

Lifting his chin, he crept forward until he was next to Janus’s shoulder.

“Hey, Logan,” he said brightly, waving.

“Ah…hello, Patton,” Logan squeaked after a moment, his eyes still wide.

“Wait, Patton’s there? With the snake?” Roman’s voice yelled from the background, and then there was Roman’s face again.

“Patton?” Roman said, narrowing his eyes. “But why are you—?”

Both faces disappeared for a moment as Logan yanked Roman out of frame. Patton thought he heard a rapid, hushed conversation. He glanced at Janus, who only shrugged, looking at puzzled as Patton felt.

Roman’s face reappeared, solemn and deeply annoyed.

“Patton,” he said, and hesitated. “D—Janus. You two…well, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Very reassuring,” Janus quipped.

“This was only supposed to be a two-person adventure: Doctor plus companion. I have no idea why the Imagination brought you both in as well; I certainly didn’t tell it to.”

“Aw, that’s okay, kiddo,” Patton started gently. “It’s not your fault—”

“Oh, sweetie.” Janus folded his arms. “I’m sorry, but that’s bull. Putting me in the Master’s shoes? Are we seriously going to pretend the Side who unashamedly hates me had nothing to do with that?”

“I didn’t!” Roman argued, his voice going high. “You really think I wanted you here, in any capacity?”

“Deceit…er, Janus, you are being unnecessarily antagonistic, and as such, unhelpful,” Logan cut in with his low, reassuring voice. “But Roman, it might behoove us to consider the role of subconscious influence. You may not have intended to pull the others in, and yet here they are.”

Roman looked at Logan, aghast, and Patton almost flinched at the raw hurt in his caramel eyes. The creative Side backed out of frame.

“So you’re on his side, too,” his voice said quietly. “Is that how it is?”

“I am not on anyone’s side,” Logan argued, raising his hands. “We are all currently in this situation together, and as such—”

Whatever he’d been about to say was cut off by another garbled transmission, taking over the screen and blocking out Logan’s face with crackly, purple static. A gray, snarling face flashed out of the haze, making Patton shriek in surprise and even Janus took a step back.

Then it was gone, dissolving back to static…and the sound of someone laughing filled the connection.

“Hellooooo, nurse,” a familiar sing-song voice crooned. “Did you miss me?”

Chapter 5- The Long Game

“You can’t just read the guide book, you’ve got to throw yourself in. Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers. Or is that just me?”

Logan sighed.

He knew that voice; they all did. Even Thomas, unfortunately.

“Remus,” Roman hissed.

The mustached Side filled the screen, grinning madly. “Boo!”

“Get out of my scenario,” Roman said, his eyes flashing. “If you know what’s good for you.”

“Your scenario?” Remus echoed, faux-outrage in his expression. “Yours? The Dream Palace is my domain, too, brother, whether you like it or not.” He leaned closer, letting his nostrils and a single radioactive green eye fill the screen. “Did you really think you could keep me out?”

Roman made a sound of disgust deep in his throat.

“Am I to assume, then, that you are responsible for bringing in the other Sides?” Logan asked, careful to keep his voice even. Remus thrived on getting a rise out of people.

“Of course he is!” Roman snapped, throwing up his hands. “He loves to ruin things, especially my things.”

“Now why would having the others here ruin anything, brother?” Remus asked in a sickly sweet voice, propping his head on his hand. “Unless you intended for this nighttime romp between you and Logan to be private?”

Roman sputtered and glanced at Logan, red-faced, as Remus giggled.

“It was meant to be so, yes,” Logan supplied, unsure why Remus would find that funny…or why Roman would find it embarrassing.

“As amusing as this all is—” Janus’s crooning voice cut through the speaker.

“Great. You’re still here, snake?” Roman snarked, his arms folded around himself.

“We’re all listening, kiddo,” Patton’s metallic voice said.

Roman’s lips always curl into a pout when he is angry, Logan thought, eyeing him without turning his head, and he gets a little wrinkle between his eyebrows. Why…why am I noticing such things all of a sudden?

Maybe it was the stress, or the unfamiliar environment.

Or maybe it was the Rose Tyler outfit.

That skirt ought to be illegal.

Logan deliberately focused on the screen, his cheeks warm.

“So this is kinda new,” Patton went on, “all of us actually talking—”

“If Remus is responsible,” Janus cut in again, “then perhaps he would be so kind as to explain the objective of this late night group therapy session?”

Despite the biting sarcasm, Logan did appreciate Janus’s insistence that they get to the point, even if it did mean talking over Patton…

Speaking of, why would Remus have paired Patton with Janus?

Surely he should have grouped Patton with Logan and Roman, and put Virgil with Janus? Or…maybe not, given how Virgil hisses if Janus so much as enters the same room.

Ugh. Interpersonal drama. Logan was thoroughly sick of trying to keep track of who carried a grudge against whom, especially when it seemed to change from day to day.

And on top of that, why would Remus make Patton a Cyberman? None of these decisions make any sense…

“Right?” Roman agreed softly next to him, and Logan realized he’d said that last bit out loud.

“If anything, I should have been the unfeeling killer robot,” Logan murmured.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Specs.” Roman shot him a strange look, both warm and troubled. “And frankly I don’t give a stinky rat’s ass about my stinky rat brother’s sick thought process. What I want to know is why Deceit doesn’t want us to mention it around Patton?”

Logan, who was still mentally stuck on rodents and donkeys…Roman’s metaphors were always something else…shook his head slightly.

“There’s no logical way Patton is unaware of his condition,” Logan pointed out. “So I can only guess he wishes to protect Patton’s feelings on the matter, by not allowing us to talk about it in front of him.” He shrugged when Roman’s frown deepened. “Those two have been getting along much better these last few weeks.”

“I think you’re giving the snake too much credit,” Roman muttered. “Even after he impersonated you, Logan? C’mon. It has to be something else.”

Logan bit back a sigh.

He doesn’t understand, he thought guiltily. Because he doesn’t know what really happened…

#

“This is unacceptable, Deceit,” Logan snapped, flinging the crook away from his body. “I was in the middle of a discussion—”

“He won’t listen to you,” Deceit had said, and there was no sarcasm or snark in his voice.

“Patton asked for my opinion!”

“And he dismissed you from the conversation the moment that opinion went against his preconceived notions!” Deceit snapped back.

Silence.

Logan could hear the others still talking, out in the real world…without him…as the misty dregs of subconscious curled around their feet.

“You tricked him.” Logan folded his arms. “He was scared and off balance and you gave him an out.”

“I didn’t make him take it!”

Deceit sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Logan. You know he is wrong on this. You know what this is doing to Thomas. His unquestioning, black-and-white, juvenile morality; it’s not working anymore. Thomas needs to grow up, and Patton is not letting him.”

Logan bit his lip.

“Logan.” Deceit moved closer, dismissing his crook into mist and setting both gloved hands on Logan’s shoulders. Logan stiffened.

“Logic. Please. I am…no good at this.” Deceit dropped his head, his hat obscuring his eyes. “I operate through deceit because that is the only way I can make them acknowledge me.”

“They don’t acknowledge you because you operate through deceit,” Logan pointed out.

“A perfect catch 22.” Deceit let out a bitter laugh. “But a snake cannot change its scales and I don’t…I have tried everything I know. I cannot fix this from the shadows. I am out of ideas.”

A strange thought entered Logan’s mind.

“You care. You care what happens to Thomas.”

Deceit looked up, his mismatched eyes glittering with stinging intensity. “I am the literal representation of selfishness. Why the hell else would I go to all this trouble if I didn’t care?”

“Well…” Logan trailed off, troubled.

He’d let the others get to him, he realized in that moment. He’d let Roman get to him, with his talk of evil and Dark Sides and how they were always trying to tempt Thomas off the right path.

But…they were all part of Thomas, even the so-called “dark sides”.

Of course they wanted what was best for him…well, what Remus wanted at any given moment was debatable…even if they didn’t always go about it in the healthiest of ways.

Deceit had laughed then, high pitched and bitter.

“Really? Really? Even you think so low of me?”

“You are manipulating me right now.” Logan frowned. “You are using my concern for Thomas to make me trust you.”

“Yes! I am!” Deceit got in his face, fangs flashing. “I am a manipulative bastard because that is the lens through which my Source perceives me. But that doesn’t matter because you, Logic; you see through me, always have. And you know perfectly well that logically, any objection you have to my personality or my methods does not change the fact that I. Am. Right.”

He punctuated each word with a poke to Logan’s chest.

“Deceit—” Logan started.

“Janus.”

“What?”

Deceit sighed. “My name. My…real name. It’s Janus.”

Logan blinked. He knew the mythology, of course: Janus, keeper of doorways and thresholds, looking simultaneously to the past and future. Two faces. Seeing things from every angle.

Self-preservation.

“It suits you,” Logan said quietly.

Tension bled out of Janus’s shoulders, a stiffness Logan hadn’t even realized was there until it was gone.

“Thank you.”

“Why am I here…Janus?” Logan asked, glancing away. “What do you need from me?”

Janus looked at him intently.

“Let me speak to them as you.”

Logan raised an eyebrow, and Janus sighed, waving a hand.

“I know, I know, more deceit, more lies, but—”

“No, it’s…” Logan pressed his lips together. “You already pointed it out. They don’t listen to me, either.”

The bitter twist that accompanied those words was becoming an all too familiar sensation in Logan’s chest.

Janus snorted.

“Oh, they do. Eventually. They heeded your advice on how to deal with Remus.”

Logan shrugged uncomfortably.

“Look,” Janus added, “honest people know how to tell the truth, but liars…” he smirked, not especially nicely. “We know how to wield the truth to accomplish an end. I can pull Thomas and the others out of this rut, but they have to be receptive to my tugging on the reins.”

Logan pursed his lips.

“You won’t fool them. If you recall, you tried to impersonate me once already and barely lasted two minutes.”

“I didn’t have your blessing.”

Janus fixed Logan with his intense mismatched eyes again, and held out a hand.

Logan stared at it, torn.

This was Deceit, the master liar: Thomas’s entire capacity for deception condensed into a single, snake-faced Side. How could Logan possibly trust him to not make things worse, after all the falsehoods, the impersonations, how he’d manipulated them all in one way or another to get his way?

But…as much as Logan, personally, didn’t understand why that callback had been so important to Thomas…he could not dismiss the fallout Thomas had suffered as a result of missing it. The decision to attend the wedding had turned out to be a bad one.

Patton had been wrong to insist upon it over Janus’s objections, and over Roman’s.

Those were just the facts.

Janus sighed.

“I’ll unmask myself when an opportunity arises, if that would help,” he offered, and to Logan’s shock, slowly tugged off a glove. “I won’t…I won’t let it go on as long as it did with Patton.”

He offered his now bare hand to Logan again.

Out in the real world, Logan could hear Patton’s increasingly desperate and ridiculous responses to Thomas’s and Roman’s questions, and winced. Janus did the same.

“Please,” was all he said.

Logan sighed…it really couldn’t get any worse, could it?…and shook Janus’s hand.

#

In his TARDIS, Logan let out the sigh he was holding back.

He might have personal, concrete evidence that Janus wasn’t evil, but he also knew Janus had wounded Roman, badly, that day. The creative Side was simply not currently capable of viewing any situation involving Janus with any sort of objectivity.

Passionate, sensitive people like Roman tended to have an unfortunate habit of hanging onto grudges.

As Logic, Logan needed to remember that.

“Oh, all right,” Remus said, his voice crackling over the connection. “Since you’re all here—”

“Actually, Remus, we’re not all here,” Patton’s voice pointed out. “You all know perfectly well who we’re missing; we’ve done this before.”

Logan’s eyes widened. “‘Where is Anxiety?’” he quoted.

“You mean Tickle Me Emo isn’t with one of you?” Remus asked, looking delighted. “Oh dear, oh dear. Is he lost?”

“I mean, TARDISes are huge,” Roman pointed out. “He could be somewhere on one of our ships.” His voice dropped again. “I’ll bet Deceit stashed him away, because we all know how he hates Virgil.”

“Excuse you,” Janus’s voice interrupted, annoyed. “It is Virgil who hates me, not the other way around.”

“Let’s both scan our ships,” Logan suggested, hoping to head off an argument. Honestly, if Roman and Janus didn’t stop picking fights with one another, he was going to lose his marbles.

The scans pulled up nothing.

“Oh well,” Remus said with a shrug. “Guess the emo gets to miss out.”

Janus grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “lucky”.

“All right, here’s what’s going to happen.” Remus leaned close to the screen. “I’ve crash landed on a lovely snowbound planet that’s crawling with psychotic tin cans who like to roll around yelling ‘exterminate’.”

“Daleks? A snowbound planet, so not Skarro, but where else…” Logan narrowed his eyes.

“He’s on the Dalek asylum,” Roman said lowly. “That was one of the episodes I had in mind when I plotted this adventure.”

“Very good, brother.” Remus clapped his hands. “And up there in orbit is a ship full of people who’d really like to blow up the whole planet. Oh, woe is me, whatever shall I—”

“Save it,” Roman snapped. “You’d probably enjoy getting blown up.”

“Hmm, true.” Remus’s green eyes sharpened. “Think of the mess! Little bits of intestines floating through space, long pink ropey—”

“Or?” Logan interjected, before Remus gave Patton nightmares.

“Or you have to come rescue me!” Remus’s teeth flashed as he grinned. “Because otherwise it’s nighty-night for me and all the other aliens in the asylum.”

There was a beat of silence.

“As terrible as that sounds,” Janus drawled, sounding anything but worried, “given that none of this is real, and at least one of us would very much rather not be here at all…why exactly should your plight concern us?”

Logan secretly agreed, but felt his stomach clench when he glanced at Roman’s troubled face. None of this was real…right? Would something concretely bad happen to Remus if the planet he inhabited was blown up?

Surely not.

This was only a dream. Perhaps, then, Roman was merely upset that his twin had usurped his adventure for the night?

“Also.” Remus buffed his fingernails. “You should know that the Imagination will only release us if we complete the objective. In other words,” and he sneered, purple-shadowed eyes glittering, “we’re all stuck in this scenario until we’re all reunited.”

Remus giggled as Logan exchanged a shocked look with Roman.

“I don’t believe you. This was my dream,” Roman said darkly. “And I’ve just about had enough of all this!”

He stepped back and snapped his fingers with a flourish. Frowning, he did it again, and again, his face growing paler with each try.

“Roman, what—” Logan started.

“I can’t end it,” Roman whispered, still snapping. “He’s right. He’s…he’s sealed off the dream’s boundaries somehow. Remus!”

This he roared at the screen.

“Keeping Thomas trapped in a dream state is going too far, Remus!” he yelled. “I don’t care what kind of demented game you want to play with us, but we don’t bring Thomas into it.”

“Oh, you think I created an unbreakable dreamscape?” Remus snapped. “You let the Imagination have too much reign, my dear brother, and now neither of us have the power to end the dream ourselves. I estimate we have about ten hours before Thomas wakes up.”

For a moment, all Logan could hear was the soft whoosh of the time rotor, and Roman’s shallow, angry breathing at his shoulder.

“So I suggest you all pilot your ships to these coordinates,” Remus added, and a series of numbers and strange symbols flashed up on one of the smaller console screens. “And get started.”

The main screen blipped, and Remus’s face was replaced by an expressionless Cyberman and a snake-faced Side who looked extremely pale under his scales.

“Well,” Logan stated. “This is a problem.”

Chapter 6- Asylum of the Daleks

“You’re going to fire me at a planet? That’s your plan? I get fired at a planet and expected to fix it?”

“In fairness, that is slightly your M.O.”

“Don’t be fair to the Daleks when they’re firing me at a planet.”

The familiar wheeze of the TARDIS materializing filled Roman’s ears as he waited by the doors. Logan joined him a moment later.

“Ready?” he asked, smoothing a hand over his cravat.

He looks good as the Doctor, Roman thought, eying the slimming black and navy, the graceful arc that hand made as it adjusted a pair of glasses…

He shook himself out of his distraction. “Let’s do this, nerd.”

Logan opened the doors and the two stepped out…not onto the asylum, but onto a spaceship. Shiny copper terraces lined the vast walls in curving rows, leading the eye up to a domed ceiling with a clear view of black, star-studded space. Like a huge amphitheater, or stadium. Even Roman had to admit, the Imagination had really outdone itself on the realism.

Of course, given that the ship was filled with hundreds upon hundreds of Daleks calling for violence…realism wasn’t exactly comforting at the moment.

“Surprise, surprise, I don’t see my stupid brother,” Roman commented over the dull roar of the crowd.

“No. But I recognize where we are.” Logan waved a hand. “You were right about Remus’s location; this ship is from the episode ‘Asylum of the Daleks’, in Season 7. If we are following the basic plotline, Remus is likely somewhere down on the planet below, and we will be sent to him in due course. However…I am curious as to why all the other aliens are here.”

Roman looked around again, seeing that Logan was right. Daleks formed the majority of the crowd, but he also spotted Zygons, Sontarans, Silurians, other Cybermen, Ice Warriors…and quite a few aliens from older seasons he couldn’t remember the names of.

(Logan probably could.)

A second TARDIS materialized near their familiar blue box: plain, gray; a squat column of a ship. Janus emerged first, a silver instrument gripped in one gloved hand, followed by an old-school Cyberman…Patton. Roman frowned. Seeing that metal…being…and having to remember it was actually his friend was going to be difficult now that there wasn’t a screen separating them.

“Nice work, Roman,” Janus said, sidling up next to him and faux-clapping his hands. “A ship full of aliens who want us dead; always an excellent starting point for an adventure.”

“This is how the episode starts, Mr. Oh-I’m-Such-an-Expert-in-Doctor-Who,” Roman retorted. “Accuracy is important.”

“But this isn’t accurate,” Logan pointed out. “There should only be Daleks here.”

Roman folded his arms, stung.

Damn Logan and his damned need to be right all the time.

“I…well, I didn’t model this adventure after just one particular episode,” Roman admitted. “I wanted it to be a challenge, and it wouldn’t be if Logan and I already knew the ending. So no, I can’t exactly explain why all the other aliens are here, okay?”

Logan sighed.

“I was not criticizing you, Roman,” he said in a gentler voice. “As this has apparently become as much Remus’s and the Imagination’s handiwork as it is yours, it would be unreasonable to expect you to know what comes next.”

“THE DOCTOR AND THE MASTER WILL APPROACH THE SUPREME DALEK,” a grating robotic voice boomed across the ship, making them all whip around. A large white Dalek with an antenna on its shell loomed on a raised stage near the center of the amphitheater.

“They were expecting me, too?” Janus raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

The lights on the Dalek’s head flashed as it spoke again.

“THE DOCTOR AND THE MASTER WILL APPROACH WITH THEIR COMPANIONS.”

The four Sides exchanged a glance, and weaved through the assembled Daleks to the raised stage. The White Supreme Dalek was not the only occupant; it was flanked by an Ice Warrior, an Emojibot (which made Patton giggle), and…

“Look, a Janus,” Roman chortled, nudging the snake-faced Side in the ribs and pointing out the two-faced alien.

“You are all nerds and my logo is a two-headed snake,” Janus complained, rolling his eyes. “I literally do not know how all of you missed that obvious clue to my name.”

“DOCTOR,” the White Dalek said as they climbed the dais. “MASTER. WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF THE DALEK ASYLUM?”

“I’m just impressed my rat-faced brother wasn’t lying about his location,” Roman grumbled, and sputtered when Logan placed a hand over his mouth.

“According to legend,” Logan said, “you have a dumping ground, a planet where you lock up all the Daleks that go wrong.”

“The battle-scarred, the insane. The ones even you can’t control,” Janus clarified. His voice dropped to a hiss. “No wonder they ssstuck Remus there.”

Roman covered his mouth to keep from snorting.

The snake would not make him laugh.

“CORRECT.” The Dalek pushed a button and a hole opened in the middle of the floor. A snow-covered planet lay below them, pristine from this high up.

“Ooh, that’s,” Patton started, and let out a metallic gulp. “That’s quite a drop. Do we, ah, have to go down the same way? Cause I remember that part, and—”

“How many Daleks are down there?” Logan asked.

“A COUNT HAS NOT BEEN MADE,” the white Dalek said.

“Millions, certainly,” a new voice chimed in. The tall, robed, dark-skinned Janus stepped forward, their front face addressing them. “But they will not be your only concern. The population of the planet consists of more than just Daleks.”

Roman exchanged a suspicious glance with Logan. This wasn’t in the episode. This is new.

“What do you mean?” Janus, their Janus, asked.

The alien Janus turned to a nearby monitor, pulling up some information. The backward-facing face continued to address them.

“Some time ago, the Daleks began noticing a curious phenomenon,” they said. “Random people, from all different races and species, started turning up on various planets in this quadrant of space, including the asylum. No ships, no technology, and no knowledge of how they’d gotten there. At first the imprisoned Daleks on the asylum simply killed them off as they appeared—”

Patton visibly winced, even with his metal body, and Logan’s eyes grew flinty.

“—but the new arrivals eventually became too many to exterminate,” the alien Janus went on, unconcerned. “By now we suspect the planet has a population of over a billion, far too many for its automated systems to handle.”

They turned their forward face to the four again.

“THE ASYLUM IS COMPROMISED,” the Dalek Supreme proclaimed. “IT MUST BE CLEANSED.”

“Hang on, you’re still going to blow the whole planet up?” Roman protested. “A billion people?”

“To be fair, that is what they did in the original episode,” Logan pointed out quietly.

“But that was just Daleks!”

Janus rolled his eyes. “Ah, so genocide is fine when it’s only the evil aliens getting blown up?”

“You know, somehow I’m not surprised to hear you defending the bad guys!” Roman snapped.

“That is enough!” Patton snapped in his robotic voice, stepping between them and raising both his hands. Laser pistols popped out of both of them, making both Roman and Janus step back in alarm.

After a tense moment, Patton lowered his arms again; the guns clicked and vanished into their casings.

“Uh, sorry kiddos, I don’t know what came over me,” he said in a sheepish, more Patton-y voice. “Can we please not fight? It…it kinda makes me feel weird and jittery when you do.”

Roman stared at Patton’s blank Cyberman face and armored Cyberman body and swallowed, hard.

Their Patton would never deliberately aim a gun at anyone, let alone his family. But Cybermen were created to eliminate…or rather, delete…anyone who got in their way.

Did Patton even realize what he’d almost done?

What would happen, if and when he was forced to confront the reality of his body in this realm? What if he didn’t figure it out until he accidentally did something terrible? It wouldn’t be real, of course, but to Patton…that wouldn’t matter.

If his Cyberman programming forced or tricked him into hurting someone, the guilt of it would devastate him.

All I wanted to do was take Logan on an adventure, Roman thought bitterly. A fun little dream adventure where he could play one of his heroes. Was that too much to ask, Imagination?

He folded his arms and glared around the Dalek ship, anywhere but at his fellow Sides.

