#FUCKING I AM GOING TO BURN A GODDAMN BUILDING DOWN WITH THE SHEER POWER OF MY SCREAMING RAGE
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Fuckign audacity on people to fucking act like I think fuckign victorian era europe and america are ideals to be upheld
No motherfucker they're HORRORS TO BE AVOIDED
so why the FUCK are we doing literally worse than them on some shit????????????
FUCKING FUCK OFFFFFFFFFFFFF
#I swear to fucking god#Oh yeah the queer jewish middle eastern Really Loves 1950s Middle Class America and thinks they're Glorious Systems To B eUpheld#FUCK! YOU!#FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!!!!!!!#WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU FUCKIGN GET OFF#JUST ADMIT YOU DON'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT WORK TIME VS HOME TIME RATIOS FOR ANYTHING BEFORE 1800 AND MOVE THE FUCK ON#~oooh people have never had much free time as workers oooh~#FUCKING AUDACIOUS#THE IGNORANCE PARADING AS MORAL SUPERIORITY#FUCKING ~I would never want to nromalize a llarge workload but~#YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT A LARGE WORKLOAD IS#IN THE VAST MAJORITY OF HUMAN EXISTENCE A LARGE WORKLOAD WAS 3 MONTHS OF ACTIVE LABOUR#AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA#EVEN IN THE PARTS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE WE TEND TO THINK OF AS 'HISTORY' IN THE WEST#6 MONTHS WAS STILL ON THE FUCKING UPPER END#AND YOU CERTAINLY DID NOT DO ALL 6 OF THEM STRAIGHT THROUGH LIKE WE DO NOW#FUCKING I AM GOING TO BURN A GODDAMN BUILDING DOWN WITH THE SHEER POWER OF MY SCREAMING RAGE
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Album Review: 'Unwanted' - Pale Waves
I don’t know why I bother reviewing Pale Waves’ albums at this point.
Their latest, Unwanted, sounds almost the same as 2021’s Who Am I?, like a pastiche or even an outright facsimile of every pop punk and female rock record of the 2000s, only soaked in more distortion.
The title track fuses early-era Avril with the snarling riffs of Sum 41, which is super hilarious in hindsight. ‘Clean’ and ‘Act My Age’ Sound like tracks straight of Michelle Branch’s The Spirit Room. I know Gen Z has really come to love that album as of late, but why can’t they give her other record, 2003’s Hotel Paper, a spin as well? That has some pretty good tracks on it (‘Are You Happy Now?’ ‘Desperately’?)
Lavigne’s influence, of course, still looms heavy over the British band. It’s frightening just how much frontwoman Heather Baron-Gracie sounds like the Canadian icon, right down the yodel-like wailing and vocal cracks, like she followed a step-by-step tutorial on YouTube.
Pale Waves have also gone through a Paramorification of sorts, building tracks like ‘Lies’ and ‘Jealousy’ around hi-energy power pop riffs, strong, raspy vocals and scream-along choruses.
But Riot! this is not. Baron-Gracie's songwriting is still as generic as ever, relying on the same cliched platitudes and teenage angst despite nearing 30. There are only so many times and in so many ways that the frontwoman can tell us that someone she thought she loved sucks/is mean/is a narcissist/that she can’t live without them.
‘Jealousy,’ meanwhile, sort of clashes with her well-established feminist ethos. While tracks like ‘You Don’t Own Me’ and ‘Tomorrow’ from Who Am I? promoted empowerment and sexual freedom, this number comes off rather pathetic and needy as Baron-Gracie declares: ‘I don't ever wanna know/Who you've been with before/Burn all your old photos/They don't exist anymore,’ the kind of words that would probably get a less popular (or male) artist relentlessly mocked for being a yandere.
Later, she’s hitting rock bottom, standing in the rain and being the joke of the party. And that’s all on the one track! If Baron-Gracie mentions something about hating her hometown, then she’ll truly hit the emo jackpot. One-word titles like ‘Lies,’ ‘Alone,’ ‘Numb,’ ‘Unwanted’ and ‘Jealousy’ are meant to feel dark and edgy, but end up evoking the feel of bad teenage poetry in an old and tattered Hot Topic diary. Even ‘The Hard Way,’ a tender acoustic ode to an anonymous girl’s suicide, feels rather superficial and vague, lacking the emotional punch to truly make its anti-bullying statement work.
That’s not to say the songs are bad, per se – they're ably produced, with occasionally catchy hooks. ‘You’re So Vain’ (not a cover) is a particular standout. The band couldn’t quite decide whether to rip off Avril’s ‘Girlfriend’ or ‘My Happy Ending,’ so they went with both, yet there’s something about the sassy, sugary, nah-nah-nah-like taunting that’s hard to resist. It might be a rip off, but it’s a good one, I guess. And yet, Unwanted is just such a dull and repetitive record, it feels almost impossible to review. What’s the point??
To think Pale Waves had the gall, the guile, the gumption, the sheer audacity to proclaim in a recent interview with Kerrang!: ‘If you try to be someone else, you’re just going to fuck up.’
With all due respect, piss off. You guys listened to Avril’s Let Go once, and now you wanna wear her goddamn skin. Even Olivia Rodrigo isn’t this shameless, and she had to give Hayley Williams a writing credit on ‘good 4 u.’
That album name was just asking for trouble...
- Bianca B.
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X-men Evolution; the great 2021 rewatch liveblog
exactly what it says on the tin, about halfway through the show I had TOO MANY FEELINGS and had to start writing some of them out haha (gets quite gambit & rogue/gambit heavy in the latter half, Because of Who I Am as a Person)
- this is my childhood’s x-men, my formative experience with them, and I’m happy to report that still seems like a good thing. the little eleven year old within me gets to geek out and have a good time with the characters and the surprisingly good animation and writing, adult me gets to CACKLE at regular intervals at the fashion/technology/absolute bonkers hot garbage comic book nonsense they use to justify a storyline every now and then, it’s been a good time
- I was like ‘ah well it is super dated it probably won’t be quite the same now’ and then rogue’s HAIR did the THING in the opening and ‘it’s all coming back to me now’ started playing in the background... the little baby queer in me swooning across time and space
- such a good beast, both his design and the writing, my heart aches for him all the time. he’s just so passionate! about being a teacher! helping young humans learn the stuff they’ll need in life! the most wonderful nerd man, just let good things happen for him
- I’m going to go ahead and assume that rogue’s ‘crush’ on scott is more of a deeply complex psychological process about desiring normalcy and intimacy and trying to figure out if she’s queer and dealing with her emerging sexuality and latching on to the first and best safely unavailable and nonthreatening older boy to project these issues onto rather than actually being a real thing, because I respect her so much as a person and I cannot bring myself to imagine she’s honestly attracted to a man who has POSTERS OF CARS on his bedroom wall. (I’ll give jean a break just because she seems to have a longer deeper history with him that might counteract some of that libido-kill, and also she’s a jock so lol)
like I am very sorry but can u imagine being a teenage girl with any interest in a boy with model cars in his bedroom when gambit’s swanning around being a much, much, much worse choice on almost every possible level but in a teen girl kryptonite kind of way? inconceivable
(I drag scott quite a few times in this and it’s not because I don’t love him, it’s just his tragedy to be the most draggable man in the world)
to be fair by the time gambit shows up that whole Situation has mostly played itself out I suppose but still
- toad’s design is so ineffably brilliant, I can’t quite tell you why but that ugly cute charm has really stuck with me, he’s one of the characters I remembered the best to this day just visually
- poor evan... he truly never had a chance, did he, they just saddled him with the most 90s teen bullshit they could come up with like he’s some kind of ‘what adult writers think teens like’ frankenstein’s monster ;______; it’s not your fault honey
- poor poor POOR storm, she gets one focus episode and they were like ‘we’re going to make an episode so racist -- ‘
I’m still STUNNED at how bad it was, but undeniably I laughed hysterically to the point that my neighbours were probably worried when that dude was earnestly like ‘He [stunningly breathlessly racist caricature of a ‘witch doctor’ guy] has stolen her powers, and he’s going to use them to take over Africa!!!’ fhajsdlfhsakjldfh oh really? tell me more, like how the fUCK this could be on television within my life time fasdlfhsdkjfhsad f just... fahjksdfh
- it’s a testament to gambit’s appeal as a character that his charm can survive what they’ve done with his hair and beard choices in this one fajskfhs regrettable but true I still fuckn LOVE him and in my highly biased yet Correct opinion he should have been around much more. get you a man who manages to stay hot through sheer Vibes even with a bowl cut
- aw scott/jean is kind of sweet in this show even if it’s taking them forEVER to get there, I like it
- it’s very nice of rogue to not mention magneto’s romantic daydreams and nostalgic memories about charles xavier after touching his face that one time... or maybe her brain did her a service and repressed it, there’s some stuff you shouldn’t have to know about your father figure
- the danger room is the very definition of ‘why do we even have that lever’ and I wonder what the fuck prof x does to have enough money to replace everything that gets busted all the time
- I’d say that a lot of the writing holds up surprisingly well! (but some of it is also incredibly inexcusably racist in ways that beggar belief, so... not full marks here) the characters have distinct voices and their arcs are set up and delivered on solidly for the most part, and there’s a lot of love showing through in small moments that are just there to have a funny/interesting thing to say about the characters and how their powers work separately and in combination. listen, sometimes I get so thirsty for like. basic goddamn competency in storytelling, let me have this
- ugggggh why is there captain america in my x-men have I not suffered enough... very very funny when prof x goes ‘sounds like you knew rogers personally’ and logan is like ‘I did ;)’ *all the students ganging up on steve rogers* “did you fuck our teacher, captain america?!”
- fskadfhas WHY are you showing me hot young-ified magneto’s ass fksjahfskj charles is not even here to see it, what a tragic waste erik
- ...I was sort of kidding before but uh I think logan genuinely did fuck captain america (or at least wishes very much that he did lol)
- wanda can have a little watching the world burn. as a treat for the way every single adult in her life has fucking failed her (’aren’t they treating you well here’ professor x she’s in a straightjacket)
- poor rogue tho can you imagine finding out after your biggest crush on a girl yet that she’s your fucking MOM in disguise... I would break out in cold sweat every time I thought about a boob forever after
- well seems like they really just had all that homoerotic rivalry stuff between quicksilver and spyke in their first ep only to never do anything with that again ever?? I mean even without the gay undertone that seems like a dynamic you spent most of an episode setting up writers what the hell haha
- dslhfkasjlh GAMBIT THERE HE IS MY BOY IS ON THE SCENE THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!! I don’t even care about his awful hair situation or the fact that his eyes are wrong here (coloured contact lenses, maybe, for a watsonian explanation? though he’d probably have to get them made special, considering he needs the sclera and the iris covered up in different ways, I’ve seen some comic panels indicating he has been known to?)
(cute little detail: when he shuffles the cards the first time we see him he ends with removing the top card to show the ace of hearts beneath <3 foreshadowing baBEY he’s a... good-ish boy deep down. hey he tries okay shit gets complicated sometimes lol)
- cracking UP at gambit perched cheerily on the edge of a crate dispensing cards in the middle of the battle... he’s like ‘eh it’s a livin’ sfsajkhf remy stop working for supervillains just because you had nothing to do on a thursday afternoon and they said they’d pay you
- I’m guessing magneto must have imposed a strict order of silence on these guys or something because I cannot imagine any other reason for him to shut up, especially once he notices rogue is a QTE (or, far more likely, they hadn’t settled on any voice actors for the new characters until next season haha. it is kind of odd that they’re all keeping up near monastic silence, though, even sabertooth lol)
- WHAT an epic first meeting for us rogue/gambit fans here... first his shadow like there’s fireworks going off behind him lighting him up and then he gives her the fuckn king of hearts and she’s so enchanted by his dumb handsome face she doesn’t even notice it’s about to blow up in her hands and it all happens in heavily meaningful silence afjsdfjashjk no wonder this ship ingrained itself in my hindbrain
yeah look smug while you can remy she’s gonna have you on your knees one day and you’ll be happy about it lol
- god storm is so COOL, everything just fading out of focus when she really gets going... give her more screen time, show!!
- mystique is every person... this person... that person... that bird... that cat... that wolf... I’m not even sure she’s not also me... are you sure she’s not you?
- holy fuck I respect the hell out of the decision to just... blow up the entire status quo in a season ender, I only vaguely remembered that (actually in general I appreciate how good the continuity is -- buildings and places that get damaged in battles need to be repaired or rebuilt, it makes the consequences feel more real even when no one gets seriously hurt. where they get the money to restore scott’s car and logan’s motorbikes every time they go cablooie is still an open question tho lol is it credit card fraud, professor? is it telepathically acquired blackmail???)
- I first watched this when I was nine or so, so it’s a real experience to go from my starry eyed intrigued ‘oh my god... they’re teenagers’ to my horrified adult perspective of ‘oh my god... they’re TEENAGERS D:’
that goes double for the brotherhood boys honestly, I’m here with tears in my eyes like ‘I’m sorry the system has failed you so badly you’re all just a bunch of dumb kids whose caretakers clearly fucked up spectacularly’
like lance is always waiting for mystique to come back because she’s the closest thing he has to a safe parental figure, may we speak about how crushingly depressing that is
- rogue is so ready to throw hands at literally any moment and for that I love and treasure her immensely (I think getting to see her be so surly and unreasonable and sometimes difficult and jealous, like any teenager, meant a lot to me as a kid who was not really allowed to be any of these things, this version of the character has stayed with me so deeply. she holds on so fiercely to her right to feel what she feels and be what she is even when it’s ‘ugly’ or unreasonable, which I think plays in really interestingly with how her powers involve getting invaded by other people’s thoughts and memories to the point of overwhelming her own sense of self and the fact that she clearly has a lot of self-loathing and self-consciousness and confusion about her identity as well. I love her so much)
- oooof this is the ‘the gang experience a microaggression’ episode huh (well more like macroagressions really)
hits a bit different with adult eyes and perspective huh
- hearing jean sound almost like a child when she says ‘that’s so unfair!’ somehow has me like ;______; -- she has to be so adult and responsible all the time, and having her be reduced to the kid she still is and should get to be in front of this awful awful man she could squash like a bug with the flick of a thought... ugh I’m Big Sad (it is funny that jean seemingly plays Every Sport tho djfhaskj)
- MY BOY IS BACK!!! this time with the duster coat and his eyes the right colour, im so happy (too bad about the subdued colour scheme tho; I adore his dumb bright pink getup with my whole heart)
it’s kind of adorable that he takes the time to take the bullies aside and go ‘I know these guys can’t wreck you without getting expelled, but I think you’ll find no law set down by god or man would stop me from doing so whenever I wanted to. so piss off and leave them alone’ lol he’s looking out for them, in his own way
- in this episode: remy lebeau wrangles some kids while looking bored yet mildly amused the whole time. what the fuck does magneto have on you for you to agree to this level of babysitting duty buddy
- fun detail I noticed b/c when I get a fave I hyperfixate: he gave rogue the king of hearts before, but he ‘introduces’ himself to the brotherhood here (lol) with the jack of hearts, probably to symbolize he’s here as someone who works for magneto in this setting and not as his own man? it’s a demotion he’s given himself there, anyway, might be he’s not very pleased about his current position huh
- I like it when rogue and kitty team up, they’re not very effective together but their squabbling is so cute and non-aggressive
- pietro is what draco malfoy would be if I ever found malfoy interesting to watch for even one moment, every time quicksilver talks I’m like ‘what wonderfully insufferable thing is going to come out of your mouth this time you little shit :’)’
- a) why are scott and logan shirtless for this scene? I am not complaining on the logan side of things at least but why and b) I laughed so hard I almost fell off my couch when scott asked logan if he’d ever been in love and he was like ‘once. she was the most beautiful bike I ever saw’ falsdfhaskjfhsakjlfhasklhjfd THE BEST VERSION OF WOLVERINE EVER, ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES
- mystique’s sheer dedication to being a petty bitch is kind of inspirational tbh, almost makes me want to go on a completely bonkers and extra crusade of personal revenge myself
- oooh they’re doing some genuinely cool things with vision/lack of vision in this one (it’s the scott left on his own in the desert without glasses one btw) even visually, dang! I’m so sad this show didn’t get more seasons than it did, honestly, it deserved it
- hell yeah jean wreck her, go get your man with the suspiciously specific clothing damage normally done to female characters
awww :’) okay yeah they’re super sweet, I love the tiny loving animation details like how he leans his head against her and her stroking his hair away from his eyes
- nooo don’t bully evan leave my t0tally r4dical sk8er boy alone :(
- I love the running joke of people fleeing in blind panic only to reveal that what they’re running from is kitty’s cheerful well meaning little face fskfaskh
- scott and jean are already peak married after officially being together for one episode and it’s adorable, and they just stone cold threw logan under the bus, rip wolverine we hardly knew ya
fjasdlfasldfhslajdkfhsadkjlfhsdkjalfhsdakfh h jean establishing herself as the alphabitch of this relationship by throwing her man to the wolves right after dsjfhaskjfhaskjhfsakjdhfaskjhfaskdhfskjahfskdajhf get smarter or get volunteered scott
- ...eyepatch lady is so hot ngl
oh evan went to the place hank used to go to calm down ;________; (honestly he’s kind of won a place in my heart just by being a pretty normal teenage boy haha)
- jesus fucking CHRIST can you imagine being storm having to look her sister in the eye as she tells her ‘I lost your only child, he’s *vague gesture* somewhere in the sewers we think’ this poor woman
- amanda the self admitted monster fucker you are so VALID (I love her and her family’s design so much tho!)
- it’s so cool that even in his human ‘disguise’ kurt’s fingers follow the shape of his actual hand beneath it rather than moving like a five fingered hand, it’s such a lovingly consistent little detail
- magneto and mystique in a breathless race to see who can be the shittiest parent... tune in next week for yet another parental nadir (also some low-poly gambit appearances in this one, for those at home keeping score (me), he’s in the background looking like someone drew him with their eyes closed fakjldfhasd look how they massacred my boy)
- someone please teach the brotherhood boys about consent huh
- jean ‘soccer mom before her time’ grey and her SUV dfhakjlhds :’)
- im sobbing rogue baby girl i’m so sorryyyyyy, this voice actress is so good, my parental instincts suddenly kicked into overdrive hearing the crack in her voice :( (bb me was right tho rogue centric episodes ARE the best episodes. that tension between ‘do I identify witn this character or am I crushing on her?? both???’ now has the fun new addition of ‘oh god oh no you are a baby I want to shield you with my body from everything trying to hurt you’)
- mystique is like ‘so you see despite you telling me you never wanted to see me again I completely disrespected that and posed as a friend your age, manipulated you by offering you the mirage of direly needed emotional intimacy and belonging and added some sprinkles of homoerotic tension to it just to massively worsen your already existing grievous psychosexual trauma and identity issues... out of love’
god go jump in a black hole you fucking monster
- there’s some very interesting and quite subtle subtext about the people she’s morphing into and what that says about her mental state/how it shows off some of her emotional baggage with the rest of the team. it’s like she’s switching between people/powers that fit the purpose as if she’s going through cycles of fight/flight (and then bursts of freeze where she’s herself, which is... so sad)
- this whole episode is hurting my heart but rogue at full power is undeniably epic
- ‘professor x get your goddamn act together and get this poor girl some fucking tHERAPY’ challenge
- SAFE PAPA LOGAN ;_____;
- EYYYYYY opening straight on My Lad, I cannot stop winning!!!!!
fasdfhsad disintegrating the window with a smiley face... remy I do love you more than my heart can bear honestly, hello may we speak about the fact that his urge to be a little shit is so deep and strong it survives mind control (that little breathed out ‘hiah!’ as he vaults the fence too dsakfjsd)
hahaha and he does up the coat fhsalfdsaj
- magneto dismissing other telepaths like ‘puh-lease, your Meaningful Looks have got nothing on my ex-husband’s’
- :’) rogue and kurt sibling timeees
- say what you want but this pyro guy’s got job satisfaction in being a creepy arsonist with a weird recurring horse theme (well at least twice but still weird)
- I love how beast is the kindest man to ever walk the earth but also straight up savage, this man drags people so hard their ancestors wince in their graves
- gambit taking the time to complete the guard’s game of solitaire -- this episode is giving me everything I want. u little disgrace mr lebeau
and THEN he takes the spider out in the most hilariously bonkers way my heart is so FULL
(I love that when magneto moves by he looks startled and has to quickly move his head out of the way to avoid getting kicked in the temple too that’s a fun detail)
I’m so INTO how this sequence shows off that his greatest strength isn’t even his powers (which are pretty straightforward, really, he makes go boom, longer time and bigger thing bigger boom) but that he’s clever and creative and always extremely ready to be the most harebrained-bananapants-extra-in-a-deceptively-laidback-sort-of-way person in the room (I actually have some genuinely Deep Thoughts about how his whole character does a really interesting thing with having the straightforwardly destructive nature of his powers yield to what his nature as a person is, and how using the playing cards play (heh) into it, maybe I’ll write it out some day. just the fact that he could use anything, but he deliberately chose something that adds style and playfulness and corny charm to it and that also limits the damage of the explosions compared to if he habitually used something with more mass... I find it fascinating how much he’s made a story around himself with it and how deeply it shows he does have a good heart, at the end of the day, in almost a metatextual way. he doesn’t want to destroy things or people, he’s at worst (and best lol) a thief.)
- I honestly have literally no memory of white nick fury (which seems so weird now isn’t it funny) in this series from when I was a kid, he clearly did not make an impression on me lol
- mr wolverine ‘assigned canadian at birth’ x-men
- oh man I dig the androgynity of x-23′s outfit (even tho they had to compensate with the long hair, which... kind of doesn’t make sense in-universe but does on a design level because it’s a crucial thing that she’s a female clone of logan so yeah okay fine whatever have your arbitrary gender markers if you must haha)
ooooooh that’s actually really clever, they make her gender gradually more obvious as she unravels through the episode and her outfit changes -- first the mask coming off, and then her jacket opening to show her silhouette more clearly, that’s cool!
- my god what really sets this show apart is how much it invests in little character and relationship moments, it’s just so fucking GOOD! it gives laura looking in on those moments such depth and weight because it’s new to her but established to us as an audience, this is how you make found family devastating people (storm growing bonsai trees is so charming too haha)
- ooof this is honestly quite harrowing
SHE’S SO SMALL COMPARED TO HIM I’M CRYING (at least that part of his genes translated over faslkfsjdh short king, I say this with all the love and support of a fellow short monarch)
- tabitha seems to just be running around doing precisely whatever the fuck she wants and you know what I support her even if she is an asshole her father left her a bunch of trauma and no fucks left to give
- still thrilled about professor x explaining the spider key fuckup to magneto after the fact like ‘magnus you dumb bitch this is why we split up’
- awww kitty has anime and movie posters on her wall and sleeps with a stuffed toy :’)
- remy rogue
🤝
doing completely unnecessary parkour around the brotherhood living room seemingly just for the hell of it... I’m not saying soulmates but fucking soulmates
- fhsadkjlfhsakjldfhsadjkfhsdajkfh just as gambit’s soul-level need to be a little shit survived his bout of mind control, rogue’s deep and urgent desire to kiss gambit full on the mouth survived hers I can’t breathe
she looks so pleased with herself too GOOD FOR YOU GIRL at least get something out of this other than more trauma
also not only the fact that he’s smart enough to figure out what’s going on (though he’s only partially right about who’s behind it. I do so enjoy gambit/mystique deep and sincere antipathy as a constant across all universes tho lmao pure wlw/mlm hostility) but also that he keeps fending her off like he’s not trying to hurt her even though she’s in nigh on unstoppable and invulnerable terminator mode... awww
- gambit having absolutely no patience for wolverine and sabertooth’s bullshit macho-off and consistently being this little biker trio’s one brain cell is adding years to my life with every passing moment
his voice is a little different in these scenes too, a bit softer and less like he’s trying to impress someone, it’s nice
- hank: well I barely recognize any of these (completely made up) ‘ancient egyptian hieroglyphs’ but from what I can make out -- *proceeds to infodump a perfect coherent narrative* fjdhfak
listen this whole thing is such nonsense on so many levels, I’m just turning my brain off so I won’t have to think about it okay, the compulsion to put ancient aliens in egypt haunts us as a culture
- I am CACKLING about gambit in the snow after having to listen to these two chucklefucks ooze testosterone at each other for hours
he started out taking it in good cheer and is now reduced to ‘dieu would both of you just jump off this fUCKING mountain please’
- ah. a little oops-a-daisy there, we seem to have unleashed the apocalypse. please stand by (they really don’t pull their punches with the season cliffhangers in this show haha)
- opening the season on gambit’s merrily grinning face is the easiest way to gain my favour. yes good this season may commence
baby u r my
ANGELLLLLLLL
(he’s so cute here tho haha I think it shows the design isn’t unsalvagable, just get him better hair and stubble more like logan has and you’ve basically got it)
love his exasperated eyeroll when the dude gets spooked (by his eyes? or just the general weirdness?) too
he’s just trying to keep this crazy family of evil mutants together and unmurdered by one another until they’ve managed to avert the end of the world, bless him
- oh NO rogue’s LIP wobbles my hhhhhheart ;____; such a good animation detail to put in
- like... I know kurt is just a sad scared teenager with a lot of shit going on and all the adults are too busy averting the end of the world to help him... but buddy maybe don’t ask your sister to wake her abuser (who forced her to kickstart the end of the world!!!!!) when she feels utterly unsafe even with her statue version around huh
- ...wanda is good and I want only good things for her. and for her dad to be disemboweled for what he did to her both the first time around and when he forced her to forget I mean what
- magneto throwing an epic satelite-slinging tantrum b/c ‘no I am the biggest sexiest strongest mutant of the pack :(’... erik fucking get over yourself
- yes boys absolutely go along with a plan suggested by a dude who looks at you like this
nothing bad can come of this surely asdfkhsa
- lance’s quarter of a braincell always trying to go ‘hey wait, maybe... not do this???’ and it never helps lol
- in this episode: Logan Has A Bad Day
...some very specific bondage positions he’s held in here, I am sure this episode awakened something in someone once upon a time lol
- logan shielding x-23 with his body... im fine it’s okay I’m not crying don’t look at me
- afsdhlsdfjasdlk those sure are some ‘scottish’ accents flsadkjhkdsjahfsd
- scott relieved to finally be able to cede the position of ‘charles xavier’s least favourite son’ to someone else fjsaklfhsajd (poor scott it’s not your fault honey)
supremely cowardly to suggest there is an ex-wife involved rather than charles slutting his way around the british isles back in the day but okay
- kurt with a cold is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. it’s okay kid it’ll get better soon
- ...is there an implication here that professor x is naturally blond. because I am losing my entire little mind about it (i mean he at least has to carry the gene, as does this lady?)
