#He's gonna need a lot of time by the pond to cope | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

chiizumuuuu · 1 year

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comfort.

Being a leader of the most successful team in a space organization takes quite a toll on him. Despite that, he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, far from that, but it doesn't take a second for anyone to understand what's going on.

His heart keeps ponding hardly in his oh-so-useless limp state, he might as well die during a panic attack. His legs are like jelly, gravity kept dragging him to the ground, what's with him and his endless cycles of near death sequences and somehow managed to escape ALL of them? He wondered that for a while, but maybe it won't be true in a matter of seconds.

Is he afraid of death? The fearless leader is afraid? Why? There's nothing to be feared about if he can just supressed his emotions and be cool and let his friends take over the scene because they trusted them and he trusts them back because of course they are he can't risk breaking their friendship they have built for so long not to mention they're his closest friends he ever had yet and he swears to god he will do ANYTHING to protect them

His hand ever-so-slowly moves near his face, turning on his power watch with a built-in communicator.

"Gopal please tell me you're still there please tell me you're still there tellmeyourestilltheretellmeyourestilltheretellmeyourestilltheretellmeyourestillthere--"

"Dude, breathe! In and out, buddy!"

Great. He hyperventilated for the umpteenth time in this peaceful night. Or morning. Or noon. Or-- wait how long this fight has been going again? Not even his elementals remembered, maybe he's tired, maybe he just wants to sleep and curl up into a ball and not bother to wake up for the rest of his life--

"We have to get there immediately! No one would be calm in that state! What if the enemy is still onto him and searching him in that fire?!"

"Ochobot, please no--"

"Coward! You're their-- no, HIS only hope. OUR only hope. Do I have to remind you that others actually died fighting there?!"

...what?

Did he forget that his friends are actually... gone? When? For goodness sakes, did they die when they were fighting with the enemy here? Cause that's for sure isn't in his deep pile of memories. Ochobot's not joking right? He sounds so desperate oh god he doesn't even know who are their target was or wait it still counts as is right is he gonna cry is he

"Boboiboy, can you breathe? C'mon, in and out slowly. In..."

Right. His name is Boboiboy, which he almost forgot. His friend is Gopal, his best friend. His other best friend and companion who often helps him sleep at night is Ochobot, which he would do that right now. Okay, he's still a mess, but it helps a little. He still haven't remembered the important details though, does he have amnesia? Here? Of all times?

"...you're still in denial? Me too. But... it happened."

Maybe that's why he can't remember anything. He swore to protect his friends and now they're gone. He failed a task that is SO simple to do, he was blinded by the truth he saw with his own two eyes. And now he can't even remember a single thing about it. He could feel his eyes trying to fight off his tears flowing.

"...I can't remember... I-I didn't remember that they died... I still do..."

"One of the guards managed to get you in a safe room and... accidentally hit your head onto a metal floor, or it could be a coping method of stress. I'm sorry you have to take this the hard way, buddy."

Gopal comforted him, that's nice. He should probably say something back, but Gopal wouldn't need that to know what he's feeling. At least he remembered Gopal is smart.

Others don't seem to use or acknowledge that talent of his a lot, though. The team mostly relies on Yaya and Ying as the strategist, sometimes Fang if they're looking for space information other than TAPOPS.

The only thing he remembers that he was the one coming up with a plan this time, and others just agreed and head straight into it. He's so bad at this, why was he chosen as a leader? Even praised by TAPOPS?

"...are they still out there? The enemy, I mean."

He can hear a robot's long sigh. "I-I don't know... but I know they won't leave until they find you. Your current location is now locked tight and can't be tracked with a radar, so you're probably good in there for a while."

Neither of the trio wants to say anything, shaken by the time-ticking situation. There was a long silence from a boy's heavy breathing, possibly concentrated.

"...actually, y'know what? You're right. I'm done cowering on the sidelines and be useless. We've messed up! WE'VE ABSOLUTELY MESSED THINGS UP AND WE CAN'T EVEN DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT! LET ALONE FIX IT!"

"No, we did not!"

"WE DID NOT?! YOU WERE SAYING?! YOU KNOW WHAT ALL OF THIS REMINDS ME OFF?! HOW I WAS ON THE SHIP WHILE OTHERS FIGHT FOR RETAK'KA, FORCES US TO BE SEPARATED! THIS TIME IS A MILLION TIMES WORSE! AND IT HAPPENED AGAIN, I DID IT AGAIN, COWERING! AND NOW HALF OF THE TEAM IS DEAD! BECAUSE OF ME!"

"G-Gopal..."

What? No, this isn't his fault. It couldn't be, he was the one coming up with a strategy and ultimately failed to death! His friend shouldn't be ashamed for himself for that, he should be comforting him, he could hear him having a breakdown. He's the leader! His mouth won't move, he can't possibly--

"Wait, where are we--"

"Buddy, you hang in there and don't leave the room, not that you have any options to break in. Ochobot, we're going right now! WE WON'T TURN BACK! FOR EVERYONE!"

The call ended abruptly right after.

His mind was empty, only trembling at the fact that his only alive friend is going to die in a matter of minutes. He's having a panic attack again, isn't he? Why is he so broken? What did he do to deserve this he did nothing wrong right why are his friends willing to go on a suicide mission to save him their lives are SO much more precious than him like they're smart yeah for sure but he couldn't understand their logic of thinking not that he would find out later anyways cause they all DIED and there's ABSOLUTELY NOTHING he could do other than cope with it and curl up in a room goodness he just wants to go to bed

Exhausted as he is and how he's still on a panic attack, he slowly gets himself up. Legs are still the same as they were an hour ago, but he's fine. He has to, not that his friend is about to face death alone. He lifts his arm to his chest and spin his watch.

"Don't give up on me now! Kuasa Elemental!"

"BOBOIBOY GEMPA!! SMASH THAT THING WIDE OPEN!!"

"BOBOIBOY TAUFAN!! BLOW IT AWAY!!"

The ruin was inevitable. What was he expecting? Maybe he was too optimistic for this world. Maybe he was in denial again. Maybe he was blinded by the truth that's happening right in front of him. He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it doesn't take a second to understand what's going on.

Now in his useless orange form, he could feel the enemy holding both of his arms in the air, voices too muffled to hear. Actually, it was multiple enemies. They have a whole gang to team up, and the kiddy voice is for sure the one who's holding him. The being in front of him has a deeper, sarcastic, almost like a gentleman voice, he hates it. He felt their hands coming through his arms and sounds of a broken glass is heard. They broke his power watch, his only source of defense and power. Without it? He's useless.

But it's fine, all that mattered to him was his last two friends he could hope they're alive and he's wrong oh but the world hates him doesn't it?

They took off and leave, voices of them fading away. He then took a deep breath, looking at his blurry surroundings. He can see footsteps reaching out to him. A purple figure is on his view, if only he could hope it was Fang. He could hear a deep, warm voice from the figure.

"This isn't good! He needs medical treatment fast!"

Geez, just let him die already! He doesn't need medical treatment! His friends are in--

"Sir, I need to report! Ochobot's pieces, both outside and inside, are shattered and broken. Even his circuit board is messed up! As expected, he's currently offline and secured onto our ship. We might be able to fix him, but our current lack of resources may cost us time."

He could hear the other's deep sigh.

Oh. Oh no.

"...others? I assume they're, uh... how do I say this?"

DON'T YOU DARE SAY IT--

"Captain Kaizo... t-their breathing stopped. Wounds are very deep and wide open. I... I don't think we can save them if we had the chance."

Why would he want Kaizo to not say it? It is his fault anyway.

"So... he's the last one standing, huh? I can feel his raging veins, must be rough for our boy."

"Don't you think he's secretly conscious right now? He could hear us talking!"

"This boy is really good at keeping secrets, no surprise there. We must evacuate him and leave immediately!"

"Understood, captain!"

He tries to get up. Legs are practically kicking Kaizo's while he was running, slipping at times. Begging for him to let go while fighting off the overwhelming emotions inside. Kaizo's arms slipped, and he managed to run away far from him.

Only to be greeted by his friends, his team, his source of warm comfort, feeling cold and laying down on the floor.

He should turn back, move on. He should've had.

His mind went autopilot and picks up a red liquid with his trembling, bare fingers. It's real, this ain't a prank, it's real blood and it smelled fresh as ever.

He tries to go to his last friend alive-- no, was alive. He then sees guards in front of him, blocking his way. Before he knows it, he was surrounded. Like the police was trying to capture a criminal. Is he a criminal then? What did he do?

He finally snapped, "...get out."

"I can assure you, we will return to Earth after this. Kokoci promised to us-- to you. Just please go inside the ship and let us--"

"GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!"

He could only do so much with bare fists and exhaustion. Kaizo came back and carry him in, hearing his screaming of agony.

All that emotions came into him for everyone to hear. Everyone but his friends, his team, his home. His home won't be the same anymore.

"IT'S MY FAULT THEY DIED, IT'S MY FAULT I DIDN'T GET TO SAVE THEM WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE, IT'SMYFAULTI'MATERRIBLELEADERTHEYSHOULD'VEBEENALIVEIFIWASN'TTHERETOSCREWTHINGSUPANDNOWISCREWEDTHEWHOLEUNIVERSEIT'SMYFAULTIT'SMYFAULTIT'SMYFAULTIT'SMYFAULTIT'SMYFAULTIT'SMYFAULTIT'SMYFAULTIT'SMYFAULTIT'SMYFAULTIT'SMYFAULTIT'SMYFAULTIT'SMYFAULTIT'SMYFAULTIT'SMYFAULT"

"Hey! Wake up!"

ItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfaultItshisfault--

"BOBOIBOY BIN AMATO, CAN YOU HEAR ME?!"

W-what? No one knows or uses his full name, unless he's about to die and the reaper calls for him in which case it would've been an honor at this point he just wants to see them again--

"SON! WAKE UP!"

He jerked awake, clearly struggling to breathe.

The first thing he saw was a blurry figure of a man, sitting in his bed. With his beard, hair style, and his iconic white hair stroke he has as a kid, it was clear it was THE man.

THE Ambassador Amato bin Aba, his dad.

Speaking of which, how did his dad suddenly appeared in his room is his first question. He may have memory issues, but he clearly doesn't remember his dad telling him he'll go visit him. Unless he's stupid, in which case, yes he is.

He then felt his hands reaching out to his face, wiping off a large volume of water. The thought shocked him, he's been crying this whole time. His right arm reached his face to wipe it all off.

The two remained silent, Amato offers a weak hug that he immediately accepts. With his hat on the table, his head felt exposed, granting the opportunity for the man to softly ruffle his hair like a kitten. The emotions are still there, and some of his new tears escaped and soaked into the man's unknowingly new shirt.

Amato decides to break the glass. His voice gentle, soft, and warm. "Geez kid... since when you're having panic attacks during sleep? I almost thought to slap you there, gave me quite a heart attack myself after arriving few moments ago."

So he arrived not too long ago. He suddenly felt guilty. His voice in contrast to his father is shy, timid, and way too quiet, "...sorry."

"Why apologize?"

"That I troubled you, especially when you're supposed to be doing your duty here. Whatever you're gonna do here..."

The room went quiet for a while. Amato gave the kid his iconic smile, something that apparently came off as offensive to him. "...what? It's not funny to smile at people when they just had a panic attack, dad. Unless it's your mortal enemy."

The man chuckles. "True, but that's not the reason I came here. It's not for my usual duty, but for another duty I should've taken care off all these years ago."

That... confuses the boy a bit. "That you should've come home sooner and more often when I was a kid? While I was still fighting Adu Du on Earth?"

He didn't mean to make such a spicy comment at this hour, but he couldn't help it. It's fun watching Amato's reaction, anyway. The man in question awkwardly cleared his throat. "Ah-- u-um... hooh, boy..."

It didn't take a while before he have the guts to bring it up to his kid, after so many years. "S-still mad about that, huh?"

"Clearly," tone is harsh and bold, but he replied jokingly. In reality, he's actually pretty considerate and forgiving, especially to his dad.

"Ookaayy... have I been committing a decade year old crime then?"

"Certainly," Boboiboy stands up from his bed, hands now crossed on his back and followed by a deep voice, almost mimicking Amato. "You are now under arrest by the laws of this boy's poor heart. You are soon being taken to the court for further legal actions."

A deep smirk is now crossed onto the man's face. "Now THAT'S my boy."

They both chuckled and laughed, forgetting what happened few minutes ago. God, does he miss these little interactions with his dad. Amato quickly stops to wipe his own set of tears, not knowing if it came from joy or missing his son.

"Okay, but are we gonna be serious here or no?"

Boboiboy laid back, now much more stable and comfortable. "Eh... I wouldn't mind not to, but I guess you have something to say, huh?"

Amato only gave him a weak nod. "Do you know what your friends have been up to lately?"

Huh. If he's being completely honest, he didn't think about it a lot. He was only told they were going on a stealth mission, leaving only him behind to do chores around the station, which is lowkey more painful than your enemy constantly beating you up. He didn't think the day after that Kokoci announced each of them will have separate rooms.

"...the four of us, excluding me for some reason, are going on a stealth mission? And for that they... decided to separate us in different rooms..? Like I'm being honest, I don't understand their decision to do that. It's quite unnecessary."