Whatever the hell this has turned into, I want no part of it anymore.

“In order for us to destroy the planet, we will need you to disable the planet’s forcefield—” The alien Janus started, but Logan held up a finger.

“Excuse you,” he said sharply. “We have not agreed to do anything, least of all help you murder a billion people whose only crime is to have accidentally turned up in your prison. Have you even attempted to solve that mystery?"

"And why do you care what happens down there?" Roman added, sneering. "If the insane Daleks are armed—”

“DALEKS ARE ALWAYS ARMED,” the white Dalek proclaimed.

“—then why can’t they defend themselves?” Logan finished, shooting Roman a questioning glance.

Roman huffed, and looked away.

“At first they did,” the Janus explained. “But as I said, the automated systems cannot keep up with the influx. Wars are being fought over food and other resources as we speak. A starliner crashed on the surface mere days ago, and—”

“Ah,” Logan said slowly. “You’re afraid, with all the shifting alliances and new activity, that the mad Daleks will escape in the confusion.”

“We do not know who or what is behind the influx,” the Janus said. “But eventually, they will start coming with ships, or they will build them on the surface, or reach out to those who could attempt a rescue.”

“‘If sssomeone can get in, everything can get out’,” their Janus quoted darkly.

The other Janus nodded. “Even the Daleks agree, their mad brethren cannot be allowed to escape. We, of this assembly—”

They waved to the assembled crowd of aliens, who observed in eerie silence.

“—have decided that one planet must be sacrificed for the greater good of the universe.”

Roman slowly and deliberately drew his sword (which the Imagination had kindly left as part of his outfit). It rasped as it emerged, the sound hair-raising in the sudden lull.

Instantly every Dalek gunstick and alien weapon on the ship was primed and pointed at the four Sides.

“And if we refuse?” Roman said evenly.

“THE DOCTOR AND THE MASTER WILL COOPERATE,” the Supreme Dalek warned, its lights flashing balefully.

“COOPERATE! COOPERATE!” the cry was echoed by the other Daleks, filling the ship with a cacophony of robot voices.

The alien Janus shrugged, spreading their hands.

“You don’t really have a choice. If you want to live, that is.”

“Is that so.”

Roman tensed and sprang at the white Dalek, not giving himself time to think. He dodged a blast from its gunstick and leaped, bringing his sword down hard. This being the Imagination, the katana cut through the Dalek’s metal armor like butter, and it clattered to the deck in two pieces.

There was a shocked silence…but no retaliation.

“Well?” Roman shouted, spreading his arms and turning in a slow circle. “This is me, not cooperating. What are you waiting for? Are you really going to shoot us?”

If they all died on this spaceship…the worst that would happen is they’d be kicked from the Imagination, and that was what they wanted, anyway.

“Roman,” Logan warned quietly, pointing.

Roman looked.

The white Dalek’s shell was…laughing?

“Oh, Roman,” Remus’s crackly voice emerged from the fallen Dalek’s casing. “Roman, Roman, Roman. My poor brave brother who thinks he can solve all his problems with steel and bravado. Did you really think it would be that easy?”

Each word bit like sandpaper against Roman’s ears.

He growled, and stalked to the Dalek’s top half, snatching it up and quickly locating a tiny speaker.

“C’mon, Remus. End this stupid charade,” he said quietly, holding the casing to his face so he could speak quietly. “You’ve had your fun at my expense. Go back to your pile of severed limbs and gloat if you must, but end this. For Patton’s sake, if nothing else.”

“I’ve already told you, it’s out of my hands,” Remus responded; typically, annoyingly casual. “If you want to end the game, you have to come down here and find me.”

Roman exhaled, resting his head against the cold, bumpy metal for a moment. His eyes burned, but he was Prince; he wouldn’t cry, not here.

“Why must you make everything difficult?”

“Roman, in all seriousness,” Remus’s voice dropped. “I didn’t know you were taking Logan on a date tonight—”

“It’s not a date,” Roman hissed, glancing at the other Sides…one in particular.

“The Imagination brought me into this without asking, just like it pulled the others in,” Remus went on. “I am aware of what has to happen, but I did not cause this.”

“You’re lying,” Roman said tonelessly.

Remus’s whiny voice grew hard.

“I don’t lie, and you despise that about me. You hide so much shit from yourself that it baffles you when I refuse to do the same.”

“Look,” Remus added when Roman didn’t respond. “The Imagination is clearly trying to get our attention. Sure, it usually goes through one of us first, but it doesn’t have to. When it comes down to it, Thomas’s mind answers only to Thomas. ”

“How are you so sure?” Roman frowned.

Was Remus seriously suggesting the Imagination they both oversaw had gone rogue somehow?

“Because I don’t curate my side as meticulously as you do, brother.” Remus chuckled. “I listen. I let the Imagination do as she pleases, free from all those pesky ethics and morals and other boring boxes you always force her into, so that our sweet Thomas doesn’t fear the contents of his own head.”

“You expect me to believe that you know what’s going on because,” Roman let every ounce of disdain seep into his voice, “the Imagination talks to you, and not me…because you don’t make her behave?”

“You should try letting her loose sometimes,” Remus drawled, “or you’ll end up with a cane up your butt like Nerdy Wolverine over there.”

“Don’t call him that,” Roman spat.

“What you so-called ‘light sides’ always get wrong,” Remus went on, “is that the juicy stuff, the gruesome and grim, the ‘bad’ thoughts that filter up from the subconscious; they can’t all be locked away and ignored.” His voice dropped ominously. “Repression can be very bad indeed, you know.”

Roman’s reasonable nature knew that his brother, despite his infuriating attitude, was actually making some good points. Thomas had been dealing with a lot lately; the tension in the mindspace felt like a ticking clock, counting down to the next disaster.

But at that moment, Roman had no desire to humor his twin.

All he wanted to do was lock himself into his own room in the Dream Palace and spend the rest of the night writing sad poetry about love, or listing his mistakes to himself until he fell asleep.

“I just wanted to show Logan a good time,” he said aloud.

“And oh dear, apparently you couldn’t even manage that correctly,” Remus said, implacably. “So maybe you should use this opportunity to get your head out of your poopy ass, and reevaluate yourself.”

Roman slammed the Dalek shell against the floor.

It cracked upon impact, the wiring inside sparking and finally flickering down to darkness. He ran his hands through his hair, reminded, once again, why he hated talking to his brother.

Like looking in a funhouse mirror…

“Roman…” Patton sidled up behind him, laying a cold hand on his back. Roman shoved the metal arm away and stalked back to the others.

“Let’s just get this done,” he said in a low voice.

“You will need these,” the alien Janus said, pushing a button on a nearby console. A translucent vertical tube rose from a gap in the floor, holding three bulky black bracelets.

“Ah yes, I remember this,” Logan said, striding forward and taking a bracelet.

“They will prevent—” the Janus started.

“The nano cloud from converting us into Dalek puppets, yes?” Logan interrupted, snapping the bracelet onto his wrist and handing another to Roman.

The nerd is getting into this, Roman thought as he put it on. I guess that’s something.

“The cloud is only active in certain areas of the asylum,” the Janus warned them again. “And those change as different factions seize control of different areas and weaponize them.”

Patton hesitantly raised a hand.

“Um, Mx. Alien, I can’t help but notice that there are only three bracelets, and four of us?”

Logan frowned. “But Patton, why would you—?”

“I’m sure it’s because I’m part snake, Patton,” Janus interrupted smoothly, swooping in to grab the last bracelet and snapping it onto Patton’s arm.

Roman exchanged an alarmed look with Logan; that was the last bit of confirmation he needed. Patton really was unaware that he was a Cyberman.

But why on earth would Janus go to such lengths to keep him in the dark about it? Even leaving aside the fact that Patton was a walking weapon; being a machine, he didn’t need protection from the nano cloud at all.

Whereas Janus…probably did.

But when Roman opened his mouth, Janus shot him a look full of daggers and promises of pain, and shook his head. Roman rolled his eyes and mentally washed his hands of the situation.

Typical Deceit. Protecting his lies.

At least Patton would be twice-protected. If the snake wanted to risk his life for a lie, let him.

“The gravity beam will convey you close to the crashed starliner,” the alien Janus said, and then there were Dalek blasters being shoved into their backs, propelling them toward the hole in the floor.

“Oi,” Roman protested, “get your freaky little eggbeater appendages away from me, you AAAAHHHH!”

There was a push, and they were falling.

Chapter 7- Oxygen

“Look at this. Classic design. Pressure seals. Hinges. None of that ‘shuk shuk’ nonsense.”

“Space doors are supposed to go shuk shuk.”

“Are you gonna be like this all day?”

Janus was done.

He sat up with a groan, brushing snow from his jacket and vest, making sure his hat and gloves were still in place. Everything ached. Bad enough he never wanted to be part this stupid dream game in the first place; now he was probably going to literally turn into a Dalek.

All because the Imagination is being a dick and Patton doesn’t know he’s a killer robot.

Wind gusted around him, making Janus glad that the Master, like the Doctor, usually preferred long sleeves and a coat. He stood, turning in a slow circle as he took in the lay of the land. Nothing but snow and rocks; true to the episode, still.

The gravity beam had split into four as it hurled them at the planet, but Janus was reasonably sure at least one of the others had landed nearby.

He hoped it was Patton.

Not because he was concerned or anything. It was just that either of the others would be absolutely insufferable company, that’s all.

“Janus!” a metallic voice called, and Janus breathed a sigh of relief.

Patton’s Cyberman body clattered awkwardly down a nearby snowbank, sliding the last few feet to land in a heap.

“It is all kinds of chilly down here.” Patton stood, and waved rather nonsensically. “Hullo there, Janus, so ice to see you.”

Janus rolled his eyes. (He would deny to his dying day that the corner of his mouth twitched at the ridiculous pun.)

“If this scenario is consistent with its source material,” he said, gesturing to the closest ridge, “there should be an escape pod from that crashed ship nearby. Come on.”

He set off across the snow, Patton following in his wake.

“Say, what do snowmen call their offspring?”

Janus exhaled carefully. Hoo, boy, maybe Logan wouldn’t have been so bad…

“I haven’t the faintest.”

“Chill-dren!” Patton chortled at Janus’s grimace. “What did one snowman say to another?”

“St. Genesius spare me,” Janus grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What, pray tell, did one snowman say to another?”

“‘Do you smell carrots?’”

Janus quickly covered his mouth.

“You smiled,” Patton crooned.

“I most certainly did not.”

“Okay, okay, one more.” Patton scurried ahead and turned around, so that he was walking backwards. “Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?” Janus said flatly.

“Snow.” Patton hooked his thumbs into the metal rim at waist, like one might on a pair of pants. Janus swallowed and looked away.

“Snow who?”

“Snow laughing matter, Janus, I don’t know why you’re smiling.”

Janus snorted before he could hide it, and cleared his throat.

“I am not smiling, how dare you.”

“That’s twice now!” Patton cackled, the sound coming out all distorted. “Admit it.”

“I refuse,” Janus said, drawing himself up. “You won’t make a liar out of….”

Liar.

He felt the joke fall flat and cringed. Even though Patton’s metal face couldn’t react, those metal shoulders visibly stiffened.

Too soon.

Liar.

Too much history between them.

Besides, you are a liar, his mind whispered. Lies of omission are still lies, Deceit, and you’re doing that right now.

Janus gritted his teeth. They topped a ridge; the expected escaped pod lay half-buried near another ridge, across a flat stretch of snow. The two Sides glanced at each other and continued their journey in silence.

Patton seemed disinclined to continue his little pun war.

Janus badly wanted to say he hadn’t minded the punning, but truthfully, keeping silent was easier. Patton’s baffling ignorance over the state of his own “flesh” was starting to wear on Janus’s conscience. He knew the longer he kept it secret, the worse the fallout would be when Patton finally learned the truth.

The urge to come clean was an unfamiliar one for him, and extremely uncomfortable.

Ironic, the master liar, conflicted about maintaining a lie.

The old him would have laughed, but…the old him hadn’t heard the sincerity in Patton’s voice, when he’d spoken Janus’s true name aloud for the first time. The old him had assumed Thomas would reject him forever…because of Patton.

And then, with Janus still smarting from the sting of Roman’s mockery, Patton had said his name.

Patton had trusted him to take care of Thomas in his stead, when the moral Side knew he had failed at it. The memory still made all Janus’s scales tingle and his heart beat a little sideways.

The new him…this him…couldn’t find it in his small, shriveled, but very much present heart to risk pushing Patton away.

They reached the pod.

Muffled shouts and something that sounded like blaster fire filtered up from inside, making them exchange another glance.

Janus set a hand on the ice-crusted latch.

“Remember, we’ll have to fight our way through a bunch of dead Dalek puppets,” he reminded Patton.

“That’s a lot of noise for just a few puppets,” Patton said softly. “That canonically shouldn’t even be awake yet.”

“I know, and that is strange,” Janus agreed. “Maybe someone got here before us. But we won’t know exactly what to expect until we get down there.”

Patton sighed, a cloud of frost puffing out of his small, rectangular mouth.

Janus pushed the latch, popped his head in, and was met with a scene of utter chaos.

About six or seven human-Dalek puppets, with stalks sticking out of their heads and blasters sticking out of their hands, were locked in a fire fight with a horde of robotic humanoids that looked like they came from the Fourth Doctor’s era, if Janus remembered correctly. Round, bulky shoulders and faces that looked like metal sunbursts.

Both puppets and robots were using the seats as cover, blaster fire zinging back and forth and exploding against the walls in little showers of sparks. Janus and Patton would be directly in the blast zone when they jumped down, a little closer to the robot side.

“Well, someone definitely got here before us,” Janus muttered.

He withdrew his head and studied Patton. Honestly, with his metal body he’d be in far less danger, and those guns in his arms would actually be useful in this situation…but telling Patton he was a walking weapon, now, would definitely not go over well.

“The hatch down into the asylum should be in the cockpit of this thing,” he informed Patton. “There’s a lot of blaster fire, though, so—”

“—don’t get cold feet and hesitate?” Patton finished.

Something in Janus’s heart twisted…something he didn’t dare examine too closely.

“Say, Patton,” he said softly, looking away.

“Yes?”

“What did the hat say to the scarf?”

Patton turned his black Cyberman eyes on Janus.

“What?”

“‘You hang around, and I’ll go a-head’.” Janus let a smirk curl his lips.

Patton was silent for a moment, but then he began to giggle, covering his mouth.

Janus pulled out his sonic laser.

He dropped into the pod with a swing of his legs, catching one of the robots in its metal chest. It fell with a screech, careening into another of its kind, but by then Janus had gained his feet and ducked behind a seat. Patton clattered down behind, with less grace and far more noise…and a random Tivolian tumbled in directly after him.

Patton caught the rodent-faced alien with a startled shout, immediately dropping them again when they screamed and struggled. Janus blinked; where the hell did they come from?

The Tivolian tumbled across the pod’s floor, only making it a few feet before getting cut down with blaster bolts. Janus saw Patton cry out, and caught the Side before he could leap out and draw more hostile fire.

“It’s too late!” he shouted over the noise.

“I should have hung on!” Patton, if he’d had a proper face, would probably be in tears. He hated death. “I don’t know why they were so scared of me!”

Janus could answer that…

“I’m more curious about where they came from,” he said instead, frowning. “They surely weren’t up on the surface with us. It’s like they just teleported in, but Tivolians don’t teleport. They don’t have the technology—”

A blaster bolt exploded across the top of the seat they were hiding behind, showering them in sparks and forcing them both to duck.

“Janus!” Patton snapped. “We need to get out of here!”

“Right.” Janus brandished his sonic. “We’ll just have to run for it.”

He leaped out, activating his weapon, and discovered that a sonic laser had a very satisfying range and kickback. Forget the Doctor’s screwdriver, he thought, blasting a Dalek puppet aside and ducking another gun blast. I wonder if the Imagination will let me keep this…

A cold, dead hand seized the collar of his jacket, yanking him back.

Then there was a yell, a clatter, and Janus turned in time to see Patton blast a puppet with a fire extinguisher. The moral Side chuckled at Janus’s shocked expression.

“I’ve seen this episode too, you know,” he pointed out.

Janus huffed.

The two dodged and fought their way to the cockpit; Janus used his laser to seal the door behind them. For a moment they simply stood there, catching their breath.

(Well, Janus caught his. Did Patton even breathe, in that form?)

“Unauthorized personnel may not enter the cockpit.” Remus’s high-pitched voice came over the speaker system. “Unless it’s an actual pit full of cocks, in which case, where’s my invitation?”

Janus was going to need something a lot stronger than tea, once they finally got out of this mess.

“Remus, for god’s sake,” he grumbled.

“God has nothing to do with my cock, but if that’s how you want to roll…” One of the cockpit screens flickered to life, and there was Remus in all his ruffly, sparkly, mustached glory. Clara’s warm, messy cove spread out behind him, reds and yellows clashing horribly with the green of his sash.

Janus moved so that his chest and shoulders blocked the screen, to prevent Remus from catching sight of Patton. If Remus saw Patton as a Cyberman, Janus would never be able to convince him to keep his mouth shut.

“All right then, where do we find you?” Janus said. “And where did the others land? Not to mention our dear missing ball of anxiety.” He leaned forward, putting on his trademark smirk. “Come on, Re. You must know. One Other to another, you can tell me.”

“Aww, Jan Jan,” Remus crooned, also leaning forward. “You care.”

“I most certainly do not!” Janus sputtered, and cleared his throat. “Patton was worried about Virgil, that’s all.”

“I was?” Patton asked from the other side of the space. “I mean, of course I am, but—”

“But surely you can at least tell us why this scenario isn’t playing out quite like the episode it comes from,” Janus interjected smoothly. He didn’t want Remus to notice the metallic quality of Patton’s voice.

“Sorry to disappoint, but I’ve already told you everything that I know.” Remus shrugged. “Roman really did give the Imagination too much freedom.”

Janus frowned.

“Then how do you know the scenario will end when we find you?”

“I actually don’t! Isn’t it great?” Remus crowed, clapping his hands. “I love stories where anything could happen. We could all get vaporized, or have our flesh eaten by—”

“Remus, focus.” Janus pitched the bridge of his nose. “So, given what we know of this particular episode, you’re assuming that our main tasks are to come get you, and to drop the forcefield on the planet so the Daleks can blow it up.”

“That’s the idea, Double Dee!”

Behind him, Janus heard Patton make a weird, choked noise, and grimaced.

“By the way, Roman and Logan are already inside the asylum.” Remus grinned, the whites of his eyes flashing. “So if you want to catch up, you’d better scute those scaly asscheeks along. Check the floor for a breach; that will be your way out. A breach, ha! Like a butth—”

Janus pointed his laser and fired on the screen, cutting the transmission and sending sparks flying all over the cockpit. An awkward silence fell in which he turned to face Patton, who of course wore no visible expression.

This, and all the reasons for it, annoyed him further.

“I swear if you ask one question about scutes or scales,” he warned, holding up a finger.

“I wasn’t…going to.” Patton held up his hands. “Logan kind of taught us how to tune out the more, er, naughty things Remus says. But I am wondering,” he added hesitantly. “Are you…feeling okay?”

“Fabulous. Peachy,” Janus said flatly, kneeling to feel around on the floor. “Fantastic, allons-y, geronimo, what have you.”

“It’s just, you seem a little angry,” Patton went on. “And you remember, that’s, that’s the first step in being converted. Maybe you should wear the bracelet for a while? We can trade on and off…”

Patton’s fingers went to his wrist, but Janus stopped him with a gloved hand on top.

Tell him, an inner voice whispered. Tell him now, before this gets any more awkward.

“That’s sweet of you, but no, I’m merely frustrated,” Janus admitted. “I would very much like to get out of here, so I can return to the pleasant evening I was having before all thisss.”

He gestured irritatedly around them.

Patton joined him on the floor and together they found a person-sized hole, with a rope ladder hanging down.

“Hey, Janus,” Patton murmured, as they were about to start the long climb down. “Can I ask you something?”

“Why do I have a feeling you’re going to ask no matter what I say?” Janus said wryly.

“Do you remember when that puppet attacked you in the main part of the ship, and I fought it off with the fire extinguisher?” Patton ducked his head.

Janus raised an eyebrow.

“They hesitated, when they saw me.” Patton’s unnaturally black eyes met Janus’s. “That’s why I had time to grab the extinguisher.”

Janus swallowed, his heart starting to pound.

“Well, I’m sure they aren’t used to anyone fighting back—”

“No, they hesitated like…like I scared them or something,” Patton pressed. “It was weird, Janus. Please. If there’s something you need to tell me…you know you can.”

Janus’s mouth compressed into a flat line and he looked away, bitterness welling up inside him.

“Can I, Patton?” he asked softly, holding up a gloved hand. A yellow indictment of everything he was. “Can I really?”

Patton sighed, long and deep.

“Touché.”

Chapter 8- Extremis

“Something’s coming. And I’m blind. How can I see them when I’m lost in the dark?”

Logan awoke to someone shaking him.

He opened his eyes to an expanse of blurry blobs and color splotches, and Roman’s sharp, frantic face very close to his. His eyes have amber flecks, his brain noted inanely. But why is he clear when nothing else is…?

Roman threw his head back and exhaled in obvious relief when Logan groaned, blinking rapidly to clear his vision.

“Singing chimeras, Specs, I was starting to worry.”

Logan sat up and touched his bare face. Ah, there’s the problem.

“Where are my glasses?”

Roman was quiet.

Logan leaned closer to the other Side, squinting. Bad eyesight was such an annoyance. If only Thomas’s developing brain hadn’t decided early on that “smart and logical” also meant “stereotypically nerdy”, and pigeonholed his own sense of Logic into actually requiring corrective eyewear.

“Roman?” Logan tried again.

“Um. About that.”

Roman bit his lip, and handed over a smashed set of frames. Logan’s stomach sank as he examined them; the lenses were shattered beyond repair.

“I found them next to you like that, when I woke up,” Roman explained. “I’ve been trying to summon another pair, but for some reason the Imagination won’t let me!”

Logan pushed down a growing sense of dread, that he’d have to navigate the rest of this adventure half-blind.

“My glasses getting broken is obviously not your fault. We did fall down a rather deep hole,” he pointed out. “But what do you mean, the Imagination isn’t letting you?”

“I mean it’s not letting me!” Roman threw up his hands. “I could summon things on the TARDIS just fine, but now…” He sighed. “I am Creativity, right?”

Logan tilted his head and frowned.

“Is that…Roman, that is a nonsensical question. Of course you are.”

“So summoning a tiny object in my own dream scenario should be easy.” Roman hung his head.

“How long have you been trying?”

“Twenty minutes, maybe?” Roman shrugged, still not looking at him. “All that time, and yet still I fail.”

Logan resisted the urge to point out that twenty minutes should be long enough to realize a thing might be outside of one’s control, and to start brainstorming other options.

Stubborn fool.