ETA: upon doing some research into this I can indeed confirm that charles xavier does seem to be naturally blond, and after this knowledge I will never be the same
- “listen, dracula” fskdafghasd oh scott you sweet baby angel I love you
- I know jean’s abilities are a bit ‘as strong or as weak as the plot needs right now’ at this point (so you can have the setup for what’s going to happen with them eventually and she’s basically invincible ;____;), and normally I’m cool with it but god I want her to just squash lucas like a little bug
- ewwwww please don’t ever say ‘daddy’ like that again
- ...what the fuck is even going on this episode’s a mess
like okay the split personality thing could be something but the way it’s done... what just happened lol
- MY BOY EVAN IS BACK! with a real glowup too (...though kind of weird how he suddenly looks like a grown man)
- augh scott’s eyes are so pretty oh my god ;__________________________;
- that episode in the first season where evan makes the ‘this is my new family!!’ video is so sad now (also, again, his poor poor parents)
- time for: life affirming road trip with gambit (involuntary) faskljdfhaskjd
stunt therapist remy lebeau
- I mean the way he goes about it is batshit insane and it’s very much secondary to what he’s actually up to but this is the first time rogue’s sounded genuinely hopeful and confident and like herself in like a season <3
- he is disconcertingly pleased about her nearly throwing him off the train, and may I just say I agree it’s so nice to see rogue with her old fire back
- the first time I watched this it was of course dubbed into norwegian, so I had no idea either of these characters were southern lol (though to be fair I probably wouldn’t have had much context for what it meant exactly either, I was like ten at the time and not too interested in america) I seem to dimly remember the norwegian voice actor did a little more of a ‘french’-tinged accent for gambit all over tho haha
- you know what respect where it’s due, pyro dude knows to live his life for the lols and one has to admire his sociopathic dedication to it
interesting that he, too, seems to have fucking hated magneto -- I wonder if the implication here is that he kept all the acolytes in line with blackmail or by keeping something/one hostage? (except sabertooth maybe he’d just have to say ‘you get to fuck shit up and fight wolverine’ and that’d be enough)
- fsdakfhsd he’s so focused on her he doesn’t notice that guy about to hit him fkafhsa
- fuck everything else except whatever the hell these two’ve got going on
- it’s weirdly cathartic to have rogue have a conversation with someone who was not happily adopted as well, I don’t think kurt like. gets it because his parents loved him unconditionally and still do
birds of a feather motherfucker
- fun detail: when the x-men team are on the shore and logan is sniffing around scott is stepping in something and trying to wipe it off his boots in the background
- when he wakes up after passing out from the touch he’s smiling even though she’s standing over him looking like the rage of god outlined by the moon fsajfsa well the last time he passed out like that it was from a kiss, maybe he still has some hopes and dreams in that direction lol (also he recovers from the tumble down the hill first and is checking on her before accidentally brushing her cheek with his hand, which I thought was sweet)
and it was in that moment he knew he fucked up *passes out*
- ‘I can explain’ can u remy. can u
- did it ever even occur to you to just. ask her. to help you. I mean I know it didn’t but like rogue’s always one second away from throwing hands with some bully and is stupidly ride or die, if you’d given her the puppydog eyes she would have crumbled immediately (fair enough I guess this entire episode is telling us he’s not from a background where he has much experience with people just helping him without a price haha)
- his eyes glowing when he’s angry or upset or using a lot of his power is undeniably cool as all hell. I’m just saying it would be Big Sexy if they sort of flickered with light in moments of genuine vulnerability okay
- his coat... his coat is what makes the Silhouette tm and I could not be happier about it
- another parent of the year contestant enters the running lol “hey remy have you ever considered that you’re more of a walking bomb factory than a person? that’s certainly how I think of you hahaha c’mon kid let’s go”
- the running joke of jean luc getting dollar signs in his eyes seeing the other mutant powers and gambit being like ‘nO!!!!’ and pulling him along is amazing haha
- from the way he looks when he touches rogue accidentally and the way he talks to his dad I’m sort of getting the feeling this gambit might actually be a bit younger than he looks?
here too -- idk why but it’s making the ‘wait is he baby???’ alarms go off in my head haha. very early twenties at most.
- and we’ve officially seen him with all the face cards in the heart suit folks! (yes this is the sort of thing my brain notices no I don’t know either)
- poor logan running his ass off this whole episode in a panic and then she’s like ‘nah he’s fine (in several meanings of the word ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ) please put him down’ hfaskfsda
- rogue without makeup!!! her eyes look so naked like this haha <3
- oooh here’s a really interesting thing that tickles my brain a bit in this specific part of the scene where gambit frees his dad -- the part where he’s leaning against the door frame waiting for jean luc, who’s about to suggest using the opportunity to ruin the rival gang from the inside rather than slipping away while they still can
from his expression here he knows what’s about to happen, what jean luc is about to say, and it’s clearly a ‘man who thought he’d lost all hope loses last additional bit of hope he didn’t even know he still had’ sort of situation. he KNOWS what jean luc is like, and it still hurts that he really, honestly can’t give him even this, can’t appreciate that remy’s already done all this shit for him when he extremely didn’t have to, without immediately (no really, it took him less than ten seconds to go there? jesus) demanding more.
remy tells him “I’m just here for you” and jean luc does not understand it. remy seems to be sincere in this motivation -- rogue certainly thinks so, having experienced it second hand and found enough at least emotional merit in it to decide he was worth saving even after all his bullshit (lol a bit of a running theme maybe. I think it’s very telling that after she absorbed mystique she was like ‘what the FUCK you’re a fucking monster’, and after she absorbed gambit she went ‘you did the wrong thing for the right reasons’ after she got over the first wave of outrage)
there’s also what he says as he stands there: “You don’t need me for that”, with the distinct implication that jean luc would only keep him around because he has a use for him and for no other reason -- and then jean luc shamelessly doubles down on that by specifying that it’s not even him he’s got a use for as such, just his powers. that’s some kicking puppies level of deliberately missing the point, it’s almost impressive in how cheerfully mean it is haha
this idea of using people is really important in this episode because remy’s doing basically exactly the same thing to rogue to begin with; it doesn’t really matter to his plan that it’s her that’s with him through this, just what her powers are. (I think it’s p r e t t y solidly implied that he does actually like her a lot outside of that too and maybe there is some comfort in having her around for this, but mostly he’s behind a smokescreen of lies through the whole thing sooo I doubt he’s even aware of it, honestly)
but then it does matter that it’s her when she comes back for him, even after what he did. and unlike jean luc he understands what that means, that she did that for him, and that she didn’t have to. and instead of asking her for more, in return he gives her the thing it’s been established is what he considers the most valuable thing he has; his ‘last card’, the thing he’s credited with keeping him alive many a time, basically. it’s gone from using to mutuality, a tentative place of friendship, and at the end of the day he is a different man than his adoptive father, with a capacity for selflessness and love he lacks. which is of course some of the same stuff going on with rogue and mystique too, except rogue acted from a more fragile and unstable place and did something she regrets, or at least has a LOT of doubts about now, and she found some catharsis in helping someone make a different choice in a similar situation. man there’s some Stuff going on under the surface here haha
(by the way it’s a weirdly... meaningless yet intensely meaningful thing, the gifting of a symbol? of an idea? but he’s putting something very crucial of himself into her hands, is the subtext, and he expects her to understand, which she also does seem to do. at the beginning of the episode he’s proving that he’s seen something true about her -- “You’re such an unhappy girl”, knowing where she comes from, the way she’s mourning her lost confidence and autonomy with her abilities -- and here she’s proving she’s seen something true about him. :’) I wish this show had gone on long enough for this dynamic to progress, it’s really interesting and touching)
- gambit dragging himself up onto dry land seeing someone approaching (to help?!): :D
gambit seeing that it’s logan and the look on his face: D:
- rogue using her powers so confidently and fearlessly in this episode tho!!!!
- *me crying* and then her FAMBILY comes to take her home and he says he’s looking out for her too and kurt still loves her even though they’re having a conflict thing between them and she’s finally able to use her powers without so much fear again and --
- ...did I just watch some baby lesbian love at first sight shit right now???
- okay last two episodes let’s go
- HELL YEAH STORM (I love that she’s like ‘don’t give me a dumb order like that and I won’t have to disobey it’ too sdfjsaj) her voice has such command I’m usually very much not the ‘step on me’ type butttt
- y’know I feel like apocalypse’s main fault across all versions I’ve seen of him is that he’s like an immortal superpowered god king and he’s not even sexy. like at least make him hot if he’s going to be insufferable in every other way
- also callout post for apocalypse: one time he made gambit into the Horseman of Death... and didn’t even make him sexy!!! you were handed remy lebeau, supreme bi disaster slut of the x men universe, and you couldn’t even make his brainwashed superpowered evil side hot?? a beautiful stubbled twunk with glowing red eyes and extremely charming :> face practically delivers himself into your hands and you do that to him???? I mean I’m sure apocalypse did some other bad stuff too but that was the worst one
(comics are so dumb y’all)
- having to watch jean cry is emotional terrorism!! ;___; she has such older sister/mom energy, whenever she gets sad and helpless it hurts
- oh, OH so PROFESSOR X you’ll make into a hunk and ~*strategically*~ rip his clothes to show off a nipple and a flawless pec in a way that makes me extremely uncomfortable because he’s like The Dad??? apocalypse you are rotten to the core this is unforgivable
- so wait wanda never actually gets her real memories back. what the FuCk I hope that was a dropped storyline because they ended the show tragically prematurely rather than like. the plan
- why is spyke calling storm ‘storm’ show that’s his auntie o!! >:(
- as a society we need to acknowledge that apocalypse looks like a fucking clown
- ooooh yeah I have been thinking that this show’s greatest visual weakness so far has been not having a visual way to show telepathy/battles of the minds, but this is a pretty cool way to do it! better late than never
- I’m so happy rogue gets to end this herself, since she was forced into starting it against her will, it’s just nice and neat storytelling
- YEAH FUCKING TELL HER KURT AND ROGUE I AM SO PROUD OF YOU and she has the temerity to look pissed off oh my god
the only valid thing mystique has done in her entire life is be in love with destiny. literally everything else she gets up to is a travesty. like I know objectively she’s hot but my loathing for her stops me from even appreciating it. I do enjoy loathing her tho so please don’t change her haha
(a bit odd to have kurt’s attitude to her swing so much but I’m just going to assume he and rogue had a good long conversation after ‘cajun spice’ and that he understands what’s going on better now)
- this last part is such a cruel tease faskdfhsdaj ‘here are all the cool-ass things we had planned. sucks you never get to see it huh’ im devastated
- magneto without his helmet and playing charmingly with children like charles is going ‘well at least I saved my marriage finally’ fsadkhfjsd (honestly tho I would be super interested in seeing how they’d redeem this magneto because he’s been a real bitch the whole time lol)
there’s an interesting thing here where magneto looks down at wanda as the last thing he does on screen before this epilogue part (yeah I hope it fucking haunts you forever what you did to her erik you absolute piece of hot garbage) and the last thing charles does is look at jean b/c he knows what’s going to happen to her and it breaks his heart... Dramatic Parallells
- just the hint of jean as the phoenix has me in full D:D:D: mode tho maybe I wouldn’t have survived it
- gambit in the last groupshot with his arm around rogue ;^) I mean I’m sure they’re headed for some turns and roundabouts along the way but what’s that thing she says as her wedding vow, that she’ll always find her way back? anyway that got me in my heart
- man I really wish this show had been given more seasons, we were barely even getting warmed up here :’(
#x men evolution#x men#gambit#rogue x gambit#aaah this is like therapy for me... just dumping all my emotions into a tumblr post and then let them go into the ether#I am now wondering if I'm desperate enough to go all the way back to the x-men animated series (which I've never seen before!)#like am I willing to go there for more Contente. time will tell I suppose#happy tag#...this is very long#MAN why can't I channel this dumbass energy into fiction writing I'd get so much DONE
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Ranking Every SPN Season Finale
15) 11.23 Alpha and Omega. Dead last because not only is Chuck and Amara’s conflict defanged with a frankly silly anticlimax, but a lot of runtime is eaten up with establishing Lady Toni getting on a plane. The great weakness of an otherwise very strong season is that none of the awful compromises Sam and Dean and Cas made (especially Sam wrt Lucifer) ended up having relevance at all.
14) 9.23 Do You Believe In Miracles. Cheesy dying dialogue, Metatron hamming it up for way too long, that facepalming “the radio was on the whole! time!” twist, uncertainty as to the motivation of the whole confrontation that ends in Dean’s death. Also, this is the beginning of the end of walking back the beautiful work the rest of s9 established, with Sam saying things like “I lied.” I don’t like Dean’s death here at all, in staging, or conceptually, or thematically.
13) 12.23 All Along The Watchtower. I am basically obliged to put this in C tier because it is quite silly, but frankly, I like it more than its ranking deserves. It has the late season finale sin of cramming in an introduction to next season’s conflict in the middle of wrapping up this season’s—but it’s absolutely hilarious that they brought in multiverse portals. And for Sam and Dean, thank god the portal appeared, because otherwise they had absolutely no plan whatsoever to deal with Lucifer, and they probably would have died gruesomely. High points: Sam discovering Rowena’s death on the phone with Lucifer; the spooky introduction of Jack, the raised stakes with Mary trapped with Lucifer. Lowest point: the utter silly pointlessness of Cas’s death.
12) 10.23 Brother’s Keeper. This is the finale that I have the strongest mixed feelings about. There is a queasy lack of self-awareness in the treacly sentiment when Sam presents family photos as evidence of Dean’s goodness. The excuse of MOC!Dean as not the “real” Dean allows for the reasons behind this confrontation to be elided, even as its themes are echoed again and again. The chilling horror of Sam on his knees in front of Dean the executioner is potent and darkly enjoyable, but the instant redirection into attacking Death prevents any kind of real culmination. I can’t decide if I like this episode or loathe it, but I do think I appreciate it more now, after 14.20 and 15.17, than I did when it aired.
11) 7.23 Survival of the Fittest. We’re on to B-tier! There’s nothing significantly wrong with 7.23. Meg crashes the Impala through a glass sign, so that’s fun. Kevin’s there. There’s action, there’s some cool stakes for next season established, Sam is left alone, which I love. The main sin here is just that most of it is fairly forgettable, because the strongest part of s7 was always the psychological drama of the Winchesters’ disintegration and isolation, not the physical conflict with Leviathans.
10) 14.20 Moriah. Lots of my points about 10.23 apply here, but Moriah is a much better episode, both because there is actual conflict of opinion, and because there is a lot more built-in uncertainty about Jack’s fate than Sam’s. Jack and Dean are onboard with Jack’s murder, just as Sam and Dean were agreed on Sam’s death in 10.23, but this time Cas is staunchly against it, and Sam is on the fence, torn as to how to intervene. So it’s much better drama. But then the crux of the issue gets defanged by Chuck’s reveal. Great s15 setup, but kicks the 14.17-14.19 build down the road. Extra points for Sam shooting God.
9) 13.23 Let the Good Times Roll. I fucking love the 13.21-13.23 arc. The only thing preventing 13.23 from being A-tier are some wholly avoidable mistakes. The staging is silly; a face-palming amount of time was wasted on Maggie; the wires were a deeply regrettable choice. But even with all that, what we got was great, actually! The Sam-Jack-Lucifer church custody battle is still my favorite goddamn thing. Dean saying yes to Michael was both his only smart move and a devastating sacrifice. The character dynamics here are so JUICY. 13.21-14.01 is, IMO, one of the most fertile grounds for fic and speculation in the entire show.
8) 2.22 All Hell Breaks Loose, Part Two. Now we’re into finales that are fantastic without reservation. Off the devastation of Sam’s death comes Dean’s iconic deal. The actual confrontation in the graveyard is good too, though it’s second to the way we’re all reeling from part one. Azazel dies, Sam and Dean are bloodied and facing down new stakes. The only thing I dislike about this episode is John’s cameo.
7) 1.22 Devil’s Trap. This is the episode that ups the ante! Azazel in John, and Dean, and Sam, and the delicious family dynamic here; the stakes are so personal, and it’s a great examination what each of them is willing to pay for their quest: an electrifying taste of what’s to come. And the music, and the sheer fucking balls of just, crashing a goddamn truck into your main characters at the end of the first season. Nice.
6) 3.16 No Rest for the Wicked. Lilith is delightfully evil. We’re on tenterhooks for Sam to save Dean, we’re narratively primed to expect him to pull off something amazing, a last-minute miracle. But—nope! Sorry! Dean gets graphically ripped apart onscreen and now he’s being tortured in Hell! Shocking and bold, and a crucial turning point in the series.
5) 4.22 Lucifer Rising. Fresh off 4.21 comes an excellent culmination of season 4′s devastation. The reveals from both Ruby and the angels, Sam draining the possessed nurse, Cas at last choosing to betray Heaven, and the final arrival of Lucifer: it all just works, really well.
4) 15.20 Carry On. Part of the reason I’m ranking this so highly might be spite. But goddammit, bad wig and worse Carry On cover aside, this is a good episode, and a really, really good series finale! The deliberate anticlimax of Dean’s death, the quiet strength in Sam’s grief, the untroubled, unrushed pacing of Sam’s recovery and aging, and Dean’s drive. Supernatural said Sam Rights, and I wept like a tiny little baby.
3) 6.22 The Man Who Knew Too Much. Adventures in Sam’s mind! Cas and Crowley and Raphael and the double cross! The taste of cosmic horror! The end of season 6 and beginning of season 7, as Sam and Dean cope simultaneously with Sam’s psychological fallout and the consequences of their most powerful ally going off the rails, is fantastic. I love the literalism and the symbolism of Sam’s reintegration: this is an unapologetically Sam episode (as are the other top four, come to think of it).
2) 8.23 Sacrifice. Sam’s heartbreaking deterioration in the church and Crowley’s disintegration are an electrifying climax to the trials. Dean and Sam’s final exchange is a breathtaking combination of raw emotion and delirium and a fascinating guilt trip. It’s a visually and conceptually stunning episode: the angels fall burning against a night sky; Sam surrenders the trials and collapses, dying.
1) 5.22 Swan Song. You knew this would be number one, I knew this would be number one, we all knew this would be number one. It’s iconic for a reason. Sam and Lucifer talking through a mirror; the loss of all hope and the sky-high stakes. Stull Cemetery is the defining moment of so, so much of the rest of the series. Dean’s loyalty gives Sam the strength he needs to bury himself alive forever with his worst nightmare, and it saves the world, and it’s the highest cost either of them has ever paid.
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Let it Go (Ch. 1 of ?)
Pairings: platonic avengers team x reader, potential background loki x reader
Words: 1800
Genre/Ratings: -WARNINGS- there will be an (unsuccessful) suicide attempt by reader- chapter will be explicitly marked in advance. Drug (pills) and alcohol abuse, lots of negativity and self loathing. There will be an arc, but said arc is going to start in the eleventh circle of hell and inch up from there.
Summary: *not far enough into this one to give an accurate summary, so this’ll have to be updated eventually. enjoy for now!*
If I see another ad for Frozen, I might go homicidal.
I pass at least five of them as I work through rush-hour Manhattan at a snail’s pace. Smash Hit! Instant Classic! #1 Movie in the World! Awesome. Fantastic. Happy for you, Disney. Now please, dear god, get it the fuck out of my face.
I jerk away from narrowly shoulder-checking a businessman hustling down the sidewalk, speaking rapid-fire into the phone glued to his ear. It’s like a very, very fucked up dream; everyone in the world is in on the joke, and I just didn’t get the invite. Maybe they were spying on me. Sure, it could’ve been inspired by a fairytale, but who knows? I could sue. Demand fifty percent of the profits for copyright infringement. That’d be more than enough to set me up with a cabin in Alaska, somewhere all I’d have to worry about is making friends with the polar bears.
On the subway, I notice someone has Let it Go blaring from their earbuds. No less than three little girls are wearing something blue and covered in glitter. One has a cheap blonde plait clipped into her hair, accented by a snowflake charm dangling from the end. I suppress the urge to rip it off her head.
It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, I want to say. It’s not Disney-dreamy like the mouse has made it out to be, living in a palace and making magical snowmen and singing power ballads about self-acceptance and overcoming your demons. In the real world, you quell those demons with a fistful of benzodiazepines, because if you don’t, something like a car alarm or a slammed door will make spikes of ice splinter through the floor around you. It’s constantly wearing three hoodies at a time, so that way if a stranger on the seat next to you brushes your arm, they don’t immediately get third-degree frostbite. It’s getting a papercut and watching the blood freeze on the tip of your finger, then melt back to liquid when you break it off and toss it away. It’s getting hospitalized when an inner-city charity doctor takes your temperature before you can object and your body temperature is barely higher than freezing, so they pump you full of warm saline and cover you in foil blankets and all that heat makes you sick, so you have to rip the IV out of your arm and walk yourself back to your apartment in your hospital gown while dodging orderlies and strange looks from passerby at 2 AM.
The kid and her parents get off at the next stop. The subway clicks along. I try to make myself smaller as the car fills up with more people.
Maybe if they’d had Xanax in Arendelle, Elsa wouldn’t have had to deal with all that “conceal, don’t feel” bullshit. She wouldn’t be able to feel anything with all the pills and booze she’d be mainlining. Take it from me, babe, it’s a lot easier to drug those demons away. Much more effective than a song.
Something in me feels a weird flare of pride for handling this… whatever the hell it is better than a fictional cartoon princess. Then I want to laugh, because goddamn, my life is pathetic.
My meeting spot is in a back alley near Bryant Park. Some NYU kid is pawning his Klonopin for party cash, I guess. I think if you’re rich enough to be a frat boy at NYU you probably don’t need the extra fifty from your prescriptions, but whatever. I don’t have a ton of other avenues at this point.
I scan the neon bottle, then shake it open and count the pills inside. “These are only a half milligram? Fifteen.”
“Dude, we said forty.”
“Yeah, for a milligram pill. These will barely last me a week.”
“Twenty.”
“Fine.”
I don’t think the universe agrees with my choices.
The sky splits open with a shriek that balances the world on the edge of a knife. One heartbeat. Two. He and I both look up at the clear blue, unsure. Between the skyline, I see something- somethings- begin pouring from a split in the universe, ugly and black and hungry.
I wrench the bottle from the kid’s hands and run.
Run, run, run, don’t look up, don’t look back, oh jesus what the FUCK IS THIS- Midtown is a nightmare. Not from Friday traffic this time. People are scrambling, screaming and crying, trying to flee the scene. An entire side of a building gets shaved off and falls to the ground like an iceberg. A gas line broke somewhere because everything is hazy with fumes and starts shimmering rainbow colors. I round a corner, cursing and trying to keep my ratty converse on my feet as I dodge rubble and ash- don’t look up don’t look up don’t look up. I can see my breath starting to crystallize around me as my anxiety spikes, and I try to force it down. Don’t think about it. Now is so not the time for that.
In the middle of the street, six brightly clad superheroes stand with grim but determined looks on their faces. There’s Tony Stark in his mechanical suit, Captain America brandishing his shield. The star stands out like a beacon in the smoke. Cool, coolcoolcool, they’ve got this, right? They’ve totally got this. Everything is going to be fine. Everything is going to befineohholyshitthat’sabigalien-
I try to use an overturned car as cover. Dart to one, breathe, press my back to steel and try to shake my body back from shock, wait for a moment of silence between the chaos- run to the next pile of rubble. My footprints are outlined in frost on the cracked pavement, clean white against the ash raining from the sky. As I slam myself up against another car, heaving, I have a prime few of Captain-freaking-America bashing three ugly aliens in the face with his shield, battering them to the ground. He stops for a moment to flex his fingers, wipe some of the grime from his face.