He likes those little moments when he's being critical, and it seems like his father feels the same way. "I don't know how to tell you this, but uh... the whole galaxy is onto you, boy."

He was quite shaken by the fact, even though he expected some enemies would be actively hunting for him. The whole galaxy, though?

The man decides to continue from the lack of response.

"As expected, they're being protective on you. I can tell, this room has a deep cut circling the room, in what I'm assuming could release anyone in here to escape. It also controls on autopilot to the next safe shelter, so you wouldn't need to worry about controlling it."

They're worried about him, that's cute. It's normal to be worried, but he could imagine the higher ups being a big softie to him. He giggles from that thought, but his brain immediately drives back to the topic. He didn't need to say anything, Amato could probably read his mind at this point.

"They're pretty worried about you. Your room is the deepest and safest part of this station, yes, but your friends haven't seen you in a while. I was on a phone call with them. Well... not really, it was more like a hologram screen of me talking to the commander. Your friends were in a strange planet I haven't checked yet, and then they suddenly asked me to check on you."

He didn't know why his shoulders lifted, but it did. He was relieved to know his friends are safe though, he didn't really have any options than to stay in the lowest floor of the station, while others were upstairs. It broke him a little hearing them talk there. The deepest part of his mind always thinks he's useless, and the situation he's in was not helping.

"Why can't they just... come to me directly instead?"

"Good question. Other than being busy, they cannot enter this floor unless necessary, sadly. Apparently checking your teammate's well being is not necessary and not a good excuse for some reason."

"TAPOPS should care more about everyone's mental state, then."

Amato clicked his fingers. "Bingo. I barely managed to came here because of my status, so another thing to point out. Also, you're a tough but so stubborn boy. You would say 'I'm fine, don't worry about me' every time they come to visit you."

A comeback to the spicy comment he made, now it tastes sour. Even his laugh felt heavy and not genuine, despite initially meaning to be one.

Maybe he is too stubborn for this world. He's their leader after all, he could not risk them getting killed. Not after that nightmare. He swears he will do anything to protect them, no matter what. But then... it cost him getting his friends worried, he doesn't want that. He doesn't want his friends to be worried.

He suddenly felt big, strong hands on his back, finding himself relaxed by the touch. His father went closer to him, almost like their initial hugging position few moments ago. Amato took a deep, warm, definitely manly breath.

"...don't apologize, I know you're going to say it. Throw that out of the window. Don't put every problem on your shoulders, that's what a team does. They've shared your problems, share yours. You and your friends are gonna carry that problem together. Carrying it one by one would only led to the team's downfall. Don't hesitate to ask for help, please. No one is going to judge you by it."

Boboiboy buried his face onto his father's chest. It's warm, can at least hide his emotions to flow from his eyes, for the world to never see but his father.

"...except me. If by next morning you're not going to share your problem with your team, at least with that phone of yours, I will kill you."

He knows the man is joking. It's hard to take him seriously with these jokes, but he knows he's being genuine. It might be an unpopular opinion and pretty biased, but he likes his father's humor and jokes. It never fails to make at least a giggle from him.

His voice is muffled by the lack of space for his mouth, sounding lazy. "Yeah, yeah, I'll do it tomorrow..."

Amato laughed, ruffling his son's messy hair once again. "You'd better!"

The air went quiet, but it was surrounded by warm, instead of cold from earlier. Amato tries to push the limp body in front of him to his bed, finding his eyes closed and seems peaceful. The only times where you would see the hero so tiny in his sleep.

He's cute, like a plushie that his heart can't take. He wouldn't dare to put him back to bed and leave him, he'd probably get cold and have nightmares again. He checks his digital watch, 2:36 AM is displayed there. It's probably worth staying for 4 hours of sleep, after all.

He stays in that position with the boy tightly and curling onto him, not knowing how much has passed before they both passed into the dream realm peacefully.

#a 2021 fic i rewritten in 2023 #writers on tumblr #cheesm's stories #boboiboy #mechamato #we stan dad tomato in this house #mechabot's not in here cuz i said so #sorry lol #fanfiction #ao3 writer

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wolfflock · 2 years

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Reactions to Superman and Lois S02E01

OMG here we go again. I am SO LATE watching this but I’m just super glad it’s out and I can do this again.

“Lois, you have to say something”. And Lois walks off. Aaaah, am I gonna have trouble with the way they write Lois this season too

Clark knowing Lana’s favourite drink aww

And the cologne thing lol SO TEEN! And wow she's been gone a month. That's so long! (Laughs in 7 years of long-distance)

Clark trying to help, Lois once again jumping at his throat, 3 months later. WRITERS, UGH.

The Cushings aww (Where was Sarah again? Ah, camp, okay) — [speaking Spanish] wow, okay, don't hurt yourself, CW

Chrissy and Lois have not only had the money to run the paper in a small town but they want to hire too! Okay, I guess that could maybe somehow potentially work

So the campaign is not Kyle's thing but he'll wear the t-shirt for Lana, that's nice 🥺 Support your boo!

Well Sarah was a lot less enthused than I would have assumed. Is she okay??

Is this now the new school year? If Sarah was off for a month bejng a councelor at a camp. Does that mean that Jon and Jordan, plus Clark, had football for the remainder of the previous school year? And now they're back?

...who is this Candice and when did that happen??? What happened to Tegan? And LOVE HOW REAL it is that Jon would take her advice but not his dad's lol

Jonathan broke his arm TWICE? When was the second time, I only recall Jordan breaking it 😳

Fucking hell, not even 10 minutes in and Superman once again saves people from a non-English speaking (non-White...) country. I wish the writers did actual representation instead of only sending Supes in to save them (OKAY WAIT IT WAS NORTH KOREANS JUST TO MAKE IT POLITICALLY bold ALRIGHT)

The VFX on this, holy smokes! So well done! When he was flying over the water the the sonic boom, damn.

YESSS GIVE ME ALL THE CLARK STRUGGLES

Why would Nat want to go to her old school? That's unnecessarily complicating things. I know, I know. 🌟drama 🌟

I'm sorry but Ian is so not authentic in this role 😅

Ah so Clark should be America's own superhero, gotcha.

Is this demi Clark confirmed here? Right???

Well that was a great conversation, Lois and Clark. And I still very much don't like the Lois they are writing 😌 Her coping with strong emotions is lashing at anyone who's close. Definitely not the Lois I like.

Jordan with the candles, aww. That was so cute of him.

I like that Coach went all in with the candidate. Yes, Coach, do it, talk about teachers needing appreciation.

“The couple that never argued”. Yeah because Lois lets it all out and Clark has to shut up... Could they write “strong Lois” without making Clark the doormat????

Uh-oh. Kyle feeling ignored. That's not gonna end well, knowing his track record XD

Ah fuck, poor Natalie 😭😭 Tayler is really bringing her A game, damn! 🥰

Jordan asked the owners if he could put the candles in the pond HOW SWEET IS HE. And it didn't work all that great 😬

Lana and Clark bonding over relationship issues, aww.

FEEL WHAT. W H A T 😱

“You're the alpha in this relationship” 😬 I appreciate the sentiment but the wording, nope 🙈 BUT KYLE AND SARAH BONDING, YES PLEASE, MORE

Okay where the frick did Lois’ mum's feelings come into this? Maybe I'm not as up to speed as the writers but in my head Lois, seeing a girl called Natalie calling her Mum, would immediately think about her own child named Natalie. Not how her mother felt leaving Lois and Lucy, and pretty much saying that her mum didn't love them at all. So while I know the intent here was drama, I think it wasn't the best way of doing it. Lois isn't expected to feel anything towards Nat, and Nat's situation isn't comparable to kid Lois’. That’s why this whole thing was a bit off for me; not the idea of it, but just this in this situation. But at least Lois opened up to Clark.

Earthquake. This isn't going to be natural, is it.

Anderson and his new recruits from the special school. Can we hey more info on them? On the superkids and the school itself?

I really like Natalie, okay? Protect her at all cost!

SARAH INTERRUPTING LANA AND KYLE I'M DEAD 🤣🤣 Yeah. Parents, not in the kitchen.

JORDAN'S FACE WHEN CLARK SAYS “intimate” 🤣 I love it! But yeah, it's nice we see this little moment, guys talking about emotions and relationships. Refreshing that it's not “mum's responsibility”

And the Irons once again crash at the Kents’ 😅 I need more Clark and John Henry friendship.

Oyyyyy that cliffhanger! Who is that???

(little plug for the server we have: join us here to talk about S&L)

#superman and lois #cw s&l #cw s&l liveblog #s02e01 #I'm in this picture and I like it

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afrival · 3 years

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AoT Characters Playing Stardew Valley

I HAVE FUCKING BRAINWORMS. I CANT STOP THINKING ABT THIS BYE 🏃 this is gonna be a long post I am. So sorry

no warnings at all this is just pure fucking fluff and crack

modern au obviously

•=======================•

- DHHFJFF idk where to even start so I’ll just go with my usual format so that means: main trio first

- Eren, Mikasa, and Eren all have a farm together and it is the MOST chaotic shit ever. They used the four corners farm and each of them got their own corner to do whatever the hell they want with, and the last one was for animals

- Erens corner is so goddamn messy. I’m talking rocks, wood, and grass EVERYWHERE. He claims it’s for the “aesthetic” but really he’s lazy and only upgrades his pickaxe

- He is a mining enthusiast, has somehow made it to the lower levels of the Skull Cavern. He spends so much time in the mines that his house hasn’t been upgraded ONCE

- Mikasa likes building shit and decorating, she also helps Armin out with farm chores bc she’s responsible unlike bitch boy Eren

- Her corner has a lot of trees and paths and is messy in an aesthetic way, it just looks like a small forest

- ARMINS IS THE PRETTIEST CORNER. So many flowers, he also took the corner with the pond. His house is fully upgraded too and decorated to the max

- Fishes and farms A LOT, he’s like the money maker of the three lmao

- Jean, Connie, and Sasha don’t have a main farm. They just keep remaking them and starting over and over and never get shit done

- They goof off the entire damn time

- Connie and Sasha found that glitch where if you spam click you can send a female character through the male changing room and make them shirtless, lost their shit at it for DAYYYYS

- Reiner and Bert have two farms: one with and one without Annie

- Their personal farm is the forest farm, they like the look of it

- Assuming they got married to each other within the game their house would be upgraded entirely, and Reiner keeps turning any children they get into doves

- However if they aren’t they just argue over who gets to marry Shane LMAO (or Bert will settle for Elliot or Emily 💔)

- Annie is the boss on their farm with her pffft, they have shared funds and she decided where everything goes

- Bertholdt HOARDS goats. He just buys so many goddamn goats and names them after objects and thinks it’s the funniest shit

- “Bert we don’t NEED this many goats-“ “you be quiet right now.”

- If Zeke played he would just fucking terrorize the villages. Is always rummaging in the garbage cans

- He thinks Marnie is a milf and is so pissed she’s not a marriage option

- Armin and Annie have a beach farm and it’s so cute, they have a coop that’s literally just all rabbits

- Very organized farming and put A LOT of effort into their house. Like wayyy to much effort

- Pieck is also a huge mining enthusiast and she just collects so many goddamn gems and shit. Porco has to beg her to come out of the mines so she doesn’t pass out

- Speaking of that mf I just feel like he’s there to be an assistant to Pieck’s antics rather than play for himself

- Like he’ll just stand in his house the entire fucking day and talk to Pieck while she does shit. He helps water the plants too sometimes and does some of the animal chores

- I saw someone do Levi headcanons for this so I’m just gonna link that bc i agree with all of them HDJFJTJ

- Levi absolutely refuses to play with Hange LMAO

- They tried once and it just. Did not go well. Hange immediately spent all of their money of fucking salad

- After that it was over no more Levi/Hange gaming

- HELP OKAY so like all of them downloaded a mod that would let like 20 people play at once and it was. The worst/best experience ever

- Everybody divided into cliques and just went to war on who could make the most money it was so violent

- Somebody also snuck in the mod that lets them piss on plants to water them and needless to say Levi just left the game after seeing it

- Erwin does not know how to play AT ALL DHFJFJ he just stands there and swings his axe until he passes out from it

- Whenever Jean and Eren play they always argue over Hayley 💀 they race to see who can raise her hearts the fastest

- Armin plays stardew religiously and he has a personal file and he’s on like year 100

Bruh fr next game hc is gonna be Minecraft or some shit bc CHAPTER 138 GOT ME FUCKED UP 🤡 I need to cope

#attack on titan #shingkei no kyojin #aot #snk #aot headcanons #attack on titan headcanons #eren jaeger #armin arlert #mikasa ackerman #connie springer #sasha braus #jean kirchstein #levi ackerman #kenshcs

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concussed-to-pieces · 3 years

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The Mettle Of A Man; Part Seventeen

Fandom: Fallout (4)

Pairing: Eventual Paladin Danse/Female Sole Survivor

Rating: Holy shit M.

AN: Tagging @anonymouscosmos, @culturalrebel, @mercy-and-malice, @deepkittycollecto and @nelba! Enjoy!