“Maybe it’s just as well we picked the wedding over the callback,” Roman added darkly, an uncharacteristic glower twisting his face. “When Thomas’s Creativity apparently can’t even control his own dreams.”

Oh…this isn’t about glasses at all, is it? Logan swallowed around an achy sensation in his chest; the one he always got when something was wrong and Roman made that face and he just…needed to fix it.

Native English speakers have a passive vocabulary of around forty thousand words, he thought, frustrated. So why, in situations like this, am I constantly struggling to find the right thing to say?

The resigned set to Roman’s jaw prompted Logan to try.

“Your inability to summon things may not be your doing,” Logan said, laying a hand on Roman’s knee. “Perhaps the Imagination is attempting to impose a sense of realism on this adventure.”

“Realism,” Roman echoed flatly. “In Doctor Who.”

Logan huffed. “You must admit, summoning objects out of thin air does defy even time-traveling alien logic.”

Roman’s face twitched in the tiniest of smiles. “So why did it work before, Teach?”

“Maybe it only worked on the TARDIS because the ship already defies every known rule of physics.” Logan shrugged. “I admit I cannot possibly intuit the inner workings of the Imagination; I can only theorize from what I have observed thus far.”

Roman chuckled softly to himself, and bumped Logan’s shoulder.

“Aww, Nerd, I’m touched. You’re trying to logic me into feeling better.”

“Is it…working?” Logan asked.

“Kind of?” An unreadable expression flitted over Roman’s face. “At least one of us is still grounded in reality.”

“Where else could one possibly be grounded?”

Roman laughed outright at this.

“Oh, Logan. Never change, okay?”

He stood up, and pulled Logan to his feet as well.

“Where are we?” Logan asked, squinting.

He could tell they were in some large, open space; all blacks and browns and dull grays. Blurry domes of copper were scattered amongst what could be bits of fallen scaffolding or machinery.

Logan was also hyperaware of Roman’s warm arm pressed against his, and his own hand clasped tightly within the Prince’s larger grip. With everything else blurry, physical sensations were all the more distracting.

“Don’t panic, okay?” Roman started.

Logan scoffed.

“You are fortunate that I am not Virgil,” he commented wryly. “Because starting a sentence like that would almost certainly have caused him to panic.”

“Well, it’s just, do you remember that scene in the Dalek asylum episode where Rory wakes up in the hanger full of dead Daleks who turn out to be not actually dead?” Roman said in a rush. “Because…yeah.”

Oh. Logan swallowed.

“So, I am guessing that those copper domes are actually Daleks?” he said softly.

Roman snorted.

“Copper domes? Jeesh, your eyesight sucks.”

“I am aware,” Logan said flatly. “Which means you will have to guide us out. If I remember correctly, as long as we are quiet and don’t kick any pipes on the ground, we won’t wake them up.”

Roman let go of Logan’s hand… and replaced it with an arm wrapped around his waist. Logan only held back a squeak because it would have been extremely undignified.

“Hey, relax, I got you, Specs.” Roman’s breath ghosted over Logan’s ear. The Prince’s shorter stature allowed him to fit snugly against Logan’s side; if Roman turned his head, he could comfortably tuck his face into the crook of Logan’s neck.

Not…not that Logan imagined him doing any such thing.

Roman drew his sword with a metallic rasp, prompting Logan to pull out his screwdriver, and they set off across the floor.

It was a strange, vulnerable sensation, Logan thought, being this close to another, being forced to rely on him for direction…or maybe it was just that Roman’s Rose Tyler outfit left so much more skin on display than his usual royal attire…

To be fair, Roman’s bare arms and short skirt and leggings were the only non-blurry things in Logan’s line of sight at the moment.

“You know, I am not sure how much good a sword will do against a Dalek now,” Logan said dryly (to distract himself). “Since it would seem that the Imagination is now attempting to be realistic.”

“It’ll be a lot more useful than a screwdriver,” Roman retorted. “Honestly, the War Doctor had a point. The later seasons really do start to treat the sonic like a weapon, and it looks ridiculous. There’s an oily-looking puddle to your left.”

They dodged around it.

“The sonic screwdriver is an ingenious, multipurpose tool,” Logan argued. “Fitting for a character who is, at heart, a pacifist. In the right hands, it most certainly could serve as a weapon. For example one could scramble a Cyberman’s circuits, short out fuses, or calculate the precise amount of blunt force needed to take down an enemy.” Logan waved the hand with the screwdriver around them. “All things that a sword could not accomplish.”

“Sure,” Roman drawled, leading them around one of the still, silent Daleks, “but you don’t point a sonic at an oncoming Dalek and expect to survive. Even the Doctor had more sense than to try that. At least a sword could cut off its blaster arm.”

“We don’t know how strong Dalek amor is down here,” Logan pointed out. “You could end up breaking your sword and then where would we be?”

“Better off than we’d be while you assembled a cabinet at them!”

Logan’s foot collided with a metallic something that made an awful CLANG and went skittering across the floor. Roman pulled them up short, his face going pale.

All around them, round blue lights began to flicker on, one by one.

“I kicked the pipe, didn’t I?” Logan said, his heart starting to pound.

“You kicked the pipe,” Roman confirmed in a sick voice.

“EGGS…!” a crackly Dalek voice next to them stuttered, making them jump. “EG-EG-EG-EGGS…!” Its twin lights flashed erratically as it spoke.

“Roman,” Logan started.

“‘Eggs, you may laugh and that’s great…’” Roman sang in a wavering voice. “‘Your smiles are what make my day’…”

The Dalek rolled toward them creakily. “EEEEEGGS!”

Logan’s breathing sped up. Another Dalek rolled in from the other side, causing him to stumble. All around them, mechanical creaks and groans and a chorus of digitized voices rose up…

“EG…EG-EGGS…TERM…”

“Roman, I believe we need to run.” Logan could see the Dalek almost clearly now, its eyestalk glowing, its gunstick rising up.

“…IN…ATE…”

Blurry, flashing lights closed in.

“‘My self-worth’s fragile like an egg,’” Roman sang. The hand gripping Logan’s middle tightened painfully. “‘When it breaks it’s tough to put together again…’”

“EX…TERM…IN…ATE!”

“Roman!” Logan shouted. “Get us out of here!”

“EXTERMINATE!”

A blaster bolt warbled past and exploded over their heads.

Roman shuddered and seemed to snap out of it, seizing Logan’s arm and pulling him so hard he nearly fell. Logan staggered, hanging onto Roman’s hand for dear life as they ran, and ran, and blaster bolts burst at their feet and shattered around them.

“This way, boys and boys,” Remus’s voice sing-singed across the room. Roman yanked them hard in that direction.

“REMUS!” Roman shouted as they ran, and Logan was impressed he had the breath for it. “Remus, you better open that door like you’re supposed to or we are DEAD!”

“Oh, keep your pants on, brother,” Remus snarked, sounding a little closer. “Although maybe Logan would prefer that you didn’t—”

Whatever else he said wasn’t audible over a hanger full of jabbering Daleks and firing blasters.

They reached a wall and Roman shoved Logan down.

“Straight ahead, crawl. Go, go, go!” he said, turning and brandishing his sword.

Bless that Prince and his stupid, stupid bravery.

Logan went, nearly tripping over his coat as he crawled under the barely lifted hatch door. Once he was past the threshold Roman flung himself under and through, knocking into Logan and sending them both sliding across the floor.

There was a hiss and a heavy thud that Logan hoped was the door shutting behind them, and finally, blessed silence. They both leaned against the wall for a moment, catching their breath.

Roman thunked his head back.

“Jesus Christ Superstar,” he muttered.

“Your welcome.”

Remus’s voice crackled through the hallway. Roman growled and sat up straighter, looking around as if his brother would magically appear.

“I did just save your lives,” Remus added. From the direction of the sound, Logan guessed he was talking through a speaker somewhere on the far wall.

“Yeah, and I’m still gonna whip your butt when this is all over,” Roman groused.

“Oooh, do I get to choose the instrument?”

Roman sputtered, but Logan grabbed his arm before he could yell back.

“You know he just likes to get under your skin,” he murmured, and raised his voice. “Thank you for opening the door, Remus. We are grateful for your help.”

There was a silence on the other end, with a quality that Logan would have described as shocked.

“Well. You two lovebirds better move along,” Remus drawled finally, shrill as ever. “Before the Silurian army shows up.”

“Excuse me, the WHAT?” Logan exclaimed.

No answer.

“Remus!” Roman clambered to his feet and helped Logan up.

Nothing.

Except now that Logan was listening for it, he definitely heard approaching footsteps and murmuring, heavily-accented voices. And they were getting closer.

“That dick,” Roman grumbled through gritted teeth.

“To be fair, I think he is trying to help,” Logan pointed out. “In his own way.”

“Don’t be fair to my brother when he’s just led us out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

“We are neither in a pan nor on fire, Roman; I have never understood that saying—”

The lights dimmed and flashed an eerie purple; Roman silenced him with a hand over his mouth. There was a voice…not Remus’s, not alien, not like anything Logan had ever heard. It chanted something, over and over again, before fading out.

The lights flared back to normal.

Logan waited, counting Roman’s shallow breaths against his neck.

Nothing.

“What was that?” he asked softly.

“Beats the hell out of me,” Roman responded. “But I guess that’s our cue to go. Stay close, Mr. Magoo.”

Logan grumbled, but allowed Roman to recapture his hand and lead them in the opposite direction of the approaching footsteps…which had resumed the moment the purple light vanished.

Next time Roman asked him to come on an adventure, he was bringing a spare set of glasses.

#sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #ts fanfic #ts fanfiction #doctor who #thomas sanders #canon compliant #action #adventure #romance #roman sanders #logan sanders #deceit sanders #patton sanders #remus sanders #virgil sanders #ts sides #ts roman #ts logan #ts deceit #ts patton #ts remus #ts virgil #logince #moceit #sympathetic deceit #sympathetic remus #bickering #enemies to friends #rivals to lovers

[amandaklwrites]

Movie Review: Enola Holmes (2020)

Genre: Action/Adventure, Mystery

Rating: 10/10

Movie Review:

This movie was absolutely amazing. I loved it so much that I watched it two days in a row, so my mom could watch it too. I can’t stop thinking about this movie right now, honestly.

This review will be probably be shorter than my others, because since it’s still a really new release, I won’t go into spoilers at all. I’ll just talk about it overall.

Let me begin with saying that the entire idea is so much fun. A teenage sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes? Umm… YES! What a great a new creative way to see a female Holmes traveling through Victorian England and becoming a detective herself. It’s rather brilliant really.

So, Enola Holmes. What an absolute darling. I loved her as our narrator (breaking the fourth wall is perfect!!) and the main character. And Millie Bobby Brown (whom I personally had never seen in anything before) was sheer delight. She created a rather feminist woman for the time, and believe me, there were plenty of them back then. They’re just mostly silenced by history. I loved following along with her, seeing how she survived in the real world and grew as she solved case after case in one swing. What a brilliant girl!

Louis Partridge seems to be new in these big movies, but I loved him so much. Tewksbury was such an interesting character, especially as a young man who was also trying to survive in this world. I liked how this movie discussed the reality that both men and women were often entrapped in this Victorian society (though, of course, women MUCH MUCH more). The teaming up of Enola and Tewksbury had such chemistry and cheer, and I ship them so hard, let’s be honest. Also, funny thing to know about me—I don’t really like longish hair on men, so when Tewksbury first appeared, I was like eh, but once his hair was cut I was like WHAT THE. He became adorable and cute instantly. I can hear the fan girls already.

Henry Cavill as Sherlock Holmes and Sam Claflin as Mycroft Holmes were incredible. I liked their different versions—Cavill’s Sherlock was a little more caring, slightly emotional. I know the Conan Doyle estate isn’t happy about that, but let’s be honest guys—we all know that Holmes cared for Watson, we can see that in every portrayal. So why wouldn’t he care about his little sister that is more like him ways than he ever thought? I thought it was true to the character. And Claflin’s Mycroft was an absolute ass and he did it perfectly. All three of the Holmes siblings seem to perfectly represents parts of society (then and now, let’s be honest)—Mycroft doesn’t want change and everything should be by societal standards, Sherlock doesn’t care one way or other, he stays out of it all, and Enola wants to bring the change crashing down over their heads. I liked that aspect, seeing everything from different angles, though I personally vote for Enola.

Helena Bonham Carter as their mother, Eudoria, was amazing. I have loved Helena in everything I have ever seen her in, and this is another one. Seeing her as a complicated mother who isn’t the atypical kind, even for the period, was so different and new that I loved her. Yes, she has her problems, but who doesn’t?

Everyone in the cast was incredible. They all brought new things to the story and the film in general, and everyone seemed to glow in their own parts. I loved them all (even the bad guys) and they are all talented individuals. The diversity!!! It was so cool to see Susie Wokoma as Edith (I loved her!!!), and had even more beyond the messages as brought, and Adeel Akhtar as Lestrade was a blast. 

Now, the story itself and the messages were outstanding. Obviously I won’t spoil the whole story (it’s a mystery after all!), but I will say that the mystery(ies) unfolding were so well done. My mom, who has a hard time staying up with mystery stories, had an easy and great time, so this is definitely a movie for everyone. (Funny moment: when Enola is figuring out names by rearranging letters around, my mom said “god, I could never think like that. I would go insane.” And I told her, “Nah, I love it. It gives my mind something to do.” That should explain our personalities well, I think). This story wasn’t just about a girl helping a boy, or searching for her mother, but finding herself while surviving in a world that was meant to go against her. This film discussed so many things, especially the world changing, for women (and anyone), and so much of it can represent current events and problems. I know some people complain about these movies of women in Victorian England standing out and being “different,” because, yes, Victorian England was restrictive like corsets. But there had to be people like these fictional characters because if there weren’t, women would still be wearing corsets, married off to men, and men would have titles, would have to carry on the family name. Not everything has changed, but a lot has as well. And it’s because of real people that are like characters like Enola Holmes.

This movie was just incredible all around. The costumes were beautiful (did I say that I love Victorian England???), the script was absolute magic, the filming was magnificent. I loved all the fight scenes—my favorite was with Enola and the bowler hat man in the alleyway, brutal yet incredibly done—and I just loved everything about this movie. How it unfolded, the gentle romance, the harsh realities of the world, the humor, Enola breaking the fourth wall to talk to the audience. It was all genuine and wonderful, and this is a movie I will often find myself watching over and over.

Just watch it. Please.

#enola holmes #movie reviews

[whitehotharlots]

Liberal cruelty has consquences

This semester is winding down. As I am desperate to avoid grading student papers, I’ve spent the morning reading longish-form online articles. I just came across one that I feel very conflicted about. The online reaction to it as been troubling. So I don’t know if I have anything particularly coherent to say, but I’d like to talk about it.

The anonymously written piece is titled “What Happened After My 13-Year-Old Son Joined the Alt Right.”  It documents a young man’s journey from a garden variety, liberal-leaning goon to a frothing neo nazi mutant.

The piece is understandably sympathetic, seeing as it was written by the boy’s parent. The writer’s whiny and heavy handed tone caused me, and most of my e-pals, to dismiss it. If anything, the essay showcases an immense failure of parenting. If my child were to ask me to take him or her to a “Traditional American Culture” rally, I would slap the everloving shit of them. Lord knows how many times the kid’s parents had dropped the ball before it ever got to that point.

But then I re-read the start of the article, in which the parent identifies the trigger point for their son’s downward slide:

One morning during first period, a male friend of Sam’s mentioned a meme whose suggestive name was an inside joke between the two of them. Sam laughed. A girl at the table overheard their private conversation, misconstrued it as a sexual reference, and reported it as sexual harassment. Sam’s guidance counselor pulled him out of his next class and accused him of “breaking the law.” Before long, he was in the office of a male administrator who informed him that the exchange was “illegal,” hinted that the police were coming, and delivered him into the custody of the school’s resource officer. At the administrator’s instruction, that man ushered Sam into an empty room, handed him a blank sheet of paper, and instructed him to write a “statement of guilt.”

No one called me as this unfolded, even though Sam cried for about six hours straight as staff members parked him in vacant offices to keep him away from other students. When he stepped off the bus that afternoon and I asked why his eyes were so swollen, he informed me that he would probably be suspended, but possibly also expelled and arrested.

If Kafka were a middle-schooler today, this is the nightmare novel he would have written.

At a meeting two days later with my husband, Sam, and me, the administrator piled more accusations on top of the harassment charge—even implying, with undisguised hostility, that Sam and his friend were gay. He waved in front of us a statement from the girl at the table and insisted that Sam would need to defend himself against her claims if he wanted to prove his innocence. But the administrator refused to reveal the particulars of the complaint (he had also blacked out identifying details, FBI-style) and then hid the paperwork under a book. He declared that it was his primary duty, as a school official and as a father of daughters, to believe and to protect the girls under his care.

Eck… who edited this? It would have worked so much better without a fucking Kafka reference.

So, maybe it was the tone. I dunno. But most readers seem to regard this section as exaggerated, possibly fabricated.  The takeaway was “boo hoo, the nazi kid got punished for sexually harassing  a girl.” Heck: If a reader is truly dedicated to the #BelieveAllWomen mantra, then this description doesn’t warrant sympathy even if it’s entirely true. The kid said something that upset the girl. It wasn’t directed to her and it wasn’t about her. But still, he upset her, and she’s a girl, so he is bad and deserved whatever punishment was doled out to him.

And this got me thinking about my experiences in high school, as a student in the late 90s and a teacher in the mid-aughts. Administrators seemed to always be adopting some or other policy of harsh punishment for bad behavior: zero tolerance toward weapons, drugs, hats, disrespectful posture, electronic devices, swearing, Simpsons t-shirts, and mentally unhygenic reading materials. During dances and social gatherings, my middle school allowed students to bring in CDs from home. That was a decent policy, but anyone who attempted to play a “hip hop” track would receive an immediate suspension for “endorsing violence,” regardless of the track’s lyrical content. My high school adopted a firm anti-bullying policy, but once a boy came to school wearing a gothic dress as some kind of vague transgressive statement, and two separate male teachers called him a fag--out in the open, in front of everybody, as part of the official business of teaching.

Once, in 8th grade, two kids were caught taking over-the-counter caffeine pills. They didn’t get sick or anything; a girl saw them and she narced. They were arrested by the school resource officer, taken in a cop car to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped, and then summarily expelled, their young lives effectively ruined over 50 milligrams of a safe and legal stimulant. At an emergency assembly held the next day, the frog-faced principal croaked out a dire warning that the use of such drugs was strictly forbidden and we would all be subjected to the same fate, should we attempt to sneak in any No Doz. As he issued his stern warning, he slurped gluttonously from a 22-ounce mug of gas station coffee.

The point is, zero tolerance never really means zero tolerance. Rules are always--always, literally always, without exception in the whole of human history--enforced arbitrarily. Harsh policies rarely make anyone safer. They are employed instead to further humiliate and brutalize those who have already been rejected by the system. In my last two paragraphs, I cited the dumbest and most conspicuous examples of arbitrary cruelty that happened to pop into my head. This doesn’t cover the everyday, petty cruelties that teachers and administrators would exact upon kids they simply didn’t like. Without exception, these were the kids who were already marginalized: effeminate boys, masculine but unathletic girls, kids who dressed poorly, kids who spoke with accents, black kids, kids with learning disabilities or behavioral problems. These kids would be given detentions or even suspensions for minor infractions--looking away from the chalkboard, slouching, sneaking in candy, laughing at importune times, etc. It wasn’t the teacher’s fault, of course: zero tolerance and all that. But, strangely, the zero tolerance policies never seemed to apply to the popular, athletic, and/or well-connected kids. If Suzie Creamcheese was caught sneaking some Starburst during Algebra--well, she’s probably hungry, seeing as she works so hard. If Raul, Roofus, or Sheena were caught doing the same? God help them.

Some teachers were nicer than others, of course. Some were downright supportive. Others were simply evil. There was one, when I was in 7th grade, who was particularly repulsive and cruel--no kidding, his admiration of Rush Limbaugh was formative in my early-adopted hatred of American conservatives. He had matted red hair and teeth like a cracked picket fence and would wear a leather jacket out to lunch. Anyhow, he would prattle on about his hatred of kids who “Just. Refuse. To. Learn.” These kids were almost always black. Pure coincidence, I’m sure. He’d make a show of tossing them out of class--sometimes physically--for infractions as minor as getting an answer wrong when called upon. One time, a twitchy white kid who wore the same t-shirt every day called him out: It’s unfair, he said, that I’m getting thrown out of class for getting an answer wrong, when right before me another kid got several chances to respond.

The teacher turned beet red. He got on his knees and put his face two inches in front of the twitchy kid’s eyes. 

“I’m not throwing you out because you got the answer wrong,” he explained. “I’m throwing you out because you are you.”

Again, these are the conspicuous examples. The everyday stuff is harder to describe twenty-five years after it happened.  Most people were not brutalized and they didn’t have a single moment that ruined their life, but they were still exposed to a deeply unfair and cruel system, and such exposure naturally engenders feelings of betrayal, hopelessness, and anger.

Here’s my story--it’s particularly stupid. 9th grade. One day,  I walked into Spanish class, and the large woman who teaches in that classroom before my section grabbed me by the collar, physically lifted me out of my chair, and shoved her moist biscuit of a hand into my face. “What is this,” she demanded.

This was all very sudden. I could see nothing but her hand, which had a distinct fecal aroma.

“I don’t know,” I said.

She removed her hand. I looked down toward desk. She stood silently. I had no fucking idea what she was talking about.

“You’re gonna tell me what you did, right now, or I’m gonna double the detentions.”

I was still silent. Seriously, no idea what was going on. This enraged her. She began to count upward, starting at 3 detentions and stopping at 10, by which point tears were welling up and my face was flushed. I said I seriously did not know. She pointed to a small pentagram someone had engraved into the desktop. The desks, by the way, were movable. Anyone could have done it. She blamed me because she didn’t like me. I served 10 detentions and had to pay over a hundred dollars (a shitload of money for a 13-year-old) to get the desk refinished.

This isn't the end of the world, obviously. But it really, oddly broke me. Before, I had thought that so long as I did was I supposed to and didn’t break any rules, I’d be okay. Now I realized that was bullshit, that any vindictive cunt with a few ounces of power could punish me for any reason, at any time, and I wouldn’t be allowed to mount a defense. That’s the sort of thing that fucks with a kid’s head.  I mean, christ--it’s 23 years later and I’m still kinda pissed about it. I hope that woman is dead.

I regained a sense of control by stealing books from the woman’s classroom. A few times a week, I would grab a textbook when I came in, use it during class, and walk out with it. At the end of the school year, some friends and I burned them in a glorious bonfire along the banks of the Mississippi.