He doesn’t see the alien rushing him from behind, mouth open and yawning in some sort of hideous grin, poised to shove a glowing blue gun against the Captain’s muscly back.
I don’t think. My feet move without my telling them to. I can taste the ash as I dart to the middle of the street, as close as I dare. The air around me is impossibly frigid. I’m not controlling anything at this point, but I can deal with that later. Hopefully.
“DUCK!” I scream as loud as I possibly can over the sound of metal and roaring monsters.
His eyes snap up to meet mine. He heard me, somehow, and then he actually heeds a random girl standing amidst the carnage and hits the deck so fast I can hear the whiplash. It’s hot enough to make my skin boil, but if I stretch my hand out and pull, I can feel something begin to crystallize in my waiting palm-
Fissures crack open in the concrete beneath me. In my hand, a thin lance of ice extends to a deadly point, too weighty for its slim frame, and while I should have all the grace and skill of an alcoholic drug addict, my aim is good enough that the alien now has an unforgiving pole of ice sticking through its breastbone. Frost creeps from the hole in its chest, discoloring its sickly black armor to a grey tint. For a moment, it's suspended in time, unmoving- then gravity takes hold and with one last nightmarish shriek it crumples to the ground in a heap.
Huh. Whaddya know. I flex my fingers, breathing hard. Take that, Elsa. Screw the power of love, I just single-handedly saved a national icon.
Said icon is picking himself up off the ground, a new layer of dust coating the front of his uniform. He looks behind him, at the ugly corpse and the ice that inexplicably hasn’t started to melt in the city’s heat. Then his eyes are on me, hard and curious.
Oh. Fuck.
Instinctively, I pull my hood up further over my head, hopefully obscuring more of my face than before. What did he see? Could he memorize my face? He knows I’m a freak show, that’s for sure. Fuck. My brain kicks in and I run, skidding over broken pavement and letting the sheer terror of a crumbling New York fuel my steps. Either we’ll all be dead by the end of this, or the strange girl with ice coming from her hands will be little more than a hazy memory after all this is said and done. I hope. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it- cold prickles on the back of my neck and pushes me back towards being just another face in the crowd.
There are over a dozen police blockades to try and control the battlefield, and between them and the rubble raining from the heavens, it takes me what feels like hours to crawl back to my underside of the city. It’s punctuated by the grinding of metal and shattering of glass and sickening cracks of lightning from Midtown, making me flinch and wring my hands deep into my sweatshirts to keep them busy with something other than frosting the ground over. Don’t think about it.
I shove my shoulder into the door, forcing it open, then close it the same way from the opposite side. I flick the locks closed, secure the ball and chains. Each one is encased in frost by the time I’m done, and the doorjamb is clogged with ice. I’m suddenly irrationally thankful that there’s only one window in the apartment. It’s a stupid comfort- those things were leveling skyscrapers, a ratty building like this would be flattened in an instant-
I wrench open the nearest drawer, sending the contents rolling. Bottles clack against each other; pills rattling against the plastic. It’s the most comforting thing I’ve heard all day. I pull one out at random, pop the lid, down it dry. In the back of my mind, the large green monster roars. I shudder and swallow another, this time chasing it with swigs from the obscenely large bottle of booze on the desk. It burns all the way down in the best way, chasing the little orange tablets and promising the sweet release of nothing.
That should last a day. Maybe more. I fall into the bed, already feeling the combo tug at my system, making me heavy and slow. Maybe Manhattan will still be standing when I wake up. Or better yet, Manhattan will still be standing, but I won’t. I’ve never been that lucky, but it never hurts to hope.
#marvel fic#marvel fanfiction#avengers fic#avengers fanfiction#avengers x y/n#avengers x oc#loki x reader#reader insert#Steve Rogers#natasha romanov#tony stark#bruce banner#Thor Odinson#clint barton#Loki Laufeyson#angst#avengers x reader
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Title: Faults of the Mind
Synopsis: Having escaped the perils of the Dark Kingdom, Rapunzel finally returns home—but all is not well in the Kingdom of Corona, and the black rocks are quickly becoming the least of her troubles. Meanwhile, over a thousand miles away, Varian struggles with new powers and his own conscience.
The labyrinth has fallen into rubble. A great evil stirs in the world beyond. The Dark Kingdom may be behind them, but the true journey is just beginning—and neither Rapunzel nor Varian can survive it on their own.
Warnings for: blood, violence, and death (NOT any of main characters), injury, some cursing, references to past character injuries, PTSD symptoms and the lingering effects of trauma. If there’s anything you think I missed, please let me know and I’ll add it on here.
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AO3 version is here.
Arc I: Labyrinths of the Heart can be found here!
Previous chapters are here.
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Chapter III: The Puppet
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As the stranger danced to silence, the Sun opened her mouth and began to sing.
It was a song unlike any other, a melody created on a whim for this lovely woman and her lonely dance. For a single moment the song hung in the wind as the woman twirled upon the seas; for a single moment they were in harmony, and all the world held its breath at the sight.
Then the stranger realized what had happened, and froze upon the raging waters. At last, for the first time, she saw the Sun. Her dance stilled; the song, too, fell silent. In an instant their eyes met.
The Sun reacted first, an apology rising to her lips—but it was too late. The stranger, frightened by her audience and her heart moved by the beautiful song she had so briefly witnessed, was overwhelmed and fled. The Sun reached out and cried for the stranger to stop, but already the woman had vanished away into the dark, gone as if she had never been.
And so it was that the beautiful Sun met the lovely Moon, and chased her away…
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For the second time in under a day, Varian makes his way through the fields back to Port Caul.
It’s early, still, and the whole world reflects it: dew and frost weighing heavy on the long grass of the fields, the sky bright with the pale colors of sunrise. The clouds above, wispy and thin, are lined with a delicate gold; the breeze still carries the heavy chill of the midnight ice. Despite the misty night, the ground is frozen solid from frost. With each step, the iced greenery crunches underneath his worn boots.
Still struggling to wake up, Varian pulls the collar of his coat closer and shivers. The fields outside of Port Caul are endless and sprawling, and in the light of the rising dawn, near breathtaking. The far-off silhouette of the city is gilded by the sunrise, the blue buildings shining soft with a pearly glow in the creeping dawn. Despite the bite of cold and the frosted edges, there is something soft about it all—a winter tempered by coming spring, ice thawed to a chill, something brisk and fresh and clean.
It doesn’t make it any less fucking cold, though.
They must make quite a sight, the two of them, to any strangers who see them: the woman, Yasmin, older and stern, with short dark curls and a confident stride—and a boy, Varian himself, tripping behind her, ragged and worn and trying desperately to keep up.
“How much farther?”
To say Varian is exhausted is a gross understatement. He is bone-cold tired. Numb to the world. A walking dead in the making. His late night has done him no favors, and this long walk back through the twists and turns of Port Caul’s farmlands drains what little remaining energy he has. His mouth is dry and sickly, his head stuffed with cotton, his limbs heavy and shaking with fever chills. The winter sun burns down on the back of his neck, the sunshine bright and as piercing as ice. Before him the wide expanse of the world unfurls at his feet, the fields of the Port Caul countryside near infinite to his eyes. Every time he looks to the horizon, to that distant shadow of the city proper, he feels even more tired than before.
Farther ahead, Yasmin walks with sure strides, making a confident pace through the overgrown paths. Despite her age and small size, she is damnably spry. Varian, still lagging behind despite all his best efforts, squints blankly in the sun and hurries to keep up. It’s ridiculous. He’s barely a head shorter than her, so how does she keep getting so far ahead?
“Hello?” he tries, when she doesn’t answer right away. The exhaustion frays his already thin temper; his fatigue makes him bold. “…Are you ignoring me?” he asks, and frowns as he says it. He’s not sure whether to be annoyed at that or not.
Yasmin, still a few paces ahead, heaves a very pointed and visible sigh.
“We’ve been walking for hours,” Varian points out, refusing to be cowed. He’s tired, she’s a jerk, and he does not care about what she thinks of him. Not at all. Nope. He’ll be as rude and spiteful as he wants to be, damn it. “Seriously, how much farther?”
Yasmin gives another heavy sigh. “Until we reach the city.”
“…Seriously?”
“What, was that not funny? I thought moody teenagers were all about sarcasm.” Yasmin stamps the ground with her foot, crushing stray grasses flat. She doesn’t even bother looking back at him. “We will get there when we get there, boy, now stop asking and start walking. Bah, these roads are awful…”
Varian gives the distant horizon a desperate look. It is so far. “Why couldn’t we take a cart?”
“Because I do not own one, clearly.” Yasmin shakes her head. “Walking is good for you.”
“You sound like Adira.”
“Vexing though she may be at times, she is, unfortunately, also often right.” Yasmin pinches at the brow of her nose. “…We will reach the city in another half-hour or so, if we make good pace. May you cease pestering me now?”
Considering the fact they’ve already been walking for about two hours, Varian thinks he deserves to be put-out by that—but he bites back the rude comment rising on his tongue before it can slip free, and takes a moment to breathe. She’s awful, but he’s better than this—or, well, he’s trying to be—so Varian settles for a dark scowl at her back, instead.
Still. He is so bored with walking. He turns his scowl to the ground and kicks a pebble on the road with all his might, smacking it with all the anger and force he can muster. The pebble rolls three measly times and then gets caught in the grass. It’s barely moved an inch.
Typical.
Varian scowls harder.
He misses Ruddiger. He wishes he’d thought to run up and wake the raccoon before he left, but the rapid exit and Yasmin’s swiftly retreating figure had panicked him, and he hadn’t realized he’d left alone until they were already ten minutes down the road. Now Varian is stuck here with a stranger he doesn’t know and doesn’t like—with no raccoon to keep him company.
The day has only just started, and Varian is already certain it’s going to be a miserable one.
Which sucks, because it’s looking to be a lovely day—not a glimpse of clouds on the horizon, a day so blinding and bright it nearly hurts to look at. The sheer shine of the morning is so intense he almost expects a summer heat to match it, but in contrast the wind blows cold, bitingly numb against his exposed face. The grasses sway and bend in the breeze, the fields awash in dark green and winter blue, frost scalding the pebbled wagon road.
In any other circumstance, probably, the view would be beautiful. But Varian’s head is aching and his eyes are sore from lack of sleep, and so instead of appreciating the sight he rubs his bare hands together and shoves them in his sleeves, and thinks only of how goddamn grateful he is that he didn’t forget his coat, too, along with his raccoon.
“Chin up, boy,” says Yasmin, at his silence. “We will be there before you know it.”
Varian directs his bleary frown to her back. Easy for her to say. She barely looks bothered by the cold at all—is it that she’s used to it, Varian wonders, or is it that she’s just pretending to be unaffected to annoy him more? He… really wouldn’t put it past her.
Still, though, Varian knows better to speak those thoughts out loud. “Why are we even going to the market?” he asks, instead, curious despite himself. “And why do I have to be there?”
Yasmin doesn’t answer right away. Like Varian, she is dressed for the cold, in a long trench coat buttoned up to her neck and a heavy dress lined with fur; she tucks her hands in her sleeves and takes a moment to fuss over the fabric. “That is a rather layered question. I am not sure where to start. Let us say… Adira has somehow convinced me to help. Doubtless this is not what she meant, but she is paying me to do my job, not to listen to her. My help takes many forms. For Adira, it is information. For you?” She shrugs. “Market.”
“I don’t need help,” Varian snaps.
“Nonsense child. Who on earth taught you that silly lie? Everyone needs help. Do not take it personally—I still do not like you. This is not pity, or whatever your knotted mind has conspired. This is simply what I do. If it helps, you may consider my help as part of my job to you.”
…Varian doesn’t even know where to begin responding to that. “That’s…” He throws up his hands. “That doesn’t make sense! What even is your job?”
He gets another side-eye for that one. Yasmin scowls at him, her eyebrows drawn low and twisted. “…Let me guess. Adira did not mention that either?”
He stares at her. “No.” Obviously.
“Bah, of course she didn’t. Why do I bother?” Yasmin slows a bit, letting Varian catch up, and glances down at him. “I am… I am not sure how to explain this. I suppose I am something of a dealer of information, and of rare goods. I know many things, and can find a great many more things, and for the right prices I can be encouraged to share them.”
Varian frowns at her, mind whirling. “Like, an information broker? Or a spy?”
“Hm. You make it sound so ill-advised. But yes, both, that is about right.”
“…Isn’t that illegal?”
Yasmin blinks at him, slow and deliberate. “Yes,” she says. “But so says the wanted criminal.”
Varian turns red, and for a moment he thinks to argue—it’s not like he actively chose to become a criminal—except, well, maybe, yes he had, but…
He gives up. There’s nothing he can truly say against that, though he thinks he is starting to understand Yasmin a little better now. He doesn’t know much about spies or information dealers, just that they exist, but he imagines they tend to be pretty secretive. And if Varian really is a known wanted criminal to the rest of the world…
He turns his head away, not wanting to follow that train of thought any longer. “Is Ella, too—?”
“No.” Yasmin’s voice is curt and cold, shutting down the question before he can finish. “Ella is… she is not involved in my work, though she knows of it. She is a singer, actually. Perfectly legal.” For the first time, something of a smile touches her lips. “My dear wife can hold quite the tune.”
Well, okay. But something she’s said stands out to him. Varian frowns. “How do you know Adira, then?”
“Boy, for Moon’s sake. You have traveled with her for months. What about that woman makes you think she cares one lick for legality?”
Varian briefly flashes back to the last six months. Jumping carts, breaking into caravans, sneaking into cities guarded by soldiers who weren’t convinced by Adira’s sheer force of authority… yeah, no, stupid question. “Is that how you met her? Breaking the law?”
Yasmin snorts. “Nothing so grand. I met Adira through other circumstances.”
“What other circumstances?”
“Tsk. Question after question with you, isn’t it? Yet rarely any answers in return. This is why I despise scientists.” She rolls back her arm, an absent-minded stretch. “It is none of your business, frankly.”
His head drops. “I was just curious,” Varian mumbles, and at his side, his fists clench. He feels a little shamed. It probably was too rude a question, but—this is more than Adira has ever told him. For all of Yasmin’s prickly answers, they are answers.
Yasmin is quiet for a long moment. Then she mutters something, the words too low for Varian to catch, and raises her voice for him to hear. “We were… Adira and I came from a similar place, you could say. Running from the same thing. I always thought her plans foolish, but… well. What are friends for, if not to encourage foolish ideas?” Yasmin glances away. “Though I am beginning to regret that. I have been too accommodating, I think. But that is how I know her. I find her whatever strange item or legend she needs, and in return she keeps me updated on the comings-and-goings of whatever country she’s tromped through this time.”
“Oh.” Varian’s mind whirls, putting together the slim pieces he’d eavesdropped from Adira’s conversation with Yasmin just last night. Their talk of a kingdom… Adira’s frustration. Yasmin, her voice low, to Adira: The kingdom died twenty years ago for me and Ella, though I see for you the death is recent.
He’d known Adira was from the Dark Kingdom—it wasn’t exactly hard to guess, what with that stupid symbol on her hand and all—but for the first time, Varian looks at Yasmin and tries to imagine her there too. Yasmin, and Ella, and their little house in the fields… he thinks of the labyrinth, and the ruins he and Rapunzel found in the depths, and still cannot fathom it. Even for someone as prickly as Yasmin or Adira, it’s hard to picture anyone once calling such a desolate place home.
Unaware of his thoughts, Yasmin’s voice lowers to a mutter. “Of course, this arrangement works much better when she bothers to stay in touch. A little head’s up, a small warning, hello, Yasmin, sorry for the year-long absence, just letting you know I am not dead, and also I am forever grateful for your friendship and the many favors you do for me—” She cuts herself off and clicks her tongue. “Ah, never mind. But that is how it goes. In the end you are just another odd job she has thrown my way.”
Varian hums, distant, and the conversation drops into silence. He lowers his eyes and watches his feet, step after step after step. It’s easier than looking at the horizon. The sheer distance to the city is just starting to depress him.
“…That reminds me, actually,” Yasmin says, apropos of nothing. “I forgot to ask her, and Adira did not mention it—did she say anything to you about a flute, boy?”
Varian looks up, his face scrunching in confusion. “Um… what?”
“A flute.” Yasmin gestures, miming an object far longer than any instrument has a right to be. “Grand old thing, carved from amber, looks quite pretty in sunlight? Lovely music, curved a bit like a hook, so big it is frankly ridiculous? Loaded with religious importance? Took me months to find and secure? Yes? No?”
Varian stares at her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he admits.
Yasmin’s lips thin. “I see.”
There is a beat of silence.
“If that woman has left my priceless religious artifact in that goddamn kingdom, I am going to strangle her with her sash,” says Yasmin, thoughtfully, and then she turns back around and marches on down the road without another word.
Varian hurries to catch up. Despite himself, and despite the wariness Yasmin still inspires, he finds his lips almost twitching in a smile, a vague sense of relief. It’s good to know he’s not the only one Adira drives bonkers.
…He’s probably being a bit unfair to her, Varian thinks, with sudden flash of guilt. Adira isn’t that bad. She… she has helped him, in a way. Maybe not the way Varian wanted, or the way he expected, but she has. She’s tried to teach him fighting. She’s kept him clothed and fed and moving in these past six months. He thinks he should maybe thank her, at least for that. As frustrated as he is, Varian is—here. He’s here.
That simple fact means more, now, than it ever did before. After the labyrinth, Varian hadn’t… he hadn’t known what to do. Where to go. What next, or where to now, or even if he wanted that. He’d been free, but he’d been lost, too—and maybe Adira hasn’t given him the direction he wanted, but she has at least gotten him moving.
Varian’s smile fades at this thought. He looks down at his feet, throat suddenly tight. He remembers the way he snapped at Adira, barely a day ago, and squeezes his eyes shut. A headache pulses behind his temple. He—he should apologize, probably. Maybe. He doesn’t think he can, now, but maybe later… maybe if she apologizes first…
His thoughts drift. The wind picks up, a chill striking through him. Varian shivers under the layers of his coat and yawns into his elbow. He feels tired, worn, too aware for the exhaustion dragging at his bones—like the wind itself is all eyes, watching and waiting, boring into the back of his skull.
One step, then another, then again. The wind howls in his ears. The shadows stretch and warp in the sunlight. His heartbeat feels very loud, all of a sudden—like the droning thud of the drums of war, pounding like marching feet against his skull.
All at once, a sudden dread overcomes him. A chill that strikes down to his bones. Each step sends his stomach plummeting. His ears ring. He feels as if ice has been dumped down his back, and his breathing has gone shallow. His heartbeat is rapid-fire, faster than a bird’s.
Don’t go.
He steps toward the city. He moves through the fields. He walks.
Don’t go there.
His mouth is dry. His vision swims. With each step, his heart beats out of tune. Varian looks up in the direction of Port Caul, and thinks, for one blinding moment of clarity: You don’t want to be here.
“Are you alright?”
He startles, near-jumping out of his skin. Yasmin is frowning at him. She stands silhouetted against the sunrise, the shadows cast long and deep across her face. Her brow is furrowed. She is looking down at his right hand.
Varian follows her gaze. His hand is—he’s holding it, he realizes, he’s gripping it tight in a vice, his thumb digging into the soft flesh of his palm as if to burrow beneath the skin. It hurts. It hurts with a dull, solid ache, like pressing on a bruise.
As soon as he realizes this, Varian snaps his hand away. His veins feel tight and cold, stone under his skin. He blinks fast. “W-what?”
“Does your hand hurt?” Yasmin almost looks concerned, in her own irritated way. “This is the second time I have seen you do that. Is that why you cannot sleep?’
“That’s—I—I don’t know.” He hadn’t even realized he was doing it. Varian hunches under the attention, and hides his hand behind his back. But even as he does it, his skin crawls, his right palm itching terribly. He has to fight not to claw at his skin. “How did you—wait, why does it matter if I can’t sleep?”
In the distance, the city looms closer than before—they are practically upon the city gates. The wall towers over him, a cold shadow, and beside them a horse and cart rumbles by through the wrought iron gates. The road, beneath his feet, has turned from soft crushed grass to actual paved stone. Varian’s head spins. How long had he blanked out for?
Yasmin scans him up and down, her brow knotted. “That is why we are here, of course,” she says, at last, looking a little reluctant at the shift in subject. “You said to me this morning you have issues with sleep, and I have little remedies for such in my house… so to the market we go.” Her lips press—but then she seems to let it go, shaking her head with a weary breath. “Well. If not an injury, then what is it? Can you not fall asleep, or is it that you cannot stay asleep?”
Varian scowls at the dirt path and stubbornly does not think of dark hallways and darker rooms, the moonlight streaming through the window. “Why does it matter?”
“I have agreed to help you, but I cannot help if I do not know what is wrong.” Yasmin is scowling, but it is a distant thing, not directed at him. She looks vaguely frustrated. “I do not like you, I have made no secret of it; you dislike me too, and you have made no secret of that, either. This is fine. We do not have to like each other. But I have tried to be honest with you, thus far—so please, do me the favor of being honest with me.”
She is frank, she is annoying, she is a bladed voice and angry words—but she has told him more in one conversation than Adira has in months. And it is this honesty that makes Varian duck his head, but it is this truth that finally makes him admit it: for all that he dislikes her, Varian is terrified of the idea of continuing to face the dark alone.
Still. It is so hard to admit it, to put voice to the fears inside him. His words come out a teeth-clenched whisper. “It’s—it’s just—” He doesn’t know how to say it. “It’s just too dark.”
It’s shameful, almost. Childish, certainly. Varian is afraid of many things, but the dark, oddly, has never been one of them. He has always felt so secure in the science of the world that the monsters of myth had been dismissed as easy as breathing. And he still feels that certainty. He still feels utterly secure in the fact there is nothing in the closet, nothing under the bed. It’s just—
It’s just too dark, now.
It’s just too much.
“I see,” Yasmin says. Her voice is quiet too. Another cart rumbles by them, the creak of the wheels almost deafening in the silence. The murmur of voices and the rasp of the sea breeze drifts in from the city gates. Varian looks away from Yasmin and up at the gate, and shivers in the shadow. The whisper comes back to him again. Turn back. Go away. It’s not safe here.
“I see,” Yasmin repeats, and her voice breaks Varian from the spell. “Well then. Just to be sure—you are an alchemist, yes?”
Varian lifts his head, blinking echoes from his eyes. “U-um, yeah.”
“I do not own any alchemical equipment, but I have enough bobbles to get you by, I think, if you choose your ingredients wisely.” She turns to the gates and Varian follows, reluctant, as she pushes through the iron doors. “Come along, boy. In the end it may do little, but if darkness is your issue… then I recommend building yourself a light.”
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Eugene leaves the castle that night.
His reasoning is simple: there’s no real reason to delay. Eugene has no desire to draw out this parting any longer than he has to. With his goodbyes to Rapunzel said and her letter weighing heavy in his vest pocket, Eugene returns to his allotted rooms and picks up the travel bags he hadn’t even bothered to unpack. He doesn’t know how long he’ll be gone, but it’s best to be prepared.
That isn’t to say he rushes, oh no—Eugene takes his sweet time. It’s almost like planning a heist, in that way. The devil is always in the details, and Eugene considers details to be the most important step. Missing one crucial item in a theft can be deadly, and in a way, well… this isn’t all that different.
The preparations take him the rest of the day. In the hours following his talk with Rapunzel, Eugene repacks his bags and prepares to leave the castle behind. He chooses new clothes, picks up fresher food, slips in a few items he thinks will serve as a welcome gift for Lance. He finds the daggers he’d stashed away when he first moved in and hides away the finer cloths that would get him mugged five feet out from the castle walls. He has a job to do, after all—and for all that Eugene isn’t the most serious individual, he is most certainly a professional. Either he does this right, or he does this not at all… and doing nothing is no longer an option.
By sunset, he’s all ready to go. Eugene hides his belongings in one of the castle’s many nooks and crannies, goes to bother Maximus in his own silent way of saying goodbye—and, when the daylight has faded and the shadows cover his path, slips inside the guard barracks and goes to find Cassandra.
He finds her in her room, thankfully—he’s not sure he could sneak by her new post in the dungeons without being caught, and he definitely doesn’t want to deal with that kind of drama right now. But his luck is holding true: he’s managed, from the sounds of things, to catch her right before she heads off for her post. Her door is half-open, the lock unlatched, and Eugene knocks on the wood frame with one hand as he toes the door open.
The room is as empty as his was; the evidence of an eight months absence. It’s cleaner than he’s ever seen it, no stray weapons lying about or anything, and her bed is made so well the cover corners look sharp enough to cut. For all that Cassandra served as a palace maid, and took her duties seriously, her own rooms are usually where she throws all tidiness out the window. This, more than the shadows under her eyes, tells Eugene all he needs to know. Apparently Rapunzel isn’t the only one with insomnia today. Cassandra probably hasn’t slept one wink since they got back yesterday morning.
She looks it, too. He’s caught her in the middle of preparing for her shift, armor half-on and hair an absolute bird nest. She’s always been pale, but today the pallor is almost ghastly, the shadows of her eyes rivaling even Varian’s. There’s a new scab on her lower lip, a wound never quite healed: she’s bit her lip hard enough to bleed.