Part One: ArcJet

Part Two: The Prydwen

Part Three: Orders

Part Four: Finding Brandis

Part Five: Weston Water And Oberland

Part Six: Meeting Preston And Matthew

Part Seven: Radstag And Radstorm

Part Eight: The Return To Sanctuary Hills

Part Nine: Domestic Ruminations

Part Ten: Institutionalized

Part Eleven: Two Weeks, Three Days

Part Twelve: Haylen’s Warning And The Glowing Sea

Part Thirteen: Under Fire

Part Fourteen: Dichotomy

Part Fifteen: The Litany Trial

Part Sixteen: Nice Try

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains intense recounts of previous abuse, intense depictions of self-loathing, self-deprecation and brief mentions of depression. Stay safe!]

Cade caught Danse before he could depart after the rest of their unofficial 'war council' had been dismissed, the medical officer inquiring, "How are you coping, Paladin? I hope that your adjustment to your newfound knowledge is going well." The arch of his eyebrow indicated plainly that Cade was looking for a clear answer, possibly to dissuade his own concerns.

"I am still uncertain, Knight-Captain Cade." Danse stated bluntly. "I know that Quinlan's reports are accurate. I know that I must be a synth. But it is...it's difficult to wrap my head around it."

"My door is always open, Danse. As it's been since the day you were assigned to the Prydwen." Cade reminded him. "I can't say I've ever had the pleasure of doing a mental evaluation on a synth, but…" he trailed off thoughtfully. "Hmm, that's not quite right. You and I have had sessions before. Maybe synths aren't so different in their cognition. Perhaps this is a nature versus nurture scenario."

"Perhaps." Danse allowed, but he knew that he sounded less than optimistic.

"Maybe in a day or two, once everything has calmed down and you've had time to think?" Cade suggested. "Collect your thoughts, then come see me and we can discuss your current state and the repercussions of Maxson's treatment."

The paladin nodded, relieved that Cade didn't wish to immediately evaluate him. It had been an incredibly stressful and arduous several weeks. More than anything, the paladin was longing to finally get some sleep.

After he spoke to Haylen and Rhys, of course. They deserved his gratitude, if only for their combined efforts in delivering the tip-off that had literally saved his life. To say nothing of their care for Elizabeth in his absence, even though they were unable to free her. They had kept her alive, and that was more than the paladin had dared to hope for.

Danse watched Cade depart, his mind miles away now. Backhand would be incredibly busy in the lead up to the assault. He felt almost irritated by that; it was unfair to ask so much of her so soon after what had transpired. But the luxury of time was no longer on their side. Danse understood, in a practical sense, that they needed to strike as fast as possible. It was entirely within reason that the Institute already knew of their plans and were preparing their own countermeasures.

It still didn't erase the hollow sensation in his gut, the fear that Backhand was all too willing to stretch herself paper-thin for her various factions. He promised himself then and there that he would do his best to absorb some of the burden.

As much as she would allow.

The memory of her ripping her knuckles apart on the manual release of his armor, talking to Matthew's parents, taking her helmet off and smiling at him. Thank you, Danse or I thought you were dead or please don't do that to me again --

Danse chewed anxiously on his lower lip. As much as she would allow. As much as he could feasibly handle. It should have felt odd that he was trading one leader for another, but Danse could only rationalize that it must be another portion of his programming.

"Paladin Danse, sir?"

Rhys . Danse started, turning around. He hadn't even heard the knight approach down the catwalk. Hell, he hadn't even realized he was spacing out in the hallway. "Yes, Knight?" He replied, nodding out of habit to acknowledge Haylen beside Rhys.

"Elder Brandis said you wanted to see us, sir." The knight stated, sounding a bit hesitant. "He said we needed to discuss...certain things."

Of course he did . Danse sighed heavily, bracing himself for some level of a disappointment-fueled tirade.

"Danse, I'm so sorry." Haylen blurted out, her voice shaking. Danse was startled, tilting his head while she carried on, "I wish there had been some other way for me to tell you. You must have been terrified ."

"I was certainly confused, if nothing else." The paladin admitted with a wry smile. "I am immensely grateful to both of you, regardless of my own trials. You followed your training and stuck to your guns, and I couldn't be more proud." He deflated slightly. "Even if the pride of a synth means precious little."

"The synth shit doesn't matter to either of us, sir." Rhys muttered. "We don't care. We're just glad you're back and that Maxson didn't manage to kill you. That's the important part, right?"

"In a way." Danse agreed, grimacing. "Our battle is far from over, however."

"Hey, we're doing something. That's more than a lot of people can say." Haylen reasoned, ever the optimist. "I've got faith in whatever plan you guys come up with."

"Thank you for believing in me." The paladin murmured, giving the only surviving members of Squad Gladius a stiff salute.

"We know you, sir. You protected us, trained us. Built us up from basically nothing." Rhys sounded angry, his typically-sullen expression gone even more sour. "You think we could ever turn our backs on you? You're not that stupid."

Haylen began to protest, "Rhys-"

"Haylen, you and I both know he'll just self-deprecate until he dissolves. I'm not letting that happen." Rhys grumbled at the scribe, who fell silent at his reasoning. Her eyes were narrowed to slits and the sight was immensely entertaining to Danse, who couldn't keep a nervous chuckle from bubbling up in his throat.

"I'm certain the two of you are aware of the devastating depression you dragged me out of all those years ago in the Capital Wasteland." Danse clapped Rhys on the shoulder and caught Haylen up in a rare one-armed hug. "How many times will you two save me? Should I start taking you for granted?"

"Paladin Danse, sir, w-we…" Haylen trailed off, her lower lip quivering. She buried her face in Danse's ribs and Rhys grunted.

"Haylen, c'mon . Pull it together." He huffed, his own eyes looking suspiciously wet. "Listen, sir, I think I've made our position pretty clear. We follow your orders. Learning about that shit with Maxson-"

"I'm so angry! " Haylen interrupted him, glaring upwards. "God Danse, I'm furious . What he did to you is unforgivable, inexcusable." She announced hotly. "Everyone assumed something was going on, but we also assumed it was consensual ."

" 'Everyone' ?" Danse echoed, a weird surge of retroactive embarrassment seizing his body. "I suppose I should be thankful you all were so willing to offer me the illusion of privacy." He mumbled.

"He's never coming anywhere near you again, sir." Rhys stated, his jaw set in an angry scowl. "I don't care if he's the last of the Maxson line. I'll break his fucking skull."

His words stirred Danse's guilt to life, the ugly feeling rearing its head once more. "It is a difficult situation to be in. I do not envy our elders, past or present." Danse tried to pose the sentence with a modicum of compassion, though he was unsure of the attempt's success. The paladin knew that despite Maxson's position of power, Danse bore a majority of the blame for not standing up to the elder until it was too late to prevent his spiral.

"Difficult, my ass ." Rhys growled under his breath.

…

"So we've got Preston, someone by the name of John D., the…" Ingram narrowed her eyes at the readout. " Atom Cats ?"

"Yep. Real into their power armor. And Zeke owes me a favor." Backhand explained, continuing to scroll through her Pip Boy notes. "If I can get them to walk across the pond and cover the Castle, that will free up more Minutemen to join us."

"Should I ask how you managed to ingratiate yourself with so many of these people?"

"I'm a sucker for a lost cause." Vega answered, her tone dry.

Ingram snorted, shaking her head. "Lucky for us, I imagine. Also lucky for us that you're the forgiving sort."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Proctor." Backhand retorted. "I'm just not yet in a position to combat your aerial superiority."

"Whew, gonna' file that one away for later consideration."

A soft knock on the comm doorway interrupted the two women, and Vega turned to see Danse peering cautiously into the room. "Paladin! You're just in time, we were about to start rallying the troops. Want to lend a hand?"

"What needs to be done, General Vega?" The paladin asked, his posture gone stiff and proper.

Backhand could feel her smile dim slightly, but she reined herself in. They had all been through so much, she reasoned, and old habits were usually a comfort. "Well, I've got a few calls to make on my own, but if you can get in touch with Lieutenant Garvey that would be a huge help."

"Understood."

Proctor Ingram (who had been watching their exchange with poorly-veiled interest) stepped out of the way so that Danse could settle down at the desk alongside one of their many radio switchboards. "Vega, I think the two of you can handle this." The older woman remarked, giving Elizabeth a sly wink behind Danse's back. "I'll start whipping the base camp into shape. Make myself useful, y'know. Ad Victoriam."

Vega went bright red as Ingram saluted, the proctor sporting an absolutely infuriating smirk. "B-But Proctor--"

"No buts! You guys handle the easy stuff. I'll manage the elbow grease." Ingram then mouthed talk to him! , before strolling out of the comm area. Backhand swore under her breath, thumping her fist into the desk in mute frustration.

"I can leave, General Vega." Danse offered, making her start and whirl to face him.

"No no! No, uh, you're fine. You're not the problem here." Vega assured him, waving her hands nervously. "I'm just...I'm a little uptight, that's all."

"Will your forces refuse to join us?" The paladin asked, his rigid posture easing slightly as he tipped his head back to look up at her. He continued in an undertone, "Would it be simpler to do it with your troops alone? Do you truly need the Brotherhood?"

"We do need the Brotherhood, yes. But I don't think we'll need them for the fighting. We'll need them for the mass casualty options and the refugee care after the fact." Backhand began to pace, mostly so she didn't have to maintain eye contact. The paladin looked fatigued yet determined, and it pained her to know that rest was still so far away for them. Rest and the possibility of actually speaking with him about the thing that had been on her mind in one form or another since…

Well, it had been a long time.

"We'll need help rebuilding more than anything. Not a lot of settlements will be keen to take on synths, so I'll need to figure out some kind of alternative. I really need to talk with Nick and Dea--er, John D ., and get their input on this whole engagement." Backhand rubbed her temples. "And here I thought getting in would be the hard part!" She tried to joke.

After a moment of silence, Vega heard Danse clear his throat. "General... Elizabeth , I know you already have many responsibilities, all of them miles more important than my own struggles."

Backhand looked over at him expectantly, a little confused.

"I have to give Cade a full report." The tall man said abruptly. "I...he wants to know everything that's transpired." He stared down at the floor, the heel of his boot scuffing the grating beneath them as he rushed to add, "I know it's selfish of me to ask you to--I mean, you've been through so much, b-but I was...rather, I am uncertain of this endeavor, and my ability to maintain my composure during it. You tend to have a mollifying effect on me for some reason."

"You want me to be present when you give your medical officer the full rundown?" Vega raised an eyebrow, further confused. Danse was a soldier , surely he had endured a full physical before?

"I am overly anxious. It means reliving some portions of my past that I find...traumatic."

"Oh." Oh . Backhand felt stupid as the truth dawned on her. Everything that's transpired . Of course Danse would want someone he trusted with him, this wasn't a physical exam at all. "What about Haylen or Rhys? Are they more appraised of the situation?"

Danse was shaking his head before she had even finished. "I did my best to keep everything that happened quiet, though it appears that I was unsuccessful. I was told that was my only option, and I did not wish to disobey Maxson's orders."

"That fuckin' asshole." Vega growled. "Alright, if you're sure it's me you want with you, I'm here."

"You don't have t--er, that is, I regret taking up more of your valuable time, General Vega. I promise after this meeting with Cade, I will be fully at your disposal." He assured her, seemingly pained by his current state.

"Danse, I don't care about that. I don't want you better just so you can get used up again, I want you better for you . I'm sorry that all of this robs you of the proper time to regroup, y'know?" Backhand apologized, her words deliberately quiet as she boldly laced her fingers through his own. "Once we're done here, though, you need to take some time off. General's orders."

"I would have to speak with Elder Brandis on the matter. As his most senior paladin, I am unsure if he would be able to permit me that luxury." Danse replied unhappily, giving her hand a gentle squeeze before he released it. "' A run ashore ', always just out of reach."

"I'm getting you time off, even if I have to kidnap you myself."

The paladin's chuckle in reply to her threat was subdued, but it still sent a frisson of happiness through her body. Backhand choked down the guilt of having those feelings in the first place for just a second, choosing to bask in the warm sensation.

"When you're ready, General, I'll need the proper frequencies to speak with the Castle." Danse's request brought her crashing back down to earth, and Vega rushed to oblige him.

There's always something else to do .

…

Two days later, on the cusp of their attack on the Institute, the both of them were seated in Knight-Captain Cade's main office aboard the Prydwen. The older officer sat across from them in the cramped space, a clipboard propped up on his knee.

"The only questions I'll ask will be strictly for clarity's sake." The knight-captain informed Danse quietly. "If you don't want to answer, that is entirely acceptable and within your right, but the more information we have, the better."

Danse nodded, the motion stilted. "I understand, Knight-Captain. I'll do my best to cooperate."

Vega squeezed his hand. God knew she didn't like this one damn bit, but she was going to stick it out for him. After all, he had gone to bat for her against the elder . Loyalty like that was in short supply. "I'm right here with you, Danse." She said softly. He had gone pasty white beneath his usual windblown complexion, and he gripped her hand wordlessly.

"If you could start at the beginning, Paladin. Or as close to it as possible." Cade prompted him.