My response was petty and destructive, but I don’t feel any pengs of guilt or shame in remembering it. I had to do something to reassert agency, to feel like I had some control, and I managed to find a way to go about doing it that didn’t hurt anybody or get me into trouble. Regardless of the morality of my particular response, we can agree that kids are now much more surveilled than they were 20-odd years ago, and that minor mischief is now much more harshly criminalized. If a kid finds themself on the outs within their school, there’s really no way they can push back. Their only available avenue of asserting control over their lives is to wander into welcoming communities elsewhere…

One more anecdote then I’m done….

My sister was in high school during 9/11. The attacks were on a Tuesday, and the whole rest of the week was assemblies and talking circles and other such activities meant to assuage fear and gin up the hatred of the dirty brown bastards that done this. Two of my sister’s friends, older boys, were the sort of kids who read Howard Zinn and listened to Jello Biafra’s spoken word records. During one meeting, they expressed exasperation at a girl who was sobbing because she just, like, didn’t know why anyone would do that. The boys certainly didn’t approve of the attacks, but they tried to explain the whole concept of the US being an unhinged and murderous imperial power that had done much worse stuff all over the globe. The audience gasped. The boys were hauled into the principal’s office. They were charged with verbally assaulting the crying girl. One was suspended. The other expelled.

So, I dunno… go ahead. If you think due process is evil, that all victimhood claims are valid and should be taken at face value, and that kids of lesser social status should be demonized and made into criminals for upsetting members of the fair sex, then you do you. That’s fine if that’s what you believe. But please don’t be so naive as to think that the bulk of these newly criminalized behaviors are going to actually be malignant, or that the genuinely malignant behaviors of secure kids will be curbed in any way. Please respect yourself enough to realize that school admins aren’t magic sages with mature moral compasses--a plurality of them were business majors in college, for fuck’s sake. And most importantly, don’t be surprised if the kids you dismiss wind up doing some crazy or awful shit in response.

[daily-dose-of-imagines]

𝕄𝕒𝕥𝕔𝕙-𝕌𝕡 ♡

Hey there! I was wondering if I could request a matchup from Naruto & attack on titan? sorry in advance if I write a lot, I’m not self centred I promise  ｡◠ ꇴ ◠｡ and thank you so much! 

I’m a straight, Australian/scottish female, with longish brown hair (which is slightly curly) green eyes, freckles, dimples and straight teeth (with the assistance of braces) I’m around 5'2 I think or 158cm to be precise and I guess an average weight but maybe more athletic build.  People squish my cheeks since I guess they are squishy, and they also try hugging me a lot (because they know I hate hugs) I have this scar on my cheek from falling off the couch when I was three, and even though people say they don’t see it, I always do! likes it’s right in my face. I also having annoyingly cubby fingers, which is common in my family, but my hands are kinds small so they look like sausages. 

For my personality, I’m an INFP (Myers Briggs) which honestly explains a lot about me. I hate talking about how I feel with people and tend to just ignore feeling like sadness or anger, but then I love it when people rant to me about their own problems since I like giving advice. So I guess im quite reserved, which I think annoys people who don’t know me to well. For me, being reserved means a lot of awkwardness, and when at school I tend to just stare out the window (if I have no friends in that class) If I am comfortable about someone I love deep conversations. Like, not necessarily about proper issues more about dumb stuff like how we are our soulmate from a past live (idk me and my friend talked about that one for ages) I also have a weird laugh but oh well… 

I’ve always been quite spiritual I guess, and would always see and hear things that my family wouldn’t. I used to be really quite when I was younger, not really because I was that shy or anything but more because I had a very active mind. That got better as I grew older, but im still really into tarot reading and all that squiz! Aries is my zodiac and im very passionate about research and trying to figure out strangers zodiacs.

My hobbies include: field hockey, swimming, reading (ASOIAF over and over) binge watching shows, drawing, collecting stones and making stone pets, sewing and making clothes, stargazing, researching the biology of strange insects, journalling, baking, gardening, going on rides with friends, pretending to have a scottish accent, my dog (called chloe)  and being in my hammock for hours. 

Things I dislike are: sleeping in (im an early bird), when people ask personal questions and I hardly know them, when my friends fight (im usually not apart of that), getting chilblains on my toes, when my neighbours dog won’t stop barking, tarragon (ew!), throne of glass book series (sorry, just can’t, nothing against the author), randomly judgmental people (like if you smile at them and they scoff, arggghh im already socially awkward safe me!) and the character Hannah from dark on Netflix. 

if I could manifest my future (lets not get ahead of ourselves) I would live in a cottage with a brown border collie doggo called cannoli and a grey fluffy cat called Magnus. I would be married with three kids, and I would force them at a young age to pack the dishwasher (oops im lazing) I would have a small art shop nearby which would basically be an art cafe. And I would go on many road trips with my hubby (I hope). 

My friend once told me she thought I was a bitch before we knew each other, so I guess I come off as a bit cold or disinterested at first. I always have a resting bitch face which doesn’t help my case (sorry for swearing, I don’t like it) in reality, I’m pretty sure im kind and also never want to leave anyone out (cause I know how that feels) if you want to be friends, you must be able to put up with my random sprouts of energy and passionate moments. 

So, in conclusion I am scottish, Australian and slightly awkward. Very much into tarot and I dislike judgy people! 

sorry for writing a full on manuscript, I guess I got a bit passionate! thanks so much and hope youse stay safe and healthy.

»»————-　♡　————-««

Hello @lilacreads~! Of course you can have a match-up~! Thank you for requesting with us~! I hope you enjoy the match-ups I gave you~!

» » Admin Ko

✲꘏ ꘏ ꘏ ꘏ ꘏ ꘏ ꘏✲

Hi okay I just wanna say, based on this alone I want to be your friend, like OHMYGOD, we would bond so MUCH! I hate throne of glass toooo, ughhhhhh, but her other series, a court of thorn and roses is really good, I love it. ANYWAYS, I hope you like this! And thank you for requesting! Also I love astrology and my zodiac is Capricorn looloolol

>Admin 𝕋

✲꘏ ꘏ ꘏ ꘏ ꘏ ꘏ ꘏✲

𝕀 𝕊𝕙𝕚𝕡 𝕐𝕆𝕌 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙

ᴇʀᴡɪɴ ꜱᴍɪᴛʜ

Alright! Due to your reserved and desire for a more deeper and complex relationship, I’ve decided to pair you with Erwin~! Initially he may not seem like a good match, in terms of prodding and having a knack at wanting to know everything about you then and there, but will acknowledge that it makes you uncomfortable and adjusts so that he isn’t too imposing on you.

He does however, immensely love having deep and thought provoking conversations with you. In a sense it sort of gives him a new perspective of the world we all live in as well as a new mindset when hearing your words. Contrary to what most might think, I feel as though he may argue for his points, but won’t necessarily say someone else’s is wrong. He’s rather tactical and will look at things in a more logistical way, but even he won’t break the line that is demeaning someone else’s opinions. 

He finds your hobbies interesting and unique in terms of athletic things to simple relaxing ones. He does partake in more of the simpler and interesting ones with you! He finds the research of biology of strange insects intriguing. Though not as much as Hange of course– he does get curious at your spiritual side. It’s confusing to him and doesn’t really make much sense, but he respects what you like and on occasion will ask you questions pertaining to the atmosphere or if anything has been odd recently.

In terms of PDA, Erwin isn’t very affectionate. He does however give you much attention behind closed doors with gentle touches, sweet kisses, etc. But when it comes to the public the most he’ll do is hold your hand, or guide you with an arm around your waist / mid back. 

»»————-　♡　————-««

ℕ𝕒𝕣𝕦𝕥𝕠 𝕌𝕫𝕦𝕞𝕒𝕜𝕚

So, I paired you with someone who is a little bit the opposite of you, because you and Naruto would be able to bond so much based on that. This dimwit would be able to show you how to have fun and being a little less serious! Not that there is anything wrong with that, Naruto would definitely need someone like you to keep him in the right lane!

His energy and your calmess would totally mesh together, because he’ll love when you stargaze with him or when you try to teach him how to make stone pets out of rocks! He will be the best at wanting to nap on a hammock with you and stay in the calm breeze. Like, this boy can totally match your energy if he needs too, but still be this energetic goofball that can get you smiling the widest you have ever smiled!

He knows what it feels like to be left out of stuff, ever since he was young, so he’ll really appreciate the fact that you would be the one to include him in anything from your friend group to your daily escapades. He will literally have his heart thumping so fast because of the little things you will do for him, from telling him about your day to how he is feeling, because he has never really had someone do that for him.

You guys will bicker a lot and it’s mostly about sleeping schedule, it’ll be adorable. Naruto isn’t one for sleeping early, oh no, he likes sleeping in, but he likes sleeping when you are there so he’ll get annoyed when you wake up early and leave him in bed, when all he wants to do is cuddle and sleep with you by his side!!!

He will come to you for his problems so you better listen carefully! Because he’ll trust you enough to have those deep conversations with you! And in terms of touch, well you’ll either have to explicitly deny him or be okay with how touchy feely he could get on a daily basis! But he iwll understand your boundaries when you really talk to him about it!

All in all, I feel like you and Naruto would be good for each other because he is a ray of sunshine that can show you the brightest path in the woods, and love you unconditionally no matter what! And he’ll be willing to work with you and make sure that you guys are happy and healthy!

#match-ups #anime matchup #submission #aot match ups #erwin smith x reader #erwin x reader #erwin smith #naruto #naruto uzumaki #naruto uzumaki x reader #naruto matchup

[chronicbatfictioner]

Exchanges and Compromises - Chapter 9

The first time Barbara saw him, she thought she was seeing things.

The first time Barbara noticed Tim noticing him, she turned towards Dick while wondering out loud if she was seeing things. Dick had answered not-helpfully, "no, but I have been watching you both glaring at them monitors for a really good long time that my eyes are getting sore. And my eyes are kind of surgically and genetically modified."

Turning to Dinah for encouragement and/or clarification was not helping. She has been alternating her glare at the monitors, Tim, and when she saw Barbara's glare, she quipped, "this may be the beginning of a very, very interesting telenovela."

"What's a telenovela?" Dick wanted to know, there was a shit-eating grin on his face that was directed to Tim, who was still glaring at the monitors almost unblinkingly.

"It's... something I'd rather you don't know of..." Barbara replied mindlessly, trying to refocus at the scene on the monitors before her. But to say the sight was somewhere between odd and - dare she thought it - endearing would and should be constituted as an understatement.

There has been quite a ruckus in Gotham since the discovery of the bodies of the Court of Owls' High Council. Dick's data was sent over to the GCPD - discreetly and exempt from all or any incriminating snippets. The GCPD matched the names with the headless carcasses they had found throughout the city. The names were haphazard, and even Barbara could not figure out the direct relationship between most of the victims.

There were a few, however, whose link was rather obvious. One was a Harriet Arkham, and the other was a Philip Kane - both are members of Gotham's Founding Families. Philip Kane was the brother of Martha Wayne, wife of Dr. Thomas Wayne; whereas Harriet Arkham was the wife of Philip Kane and daughter of Amadeus Arkham, the founder of Arkham Asylum.

From then, they were stuck to the point where Barbara decided that they ought to keep the 'why' under 'because they were members of the Court of Owls', and not look further for the time being.

Figuring out the 'Bane' guy was proven to be less difficult.

Born in a prison city of Peña Dura at the island country of Santa Prisca, where his mother was incarcerated for an unknown reason, Bane was said to have overturned the 'corrupt and vile Government of Santa Prisca and came to Gotham for business opportunities' - or so his visa statement said. He came under a diplomatic passport, alright. But Barbara knew that the passport was forged nine ways to Sunday. The Immigration's excuse when an inquiry was sent to them - under the pretext as a federal agency - was that they have no information of legalities of Santa Prisca, and thus have no reason to deny Bane's entry to the US.

It has only been a month since Dick got 'integrated' to the Birds of Prey, but he was proven to be quite an asset. Bane-matters aside, there were a number of missions in which Dick's stealth skills - be it in an enter-exit situation or in providing physical backup - were immensely useful. Dick himself turned out to be quite an easygoing person - not to mention that he looked quite exotic and very well-built that is pleasing to the eyes.

When it comes to a new alias, he had requested the name 'Robin Goodfellow', and Barbara complied without thinking much aside for the literary reference. It was Tim who commented that he recalled that the name 'Robin' was something Dick's mother used to call him.

Today, they were greeted with a rather brutal scene from the surveillance cameras around the Wayne Tower. A group of heavily armed people was attacking someone who apparently was quite versed in fights and lethal forces. From a distance, the person looked like Ra's Al Ghul, the supposedly immortal Master of the League of Assassins in all of his gloriously extravagant costume. Green, overflowing cloak with gold lines that Barbara knew were made of real gold; loosely fitted tunic; a long wraparound belt made of very, very soft leather that hid several weapons; loosely fitted pants with cuffs on the ankles; and shoes that would cost approximately as much as her monthly electricity bills.

Given that Ra's Al Ghul was also the CEO of Algol Enterprises - the company that owned half of Gotham along with Wayne Industries, the attire was not overly curious. Barbara had met him once in a gala held to benefit the Gotham PD. Her subsequent investigation of Al Ghul eventually discovered that the man was using the Algol Enterprises as a front; and that his real money came from assassination business through a group called the League of Assassins. It was rumored that he controlled two-thirds of Africa's indigenous tribes, as well as two-thirds of the Indochine's indigenous tribes. And not a single law enforcement agency in the world had ever even come close to find evidence of the 'assassination business'.

The person was holding a small bundle of a child under one arm while fending both of them against costumed thugs. While he looked like he would be able to finish the job, Tim commented that several groups of armed thugs seemed to be coming on to help their fallen comrades.

"I'mma go and help." Dick eventually decided. "Really, people are having a free-for-all brawl right on my doorstep and they're not inviting me? Rude."

She didn't stop him, or Tim, when they went out and vaulted over several buildings toward the rooftop where the altercation was taking place. Once she could switch on Tim's goggle-cam, she realized that the man was not, in fact, Ra's Al Ghul.

He was a few inches shorter, but a lot wider than Al Ghul, albeit with similar jet black hair that was not as long as Al Ghul's would have. His features were decidedly caucasian, in spite of the tanned skin. His facial bone structures were square-ish, different than Al Ghul's longish structure. He was also still very young, approximately her age with the scowl, probably less without.

Within minutes, Dick and Tim's assistance of the man managed to drive the thugs away. The next step should be - if the guy was willing - Tim would take them to the Birds' safehouse. Otherwise, and if the guy was not willing to be persuaded, Tim would place a tracker so that Barbara could figure out who they were.

Right now, though, Barbara wondered if Tim would be as effective and diplomatic as she needed him to be and not affected by the other man's... charisma.

Tim was smitten. Clearly and absolutely. Every inch of his body language screamed, 'hi, let's frolic. And by frolic, I don't mean the PG-rated one!' - and Dick confirmed her suspicions by giving a stage-whisper through the comm-links, "O, did our kitten has just reached puberty?"

She didn't groan. Oh wait, she did. "I was hoping he won't get it for another year or two - decades, that is. Or ever. Mama cat is sharpening her shotgun's bullets by now, I think." she quipped back.

"What even, you two... I can hear you, you know," Tim growled at them and glared at Dick for a moment before turning back to the other man. "But, anyway. Hi, hello! We're with the Oracle and would like to extend the invitation to you and your... charge here to get some rest, and maybe stitches," he told the stranger. "I'm Stray, by the way."

"I'm Talon," Dick waved at the guy from a safe distance - both out of range of his sword and of Tim's claws. Tim, on the other hand, stood a mere few feet away right in the guy's personal bubble.

"I have heard of the Oracle. I am the Red Ghost." The stranger growled between gritted teeth. "We duly appreciate your hospitality, gentlemen, madame. Especially since I reckon our reservation at the Ritz has likely been compromised."

At the comment, Barbara promptly searched for new reservations of the presidential or junior suites made under Al Ghul's company, name, or anyone linked to Ra's Al Ghul. She found one, hidden deep under several shell companies and nominees, for the Presidential Suite.

She also found the bug planted within the hotel's international server that would alert whoever planted that thing for reservations under about three hundred names, including some quite formidable politicians and dignitaries. Being - as Tim said it - the data hoarder that she was, she downloaded and stored the names for future references. Maybe one of these days, she could send herself on vacation to a Ritz somewhere under one of those names. If she's lucky, somebody might try to assassinate her and she could practice her defense and evasion skills.

Come to think of it, a girls' night out in a presidential suite sounded quite cozy. Adding assassins or ninjas to the mix would've been the highlight of their year.

She shook herself out of the daydream and refocused on Tim. The little child has been set on the ground and was scrutinizing Tim intently.

"I am Damian Al Ghul Wayne," he stated in an oh-so-high-pitched-yet-so-regal voice. "I duly thank and shall accept your hospitality before continuing my journey to reach my father, Bruce."

The pen in Barbara's hand fell to the floor.

"Houston," Dick quipped, "we have a problem."

#Batless!AU #Tim Drake #Barbara Gordon #Dick Grayson #Dinah Drake #Red Ghost #Jason Todd #Damian Wayne #Stray!Tim #Talon!Dick #Oracle!Barbara #RedGhost!Jason #bby!damian

[rainnawarmcuppa]

Dawn of the Wolf

Rating: Explicit (eventually)

Word count: 6,991

Pairing:The Doctor/Rose Tyler

Find it:AO3

Summary: When Rose Tyler meets the Doctor at eight years old, she has no idea how much her life has been irrevocably changed. When she looked into the heart of the TARDIS she did much more than save the Doctor, she saved their future. 

At eight years old, Rose Tyler didn’t know much about life. She knew that she had no father (which was surprisingly normal for her neck of the woods), that school was awful, and that the man crouched in front of her Christmas tree was definitely not Santa.

She stared at him for a bit as he tried to get the red bike she had asked for to look nice by the tree. He had floppy brown hair and was wearing a tweed suit jacket and a pair of boots. He didn’t seem too happy as he grumbled under his breath while the bike continually tried to fall over.

“You’re not Santa.” Rose said.

The man startled, the bike slipping out of his hands and falling over onto the tree. He scrambled to pick it back up again, leaning it against the wall beside the tree in a huff as he turned to look at her.

“Rose Tyler, you should be in bed right now.” The not-Santa whispered, his arms on his hips as he glared at her.

“Tell me who you are or I’ll scream for my mum, then you’ll be in real trouble.” Rose said as she glared back, moving to match his pose.

“Well, I never! I’m Santa, of course.” He said, tugging at his jacket as if he was proud.

“Nu-uh. You look nothin’ like Santa.” She said as she moved closer, craning her neck to stare up at him.

“Well, I suppose you’re not wrong. But! Santa is my friend and he asked me to deliver this wonderful bike to you. Of course, me being me I could hardly refuse to deliver a gift to Rose Tyler on Christmas day.” He preened as he tucked his hands into the front pockets of his trousers.

“How do you know my name? And how did you get in here?” Rose asked as she peered around him to look at the shiny red bike.

“Well, I’m the Doctor and I know everything about you Rose Tyler. In the future, we’re the best of friends.” He replied as he kneeled down to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, “And I got in through the front door because you gave me a key.”

“No, I didn’t!” She cried indignantly, swiping at his hand.

“Hush! Don’t want to wake your mum.” The Doctor said as he leaned around her to look down the hall where Jackie’s room was, “Besides, I didn’t mean you-you, I meant future you.”

“Like, ’m all growed up?” She asked in wonder.

“Yes indeed, Rose Tyler. A full fledged adult.” He said with a big smile, “The best adult I know.”

“So, If you’re from the future, does that mean that you can travel in time?” She asked with wonder in her voice.

“Spot on.” He ruffled her hair before standing up and moving around her towards the front door.

“Where are you going?” Rose asked as she turned and stumbled after him.

“Home, of course!” He turned around, walking backwards, “I’ve got my own Rose Tyler to have Christmas with.”

Rose stopped walking when she reached her bedroom door and he had made it to the front door, his hand wrapped around the door knob as he turned it and opened the door as quietly as possible. 

“Oh, okay.” She said quietly, “Merry Christmas, Mister Doctor.”

“Merry Christmas, Rose Tyler.” He said as he winked at her and left. 

She stared at the door for a bit, waiting to see if he would be coming back. When he didn’t return, she turned around to stare at the red bike for a little bit. Her chest swelled with excitement as she looked at it. She knew, however, it was much too early to wake her mum up to open gifts and instead chose to crawl back into bed with a huff. She supposed she could be patient.

The next time Rose met the Doctor she was sixteen years old. She was sure that she had dreamed him up until the day he appeared at the library to tutor her in maths. She stared at him, gawking as he pulled out a chair to sit across from her. 

He was still dressed the exact same way she remembered, tweed suit jacket, bow tie, trousers and suspenders. He was all smiles as he rubbed his hands together with what appeared to be glee. She’d never met anyone so excited to do maths before.

“Hello, Rose Tyler. Are you ready to do some maths?” The Doctor asked brightly.

“You’re the Doctor!” Rose shouted, earning her a few shushes from the other students and workers in the library.

“Well, yes.” He whispered, eyebrows raised, “But how do you know that?”

“Christmas. I was eight years old and you brought me a red bike. I thought you were a dream.” She replied, leaning across the table to whisper at him furtively. 

“Hasn’t happened for me yet, but that’s something to look forward to.” He said, his eyes bright as he smiled at her.

“Hasn’t- what do you mean it hasn’t happened for you yet?!” She bit back, her eyes slanted as she leveled him with a glare.

“I’m a time traveler. Surely I covered that when I met you at Christmas.” 

Rose leaned back and stared into the middle distance. He had mentioned that he was a time traveler, but she had mostly thought he was joking. She supposed that he could be lying, but she didn’t know what he would have to gain by doing that besides driving her barmy. 

“So, you’re telling me that you’re from some point in my future and that you just decided ‘Today’s a good day to pop back in time and tutor my best friend in maths’?” She asked, leveling him with a look of utter disbelief.

“Yup.” He answered, popping the ‘p’, “We had some down time and you thought that now would be a good time for me to just go ahead and come on back to get this done.”

“I told you to come back and tutor me in maths?”

“Well, from your point of view I already had. So, I just had to come back and close up the loop.” The Doctor replied with a smile.

“I think I’m gettin’ a headache.” She said as she let her head fall onto her maths textbook.

“You teens, always with the melodrama. We haven’t even started on your homework yet.” He scooted around so that he was beside her, gently pulling the book out from under her head, “Geronimo, Rose Tyler. No time like the present.”

That was how she had spent a whole semester with the Doctor. She found that she quite liked the man, though she supposed she would have to if she spent as much time with him in the future as she thought she did. Sometimes, when he got on a good babble, she would ignore him and just take in his features. He really was quite handsome with his longish hair and prominent jaw. She often wondered what it might be like to kiss him, but she had never acted on the urge.

She saw him again not even a year later, but he looked nothing like he had in the past. Rose was seventeen and several of her classmates had gone missing. Never one to shy away from a mystery, she had started looking around her school for clues the weeks following the disappearances. It was on week two that she found him.