Cassandra glances over at the open door, helmet in one hand like she’s trying to decide whether it’s worth trying to pry it over her bush of curls. It takes her a moment to realize he’s there, but as soon as she realizes her face twists in a scowl. Her glare is practically automatic, but whatever sting it might have held is dulled by the bloodless pall of her face.
“What do you want, Fitzherbert?”
Bad mood, then. The last name thing is always an indicator. Eugene’s lips thin. He’s not upset. He can’t even blame her. She looks…
She looks how he feels, really. What a mess. “Long day?”
Cassandra gives him a dirty look for that. Eugene winces. “Yeah, okay. Too soon?”
She throws the helmet on her bed, looking about to snap… and then sighs, her shoulders slumping. Her eyes squeeze shut. In the darkening sunset light streaming through her narrow window, the shadows under her eyes seem bright as bruises. “Sorry.”
Eugene snorts and leans back against the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s fine. You realize I’ve dealt with your prickly temper before, right?”
Cassandra rolls her eyes. “Oh, ha-ha.” She rubs at her face and turns away, sitting down hard on the bed. “Still, sorry. I’m not… I just…” She shakes her head, her teeth gritting.
Eugene can only imagine. Demoted to prison duty, after once having been the top detail of the future Queen? It’s more than a slap on the wrist—it’s a bona fide royal punishment, and it’s going to give her a bad rep, too. And that would be bad enough, perhaps, but that she’s being punished because of the situation with Varian…?
Yeah. Yeah, no. There’s no good ending to that story.
They haven’t talked about Varian, really. They’ve barely said his name at all these past few months, beyond the whys and hows of his disappearance after the labyrinth. There is an understanding between all three of them—a looming fight that Eugene can almost taste in the air whenever the topic is broached, and all three of them have been ignoring the problem of Varian entirely rather than risk the argument it might spike. So while Eugene can’t say he knows how Cassandra feels about Varian… well.
He has a pretty good guess that it’s nothing good.
He doesn’t blame her; some days, Eugene feels much the same himself. His nightmares have come and gone these past few months, ebbing and rising like a tide, but though most are filled with dark stone and the knife-like smile of a terrible god, some are older still. A campfire, halfway burning. Arrows in firelight. The way Rapunzel fell back, the sound of her skull snapping against the stone, and most awful of all: that brief, terrible moment when he thought she’d never get up again.
He knows Cassandra dreams of much the same.
“It’s a bad situation,” Eugene settles on, finally. “As expected.”
“Being right about it doesn’t make it better, Eugene.”
“Uh, yeah, no. Yep. Bullseye on that.” He sags his weight against the doorway, heaving a sigh so heavy it makes his body sink with the sound. He rubs the back of his neck. “I mean, by gods, I sure didn’t miss this. Politics! Hah!”
The briefest hint of a smile curls at Cassandra’s mouth, almost reluctant. “Oh? And here I thought you liked the idea of being king.”
“Yeeeeeah, about that. Sneaky.” He points a warning finger at her. King, hah. It’d been Lance who’d finally told him how succession worked in Corona. Rapunzel gets crowned Queen—and Eugene, marrying into the family, would not be a king, but rather a Prince Consort. Which is a fine fancy title in its own right, but still. “When were you going to tell me that isn’t how it works?”
“When it was funny.”
“Oh-hoh! Fuck you.”
That pale smile flickers to a true grin. Eugene leans back against the door again, pleased with his work. “But seriously,” he says, humor fading to sincerity. “Things may seem like a shitshow now, but… It’ll blow over. Eventually.”
The grin fades. Cassandra looks away. “Sure.”
“Still sucks, though.”
She exhales hard, pointedly. “Eugene. Why are you here?”
This time it’s Eugene who looks away. He taps his fingers against his arm, the uneven rhythm of a bar song that’s been stuck in his head since winter began. His lips press in a thin line. He takes a moment to gather his thoughts, then pushes up against the doorway, bracing himself.
Well. No more stalling it, he supposes.
“I’m leaving.”
He senses rather than sees Cassandra go still. “...What?”
“I didn’t come here to get lectured,” he warns her, straightening up, finally meeting her eyes. She looks as furious as he expected. “I already told Blondie. I’m heading out tonight. If you need to get in touch, the Snuggly Duckling is your best bet.” He hesitates, then exhales heavy through his teeth. “Look, I—I get it. I know what you’re going to say. But I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I… I need to do this.”
“We just got back.” Cassandra’s voice is low. “Just got back, and with things as they are— and I can’t even see her— and you’re leaving her alone?”
“I can’t help her here.” Eugene tries to keep the words even, accusation-free, but he can’t quite keep the coldness out of his voice. He knows this already. He knows, and it's already eating at him, and he doesn’t need Cassandra digging in the knife. “I can’t— I won’t sit here and be useless.” Not again, he thinks, but he bites that part off behind his teeth.
Cassandra scowls at the ground. Her expression has turned dark.
Eugene looks away too, hating the knot in his gut. He rubs at his chin and sighs, leaning back heavy against the doorframe. “Besides,” he says, finally, trying to keep his voice light. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that whole ‘no-contact’ clause part of the punishment. This is Rapunzel we’re talking about. I’d bet good money she’ll find a way to break out of that room and into here in about… oh, three days. Tops.”
“She shouldn’t.”
“Well. It’s Rapunzel.”
Cassandra hums at that, tuneless. She still isn’t meeting his eyes.
Eugene holds back another sigh and shakes his head, dipping one hand in his pocket. “...I didn’t just come to say goodbye, either.” He draws Rapunzel’s letter from his vest, holding it out. “For you.”
She goes to take it, but Eugene pulls it back out of reach. “Cass, before you read it—”
She glares at him.
“You don’t have to do this,” Eugene says, undeterred. “Not if you don’t want to. I know how much this job means to you.”
Something in the tone of his voice must get through, because her hand stills. She’s quiet for a long moment.
“…Will it help?”
He’s not sure how to answer that. “It’s something.”
“Then yes.” Cassandra meets his gaze, her expression tense. “I want to help.”
He thins his lips, but hands it over. He’s not sure what to make of the look on her face—the odd pinch to her eyes. Cassandra takes the missive warily, breaking the seal and scanning the page within seconds. Eugene watches her face, trying to put a name to what he sees there.
Cassandra’s expression doesn’t even twitch. After reading, she folds the letter carefully and lays it flat on her lap. With one hand, she rubs the corner of the parchment between her fingers, her eyes dark in thought.
“You understand, don’t you?” Eugene says finally. His voice is quiet. His eyes unwavering. A flash of clarity has struck him. “Standing aside, watching everything happen… I never want to be there again.”
At long last, Cassandra looks at him. She doesn’t move, but in this moment, he can finally read her. In this, he knows for sure. The labyrinth has left its mark on all of them, in its own way—and for the two of them, it has left the same scar. It has united them in the horror of being left behind and helpless.
Cassandra’s eyes drop. The anger has faded from her face—now, she just seems tired. “...I’ll look out for her.”
“She doesn’t need it, I think. But thanks. I hate the idea of leaving her alone.” Eugene straightens, waves one hand in a mocking salute. “Good luck,” he says, gentling into something genuine. “Cass.”
She meets his gaze again. A smile twitches at the corner of her mouth, and this time, it’s almost real. “You too, Eugene.”
Eugene gives a winning smile back and slips out the room without another word—no need to make this sappy, after all. He closes the door soundlessly behind him, and feels something almost like pleased. The conversation didn’t quite go as he wanted—but he thinks it was a success regardless.
He sticks his hands in his pockets and slips back in the comfort of the shadows.
It is child’s play to get back outdoors undetected. He picks up his bag from the hiding spot and slip it over his shoulder, tilting back his head in the night air. He’s got a long walk ahead of him—a long few weeks to go—and he takes one last second for himself, to settle, to be sure. Taking one last moment to breathe.
Oh, gods. Is he really going to do this?
He looks up behind him, one last look at Rapunzel’s tower room. The window is dark, all the lights gone out. But he can still see the silhouette of a figure on the balcony, the flickering shine of golden hair swept up in a breeze.
He lifts his hand, wondering, a quiet wave. He thinks he sees the figure wave back.
He already misses her. But Eugene turns away from the castle regardless. He slips by those castle gate guards without any issue at all, and just like that: there he is, on the road once again.
His heart is tight, but Eugene manages a smile anyway. Rapunzel will be okay. Cassandra, whatever she decides, will be there for her regardless. They have things handled here—and Eugene’s place, for now, is elsewhere.
He’s got work to do.
It takes him an hour to leave the city behind. By the time he reaches the woods it’s gone completely dark outside. The woods are all shadow at this time of dusk, foreboding and eerie, but Eugene palms his dagger and continues on without worry. Even without a sure light, the moon and stars are bright above him—and he’s always been an old hand at sneaking in the dark.
He walks for most of the night, well on to midnight. The time makes no difference, however—even at this hour, he can hear the Snuggly Duckling before he sees it. Laughter, and roaring music, and then distant light through the trees. Eugene shades his eyes against the startling shine and has to physically bite back a grin when he hears the singing. Oh-hoh, he knows that voice.
He rushes to reach the doors before it’s too late, moving fast as the song and music begin to reach its finale. He makes it just in time.
Eugene throws open the door just as Lance finishes a truly impressive solo, and lifts a hand to his ears with no time to spare. “Good gods, men!” he says, as loudly as he can. “I came here to get a drink—but who let a banshee in this place?”
The music stops. Someone’s cup drops and rolls. The Snuggly Duckling falls into a hushed and reverent silence, and Lance falls off the table.
Eugene stares at the stunned room of thugs. The stunned room of thugs stares back.
“...Surprise?”
Lance’s head pops up from the floor. “Eugene!” he shouts, delightedly, and tackles him in a hug.
Like Lance’s word was the stone to break the glass, the whole bar erupts into noise.
“Hey!”
“It’s Fitz!”
“Welcome back!”
“Where the hell have you been, you slippery bastard?”
Lance spins him around, cackling loudly. Eugene yelps, arms suddenly pinned, torn between laughing and hissing at him. “Hey, hey, hey—!”
“You’re back!” Lance drops him on his feet, beaming fit to burst. He looks—he looks good, Eugene realizes, and it makes some secret weight on his heart lift. It’s just been bad news after bad news for so long, that he’d worried… but Lance is here, his smile wide and true, and he looks happier than Eugene has seen him in a long time. He’s dressed in a new outfit, a snazzy black vest with a red cotton undershirt, a new piercing in his left ear. There’s a glow to him, a veil of health that speaks of regular meals and good care. In contrast to the gloom that haunted the castle, Lance’s presence lights up the room. His hand on Eugene’s shoulder is warm. “Long time no see, Eugene.”
“We’ve gone longer,” Eugene says, an automatic answer, but inside, he agrees whole-heartedly. It has been—too long. Far too long. His returning smile is helplessly fond. He is so glad to see Lance. “How are things?”
“Oh, booming,” Lance says, and he says it casual, but there’s a smile on his face that Eugene knows well— that beaming pride, curdled warm, but this time there’s something softer to the edge of it. “It’s, uh—going really well, actually. I meant to say in the letters, but—well, I got the bar!” He gestures to the Snuggly Duckling. “The whole lot of it.”
“Done good work too!” one man yells, and the tavern shakes with the ensuing roar of agreement. Lance laughs again, looking touched. Eugene looks around at the sea of bright and drink-rosy faces, the warm lanternlight and crackling fire of Lance’s Snuggly Duckling, and grins back.
“Lance!” he says, punching his shoulder. “Buddy! That’s wonderful!”
“It’s been a journey,” Lance says, trying for humble, but there’s a brightness to the words, a disbelieving joy that hasn’t quite faded. “I’ll tell you later. What about you, eh? It’s been ages since your last response!”
Eugene’s smile flickers. Lance immediately pauses. “Oh—”
“You’re never going to believe this, Strongbow, old buddy, old pal.” Eugene slings his arm around him, cutting off the inquiry before the rest of the bar can catch onto the shift in mood. “The number of things I saw across the sea, good man, I could fill a book!”
Lance blinks, rapidly, and for a moment his face is terrifyingly blank—and then his eyes go wide in realization. Thank gods. It’s been awhile since they used that code, but the memory of childhood bonding over Flynn Rider books reigns eternal even now.
Lance slings an arm around his shoulders and grips him in a one-armed hug. “Then I, Strongbow, shall most definitely help you write it!” The word-for-word quoted response. Then Lance winks, and the next bit is all him. “After a drink, of course.”
“Of course,” Eugene echoes, wryly, and manages to grin back.
Lance pushes him through the bar, somehow keeping Eugene from the crowd without making it suspicious, laughing and cheering and chattering like it’s a normal Tuesday. Before Eugene even knows what’s happened, he finds himself in a back room of the tavern, drink in hand and Lance sitting across the table, the room as quiet as any rooms in the Snuggly Duckling can get.
“This is as private as I can give you,” Lance says, sitting back in his chair. His smile is bright as ever. His voice, warm as Eugene remembers. But there is a tightness around his eyes, a worry Eugene reads clear as day, and when Lance leans in, he is as serious as he ever gets. “Okay, buddy. Spill. What happened? And how can I help?”
This is why Eugene came here. This is why Eugene needed to leave. Because he’s good. He’s really good. But he’s always been better with someone at his back—and he’s at his best with Lance by his side.
Gods, he’s missed him.
Eugene drinks deep from his flask, sets down the empty cup, and prepares to tell Lance everything.
.
“What do you need?”
The sun is high in the bright blue sky, and the Port Caul market in full unbridled swing. Stalls line the main city road, stretching on from the docks to the shopping district, their owners shouting wares from across the street. Vegetables, cheeses, smoked meats and cloth and flowers and trinkets—everywhere Varian turns, there is something new to see, some new dizzying sight to catch his eye. He’d thought the crowd from yesterday had been intimidating, but this one puts it to shame. The sheer amount of people and goods makes his head spin. This is nothing like the market in Old Corona—this is more like the capital than anything, or even the science fair. The amount of people out and about for a daily market is mind-blowing.
“Child, eyes on me.” Yasmin snaps her fingers in front of his face. Varian looks to her reluctantly, fighting the urge to keep gaping at his surroundings. “What do you need?”
“What?” Varian asks, too dazed to follow her questions. His eyes drift to the market again.
Yasmin frowns down at him. “Keep up, boy. For a light. What do you need?”
Oh. Varian blinks fast, thoughts muddled by the market, his own exhaustion, and the constant dread that is stillbeating away at the edge of his mind. He says the first thing he can think of. “Matches?”
Yasmin stares at him. Varian slowly flushes, scrambling to get his thoughts in order—nope, nothing. He tries again. “…Fire?”
“That was not a trick question. I meant—a more permanent light, a manufactured one. A nightlight. Something to help keep the dark at bay without being too bright to wake you.” Yasmin rubs at her forehead. “What do you need to make something like that?”
“Oh.” Well, that makes much more sense. Varian blinks hard, rubbing at his eyes, trying to get his thoughts in order. He feels like he’s wading in molasses, an exhaustion that drags at his thoughts and eyelids. A permanent light… something he could hold, maybe. Something bright enough to let him know he isn’t in the dark but quiet enough not to keep him awake. A soft glow. Unwavering…
“A vial, maybe?” Varian murmurs. “No, glass, breakable, bad idea. Stone… too opaque. Gem, too expensive—”
“Crystal?”
Varian blinks, startled from his thoughts. Yasmin is frowning again, but not at him—just off to the side, looking lost in thought. “Would that work?”
“I…” His mind whirls, thoughts tangling. “If it could hold something—was hollow inside—I think so? I need a space to put in the materials, and then I gotta seal it up after, so—”
“Yes, yes, let me handle that—I am not completely bereft of supplies. I am sure Ella has a jewelry clasp somewhere. We will figure something out.” Yasmin tilts her head. “What would you need to make the light?”
He lists ingredients in his head, remembers the likely lack of equipment, and shoves aside all but a few. Lists down his fingers. “Let’s see… um, distilled water, definitely. Probably some sodium carbonate, luminol… ammonium carbonate, copper sulfate pentahydrate… maybe some 3 percent hydrogen peroxide, or would just using zinc sulfide work better?” He frowns at his hands. “I should probably test that, the zinc sulfide might be too weak to last, but the other mixture might—”
Varian cuts himself off, his hand dropping. At once he realizes he’s been rambling. He flushes, his confidence faltering. There in the market cheer he feels abruptly out of place, too obvious, too seen. His skin crawls. He swallows hard. “Um. But I… I don’t think I’ll find all that here, it’s—”
“Do not worry,” Yasmin says, surprising him silent. She looks almost bemused by his sudden bit of word vomit. “Port Caul markets sell many things— and things like that for rather cheap. You would be surprised at how many children like to play at alchemy.”
Varian splutters. “It’s not playing—”
Yasmin has already turned away. Her coat flaps at her heels as she strides deeper in the market crowd. “Hurry along, boy. Let us go! I haven’t got all morning.”
Varian yelps and rushes to keep up.
It must be market day, he thinks; the place is busier than it was yesterday, and the crowd is nearly dizzying. People shouting, people selling, laughter high and bright in the frozen winter air. They’ve arrived early enough that the sun’s rising warmth hasn’t thawed the streets yet—the cobble roads are slick with frost and sea-spray salt, the wind brisk against his skin, the breeze as sharp as knives.
Varian tugs up his borrowed coat collar and follows Yasmin best he can, tripping in his too-big boots even with his layered number of socks. In contrast to Varian’s hesitation, Yasmin maneuvers the market like a king in court, eyes sharp and scanning, seeing all the market has to offer and dismissing it just as quickly.
“This way,” she says after a minute, and tugs Varian to the side, near a small stall off the corner. The covered wagon has a table with a velvet cloth, small glittering gems and jewels shining on the dark red fabric. The man minding the stall is tall and round, and when he sees Yasmin approaching he sits up with a smile.
“Yasmin! Been awhile. How’s it been?”
“Lovely, Marin, thank you. Have you any crystals?”
The man hums. “All sorts. What are you looking for?”
Yasmin puts a hand on her hip and turns to Varian. He stares back, blank, then jumps when the man looks at him too. “O-oh. Um.” Their eyes make his skin crawl. Yasmin has already recognized him for what he is. What if this man, too—? “A, a hollow… hollow center. If you have that. And, um… clear would be—be best—”
“Of course.” The man’s interruption is kind, his smile unsuspecting. He leans down and rummages at his feet, the clink of precious stones in the air. “I’ve a few like that. Take your pick.”
Varian surveys the offered collection of crystals, ranging in sizes from small to unwieldy, and finally selects one near the middle—not the cleanest cut, but a nice size, fitting well in his palm. It has a hollowed center like a shallow shot glass, the opening just barely big enough for a finger. Hopefully easy to seal closed, once he’s made the light. “T-this one’s fine.”
“Great. That’ll be five gold crowns, then.”
Varian freezes, color draining from his face. Five gold crowns? He doesn’t even have copper. Oh, gods, he’s forgotten money was a thing that existed again. “I—uh, I—”
“I have it.” Yasmin sets the gold down with a sharp click, the coins stacked in a perfect tower. “Take care of yourself, Marin.” To Varian: “Come along. Next stop.”
“Come back if you need any more!” the shopkeeper calls. “I’ll have a lot more next week, if those trading ships finally make it to harbor!”
“I will think about it!” Yasmin is walking away, but Varian doesn’t move, and after a moment she glances back at him, eyebrows raised. “Hello? What is wrong. Why are you not moving.”
He stares down at the ground, eyes burning. “I didn’t ask you to pay for me.”
Yasmin tilts her head. “I am the one helping you, and this is my idea. I would not make you pay for it. In a roundabout way, I am being paid to help you. There is no loss here.”
“I—”
He can’t find the words, the anger rootless, his frustration smarting. He is sick of feeling helpless, of feeling like a drain; he hasn’t asked to be taken care of, to be treated like a child. But he doesn’t yet know how to put it into words, and all he can do is glower at the ground and seethe.
Yasmin considers him. Something in the hard lines of her face softens.
“…Come here.”
He goes reluctantly, stepping out of earshot from the shopkeeper. Yasmin places a hand on his shoulder, steering him away, and when she speaks, her voice is not softer but somehow gentler. “Listen. I do not know what brought you here, nor do I care. But you are here. And it is clear to me that you need help.” She looks down at him. “Boy, you do not need to like me. I still do not like you. But I am not here to hurt you, or slight you, or whatever it is you think I am doing. My dislike does not mean I cannot do you a kindness.”
Varian doesn’t answer. Yasmin draws her hand away. “If it bothers you so deeply, you can plan to pay me back in your own time. But for now—can you accept this?”
He looks down. The anger, rising, turns ashy on his tongue, cold and empty. “…Okay.”
He sounds tuneless even to himself. In the back of his mind, the dread hums like a lightning strike. Turn back. Go home. It’s not safe here.
He swallows back the anxiety and shuts his eyes tight. He hears Yasmin exhale, soft and tired.
“Chin up, boy,” she says, half-way to gentle. “I am sure you will like this next part. Come along.”
Varian, doubtful, sets his jaw and bravely follows after her.
She leads him further into the market, closer to the docks. The scent of salt and sea fills his nose. The crowd is a little thinner here, easier to navigate, and the sudden breathing room helps unwind some of the tension from his shoulders. He tilts his head in the breeze and breathes deep.
It’s the smell that hits him first. The burning hiss, the sudden bitterness on his tongue like ash—
His eyes snap open. He sees it almost at once.
The small wooden stall. The bright pink banner. The small jars, the neat little labels. The smell in the air, even in this crowded and clustered market place, a sour snap like citric acid, like the tang of metal—
He knows the stall even before he sees the sign. This—this is an alchemy store.
Varian races ahead, pushing past Yasmin and nearly running right into the stall. It has been so, so long since Varian has seen alchemy, even longer since he’s done it properly. The road isn’t appropriate for intensive experiments, and Adira never willing to buy materials, and Varian never quite confident enough to ask for them. After six months of nearly nothing, the sight of the stall is enough to make his eyes prick with tears.
Even the memory of his last alchemy experiment can’t bring down his mood. In the labyrinth, this skill was the one thing that brought Varian some comfort. Some denial of fate, some way to fight. Through alchemy, Varian found a chance to breathe. Through alchemy, Varian defeated Moon’s golem.
And now, this alchemy stall—the sight of those elements, neatly bottled, the equipment, newly shined—it makes his vision blur. Varian’s smile nearly splits his face in half. He puts his hand on the table and leans up, beaming at the shopkeeper, a woman with a heavy afro pulled back in a bun and a no-nonsense alchemical smock. “Is this all yours!?”
“Every bottle of it.” The shopkeeper puts down a vial, a latest experiment of some sort. Her gloves, heavy and dark and made of solid stitched leather, make Varian’s own now-bare hands itch with envy. “Why, you interested?”
“Yes.”
She grins. “Well, then. Nice to see someone who appreciates the art! What are you looking for?”
“Something for a light, if you have got it.” Yasmin walks up from behind him, sounding bemused. “What was it? Zinc sulfate?”
“Sulfide,” Varian corrects, automatic. “Zinc sulfide, and also some distilled water, and I was thinking maybe…”
He lists the ingredients off from memory, counting them off his fingers to be sure he doesn’t forget any. “…and some 3 percent hydrogen peroxide, if you have any?”
“Easy enough.” The woman tugs off her gloves, nodding thoughtfully. “How much of each?”
Varian does quick math in his head—some extra needed if things go wrong, enough to make two batches if things go right—and rattles off the amounts in grams. The shopkeeper hums when he finishes, looking vaguely impressed. “Can do. It’ll be a blue-ish light, in the end—should last you a couple months before you’ll have to remake it.”
Varian abruptly pales. The shopkeeper blinks. “Is something wrong?”
Blue, Varian thinks numbly. Blue light. Right. He hadn’t thought of that. He struggles to answer. “Um—I—that is—”
Yasmin touches at his shoulder. Varian looks up at her, but Yasmin is speaking to the shopkeeper instead when she says, “Is it possible to change the color of the light?”
Something like pride smarts in his chest.
“Of course,” says the shopkeeper. “Easy,” Varian scoffs, pointedly, at the same exact time.
There is a beat of silence. Yasmin rolls her eyes. “Scientists,” she says, disgusted. “Would you need an ingredient for that?”
“Alchemists,” Varian corrects, annoyed, and then blinks as the rest of her words sink in. Oh, right. He turns back to the shopkeeper. “Do you have any pigments?”
“I have all the pigments. Could even mix a few powders, but you’ll have to be exact on the color if so.”
Varian bites his lip, considering. Yasmin looks down at him. “It need not be a difficult discussion,” she says. “The intended use already removes a few options. White, too bright; black, destroys the purpose of having a light at all. Red would be… garish, I think. Sort of bloody. Hmm. What about orange?”
He makes a face, unable to help it. Orange has never been his favorite color, and after the amber… “No.”
“Tsk. Green? Violet?”
Violet is too close to blue; green reminds him of the automatons beneath the castle, and what he did with them. Varian shakes his head.
“…Yellow?”
Golden shine and searing heat, the numbness broken apart by a light that burned as bright as a sun—
Some of his thoughts must show on his face. Yasmin stops herself before Varian can even think to interrupt. “Not yellow, either. Hmph.” She considers, cupping her chin in one hand. “…What about pink?”