"Yes, I...of course." Danse rasped. "The first time we engaged was shortly before the Brotherhood lost Knight Cutler."

Cade looked at him over his half-moon glasses, seeming perturbed. "That was...so this was a prolonged assault."

"Not an assault. I did as I was ordered." The dull tone of Danse's voice, the way his eyes had gone almost grey ...Vega wanted to know how the hell Maxson had ever justified this. "I could not bring myself to question Arthur. He came to me, at first simply asking for help even though it was an order. He said he couldn't sleep. I...I never told Cutler. I didn't think it was relevant. I thought I was helping the new elder." Danse looked up at Cade. "I know what it's like to not be able to sleep for all the thoughts in your head."

"Was there a specific point in time where his behavior shifted? Perhaps when it became more clear to you that there was something wrong?" Backhand was grateful for the delicate way Cade phrased the question.

"I…" Danse's brow furrowed. "...had just come back with...after what transpired with Cutler. Four days on base. I was furious with Maxson for stationing Cutler out there, furious with myself for not saving Cutler. I was grieving and hurt both physically and emotionally, as you recall." Cade inclined his head. "I assume you also recall the bite on my arm that appeared shortly thereafter. That was a...result of my inability to perform."

"Ah." Cade murmured, jotting something down.

Bite? Vega could feel Danse trembling. "I-I was...unable to function or perform for him in a satisfactory manner and that was his method of voicing his frustration with me." Danse swallowed hard. "I was mourning , Cade." He sounded like he was begging the other man to understand, begging him not to judge.

Perform for him. Backhand sucked in a deep breath through her nose, willing herself to stay silent.

"After that, I would just comply. It was never as bad as that time. I would perform for him to the best of my abilities." Danse paused, "but I never sought him out, and nothing occurred without me being ordered to do so." He then proceeded to rattle off a distressingly-long list of dates, every time that Maxson had coerced him. "I was not interested in...well, anyone , after Cutler." He muttered after a brief pause, "the term broken seems fitting."

"You weren't allowed proper space to heal yourself after what happened with Cutler. You were injured and then forced to deal with someone who kept prying open your wounds because they enjoyed lording their power over you." Cade theorized, his voice a little sharper. " Broken is not fitting in the slightest, Danse."

The paladin shrugged. "Whatever the terminology might be, then."

" Traumatized , Danse. Emotional wounds take time to heal, just like physical ones. Losing Cutler in the way that we did-"

"I deserved it!" Danse cut off the medical officer, leaning forward and clenching his free hand on his knee. "I failed Cutler, Cade! I should have gone after him sooner! The treatment from Maxson is what I deserved ." His eyes were wild, frantic. "He's an abuser, but I am a man deserving of every last instance of that abuse for my inaction when it came to Cutler!" The paladin reasoned intensely.

Cade sighed, rifling through his clipboard. "Danse, you did not deserve or garner punishment for the consequences of Maxson's orders." He informed the other man quietly. "You were simply a man who lost someone that he cared deeply about."

"And to find out that I'm not even that much!" Danse spat. "I'm still trying to cope with the reality that I am a living lie . My identity as Paladin Danse is nothing but a memory now. Everything I held dear, everything I ever believed in is completely gone. Can you imagine how that feels?" Danse was nearly shouting at this point, moving to stand. "I started out as nothing , and I've ended up as nothing . And I don't know what the hell to do about it!"

Backhand brought her hand up over his elbow, hauling him back down into his seat. " Listen to Cade, Danse." She growled. The paladin fought her grip briefly, but ultimately slumped in the chair. Good thing too, Vega wasn't exactly up to full strength just yet. The large man was shaking again, his breathing coming in harsh bursts. "It's okay, it's okay." Vega found herself repeating the phrase, rubbing circles on his back between his shoulder blades. Many members of military factions found repetition comforting and Danse appeared to be no exception, the large man heaving a massive sigh under the weight of her hand.

"Danse, I'll fully admit to being out of my element here. I never expected to have to treat a synth." Knight-Captain Cade said plainly. "However, I've known you for many years. We have an established rapport. Your body is indistinguishable from an ordinary human body, as proved by my records. Your mental processes and pain responses are normal for a human. I suppose what I'm trying to say is learning that you are a synth may not change all that much, despite what you may be feeling."

Danse choked out a forlorn noise that might have been a sob, burying his face in his hands. "I'm so confused." He confessed plaintively. "You're saying I did not deserve punishment for my failings, but...how else am I supposed to atone for Cutler?" He looked up, tears welling up in his eyes. "How am I supposed to reconcile with these human emotions, Cade? I barely kept myself under control when I believed I was human!"

"Your feelings have always run deep, Danse. Your empathy for your fellow man has landed you in hot water more than once." Cade gestured at Vega. "According to our infiltrator, even the most brutal of synths feel regret and remorse just like we do, though they have not been taught how to cope with it."

"I still feel like a human. Nothing feels different, yet now I constantly second-guess everything I do. I've had a plan from the beginning to shape my future, but I have to wonder about whether that's a lie as well." Danse remarked bitterly. "I had...I had hoped…" he trailed off, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter."

Backhand could feel her heart breaking the longer he spoke. His true identity was an immense blow to him, and on top of it he was still struggling under the burden of the guilt he carried due to Cutler's demise. He blamed himself for Arthur's demands.

"Listen to Cade, Danse." She urged. Her hand was essentially on autopilot as she traced small patterns on the center of his back, moving up and down his spine without rhyme or reason. "You're not to blame for what Maxson did. It's not yours to bear. Trust me, coming from someone who's more than willing to take on other folk's problems, that weight is not yours."

"But-"

"You trust me, right?" Vega interrupted him softly, cupping his face so that he had to look at her.

"With my life, General Vega."

The rapid sincerity of his reply startled her and Backhand needed to take a moment, steeling herself yet again. "I know you trust Cade too, and I know this won't be a quick or easy process. But you accepting that whatever happened was not your fault would be a huge first step."

"I...If I do…" Danse paused, hesitating. "Vega, if I forget about him..."

"Hey, nobody said anything about forgetting. You told me about Cutler, about how important he was to you. There's no way someone like you could forget about him. But you need to forgive yourself, you have to understand that losing him was not your fault." Once more she found herself in over her head, but she did her best to tell him all the things she wished someone had told her when Sergeant Cathan had died.

"He was...he was everything to me." Danse's voice cracked. "And I had to--I had to, he was...I had to."

"What happened to Cutler and his team was an immense tragedy, and a needless one at that." Cade spoke up from his seat, his brow furrowed. "Maxson outed himself quite thoroughly during the trial, I would say. It will be difficult for him to explain his actions away when so many witnesses heard exactly what he said."

Elizabeth felt Danse go still, the paladin hanging on to Cade's every word. "Am I even permitted to be happy that he may face consequences?" He asked uncertainly, wringing his hands. "Is that a breach of protocol, Knight-Captain?"

The medical officer shifted his weight, leaning forward to prop himself up with his elbows on his knees. "I can't promise you swift justice, you know how the Brotherhood operates. But Arthur invoked the right of a litany trial, then proceeded to break his own terms. To say nothing of the fact that he nearly killed someone uninvolved in the trial." Cade shook his head. "His abuse flourished in secrecy. Now that everything is out in the open, I do not believe even his status as the last Maxson will sway the other elders when they pass judgement."

"Thank you, Knight-Captain." Danse closed his eyes, inhaling deeply. "I...thank you, Vega." He continued, a little quieter. He caught her hand in his own, giving it a cautious squeeze. Almost as if he was imitating her gesture from earlier in the week. "I have so much to think about."

"Agreed. Shall I put in a request to Brandis for a leave of absence?"

Danse visibly recoiled at Cade's suggestion, his eyes going wide in dismay. "No! No, I am needed, Knight-Captain. After our assault has been carried out, and the Institute has been wiped from the map, I…" he hesitated, like the words were caught in his throat. "I will gladly take a leave. Until then, however, there is still work to do."

"There is always work to do, Paladin." Cade chided. "Remember what I told you? You will burn yourself out and the Brotherhood can ill afford to lose you."

"I'll see to it that he takes time off after our successful operation." Backhand stated firmly. Cade raised an eyebrow at that and Danse flushed across the bridge of his nose, stuttering a little. "Your health is important to me, Danse. You can be as stubborn as you want, but I'm not letting you weasel out of this."

"I suppose that will have to do." Cade sighed. "Do you have any questions for me, Paladin?"

Danse shot a sidelong glance at Vega that she was relatively certain she wasn't supposed to see, the large man worrying his lower lip. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on her part, though, as Danse shook his head after a moment. "No, I...I just have some reflection to do." He got to his feet abruptly, saluting both Cade and Elizabeth. "Ad Victoriam, Knight-Captain. Ad Victoriam, General Vega."

Cade returned the salute absently, already absorbed in writing something else down. Vega was a little slower, her query of, "do you need me, Danse?" coming out softer than she had intended.

She wanted to believe that the paladin hesitated before he replied, "No, General Vega. I can manage."

Part Eighteen

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trensu · 4 years

Text

Episode 43: The One where WWX is Soft for Children and Bunnies

we're still in the forbidden chamber

wwx has his detective cap on and is being clever

the lan bros are listening attentively as they should be

wwx: jgy is a sneaky conniving bastard blah blah he vandalizes evil music books blah blah

lots of boring plot talk basically

i'm sitting here like, *sigh* so pretty wwx so pretty

which is what i imagine lwj does all the time...

lol wwx goes to lxc and is like, no offense bro but jgy was a skilled spy during the war who was able to infiltrate and memorize wen ruohan's stuff in their secret chamber. invading this one would've been a piece of cake for him

and lxc is like well damn, guess i better test out all this evil music and see if it actually works

lxc: i'll just test the evil magic music on myself. yep. that way no one gets hurt and that couldn't possibly backfire on me at all

lwj: bro

lxc: bro. i gotta do this bro to clear my bae’s i mean friend's name

LOL lxc is like you all see jgy this way but i see him in a totally different way

YEAH WE KNOW, THAT'S THE PROBLEM

LOLOLOL OMG

lxc turns to gaze off into the middle distance and is like, the jgy in my heart is kind and benevolent blah blah

and behind him wwx crosses his arms and all but rolls his eyes LIKE DUDE YOU'RE COMING TO THE WRONG PERSON FOR SYMPATHY. I'M THE ONE THAT GOT KILLED FOR THINGS YOUR BF DID

oh this moment's interesting

lxc is like, can't you allow me to be cautious about making this decision?

and lwj takes a step towards him, ready to speak but wwx grabs his upper arm and stops him with a shake of his head

the look lwj gives him just before that was like why are you stopping me?

but wwx knows this isn't something you can push

lwj trusts wwx's judgment and holds back whatever he was going to say

i'm curious as to what he WAS going to tell his brother tho

now lwj is leaving to talk to their uncle and lxc is like, sure i'll take your soulmate back to your room for you

WE'RE GONNA GET SOME BABY!LWJ FLASHBACKS SOON OMG

IT'S GONNA HURT

wwx: since lan zhan isn't here, i wanna ask you about something

lxc: tell me

wwx: what are the whipping scars on lan zhan?

lxc: you don't know?

AND THEIR SONG STARTS PLAYING

wwx: i asked him but he didn't wanna say, so i'm asking you

lxc: yeah, if he doesn't think it's necessary he'll probably never talk about it so i'll tell you instead of respecting my little brother's decisions about his personal life

AND OKAY I'M GLAD HE DID BC IT GIVES US WANGXIAN MOMENTS BUT STILL!!

lxc: do you remember that one time when wn shot and killed your sister's husband?

on the one hand, HOW COULD HE FORGET but on the other hand, he forgets quite a lot of things actually...

lxc: after wq and the others turned themselves in...*cue flashback*

we're at the burial mounds, lwj is standing by himself before wwx's cave facing down a whole freaking squadron of cultivators

su she: *runs his mouth as if we actually care what he has to say*

lwj: *completely unfazed and expressionless* you are not qualified to speak to me

HELL FUCKING YEAH

WORDS CANNOT DESCRIBE HOW EPIC THIS MOMENT IS

LOOK AT LWJ OWN THAT ICE PRINCE PERSONA TO STRIKE DOWN AN IMPUDENT ANT OF A PERSON

su she goes to draw his sword AS IF HE HAS ANY REAL CHANCE OF DEFEATING HANGUANG JUN IN A SWORD FIGHT

but jgy shows up with even MORE cultivators and then does that thing where he compliments the person inconveniencing him and takes control of the situation

jgy: oh hanguang jun is so honorable let's not search wwx's secret cave lab right now

BUT THE GREAT THING IS THAT LWJ DOESN'T EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE HIS PRESENCE

HE DOESN'T LOOK AT HIM OR SU SHE AT ALL

bc lwj is forever Better Than You.

fuck jgy

jgy: even if wwx is alive, the burial mounds is surrounded so there's no way he could come here without us noticing

he says this to lwj all mildly BUT YOU KNOW IT'S A THREAT

He bows (lwj STILL doesn't acknowledge him and it's GREAT) and walks away

then pauses (bc Drama) and is like oh, almost forgot, your uncle is waiting for you at the cloud recesses. And then he just leaves with all his cultivators

this is when lwj finally looks at jgy (or his back, at least since jgy is leaving)

We cut to the next scene that has lwj slamming the point of bichen in the the stone ground, arm bleeding

HE IS VISIBLY SWEATING AND TREMBLING

lxc: lwj made a mess and fought against everyone there

AND WE SEE LWJ FALL TO HIS KNEE, ONE ARM USING BICHEN AS SUPPORT WHILE THE OTHER RESTS ON THE GROUND

but the fall was gradual and jerky, like he was fighting it the whole way down.