She creeped quietly through the dark school halls towards the headmaster’s office. It had been quite easy to get into the building when one had left the window in their classroom unlocked to allow entry after hours. The only problem was how far away from the main office her classroom was.

She moved slowly down the halls, keeping her small torch pointed at the ground in front of her. Her and Mickey used to joke when they were younger that the teachers slept in the school, she was really hoping that they were wrong. 

She crouched down as she reached the office, trying to open the door and rolling her eyes when she found it locked. Gripping the torch between her teeth and reaching back into her bag, she pulled out her lock picking kit. She had bought the little thing after Shareen had taught her how to use the one that she had on her mum’s liquor cabinet.

The lock gave way with a soft click and Rose cheered quietly, stuffing her kit back into her bag as she moved through the door and towards the headmaster’s office. She found that door unlocked and sighed quietly in relief as she walked in and over to the computer. She was trying to get logged onto the headmaster’s account when she heard the front office door open. In a panic, she dived under the large desk and folded herself as small as possible. 

She heard as feet shuffled into the room and saw a pair of converse and pin striped trousers come into view from around the desk. The feet were rather large, so she figured it was probably a man. Her chest grew tight at this revelation, the headmaster was a woman. 

A strange warbling noise echoed through the room. She didn’t have long to worry about it though when the man spoke, “Is someone in here?”

She covered her mouth, trying to tuck herself more tightly into the corner. As the man started to lean down, she kicked out. Rolling out from under the desk she moved into a crouched position and pointed her torch in the man’s eyes as he stumbled back into the filing cabinet. He raised a hand in the air and rubbed his back with the other as he grimaced in her direction.

“Ouch! What was that for?!” He demanded as he glared at her.

“Who are you!?” She shouted as she stood up, “You don’t work at this school!”

“Neither do - hang on a minute, I recognize that voice. Rose Tyler, is that you?” He asked as he squinted his eyes to try and see passed the light of the torch.

She was stunned as she stared at the man in front of her, letting the torch drop from his face as she pulled her hood off, “How did you know that? How do you know me?”

The man laughed brightly as he took off his glasses to rub at his eyes, “I should have known! No wonder you didn’t come with me to sort this, I thought you just wanted to spend time with your mum. You’re a clever girl.”

“I asked who you were!” She demanded again.

“Alright, quit shouting. It’s me, the Doctor.” He smiled as he approached her slowly.

Her arms fell completely to her side, stunned as she took in the handsome man before her, “But you can’t be! You look nothing like him!”

The man calling himself the Doctor raised an eyebrow at her as he came to stand in front of her, “Hang on, what did I look like the last time you saw me? Moreover, how old are you right now?”

“You were younger and you wore bowties and had sort of floppy hair. I was sixteen then, now I’m seventeen.”

“Blimey, but you’re young. I’ve haven’t had a body that sounds remotely like what you’re describing before, must be in my future. How strange.” He said as he crossed his arms and paced the room.

“I still don’t understand. How can you just look different?” She asked, crossing her arms and giving him her best Jackie Tyler glare.

“I’m an alien, Rose. When I’m mortally wounded, rather than die I change my entire genetic makeup. Same mind, different casing.” He said as he stepped closer, his hands tucked into his front pockets in a way that she recognized.

“That is really alien.” She said, tilting her head up to stare into his brown eyes.

“Well,” he began, drawing out the vowel in a way that she found endearing, “you’re the alien to me.”

They stood in silence for a bit, eyes locked onto one another. She wondered what he was thinking about in that big Timelord brain of his. It was nice to hear that she was still traveling with him. How long would things be that way? Her traveling through space and time by his side. She hoped it was the rest of her life.

She felt her face heat and her heart skip as he brought a hand up to push her hair behind her ear, his thumb grazing the apple of her cheek. There was barely any room between them now, their bodies so close together they almost touched. He was leaning down, his face near enough to her own that she could feel his breath against her lips. She’d always wondered how he felt about her, she supposed this was a rather blatant answer.

Leaning forward the last bit, she pressed her mouth against his in a light kiss. His lips were soft against her own, his mouth molding perfectly against hers. She brought her hands up, framing his face on either side and letting her thumbs run over his sideburns. It was a sweet innocent thing that left her heart racing and her mind spiraling. She’d never actually kissed someone before.

Pulling away, he rested his forehead against her own and smiled, “You want to solve a little mystery with me, Rose Tyler?”

She smiled brightly back, tucking her tongue into her teeth in that way that she knew he loved, “What do you think I was doing before you so rudely barged in?”

“Oi! I wasn’t rude.” He said as he stood up, straightening his tie indignantly. 

“Sure you weren’t. Nearly gave me a heart attack.” She replied before walking around him to begin her work on the computer again.

“I think I can get that open for you, if you don’t mind.” He had walked over to stand over her shoulder, a strange cylindrical object in his hand.

“Wha’s that?” She asked as she stepped back to allow him access to the computer. 

“It’s my sonic screwdriver. I haven’t shown this to you before?” He quirked a brow at her as he pointed the screwdriver at the computer, the strange warbling sound echoing through the air as a blue light emitted from the tip.

“Nope.” She replied, popping the ‘p’, “Doesn’t seem like something that would come up in normal conversation.”

“Blimey. What have we done the other times we met?” He asked as he turned to start digging through the computer files to look for anything strange and out of place. 

“Mostly homework. You were my maths tutor. Scared the hell out of me when you showed up the first day. Thought you’d been a dream I had when you brought me the bike that first time.“ 

“Maths tutor?! How boring!” He said, whipping his head around to stare at her incredulously. 

“You weren’t a half bad teacher when you were able to focus. Passed my exams thanks to you.” She said with a shrug.

“Well, I aim to please.” He said smugly, “So, what are we looking for?”

“About two weeks ago female students started going missin’ from the school. The bodies that have shown up have been completely exsanguinated. Coppers think it’s some sort of weird serial killer, I was thinkin’ more like aliens after some of the stories you’ve told me.“ 

“That’s my girl. Anyone new arrive at the school in that time period?” He asked as he clicked through student files.

“Yeah,” Rose crinkled her brow in thought as she leaned back against the desk, “We got this new counselor recently. Her name’s doctor Day. One day it’s the same counselor we’ve had for years, the next it’s just her.”

The Doctor moved over to the faculty files and opened up the new counselor’s folder, “Doctor Anne Day, graduated cum laude from Oxford with a Ph.D in psychology. I think we may want to keep our eye on her.”

Rose smiled at him, excited at the fact that they had a lead, “Suppose so. I go to school here, what are you gonna do?”

“I heard they might be in need of a substitute.” The Doctor winked at her, straightening his tie.

What followed the next few days were probably the weirdest of her life. Anne Day had definitely been who they were looking for, a plasmavore from Cyprus 9 who drank the blood of young women to make herself virtually immortal. There’d been a brief moment there where she thought she might have been alien chow, but the Doctor outwitted the creature in the end and sealed her in a music box he had found in his pocket. 

“Never let it be said, Rose Tyler, that a music box can’t be useful.” He had said as he shook the thing at her before stuffing it in his pocket.

It had been odd, sitting in a classroom with an alien substitute that she had kissed and was probably in love with. It had been nice though, getting to be around him for those few days again. She knew that she would be with him full-time in the future, but she had never been very patient.

It had struck her, quite suddenly when he left, that when she did get to leave with him, he would just be meeting her for the first time. Her heart broke at the thought of him looking at her and not knowing who she was. How long would it take to get to the place where he would want to be with her? If his goodbye kiss was anything to go by, they were definitely more than traveling roommates in the future. What if she did the wrong thing and screwed everything up?

Rose moved through the next two years hoping that she’d see him again nearly every day.  She had suitors, boys her own age who wanted to go steady with her, but she couldn’t bring herself to be interested. Mickey had tried time and again to catch her interest, even going so far as to get her mum to help him. Nevertheless, she waited, passing her GCSE’s and then moving on to a part time job while she went for a degree in astronomy and computer science. 

It was fall of the year 2005 when she finally saw him again in the basement of Henriks. He was completely different from all the other Doctors she had met. He was gruff and older, but his eyes told her everything she needed to know. The man now standing in the living room with her was her Doctor, but he had no idea who she was.

“So, you’re sayin’ we’ve met before?” He asked, his voice rather even as he strode out of her apartment and down the stairs. 

“Yes. Rather, I’ve met you, but I believe this is your first time meetin’ me.” She said, nearly running into his back when he stopped and turned to quirk an eyebrow at her. 

“You sure? Sounds a bit daft to me, crossin’ your timeline like that when we’re supposedly goin’ to be travellin’ together. Could cause all sorts of problems, that.” He remarked as he continued to walk back towards where she was sure the TARDIS waited, plastic arm in hand.

She moved to walk beside him, “I suppose. Are you saying you don’t want to travel with me?”

The TARDIS came into view as they exited an alley and she couldn’t hold back her smile as they approached the beautiful time and spaceship. She’d never actually traveled in her, but she’d met the girl a few times when the Doctor had been around and she always felt a sense of home when she was with her. The Doctor had said it was because the ship liked her.

“Never said that.” He replied as he unlocked the door to the ship and stepped inside, “Just think I should get to know you a little more before I trust you with all of time and space.”

Rose ran her hand over a coral strut as she stepped into the ship, smiling at how different it looked compared to the last few times she had seen it. The Doctor paid her no mind as he set the arm on the console and began typing away at a keyboard. 

“I suppose.” She moved further in, gently touching the console, “It’s not like you gave me a guide on how this would go. You talked an awful lot, but never about the first time you met me.”

“Future knowledge can be dangerous. Seeing you in the past when I already knew you in the future is bad enough, didn’t need to be telling you about that future as well.” He said as he leaned his hip against the console, the leather of his jacket creaking as he crossed his arms. 

She watched him, her fingertips swirling circles on the console as she stared into his bright blue eyes. He looked older, but he was younger than any other version of the Doctor she had met before. His large ears and aquiline nose should have made him unattractive, but she found that they rather balanced one another out and made him handsome in an unconventional way.

“How old are you, Rose Tyler?” He asked gruffly.

“Nineteen. Why?“

The Doctor shrugged noncommittally, uncrossing his arms to fiddle with a knob on the console, “You look younger. Don’t want you gettin’ in over your head.”

“I think that you’ll find’m quite capable, Doctor. I think you should be more worried about that arm meltin’.” She said as she pointed to where it was bubbling on the console behind him.

“What?” He flipped his head around, rushing back to the keyboard to type at it animatedly, “No, no, no! I wasn’t done yet.”

“What exactly were you doin’?” She asked as she watched the melted plastic drip off the console and onto the grating.

“Was using it to track more of them. You see, the arm is too simple, but if I could get a head I can trace the signal back to the original source.” The Doctor started moving around the console, flipping switches and setting the TARDIS into motion. 

Rose gripped the edge of the console, trying to stop herself from falling as it wheezed and shook roughly. As many times as she had been in the TARDIS, she’d never actually been in it while it was moving. She lost her grip as it came to a rough stop, stumbling and falling to the floor in a heap.

“Not sure if I should blame the TARDIS or if you’re just a terrible driver.” She said as she grabbed the edge of the console to pull herself back up. 

“Oi! I’m a great driver, I’ll have you know.” He quipped as he moved past her and out the doors.

She followed him briskly, closing the doors behind her as she looked around the street they had landed on, “Alright, what are we looking for then?”

“Anyone that looks out of place. Too shiny, weird clothes, just anyone that doesn’t belong.” The Doctor said as he pulled out his screwdriver and scanned the area around them.

Rose tucked her hands into the pockets of her jacket as she glanced around the busy street. It appeared to be a normal Saturday. People milled about the street, shopping and eating as they enjoyed the kind fall weather. She was about to give up when she caught the sun bouncing off of a man in a strange way as he came out of a restaurant. It didn’t take long for her to realize that she actually knew the person. 

“Hold on. That man over there.” She pointed down the street, “That’s my friend, Mickey. Only, he’s a bit shinier than the last time I saw him.”

“Nice catch, Rose Tyler. Let’s go!” The Doctor beamed at her as he took off down the sidewalk.

She followed after him quickly, keeping close behind as they tailed what she assumed was another one of the living plastic aliens and not her childhood best friend. His head was even shinier as they grew closer, the sun bouncing off of it in an inhuman way. She’d seen Mickey sweat a lot when they were kids and this definitely wasn’t normal.

When the Doctor grew close enough he grabbed the man by the collar and dragged him down an empty alley. He pointed his sonic screwdriver ominously at the creatures back and waited for it to turn around. When it did, Rose shivered at the look on its face. It was smiling at them wickedly, as if it had found exactly what it was looking for.

“Hello, Doctor. Just the man I was looking for!” The not-Mickey shouted as his hand shifted into what looked like some sort of paddle.

“Well, here I am.” The Doctor said, “Don’t suppose that you’re here for a nice civil chat?”

Rose shrieked, ducking out of the way as the living plastic brought it’s hand down roughly. She rolled under its legs as the paddle hit the ground and cracked the concrete. Finding herself behind the not- Mickey, she looked at the Doctor over its shoulder frightfully. 

It was picking its arm up, readying to swipe at him again, when Rose wrapped her arms around its neck and pulled hard. The head came off with a pop and she stumbled back, nearly falling as she tried to keep hold of the thing.

“Don’t think that’s going to stop me.” The not-Mickey said in her arms.

Rose shouted, nearly dropping the still talking head as the body hobbled around the alley, swiping its arm erratically, “Doctor! What do we do?!”

“We need to get it back to the TARDIS!” The Doctor said as he held out his hand for her.

She bounced from foot to foot, dodging the arm as it swung at her and narrowly missing being hit as she ran around its other side. She laced her fingers with the Doctors and they took off running out of the alley, her friends head still securely in her arms. They bobbed and weaved through the crowd and reached the TARDIS in no time, the Doctor dropping her hand so that he could pull out his key and unlock the door. Peering back over her shoulder she saw that the Auton was not far behind, still waving its arm erratically and nearly hitting people.

When he got the door open, he yanked her inside and plucked the head from her arms, “Nice work back there.”

“Thanks. Took gymnastics and some self-defense classes all through school.” Rose said as she slammed the door shut and followed him up the ramp, “So, what happened to the real Mickey then? Is he dead?”

The Doctor placed the now silent head on the console and started typing just as he had before, “Not sure. Don’t think so. I’m sure your boyfriend is fine.”

Rose scoffed, holding back a laugh, “Yeah, he’s not my boyfriend.”

He looked at her over the top of the monitor, assessing her with his timeless eyes, “No questions for me about my ship then? Or me? You just trust that I am who you think I am?”

She shrugged, her hand running gently along a coral strut, “I’ve already met this beautiful girl a few times, never traveled in her though. So, that was exciting. But, yeah, I do trust you. I could pick you out of a lineup any day.”

“S'that right?” He asked, stepping around the console to look at her more fully, “Even if I, say, looked completely different? Hypothetically.”

“Yup.” She replied, popping the ‘p’ in that way her future Doctor would.

He crossed his arms again, his eyes squinted as he studied her. She figured, with as many times as he had done it by this point, that the arm crossing was a staple with this him, much as the other him liked to put his hands in his pockets. She opened her mouth to add more, but was cut off as he started shouting. 

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no!” He started flipping switches and putting the tardis in motion. 

It was then that she noticed the melting head on the TARDIS console. She patted the strut by her in consultation. Melted plastic must be one hell of a cleanup job. 

“What’re you doin’?” She asked as the ship rocked.

“Following the signal. I didn’t expect the damn thing to melt so quickly. Wait a minute, I’ve got it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Almost there. Almost there. Here we go!” He pulled the materialization switch with a flourish before hurrying past her and down the ramp.

They were on the north banks of the Thames when she stepped outside, the London Eye lighting up the water across the way. It was night now, which meant that they had traveled through both time and space.

“I lost the signal, I got so close.” He turned around to look at her, throwing his hands up in the air before crossing his arms again in a huff.

“So, this living plastic, what’s it got against us?” Rose asked as she moved over to stand in front of him, her hands finding their way into the pockets of her hoodie.

“Nothing. It loves you. You’ve got such a good planet. Lots of smoke and oil, plenty of toxins and dioxins in the air, perfect for the Nestene Consciousness. It’s food stock was destroyed in the war, all its protein plants rotted. So, Earth, dinner!” He said with more excitement than she thought was necessary.

“I’m assumin’ that you have a plan to stop it?”

“Anti-plastic. But first I’ve got to find it. How can you hide something that big in a city this small?” He asked, his brow furrowed in consternation. 

“Hide what, exactly?“ 

"The transmitter. The Consciousness is controlling every single piece of plastic, so it needs a transmitter to boost the signal.”

“What would that look like?” She asked, her eyes scouring the skyline to see if anything looked out of place.

“Like a transmitter.” He said, giving her a look as if she had dribbled on her shirt, “Round and massive, slap bang in the middle of London.”

Rose stared over his shoulder at the London Eye. Round and massive were definitely two words she would use to describe the attraction. She gave him a pointed look, turning his own ‘dribbled on your shirt face’ back on him.

“A huge, circular, metal structure like a dish, like a wheel. Radial, close to where we’re standing. Must be completely invisible.” He had been examining the city behind her and finally let his eyes fall back onto her face where he raised his eyebrows at the look she was giving him, “Oi! What? What’s that look for?”

She tipped her head in the direction of the eye, waiting on him to cotton on to what she was sure would be the transmitter.

He turned quickly, looking at the city behind him, but turned back not a moment later, “What? What is it? What?”

She continued to stare at him raising her eyebrows. This was the man she was going to be traveling with? All that boasting about being impressive and he couldn’t even see the great big answer, even as it was literally lit up in front of him.

He turned again and finally caught on to what she had been staring at, “Oh, Fantastic!”

The Doctor took off towards the Westminister Bridge, not bothering to wait on her as he broke out in a run.

Rose rolled her eyes before pulling her hands from her pockets and sprinting after him. It didn’t take her long to catch up, the oncoming babble already going as she reached earshot.

“Think of it, plastic all over the world, every artificial thing waiting to come alive. The shop window dummies, the phones, the wires, the cables-”

“The breast implants.” Rose added, snickering as the Doctor gave her a withering look.

“The 21st century is the perfect environment for the Nestene Consciousness. All that plastic in your home’s and landfills.”

“I think I get the big, horrifying picture now, Doctor.” Rose replied with a roll of her eyes. 

“Still, we’ve found the transmitter. The Consciousness must be somewhere underneath.”

Rose pointed at a large manhole entrance as they made it to the south banks, “What about down there?”

The Doctor leaned over the parapet, “Looks good to me.”

Rose followed the Doctor down the stairs and to the manhole. A red light spilled out as he opened the hatch, casting an eerie glow to his face. It’s a quick climb down the ladder and into a strange brick room with chains hanging everywhere. They spot a door across the way and jog to it, ripping it open and rushing down the stairs into the large chamber.

“The Nestene Consciousness. That’s it, inside the vat. A living plastic creature.”

 "I assume you want to offer it a chance to leave before you go tippin’ in that anti- plastic?“ She asked, staring at the bubbling vat. 

"How’d you know that?” He asked as he started down the catwalk to the vat.

She gave him a soft smile he couldn’t see, her arms folding across her chest, “Because that’s the kind of man you are, you always have to give ‘em a chance.”

He stopped suddenly, his back stiff as he turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. She stared into his timeless eyes, trying hard to decipher his thoughts and feelings before he turned away from her and kept walking. She thought she saw some form of awe there, but supposed that she would never know. 

“I seek audience with the Nestene Consciousness under peaceful contact according to convention 15 of the Shadow Proclamation.”

The Nestene Consciousness flexed and bubbled before speaking, “Audience granted.”

“Thank you. If I might have permission to approach?”

Rose turned the Doctor out as she looked around the room. There were a few of those shop window dummies standing about, but not much else of interest in the room. Looking down she spotted someone huddled on one of the lower levels. Running down the stairs she quickly realized who it was.

“Mickey! You’re alive!” She gathered him in a brief hug.

“That thing down there, the liquid. Rose, it can talk!”

“You don’t half stink, Mick.” She responded as she pulled away, “How long have you been down here?”

“I’m not sure. At least a day. What’re you doin’ here? Who’s that man you’re with?" 

Rose turned around to look at the Doctor, her mouth opening to respond when she noticed a pair of dummies approaching him, "Doctor!”

Each auton grabbed at one of his arms. There was a brief struggle as the Nestene Consciousness ordered them to hold him. After a moment, one of the autons stepped back holding a phial that it had pulled from the inside of the Doctors jacket.

“That was just insurance! I wasn’t going to USE it!” The Doctor said as he continued to struggle with the remaining auton to no avail. 

“You came to attack us!” The Nestene Consciousness shouted, the plastic in the vat raising and bubbling in anger.

“I was not attacking you. I’m here to help. I’m not your enemy. I swear, I’m not!”

“Lies!” The Nestene Consciousness screamed, “We know what you are! We know you!”

“What do you mean?” The Doctor asked, a look of confusion on his face.

Not far from where Rose was crouched next to Mickey, a large metal wall slid open to reveal the TARDIS. Rose gasped softly and stood up. She took a tentative step towards the ship.

“You came to destroy us!” The Nestene Consciousness stated.

“No, oh no. Honestly, no.” The Doctor responded.

“Our world was destroyed by you and your people, Timelord! You turned our world to dust and ash! You are the reason we are here!”

“That’s not true. I should know, I was there. I fought in the war - it wasn’t my fault! I couldn’t save your world! I couldn’t save any of them!” The Doctor shouted miserably, an edge of panic to his gruff voice.

The Nestene Consciousness roared, shaking in its vat.

“Doctor! What’s happenin’?!” Rose shouted.

“It’s the TARDIS! The Nestene has identified its superior technology - it’s terrified! It’s going to the final phase, It’s starting the invasion! Get out, Rose. Just leg it! Now!” The Doctor continued to struggle with his auton captor, trying to pull away.

Rose stumbled as the room had begun to shake. A bolt of lightning shot from the Nestene Consciousness up through the ceiling, a dome of shimmering energy encasing the Consciousness.

“It’s the activation signal! It’s transmitting! Run! Get out!” The Doctor shouted to her.

Rose shook her head even as Mickey grabbed her arm. Turning to look at her friend she pulled herself roughly from his grasp, “I’m not leavin’ ‘im. I’m not leavin’ you! You hear me!?”

She looked around the room, trying to find a way to help the Doctor that wouldn’t end up with her chucked into the vat of hot, liquid plastic. The stairs leading upward had already given way, but on the other side of the platform she caught sight of a chain pinned to the wall. She took off at a run, stumbling a few times as the room continued to quake.

“Just leave him! There’s nothing you can do!” Mickey shouted after her.