Pink. Varian considers it. It’s a pale color, and a soft color, like they wanted. If he makes the glow very quiet it won’t hurt his eyes at all. And pink… there is nothing he associates with the color, no light-based trauma to invite nightmares. Pink is sunrise and sunset, soft flowers in spring fields. It’s a color that reminds him of happy things.
“…Pink would work.”
“Pink it is.”
The shopkeeper nods. “I’ll wrap it up.”
They get the ingredients wrapped in small paper bags, and as Yasmin counts out money for the cost Varian shuffles through the wrapped ingredients with a giddiness he’d almost forgotten. He feels renewed, refreshed, the ever-present exhaustion dulled by a joy that could almost burst out of him.
He tucks the packets away in the satchel and tilts his head into the wind with a soft sigh. His smile is a small thing, barely there—quiet and thin, hidden in the light of the winter sun. The market moves around him, warm and whispering. The noonday sun is melting the frost.
And it is then, in this moment, as the crowd swells silent and the market murmurs soft—that is when the screaming starts.
.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
Cassandra closes her wardrobe hard, hearing the weapons knock around inside. It is three days after their return to Corona, and Cassandra’s patience is nearing its limit. Outside of her window, the setting sun burns gold at their backs, casting a long shadow across Cassandra’s entire room. “Yes, Raps. I already said I was.”
“I know. I just—”
“You worry. I know.” Cassandra takes a breath, holds back a sigh. She’s not annoyed. She’s not. She’s just—
Gods, she wishes Rapunzel could just let it go.
It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate the gesture—to be honest, she’s fully expected this. Of course Rapunzel would come to check in on her, especially after the last few days. Eugene’s skipped out of the castle with a plan he hasn’t even told Cassandra about, Rapunzel has been avoiding her parents best she can, and Cassandra—
Cassandra is right back where she started.
She supposes it could be worse; the king could strip her of the guard title entirely. Being demoted to the dungeons, being forced to avoid Rapunzel… these things aren’t good by any stretch of imagination, but as far as limitations go, they aren’t so bad. Take this, for example—for all of the King’s grandiose orders, here Rapunzel is, only three days later having already discovered a path through the tunnels that leads right to Cassandra’s quarters.
It could be worse, Cassandra thinks, and ignores the way it feels like she’s trying to convince herself. It could be worse.
“I just… I want to be sure.”
Cassandra turns, straightening up in full as she pulls on the last piece of armor, strapping her arm guard in place. Clunky, bronze, degraded, demoted. She misses the golden shine of the armor for Royal Guards. “And I’m telling you exactly what I told Eugene. It’s fine. There’s obviously something wrong, and—and you need my help. And if what you overheard was true…”
It’s the reason for Rapunzel’s visit, after all. Cassandra had woken up to sunset, blearily about to get ready for yet another awful night shift—only to find the resident Princess and future Queen leaning over her face like a fretting hen, eyes bright with a stolen secret.
“I’m almost certain,” Rapunzel says at once. “I know it was Nigel talking, he’s got… a distinctive voice. And he sounded worried.”
According to Rapunzel, just this morning while on her way to meet with her parents for yet another awkward not-quite-conversation, she’d passed by a hall and heard Nigel talking with a messenger. Which isn’t anything unusual—advisors talk with messengers literally all the time—except the contents of this conversation had been a little… stressed. A deal in the making, a big agreement between the King and another party—only whoever and whatever this deal was about, it didn’t seem to be about anything good.
Still, Cassandra is content to play devil’s advocate for this. “The kingdom makes deals all the time, Raps. Compromise, trade, agreements… that’s what running a country is all about.”
Rapunzel isn’t swayed. “Trust me, okay? This wasn’t like the usual. The way they were talking…” She bites her lip. “Cass, it sounded… bad. Almost like they—Corona, my dad—were running out of other options, but also like accepting the deal would be…”
“Like a deal with the Moon?”
“Or Zhan Tiri. Just. Bad.”
“I believe you,” Cassandra says, finally. She places one hand on her sword. “But that’s why, if it’s really as big as you say, we need more information, if anything we do is going to stick. So, if this is what’s needed…”
I want to help, she doesn’t say this time. She’d already said it to Eugene, two days and a night ago, when he stopped by her room and pressed a letter in her hands.
“You don’t have to do this, Cass,” he’d said then, letter in hand but holding back. “I know how much this job means to you.”
“Will it help?”
“It’s something.”
“Then yes,” Cassandra had said, cold and trying hard not to seem desperate, and she’s spent every night after thinking about that letter and what it meant, and the look in Eugene’s eyes when he gave it to her. Like he knew. Like he suspected.
King Frederick had been cold when he’d demoted her, near icy in tone. In contrast, beside her, Cassandra’s father had been spitting mad on her behalf, only just holding his tongue, his face dark with an anger that the King hadn’t even batted an eye at. Cassandra had taken the sentence with her head high and her heart burning. She’d known what this was really about, even then. It’s not about the secrets. It’s not even about Rapunzel’s silence, not really. It’s this—Rapunzel, flinching and quiet and different behind the eyes, the attack Cassandra can’t elaborate on and the prisoner who escaped, Varian vanished into the wilds.
In the eyes of the king, Cassandra has failed. Never mind that Varian got a chance to attack because Rapunzel let him. Never mind it was Rapunzel who let him go. Never mind that—
But even then. Even then, that hadn’t shaken her. But when the King had demoted her, when that golden shine of royal armor was replaced by lesser bronze—Cassandra had stared down at gloved hands, and wondered what the hell she was doing there.
Standing in line, she thinks. Guarding locked doors. She’s traveled across two continents, she’s traversed the ruins of a kingdom long dead, she’s looked a god full in the face and snarled—
And here she is. Back again in the kingdom, with armor that doesn’t fit quite right and a restless burning beneath her skin, the whisper of opportunity lost.
When did I outgrow you? she wonders, absently, picking up her halberd, putting the helmet under her arm. She draws the sword and looks at it, the person staring back. When did I lose this?
But she doesn’t say that. She can’t, not really—she hasn’t the words, and a little bitter voice in her gut says that Rapunzel won’t understand anyway. Besides, Rapunzel has her own issues to deal with. Her own struggles. Cassandra doesn’t want to become another burden—not any more of a burden, at least.
When did I become so weak as to be used against you?
But those are quiet thoughts. Cassandra shoves them away, locked back in the corner of her mind where they belong, and turns to face Rapunzel with both hands on her hips. Rapunzel is sitting quiet on the bed, head bowed, gloved hands folded in her lap, and at the sight something in Cassandra’s chest eases. She crosses over, and kneels down before her. “Hey. Raps.”
Rapunzel looks up. Her eyes are dry, the green of her irises cold and clear. Her mouth is set in a mulish sort of stubborn. That tight knot in Cassandra’s chest eases further, and she manages the barest hint of a smile. “Look,” she says. “I get it. I do. And you’re right. It’s—a lot.” Which is a nice way of saying basically treasonous, but hey. “Look. It’ll work out, okay? I’ll do a scan on the dungeons when I can, get info like you requested—” As per the letter still in her pocket, anyway. “—and yeah, sure, it’s… dangerous.”
“Treason. If you get caught. And my dad—”
“Yeah. But Eugene has the right idea. Don’t tell him I said this, but… look. You can eavesdrop on the nobles. Eugene is doing…whatever he’s doing. And me?” Her lips thin. “I can see what the prisoners say. I can walk around and listen, and see what they know. And maybe it’s dangerous, but if it gets us what we need to know, gets us where need to go…” She trails off, pointedly.
Rapunzel dips her head. “I’m worried,” she admits, quiet. “And you’re right, I don’t know enough. But—Cass, what if you’re right about this, too? What if it’s nothing? What if it’s not worth it? What if we just make things worse?”
“Yeah, okay. Good point. But you’re doing this anyways, right? So… I—I don’t want—” Oh, how to word this. Cassandra blows out a breath through her teeth, hard and hissed. “I can’t just sit here, Raps. I can’t do nothing.” Her hands curl, unbidden. “Don’t shut me out again.”
The set to Rapunzel’s jaw eases, just a bit. She reaches out and squeezes Cassandra’s hand, brief and firm despite how the pressure on her injuries makes her face twitch with an echo of pain. “I won’t,” Rapunzel says, and a pale smile flickers across her face. “I… I did promise, after all.”
“You did,” Cassandra replies, neutral.
“Okay. Okay. I’ll lay off. If you’re sure.”
“Very sure.”
The smile on Rapunzel’s face settles, a little stronger. “Thanks, Cass.”
“It is literally the least I can do,” Cassandra informs her, dryly, and stands up with the creak of new armor. “Now get out of my room before your new guard realizes you're missing, yeah? Elias is skittish, but he’s going to realize you used your hair as an escape route sooner rather than later, and if I have to go guard the sewers we’re all going to suffer.”
Rapunzel’s smile widens. “Right!” she says, and scampers up, heading back for her newfound secret entrance to the tunnels. Seriously, how does she keep finding those things? “I’ll try and visit again soon. There’s this dinner party with my parents, and I think I might be able to ferret out a few details on this mysterious deal. I’ll let you know!” Something in her face gentles. “…Please take care of yourself, Cass.”
“Only if you do.”
Cassandra watches her go, and manages a small wave and a weak smile when Rapunzel looks back. She waits, patiently, until the stone door of the secret entrance latches shut, and then lets her hand falls with a sigh.
For a moment she just stands there, basking in the silence. Her hand goes to her pocket. The missive Rapunzel wrote and Eugene gave her sits heavy by her side.
I’m sorry to ask this of you. I know my father is your King. But I need you, Cass. I need to know if you’re with me. You don’t have to say yes now. You don’t have to answer at all. And I will never, ever be angry if you say no. You’re my best friend, now and forever. But whatever you’re willing to give. Whatever secrets you find willing to share with me…
If the time comes to choose, if circumstances force us to make a stand—will you stand by my side?
Cassandra has never been readier. But still—
For some reason, the knot remains, cold and heavy in her chest.
She marches out of her room to her new guard shift with her chin up and back straight and proud. Some heads turn when they see her pass; some faces creases in sympathy, others tight-lipped. Odd, she thinks, and remembers vividly Eugene’s offhand comment on the castle’s reactions. She thinks again of her father’s face when the King stripped her of rank, the anger he didn’t even try to hide, and her lips thin further. There’s something wrong here after all—she just hopes it’s not the internal battle she’s starting to suspect it might be.
She turns another hall, pushes open the last door. Cold, rank air blows against her face. Her nose wrinkles.
Once, in a different age, the dungeons of Corona had served as part of the castle proper. In the start of Corona’s great history, King Herz der Sonne had walked these halls and eaten in these empty rooms, enjoyed food and rest in the grand circular hall that has become the main prison pit. These stone walls were filled with history and majesty, until an unfortunate winter earthquake fifty years after his reign brought the whole castle tumbling down.
The castle was rebuilt, of course—better this time, and it has withstood every earthquake since for the remaining hundreds of years. But of that first, lonesome castle, only the tunnels and this hall remain—the tunnels locked down for fear of constant collapse, and the rubble of the first castle become one of the worst places in the whole kingdom.
The point is that the dungeons are a place of history—and at the moment, Cassandra feels as if she’s experiencing each one. As she marches through and down the enclosed halls, the cold deepens, the stone growing soft with age and dark with a grime built up over centuries. Voices murmur low and bitter through the grates as she passes, and the stench of rot and mildew and waste is so heavy she almost struggles to breathe. There’s a slick moss crawling stubbornly through the cracks in the mortar, and as she passes down to the last and final floor, the old stone sagging and heavy, the ceilings low and strained under the weight of the years, even the voices fade out. There aren’t many prisoners here. In truth, there’s very little here at all. Something wet and watery drips down the wall. The cells are silent and empty. Cassandra, standing all and alone in a dark corridor, takes a deep breath and regrets it almost at once.
She’s in full guard armor, the bronze polished and shining, her curls forced under the tight helmet. Her gloves are crisp on her hands, the halberd stiff in her palms; her stance is straight and her eyes unwavering from the door. Every few minutes she’s to turn from her post to pace up and down the corridor for a routine check before she returns back to the door at the end of the hall.
It’s a joke of a job. It’s a job for newbies and rookies and guards with their heads too full of pride for sense, and here she is. Stuck here until Rapunzel either breaks her silence—unlikely—or until the King cools his temper, which…
Well.
She’s probably going to be here for a while, she knows, and as she stops before her new post, she closes her eyes, breathing in deep through her teeth.
Gods, she has no idea what she’s doing here. Cassandra is skilled and she knows it. She’s wasted here, and the fact she’s only been posted here as punishment for Rapunzel’s actions only furthers the insult. She’s not—resenting it, really, or at least she’s trying not to. It’s not Rapunzel’s fault. That the King is punishing Cassandra in order to punish Rapunzel… it’s more than insulting. It’s downright infuriating.
Not to mention being replaced by Elias, of all the guards. The boy is… new is almost too kind a term. He’s barely not a trainee, and while he’s not a bad kid, Cassandra suspects that kindness won’t stop him from reporting Rapunzel’s every action to the King.
They’ve been back for only a scant three days, and already, most of Rapunzel’s worries are proving justified. If this is destiny, Cassandra wishes she could punch it into submission or something. First the Dark Kingdom, now this—for gods’ sake, don’t they all deserve a break?
But no, of course not. And so Rapunzel’s confined in the castle and Eugene’s walking on so many eggshells he decided running was the better option, and Cassandra is here: stationed in the deepest, darkest, most boring corridor in the dungeon, waiting for nothing.
She closes her eyes. “Look around,” Rapunzel had said. “Keep your eyes open. Maybe you’ll find something everyone else missed.” But gods, how is Cassandra going to find anything if she’s stuck miles underground for eight straight hours a day? She’d mentioned the idea of wandering around to listen in on the prisoners herself, but in the secret depths of her mind, even she can admit it’s basically a worthless task. Who on earth would spill the beans when guards lurk around every corner?
She wants to help, but this—
It feels terribly like being shunted. All. Over. Again.
Cast aside and left in the dark, something in her whispers, dark and bitter. Cassandra sets her jaw. There isn’t even a guard on duty to take over once her shift ends— there’s nothing here to guard at all. This job is a joke.
She turns hard on her heel, walking away. To hell with it. If she’s stuck down here, she thinks grimly, she can at least explore. As useless as it is, at least those cells aren’t empty.
The air is like ice around her; the winter cold turned something subzero in the freezing hold of the underground stone. Each breath puffs like fog before her. In her armor, the metal is so chilled her fingers flex on impulse to get blood flow going. She turns down the twisting halls, eyes passing blind over the shadowy cells and water-rusted metal, the withered skeletons of the ruins of the ancient castle. She breathes in, breathes out. Nothing appears. Nothing happens.
Nothing’s ever going to happen.
Who is she even kidding? She’s going to be down here for hours, for days, for weeks. She wants to help but she couldn’t even see Rapunzel herself; the princess had to find a way to her instead. Rapunzel may be trapped in her room, but she already knows how to slip free— and Cassandra’s chains are so much tighter. She has so much more to lose.
And if things do go wrong, guess who’s going to suffer for it? Her, probably. Definitely. She loves Rapunzel, gods know she does, but so much of this mess is just—!
Why did she let Varian go? Why didn’t she ask them? Why hasn’t she explained? What little Cassandra knows of the labyrinth is just that—just the little. Just the bare minimum. She’s not asking for a play by play, but if Rapunzel is going to release known criminals, couldn’t she at least give a real reason? She’d said it was because it didn’t feel right, but what had that even meant? Feeling has no place in politics. No place in acting queen, or princess…
Even after everything, she’s still weak.
Cassandra stops mid-step.
She feels struck, stunned still by her own thoughts. Her hand rises to her head. A wave of dizziness overcomes her, shame like a blooming poison in her gut. The cold of the dungeon bites at her skin like a beast.
That’s… that’s a cruel thing to think. Sure, Rapunzel is a little much at times, but she’s been growing too, changing, becoming more and more sure of her place every day. More confident in herself, even if Cassandra doesn’t agree with all her choices. And—and Cassandra knows that, she understands that, so why—?
“…Cassandra? Is that you?”
She jumps, just barely avoiding dropping her halberd. She whips around, breath caught, weapon raised—and the confused face of a guard blinks back, almost bemused.
She stares at him, mouth open in shock—lowers her weapon rapidly, heat climbing in her cheeks. “I— sorry. You snuck up on me.” She pauses, abrupt. “Wait, what are you doing down here?”
The other guard frowns at her. “Cassandra, this is my post. Aren’t you stationed in the lower dungeons?”
“I…” She looks around, rapid, and realizes he’s right—the walls are lighter, the stink stronger. This isn’t her post at the lower dungeons. This is the first sector—the private prison, for top-priority prisoners, serious threats to the kingdom. Once upon a time, Varian had been kept in this sector, only one floor above her. When had she…? “Apologies. I got lost in thought.”
His scowl deepens. “Look, I know the demotion must sting, but that’s no reason to leave your post. What would the Captain say?”
Cassandra flushes, her lips pulling away from her teeth. “Look, I didn’t mean to—”
The guard is glaring.
Abruptly Cassandra remembers herself. She cuts herself off, breathing in deep through her nose. Her fingers clench white-knuckled under her gloves, curled tight and shaking around the halberd. “…No, never mind. You’re right. I apologize. It won’t happen again.”
She turns away hard before he can say anything more, marching off down the stairs. She doesn’t look back. The guard shakes his head and turns away, pulling the door latched behind him, back again at his post.
She leaves the private dungeon behind, and slams the door tight behind her. She walks quick, her stride furious. Her footsteps echo off the walls. Just like that: alone again.
Water drips uneven on the withered stone. The darkness slithers and seeps in the corners. The lanterns flicker. Unknown even to herself, Cassandra shivers once, and hugs her arms tight.
And in the darkness of a cell just out of view, someone else watches her seethe—and smiles.
“Oh, yes,” the prisoner says. Their voice is nothing but a hoarse whisper; their smile bares feral in the lanternlight. “I agree.”
Cassandra opens the final door, the exit to the prison floor. A sharp, foul gust of air howls through. The lantern flickers. For one shining moment, the prisoner’s eyes glint bright and green.
“She’ll make a wonderful disciple.”
.
For a moment, Varian doesn’t understand what he’s hearing.
He stands there, before the market stall, hands cold and heart growing colder; the screams, distant, are indistinct to him. It could be cheering, he thinks. It could be celebration. It could be nothing at all.
Except then Yasmin grabs his arm and yanks him back, and people have started to run, and then all at once he hears a boom like thunder and sees shrapnel fly, and he thinks—cannons—and he realizes.
The harbor is under attack.
A whisper drifts by his ears, paranoia crystalized to reality. The wind hisses like a curse. I warned you, child. Now it is too late.
The ground rocks with the force of the explosives; Varian stumbles sideways and just barely keeps to his feet. He can hear laughter, distantly, in the crowd, faint above all the screaming, mingling with the shrieking steel of sword against sword as the guardsmen of Port Caul rush in. But that doesn’t make sense, he thinks—how could it all happen at once, so soon? Or had these attackers planned this, had they snuck in with the market crowd and waited amongst the people for the attack to begin?
Another blast of cannon fire shakes the stonework, cutting his thoughts short. This time Varian isn’t so lucky—he falls hard on his knees, unable to stand on the shaky ground.
A hand grips his arm, nails digging into his shoulder—Yasmin drags Varian to his feet, supporting him against her. In the alchemy stall, the owner has vanished. Varian lists sideways in her hold. “What—”
“Pirates,” Yasmin hisses, and they both stumble when the ground rocks again. Cracks line the street. “I knew they were getting bold, but this is—!”
The jeering grows louder, closer to them. Yasmin pulls him up to his feet, and this time Varian needs no instruction. The pound of blood in his ears, a looming threat coming ever closer—he knows this feeling, this metallic tang in the air.
The labyrinth has etched this lesson into his bones.
He runs, and Yasmin runs with him. The crowd, once comforting, has turned confining; bodies shifting like a living thing, people on the ground, someone crying. Varian shoves his way through, trying to get away. A piercing scream makes him falter, then push on, but Yasmin turns back, vanishing momentarily in the crowd.
Varian stumbles, stopping too, turning back less because he wants to and more on instinct. Panic coats his tongue. He pushes through the mill of people, searching—and finds Yasmin on the ground, kneeling down to help someone up.
“To your feet!” Yasmin is saying, pulling the poor bystander upright. “Hurry! Get others off the ground! We will all be trampled at this rate.”
“Yasmin—!”
“Boy, what are you standing there for? Go hide!”
“I—” He wants nothing more than to run, but her moment of altruism has sent a cloud of shame through him. She’d stopped at the screams and cries for help. He had not. “I can, I can help—”
“I think not.” Yasmin grabs his arm, pushes him away; the crowd swells and ebbs around them. “Go to the buildings, you are small, hide by the crates—this crowd will kill you if the pirates don’t get there first, now hurry and—”
A shrieking sound rets the air, the awful screech of metal sliding against metal. Yasmin cuts herself off, whipping around; Varian stares over her shoulder, numb and horrified. There is a body in armor fallen to the ground, and red smeared across the cobblestone. Above the body there is a pirate, pale like a fish’s belly and smiling with teeth like tombstones, pulling free a crude sword dripping with blood and gore.
Varian claps a hand over his mouth, bile sour in his throat. The sight of blood makes his head spin. He’s never—he’s never seen someone die before, he realizes. Not like this. Not so brutally. He’s never…
Yasmin grips his arm so tight her hand spasms, hard enough to bruise. The pain grounds him, and Varian pulls his eyes away from the dead guardsman with difficulty, swallowing back the sick. Yasmin tugs him behind her, as if to shield him, and herds him back as she steps away from the scene, moving out of the pirate’s line of sight slowly and silently—
And the money pouch in her pocket, still untied and hanging out from her pocket from when she’d opened it, minutes ago, to pay for Varian’s alchemy ingredients—dips, opens, and spills bright golden coins all across the street in a clatter.
Yasmin freezes, her eyes going wide and horrified. Varian’s breath slams shock-still in his throat.
The pirate’s head snaps up. He stands, sword in hand.
He looks right in their direction.
Yasmin says a foul word in a language Varian doesn’t know, grabs his arm, and turns to run.
Varian scrambles to follow, his heart stuck in his throat. He can hear the pirate behind them, beginning to laugh, cackling with a bright and bloodthirsty sort of glee, drunk on something far worse than wine. “Pretty lady!” the man coos over the screams of the crowd and the cannon fire. “Pretty lady, you look like you might have gold!”
“Fuck,” Varian says, distantly, and then Yasmin shoves him into an alleyway. Crates and barrels and open buckets of produce line the dirty side-street, and despite the lack of people it’s nearly a maze to his eyes. Varian dodges crates and spilled fruit, following Yasmin’s sprint best he can—and he thinks, in that moment, he will make it. He can see the other side, the open street, and he is close, so close—
He bursts out of the shadowy alley into the sunlight—and then the ground tremors with a force more than cannon fire, and sends Varian crashing to his knees.
His vision flips. White bursts like stars behind his eyes. The ground rushes up to meet him and he catches himself badly on the stone, cobble scraping up his hands, the street rocking beneath his palms like a bucking horse. Small cracks break through the rock. He doesn’t understand. This can’t be from cannon fire. This is—this is—an earthquake?
He can’t see Yasmin anymore. His head is spinning. Varian pushes dazedly to his feet, and feels so turned around he falls right back down again. His breaths rasp distant in his ears. His hands are shaking. He gets to one foot and lists hard to the side, stumbling sideways until he falls heavy on the thick glass window of a shopfront.
Varian fumbles blindly for purchase, and his fingers catch on the window frame. He gets one hand on the shopfront wall and pulls shaking to his feet, standing hunched and wheezing in the burning daylight. The glass of the shop window shines cold in the sun. He looks beside him, and the shop window reflects back at him, a distorted image of himself. In his reflection he can see the blood on his face, the shadows under his eyes. The fear and confusion clouding his expression.
And behind him. Behind him—
The man. The pirate. Blood on his coat and a smile like death. He is still laughing. Still standing. It’s as if the earthquake hasn’t touched him at all. His eyes burn green in the windowpanes. His hand is raised, and his sword glints bright in the winter sun.
Varian should run. Varian should fight. He doesn’t, though. He can’t. He feels cold. He feels frozen all the way to his bones, all the way to his navel. Like an icy cord has been pulled taut—like a hand on his neck, holding him in place. A weight in the air that is more than fear… an anticipation that is almost supernatural.
All those dreams. All those sleepless nights, trying in vain to fight the exhaustion and the dark. All those whispers in his ears. The memory of it chokes him. The memory holds him still.
The pirate lifts his blade. In the window, Varian’s reflection shimmers like a ripple effect. For a moment, someone else stands in his place. A woman, terrible in her familiarity, with stone-dark skin and eyes glowing yellow like a moon.
Hello, child.
The pirate swings.
Did you miss me?
His right hand is searing with pain. His veins feel like molten metal. The world flashes white, and the pirate’s laughter, behind him, cuts off into a scream.
And like something from Varian’s deepest nightmares—the black rocks begin to grow.