As if the only reason he fell is bc he's used up every ounce his strength and energy he had in his body

lxc: uncle burst into anger and took him back home, punishing him with 300 lashes and repenting in the cold pond cave for 3 years

we cut to the cloud recesses, camera shot from above making lwj, who is kneeling before his uncle and surrounded by disciples, look small AS ~THEIR SONG~ STARTS PLAYING ON THE CELLO

his uncle orders them to start beating lwj

AND LWJ TAKES IT LIKE A CHAMP

he barely moves with each strike and MAN THAT DISCIPLE IS NOT HOLDING BACK

oooh, we see him do that fist clench thing which looks even more painful without bichen to grip tbh

dude lwj is clenching his jaw so hard.

like, he refuses to cry out in pain and it's gotta hurt bc he's bleeding already

lqr: what is rule 52 of the lan clan?

lwj: do not befriend evil

NO HESITATION. SAID IN A STRONG FIRM VOICE

AS IF HE WASN'T CURRENTLY GETTING BEATEN WITH A NIGHTMARE STICK

and lqr is all you have forgotten the fundamental laws of our clan, how can you have the nerve to face your ancestors like this!!

BUT LWJ IS NOT HAVING THAT

HE'LL TAKE THE BEATING BUT HE'S GOING TO MAKE HIS POINT

lwj: i dare ask you, grandmaster, who is right? who is wrong? what is black? what is white?

Bc our boy has learned! He’s learned NUANCE and CRITICAL THINKING and the existence of GRAY AREAS

BC WTF IS THE POINT OF ALL OF THESE STUPID RULES IF THEY DON'T PROTECT THE INNOCENT AND DEFENSELESS?

Bc his soulmate was right all along and he didn’t stand by him when he needed him most and now his soulmate is gone. His soulmate is gone. He’s GONE.

I'M GONNA MAKE MYSELF CRY

lqr: perfect! that's my good student

he does not say this happily. he is in fact SHOUTING this VERY ANGRILY

and here i wanna say, hey lqr, what's that rule about excessive noise...?

cue lwj's fist clench again, which sounds just as painful as the beating tbh

lqr: wangji, you have disappointed me

NOT AS MUCH AS YOU AND YOUR DAMN RULE-BOOK HAVE DISAPPOINTED HIM, YOU JERK

and here we see an ACTUAL VISIBLE SCOWL on our beautiful hanguang jun's face as he continues to be beaten

HOW ANGRY AND TORN UP MUST HE BE TO ACTUALLY SCOWL LIKE THAT??

cut to lwj kneeling at the ice table thing in the cold pond cave, robed in white and face blank but somehow still projecting an aura of cold fury

probably bc the rulebook open in front of him says "eradicate evil, establish laws, and goodness will be everlasting" and he knows that’s bullshit now

but actually this scene is visually very beautiful.

It’s all in misty shades of pale cold blue and white and everything’s spaced out in a way to emphasize how very very alone lwj is

cut back to the present with wwx and lxc

wwx grips his flute with both hands and looks down like he can't believe what he's hearing

lxc: when lwj was imprisoned i tried to persuade him...but he told me he considered you his confidant soulmate and believed in your integrity

wwx: why would he bother…?

his brow is furrowed and his voice is soft like he truly doesn't seem to understand why lwj would bother to do all that

and on the one hand i wanna scream IT'S BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU, YOU MORON

but on the other hand, everybody else in wwx's life, everyone else he loved, turned on him or died

and he probably truly believes he deserved all that, and that he is undeserving of lwj's unwavering faith

and then i cry

lxc: do you know what this place is?

shot of the entrance to the silence room aka the jingshi aka lwj's room

wwx: i don't

lxc: it's where our mother lived

wwx is hanging off his every word

lxc: you might find it strange that the wife of the clan leader didn't live with her husband in the frigid chamber

with a name like that i wouldn't want to live there either...

lxc: you might know that our father used to isolate himself for years, not caring about anything...

Not even his sons, apparently!

wwx: i do

and he explains that his father isolated himself bc of his mother or whatever

lxc: this place was more of a prison than a home

It was his mother’s prison. When did he figure that out? Was it when HE WAS STILL A KID??

DID HE FEEL GUILTY FOR SPENDING TIME WITH HIS MOTHER KNOWING SHE WAS LOCKED UP AGAINST HER WILL??

THE LAN FAM IS SO FUCKED UP OMG

now he's telling us the whole tragic love story

it was love at first sight, he says and wwx is like ah yes, a typical romance

and lxc is like, uh no, she didn't love him back and she murdered his teacher, idk why tho

lxc: but i guess it's all about right and wrong, love and hate

Which is a major theme of the whole show, tbh

OH DAMN

now he's telling wwx about how his dad took his mom to cloud recesses and married her against the clan's approval and that he told them that this was the person he would love for a lifetime, that “whoever tried to drive her out would have to go through him first"

DOES ANY OF THIS SOUND FAMILIAR TO YOU, WWX?

RINGING ANY (WEDDING) BELLS?

DOES THIS REMIND YOU OF ANYTHING AT ALL, WWX?

"after the wedding my father built this house, and locked my mother up"

lxc says this all so calmly and gently, as if he were reading from a story book rather than reciting his immediate family's history

Which is probably a coping mechanism, tbh

this fam is so fucked up, have i mentioned?

lxc: do you understand why my father did all this?

wwx: *nod*

lxc: and do you think he did the right thing?

wwx: i don't know

well, i mean, he married her and locked her up against her will

granted she did murder someone but i get the feeling she probably had good reason to

and now he's telling wwx that they basically had no parents bc they were given off to others to raise them until they were old enough to attend their uncle's lessons

FLASHBACK TO BABY!LWJ READING TO HIS MAMA FROM A LAN CLAN BOOK

HE'S SO CUTE AND TINY AND HIS MAMA IS SO SOFT AND PRETTY.

SHE LOOKS AT HIM WITH SUCH LOVE, AND RUNS HER HAND THROUGH HIS HAIR SO GENTLY

lxc makes a point here to say that their mother never complained about her imprisonment or how painful it must've been to be trapped like that

BC THEIR MAMA LOVED THEM

lxc: lwj never said anything, but i knew he looked forward to the day we visited mother every month

HOW AWFUL IS THAT, TO BE RESTRICTED TO ONE DAY A MONTH TO SPEND WITH SOMEONE YOU LOVE???

Lxc: he did (look forward to seeing mom). and so did i.

cut to baby lwj kneeling in the snow, all little and by himself IN FRONT OF THE JINGSHI, AKA HIS MOM��S PRISON AKA PROBABLY HIS FAVORITE PLACE IN ALL THE CLOUD RECESSES

lxc: one day, uncle told us that we didn't need to go there anymore. mother had gone.

I'M GONNA CRY

HE'S SO LITTLE AND SAD AND HE'S KNEELING SO STILL WITH HIS TINY HANDS IN HIS LAP

like even lqr is moved bc he goes and puts a hand on his shoulder

lxc: we were too young to understand what that meant.

lxc: no matter how others consoled us or how uncle scolded him, lwj still came here every month. he would sit on that porch and wait for someone to open the door.

I'M SOBBING

LWJ HAS SPENT HIS WHOLE LIFE WAITING FOR THE PEOPLE HE LOVES

He’s kept himself still and stalwart ever since he was a kid so that if his loved one chose to come back, he’d still be there for them

I'M HURTING SO MUCH

HE JUST WANTED THEM TO COME BACK AND THINK HE WAS WORTH STAYING FOR.

GOD I HATE CRYING. I'M A SNOTTY MESS RN

Lxc: when we got older we realized that she would never come back. that no one would ever open the door for him. but he still came.

FUCK

GOD DAMN IT

STOP HURTING ME SO MUCH, WHAT THE HELL

lxc: lwj has always been stubborn since he was very young

lxc: back then, he watched you learn crafty tricks. he didn't say anything, but i knew...that the pain and confusion in his heart was the same as what he felt for our mother

MY GOD, JUST BEAT ME WITH THOSE NIGHTMARE STICKS INSTEAD. THAT WOULD HURT LESS THAN THIS.

wwx's eyes are all red-rimmed and his brow is all pinches and HE JUST SWALLOWED BACK THE LUMP IN HIS THROAT

THE SAME ONE I HAVE RIGHT NOW AS I CRY AND CRY AND CRY

and lxc is like, well, that's enough intense conversation for now, imma do a flute solo

~flute sounds~

and now he's like i tried to persuade lwj before but now that i'm in his shoes it turns out making a decision isn't actually easy to do?? who'd have thought?

oh here comes lwj, all straight-backed and regal as always but no jewelry in his hair! no topknot! he looks so different this way

AND HE HAS TWO JARS OF EMPEROR'S SMILE WITH HIM

AND ~THEIR SONG~ IS PLAYING AGAIN

oh, the way he holds it out to wwx, like an offering at an altar...

cut to inside the jingshi, we get to see him uncap one of the jars and pour a drink out for his soulmate.

like, the camera is specifically focused on his hands

which, hey, i’ve seen the tags ppl, i know some of you are Into That so take the time to enjoy this

then we get a shot of all of him and he looks so so soft and exposed and vulnerable here?? with his hair down in his own room, pouring a drink for his wei ying

it's beautiful

wwx walks in and watches as lwj starts to pour himself a cup of tea

THIS IS A LOT.

~Their Song~ playing sweetly, no other sounds except the quiet clinks of the cups and teapot. And all of lwj’s actions are just...light

wwx: lan zhan…

GOD I JUST WANT TO SCREENCAP THIS WHOLE SCENE

the shot of lwj here, while he’s focused on pouring his tea.

the way his head is angled and the wisps of his hair frame his face.

he takes up a good portion of the screen without seeming domineering or forceful, just...peacefully existing in the space

and then we cut back to wwx's face, his mouth open as he takes a breath

He wants to say something, anything, but you can see on his face that he can't make the words come

Like he doesn’t want to disturb the moment with whatever he was going to say, bc it’s a fragile moment

and then this brief literally-2-seconds shot of lwj to the right, sitting at the table

the table is set up so beautifully with the jars of emperor's smile and their cups. and he's looking up and the lighting AND AHHHHHH

IT'S JUST A VERY BEAUTIFUL TWO SECONDS AND I'VE STARED AT IT FOR MUCH TOO LONG ALREADY

lwj: what?

and wwx can't even really return his gaze. he looks just as vulnerable here but, unlike lwj, he also looks awkward, like he’s nervous in his vulnerability same ,wwx, same

wwx tries to say thank you but it comes out stuttered and soft while lwj watches him patiently

wwx mumbles to himself "it's awkward to say it out loud" and his eyes flicker back and forth for a second as his mouth pinches, agitated

BC IT IS MEGA AWKWARD

FEELINGS ARE AWKWARD

AND AS LOUD AND OBNOXIOUS WWX CAN BE, IT'S NEVER ABOUT HIS FEELINGS.

wwx: *clears throat* i mean...the burden on your brother's shoulders is tremendous

smooth transition, wwx, very smooth

but at least it allowed him the chance to sit at the table with lwj

wwx: after all, jgy is his sworn brother. if i were him...

he trails off awkwardly and it feels even MORE awkward bc the background music just ends suddenly and it's silent for us, the audience

lwj doesn't say anything and instead gently moves the cup of wine towards wwx.

once that's done he says "if there's evidence, my brother won't tolerate it."

but he doesn't look at wwx and his face is somber

wwx: that's true. he's got his principles

finally lwj looks at him

lwj: you didn't tell him.

wwx: tell him what?

lwj: about the flute on qiongqi way

wwx: you know about that?

lwj: i asked wen ning. he said he heard a second flute

wwx: i thought i was hearing things until nightless city *insert flashback here*

cut to next scene. wwx is standing just outside the jingshi doors with a jar in his hand as it snows

lwj steps up next to him and ~THEIR SONG~ STARTS PLAYING

they're still talking about the flute and how wwx is confident now that there was a second one used to frame him basically. he's quietly angry here.

lwj immediately says it was jgy but wwx responds with "maybe, maybe not"

lwj looks at him, "you don't want to know the answer?"

bc lwj does. he wants to know who framed his soulmate, causing the suffering that lead to his death

wwx: at first i really wanted to but now i just want to say, 'whatever. screw it!'

he says with a laugh and then takes a swig from his wine jar

wwx put down that wine jar, you've obviously had too much already.

wwx: lan zhan, i actually think whether i know the answer or not won't be of much importance for me. after all, in ppl's minds, the yiling patriarch did bad things. even if i expressed my grievances, people still won't trust me

and he smiles

MY POOR SUNSHINE BOY

He says, "Sometimes the world only needs an excuse or target that everyone can hate"