Rose looked around near the chain and grabbed an axe to help her cut through the thick rope. It looked like all those years of gymnastics were going to come in handy. She gripped the chain tightly before dashing and swinging along the edges of the catwalk. She placed a firm kick to the chest of each auton, knocking them both into the vat along with the phial of anti-plastic.

“Rose!” The Doctor shouted, grabbing her in his arms as she swung back.

The Nestene screamed, its once golden shine turning a chaotic blue as cracks spread through it. 

The Doctor gave her a manic grin, her arms pinned against his chest as he continued to hold her, “Now we’re in trouble!”

He slid his arms from around her, one of his hands gripping her own as he dragged her away from the edge of the vat and back up to the TARDIS. Rose followed along easily, only sparing the Nestene a parting glance as the Doctor fumbled with the key before getting the door open. She grabbed Mickeys arm and tugged him inside, slamming the door shut behind him to allow the Doctor to put them in flight.

“Hold on!” He shouted as he put them in flight briefly, reengaging the materialization sequence not thirty seconds later.

Rose walked over to the door, pulling it open so that Mickey could run out. She shook her head as he hid behind a pallet in the alley. Stepping out herself she smiled as she turned back to look at the Doctor where he was leaning against the doorway, arms crossed once more.

“Fat lot of good you were.” Rose quipped.

“Nestene Consciousness?” The Doctor snapped his fingers, “Easy.”

“I don’t know. You were pretty useless in there. Pretty sure you’d be dead if it wasn’t for me.”

“Yes, I would.” The Doctor’s smile softened, “Thank you.”

They stared at one another for a moment, a comfortable silence settling between them. He cleared his throat when the silence became too much.

“Right then, I’ll be off, unless, er, I don’t know, you could come with me?” He asked, his cool blue eyes never drifting from her own.

“Don’t.” Mickey piped up from behind her, “He’s an alien, a thing.”

“Your boyfriend’s not invited.” The Doctor replied, giving the other man a withering look over her shoulder before continuing, “What do you think? You could stay here, fill your life with work and food and sleep, or you could go anywhere?”

“Yeah, he’s not my boyfriend.” Rose said with a roll of her eyes, “But, you know what? That sounds brilliant. I think I could use a bit of a break from Uni. So, why not?”

The Doctor gave her a bright smile, uncrossing his arms as he turned and headed back up the ramp to the console.

She shook her head, still smiling as she took her phone out of her pocket to dial her mum. She sighed as she noticed 10 missed calls.

“Rose! I’ve been trying to reach you for hours! Don’t go outside, it’s dangerous. First your job blows up and now shop window dummies are coming to life and -”

“Mum! Calm down. It’s fine, everything is fine. Look, I need you to listen to me, yeah? I just got an offer to travel with one of the professors from uni and I’m gonna take it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I applied, but I was worried you would freak, yeah?” Rose said as she bit at her fingernails nervously. She’d had this lie ready for awhile now, ever since she had reached uni and had learned she would be traveling with the Doctor.

“What?!” Jackie squawked over the line, “You’re gonna take off? Just like that?”

“Sorry mum, a spot opened up last minute. I’ve gotta go or my ride is gonna leave me. I’ll try and stay in touch.” Rose replied before hanging up the phone and running into the TARDIS, the blue door falling shut behind her as the Doctor started the dematerialization sequence with a manic grin.

#doctor who #my story #fanfiction #Doctor who fanfiction #rose tyler #the doctor/rose tyler #Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler #tenth doctor/Rose Tyler #eleventh doctor/rose tyler #ninth doctor #tenth doctor #eleventh doctor #mickey smith #jackie tyler #ua #series rewrite #timepetals #angst #drama #fluff #sci fi #humor #action #adventure #romance

[inagetawaycarxo]

Dating Sebastian Stan Would Include

—Requested by anon

—Requests are open btw, send in a imagine idea or a headcanon idea for Sebastian or marvel!

—A/N: *sighs dreamily* I might have gone a little overboard on this one! Feedback is appreciated!

When Sebastian first met you he couldn’t help but stare at you, getting captivated by you, which resulted in him running into a glass window of the coffee shop. He got flustered when you came over and asked if he was alright. Which made him stumble over his words.

“I’m fine.” He squeaked out, his cheeks reddening, as he looked anywhere but at you.

He then stumbled off, not waiting to hear your response, bumping into people on the way out. Tbh he was a clumsy mess. Still is when he is around you.

The second time you and Seb met was when Chris took you to the set of marvel.

You’s two started off as friends.

Chris and Anthony trying to get you and Sebastian together, and being frustrated by how oblivious you are to the feelings Seb has for you.

With a lot of encouragement from Chris & Anthony, Seb finally gets the nerve to ask you out. When you agreed to go out with him Seb can’t help but smile at you, wrapping his arms around you and lifting you off the ground spinning you around.

Being besties with Mackie as well as Chris.

Sebastian is always a blushing nervous wreck around you.

Also can be a cocky little shit as well, and a tease.

Seb adores you so much. You are his entire world, he loves to brag/talk about you to friends and family, though some of them get annoyed by his constant rambles/fangirling about you, not that Seb cares.

Seb looks at you and gets lost in a daydream a lot, sometimes dirty daydreams.

He could stare at you all day and not get bored.

Learning to speak Romanian. Though you butcher some of the words.

Sebastian falling more in love with you when you try/speak Romanian, his eyes beaming with happiness.

If you do speak Romanian, then having a conversation in Romanian with Seb.

A lot of PDA…Not really in front of paparazzi though, mostly in front of your family and friends. Sometimes fans.

Seb likes to have his arm around you a lot, either on your waist or around your shoulder. Or hold your hand in public. He will kiss your cheek and forehead but never your lips in public.

He likes to hold your hand all the time.

He loves to wrap his arms around your waist, pressing soft kisses on your shoulder then your neck, or resting his chin against your shoulder. Or in the crook of your neck.

Seb is really protective of you, if anyone says a bad word about you, god help them they get the wrath of Seb, he definitely gives them that Bucky glare, he is also protective over you in public too

Being the biggest space nerds ever.

Stargazing.

Watching space documentaries/ sci-fi movies.

A lot of dates; coffee dates, pizza dates, movie dates, midnight dates, beach dates, hiking dates, Picnic dates

Dates with Seb are never boring.

Midnight strolls

Working out together.

You and him like to encourage/motivate each other when you’s are working out.

Trying not to stare at him too much while he is working out.

Vice versa Seb trying not to get distracted by you when he works at.

Trying to impress each other.

Taking a lot of selfies together + photos of each other {even without one of you’s knowing}.

He doesn’t post most of them keeping them to himself.

Anthony teasing you and Seb a lot.

Anthony calling Seb whipped.

He is definitely whipped.

Seb finding it cute/hot when you are mad at him.

When he is home, you’s two mostly have lazy days.

Seb taking you to cons.

Visiting him at his panels.

Getting fan art/gifts from the fans that ship you and Seb together.

Seb taking you to his movie premiers.

Seb finding it adorable when you fangirl about Marvel.

Sending each other memes. Telling him he is a walking meme. He is a walking meme tbh.

When he had longish hair he used to steal your hair ties.

Convincing Seb to keep his hair longer for a little while.

Playing with his hair a lot.

Braiding it when it was a bit longer.

Seb playing with your hair.

You’re his best friend, and he is your best friend.

A hell of a lot of kissing.

Forehead kisses.

Neck kisses.

Shoulder kisses.

Nose kisses.

Cheek kisses.

Thigh kisses.

Belly kisses.

Hand kisses.

Morning kisses.

Goodnight kisses.

Needy kisses.

Kissing you at random times

And a lot of making out.

Let’s just say he is obsessed with kissing you.

Your neck will be covered in a lot of hickeys, so will Sebs and the rest of your body, mostly your neck and thighs.

Seb buying matching turtle neck sweaters to cover the hickeys.

Seb believes every time you smile it makes the world a little bit brighter.

Visiting him on set.

Making out with him in his trailer.

The dudes a huge hopeless romantic.

Always being there for each other.

Loving each other no matter what.

Being there for each other when one of you’s have a bad day.

Listening to each other’s problems.

Long skype calls while he is away filming, he mostly falls asleep in them.

Or facetiming each other, either one.

A lot of “I miss you’s.” when he is filming.

Helping him with his lines.

Seb being your #1 Fan/supporter,

Being his #1 fan/supporter.

You spend most of your time at his place and he spends most of his time at your place.

If someone comments rudely on one of your post on Instagram then he will defend you.

Seb cursing in Romanian when he is angry.

Seb biting his lip constantly when he is around you. {Since he knows it turns you on}.

Teasing you in Romanian.

Seb likes to go lingerie shopping with you.

Also likes to go shopping with you in general. He has great taste.

Matching outfits.

Supporting each other no matter what.

Plus being honest with each other and trusting each other.

Being there for each other through the ups and downs of life.

Most of the time you’s don’t fight, but when you’s do its mostly small fights, though you’s two makeup and have makeup sex.

Sebastian getting jealous of your celeb crushes

“Yeah, well he/she can’t fuck you and love you like I can.” He grumbled.

Saving water and showering together, though you’s are probably wasting it since you’s have a lot of sex in the shower.

You love to run your hands through his hair.

You’s two don’t hide the fact that you’s your dating from public but you’s are private about it.

Though that doesn’t stop him from gushing about you in interviews. However, if it’s his friends or family then he will talk their ear off about you.

Cooking together, though it’s mostly make out sessions leading to the food to get burnt and you and Seb have to end up ordering take out.

You’d suggest going to cooking classes, but then you and him probably end up making out and get kicked out of the class.

He loves to cuddle you, he is such a snuggle bug, whether it’s spooning or you cuddling into his chest or his side. He loves cuddling you.

Morning cuddles.

Bear hugs.

Hugs from behind.

He also likes being the little spoon as well. The feeling of your arms wrapped around him makes him feel secure.

Seb is so handsy. Not that you are complaining.

Netflix and chill.

No, really you’s do watch Netflix and chill as well.

A lot of movie marathons.

Dancing. Well, dorky dancing.

A lot of pet names for each other.

Calling him either, Seb, Sebby, baby, babe, sexy, hot stuff, darling, honey, mon Cheri, daddy, babykins, cutie pie, babycakes, bae, beautiful, big boy, my love, cupcake, cutie, dreamboat, goofball, dork, gorgeous, handsome, honey bun, honey bunny, hot stuff, hottie, hun, love, love bug, love muffin, lover, loverboy, my drug, pumpkin, snuggle bug, snuggle butt, snuggle muffin, sugar, sweet stuff, sweet thing/thang, sweetie, sweettums, sweetie pie, tiger.

Seb calling you baby girl. Baby doll, doll, {your nickname}, sweetheart, adorable, babykins, beautiful, buttercup, cutie pie, cutie, darling, gorgeous, honey, hon, hottie, kitten, love, muffin, my queen, my love, peach, princess, sugar, sunshine, sugar pie, sweet pea, sweettums, sweetie, toots.  

He definitely says some of those pet names in Romanian too.

Whenever he speaks Romanian it turns you on.

If you have an accent then that definitely turns Seb on.

You even beg him to sit and watch his movies with you.

Accidentally calling him “Bucky.” only to get this response “Who the hell is Bucky?”

Seb always either smacks your ass or grabs it, either one, actually he does both.

Telling each other really corny jokes.

Always making each other laugh.

Buying you flowers/roses for no reason

“What are these for?” you asked Seb, smelling the roses.

“Cause I love you.” Seb answered, wrapping his arms around your waist and pressing a soft kiss on your neck.

Comforting him when he is feeling sad.

Vice versa, Seb comforting you when you are down.

Begging him to tell you endgame spoilers.

“No, I’m not telling you, watch the movie.” He grumbled, getting out of your grasp.

“No, please tell me I don’t want to walk into endgame unprepared, I need tissues if my baby Steve is going to die? Or if Tony or Thor is going to die, I can’t be unprepared if my favourite dies.” You whined, giving him puppy dog eyes.

“What about Bucky? I thought my character was your favourite.” Seb whined, pouting at you.

“Bucky’s dead though, oh my gosh, I hope Carol kicks Thanos purple ass, Oh does Bucky at least come back, maybe he can be the new captain America if Steve dies or Sam.” You ranted, Seb rolled his eyes letting out a sigh, before turning around and walking away from you.

“Don’t walk away from me, tell me spoilers god damn it.” You shouted...

He is so needy. Might be a little clingy but so are you.

Seb likes to buy you gifts and spoil you.

Also, pamper you as well.

He loves you so god damn much and you love him so much. You’s two love each other a lot.

He is such a romantic.

You are his whole damn world.

Domestic Seb, got to love Domestic! Seb.

Grocery shopping.

Brushing your teeth together, because he hogs the mirror.

Seb making you breakfast in bed.

Adopting a dog together.

Live streaming.

A lot of “I love you’s.”

Straddling his waist either to cuddle or make out.

Moving in with him.

Piggyback rides.

Deep conversations.

Taking bubble baths together.

Falling asleep on his chest.

Seb tracing your spine with his fingers.

Road trips.

Helping each other when you’s are stressed.

Roasting each other.

Being proud of each other.

Roasting Tom Holland with him and Mackie, (poor Tom)

Texting each other a lot while he is away filming.

Giving each other massages.

Talking about the future, like getting married and having kids. He daydreams about having kids with you a lot.

Being couple goals.

“One day we will be marriage goals.” Seb cooed, smiling at you.

“Are you trying to hint to me you’re going to propose to me?” you asked, looking up from your phone to look at him.

“Maybe.” He answered, biting his lower lip as he stared at you.

Going on vacations when Seb is off of work.

Sending you flowers/gifts while he is filming.

Getting drunk together.

Carpooling.

A lot of eye fucking. {Did I write that already probably did anyways more eye fucking.}

Tickle fights.

Fans adoring you.

His beard, you are obsessed with it, you’re always stroking it.

Hiding his razor so he doesn’t shave it.

Having fights on how to pronounce memes

Going to charity/galas with him. And red carpet events.

Telling each other how much you love one another.

Spilling tea to each other.

Seb wakes up before you do, he likes to admire you for a little while, before waking you up by kissing you/ your body.

Adoring every inch of your body and your flaws.

Same goes for you, adoring every inch of his body and his flaws. Not that you think he has any flaws.

He cherishes you in general.

Meeting each other’s friends.

Meeting each other’s families.

His mom absolutely loving/adoring you.

His mom teaching you how to cook Romanian recipes

Your family adoring/loving Seb.

Your mom even shows him baby pictures of you.

“Aw, I hope our babies look like you when we have one because you are just so damn cute.” Seb cooed, beaming at you.

Listening to each other about how your days went, what you’s did and so on.

Wearing his jumpers/ shirts. He loves it when you wear his clothes.

Being each other’s backgrounds/or/lock screens on each other’s phones.

Helping him navigate social media.

Seb gets jealous easily.

Seb getting jealous of your girl crush on Brie Larson. {Unless you don’t have a crush on Brie Larson then just ignore this.}

Taking videos of each other doing weird stuff and cute stuff.

Taking naps together.

Getting lost in those blue eyes, and not listening to what he is talking about. Damn those blue eyes.

Jogging together.

Seb getting insecure when you talk to guys younger than him.

Seb smirking when he gets you flustered. Also hot and bothered.

Sex with Sebastian is never vanilla.

A lot of hair pulling when you’s two are having sex, from the both of you’s.

A lot of oral.

Pretty much having sex every hour (if possible) you’s two kiss a lot and have sex a lot.

Seb speaking Romanian when you and him have sex. {Most of its dirty talk.}

He definitely loves to grope your boobs a lot.

He has a huge daddy kink.

And a praise kink

Lazy morning sex.

Shower sex.

Passionate sex.

Rough sex.

Jealous sex.

Making love to you.

Lots of quickies.

Lots and lots of hickeys.

And thigh burns.

A LOT OF DIRTY TALK, he will even say it in Romanian to which brings you close to your orgasm.

Orgasm denial, from the both of you’s

Orgasm delay.

Light bondage.

He is a Dom but he can be a sub as well.

His favourite positions are doggy style, missionary, the lotus position, cowgirl,

You’s two have sex nearly in every room and anywhere.

Seb is the king of aftercare.

Let’s just say you’s two have a lot of sex and a lot of make-out sessions.

If you are an actress or newly actress then Seb will support you, watching your movies, or TV appearance, helping you with lines, going to charity events, red carpet events, and movie premiers with you.

Seb prob feeds you food.

Seb is a gentleman though he is a dork and he a freak in bed.

The both of you’s are such big dorks.

Watching sunsets and sunrises together, mainly sunsets.

#sebastian stan #sebastian x reader #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan headcanons #sebastian stan headcanon #sebastian stan smut #mcu #mcu x reader #marvel x reader #marvel headcanons

[specialagentlokitty]

Spencer Reid x Autistic! Reader - he knows

Hii so I have an idea for a Spencer Reid x reader 💕 Like the reader is autistic and Spence is the only one she's comfortable with beeing touched by, and he always knows what she's thinking so when she has problems verbalising something he helps her💞 Sorry if this is too specific 😅💕💖 -Anon❤️

I’ve never wrote Autistic reader before, I tried, I’m not sure if it’s what you are looking for(I tried my best heh so it’s probably baaad)

Walking briskly around the small towns police station you avoid touching anyone. You didn’t really speak to anyone there and it made them question why you were even with the FBI, if only they knew.

Walking into the room your team was using, Derek smiled up at you.

“Hey babygirl!”

“Hey..” you whispered.

“Bad verbal day?” He asked.

You nodded, taking a seat opposite him at the table at taking the file from his hands receiving a playful glare from the man.

“I can’t see anything that makes this guy our unsub, he says it’s him but won’t tell us anything more.” He sighed.

Your eyes scanned each word, taking it in and assessing them. Your mind worked in a different way, so Derek was glad to have you look at the file. Slowly the team trickled in, all being quiet as not to disturb you. Find what you could you placed the file back down and got everyone’s attention.

“So he uhh... he has? Has a... what’s the word...” you mumbled.

“Property?” Spencer smiled.

You nodded furiously.

“Yeah! He has a property he’s had it since...” your mind tried to think of the words.

“He was a Teen.” Spencer smiled again.

“His parents died” “he inherited it”

Reaching your hand out you made grabby hands at Hotch who was holding the board pen. Handing it over he took a step back to give you room. You quickly got to work scribbling on the map. Finsihing you took a step back, eyes glancing to Spencer for help. Tapping your fingers on the side of your thigh as he read the map.

“The place we’re looking for is in this two mile radius, it would be run down, like many building there. Small, so that takes away half the buildings, (Y/N) thinks that there would’ve loads of small ally ways around it and manybroads leading towards it.”

Hotch called Garcia, and you stood back. Sending Spencer another glance you grabbed his wrist and squeezed it, Leaving your hand there.

“Your welcome.”

Suddenly another thing came to mind, looking at Spencer you tugged his arm. Pointing at Rossi’s coffee cup.

“(Y/N) said it’ll smell like coffee.”

As they went to investigate the building, you laid down the couch in the room. Still holding onto Spencer, making him down in front of you. Your hand absently running through his longish hair enjoying how smooth it felt. Trailing your hand down to his face where you begun to tap his cheek while he did some more research. Spencer never minded you doing this, in fact he rather enjoyed it.

You didn’t let anyone else touch you, Derek found this out the hard way when he hugged you and you reacted badly, but you were more then happy at let him touch you and you were often found holding him in some way. The team didn’t know why, but they were glad. They thought you two were perfect for each other.

“Hey (Y/N)?”

You hummed.

“Do you think that our unsub could have a partner?”

You thought about this, it would make sense. Tapping his cheek twice he nodded in agreement.

“I’ll let the other knows.” He beamed.

As he went to stand up you kissed his head making him blush a little, he kissed your forehead and went back to what he was doing. When he was done done you tugged at his jumper.

“It is cold in here, hold on you can wear this.”

Pulling it off he handed it over, greatfully you put it on.

You didn’t need to talk for Spencer to be able to understand you, he always knew what you were thinking and that’s one of the many reasons you loved him.

Getting his attention you took a deep breath.

“I... I.. you.. I..” you tried to get out.

Spencer stopped you, placing a gently hand to your face as he kissed the tip of your nose.

“I love you too sweetheart.”

Giving him a grin you pecked his head and rolled into him making him fall on the floor, where you both sat until everyone came back to find you peacefully asleep

#spencer reid #doctor reid #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #reid x reader #reid #aaron hotchner #david rossi #derek morgan #garcia

[frostyalice]

fic: an ode to the man bun (1k)

“Only by loss of an unfortunate bet would I allow myself to walk into a building full of pubescent teens wearing my hair in a ponytail.”

“Man bun,” she corrects. “And they’re not pubescent,” she adds.

“That’s what I said, a ponytail.”

“A bet, huh?” Alice ponders, ignoring him. Then, to Jasper’s horror, he watches as a cheerful smile graces his mate’s perfect little face.

or: 1000+ of unnecessary words about how alice coerces her husband into a man bun for high school. to keep up appearances and be trendy, obviously.

a/n: hi! just dropping a little fic like i’m not new to the twilight fandom (i mean i’m not i’m just new to the twilight renaissance i believe is what you all are calling it). this fic was born from my random guilty pleasure but as i found quickly, other people liked the idea too. the idea wouldn’t go away, so instead of leaving it on my phone, i’m leaving it here for anyone to find. sorry for any typos. this was mostly done on my phone.

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Jasper.”

“Alice.”

“My life,” she tries.

“My whole reason for existence.”

Alice scoffs. “Well, clearly not. Since you won’t even do me this one favor.”

“Jasper rolls his eyes. “I would die for you and you know it. Don’t take advantage.”

“This is a million times less painful than death.”

“As someone who has experienced death and has been ripped apart numerous times, I disagree.”

“You are so dramatic,” Alice complains. Jasper raises an eyebrow then watches his mate’s eyes lose focus for a second. He opens his mouth. “Don’t finish that sentence,” she hisses.

“I didn’t even start it.”

“It’s just a man bun!”

“Two words that were never meant to be put together in a sentence, I’m sure.”

Alice crosses her arms and pouts, the little manipulator. She knows what that does to him. But Jasper has faced hundreds of newborns collectively; he can stand against this not even five foot creature.

He can.

Alice widens her eyes a little and shoves an extra dose of hopefulness his way.

He can’t do this.

But he’s going to keep pretending. He crosses his arms. “Only by loss of an unfortunate bet would I allow myself to walk into a building full of pubescent teens wearing my hair in a ponytail.”

“Man bun,” she corrects. “And they’re not pubescent,” she adds.

“That’s what I said, a ponytail.”

“A bet, huh?” Alice ponders, ignoring him. Then, to Jasper’s horror, he watches as a cheerful smile graces his mate’s perfect little face. Perfectly devilish face he thinks to himself. See, this is a smile of a girl who’s had a vision of this situation going her way. And Jasper has long since stopped trying to be against those.

“I’m not betting on anything now!” Jasper protests.