They come out of nowhere: the dark rocks bursting all at once, a starburst of deadly intent. They spear through the cobblestone like a hot knife through butter, crisscrossing and tearing up and down the street in a deadly wave. Dust bursts up in the air like a fog, the streets turned to rubble and ruin. Through the distant ringing of his ears, Varian can hear the rising screams like a final curse.
In the mirror, the Moon smiles. The icy touch at the back of his neck burns like a brand. His hand spasms with a pain white-hot and bleeding, and Varian drops to his knees.
His vision whites. Exhaustion hits him like a physical blow, the drain so sudden it makes his head spin. He blinks, and then—just like that—she’s gone. It is just him in the mirror, now. Just Varian, staring wide-eyed and horrified at his own reflection, blue eyes gone empty and cold with remembered terror.
“—get up!”
A hand pulls at his shoulder, and Varian fights on instinct, struggling to pull away. His limbs are weak, his body aching—he bites back a sob and tries to throw himself back. He hears someone curse.
“Boy, snap out of it! We need to go!”
At last, familiarity seeps through. That voice. He recognizes it.
“Varian!”
Yasmin.
His eyes clear, and he finally recognizes her. Her grip on his arm is almost bruising in its force. Her eyes are wild. There is blood on her cheek.
“Hurry!”
This time, when she pulls him up, he does not fight her.
Varian stumbles to his feet, wavering back and forth. He feels very far away. He feels like he’s drowning. He’s barely breathing at all.
Yasmin is running. Yasmin is dragging him with her. The satchel thumps heavy against Varian’s side like a promise, or a reminder. His hand hurts, but the pain is fading, needle-like piercing turned to dull aching. He feels cold. He feels so cold. He doesn’t want to know.
He looks behind him anyway.
People are crying. People are still screaming. It rings in his ears like the distant toll of a bell. Smoke and dust cloud in the air and drift soft like a fog onto crumbling streets. People are lying still. People are lying silent. He cannot see the pirate at all.
There are rocks, too. Black rocks torn through the ground like a spiny crown, ripping apart the streets. They are everywhere. They are tearing through the city like they once tore up his home. Needle-like and deadly, and each and every last one of them is pointing right at the sea.
His hands are numb. He feels so cold. In the back of his mind, he can hear laughter on a distant breeze, and for the first time he’s not sure if it’s only a memory, or perhaps something more.
Something worse.
Hello, child.
Varian looks away.
.
.
.
In a grand ship by the eastern coast, Lady Caine watches the distant sprawl of Port Caul go up in smoke.
Her hand is outstretched, reaching—her fingers curled as if to grasp the air itself. Her lips have peeled back from her teeth; her dark scowl cuts into her pretty face. The ship is empty but for her, her crew gone out to battle—armed only with their swords and a spare vessel for cannon fire. She is alone here. She is the only one watching. The only one to see exactly when the battle started… and the only one to see how it ends.
It is only Lady Caine that sees the rocks rise up, black towers hanging heavy over the city skyline. Only Lady Caine that sees her crew fall back to the sea, their numbers gutted, their white shirts turned red from bleeding.
She drags her hand away from the water, and her scowl turns to a snarl. She watches, white-knuckled and furious, as the black rocks rise up over the city. Tens upon tens of deadly spears, that lethal black stone slanted and sure, each and every needle-tip edge pointing right towards Lady Caine in her ship.
“Is that a threat?” she hisses, and turns away from the sight, pacing furious across the deck. “No one said the gods would be involved.”
She pivots on her heel, the wind whipping at her hair. Her eyes fix bright and poisonous on Port Caul. Her muttering darkens. “What happened to the Moon being too weak to make an appearance, anyway? I thought she needed a conduit for that. But that fucking moonstone is gone, and all reports say she’s an avid hater of mortals, so how…?”
She trails off, the words falling short. Her pacing stills. She holds herself tall and stiff in the shine of the winter sun, and her hands clench tight into fists. Her nails cut deep in her palm.
Something shudders across the deck. A shadow, a cloud over the sun. The boat creaks and groans like a rusty hinge. Frost crawls along the side of the boat. The wind whispers. Lady Caine closes her eyes in thought.
“Maybe,” she murmurs, the rage falling slowly to contemplation. “Maybe she did choose a mortal vessel. For some reason. Against all reports of her personality.”
A pause. Lady Caine tilts her head.
“And, say, if the Moon did choose a conduit...”
Her eyes open. She looks at Port Caul with fresh eyes. She traces the path of the black rocks. That deadly slant. That unbreakable sword. Those cruel, uncontrolled towers, and the unerring accuracy of their direction, the blade pointed right at her.
Slowly, surely, Lady Caine starts to smile. She watches as her men flee like cowards, running from the dark rocks like cities from a plague, and laughs under her breath. “Someone who can summon the dark rocks, hm…? Sounds like someone we could use.”
Another pause. She tilts her head. She turns to the shadows, to the empty air beside her, and smiles with all her teeth. In the midday shine, the green of her eyes nearly seems to glow.
“Well?” says Lady Caine. “What do you think?”
#tts#tangled the series#varian#rapunzel#rta#rapunzel's tangled adventure#tangled#cassandra#eugene fitzherbert#tangled varian#tangled rapunzel#iza fanfic#fic: labyrinths of the heart#fic series: the long road back to home#fic: faults of the mind
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• "Those bright eyes of his... They scare me"
I remember him so well. Too well. More than I want to, honestly. If I close my eyes, I can see him with such utterly small details that it gives me shivers, shivers out of sheer guilt. He was the softest thing ever, most precious, innocent cinnamon roll. He had the sweetest voice, calmest attitude, respectful posture, everything you see in these cliché perfect precious boys in generic movies. Usually the one who gets called a nerd and a "kick me" note on the back of a old hoodie.
And he was the weakest person I've ever met on my life. He had the loudest cry, the thinner arms, clumsiest manner, perfect to punch. He was a slow runner, a coward at his best. He never replied when we offended and laughed at him. He cried like a stupid baby when some of us burned or ripped his notebooks full of hero entries he studied so hard to finish. He never hit back when ''some of us'' almost made him deaf by making explosions way too close to his soft baby ears and making he throb in pain. He didn't care about the bullying, since a long time ago, and that drove me nuts. Who that jerk tought he was to act so goddamn cool?
It started pretty early, being honest. At the start it was just a ridiculous joke, as we were little kids who might just have started to discover who they are. Or who they aren't. We blasted. We flew. We had tails. We had crazy body parts, cool abilities, weird stuff going on. He had nothing. He just had his puffy cheeks, his weirdly symmetrical freckles, his scaredy cat green eyes and that messy dark olive hair.
So bad I'll never see these things again.
Time flew, of course, and when we realized, it was a sick, dizzy endless spiral of offenses, threats, awful bruises, adult negligence and even worse. We were both pathetically weak, we still are, but he made me feel powerful. He made me feel like I had control over his life. He was submissive because of all the pressure and harm I had put on his shoulders and didn't even realize. And yet, he still called me a friend. We had a really distorced vision of what friendship was, and we couldn't do nothing about it.
At least I couldn't. Not in time.
Despite all my obsession with heroes and being so fucking heroic, I was too blind to save him. I was such a coward... Such a villain.
Of course, there is always the high point. The apogee. In my case, the lowest blow I could ever think of blowing. And the worst part, I tought I was absolutely right, until it was too late to come back.
This day, he said he wanted to apply to U.A. we made such fun of him this day. We blew our limits shamelessly. It was so ridiculous! He didn't have a quirk, how would he go to U.A? What a joke! He was so naive. I took another of his notebooks, seeing the unbelief show in his eyes the millionth time. He tried to get it back, but I was at least ten inches taller than him, it was easy to mock that little poor soul. My hands burned the booklet and carelessly threw it from the window to the hard floor behind our hell-ish school. He stood there, hanging to look at the window, almost crying. Like the jerk he was. "Oh, come on!" I laughed so hard my stomach hurt, alongside with my 'friends' (whose I am now so disgusted of now that I don't even remember their names). "If you want to be a hero so hard, just jump off a fucking roof and see if you have a quirk in your next life!"
That was the low blow.
The look he gave me after that didn't disturb me at the time, I was too arrogant to care, but now it haunts my deepest nightmares. A look of shock, anger, lute. A look of despair, unfairness, reluctance, such a mixture of bad feelings, accumulated over so many years of oppression exploding inside him, staring directly at my soul in a way I've never seen him even trying to do, a wildness that haunted my eyes for all my years, dragging my counciousness down to an unknown path with him, forever. It's something hard to forget. Hard to overcome.
He had an accident involving a villain that day. Almost died. If it wasn't for All Might showing up at the last second, the slugde villain would've suffocated him. Ah, that was the best moment of that poor emerald's miserable life. He admired All Might so much, so much, he couldn't even believe he was being saved my his idol. By what they told me, he asked for him to sign his notebook, the same I had blown away from the window barely half an hour before. He even asked to All Might if he could be a hero even if he didn't had a quirk. He was shining.
But then, he got crushed. Appearently, All Might tought the same way as me... Or he was just being protective, knowing the struggles and dangers of being a hero, trying to keep his naive and sweet innocence safe. It didn't work. He was already suffering, and this triggered his already weak head beyond any limit. Amy humanity he had at this point was dead.
That same evening, Izuku Midoriya jumped off a roof, like I said him to. He purposely chose a building that no one looked at, just so he wouldn't get the attention for himself. It was painfully calculated, cruelly well-thought. A successful failure.
That same evening, the same criminal who attacked him almost took my life away the same way. If it wasn't All Might and some other heroes... I'd probably be in hell. In hell, like the monster I am. This day changed me forever, even when I still didn't know about Deku's fate yet. It made me rethink how I see my life. It made me appreciate it. Made me realize for once that the power I thought I had was non-existent, made me see how weak I really was. As my mom would say, I am a rat. A bastard.
Then they found his body, and my world was twisting once again. Not that I liked him. Not in the way people think I do. I just never realized how my jokes made his life a living hell. The look his mother assumed to no one specifically once she knew... It was tortuous to look at. Her painful sobs and screams, the shaking agony that exploded towards her body, the muffled, utterly sad voice as she desperately repeated the word "Izuku" a million times in a row, begging for the only thing that she loved to come back uselessly still gives me so many bad thoughts when I think about it. How could I be so cruel? How could I have ruined such a innocent woman's life like that? My own mother looking at me with a cold blooded gaze wasn't very relaxing either. She knew it was me, but she didn't even say anything about it. Just her poisonous red eyes staring at the dirtiest secrets of my soul were enough to torture me for years. She knew how to make me feel the worst kind of pain, she still knows. She plays a lot with it.
Once the controversy was over, I finally got to U.A. I owed this to both myself and Izuku. For once, I stopped offending him in my mind. Too late for apologies. I still visit his grave every year though.
I made new friends at that place. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I've met people like Kirishima, Kaminari, Sero, Ashido, Jirou and many more. Even the people I'm not so close to, I still try and have a nice conversation sometimes (although I'm not the most delicate person on earth), like Iida, Uraraka, Tokoyami and Aoyama; hell, I even made somewhat of a friendship with the complicated emo™ Todoroki.
But, I still feel his eyes above me every single moment. His once green, livid eyes, now dead, full of white emptiness, staring at my deepest self with wild rage. He's attached to me like a shadow, unquiet and unsettling. He's my shadow, but he don't have my spiky blonde hair, nor my sharp features. No, his uncanny softness was still still there, haunting me unhumanly, not like the boy, the victim I once knew, but a ghost determimed to chase after me sleeplessly, gazing me, keeping all my darkest secrets until I join him wherever he might be, waiting for me, planning his sweet revenge, maybe.
Those bright eyes of him...
They scare me. A lot.
#bnha#bnha fanfiction#bnha midoriya#bnha angst#bnha bakugou#bnha ua#bnha class a#bnha katsuki#bnha deku#izuku midoriya#this just popped in my mind and i HAD to write it#this got very edgy...#anyway embrace your darkness#maybe ill make a fanart based on this for myself idk#angst angst angst angst angst angsssttttt
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Theory time
Alright, so we all know through the context of this being written in a fanfiction/a03 format that this is all a play about canon VS fanon. What is a little hard to decipher is what are the things that are plays off fanon and which qualities are the true aspects of the characters(canon)? ANYWAY here are just a few of the things I am ASSUMING are plays off fanon based on my years in the fandom and sheer obsession of consuming this shit (trigger warning for everything taken place in the epilogue FYI):
-Dave: I think some of the main aspects of fanon influencing his epilogue version is intertwined with “woobifying”, “Slow burn”, and even possibly even “sexuality”.
-Woobifying is a fandom concept of reducing a character to “a cinnamon roll too pure for this world” someone you wanna baby (often applied to trans guy characters whether canon or headcanoned). This one is a bit of reach I’ll admit because it DOES makes sense that after years of living with Karkat the dude would soften up but there were times in the epilogue even Dave admits he’s gotten softer and the dude just plain out was very passive. In my time I’ve seen tons of depictions of Dave as a lot more emotional than shown in the comic or a lot more woobified in fics (like in meteor fics where he often has very dramatic emotional outbursts) By the way this is NOT me shitting on you if you like viewing Dave in that way because a lot people with trauma relate to him and use him for “cathartic release”(me fucking too lol). It’s more a guess/observation of maybe why he’s developed in this way due to the comic now being a strange sponge absorbing all fanon, good and bad, into it weird ass grasp.
-Slow burn is likely the trope that plays into why the hell it took so fucking long for him AND Karkat to admit their feelings. If you have literally ever consumed Davekat content I’m sorry but 99% of it is slow burn lmao every meteor fic is pining, every coffee shop AU is the budding of a lifelong partnership, and every Harry potter furry inflation pwp crossover WHATEVER fic is 10k words building of sexual tension like......To bring their other relationships in canon into this we can see that Dave was able to flirt with Jade and Terezi and entered a relationship with them at a pretty normal rate WHICH can totally be attributed to the fact he views them as girls and himself as heterosexual so was much more comfortable making a move- sure. Looking at Karkat, however, and you see the dude is a little shy about romance sure but he was still able to flirt with Terezi and make awkward moves on John so like......I can’t help but to feel like something outside (us?) was influencing them?
-Sexuality is another sort of reach but I think it’s something to consider. In terms of the comic....when exactly DID canon end? You could argue at the end of act 7.......or the moment John used his retcon powers to create a new timeline. Fandom Dave (on the tumblr side at least) was usually consider queer and a lot people shipped Dave with another dude. Perhaps John going back and rewriting canon helped bring our influence over Dave’s sexuality into the comic? I remember finding out Davekat was canon and confirming my “Dave is bisexual” headcanon and just thinking in wonder how it felt like Hussie was plucking my desires straight from my head and incorporating them. Which made me HAPPY by the way. If this is anywhere even near truth it’s not like he didn’t do a fantastical and natural job of incorporating it into the comic which shows how “incorporated fanon” is not a totally horrendous thing. The comics always done it with fandom memes and such.
-Rose Lalonde. Not too sure what fanon influenes were brought onto her to be honest? In candy she was almost like a creepy stepford wife which is. Bizarre to me. Rose is the most contrary and rebellious character so seeing her settle down like that (OR FUCKING DOING SOME GUYS LAUNDRY) is a little strange. In meat she insists that she is an individual despite being married but that could have EASILY been Dirk’s influence? Also her biggest fandom stereotypes off the top of my head is Know-it-all smug meddler, alcoholic, and elegant. Really none of that was applied so still need to consider her more. The most damning thing however is where is all the piss?? If you look at the amount of piss kink rose fanfiction one has to wonder......and I can’t even continue this joke.
-Jade Harley: Gonna keep it real with ya’ll. I feel like this epilogue gave Jade Harley way more character. She wasn’t given much in canon except for lonely silly girl so it makes sense to me why she’d grow up desperate for physical bonds and inserting herself into relationships. I liked her telling John that she wasn’t some princess in a tower anymore cause it shows she KNOWS how everyone has always viewed her and that’s a little sad. As for tropes around her character.....yep people pleaser, silly girl, hippie, shoved aside for literally any other character......Need to think about her more, too.
-Jake fucking English. What even is there to say? He more than anyone was influenced by fanon and it doesn’t take too much thought to see how. In a lot of fandom jokes and in fanfiction he is basically treated as a stupid piece of meat. I genuinely don’t read much fanfiction about him except from a trust few fans who I know care about him and will write him in a full rounded way. In any case we see a single moment in which Jake has this oppressive narrative taken away from him and it was when he was talking to Dave and Karkat during their election conversation. If that wasn’t already hard enough to read we can look back at the implied rape that took place with him in the beginning of Jane’s relationship with him or over the course of it. John, the one person supposedly not influenced by fanon as he’s still tied to the comic via retcon powers, is even the one to tell people that Jake is basically being raped. So yeah. Good times. I’ll get to Dirk in terms of Jake in a moment L M A O. Imagine that being the saddest lmao you ever just read.
-Jane Crocker: Welp hope you weren't a Jane fan lmao. What can I say except it FEELS like all the subliminal messaging really got to her and she’s like......warped by the condesce? I think if in the comic they showed more of her political takes then maybe this wouldn’t have come as such a shock. Like, I flat out am disgusted by her character now? She’s a facist, abusive, rapist(that was hint, unfortunately)? WOW good take homestuck writting staff?? I mean I know one of you used to write like incest pedo rape porn but aight??????????? Anyways in fanon Jane is treated as the girl who gets in the way of dirkjake so kinda that early 2000s bitchy yaoi girl brand, boring person in the background, or the hottie. They obviously kept saying she was “easy on the eyes” so there’s the hottie trope but that’s about it.
-Roxy Lalonde: Out of ALL the Alphas they fucking escaped with their goddamn dignity PFFT. So in terms of tropes: trans Roxy, alcoholic, and flirty “boy obsessed”.
-So with trans Roxy this is like Dave’s sexuality thing I discussed where a widely celebrated headcanon influenced canon and that not necessarily a BAD thing. Like I said, this theory is that canon is just absorbing fanon for better and for worse. I saw people were bummed they weren’t a trans girl but I am actually down with this for two reasons. 1) being all those memes “what’s your gender?” “the void” and 2) a part being friends with someone who’s trans is.....not being used to seeing them as the gender they actually are but taking the time to learn these new unfamiliar pronouns- and get the fuck over it. It’s their choice and you just gotta accept it despite your feelings.
-alcoholic Roxy was not at all incorporated which is the biggest fanon about her (not as much in recent years thankfully) so honestly? Kinda diminishes my argument. It’s not like the writers were worried that tossing out their progress as person was bad writing lol look at Dirk.
-Flirty Rox. In candy they were SUPER fast moving in their relationship with John and despite towards the end they said that Dirk dying made them wanna do something with their life I just....don’t buy it? Mainly because john who is uninfluenced by the fanon tropes even noticed how fast they were moving and how stepford agreeable wife she’d become.
-Dirk Strider. Aight. So. Here we go. fandom tropes are controlling puppet master, abusive, and cold/uncaring.
-Dirk is a naturally controlling man, yes. Every version of himself struggles with this, yes. Even if we work on issues does not mean old flaws will never leak out, yes. However, after in the comic itself we see conversations with some of his closest companions and the effort he was making and ready to continue making was completely obliterated. Dirk is someone who takes his projects a little too seriously so why would he toss out this one- the most important one in his life? ANYWAY........Dirk in canon is shown that he’s also not great at multi-tasking or really anything that he really makes himself out to be AMAZING at. Don’t get me wrong I actually view Dirk as a complement dude cause he did get all the alphas into the session in a smoothish fashion (yes hal is him so it still counts) but, like, even when Dirk sounds like an AWESOME engineer to Jake he even admits that he basically had the future’s technology to help and it wasn’t that impressive. So now he’s claiming he’s the BEST? Wack.
-Abusive Dirk......The sheer amount of people in the fandom who still misconstrue his character as heartless and the sheer amount of fanfiction of sociopathic Dirk might’ve done something. If he is truly becoming his “ultimate self” and he is heart aspect.....all these fanfiction splinters are getting applied to him as well, ya’ll. INCLUDING one of the epilogues writers who literally used to write fanfiction depicting Dirk as a brutally abusive and manipulative version of himself. With the similarities between their big fic and the homestuck epilogue I can’t help but to wonder if they’re subtly trying to incorporate that? After all Alt Calliope goes into detail about how the writer/narrator is IMPORTANT and when one is someone who enjoys viewing dirk as such....well who’s to say pfft Everything about how Dirk treated Jake was some of the most shocking to me. How did you get the guy taking most of the blame for a relationship gone wrong to a man who in a very rapey way makes someone obsessed with him, stupid, and unable to ever receive respect? Horrifying stuff to read, lads. It makes much more sense to me if you look at this fandom’s perceptions on DirkJake. My god there are some bad takes and there’s a whole section of the fandom who was hellbent on making the ship out to be the most problematic ship to ever occur. So whereas in the comic you have Dave pointing out that both sides had issues and everyone was willing to talk things out you had half the fandom insist that it was all Dirk’s fault and he just COMPLETLY forced himself on an unwanting Jake. Yep, sound familiar?
-cold uncaring. yep tons of depictions of Dirk being cruel to his friends and family and sorry but go reread Homestuck I don’t even know what to tell you if you actually believe that. There’s literally nothing here I could write to help you. As if the whole thing about his character isn’t about how the people around him helped prevent him becoming like that and he hasn’t said in a dozen different ways how much he loves them and wants to treat them better. Get out of here with that shit lmao
I guess all can be said about Dirk at this point is either 1) the absorption of the vast amount of terrible Dirk depictions from ascending to his ult self has warped him 2) he’s playing a villain just because Homestuck being over means not existing which TERRIFIES him and existing is a higher priority than treating the people around him right or 3) caliborn influence
1) For the ascending I’m pretty sure this is the theory that’s gonna be right
2) playing the villain is probably not what it is because on twitter all of the writers are saying the transphobia is literally just him and they’re boosting a lot of theories say “this is a story about friends you love disappointing you and you moving on” So. Yeah. Take that depressing nugget of information. (I literally will be fucking dead inside if that really is where this story is taken. No joke I will probably quit this fandom lol don’t know if any of you really know how big that is for me to say
3) Caliborn? eh maybe who the fuck knows after typing that last bullet point out I’m too bummed to continue this hah
#Homestuck#Homestuck epilogue#upd8#dirk strider#personal#fyi I love people who tell me when they disagree so if this seems like utter bullshit do not hold back
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Storms
BakuKami week day one (Part three): Not enough/Better off
Summary: All quirks have a cost. A price or a drawback, something which makes the user suffer. It’s the natural order of things.
Read on Ao3
Kaminari was known for being rather loud, boisterous and cheerful. A ball of happy energy and sunshine. It was something Bakugo loved about him, one of the many. Kaminari balanced him out, always had a quick quip in response to his insults, something he regretfully appreciated. His cockiness tended to get him in trouble, and people like Kaminari helped rein him in. It was a comfort to know he had his back, in a fight or life. He'd even heard how, back at the training camp, he and Kirishima had been willing to fight the villain all on their own, and Vlad King if necessary.
But the clouds were rolling in, storming, and blocking out the sunshine.
And with storms came rain and lightning; lightning meant electricity, and electricity always took the path of least resistance to the ground. Often, this meant Kaminari, with the hum and buzz of power under his skin, became its target. He held back so much energy on a daily basis, being careful not to hurt someone.
Everyone knew that Kaminari's quirk was classified as an evil one, easily able to kill if he let loose without being careful.
The storm was getting closer, and Kaminari's control was slipping.
First, he'd zapped several of his classmates on their way into class, then he'd accidentally knocked out Jirou when she hit him with her jacks, their quirks interacting and she received the brunt of the shock. Kaminari wanted to cry, watching her be carried to Recovery Girl by a worried Iida, Yaoyorozu following behind with her hands clutched.
Aizawa had been watching him all day, but considering he had a class to teach, he couldn't actively continuously disable Kaminari's quirk. Elemental quirks were always violent and volatile, able to be affected by the slightest change around the user.
To Kaminari, even though it had been explained to him time and time again that there was a threshold of power a child just couldn't control, all he heard was that his control wasn't enough to keep people safe. He was a liability, and the look on people's faces when he'd taken down Jirou had been enough to say it all.
Almost everyone around him didn't feel safe.
Blissfully, his boyfriend was an exception. Bakugo wasn't a touchy-feely person anyway, so he didn't need to worry about zapping him. When Iida had chastized Kaminari for letting his quirk loose without Aizawa in the room, Bakugo was the one to get up and yell right back at the class representative.
"God, you're supposed to be the goddamn smart guy, Engine legs? Look the fuck outside; it's fucking storming, asswipe!" He'd yelled, hands crackling with explosions. Kaminari's head hurt from focusing; he couldn't think, too preoccupied with what he had allowed to happen to his friend.
"He should be-"
"THERE'S FUCKING LIGHTNING! HIS FUCKING QUIRK IS ELECTRICITY! THINK ABOUT IT FOR TWO SECONDS! Jesus fuck!" Bakugo exclaimed, getting louder and the class fell silent, looking from the window where rain pounded harshly against the glass, lightning striking in the distance, and thunder cracking. Kaminari pressed his forehead against the desk, whining and clutching his head, the sheer willpower he needed to exert to keep himself from overloading enough to take a more significant toll on his body than letting loose over two million volts.
Iida hadn't said anything as he walked by, Yaoyorozu getting up as well so they could take Jirou to the nurse.