PAINFULLY TRUE

and then he says something along the lines that it doesn't matter, if he wasn't made the target, someone else would have been

BASICALLY HE'S JUST VERY DISILLUSIONED HERE

THE WORLD SHOULD FEEL ASHAMED FOR DISAPPOINTING HIM

now we hear the sound of a guqin playing ~Their Song~

lwj at his guqin playing their song to soothe his soulmate

wwx: *voiceover* i was lonely back then. the few who believed in me were dead, wen ning, jyl. Luckily…

and here we get the crescendo of the opening theme as we cut to lwj.

the voiceover changes from wwx to lwj

lwj: in this world, there is still someone who trust you

I'M HAVING A LOT OF FEELINGS RIGHT NOW

voiceover switches back to wwx and we get a shot of wwx watching lwj play

wwx: lan zhan, i toast to you. i'm glad to have one true friend

SO MANY FEELINGS

and then i get distracted as wwx does that thing where he pours wine into his mouth and spills half of it down his VERY INDECENTLY EXPOSED THROAT

shot of lwj thinking: for nothing else but a clean conscience

shot of wwx thinking: no matter how they slander me, i know i have a clean conscience

EVEN THEIR THOUGHTS ARE IN SYNC OMG

AND ~THEIR SONG~ IS STILL PLAYING BUT NOW IT'S THE GUQIN AND THE FLUTE COMING TOGETHER

wwx gazes tenderly at lwj and whispers: lan zhan. i'm sorry...and thank you

AND WE GET THE ACTORS’ VOCALS ADDED IN TO ~THEIR SONG~ AS LWJ LOOKS UP AND SEES WWX WATCHING HIM

AND I'M HAVING SO MANY FEELINGS

I WOULD LIKE TO GET DISTRACTED BY WWX'S INDECENTLY EXPOSED THROAT AGIAN PLZ

cut to the next day with lxc meditating and our boys hiding behind a privacy screen

lwj is in perfect posture, eyes closed and meditating calmly while wwx keeps listing to the side and jolting awake bc meditating IS FOR NERDS

lol except this time he lists to the opposite side and falls into lwj's shoulder with a cute little gasp

lwj gives him a look and wwx quickly arranges himself into a sloppy lotus pose

jgy walks in and our boys are immediately on alert peeking through the privacy screen

(which actually isn't all that private. you can see through half of it??)

now we get a moment for lxc and jgy in which jgy returns the jade token and it’s, like, a Thing

BUT WE DON'T CARE ABOUT THEM

LET'S SEE OUR BOYS' REACTION TO WHAT JGY HAS TO SAY

wwx is watching lwj as jgy says something about how they don't have info on lwj and wwx yet and lwj closes his eyes against the news

i think he's upset he's placed his brother in this position...

now we're informed that there are active puppets in the burial mounds

lxc is like, well it can't be wwx bc he was stabbed

and jgy is like he's been stabbed before and controlled puppets alright then!

meanwhile wwx behind the screen scoffs and thinks "they think too highly of me"

also, like, jgy was trying to get lxc to give them up by saying how lwj would be safe bc of his great reputation

Honestly, it really just goes to show that these people don't actually care about your actions. they've made their assumptions and they'll stick to them no matter what and IT'S SUPER FRUSTRATING

plot talk plot talk sworn trio moment plot talk

now lxc is off to carp tower while our boys prepare for a field trip to the burial mounds

LIL APPLE AND THE BUNNIES!!

our boys are by a stream and there's bunnies all over the place and wwx is telling lil apple they're leaving

~THEIR SONG~ STARTS UP AGAIN

AHHHHHHHHH, LOOOK!!! THERE’S TEENY TINY SMILE ON LWJ'S FACE AS HE PUTS DOWN BICHEN TO PICK UP ONE OF THE BUNNIES

EVERYTHING IS ADORABLE

WWX GETS THAT LITTLE MISCHIEVOUS SMILE ON HIS FACE AS HE GOES TO POKE THE BUNNY

AND HE MAKES SILLY NOISES AT IT AND IS ALL INSULTED THAT THE BUNNY DOESN'T REACT

SO CUTE!!

wwx: see? they only like you *pout* they're only loyal to their owner

so lwj wordlessly hands over the bunny BC IF HIS SOULMATE WANTS BUNNIES, HIS SOULMATE IS GETTING BUNNIES

the bunny wriggles and wwx is like "don't try to run. you can never run away from me. stay here bunny!"

IT'S SO CUTE I'M GONNA DIE

HE'S JUST PETTING THE BUNNY ALL OVER AND USING A PLAYFUL VOICE WHILE TALKING TO IT AND EVERYTHING IS WONDERFUL

Don’t be jealous of a bunny don’t be jealous of a bunny don’t be jealous of a bunny

wwx looks over to lwj: lan zhan, it's so strange. i know we're going on a dangerous mission but i don't feel scared at all

then he goes back to the bunny and wiggles it around SO CUTELY: do you think it's strange too? what do you think?

AND HE'S GOT THE BIGGEST SMILE

lwj: it's getting late. let's go

wwx: okay *pets bunny* little bunny, we're leaving~

THIS SHOW SHOULD ONLY EVER BE ABOUT BUNNIES, I'VE DECIDED

BUNNIES DON'T HURT ME

now we cut to them at the entrance of the cloud recesses

lil apple is being stubborn and the bunnies are on the steps

wwx: they hate to see you go.

and wwx looks at lwj all playfully

wwx: i never thought that hanguang jun would be so popular among the little animals

and then he finishes with AN ADORABLE LITTLE POUT: bc i'm not

lwj: why not?

wwx: all little animals regardless of their habitat run when they see me. isn't that right lil apple? *proceeds to bully the donkey*

lwj: *walks off bc he does not condone animal abuse or smth*

wwx: wait for me hanguang jun!!

NOW WE'RE ON A DIRT PATH

LWJ IS HOLDING THE LIL APPLE'S LEAD WHILE WWX RIDES LIL APPLE

HE’S PLAYING HIS FLUTE AND THEN STARTS PLAYING ~THEIR SONG~!!!!

AND LWJ LOOKS TOWARDS HIM HIS EYES ALL TENDER AND FULL OF LOVE

WWX IS SMILING WHILE HE PLAYS

EVERYTHING IS STILL WONDERFUL

LWJ HAS ONE OF HIS ALMOST-SMILES ON HIS FACE

wwx: lan zhan, i wanna know, back in the murder turtle cave, what was the name of the song you sang to me?

lwj: why do you ask?

wwx: just tell me the name. i think i've figured out how you recognized me

wwx: tell me what song it is. who's the composer?

lwj: me

wwx: so you composed it?!

lwj: hm

wwx: what's the name then?

THIS IS SUCH A CAREFREE PLEASANT CONVERSATION AND I LOVE IT

lwj: what do you think?

wwx: you're asking my opinion?

he gets this huge smile on his face and giggles

wwx: i think i'll call it...

lwj: i'm thirsty, let's look for water

IT'S RUDE TO INTERRUPT LWJ

they find a random house and wwx proceeds to steal a melon

but they're interrupted so they hide like the CRIMINALS THEY ARE lol

and we see mr & mrs mianmian with little mianmian!!

mr mianmian is all if you run off again the yiling patriarch will eat you!

little mianmian is like I'M NOT SCARED, mama says the yiling patriarch doesn’t bully good people

and that's how mianmian and her husband and daughter get guaranteed invites to their future wedding

we cut to wwx and lwj

wwx is nodding enthusiastically like THAT'S RIGHT, I DON'T HURT INNOCENT PEOPLE, IT'S ABOUT TIME THAT'S ACKNOWLEDGED

ohhhhh really liking how mianmian draws her sword and demands the criminals to show themselves

Lol, she's like WHO'S THERE? and wwx literally answers, UM, NO ONE??

lwj purses his lips like, really?? and comes out of hiding

Mianmian is shocked to find hanguang jun hiding on her property obvs, but is also excited to recognize wwx

wwx: *internally* why does this lady know me?? did she have a problem with me or did i provoke her??

then wwx recognizes her!! he's very excited about it!

and we end the episode on a high note there!!

We get to see the only functional, happy (and alive) marriage in the entire cultivation world!!

And yeah, we got our hearts torn out by kid!lwj but we were rewarded with soft domesticity AND bunnies right after!!!

Overall good quality wangxiantics

Return to Masterpost

#WangXiantics #wangxian #the untamed #cql

104 notes · View notes

saiilorstars · 4 years

Text

Falling in Temptation

Previous chapters || Sequel to Stars Dance

Fandom: Doctor Who

Pairing: 11th Doctor x Female OC

~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~

Ch. 10: Reality

Chapter summary: Two Doctors would usually mean things would get solved quicker, but not this time. The gangers and humans are raging war against each other and now it's a race to find the TARDIS and escape with their lives. On the side, Avalon is determined to get the only piece of honesty she can get right now and it can only come from the Doctor.

Fairy Tale Memoirs (Companion story)

As soon as the ganger Doctor said spoken his first words to the group, he erupted into massive shouts of pain. "What's happening?" His words, his shouts, were all mixed up as if he was living through different moments. "I wonder if we'll get back. Yes, one day... Aaagh! I've reversed the polarity of the neutron flow!"

"What is he doing?" the Sapling cocked his head each time the ganger turned.

The Doctor tried helping the ganger but there was really nothing he could do at the moment, "'The Flesh is struggling to cope with our past regenerations. Hold on!"

"Don't you have like a billion of those?" Amy called in, making the Doctor momentarily pause to glare at her.

"No!"

"Would you like a jelly-baby?" the ganger Doctor questioned in his 4th incarnation's voice, "Why? Why!?"

"Why do they keep saying that?" Avalon suddenly asked, getting the glances of everyone, "I mean...that's what ganger Jennifer said too, remember Amy?" the second ginger had to agree with a nod, "What does it mean?"

"'Why' what?" the Doctor finally asked his ganger self, taking in Avalon's words and having to agree as well.

"Hello. I'm the Doctor," the ganger replied instead, using his 10th's self's voice, "No, let it go, we've moved on!"

"Oh!" Avalon snapped her fingers, suddenly beaming. "That's the one that went to New Earth!"

"Ava, not the time!" went the Doctor, but she mimicked his voice instead of agreeing.

"I'm never gonna meet him so I'll take what I can get!"

The Doctor's face might as well have stayed in a glare because it seemed like Avalon and Amy were taking turns making unnecessary comments.

"I've reversed the jelly-baby of the neutron flow. Would you like a..." the ganger grabbed the Doctor by the lapels, "Doctor...Doctor... I'm... I'm the... I can't."

"No, listen, hold on. Hold on!" the Doctor tried reassuring the ganger but was shoved away.

"No-o-o-o! Aaaagh!" the ganger showed his flesh-state face to the others.

"Doctor, we need you. Get over here," Amy called to the Doctor, taking cautious steps towards him with Avalon.

The ganger slowly stopped moving until he came to a complete stop. His hands fell from his head and came to adjust the bowtie around his neck. "Hello," he gave a wave with his hand.

"Hi!" the Sapling returned the gesture with a beam on his face.

"Cybermats," the Doctor crossed his arms and faced his ganger self. They really did look identical - it was really weird.

The ganger seemed to catch on and sighed, "Do we have time for this?"

"We make time. I'd like more proof that you're me. Cybermats?"

"Created by the kill by feeding off brainwaves."

Amy gave up trying to get the Doctor's attention and ran back to the door with the other factory workers. Avalon was a bit more awed by the situation but was nonetheless scared as well, so she hurried to the door.

"Don't you have guns somewhere?" was the first thing she asked the factory workers.

"Yeah, big guns would be good right now," Buzzer sucked some breath and nodded.

Jimmy was leaning against the door, a last resort to keep it shut against the gangers, "Why would we have guns? We're a factory. We mine."

"Get back!" Amy yelled as they heard a hissing sound along and saw smoke coming through the door.

"We are completely done for," Avalon declared as they all stepped back. She rolled her eyes at the conversation she was hearing from behind, "Are you two done yet?" she spun around to where the Doctors were, even Amy doing the same, "There's two of you yet still nothing gets done!"

"First of all," the Doctor headed for them and wagged a finger at Avalon. "Shut up!"

"Second of all," his ganger followed in suit with the same finger pointed at Avalon, "...still, shut up."

Avalon raised her eyebrows. Did they seriously think that because there were two of them they could win against her? Absolutely not. She folded her arms across her chest and smirked. "Two of you and you still can't come up with good comebacks. Truly sad. How many brains you got again?"

"Enough with the games," Amy sighed, "There's a problem that needs solving!"

"Breathe," was the Doctors' reply for her.

"What?"

"We have to get you off this island," the ganger Doctor looked at the not-so-well barricaded door.

"And the gangers too."

"Um, Doctor, I'm all for life, but the gangers are trying to kill us," Avalon pointed to the door where the acid could be clearly seen. She barred the Sapling from getting closer.

"They're scared, Ava, that's all," the Doctor assured.

"We're trapped in here," Amy also reminded.

"I don't think so. The Flesh Bowl is fed by cabling from above."

"But where are the earthing conduits?" the ganger Doctor asked.