“Oh, sweetie,” Alice coos. “You already have.”

What?

“What?”

“Remember a week ago? You bet Emmett that you could breathe fire by swallowing some god awful alcoholic fluids and then spitting it back out with your venom?”

Jasper nods, a little sheepish. He had thought that they could maybe breathe fire by swallowing copious amounts of alcohol, letting it mix with their venom and essentially puking it back up. Something like shaking a coke bottle and then opening it. It was supposed to have worked.

“I remember,” Jasper replies warily.

“Remember what he said to you after you lost?”

(They were both laid out on the ground with something akin to a stomach ache and a weird sizzling feeling in their throats.

 “Ugh,” Emmett groaned. “Worst idea ever.”

 “Yeah yeah,” Jasper conceded. “So, what do you want?”

 Emmett had barely opened his mouth when they both turned their heads to the sound of a front door opening and shutting. Jasper had watched as Alice quickly flitted out the door, paused to give him a quick kiss on the cheek, and then move onto Emmett. Jasper couldn’t be sure because her tiny stature had been blocking his view, at the time, but he had thought he’d seen her pass the large vampire something. Then, as a fast as she’d come, she had gone.

 Emmett was left standing with a smirk on his face.

 “Well?” Jasper had prompted.

 “Hm?” Emmett as innocently.

 Jasper was immediately suspicious. Unfortunately, he couldn’t feel anything other than his brother’s normal cheerful demeanor radiating from him. “The bet?” Jasper reminded. As if Emmett could have forgotten in the seconds it had taken for that weird exchange to happen. Emmett never le ta bet go if he won.

 “Don’t worry about it, bro. I”ll collect my winnings when I think of something,” Emmett had said before lumbering off into the house before Jasper could question him further.)

 “Hey Jasper,” the bear of a vampire greets cheerfully, walking into the living room and pulling Jasper out of his thoughts.

Jasper knows he’s been listening and narrows his eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

His brother shrugs.

“C’mon, Emmett, we’re brothers,” Jasper tries. Alice just swings her hands by her sides, watching the both of them. Jasper knew a lost battle when he saw one.

“Sorry man,” and Jasper could tell he was sympathetic. Just not sympathetic enough, clearly. “Alice promised she’d convince Rose to leave me behind when they did their seasonal shopping this year,” Emmett explains.

Jasper winced. Damn.

Alice would probably convince him to go. Double damn.

He glared at his mate. She just smiled and blew him a kiss. “Meet us in the bathroom fifteen minutes before we have to leave for school,” she instructs.

Wait a minute.

“Us?!” Jasper sputters. “Fifteen?! How long does it take for a ponytail?!”

“Man. Bun.”Alice corrected again.

Jasper growls.

“Love you!” And then she was gone, off to get herself ready for the fashion show that was high school.

Jasper sighs. “Love you, too.”

Emmett pats his shoulder in condolence as he passes. Lucky bastard died with short hair. Jasper thinks maybe he should just cut his..

“I wouldn’t do that!” Edward yells from somewhere in the house.

“Get out of my head!”

*

Twenty minutes later, and twice that amount of hair product and do overs, Jasper finds himself riding in the Jeep along with his siblings, sporting his new, perfectly messy but not too messy or too greasy or too frizzy ponytail.

“Man bun,” Edward corrects from the driver’s seat, then quickly ducks when Jasper tries to punch him on the side of the head. The car never swerving once.

Jasper inhales sharply. Even though he would never admit – and I’ll rip your fingers off knuckle by knuckle if you tell, he adds mentally for his mind reading brother – he’s nervous.

As if he and his family didn’t already stick out like a sore thumb. He had been sporting his longish hair the same way every day this year. The middle of the semester was not the time to try to start being trendy.

“Game time,” Emmett announces as they pull into the parking lot.

It’s already full of kids, standing around cars, avoiding homeroom.

Well, here goes nothing, Jasper thinks morosely. Alice squeezes his hand as they get out. As per usual, they turn lots of heads. Why did they decide to all drive together this morning? Jasper regrets this since it attracts more attention.

“Who’s the new guy with that Alice Cullen?” he already hears someone whisper.

Jasper grits his teeth and feels a very strange, uncalled for streak of jealousy go through him. The thought of these kids thinking some other guy is with Alice. Even if that other guy is him. Jesus, it’s just hair, it’s not like I shrunk.

 “Is that Jasper Hale?” a second asks.

“Of course it’s Jasper, don’t be stupid.”

Jasper mentally sends appreciation to the one kid who seems to have his head screwed on straight. Edward chuckles. If the rest of the day is going to go like this, he was in for a long one.

*

The day passes relatively without too much drama. The same gossip. The same problems. The only thing new being all the “hey look at Jasper’s new hairdo” comments, which he does not appreciate.

He and his man bun would like to just lay low until this day is over, but it’s hard to do when for five students they pass, at least one of them make some kind of comment to their friends about it.

Lunch is the worse since the Cullens are usually the only thing to look at when they all walk in together. Again, maybe they should re think that. Unfortunately, the comments about his hair double. He tries to place himself between the wall and Emmett so there’s less of him to see. Unfortunately, Emmett chooses today to be perceptive and just scoots back whenever he can.

Jasper glares at him.

Alice touches his hand though, and he watches as her eyes inch up just slightly higher to take in his new hair for the day and smiles just a little bit wider and he love for him flares just a little bit brighter.

Jasper thinks he’ll make it through this day just fine.

“We should make this a Man Bun Monday sort of thing!” Alice suggests suddenly. Her eyes losing focus, but not in a vision sort of way, as far as Jasper can tell, just normal day dreaming.

“Absolutely not,” Edward responds before Jasper can. He feels a spark of irritation and… fear? He’s trying to figure out what Edward heard. As far as Jasper was concerned, he thought his brothers were all for his constant high school humiliation.

Then Alice says to Edward, “Oh, but you would look absolutely adorable with a little ponytail!”

Jasper can’t help but laugh. “Yeah, come on, Edward,” he ribs. “Misery loves company.”

Edward grumbles something offensive.

“Hey, no fair,” Emmett cuts in. “What about mine?”

Alice just pats his short curly haired head. “Don’t worry, Em, we’ll figure something out for you, too.”

Then she looks over to Jasper and gives a little wink.

And Jasper? Well, Jasper loves his family. But he really loves his wife. Even if she is a little prone to making him change hair to fit the times.

But hey, a little man bun never hurt no one.

end note: thank you for reading. i do believe this is what the fanfiction world calls a ‘crack fic’ the part about vampires being able to breathe fire is an ode to one of my favorite jalice fics - where they CAN breathe fire by doing this - which you can read here. let me know what you thought? tell your friends about jasper’s man bun potential! typos are my own. if you’re interested, i have written another fic! (this one features tattoos)

#man bun potential #does this really count as crack fic if jasper would totatally do this for alice imo #jalice #jalice fanfiction #do people use that tag #idk #twilight fanfiction #crack fic collection #is anyone even awake to read this lmao #whoops forgot my actual fic tag #my fic #jasper hale #twilight renaissance #posted

[arcadequeerz]

Matora |Non Fandom OC|

THIS IS, the first oc I ever made, he means a lot to me, n i love him so mch c:b Matora is...sweetheart...

Matora is a 10ft tall wolf anthro looking creature. He has long, floofy black fur covering his body, it has darkish, golden colored speckle markings on it. These markings are on his forehead, under his eyes, down his muzzle, down his arms, shoulders, back, down his sides, hips, thighs and on his stomach. He has a mane of fur, its around his neck and goes onto the top of his head. The mane also goes down chest as a streak, stopping at his lower stomach. it also goes down his back stopping right at the base of his tail. The fur the manes made of is black and is quite fluffy and long, almost gives him the look of a head of long semi, curly hair? His ears are quite long and are wider then normal wolves ears. His nose on the end of his muzzle is a darkish brown with a black spot on it. His tail is pretty long and very bendable, covered in very floofy fur, the fur along the underside of his tail is longer and the fur at the tip of it is longer too. His tail has faint grey speckles that go down it. His hands are semi paw like, have five fingers on them with longish curved claws. They have paw pads on them, the paw pads are the same color as his nose. His legs are digitigraded, and have large paws n them with claws like those on his hands, and the fur on his ankles are a lil longer.

Body wise, Matora’s pretty chubby, has kind of wide set hips and biggish thighs, but still seems pretty muscular, (This is a horrible description of his Bodytype, I ho n estly can’t describe body types, so forgive me HGFDSHG d:xc

His eyes are a bright almost neon blue and his eyes glow quite brightly at night

Its quite hard to find clothes to fit his ten foot self, lucky he has a friend who makes them for him(Zeno makes em). Usually wears loose fitting kind of clothes, hoodies, sweaters, loose fitting pants. Often times he’ll keep the hoodie up over his head because people tend to be quite afraid of him ao he likes to cover his face. He’s very fond of earthy colors, like browns and dark greens. But he also loves the color yellow or light pinks. Sometimes he wears a lot of hair pins or bows in his mane.

Matora is the living embodiment of the saying “Gentle Giant”. Kind down to the core and as gentle as can be. He is very timid and often has trouble talking and interacting with others because of this. He is very quiet and doesn’t talk much. He trusts people easily, maybe a bit TOO easily, and that often leads to trouble. He’ll help anyone that needs help, no matter how big or small their problem is, he’ll help someone no matter what. Tends to be very nervous around people when he first meets them, but is kind to strangers nonetheless. EXTREMELY protective of his friends. He is very affectionate to friends and can be very sweet. If your a friend of his expect him to give you lots of hugs and always be a shoulder for you to cry on. He is generally a very sweet, and caring person to others and friends as long as they’re kind to him. When someone threatens his friends or someone he considers family he will not hesitate to “bite” back at the harasser. Sticking up for his friends is one of the only things that makes him push his timidness to the side to do. He will not take someone threatening the people he holds dear. At times Matora can seem very sad, mostly because he is, he is a very melancholy person and has much trouble dealing with depression and lots of self hatred. Most of which is centered around his appearance which hes often told looks monstrous and scary. This causes him to wish he wasn’t so big and intimidating, he wishes people could see past his appearance and get to know him, not be afraid of him. He’s happiest surrounded by his friends and hates to be alone.

He is passionate about caring for the woods he calls home, Darkwood, and is very found of animals of all kinds. His favorite animals are dogs/wolves. If he finds a sick or injured animal he’ll nurse the animal back to health and release them back into the forest. He loves to garden, he has a garden which he grows all sorts of veggies and flowers in. He also carves little figurines or statues out of wood, a lot of times their very detailed and he’ll sometimes paint them. The figurines are usually animals or flowers. He even carves some out of the crystals you can find in the caves around the woods. He also loves collecting lil trinkets he finds while wondering around the forest. Things like old jewelry, pretty rocks, or old toys. He is a very skilled hunter, doesn't use guns but instead sticks to using his claws, or his teeth to take down prey. He kills humanely and does it quickly to not prolong the animals suffering. Usually hunts small rodents, birds or deer and sometimes will eat fish from the lakes or rivers in the woods. He only kills what he needs to feed himself and no more and never kills just to kill. Hes actually able to eat raw meat, and usually prefers to eat it raw rather then cooked. He also likes eating fruits and enjoys certain veggies, but his diet mostly consists of meat. He sometimes goes out blueberry picking and strawberry picking when its berry season. Most human food makes him ill or not feel well. He is a fan of sweets though, and might eat some even if it does make him feel a bit sick later.

He has a very beautiful singing voice, sometimes while he’s alone, like walking through the woods, he’ll sing a lil tune to himself. He doesn't like to sing in front of others though. Too scared of hearing people tell him he sounds awful, which he believes he does, even though Zeno(who has caught him singing a few times) keeps telling him hes amazing at it, and very talented.

He lives in a old cabin in Darkwood at the very edge of a village/town of people. He visits it occasionally to buy groceries or things he needs. Sometimes he’ll bring what vegetables he grows to the farmers market and sells them there and also sells the lil figurines he makes there too. Most of the people in the village find him very scary, most tend to stay away from him, and some of the more Asshole people like to harass him when he comes around. He does his best to just ignore them and not let them get to him. Zeno is usually the one to tell people off and tell em to leave him alone. There are some people in the town that he does consider friends, but their far out numbered by those that dislike him.

He hates confrontation and hates fighting, even though he could Quite easily hurt someone, or kill them if he wanted to, he chooses not to. He usually lets people walk all over him and push him around, and rarely ever sticks up for himself. He’ll just sit there and take peoples abuse. He gets Very nervous and upset when people start to yell, doesn't like when people get mad because it scares him and usually leads to him believing its His fault and sometimes start crying, and apologizing even though something might not be his fault. You could Hit him, and even though he’d cry he’d still apologize like it was his fault. He basically walks on eggshells around Everyone out of fear of being yelled at or hurt.

Usually hides how he feels, keeps all his anger and frustration, and sadness all on the inside rather then talking to anyone about it, cus he doesn't like to burden people with his problems, pretends a lot of times to be happier then he really is.

He cries very easily, but doesn't like when people see him cry. Usually hides his face when he cries.

Hes able to make lots of wolf/dog like noises, and makes a low purring like sounds when happy. He also makes squeak like noises, hisses, growls and snarls as well. And he can howl too.

He loves to be pet, even though hes nervous/shy to admit it, favorite spot is his ears, having his cheeks pet and sometimes even belly pets(only allows people he loves/are his SO to give him belly pets though, hes very shy about it though)

Often wraps his tail around himself to keep himself arm, likes to have it wrap around his waist. Wags it really fast when happy or excited. When scared the fue on his tail puffs up big. He also likes wrapping his tail around people hes very close to/loves.

When angry, the fur along his back bristles/stands up. Usually growls/hisses/snarls and bares his teeth if angry.

His sense of hearing and smell is very good, and he can see very well in the dark.

He gets flustered very easily and not good at taking compliments. Often doesn't know how to respond and blushes very easily. When blushing the markings on his muzzle and under his eyes will turn pink. Hides his face in his tail when flustered.

Hes a very cuddly person, and if you were his SO expect him like to cuddle with you, and hug on you, and wrap his tail around you. Hes very affectionate and just super cuddly.

Matora stutters sometimes when he talks, hes very self-conscious about it, and when nervous/scared/upset his stuttering gets worse.

Matora’s genderflux and his pronouns are he/him sometimes they/them and she/her and hes pansexual!

#Cade's Characterz #long post #SHE'S A SWEETHEART. u wul all look atmy goodest lad #i havnt...rlly formulated a good backstory for him d:x #idk why buyt hes SUPER HARD for me to com up weith something d:( #nothing ever fits them n idk why d:((( #i hav som art of him too d:3c #i wil post in a moment!

[davids-cartoon-corkboard]

I'm starting to think that Venomous and Shadowy Figure aren't twin brothers but one of them is the turbonic form of Laserblast. It's hard to say for sure which one is the turbo form because while Venomous is similar in personality to Laserblast ( Calm and collected, likes cute animals, romantically attracted to those who show strength. ) it feels like Shadowy Figure is more actively fit, carefree, goofy, and seems to genuinely care for K.O which gives him heroic traits.

I think Venomous and Shadowy Figure are brothers (maybe nottwins), and Shadowy Figure is Laserblast. However, Shadowy isn’tturbo!Laserblast. Which sounds confusing, but I’ll try to explain.

(longish post under the cut)

Coincidences happen all the time in real life. But OK KO isa story, and coincidences don’t happen nearly as often in stories. This storyhas only two purple snake people. Not two prominentpurple snake people, two purple snake people period. And they’re both voiced by Steven Ogg! They’re connected somehow.To fit with the show’s themes of family and identity, they’re either related orthe same person. (If someone can think of a third option that would fit, I’dlove to hear it.)

Ven and Shadowy aren’t the same person. Shadowy is veryfixated on KO and his power. Wouldn’t figuring out how to obtain it be aninteresting and complex project for Ven? But Ven had been dealing withlong-term boredom as of “Boxman Crashes”. Wouldn’t he have at least mentionedbeing frustrated at “not making progress” or being “stuck on a problem”? Thosetwo puzzle pieces don’t fit together.

Also, Shadowy Figure made a huge tactical blunder that wouldn’t have happened if he wasVenomous. When Fink was upset she couldn’t go to the party in “Villain’s Night In”, Ven apologized for disappointing her (via text, but still an apology). Every good parent knows the powerof an apology. And from a strategic standpoint, Shadowy should have apologizedfor hurting KO. I doubt he feels guilty about it, but when has the idea oflying ever stopped people like him? The second time he interacted with KO wasin “Let’s Have a Stakeout”. He acted manipulative, insulted KO, and physicallyattacked him. What if he hadn’t done that? What if he had met KO in the sewersand said, “I’m sorry”?

“KO, I’m sorry for what happened to the Plaza. If I hadknown the true extent of your power I would never have pushed you so hard inthe first place. I wanted to help you, but I wasn’t careful enough and wound uphurting you and many others instead. This is all my fault, and I am so, sosorry.”

Suddenly KO doesn’t feel quite so guilty for wrecking thePlaza, because Shadowy has taken the blame instead. Suddenly this guy isn’t anenemy, but a potential ally who just made a mistake. People forgive KO when hemakes mistakes, shouldn’t he do the same? And so what if Shadowy’s POW cardsays he’s level negative eight? KO’s card obviously isn’t accurate, so maybeShadowy’s isn’t either!

Maybe KO starts to trust Shadowy again, putting him in theideal situation to be manipulated. Carol and Gar and everyone else would thinkhis new friend was evil, so KO can’t tell them he’s visiting Shadowy. Shadowywants to fix this, so maybe it’s okay for him to take a few hair and salivasamples. Both want KO to use this power responsibly, so maybe he’d considerpracticing with it… just a little…

But Shadowy isn’t Venomous, so he messed up and none of thathappened. It would have been so cool,though.

Since Ven and Shadowy are not the same person, they must berelated. I only call them brothers for convenience, they could be cousins orsomething.

Where does Laser fit into this? Well, he’s not dead. Acharacter isn’t confirmed dead if nobody finds the body. And it doesn’t makesense for him to have said “screw this” and gone off to chill on a tropicalisland for the past six to eleven years without letting anyone know he wasokay. He must still be relevant. “Where did Laser go?” and “Where did Shadowycome from?” are questions that easily answer one another.

Both the blue and green orbs activated in the “Let’s Take aMoment” flashback. It’s possible the red orb also activated, removing Laser’spowers. Laser is clearly KO’s father. Children tend to inherit their powersfrom their parents. Shadowy wants KO’s power, but we don’t know the reason. Laserhas a reason, though. Them being the same person would fill in that blank verynicely.

While Shadowy is morecarefree and goofy than Laser, Shadowy isn’t under the pressure of Being a GoodExample, Not Disappointing Foxtail, and Not Blowing His Cover. I’m much morepolite and formal at my job than I am at home. This difference in personalitycan likely be chalked up to a difference in environment. Goofy isn’t inherentlya heroic trait either, Boxman is very goofy but he is absolutely a villain.

I don’t see any evidence for the Laser=Ven idea. While theirpersonalities are similar, it’s possible that’s just due to being raised in thesame environment. Sure, Ven has something to do with turbo power, but hisinterest in KO specifically is minimal, even though KO is apparently a sourceof it. He doesn’t seem to prioritize antagonizing KO over Rad or Enid. He hasno reason to attack the Plaza or its members other than to have fun withBoxman. We haven’t seen him interact with or comment on Carol. His opinion onP.O.I.N.T. seems to be wholly negative instead of wistful or bittersweet. Therearen’t enough strings linking the two for me to think they’re the same person.

Laserblast is Shadowy Figure, and that person is Venomous’brother. “Shadowblast” wants KO’s power so he can restore his own. But thepower he wants isn’t just turbo power. In “Boxman Crashes”, Venbecame more snakelike when he lost his temper. Ven has shapeshifting abilities,but he doesn’t use them a lot because he fights with science instead of hisbody. His brother Shadowy may have also had shapeshifting abilities. But sinceShadowy is a physical fighter, hewould have had more incentive to train and improve his powers.

Perhaps he got so good at shapeshifting he could change intoa human form?

And that is where“Laserblast” comes from. No turbo power, no two identities housed in one body,just regular-ass shapeshifting and a whole lot of lies.

KO’s eyes are typically brown (like Carol’s?), but have beenred, purple, both, or a mix when influenced by turbo power.

Maybe Shadowy hadpurple eyes and tried to change them to red to match Laser’s visor beam, butcouldn’t do it fully? Laser always hid his eyes because one was stuck atpurple. We could see this heterochromia in modern day Shadowy and that will beThe Big Reveal.

But why wouldShadowy undergo such a dramatic change for such a long period of time?

My theory is that Ven and Shadowy are from a formerlypowerful villain family. Shadowy had a mission to infiltrate P.O.I.N.T., butcouldn’t complete it because he lost his powers and permanently reverted to hisoriginal form (except possibly for his red eye). His failure disgraced thefamily. Ven often wears a hat and glasses in public and Shadowy Figure wears ahood because they don’t want to be recognized as members of the disgracedfamily.

Shadowy wants his powers back so he doesn’t have to sneakaround everywhere. Perhaps he even wants to become Laser again, to make up astory about why he was gone so long and return to his former friends. Cob knowshis family won’t take him back.

Shadowy had major shapeshifting abilities, while Carol hasnone. This gives KO minor shapeshifting abilities. Because the abilities are sominor (and possibly because he doesn’t know he has them), they only manifestwhen boosted by turbo power. We can see this in “You’re Level 100”, when KO wasusing turbo power before TKO had fully formed. His eyes, teeth, and claws areclearly different.

KO’s minor shifting powers with enough turbonic energyshould get Shadowy back to his original ability level.

“But David!” you ask. “If Shadowy’s power is onlyshapeshifting, then where does KO’s turbo power come from?”

It comes from Carol. And I know that sounds like a reach,but hear me out. Carol can mimic any combat move she sees. We see this mostoften when she copies Gar’s signature move. But it’s not your standard elbowattack- it also emits a pink energy. This suggests Carol could mimic otherenergy emitting moves.

Remember that turbo collar Ven made for Fink? It worked very well! The only reason it stopped was because it ran out of power. There weren’t any glitches or malfunctions. That means it probably isn’t the first iteration of this project. Perhaps he’s had prototypes for years and years, but hardly made useof them because he a) didn’t have a stable glorb supply, b) doesn’t dohand-to-hand combat himself, and/or c) didn’t trust anyone he might have beenworking with to use it. But he let Fink have it because she’s loyal and theynow have access to Boxman’s glorbs.