Aizawa returned and didn't ask questions, but he told Kaminari to return to the dorms as a safety precaution. Kaminari was happy to follow the order, even forgetting his umbrella as he ran through the halls.
No matter what he did, it wouldn't be enough to keep his electricity under control; he could feel it reaching out and buzzing. He heard the light bulbs shatter as he ran by, tears streaming down his face.
Bakugo stared out the window, only barely paying enough attention to the lesson enough to remember what the hell it was about. He was more worried about what would happen with Kaminari once he got outside since he would get wet and water was a conductor.
The lightning was far away, he should be safe, but a nagging feeling in his gut told him he should keep an eye out.
He was right to do so.
He could see Kaminari quickly walking out of the school building, electricity thrashing about around him and onto the wet walkway. The walkway was covered in water, absorbing the electricity and heating it. Thunder cracked loudly, and suddenly a giant bolt of lightning came from the sky, right in front of the window, light near blinding and the shockwave enough to break the windows, shattering and everyone turned towards it, the students clamoring over to them and Aizawa telling them to be careful, running over himself. Bakugo hadn't even noticed he'd been cut by the glass, leaning over out the window. The wind blew harshly, and Kaminari was screaming, now all the lightning focusing on him. Another came down, striking him directly and sparking, the bushes and trees catching on the sparks which danced around him.
Bakugo called out to his boyfriend as another bolt of lightning came down, crashing, the shockwave enough to force him back. The other students yelled and fell back from it, shutting their eyes against the light. Almost as soon as one bolt dissipated, another crashed down and the shockwave only increased.
"Shit! Stay here!" Aizawa swore, jumping out through the broken windows, his binding cloth catching onto the tree. He needed to time his quirk use just right, or he could kill Kaminari by accident. The teenager screamed, falling to his knees and his quirk lashing out more, fire surrounding the building and lights flickering. Students from all classes had gathered by the windows, watching as this happened to Kaminari.
There was a brief second in between the lightning bolts, and Aizawa had to blink to protect himself from the harsh light. He threw his binding cloth to Kaminari, activating his quirk as soon as the flash stopped, and he yanked Kaminari away from the walkway.
Kaminari passed out with the relief without the electricity, tears streaming down his face, angry Lichtenberg figures marring his entire body.
Aizawa used his binding cloth to get back into the classroom through the window, Kaminari safe in his hold, and the students clamored around.
"He's going to be fine," Aizawa said, though he noticed the lights had shut off. Probably a power surge. The only source of light was Bakugo's sparking hands and Todoroki's fire, also helping to keep Dark Shadow at bay.
"Like fuck he is!" Bakugo yelled, the rest of the class backing him up.
"He just took fifteen lightning bolts directly into his body!" Midoriya said.
"I know that. I'm going to take him to Recovery girl. Bakugo, you're with me, okay? Midoriya, Todoroki, keep everyone here under control."
Both teens nodded, Bakugo lighting the way for them to get to Recovery girl while teachers looked out of their classrooms, asking what had happened. People were panicking, though things were slowly calming down.
"You're Kaminari's boyfriend, right?" Aizawa asked Bakugo while they walked, even though the popping and crackling from Bakugo's explosions were nice background noise.
"Yeah, what about it?" Bakugo scoffed as they turned the corner.
"I'm surprised you're not more worried about him." Aizawa shrugged, his eyes burning; he'd need to blink soon, but he wanted to get Kaminari as close to Recovery Girl as possible. He couldn't run, it would only agitate the soaking wet student's injuries.
"Well. He's always got electricity in him, yeah?" Bakugo said, more of a growl than actual words, "This probably isn't the first fucking time it's happened to him. Yeah, I'm fucking worried, but he's not enough of a damn weakling to go and die."
Aizawa blinked, feeling Kaminari's quirk start up again from the tingling sensation, lights flickering. He opened them again as quickly as he could, Kaminari shutting down again.
"You're not wrong," Aizawa said, smirking slightly. He was proud of his students, especially so for what they could withstand.
"Am I ever fucking wrong?" Bakugo glanced at the face of his boyfriend, seeing what he hated and loved to look at at the same time. His face was covered in freckles, though through his right eye and over his right cheek was the same Lichtenberg figures which he was sure covered the rest of his body as well. Veins heated up, and they might as well be burn scars, but Kaminari's body never seemed to let them scar over. It set apart the difference in their power levels.
Bakugo was powerful, and no one would ever doubt that after the sports festival, but if Kaminari could get more control then he'd be more powerful. Out of the whole class, Kaminari had the most potential and raw energy, and it grated at Bakugo's nerves that he didn't care enough to learn to use it properly. Fuck.
"There are days." Aizawa had to blink again, and they walked the rest of the way to the nurse's office in moderate silence.
Aizawa placed Kaminari onto one of the beds, next to Jirou, Bakugo having to stay to create light so the woman could administer a quirk blocker to his boyfriend, stopping his quirk from working normally for the next twenty-four hours. She also applied burn cream to the figures she could access easily.
The lights came back on, emergency generator finally kicking in, and Aizawa said he was heading back to class, but Bakugo didn't have to if he didn't want to.
Bakugo stayed, sitting next to the bed and listening to the rain. He wanted to be there when Kaminari woke up.
Which he did, an hour after school ended. He'd been carried back to the dorms once the rain had stopped since Recovery girl said she couldn't do much more for him. So there he was, laying in Katsuki's bed, his boyfriend right next to him.
"H-he-hey," Denki said, stuttering on his words through a stressed throat.
"Hey, dunce face." Katsuki smiled, just a tiny bit, and reached up to run his fingers through damp golden strands.
"I... So.. sorry..." Denki strained, and Katsuki glared.
"You've got nothing to be sorry for. Fucking lightning sucks ass."
"j... Just. I. If. I'd b-b-b-beeeeennn." Tears came to his eyes, and Katsuki waited for him to finish. "Bet-bettr. It. Not eno-nough." Denki was having a hard time talking, and Katsuki stopped petting his hair to reach over to the nightstand, getting a glass of water to help him.
He reached his other hand under Denki's head and pulled his head up so he could drink properly, the cool liquid soothing the throat sore from screaming.
"What the fuck wasn't enough, sparky?" Katsuki asked once the cup was empty.
"Con-trol." Denki squeaked out, and Katsuki glared once again.
"Fuck your shitty control, dunce face. You fucking survived a shit ton of lightning straight to your goddamn body, and you managed not to kill anyone with it. How's that for fucking control?" He said, looking down at the other hero in training.
"Y-You'd be. Bet. Better without."
"Better without what? You? Who the fuck are you to decide that for me?"
The tears started to fall from Denki's eyes, stinging against his wounds.
"I. Danger. Dangerous."
"Yeah, you're fucking dangerous, big whoop. Everyone in our goddamn class is dangerous; we're training to be heroes."
"Kach-"
"Don't try to convince me otherwise, it won't work dammit." Katsuki leaned forward and kissed him carefully, Denki unable to really do anything to reciprocate.
"I've gotta check you over for burns, alright? The old hag gave me a bunch of burn cream to put on your damn scars." Katsuki said Denki nodding. He couldn't move much, his body stinging like an open wound. Slowly, Katsuki helped him out of his uniform, revealing the figures running along almost every vein in his body. His back was the worst, however, and had already been gauzed and wrapped by Recovery girl. He couldn't touch it.
"Fuck, that did a number on you," Katsuki said, slowly rubbing the cream into Denki's legs. Denki nodded, whining.
"H... How's. Jirou?"
"The second-rate iPod is fine, she fucking left the nurse's office before the storm stopped."
As soon as he'd been covered in the burn cream, Katsuki helped Denki get dressed again, though just in briefs and a rather large hoodie, which was big enough on his boyfriend it might as well be a dress.
"Hung..." Denki whined, Katsuki huffing.
"I'm not your fucking nursemaid, okay? As soon as you're okay to walk, don't expect this." He grumbled, picking up his boyfriend and bringing him down to the main floor.
The storm hadn't quite passed yet, but it was certainly on its way.
#Bakukamiweek2018#Bakukami#Kaminari Denki#Bakugo Katsuki#Quirk control#Angst (Kinda)#Ask to tag I'm shit at it#Denki get's struck by Lightning#Aizawa shouta#TW: Bakugo's language
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Chapter 24 - Epilogue
by Dan H
Wednesday, 01 August 2007Dan concludes his review, having abandoned any semblance of impartiality, bless his bitter little heart.~
Previously: Harry does nothing of any interest for 23 chapters. We finally destroy one single solitary Horcrux.
Chapter Twenty Four: The Wandmaker
In which we learn a bunch of shit about wands that will be contradicted by the end of the book.
This chapter opens with a genuinely touching scene in which Harry buries Dobby by hand (as opposed to using magic). It's really sweet, although perhaps I would have found it more affecting if Dobby hadn't died out of sheer authorial malice.
So Harry dithers over whether to go for the Hallows or the Horcruxes, and thinks about all the shit that's happened and what it could all mean. He spends a really, really long time thinking about Dumbledore, and what his plans for the whole thing were.
So then Harry goes and talks to the Goblin they rescued from the Malfoys (did I mention the goblin? There was a goblin). The Goblin is all "you totally rock Harry Potter, because you sometimes treat other races with the barest minimum possible level of decency when you remember to." You see, it's because Harry understands love.
So Harry goes and talks to Ollivander about his broken wand. I mean seriously, it's not even worth doing jokes about, is it.
Having got his penis-metaphor out of the way, Harry then talks some more about Wand-Lore with Ollivander. Here we learn that it is the wand that chooses the wizard, not the other way around, and that if you take somebody's wand by force, that wand will work better for you than one you just picked up somewhere.
In particular, the discussion goes like this:
"I took this wand from Draco Malfoy by force," said Harry. "Can I use it safely?"
"I think so, subtle laws govern wand ownership, but the conquered wand will usually bend its will to its new master."
This all leads into a big discussion of the Elder Wand and how to take control of it you have to kill its previous owner or some such shit like that.
All of which turns out to be nonsense. In fact the rules for wand ownership seem to be roughly these:
Every wand has a True Owner.
When a wizard takes a wand from another wizard, he becomes the True Owner of every wand of which that wizard was previously True Owner.
"The Wand Chooses The Wizard" is crap, the thing about the Elder Wand changing hands through murder is crap. Like all the rest of the magic in Harry Potter, wands aren't mysterious or mystical, they follow simple rules which can be written down and followed very, very easily.
This will all become apparent later on, when it is revealed that Harry's act of yanking some wands out of Draco's hands made him the True And Destined Owner Of the Most Powerful And Destructive Wand In History.
Lame.
This chapter ends with another flash of Voldy-vision, as we see the Dark Lord claiming the Elder Wand from Dumbledore's tomb. But it's okay, because he's not the True Owner of it, because of rules one and two above.
Chapter Twenty Five: Shell Cottage
In which Harry spends so much time sitting on his arse doing nothing that it's not even funny.
This chapter is short, at a mere thirteen pages, but that is precisely thirteen pages longer than it needs to be.
Harry gets all weird about how Dumbledore is totally alive, and totally talking to him by weird magical means. It's like that Buffy episode where Giles thinks that a poltergeist is Jenny, but it isn't. Only with more sucking.
Bill and Fleur carry on being shit. Fleur carries on 'aving zee most stupeed accent ever written, and doing that really fucking annoying thing that French characters in books always do, where they put one French word into every sentence so that they wind up sounding like they're failing their GCSE oral.
During the big slew of inactivity, Lupin shows up to tell everybody that Tonks has had their baby. His opening line of dialogue is truly, truly, truly stupid:
"It is I, Remus John Lupin ... I am a werewolf married to Nymphadora Tokns, and you, the Secret Keeper of Shell Cottage, told me the address and bade me come in case of emergency!"
Okay, I get that he's trying to convince them that he isn't a Death Eater using Polyjuice (it's nice that somebody in the Potterverse has worked out how trivial it is to use), but none of the information he gives is secret, except for the stuff about Bill being the Secret Keeper, and since the Fidelius charm already prevents people from getting into the cottage, it's a bit of a waste of breath.
Remus asks Harry to be godfather to his child, then leaves.
Harry decides to break into Gringotts with the help of a Goblin. He bargains the Sword of Gryffindor for this, because apparently it belongs to the Goblins anyway. In one of the few moments of (a) this book being remotely interesting and (b) my finding a piece of Fantasy Worldbuilding worth listening to, we learn that Goblins believe that anything they make remains the property of its original creator, and that if they make something for somebody else, that something should go back to the goblins once said somebody dies.
So they're off to Gringotts. Four hundred and fifteen pages in and we're onto Horcrux number two!
Chapter Twenty Six: Gringotts
In which they finally run out of fucking Polyjuice.
They Polyjuice Hermione into Bellatrix, give her Bella's original wand (which Ollivander conveniently identified for them), and head for Gringotts.
And they use the Invisibility Cloak, of course they use the invisibility cloak.
Anyway, Hermione has trouble working with Bellatrix's wand (because she "had not won its allegiance by taking it personally from Bellatrix" - although as we will learn by the end of the book, casting Expelliarmus on whoever did take it personally from Bellatrix, or on anybody who had ever cast Expelliarmus on Bellatrix at any point in the past, should also have worked). Blah blah some crap, blah blah diagon alley.
They head to Gringotts, where they are interrupted by another Death Eater, who asks Hermione-as-Bellatrix how she managed to get hold of a new wand, since the only Wandmaker in England is currently AWOL and hers was known to have been stolen by Harry Potter. Tragically, Hermione does not respond by saying "I don't know, the same place the new intake of Hogwarts students got theirs I suppose."
By the time they get to the main desk of Gringotts, the jig is totally up. All the crap with the Polyjuice and the Goblin and all the rest has been for nothing. From the security of his invisibility cloak, Harry uses the Imperius curse to get past the goblin on the desk. I'd like to think that this marked a genuine change in Harry's character, but it totally doesn't. He was in a difficult situation, he took the easy way out. I'd also point out that, compared to turning your target irreversibly into a drooling lunatic (like Hermione did to Xenophilius Lovegood) the Imperius Curse doesn't seem half bad. It gets your target to do what you want and go where you want, but so does a Confundus charm.
Just so we get the message that we're now in the company of dark, edgy Harry Potter, he uses the Imperius curse a couple more times, and each time it seems not so much like an unforgivable violation of somebody's free will, but a comparatively harmless way to get somebody to look the other way for five minutes. It's rather like the Jedi Mind Trick, in fact.
So they get deeper into Gringotts, and it's revealed that yet, they do have a couple of defences, in the shape of some water that washes away magical concealment (wouldn't it be better to have that before you get into the building - and shouldn't the Ministry invest in some of it as well?) and a blind dragon which is scared of loud noises.
Impregnable, huh?
So they head to the Lestrange vault, and realise that they find that every time they touch something, it multiplies itself and becomes burning hot. How the hell do the Lestranges expect to get anything out of there, I ask you? Or does it only work if you aren't the rightful owner of the vault? In that case, why not just rig the door to only open for the right person? They could use that "flesh memory" shit which snitches are apparently built with.
Seriously, though, this is what I hate (okay, one of the many things I hate) about Rowling's universe. It's all so arbitrary. Everything works according to these stupid rules which operate on the basis of pure plot-convenience. Like the poison in Book Six which "has to be drunk" in order to get at the Horcrux. All throughout this book, the "magic" is arranged so that the "only thing to do" is whatever the hell JK Rowling wants to have happen next. It's fucking lazy.
So they grab the Cup of Helga Hufflepuff, but they lose the Sword of Gryffindor. Don't worry, though, they can still pull it out the Sorting Hat.
Actually, thinking about it, wouldn't that have been a better, faster way to get the Horcruxes together: just get a True Ravenclaw, a True Hufflepuff and a True Slytherin to yank the damned things out of the Sorting Hat. Except, of course, that wouldn't be the way it Had To Be Done.
Chapter Twenty Seven: The Final Hiding Place
It's Hogwarts.
Chapter Twenty Eight: The Missing Mirror
In which we get yet another dose of Dumbledore backplot.
So Harry is off to Hogwarts, because he saw in Voldemort's mind that the last Horcrux was there. He also saw that Voldemort had only just realised that his Horcruxes were in danger at all.
I mean, seriously, I get that he's arrogant, but you'd think that however overconfident you were, spending eleven years as less than a ghost would teach you some level of caution. I mean, I don't like leaving my keys where I can't see them, let alone fragments of my actual goddamned soul. But Voldemort, intent as he was on finding the Elder Wand, has just decided to take it on trust that his immortal soul is nice and safe and not hacked into bits with the Sword of Gryffindor.
Seriously, this guy totally deserves to get killed by his own rebounding curse.
Harry and co Apparate into Hogsmeade, where they immediately set off the alarm system and get set upon by death eaters, but the bartender at the inn takes the rap for them, and pulls them out of the shit.
I mean seriously, how many times can somebody get rescued from their own fuckups by smarter more capable people and still be considered a hero?
The bartender turns out to be none other than Aberforth Dumbledore. Woohoo, we're in for some more exciting Dumbledore backstory.
Aberforth tells us the exact same story we have heard six times already: Dumbledore hung out with Grindelwald for three months in the eighteen fifties, there was a fight and their sister got killed in the fallout. Aberforth thought it was Dumbledore's fault, Dumbledore thought it was Dumbledore's fault, Grindelwald ran off to be a Nazi somewhere.
Harry gets into Hogwarts through a secret passage which Neville created using the Room of Requirement. Because Neville rocks.
Chapter Twenty Nine: The Lost Diadem
In which Harry is systematically upstaged by every single character in the book.
Neville takes Harry into his secret military base in the Room of Requirement. Neville, incidentally, also has honest to god scars from standing up to the Death Eaters in charge of Hogwarts. Notice that's "standing up to" not "throwing a tantrum at" which was the best that our hero ever really managed.
Neville fucking rocks. No wonder Voldemort didn't mark Neville as an equal, he knew when he was outclassed.
It turns out that Dumbledore's Army, freed from having to put up with Harry's complete inability to get over himself for eight seconds, has gone on to actually be useful and effective. They offer to help Harry, and Harry has an attack of stupid.
"You don't understand." Harry seemed to have said that a lot in the last few hours. "We - we can't tell you. We've got to do it - alone."
"Why?" asked Neville.
Harry Potter everybody: whiny shit with a messiah complex, completely incapable of independent thought. Eventually they do in fact manage to convince him that he's being totally totally stupid. But wouldn't it have been nice if he'd just not been stupid in the first place?
So the DA go off to fight Death Eaters while Harry looks for the Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw, which somebody else told him might be the best place to start. Seriously, Harry does nothing for himself in this book. Or in any of the previous books come to think of it. But it's okay because he's "brave".
Harry and Luna try to sneak into the Ravenclaw common room to catch a look at the statue of their founder. In a rare moment of actually being kinda cool, we find that the Ravenclaw common room is not protected by a password but by a riddle (more of a koan, really: the question asked of Harry and Luna is "what came first, the phoenix or the flame?"). Needless to say, Luna answers the riddle, not Harry.
Worst. Hero. Ever.
They get to the common room, and are immediately ambushed by an interchangeable Death Eater.
Chapter Thirty: The Sacking of Severus Snape
In which Snape appears for ten seconds and utterly steals the show.
Oh look, they've summoned Lord Voldemort again. Pity they couldn't summon somebody actually scary instead.
So the Dark Lord is on his way, and all the people that are actually cool rush to the defence of Hogwarts. Harry, on the other hand, runs around looking for somebody to tell him what to do next. He eventually decides to start taking orders from the ghosts.
Everybody mills around in the corridors, and all the parents seem to have shown up. Molly Weasley continues to be completely fucking shit, insisting that Ginny can't fight because she's only sixteen.
Everybody gets ready for battle.
Oh, and Snape leaves so that he can get killed.
Chapter Thirty One: The Battle of Hogwarts
In which a battle presents no impediment to the interminable exposition.
While the rest of the student body are actually getting stuff done, and preparing to lay down their lives in battle against the Dark Lord, Harry goes off looking for a plot dump.
He finds it in the shape of the Grey Lady, ghost of Ravenclaw tower, who reveals that she is actually Helena Ravenclaw, daughter of Rowena Ravenclaw. Wow. Words cannot explain how little I care about that. She also reveals that she stole her mother's diadem, and that she hid it in a tree in Albania (the very Albania where Voldemort once went! Amazing isn't it). Harry suddenly remembers that he saw a diadem in the Room of Lost Things in the previous book (funny how he can remember that, but not - say - things that happened two chapters ago). He goes to get it.
While Harry is doing this, Ron and Hermione dash of to have sex in the Chamber of Secrets, which Ron manages to open by imitating Harry's use of Parseltongue. That's right folks, the magical language Harry carries in his soul as a result of his connection with the Dark Lord can be picked up by any schlub who pays attention for five minutes.
Hermione destroys the cup offstage, so we miss the big plot point, and get the ghost story. Oh JK, you master storyteller you.
Then the Troika go to the Room of Requirement and start ransacking it for Horcruxes. It's a good thing Harry happened to see it in the previous book really, or they'd be totally fucked.
In the Room of Requirement they meet Draco, Crabbe and Goyle. Crabbe and Goyle have been presented previously as a bit thick, but basically just your average bully types. In this scene, though, they're positively retarded. In, like, an actual way, rather than the way in which the whole book is retarded.
"We was hiding in the corridor outside," grunted Goyle. "We can do Diss-lusion charms now! And then," his face split into a gormless grin, "you turned up right in front of us and said you was looking for a die-dum! What's a die-dum?"
I've typed a lot of quotes into this article (I intended to do one a chapter, but I couldn't quite bring myself to), and fuck me JKR uses a lot of exclamation marks. Also: for fuck's sake, if you can cast a Dissillusionment charm, you should damned well be able to say "Dissillusionment charm".
Anyway, it turns out that Draco, Crabbe and Goyle have shown up to kill Harry, or bring him to the Dark Lord or something. I would like to believe that Draco is only doing this because he fears for the safety of his family, but since every single Slytherin turned against Hogwarts in the crunch, I think he's probably just being Evil.
So Crabbe or possibly Goyle summons Fiendfire, which is wild and uncontrollable and, conveniently, one of the few things that can destroy a Horcrux. This kills Crabbe, and allows Harry do demonstrate his heroism by rescuing Draco.
They get outside to see the penultimate (they think) Horcrux bleeding itself to death, and meet up with Fred, Percy and some nameless others. Percy gets quite a nice moment of redemption, where he apologises for trying to have a career when he should have just settled into virtuous poverty like the rest of his family. Then Fred gets killed in a horrible explosion.
Poor Fred. Ah well, it's not like he and George had distinct personalities anyway.
Chapter Thirty Two: The Elder Wand
In which Snape gets it for spurious reasons.
This chapter begins with Harry being Really Really Upset that Fred is dead.
The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant lain down their arms?
Oh just shut up! Just shut the fuck up JK Rowling. If you want us to mourn the death of a minor character, spend some fucking time developing them instead of telling us how we should all be really sad and shocked that they died.
So the battle rages on. Harry decides he's got to go find Voldemort, because he has to kill Nagini and end the plot once and for all. Also: he has to overhear Snape's final confrontation with Voldemort.
So Harry sneaks into the Shrieking Shack with his posse in tow, and we see Voldemort killing Snape in order to become True Master of the Elder Wand. Snape coughs his memories into a jar, and Voldemort calls an intermission in the battle, instead of just killing Harry where he stands.
I fucking hate this book.
Chapter Thirty Three: The Prince's Tale
In which all the fanfic turns out to have been right.
Snape was in love with Lily.
Harry is a Horcrux.
Dumbledore is an asshole.
Chapter Thirty Four: The Forest Again
In which the forest still fails to be remotely threatening.
This chapter makes me genuinely uncomfortable. Not in a "it's so dark and edgy and outside my comfort zone way". In a "I seriously am beginning to find JK Rowling morally despicable" kind of way.
Harry discovered, through Snape's memories, that he (Harry) is a Horcrux, and that the only way Voldemort can be defeated is if he (Voldemort) first kills Harry, thereby destroying the fragment of his (Voldemort's) soul which is inside him (Harry).
Harry, being the braindead personality-free fucktard he is, accepts this at face value, and marches off to die, pausing briefly to tell Neville to kill Nagini if he gets the chance. I'll say this for Harry, he knows how to leave things in the hands of better men.
He realises that "I open at the close" (the cryptic message inscribed on the snitch that Dumbledore gave him) means "I open when you're marching off to sacrifice yourself pointlessly". So the snitch opens, and he gets the (new, not-cursed) Resurrection Stone out of it. He puts on the ring and turns it, and all the dead people in the book (well, James, Lily, Lupin and Sirius at least) show up in spectral form to tell him how proud they are that he's off to commit suicide by means of Dark Wizard.
I mean, seriously, this is all kinds of fucked up.
Lily's smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily as though she would never be able to look at him enough.
"You've been so brave."
He could not speak. His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough.
"You are nearly there," said James. "Very close. We are ... so proud of you."
"Does it hurt?"
The childish question had fallen from Harry's lips before he could stop it.
"Dying? Not at all," said Sirius. "Quicker and easier than falling asleep."
I'm sorry, but that's just wrong on so many levels.