"All this piping must go down into a tunnel or a shaft or something, yes? With us?" the Doctor headed for a large panel at the other end of the room, "Yowza!" he cheered as he removed the paneling to find a grate. "An escape rout."

Amy glanced at Avalon, mouthing 'Yowza' questioningly at her. Avalon made a face and shrugged, never understanding the Doctor most of the time.

"You know, I'm starting to get a sense of just how impressive it is to hang out with me," the Doctor smugly looked around the room.

"Do we tend to say "Yowza"?" his ganger genuinely wondered.

"Nope!" the Sapling turned around to answer. "Although you did used to say 'Allons-y' for some reason."

Avalon laughed and shot the two Doctors a look. "You did what!? Who did that?"

"I'd rather not answer," the Doctor turned his head away, intending on taking that secret to the grave. It was unfortunate that the Sapling did not agree.

"His last incarnation!"

"Sapling!" the Doctor frowned, feeling completely betrayed by the child.

"Ah, see, that's the one we need to meet!" Avalon sighed in true content, which did make the Doctor be a little less upset. It was better to have her laughing, even if it was at him, than to have her crying.

Just as the entire group managed to get inside, the gangers broke through the door. As they reached the grate, they saw the group at the grate where the Doctor sonicked the locks.

~ 0 ~

The group hurried down the tunnels after getting out of the grate. There was acid everywhere and it was making it difficult to get across without being touched.

"The army will send a recon team," Buzzer said to them.

"We need to contact the mainland," Cleaves reminded him.

"What about Rory and Jen? They are both out there," Amy stressed as she looked around in case they were somewhere nearby. Unfortunately, they weren't that lucky.

"This is a like a labyrinth," Avalon sighed, already having given up looking around their immediate areas. She held the Sapling's hand in hers, tightly, but she wasn't sure who was more afraid at this point.

"I bet you lot have got a computer map," the Doctor looked at Cleaves questioningly.

"If we can get power running, we can scan for them," the woman agreed but couldn't say more as they all started violently coughing.

"Doctor, you said earlier to breathe," Amy covered her mouth.

"Very important, Pond. Breathe," he stood by his statement.

"Yeah, I'm struggling to."

"Acid interacting with the stone," the Doctor managed to explain.

"Creating an asphyxiant miasma," his ganger finished thankfully.

"In English?" Avalon raised am eyebrow.

"Chokey gas. Extra heavy. If we can get above it..."

"The evac tower," Cleaves resolved and started leading the way, "This way!"

They entered a room full of machinery which was they assumed was the control room. As the Doctors got straight to work, the humans took a moment to end their cough.

"Ohh! I think I coughed so hard, I pulled a muscle or something," Amy remarked as she struggled to stand straight.

A bell chimed in the distance which made Jimmy sober up rather quick, "It's midnight. It's Adam's birthday. My son's five. Happy birthday, bud."

"Best present for him would be getting home," Avalon sighed and put a hand on her back as she stood correctly, "How we doing over there?" she called to the working aliens.

"Trying to get the power back," the original Doctor replied, "There's always some power floating around."

"Sticking to the wires, like bits of lint," the ganger Doctor popped up from behind the console.

Amy frowned, "Can you stop finishing each other's..."

"Sentences?" the Doctor finished, "No probs."

"Yes," the ganger nodded and both ducked down behind the console again.

"Confused as hell," Avalon commented with a resigned sigh, "You - well, one of you - said that the TARDIS was stuck in acid, so won't she be damaged?"

One of the Doctors stood up again, but neither Avalon nor Amy (nor the Sapling for that matter) knew who was who. "Nah. She's a tough old thing. Tough, old, sexy."

"No," the other Doctor stood up, "Tough, dependable, sexy."

"Come on. OK, how can...how can you both be real?" Amy felt like her head would spin if they continued to do that. She glanced at Avalon and saw the latte was more or less feeling the same. Only the Sapling seemed to be enjoying the situation.

"Well, because...we are. I'm the Doctor," went one of the pair.

"So am I," went the other, "We contain the knowledge of over 900 years of experience. We both wear the same bowtie, which is cool."

"Because bowties are..."

"And always will be."

"Stop it!" Avalon cut in with exasperation, "You weren't linked up to the Flesh so how did that work, exactly?"

"It must've been after I examined it," the original Doctor answered, "Thus, a new, genuine Doctor was created."

"Ta-da!" the ganger exclaimed.

"You mean I could've had a ganger too!?" the Sapling gasped at the idea as he recalled how close he'd been to the Flesh as well.

"No," Avalon shot him a look.

"Quite right," the Doctor agreed. "You were behind me, Sapling. I think it's better like that, though. Who knows what kind of ganger you would've gotten."

"It would've been cool," the Sapling mumbled, quite disappointed.

"But one of you was here first," Amy's pointed finger moved from one alien to the other.

"After the Flesh scanned me, I had an accident with a puddle of acid. Now new shoes, a situation which did not confront me learned self here."

"That satisfy you, Pond?" the ganger raised an eyebrow, "Ava?"

"Don't call me Pond, please," Amy said quietly as she moved around. She stepped beside Avalon when both Doctors looked at her. They were examining her as if she were some new experiment. "What?"

"Interesting," the ganger Doctor said, "You definitely feel more affection for him than me."

"No, I..." Amy could see why they would think that and felt uncomfortable having to explain. It should be obvious that she wasn't doing it to be mean. It was just natural. "Look, you're fine and everything, but he is the Doctor. No offence. Being almost the Doctor is pretty damn impressive."

"Being almost the Doctor's like being no Doctor at all," the ganger snapped.

"Don't overreact," Amy frowned.

"Well you are being rude," Avalon mumbled to her and received an elbow jabbed on her side, "Ow!"

"And what about you?" the ganger looked at the pained ginger.

"What about me?" she rubbed her side and glared at Amy.

"Do you think I'm real?"

"Being real is not the problem I have with you," blurted Avalon who then quickly covered her mouth, "Sorry."

"Ava," even the original Doctor was mildly surprised.

"Wha...she's the one who said you weren't real," Avalon pointed at Amy in a quick attempt to distract him.

"Yeah, thanks Avalon," Amy muttered, shooting her a glare.

"Oh shut up, you dug your own hole," Avalon snapped then sighed, dropping her hand from her side. "Look, I didn't mean for it to come out like that..."

"What were you trying to say, then?" the ganger was still snappy, which only made her frown.

"Listen, if you're really the same then you know exactly what my problem is. And just so we're clear, it's with both of you."

"Sounds like Father is in trouble," the Sapling announced. Avalon nodded her head, humming in agreement.

"I'm going to pull the 'I literally just came to life' card right now," the ganger Doctor happily said as it did free him of any problems. And even more, it made Avalon chuckle.

The Doctor watched with a frown as his ganger practically yanked Avalon's hand, bringing her far too close to him. What did he think he was doing? Avalon was smiling like she wasn't angry with them two seconds ago.

"Well, I guess I can't be that mad with you," Avalon bobbed her head while she pretended to think. "But you can't use that line all the time."

"I'll come up with better ones," the ganger promised her then winked. Avalon might have blushed.

The original Doctor wasn't very pleased with the interaction and did the only thing he could do, "Communication a go-go!" he slammed his hand on the console repeatedly to break them up, succeeding easily.

"Can it find Rory?" Avalon quickly forgot the situation as she and Amy ran for the computer screen, though the ganger Doctor shot his original a look for his obvious attempt. The Doctor ducked his head with the controls. He needed to work, after all.

Cleaves was already maneuvering the screen by the time the gingers got to her, "There's no sign of him anywhere."

"Come on, baby, show yourself," Amy insisted.

~ 0 ~

After a while of checking the scans for Rory and Jennifer, Cleaves decided to activate a transmission for the mainland, "St John's calling. Emergency Alpha. St John's calling the mainland. Are you receiving me, Captain? Come in'," but there wasn't an answer back, "We'll never get a signal through this storm. St John's calling the mainland. Come in, this is urgent."

"'We're just about reading you, St John's. How are you doing? We've had all kinds of trouble here'."

"'Request immediate evacuation. We're under attack. The storm's affected our gangers. They're running amok."

"'Your gangers?'"

"Yes, our gangers are attacking us. We need you to take us off the island immediately and wipe them out."

The two Doctors looked at each other with concern, that wasn't part of the plan and Cleaves knew it.

"'Copy that, St John's. Shuttle's dispatched. Hang on'."

"You'll need to airlift us off the roof of the evac tower. And Captain, any further transmission sent by me must come with the following code word. I'm typing it, in case they're listening in.'

'"Got it. We'll swing in, get you out and decommission the Flesh'.

"We've got to get out of here," Buzzer said immediately after the transmission had been cut off.

"But we can't leave without Rory nor Jennifer," Avalon reminded him.

"We're not leaving without them," Amy firmly said.

"I want 'em found too, but it's about casualties, innit?" he raised an eyebrow at the two gingers, "Can't be helped."

"Well you're going to have to cope because we're not going anywhere without them," Avalon declared.

"What are you doing?" Amy had noticed the Doctor sitting in one of the chairs at the console typing away. She moved closer and observed the screen.

"Making a phone call," the Doctor answered distractedly.

"Who to?"

"No-one yet. It's on delay."

"Right, not getting it. Why exactly are you making a phone call?"

"Because, Amy, I am and always will be the optimist, the hoper of far-flung hopes and the dreamer of improbable dreams. The wheels are in motion. Done."

"I dream of getting out of here," Avalon sighed, "And as quick as possible."

"Will be taken care of," the Doctor pointed at her assuredly.

The Sapling had noticed Amy staring at something across the room. He came to stand beside her and tried to catch whatever it was she was looking at, but he couldn't find anything. He then realized that Amy hadn't even noticed he was standing right there. "Aunt Amy?" he tapped her arm and watched her jump in place. "What's wrong? What were you looking at?"

Amy rubbed her eyes and gazed at the wall she'd been staring at. Nope, no eye-patch woman there. Why did she keep seeing that woman? Was it some effect from the TARDIS?

"Amy?" the Doctor called now once he saw how pale she was. "What happened?"

Amy didn't know if she would sound crazy but she had to get it off her chest. She'd been carrying the secret with her for a while now and for some reason, she felt like now it was getting worse. She kept seeing the woman by the hour. "I can't take it anymore!" she exclaimed. "It's her! I keep seeing her!"

"What is she talking about?" Avalon inched behind the Doctor. Like the Sapling, Avalon gazed at the wall but found nothing.

"There's a woman I keep seeing, a woman with an eye-patch, and she has this habit of sliding walls open and staring at me," Amy frantically explained and missed the reactions of both Doctors.

"Is that like a movie?" the Sapling glanced at his Mother for the answer.

"Not one I've seen," the ginger promptly responded. She checked to see what the Doctor thought but noticed how unsurprised he was. "Doctor?"

"It's nothing," the original tried to wave off.

"Yeah, judging by Amy's face it doesn't look like it's 'nothing'," Avalon tilted her head, "What are-"

"It's a time memory. Like a mirage," he cut her off, "It's nothing to worry about."

"Liar," Avalon whispered then looked at the ganger beside her, ready to question him too.

However, he had his eyes closed and looked like he was in some type of pain, "It's in my head..." he hurried out the room.

"Hey, hold on!" Avalon called after him.

"Don't let him go," Cleaves warned.

"Leave it to me," Amy hurried out the room, hoping to fix some the things she'd said to him.

Unfortunately, that didn't seem the case for when she returned to the room, it was in a hurried run and heavy breath, "Keep him away from me!" she ordered and ran over to where the other Doctor was.

"Amy?" Avalon frowned at the attitude of her friend, "What's wrong?"

"Did you sense it?" the ganger Doctor came into the room and questioned his other self.

"Briefly. Not as strong as you."

"Sensed what?" Avalon walked over to Amy and hoped to calm her.

"Is there pictures we're missing?" the Sapling looked between the two Doctors, just as puzzled as everyone else.

"Not quite," went one of the Doctors.

"Amy, I'm sorry," the ganger Doctor apologized honestly.

"No, you keep away!" Amy snapped, pulling Avalon closer. Rory would definitely not want Avalon to be around the ganger who had radical, horrific emotions, "We can't trust you!"

"It would appear I can connect to the Flesh," the Doctor wasn't particularly paying attention to her at the moment.

"Well, you are Flesh," the ginger continued to say.

"I'm beginning to understand what it needs."

"What you want. You are it."

"Amy," Avalon put a hand on Amy's arm, disliking the tone and attitude she was taking with the ganger. If he was connected to the Flesh, then he didn't exactly have a choice in what he saw.

"It's much more powerful than we thought," the Doctor continued on without notice, "The Flesh can grow, correct?"

Cleaves was another that wasn't very interested in the topic, "Its cells can divide."

"Well, now it wants to do that at will. It wants revenge," the Doctor approached her, "It's in pain, angry. It wants revenge."

"Hm, thing got a mind of its own now? Where did I hear that one...?" Avalon sarcastically looked around, "...mm, oh right," she crossed her arms as she finally stepped around Amy, "Me."

"Mother was right," the Sapling agreed with a nod of his head.

"Doctor, I told you that we couldn't trust him," Amy went up to the Doctor herself. "I was right. He can't be the Doctor. He can't ever be, he's just a copy."