The tree under the Plaza is a source of glorbs. Presumablythere’s another one somewhere else underground, as suggested by the glorbcluster Gar sealed up in “GarQuest”. There are likely more of them scatteredacross the world. If we’ve noticedthe similarity between glorbs and the colored orbs, P.O.I.N.T. may have too.Carol’s new outfit in the “GarQuest” flashback suggests she still did somenon-secret hero work after Laser’s death, presumably until she realized she waspregnant. I think she was sent on a mission to make sure a glorb tree didn’tfall under villain control, and got in a fight when she arrived; perhapsagainst Venomous himself, perhaps against someone he used to test the collar on.If Carol fought a collar-powered villain while in a glorb-rich environment, shecould have used her ability to temporarily go turbo herself.

Which could do odd things to a fetus.

While KO has a weaker version of his father’s power, he alsohas a weaker version of his mother’s. “Copycat” becomes “Imprint”. He can copyan energy-emitting ability… but only once, and then he’s stuck with it.Normally he wouldn’t have been able to do this until after he was born, butsince he was essentially soaked inturbo power, he imprinted early.

This would explain why his standard power fist is blue- it’sthe color of a normal glorb. Only under special circumstances can he use theturbo version. It might also be why PKO’s headband and wristbands are blue.

That’s why Carol has no fucking clue what’s going on withher kid. It wasn’t a particularly memorable mission, and she was focused on hergrief. She has no reason to connect it to KO’s situation six to eleven yearslater. Maybe now that Foxtail’s done a heel face turn we can get access to someold mission files.

I’d say, “this is a bit complex for a children’s cartoon”,but Gravity Falls and Steven Universe pulled off some wild shit. It couldhappen!

This was probably way more of a reply than either of us were expecting, haha. But that’s my take on things! Y’all are welcome to bring up new evidence, alternate theories, corrections, etc.

#bluenebelung #ok ko #ok ko theory #tko #professor venomous #shadowy figure #laserblast

[27dragons]

For @captn-sara-holmes​. Happy birthday, and happy end of school!

Do the Math

Clint was chugging down a mug of burnt coffee in the teachers’ lounge when Principal Fury found him. “Just got word from the WSC,” Fury said without preamble. “They’re sending in an inspector today.”

The Working Schools Council was a bunch of meddling asshats who wouldn’t know good teaching if it bit them on the ass. Fury didn’t look impressed when Clint relayed that fact to him.

“It doesn’t matter if they’re a bunch of nanny goats wearing party hats,” Fury said. “They have the power to suspend teachers and even shut down the whole school, so for once, I need you to keep your kids under control and at least pretend to be teaching something of value when the inspector arrives.”

“I teach my kids plenty!” Clint protested, which Fury damn well knew, because that was why Fury kept giving him all the problem children.

“Just try not to stage a revolution again,” Fury growled, and stomped back toward his office.

Once upon a time, Fury had been a brilliant teacher, Clint mused, but administration had made him sour and grumpy.

Clint shrugged and poured himself another mug of horrid coffee. It sounded like he was going to need it.

[There is a readmore! Read more!]

“Okay, everyone, take out your math workbooks and turn to page 78,” Clint instructed the class. “Work on those problems, and I’ll be coming around to help anyone who needs it. Raise your hands if--”

The door to the classroom opened to reveal the most beautiful man Clint had ever seen. Tall and broad-shouldered, with longish hair tucked back into a tail, and piercing blue-gray eyes. He smiled as he met Clint’s gaze and said, “Mr. Barton?”

“I certainly hope so,” said Clint before he could put a rein on his mouth. “I mean. Yes, that’s me.”

“Great,” the guy said. He came all the way in and extended a hand. “Mr. Barnes,” he introduced himself. “I’m the inspector.”

Clint’s world came crashing down around him. “You’re the inspector?” he repeated. “Uh. I mean, of course you are. You’re here to... inspect.”

“That’s the job,” Barnes agreed, still smiling. “Don’t mind me, I’m just going to observe quietly for a little while. You carry on.”

Right. Carry on... teaching. Because that was what Clint was supposed to be doing right now. “Right. Uh.”

A hand shot up in the back of the class, and Clint dragged his attention away from the inspector. “What is it, Tony?”

“I already finished that page!”

“Well, then do the next one,” Clint suggested.

“I did that one, too! I finished the whole workbook last week!”

Clint resisted the urge to put his head down and grown. Tony was one of the smartest kids he’d ever encountered, and was a holy terror when bored. “Okay, why... Why don’t you help me out, then? You can explain it to Steve if he has problems.”

Steve was bright enough, but he’d missed almost a month of class due to illness and was still struggling to catch up.

“I don’t need no help!” Steve protested.

“You’ve already done the first one wrong,” Tony told him, leaning over to look at Steve’s workbook.

“Nuh-uh!”

“Yuh-huh!”

“Boys,” Clint said sharply. “Inside voices. Steve, it’s okay to be wrong sometimes. Let Tony help.”

“Tony is a stupidhead showoff,” Steve grumbled.

“If I was stupid, I wouldn’t have anything to show off,” Tony pointed out with relentless logic.

“Do you two need to spend some time out in the hall?”

Steve glowered at his workbook and slumped down in his seat, crossing skinny arms across an even skinnier chest. “Fine,” he huffed.

Clint sighed and turned to the rest of the class. “Okay, now--”

“Mr. Barton?”

“Yes, Jane?”

“Loki is copying from Thor.”

Personally, Clint thought that was Loki’s problem, since Thor was at best an indifferent student. “Loki, do your own work.”

“I don’t mind!” Thor said cheerfully.

“It’s against the rules whether you mind or not,” Clint said, and hoped it didn’t come out as tired as he felt. “If you need help, raise your hand and I’ll come help. Otherwise, please just do the work quietly.”

A whole two minutes passed in silence broken only by the scratching of pencils and Tony and Steve’s whispering in the back corner. Clint used the time to watch Barnes wandering slowly around the room, checking on the supply cabinets and the small bank of computers.

The inspector was still smiling, albeit faintly. It made him unfairly good-looking.

“Mr. Barton! I hafta go to the bathroom!”

“Sit down, Wade. We all know you don’t really have to go,” Clint said, trying for his most reasonable tone. “You just want to wander the halls.”

“Nuh-uh, I really hafta, hafta!” Wade clutched at his crotch and danced from one foot to the other. “Please, Mr. Barton! You’ll be my favorite teacher forever!”

“Imagine my disappointment,” Clint said drily, then coughed as he remembered that the inspector probably wouldn’t appreciate him being sarcastic at the children. “Have a seat, Wade. We’ll have a break in half an hour. You can hold it that long.”

“Mr. Barton!” demanded Natasha, waving her arm wildly. “Mr. Barton!”

“What is it, Natasha?” Natasha was usually quite good at math and she hated asking for help, so she must be really stuck.

“Loki says I hafta marry Bruce ‘cause I’m sitting next to him and he won’t take it back!”

Or not. Clint suppressed another sigh. “You know Loki’s wrong,” he pointed out. “No one has to marry anyone if they don’t want to.”

“You don’t want to marry me?” Bruce asked, pouting.

“Gross,” Natasha pronounced.

“I am not gross!” Bruce shouted, because of course that flashfire temper of his would flare up with the inspector in the room.

“Hey, Bruce, come on, she didn’t say you were gross,” Clint tried, putting himself between Bruce and Natasha. “She probably just meant--”

“All boys are gross,” Natasha clarified, at increasing volume. “I’m going to marry a girl.”

Clint rubbed at his face and snuck a look at the inspector, who was -- ohgod -- jotting a note on his clipboard. “And that’s fine,” he said, “but no one is marrying anyone until we get our math done. So if we could just focus, please, for a little while?”

“I’m not gross!” Bruce yelled.

“Bruce, c’mon, let’s just do the math. You like math, right?” Clint tapped Bruce’s workbook. “I know you don’t want to have to go back to the principal’s office again this week, so let’s just... calm down, okay?”

“I’m going to marry Steve,” Tony announced, draping his arms across Steve’s shoulders.

Steve pushed Tony away. “You hafta ask first, stupidhead,” he grumbled.

“Guys,” Clint begged. “Stop pushing and stick to the lesson, please.”

“Who’re you gonna marry, Mr. Barton?” Pepper asked.

Clint covered his face with both hands. “I’m not marrying anyone,” he groaned. Not least because he was probably going to get fired for being unable to keep his kids on task. “Can we please just save it for recess? Okay?”

Another hand went up and Clint resisted the urge to groan. “Yes, Sam? Please tell me this isn’t another thing about who’s marrying who. Whom,” he corrected hastily, even though they hadn’t gotten to that in their grammar lessons yet.

“No,” Sam assured him.

Cling let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, what is it, Sam?”

“Wade made a mess.”

The half-pot of coffee in the teacher’s lounge was even more burnt than it had been this morning, but Clint didn’t care. If he wasn’t allowed to drink alcohol at work, then he was for damn sure going to have more coffee. He sloshed it irritably into a mug and took a gulp.

“So that happened.”

Clint nearly did a spit-take, then swallowed the coffee quickly to avoid the spit-take. It burned his throat and he whimper-screamed and fumbled the mug.

The inspector lunged forward and caught the mug before it could shatter on the floor. “Wow, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you like that.”

“Holy shhhhamrocks,” Clint gasped. He rubbed at the outside of his scalded throat. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“I wasn’t sneaking, really,” the inspector said. Barnes. Clint was good with names, honest. “And there’s no kids here; I won’t tell if you curse. Are you okay?”

Clint huffed and picked his coffee mug back up. “You were there,” he said. “What do you think?”

“I think you need something stronger than day-old coffee,” Barnes admitted. “Fury told me you had all the troublemakers in your class.”

“Buddy, that was a good day,” Clint snorted. “They didn’t even try to organize a coup to take over the school.”

Barnes laughed. He had a nice laugh. It made his eyes shine. He probably thought Clint was exaggerating.

“So give it to me straight -- am I out on the street?”

“Nah,” Barnes said. “I’ve seen so much worse, you wouldn’t believe.”

“I probably would,” Clint said. “When I was a student teacher I got paired with this old bat who I swear was still disappointed that we’re not allowed to smack kids around anymore.”

“Yeah?” Barnes tore the corner off the sheet on his clipboard and scrawled something on it. “I’ve got to get back to the WSC office to write up my report, but you should give me a call. We’ll grab a few beers and trade stories.” He tucked the scrap of paper into Clint’s shirt pocket, then grinned and walked away.

Clint fished the paper out of his pocket. It read, “Bucky Barnes” and was followed by a phone number.

Clint scrambled for the door, catching up just before Barnes reached the end of the hall. “Did you just ask me on a date?”

Barnes glanced back, those eyes sparkling. “You do the math.”

~fin.

#clint barton #bucky barnes #buckyclint #winterhawk #captn sara holmes #au: school #pique queue

[hope-for-olicity]

Fabulous Olicity Fanfic Friday - November 2nd, 2018

Happy Friday! So this is my attempt to both thank awesome fanfic writers for their amazing work and offer my recommendations to anyone who is interested. Here are the fantastic fanfic stories I read this week! They are posted in the order I read them. I’m slowly catching up on my reading and feel so very lucky to be in this fandom with so many AMAZING writers! Hugs! 

Re-Airrow: Episode 2x07 by @lostolicityscenes - Another sort of longish one. I wrote Scene 1 because I wanted to see more of the fallout of last episode’s talk and also further my subplot of why Isabel hates Felicity it takes place before the episode. Scene 2 includes a character that I introduced in 1x08. Did I do that so that I could feature him here and Felicity’s offhand comment in the episode would refer to him? Yes I did! Scene 3 is mostly set up for later and adds to Isabel and Felicity’s increasing hostility. Lastly, scene 4 takes place after the events of the episode. I remember the first time I watched it I was struck by Oliver’s expression and thought, this is the moment he knows he loves her. https://lostolicityscenes.tumblr.com/post/179220041276/re-airrow-episode-2x07

Charmed I'm Sure! multi-chapter WIP by @christinabeggs - What happens when three witchy sisters take on the evil in the world? https://archiveofourown.org/works/15852249/chapters/36922482

seemingly impossible (but not untrue) multi-chapter WIP by @alexiablackbriar13 - Young genius historian Dr Felicity Smoak unknowingly and accidentally calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript within the Oxford Bodleian Libraries - a book that has been lost for centuries. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Felicity wants nothing to do with magic, despite her unruly and powerful abilities. But her discovery of Ashmole 782 sets the world of creatures stirring; with a mystery afoot and new, dangerous magical abilities manifesting for her to navigate, she is approached by the enigmatic vampire biochemist Professor Oliver Queen, who seems to have a deep interest in both the manuscript… and her. Based on A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16224353/chapters/37923743  

Love and Little Cupcakes multi-chapter WIP by @christinabeggs - Felicity loved sweets so much that she paid no attention to her lovelife. Until Thea Queen came into her store wanting fabulous cupcakes for her sixteenth birthday. SO ADORABLE! http://archiveofourown.org/works/12400539/chapters/28216053

Oliver the Cardinal by @someonesaidcake - “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.” Her words taunted him, a man of the cloth, sworn to an oath that had been forced upon him. But his heart sat elsewhere... with her. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16334099

Oliver the (Divorce) Lawyer multi-chapter WIP @someonesaidcake - Black tie, white shirt, grey suit... when Oliver put them on that chilly December morning, he hadn't planned on meeting her. 'Her' being Felicity Smoak, the sassy dark haired college student and daughter of his (only) client. This should be fun... https://archiveofourown.org/works/14823708/chapters/34304472

Whiskey and Romance multi-chapter WIP by @mindramblingsfics - Felicity Smoak gets the opportunity of a lifetime to compete for the hand of Prince Tommy Merlyn. She is taken from her normal mundane Vegas life and is soon swept up into a lifestyle full of nobles, drama, obligations and chaos. All the while trying to stay afloat, someone else begins to win her heart, Tommy’s best friend, Oliver Queen. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14441952/chapters/33357156

The Phoenix Rises multi-chapter WIP by @supersillyanddorky06 - For two years, Felicity has lived as a woman happily married to Oliver Queen. They have had their differences, like they always do, but nothing they could not come back from. Until now. Things crumble to the ground as an evil from the past descends upon their married life and tragedy reigns, they face something they never have before. But Felicity knows together, they can brave through. Oliver has no intention of letting go. Neither does she. Mature content. Mild swearing. A lot of sexual tension. You will probably want to bash their heads together at times. http://archiveofourown.org/works/4413614/chapters/10024649

Rebels Connected multi-chapter WIP by @mindramblingsfics - Felicity Smoak is an escaped mutant on the run. Oliver Queen, leader of an underground safe house for mutants to call home comes to her rescue. Everything changes once he brings her into the organization and his life. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16014089/chapters/37369784

The Reason multi-chapter WIP by flipflops - Oliver is an Alpha and Felicity is an Omega....circumstances lead Oliver to find this out and a very bad time or maybe very good time... https://archiveofourown.org/works/15012431

Undisclosed Desires multi-chapter WIP by @green-arrows-of-karamel - People seldom show their true face to the world. Nobody knows this better than Felicity Smoak. She worked hard to get where she is and nothing, not even a nuisance like having a stalker, can stop her. When the threat proves to be more serious than she thought, Felicity is forced to hire Green Arrow Security. Her reluctance to have a bodyguard, shadowing her all day long, transforms itself into a —irrational, some would say— dislike for the man in charge of her safety. No other client had ever driven Oliver so crazy as Felicity Smoak does. That has nothing to do with her mesmerizing beauty or her astonishing intelligence but everything to do with her exasperating stubbornness. Honestly, he doesn't know what’s her problem is with him. If it wasn't because, Thea, his little sister, made him promise that he’d personally protect the woman, he would have quit months ago. It takes very little to ignite the fire between them. A single innocent comment can turn into an epic battle of vicious words, with the only purpose of irking each other. Everyone around them watches all happening from the front row. They ask themselves what will befall first… Felicity and Oliver killing each other, or realizing that they’re in love. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15808077/chapters/36794202

Beyond the Spotlight multi-chapter WIP by @arrow-through-my-writers-block - Bodyguard/Popstar AU. Felicity Smoak is music's hottest star. But when her fame and deeply hidden secrets breed threats to her life that cannot be ignored, she hires Oliver Queen. As her new head of security/pet bodyguard, their personalities clash. Can he protect her from the many unknown enemies from her past that hunt her, or will her intriguing complexities and his own developing feelings be a detriment to them both? http://archiveofourown.org/works/11067006/chapters/24679221

Fictober18 #22 - “I know how you love to play games.” by @tdgal1 - A continuation of the vampire series. The sisters try to help out! https://tdgal1.tumblr.com/post/179313475755/fictober18-22-i-know-how-you-love-to-play

Fictober18 #23 - “This is not new, it only feels like it.” by @tdgal1 - A continuation of the vampire series. Dinner with the sisters continues. https://tdgal1.tumblr.com/post/179357810215/fictober18-23-this-is-not-new-it-only-feels

Just Beneath the Surface multi-chapter WIP by @smoaking-greenarrow - When an S.O.S signal is sent to the FBI from a woman named Felicity Smoak, Director Oliver Queen knows that she is in grave danger. He can’t help but notice the haunting similarities between what’s happening to her and what happened nine years ago; in thirteen unsolved cold cases that drove ex-agent John Diggle out of the bureau. With a race against the clock, Oliver enlists the help of his old mentor to reopen the investigation, and hopefully save Felicity’s life. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16239002/chapters/37963052

The Predator multi-chapter WIP by @supersillyanddorky06 - Oliver Queen is the one anomaly in the Chicago Outfit. He is the only non-blooded member to be a part of the high circle in thefamily. His reputation precedes him and he is their best hunter. Felicity Smoak, daughter of theStarling boss, infiltrates his house, intent on killing him. But a startling encounter tips the scales. He goes on the prowl and she escapes. Hate, heat, and friction. Sparks. But something bigger is happening in their world. And despite their disagreements, only they can fight it down. Mob AU. Not Bratva. Enemies-lovers. http://archiveofourown.org/works/5077885/chapters/21891689

H(a)unted by @smoaking-greenarrow - Prompt: I had a prompt idea :) One where Oliver is (finally) out of prison but very aware of his surroundings, especially when he goes out with Felicity and William. He doesn’t want to let them out of his sight because he’s, kinda paranoid for the lack of a better term, about something happening to them and their safety. Set in season 7ish but canon noncompliant :) http://smoaking-greenarrow.tumblr.com/post/179438084324/haunted

Kiss and Plate by @crazycrystal10 - Prompt - "Why didn't he come and talk to me himself?" Pregnant, hormonal Felicity Smoak × Loving hubby, Oliver Queen. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16415555

Angel multi-chapter WIP by @it-was-a-red-heeler - Oliver encounters a stripper by the name of Angel and is blown away. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15961898/chapters/37227686#workskin

Fictober18 #24 - “You know this, you know this to be true.” by @tdgal1 -  A continuation of the vampire series. Felicity continues to try to get Oliver to see reason. https://tdgal1.tumblr.com/post/179459661835/fictober18-24-you-know-this-you-know-this-to

Fear Wakes You Up multi-chapter WIP by @smoakmonster - In a world divided into factions, being Divergent means certain death. For years, Oliver has hidden his terrible secrets–masking his own Divergence within the chaos of Dauntless, covering up the sins of his father’s past that mark his body beneath tattoos, and pushing himself to overcome his nightmares through endless simulations. He’s biding his time until he can somehow save his sister back in Abnegation. But everything changes the day a new batch of transfers arrive. The day he meets her. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16058117/chapters/37490819

Home To You multi-chapter WIP by @the-shy-and-anxious-fangirl - Oliver Queen has never done what his family expected of him. He took a gap year after high school instead of going to college right away. He quit his fraternity sophomore year to join the student newspaper, switching his major from business to journalism. He became a photojournalist for a wire service instead of taking a place at Queen Consolidated. He went missing after six months instead of coming home for his sister’s twenty-first birthday. He survived five years of captivity in a war zone when everyone thought he was dead. He came home. But home didn’t have a place for him in it anymore. His parents were both dead, casualties of their own mistakes and a city they had turned against them. His sister was all grown up, the CEO of Queen Consolidated with a fiancé and a dog and a life of her own. Oliver didn’t belong in his old life, but there was nowhere else for him to go. He was a man without a home, without any way of finding one, until he stopped by the IT department of his sister’s company to get files off an old, battered memory card, and found a woman with curly blonde hair and bright, intelligent eyes chewing on a bright red pen and swearing at a computer screen. https://archiveofourown.org/works/12613188/chapters/28734552

The Queen's Mage multi-chapter WIP by @the-shy-and-anxious-fangirl - Words have power, and mages, those with the aptitude to draw on that power, are few in number. Thus, their services are highly sought after by anyone who has exhausted all mundane means of solving whatever problem is plaguing them. Felicity is reminded of this fact the hard way when she is hired by Moira Queen, the Lady Starling, to find and return to her son Oliver, who fled his family home five years ago following the death of his father. With a threat hanging over her should she return without Robert Queen's heir, Felicity begins her search. When she finds Oliver, and ends up joining his vigilante crusade while she waits for him to decide whether to return home, the last thing she expects to do is fall in love with him. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14617068/chapters/33781269

Elizabeth Grace Smoak multi-chapter WIP by @lynn8828 - What if Felicity and Oliver briefly had met before he got on the Gambit? Despite her best efforts, Felicity was unable to get in contact with the famous Oliver Queen after having a one night stand with him and getting pregnant with his child. After raising their child for five years after finding out that Oliver died on the Gambit, she finds out he is alive and knows that she needs to tell him about their daughter. But will he believe her? AMAZING STORY!! http://archiveofourown.org/works/13639371/chapters/31322715

From Somewhere Within multi-chapter WIP by @smoaking-greenarrow - Their connection has always felt natural to them, safe and secure. But others tend to fear what they don’t understand, and as far as their enemies are concerned, the world isn’t ready to accept two people who can know each other the way that Oliver and Felicity do. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16009244/chapters/37356257

And So The Adventure Begins multi-chapter WIP by @mindramblingsfics - Felicity spent her first year of college focused solely on her studies. In year two, with the convincing of her best friends Iris and Sara, she lets her hair down a bit. Oliver spent his first year partying with his wingman Tommy and living up to the status that came with his last name. He realizes he should buckle down focus on the most important part: actual school. Oliver and Felicity meet, and even though they are on different ends of the spectrum, they don't realize that they can each bring out hidden parts of one another. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15800025/chapters/36771018

Pieces of Always multi-chapter WIP by @so-caffeinated and @dust2dust34 - Life continues after Forever is Composed of Nows. Ongoing non-linear collection of family moments for the Queens. http://archiveofourown.org/works/8220479/chapters/18840356

// @emmaamelia95 // @mel-loves-all // @oliverfel4 // @green-arrows-of-karamel // @coal000 // @miriam1779 // @memcjo// @captainolicitysbedroom // @tdgal1 // @spaztronautwriter // @lalawo1// @quiveringbunny // @wrongshipper // @thebookjumper // @vaelisamaza // @myhauntedblacksoul // @lovelycssefan // @laurabelle2930 // 

#FabulousOlicityFanficFriday #olicity fanfiction #fic recs