Now I admit, all through this book, I've been annoyed by the overprotective coddling of Molly Weasley, who won't let anybody under the age of thirty do anything that might be considered dangerous, but I'd even take that interfering old biddy over this creepy band of suicide groupies.
I mean seriously: the Potters both sacrificed their lives to save Harry, but now they're all in favour of him rushing headlong into his inevitable destruction? And what's with Sirius' "being dead is totally cool" speech? I mean seriously, this is exactly the kind of shit that Christian Fundamentalists have fits over, and with good reason.
Harry confronts Voldemort. Voldemort kills him.
I really, really wish this article could end here.
Chapter Thirty Five: King's Cross
In which JK Rowling, through Dumbledore, tells us how to feel about Harry.
I almost cannot bring myself to write about this chapter, in which Harry has a vision of Dumbledore in King's Cross station, and Dumbledore explains the plot to him again for old times' sake.
So it turns out that Harry isn't dead after all, because of the Very Special Bond between Harry and Voldemort, but Voldemort did ironically manage to destroy the fragment of his soul which was inside Harry all this time.
Wow. Convenient.
Then Dumbledore gives us a big speech about how fucking wonderful Harry is. You see Dumbledore sought the Deathly Hallows himself, but he sought them for bad reasons. Which in this case means "any reason at all." Harry, on the other hand, is Good and Pure, because he went through his entire life without having a fucking clue what he was doing. Because Harry was a passive little pussy who never did anything, never achieved anything, never had any ambition or even motivation.
"You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying."
So Harry, by blindly and unquestioningly allowing Voldemort to kill him, has shown himself to be a better man than any other.
I'm sorry, but I find that genuinely offensive.
I'm going to go into more detail about this in my post-book wrap up, because I think it bears some close analysis, but for now I'll make a couple of simple points.
Every single man, woman, and child in Hogwarts is risking their life to defeat Voldemort. Every single one of them is confronting death (or, if you prefer, "Death") and every single one of them has accepted that there are far worse things than dying. But their sacrifice doesn't count, because they're actually fighting, which is to say, they are trying to survive. In the new morality Rowling wants us to accept, the only true way to show courage is to lie down and just accept death.
Furthermore, Harry's stoic acceptance of his mortality is grossly undermined by the fact that he actually doesn't die. His great sacrifice is actually just another instance of him doing nothing by himself, and relying on other people to make things turn out alright.
Consider: if Harry actually had died, his mastery of the Elder Wand would have died with him, and Voldemort would have been able to carry on slaughtering to his heart's content. He would have still had one Horcrux left, and Hogwarts would have been destroyed.
This is the emotional and moral crux of the book, and it sucks beyond the telling of it.
Chapter Thirty Six: The Flaw in the Plan
In which all that seemed wrong was now right and those who deserve to are certain to live a long and happy life, ever after.
Voldemort seems to have collapsed, as well you might after nuking your own soul. He sends Narcissa to check whether Harry is alive, but when she realises that he is, she asks him (in a whisper) whether Draco is still alive.
Seriously, I love the Malfoys. I mean compare Narcissa - whose first and only concern is for her child, so much so that she risks defying the Dark Lord who, let's face it, isn't exactly known for his forgiving nature, just to know if he's alive or dead - compare her with Lily Potter, who just moments ago was cheerfully watching her son go to his certain death.
So Voldemort carries Harry's "dead" body to the front lines and does his big "ha ha, I've won you bunch losers" speech.
Everybody acts really sad that Harry is dead. Then Neville rushes the Dark Lord. Because Neville fucking rocks.
The Dark Lord disarms him, binds him, and then puts the Sorting Hat on his head and sets it on fire. Dude, you know she's reaching when she kills the goddamned Sorting Hat.
Neville breaks free of Voldemort's curse (which I like to think is Neville being a badass, but it is later revealed to be the Power of Harry's Big Love Death Sacrifice), pulls the Sword of Gryffindor out of the sorting hat, and totally decapitates Nagini. Because he has had it with this motherfucking snake, oh yes.
So then the shit hits the fan, and Harry jumps under his invisibility cloak again. There's a bunch of really badly written action. Molly Weasley takes out Bellatrix Lestrange in what our esteemed editor would identify as the Battle Between The Virtuous Woman And the Sinful Woman. Harry finally reveals himself, and reveals too that he has learned from Dumbledore the capacity to make long stupid speeches.
I'm going to reproduce this in full, and I'll say beforehand that Voldemort is totally right about everything:
"I don't want anyone else to try to help," Harry said loudly, and in the total silence his voice carried like a trumpet call. "It's got to be like this. It's got to be me."
Voldemort hissed.
"Potter doesn't mean that," he said, his red eyes wide. "That isn't how he works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield today Potter?"
"Nobody," Harry said simply. "There are no more Horcruxes. It's just you and me. Neither can live while the other survives, and one of us is about to leave for good ..."
"One of us?" jeered Voldemort, and his whole body was taut and his red eyes stared, a snake that was about to strike. "You think it will be you, do you, the boy who has survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?"
"Accident, was it, when my mother died to save me?" asked Harry. They were still moving sideways, both of them, in that perfect circle, maintaining the same distance from each other, and for Harry no face existed but Voldemort's. "Accident when I decided to fight in that graveyard? Accident that I didn't defend myself tonight, and still survived, and returned to fight again?"
Umm ... yes. Yes to every single one of them. At no point was it suggested that Lily Potter deliberately invoked ancient magic when she put herself in front of her son. Harry certainly didn't go to the graveyard by choice, and he had no idea that his wand would magically prevent Voldemort from hurting him. So yes, it was in fact all accidental. Harry Potter: the boy who was too dumb to die.
There's one more bit I want to draw attention to in this speech, because I find it so abominably offensive.
"I was ready to die to stop you hurting these people ... I've done what my mother did. They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding?"
This comes back to my point from further up (and I'll come back to it again, because it genuinely sickens me). Why the fuck is Harry's sacrifice more significant than anybody else's? Why did Harry's "willingness to die" create a special magic forcefield around Hogwarts, but not the willingness to die of every single other person in the damned school?
Essentially, Harry is setting himself up here as a literal Christ figure. The perfect innocent, going meekly and willingly to his death in order to take the place of the whole world. The thing is, though, Jesus was supposed to actually be God. His sacrifice (according to Christian tradition) was greater than the sacrifices of normal men because he was not a normal man. He was God, suffering as a man for the sins of man. Harry Potter is just a miserable self-involved kid with a martyr complex.
Harry carries on talking for another three pages. Then Voldemort tries to curse him, but his curse rebounds because of that bullshit with the Elder Wand really belonging to Harry because he "conquered" Draco.
Of course with the Dark Lord fallen, his entire army disperses without a word.
They collect their dead, and we find that Mr and Mrs Remus Lupin are among the fallen. Harry is momentarily sad.
The final page of the book shows Harry with the Elder Wand, which is now most definitely His. In a scene which I think sums up the vacuous nature of the entire series, he uses the Elder Wand, the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick, to magically repair his old wand.
Because lord knows, we wouldn't want the events of the last six hundred pages to have any consequences now, would we.
Epilogue: Nineteen Years Later
In which we learn that nothing that happened in the entire series meant shit.
Harry is married to Ginny. Ron is married to Hermione.
Back when I read The Order of the Phoenix, one of the few things I liked about it was the fact that Ginny seemed to have got over her crush on Harry. I thought that it was a refreshingly subtle, and subtly mature message to put into a children's book: sometimes you just get over people.
It saddens me greatly that JK Rowling, divorcee and single parent that she is, would feel the need to present such a naive view of romance. It seems like she spent so long talking about Death, she couldn't find anything to say about Life beyond "you grow up, get married, and have children."
Harry and Ginny's children are called James, Lily, and (as I am sure you already know) Albus Severus.
I think this, more than anything else, shows how deeply immature the series is. Harry goes through seven years of constant danger, he suffers torment, loss and even death. He touched the soul of the greatest Dark Wizard who ever lived, and practised the blackest of magic when he was forced to. But has he grown as a person? Has he changed? Not at all. His life still revolves around James and Lily, Dumbledore and Snape.
I also find it more than a bit offensive that Ginny (who we learn in
this interview
goes on to be an international sports superstar) doesn't seem to get any say in naming her own kids. I know it's an epilogue, I know it's sweet and everything, but her brother died at Hogwarts as well. The epilogue essentially says "And Harry Finally Got The Happy Family He'd Always Longed For". Never once does it consider the fact that after seven years he might want something else.
Coming Soon: My thoughts on the book as a whole, and the series in general.
Wardog at 15:46 on 2007-08-10I'm sorry I keep quoting David and Hannah at you but they're one of the few people to whose arguments I would naturally grant credence and they both very much enjoyed DH. David pointed out that there's something very different in fighting in a war in which there's a chance you might get killed and knowing walking to your death - thus Harry's sacrifice has more nobility and courage attached to it than you're giving him credit for. I guess it's the difference between rushing the Bastille and going to the guillotine..permalink - go to top
Dan H at 16:00 on 2007-08-10There is indeed a difference between fighting in a war in which there's a chance you might get killed and knowingly walking to your death.
Knowingly walking to your death is easier.
Harry doesn't really have a choice. He's "the chosen one". Colin Creevey, however, could have just walked away from Hogwarts and nobody would have thought the less of him for it.
I'd also point out that Harry didn't sacrifice himself to *save* anybody. He sacrificed himself to *kill* somebody.permalink - go to topArthur B at 17:10 on 2007-08-10I have to say that I'm also deeply uncomfortable with any situation where deliberate suicide is actually a good idea. Walking bravely to the guillotine, I don't count as suicide, because you don't normally have much choice as to whether or not you get your head hacked off: the only choice is whether you cry and whine and piss your pants, or whether you walk with your head held high and, possibly, impress the crowd with your stoic acceptance of your fate.
Walking to a duel which you are going to deliberately lose, because you think a loophole in the metaphysics in the universe will allow you to become Master of Death and give you the power to be the Messiah, isn't the act of a brave or noble individual. It's the act of a paranoid schizophrenic.permalink - go to topDan H at 17:15 on 2007-08-10He's not even doing it because he knows about the loophole, though. He's doing it for the same reason he does everything (see next article): Because He Thinks Dumbledore Wanted Him To.permalink - go to topArthur B at 17:31 on 2007-08-10So it is, in fact, literally true that if Dumbledore asked Harry to jump off a cliff, Harry would do it. (Which is kind of odd, in a series of books where mistrusting authority is supposedly a recurring theme.)permalink - go to topWardog at 21:51 on 2007-08-11I can't believe I'm trying to defend JK. I really have no investment in this, which is why I'm doing such an appalling job of it. But surely Harry has just as much right to walk way than Colin Creevy? He could go and live with Hermione's parents in Australia. I mean, through Snape's memories Harry sees what Dumbledore always intended for him (that he should nobly sacrifice his life) and *chooses* to do it anyway. An alternative reading might be that Harry realises that, rather than run around desperately trying to find alternative solutions to the Voldemort Problem, the adults around him have essentially groomed him into a passive matyr figure who will Do The Right Thing, even though it means his own death. And by the time he realises how thoroughly screwed he is, it's in the middle of the final battle and there's nothing much he can do short of pegging it. To *choose* what other people want you to do is still a choice, and after all that's happened to him, that Harry still has enough love in his heart to lay down his life is, y'know, pretty damn noble.
For the record, I don't actually buy this.
I don't actually buy that it's harder to walk knowingly into death than take a chance on it in a battle. Given a choice, I'd go for the battle and hope to find somewhere to hide.permalink - go to topWendy B at 23:29 on 2007-08-13Daniel --- I just wanted to say that you are not alone in your suffering. I've been working on a review of DH from my Livejournal site, but the 7th book seems to have killed my will to write. I am reading the book one more time to possibly find redeeming value, besides inducing millions of otherwise illiterate youngsters to get interested in reading. Beyond the insufferable plot details/holes you chronicle above, the series up through B6 appeared to be a gigantic and elegant mystery puzzle to be unveiled. And then on 7/21 we discover that it was an UNSOLVABLE mystery --- in B7 she introduced new characters and clunky plot devices. at the 11th hour (it burns! it burns!), to contort and bring the damn story to a close. All her prior book "clues" that fandom crawled over with a tweezer --- they weren't clever clues at all. Bah...but I loved this essay and laughed through the entire series. I might not write a thing but just refer folks here. Wendypermalink - go to topDan H at 15:13 on 2007-08-16the series up through B6 appeared to be a gigantic and elegant mystery puzzle to be unveiled. And then on 7/21 we discover that it was an UNSOLVABLE mystery
I think that's part of why I found the last book so unsatisfying. While I wasn't ever massively into the "puzzle box" aspect of the books, I can understand other people being into it. But the last books lost sight of even that giving us, as you say, a bunch of new characters and clunky plot devices which came out of nowhere (or at the very least, out of previously untouched areas of her notes).
If you do manage to get your review finished, I'll be very interested in seeing it.
permalink - go to topWendy B at 16:18 on 2007-09-16Daniel...you might get some traffic to these articles as I posted the links within an essay I just posted to LiveJournal's hp_essays: http://community.livejournal.com/hp_essays/239017.html
Wendy Bpermalink - go to topDan H at 12:24 on 2008-03-25On the Dumbledore side of things, I just don't understand how she can have a character that she spends half the book going off on a tangent about their unnecessary backstory (although it is a tangent away from that fucking tent so maybe I shouldn't complain) - the point of which is supposed to reveal that he turned away from power and ideas of sacrificing people for the 'greater good' - only to have him control and use every single character to the point where the entire book is just enacting his great Masterplan! Surely that contradicts a bit?!!
JK is chronic for this: her Good characters behave exactly the same way as her Evil characters, except that everything that is a sign of an evil character's Evilness is a sign of a Good character's Goodness.
Cases in point: Draco is evil because he "bullies" Harry. James is good because he "sticks up" for people against Snape (Harry similarly does a lot of "sticking up" for people that involves dogpiling defenseless Syltherins). Umbridge is a "racist" because she thinks Hagrid being a half-giant makes him a bad teacher. Harry, Ron and Hermione treat the full giants with patronizing contempt, and this is a sign that they're great humanitarians. Voldemort hates Muggles because he's evil. All the other Wizard treat Muggles like vermin but it's okay because they're endearingly careless about it. Then of course there's the fact that Harry's furious desire for vengeance is apparently a sign of his great capacity for "love".
p.s ooh look, my first post. How exciting :)
Welcome aboard.permalink - go to tophttps://me.yahoo.com/a/tjLTVHEducFb4rKDHU5DukBHtQcCbTVMEEq55v0CxV4-#5e156 at 20:29 on 2009-07-29Dan doesn't realise just how absolutely spot on he is. I remember the Magnet series in 1930 where the Remove overthrow a demonic temporary headmaster from Greyfriars. Did anyone else read the Magnet when it was still being published? DH should have followed the Hogwarts front with Neville and Luna leading the rebellion against the Carrows. Or better yet, Voldemort should have made himself headmaster and Neville should have barred him out, that would have made for an infinitely better story. Voldemort really was no more capable than the wicked headmasters who sometimes got foisted on Greyfriars were. But instead... JKR wrote so much about nothing happening that she seemed as nihilistic as Samuel Beckett.permalink - go to topGamer_2k4 at 21:20 on 2011-06-02I know I've been guilty of some serious comment thread necromancy as of late, but I've got a question.
"I think so, subtle laws govern wand ownership, but the conquered wand will usually bend its will to its new master."
Is this an inaccurate transcription, or does the book really have run-on sentences like that? I've seen a few other quotes from the book with similar use of commas, and it's almost painful to think that writing that bad can make it past an editor and into the final version of a book.permalink - go to topDan H at 21:36 on 2011-06-02I'm honestly not sure if I transcribed that right or not, although to be honest I'm not overly fussed by slightly long sentences and I think Orwell would have supported the choice of a comma over the semicolon (although I think the line would sound better split into two sentences: "I think so. Subtle laws govern...").permalink - go to tophttp://sunnyskywalker.livejournal.com/ at 02:52 on 2011-06-03I don't remember about that particular quote, but I do remember noticing several instances of comma splices while reading the book and wondering why the editor didn't, as Dan suggests, split the sentence in two or something, because there didn't seem to be any good reason to have them. (I accept that sometimes there is a good reason. JKR didn't have it.)permalink - go to tophttp://vonnemattheus.livejournal.com/ at 00:21 on 2012-05-04The Horcrux hunt should have been a dangerous and exciting adventure, instead of the Camping Trip from Hell plot you get in sitcoms like Bottom. It was like watching someone else play Zelda really, really badly. Also, I thought there was an expiry date on the Mother's Love charm that keeps Harry's arse above ground?
The best part of the book is when Harry is at his parents grave were, for some reason, he starts thinking of them rotting underground. JK even uses the word "Mouldering".permalink - go to tophttp://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/ at 03:01 on 2012-05-04Inspired by that scene, I buried my old HP books in the backyard after Deathly Hallows, but when I dug them up recently, they weren't nearly as decomposed as I had hoped. I don't think the maggots or the bacteria liked them very much either.permalink - go to topFurare at 13:28 on 2012-05-04Since this article was bumped onto the front page again, I noticed the comment about JKR's abuse of commas. I was reminded of reading the climax of Half Blood Prince; it's supposed to be really exciting and everything, and all I remember thinking is "Wow, are there four separate clauses separated by commas in that sentence?" I thought that several times. It's really quite shockingly badly-written in places.permalink - go to top
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Serious Wars, Seriously
Description: Tom’s distractions were always interesting. Tord should just be happy Tom didn’t decide to hit him over the head like last time.
Serious Wars, Seriously
One stupid mistake. It only took one mistake to have Edd, the leader of a small but powerful rebellion, on his knees before the Red Leader. His wrists were bound behind him, leaving him exposed.
“It’s been a long time, Edd.” Tord grinned, raising his gun lazily at the cuffed man. His soldiers had found him after ransacking the abandoned Cola plant. An anonymous tip about a strange man fitting Edd’s description reached their ears nearly an hour ago. It was pure luck that they found him before he had run off again.
Edd glared up at him, his dark eyes burning. They soften when two of Tord’s soldiers flanked the Red Leader. Matt stood at Tord’s left, somber with his hands shoved into his coat. Dark bruises clashed against his pale skin, giving away how Tord has been running him rugged to find him. Tom, on the other hand, gave nothing away as he stood at Tord’s right with his arms behind his back. It felt like a cold welcome coming from Tom. “Too soon if you asked me,” he retorted as he assessed his bindings by flexing his arms. They were too tight to break, but if he was careful he could shimmy his knife out of his boot. Rocking his knees against the wet floor, he reached for the hidden blade.
Tord tutted and brought the gun back to his attention. “None of that.”
Matt tiredly stared down at him, his robotic eye flashed behind his heavy lids. “Give up Edd, there’s no way out.” He yawned, covering his mouth in a failed attempt to hide how tired he was.
Edd frowned, but Matt looked unmoved. Even Tom stood just behind the two, oddly silent, his goggles blank. “Tom?” Edd said almost beseechingly.
Tord pulled back the hammer warningly, raising the barrel till it was aimed at Edd’s forehead. His grin had dropped, closing himself off except for the anger that started to burn in his eye, inciting the gray to brighten ominously.
The whole group tensed at this, even Edd looked at the barrel worrisomely. Matt’s eyes glanced hastily between the two, looking ready to push Tord away. “T-Red Leader, what are you doing?”
“Getting rid of the problem.” The answer was calm, leaving a chill in its wake.
“WHAT?” Tom screeched, finally breaking his silence.
Tord’s eye narrowed as a humorless grin overtook his face. “No more resistance leader, no more resistance, no more problem,” his said as if it made perfect sense to kill his longtime friend over something so trivial.
“But it’s Edd!” Matt grabbed onto Tord’s shoulder, trying to detour him away, but Tord stood firm. “You can’t kill him!”
Tord sneered, shrugging off Matt’s hand. “From where I stand, there is only an enemy that is keeping me from what I want.”
“Then do it,” Edd’s voice cracked as he spoke. He returned Tord’s glare with interest. His insolence barely hid the trimer of fear that went through him. “I wouldn’t bow to someone like you, not after what you’ve done.”
With an inhuman growl, Tord shoved the cold end of the barrel against Edd’s forehead hard enough to send the traitor back onto his pinned arms with a pained grunt. “Don’t act so innocent! You forced my hand!” Flicking the safety off, he steadied his arm. “I’m going to enjoy removing the competition.”
Matt was ready to take down the Red Leader with a well-placed tackle, but quickly changed tactics when a message flickered over Tom’s goggles. In Tord’s moment of hesitance to ending Edd’s life, Matt shot forward and grabbed his bound friend from the factory floor and in a mad attempt of escape. He heaved Edd onto his feet and they were off in a matter of a second.
“Matt!” Tord roared, more surprised than angry at his rebellious action. He raised his gun to take aim at the fleeing pair when hands grasped the lapels of his coat and jerked him around. A look of bewildering etched onto his face as Tom was considerably closer than he excepted. He had no time to question it as he was wrenched down into a bruising kiss.
There was no grace to it, even painful to a degree when they first connected, but Tord trembled at the touch. The whole of him melted against Tom, timidly touching the man’s sides as if afraid Tom would run at his touch, but Tom stayed. And to Tord’s ever-growing surprise, he stepped closer, cupping Tord’s face in his cool hands. A low groan erupted from the Red Leader’s throat and Tord gave in and wrapped his arms tightly around Tom.
Each movement of Tom’s mouth against his stole bit by bit of his breath until he panted breathlessly against swollen lips. Teeth nibbled against his lips, making him whimper. “Tord,” Tom whispered, sending a flutter through Tord. He peppered kisses against Tord’s parted lips, deepening the kiss for a moment and pulling back just enough that Tord could breathe.
It took all of him not to stay in the moment. To have Tom in his arms, the feel of him, the taste of him, but there were somethings that he didn’t want to disillusion himself to. “Why are you doing this?” he panted, gazing down at Tom’s flushed face. He already knew the answer. He just wanted to hear it from Tom.
Tom bowed his head, letting it rest against Tord’s chest where his heart was still rapidly racing with no signs of calming any time soon. “I wanted to,” he whispered, threading his fingers through Tord’s hair and gently messaging his scalp.
Tord tensed, not able to relax into the touch. “For Edd.”
Tom gave a hesitant nod.
“Because you love him.” He sounded so resolute, that he cringed at his own words.
It was Tom’s turn to tense. “No, I don’t,” he said, looking up.
“Don’t lie to me,” Tord snarled, his hold on Tom tightening.
Tom narrowed his electronic eyes and yanked at Tord’s hair until he had to bend his head back or lose a chunk of hair. “Edd is my friend, my best friend,” he growled. “But I don’t love him the way you think.”
“You just committed treason to save him,” Tord argued, the pain of having his neck tilted back was souring his already poor mode.
“I wasn’t about to let you kill him!” Tom roared, a purple haze seeping out from behind his goggles.
The obvious warning wasn’t about to stop Tord’s mouth. “It was the only choice!”
“Like hell it was!” Tom yanked on his hair before forcing them nose to nose. “You know exactly how you could end all of this!”
“I am not going to give in to some traitorous bastard!”
“Tord!”
“No! I don’t go back on my decisions!”
“Just revoke the damn law!”
“I’d rather die!”
“Give him his goddamn Cola!”
The two scowled at each other. Tord’s robotic arm clenching painfully around Tom’s waist as claws dug into his scalp.
“If you don’t change the cola ban, I won’t kiss you again,” Tom threatened.
Tord huffed out an astounded laugh. He could easily say he never thought Tom would ever use a threat like that against him. “You really think that will change my mind?”
Tom rose his brow. The sheer amount of defiance in that action was enough to send Tord on edge, but then he unwrapped his arms from Tord and crossed them over his chest, leaning back.
His arm automatically tightened around his second. “Tom,” he started warningly.
Tom looked unimpressed, a look that he gave Tord on countless occasions and each time angered him just as it was now.
“I’m not…”
Silence.
“Tom?”
More silence.
“You can’t be serious!”
Determined silence.
“FINE!” Tord yelled, throwing his arms up as he stomped away from Tom who now looked far too smug for Tord’s liking. “He can have his stupid cola again!”
Tom smiled at him, clearly enjoying how frustrated his Red Leader had become.
“Don’t,” Tord started, stomping up to Tom and shoving a finger in his face. “Ever threaten me like that again,” he growled low.
Tom hummed, reaching up to Tord’s face and gently cupping it. “No promises,” he murmured as he leaned up to place a chaste kiss on Tord’s frown.
Grumbling, Tord relaxed into the kiss.
A soft smile lighted Tom’s face as he pulled back. His thumbs brushed over Tord’s flushed cheeks. “Let’s go end your stupid side war,” he said, pulling at Tord’s cheeks with a smirk.
“It wasn’t stupid,” Tord grunted, rubbing his cheeks as he followed Tom out of the building. It was very serious.
A/N: I’ve always thought Edd and Tord were little shits towards each other and if the other pissed them off, they’d do whatever they could to fuck them over. Tord taking away something Edd loves, Edd returning the favor. Neither knowing how to adult. Also, this was actually going to go a bit dark when I first thought of it, while Tord pins and onesided love, knowing his affections for Tom was being used. Maybe I’ll do a redo or something.
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