"That's not very nice," the Sapling pointed.

"Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with the Sapling this time," Avalon folded her arms.

"Be quiet, Avalon," Amy snapped, nearly sounding like a mother and looking like it when she pulled Avalon back with her.

"Hey!"

"Doctor, it might be best if you stayed over there for now, hmm?" Cleaves resolved as she stepped towards the ganger, prompting the other Doctor to move up as well.

"Hold on a minute. Hold your horses," he cut in between the woman and the ganger, "I thought I'd explained this. I'm him, he's me."

"Doctor, we have no issue with you. But when it comes to your ganger..." Cleaves looked around to the other people for their opinions, though their faces were more than clear, except for one person of course.

"I think you're all overreacting a bit," Avalon tried to input but no one listened.

"Be quiet!" snapped Amy again, though this time Avalon sent her a deep glare.

"Tell me to shut up one more time, I dare you," she gritted her teeth. It was completely outrageous that they forced the ganger Doctor on a barrel like he was some criminal.

Amy would not take the dare; she'd seen the fights Avalon had in the past and she wasn't interested in getting a black eye in the midst of all the trouble. "I just think it would be safer," she said, though her tone was still strained.

"Safer? They're the same!" Avalon gestured to the ganger and then to Doctor. "Down to the same stupid bow-tie! No two people can make that same mistake!"

The Sapling covered his mouth to giggle when both Doctors gave Avalon the same deadpanning look.

Amy, though, wouldn't listen as she shook her head. "You're too blinded by them."

A new type of anger flourished across Avalon's face when Amy made that accusation. Making that accusation basically told Avalon that Amy believed she couldn't separate reality from her stories, from the all the stories she'd heard about the Doctor. It was an outright offence, honestly. "I am not blinded, Amelia Pond! I'm not seven! I'm not a child!"

"Avalon," the ganger Doctor stepped in when her face began to match the shade of her hair. He grabbed her arm and gently pulled her away from the mini-stare down she was having with Amy. "It's fine, really."

"No, it's not," Avalon continued shooting Amy glares. "I hate when they say that. Like...like I'm too engulfed in my stories to realize that I'm in the real world." She turned to him, expression akin to a beg. "I know I have my stories and I love them but I'm not blinded by them. I know you're real and that you have flaws and...this is the real world. It's not my fairy tale world."

"I know that," he assured her with a soft smile. "You don't have to prove it to me."

"...just like you don't have to prove to anyone that you're real," she said and shot the others another glare. "You're a ganger but you're the Doctor. I know you are."

"And that counts for a lot, trust me," he rubbed her arms comfortingly. "My Ava."

She smiled back but when he moved to sit on the barrel the others ordered him to, she yanked him to his side. "Absolutely not. They can all suck it." She stuck her tongue out at anyone who saw.

From his spot, the original Doctor struggled hard not to laugh right there and then. That's my Ava.

After a couple minutes, the group got word from the mainland they were trying to land when the signal was cut off.

"I can't find Rory. I'm going out there," Amy had had enough of waiting around.

"We could use the sonic to track him," the Doctor offered as he pulled out his screwdriver, "Humans and gangers give off slightly different signals. The sonic can tell the difference."

"Oh, so the sonic knows gangers are different, so the other Doctor is different."

The Doctor rolled his eyes, "He is the Doctor."

"Not to me," Amy assured, "I can tell."

"Sure you're not prejudiced?"

"Nice try, but I know, OK? We've been through too much. You're my Doctor. End of."

"Amy, instead of making things worse come over here," Avalon was with Buzzer in front of the visual screens, "We've got Rory and Jennifer," everyone quickly gathered to see the screen.

"They're heading for the thermostatic room," Cleaves seemed confused and with great reason.

"Let's go get them," Amy declared but saw the screwdriver being tossed over to the Doctor on the barrel, "Hang on!"

"We can't let him go," Cleaves moved over to the Doctor, "Are you crazy?"

"Am I crazy, Doctor?" the Doctor turned to his other self.

"Well, you did once plumb your brain into the core of an entire planet just to halt its orbit and win a bet."

"I remember that!" the Sapling laughed as he watched the images in his head.

Avalon was not amused in the least. "That's not being crazy, that's being utterly stupid. And that's coming from me. Mels used to dare me to do the stupidest things."

"Enough!" Amy snapped. "Now he's not going-" she pointed to the ganger, "-I am!"

"Do you know, I want him to go," the Doctor stepped closer to her, serious, "And I'm rather adamant."

"Well, then, he'll need company, right, boss? It's fine. I'll handle it," Buzzer offered and stepped forwards.

"Thank you, Buzzer. It'll be all right. I'll find him," the ganger waved and left with Buzzer to follow.

"I can't explain it to you now, but I need you to trust him," the Doctor looked at Amy and even Avalon, "Can you do that for me?"

"Course," Avalon nodded but Amy seemed to have more trouble accepting it.

"What if you're wrong?" were her final words.

~ 0 ~

"These temperature gauges are rising," Cleaves read from the screen. They'd been monitoring the visuals for a while and was growing concerned, "Jennifer and Rory must have shut off the underground cooling vents."

"Why do that? They'll kill us," Dickens frowned.

"There's a million gallons of boiling acid under our feet..." Cleaves slowly looked down at the floor.

"And now it's heating up the whole island," the Doctor understood, "How long till it blows?" his answer was the explosion that rocked them entirely.

"Gangers or no gangers, we need to get the hell out of here," Dickens urgently said.

"Shuttle! We need evac," Cleaves started a transmission again, "Where are you? Can you hear me? Can you...?" she stopped when she felt a jab at her forehead.

"Cleaves? Cleaves, sit down," the Doctor helped her away the console and sat her on a chair.

"I'm fine," Cleaves assured as she put a hand on her forehead, I'm waiting for results, so let it go."

The Doctor had used the sonic on her and got results instantaneous, "It's a very deep parietal clot."

"Inoperable?"

"On Earth, yes."

"Well, seeing as Earth is all that's on... offer...hm," Cleaves slumped in her chair, "I'm no healthy spring chicken, and you're no weatherman. Right?"

Another quake struck and shook the room, "Something just cracked. I heard it," Avalon frantically looked around for anything that was breaking.

"Yeah, we can't stay here, let's go," the Doctor agreed and headed for the doors.

Cleaves moved to the console again and did another transmission, "Cleaves to Shuttle. We need to move, and we can't be collected from the evac tower."

'Give us the codeword'.

"The codeword is..." but her voice was cut off with another quake that struck that console and cut off the transmission.

"Cleaves? Cleaves, it's dead, it's dead," the Doctor called to them, "We need to get out of here. We need to get back downstairs and get those vents back on, come on."

They ran into a new room where the Doctor and Cleaves hurried to change the settings on the machine, "It's a chemical chain reaction now. I can't stop it. This place is going to blow sky high," the Doctor sighed.

"Exactly how long have we got?" Cleaves asked.

"An hour? Five seconds? Er, somewhere in between."

The klaxon sounded along with a series of explosions, "Out!" the Doctor ordered and ran out the room with the group.

They ran a couple feet until they found Rory on a turn. Amy was the first to hug him as she was the closest one.

"All right?" Rory pulled back and studied her followed by Avalon.

"Us? What about you?" Avalon hugged him, "Don't you dare do that again!"

"Yeah, aunt Amy and Mother were very worried," the Sapling informed as if Rory hadn't already known that.

"There's a way out. Jennifer found it. A secret tunnel under the crypt," Rory pulled away and looked at the group.

"From the crypt? It's not on the schematics," Cleaves shook her head.

"It runs right out of the monastery. Maybe even under the TARDIS, Doctor. Follow me."

As everyone ran after Rory, the Doctor seemed slightly hesitant to do so.

"We can't leave without Buzzer," Jimmy said as they entered the new room.

"I'll go back for him," Cleaves called.

Rory was with the Doctor and was looking nervous for some reason, "Doctor, look...I'd better tell you, I haven't been quite straight with you..." but ganger Jennifer pulled him out the room before he could finish and locked the group inside.

"Rory!" the Doctor pounded on the door, "Rory Pond, Roranicus Pondicus!"

"Rory! What the hell are you playing at?" Avalon shouted but caught sight of Jennifer on the other side and knew it had to be that woman's fault.

"Rory, there is no time. This factory's about to explode!" Amy called frantically.

"I'm sorry!" Rory was able to say before he was dragged away by the Jennifer.

"Can we hurt her?" the Sapling made a deep scowl appear on his face. They were just trying to get home and that woman was about to kill them off.

With no other alternatives, the Doctor hurried back to the acid with the sonic, "This is going to overheat and fill the room with acid, just as a point of interest."

"Please, stop talking," Avalon sighed, she'd rather not hear about their looming death.

Dicken started lowering the cap over the vat as an effort against it. Jimmy moved closer to the vat and shook his head, "It'll never hold her.'

"If you have a better plan, I'm all ears," the Doctor pointed, "In fact, if you have a better plan, I'll take you to a planet where everyone is all ears."

"I've also seen that one!" the Sapling tapped the side of his head. "Can I go there afterwards?"

Even through the now shut cap, the acid was far stronger. Cleaves observed it from a distance, "The acid's eating through."

"This is it, huh? This is where we're going to die," Avalon shuddered a breath as she stared at the weak vat with soon-to-be overflowing acid. She felt her breathing pick up. That was new. She never really considered that one of their trips might be the last one.

The Doctor came over to her and hugged her. He didn't care if she would push him away; he needed for her know that he wouldn't leave her side. "No, it's not," he quietly said.

"Oh you don't have to lie," Avalon sighed. She allowed him to hug her for a few seconds, letting herself enjoy his hold just for a bit.

Jimmy had moved to keep the vat's lid down but some of the acid managed to splash on his chest, knocking him to the floor. At that moment, ganger Jimmy ran into the room and went straight for his other self. The Doctor had gone to check the original but found bad results, "There's nothing we can do. The acid's reached his heart."

"Hang in there, mate," ganger Jimmy sighed.

"I'm quite handsome from this angle," Jimmy managed to humor.

"I'm...sorry. I'm the fake. Adam deserves his real dad."

"Shut up," Jimmy playfully rolled his eyes.

"What do you want me to do? Anything, just say."

"The way things are, mate... it's up to you now," Jimmy pulled on the cord around his neck and gave it to his ganger, "Be a dad. You remember how."

A stunned ganger Jimmy held up a wedding band in his hand.

"Jimmy Wicks...you're a dad," the Doctor clapped him on the shoulder.

"Right then, everyone, it's time to go!" ganger Cleaves called to the group and ran out the room first.

The Doctor stood by the door as everyone ran out but noticed Avalon staring at the corner of the room. "Ava! Let's go!"

"Amy said that woman appeared there again," she pointed at the wall. "How can that be? There's nothing there."

"Avalon, it doesn't matter!" the Doctor ran back to bring her out of the room. "We have to go!"

"But it does!" Avalon snapped, yanking her arm out of his hold after they'd gotten into the corridor. "Because you know what it means and don't want to tell us! And when you do that, it means something's happening."

"No, it's not," the Doctor tried his best to smile like nothing was going on around them, like neither of them were in danger. "You know me, I've got so many things in my head that I don't even know what's going on half the time."

"Nice try," Avalon rolled her eyes. "You know what's going on, more than you're letting on. But I shouldn't be surprised. It's what you do. Keep everything to yourself."

"This...isn't about Amy anymore, is it?"

Avalon once again rolled her eyes and when she attempted to leave, the Doctor grabbed her arm. "Look if you're not going to tell me anything, then just leave me alone."

"Now a wait minute, 10 minutes ago you were dandy with the other Doctor but now I'm the one you're mad at?"

"Are you seriously telling me that you're jealous?" Avalon didn't know whether to laugh or scream in frustration. "Why are you like this?" she air-strangled him instead.

"Like what?" the Doctor frowned.

Avalon groaned, her hands dangerously close to actually strangling him by the neck. "I hate you, you know that!? Do you enjoy being self-righteous with me? Especially with me?"

"I would never-"

"-then why don't you just tell me the truth already?"

"What truth?"

"I'm going to kill you, after," Avalon muttered and stepped towards him. She grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and pulled him close to her so he would definitely listen to her words. "If I'm really going to die here, then I refuse to go without hearing you tell me the truth about us."

The Doctor's eyes widened. "Oh..."

"Yeah, 'oh'," Avalon could be pretty scary when she wanted to, and of course she'd choose to be the scariest when she wanted a confession from him about their feelings. She sure knew how to pick them.

"I don't think this is really the time. I mean, we have got some killer acid and actual killers after us-"

"-I don't bloody care," Avalon snapped. "I deserve for somebody to tell me the truth for once in my life." Her face suddenly softened, as did the grip of her hands on his jacket. She tilted her head slightly, eyes glimmering with tears. "And I would really like for that 'somebody' to be you."

"Ava...I can't..."

"Why not?" she asked through gritted teeth. "And don't tell me it's because there's nothing. Fantasy Fest. That's all the proof I need. You were about to kiss me and don't deny it."

"I stopped for a reason..."

"Because you nearly got caught."

"No, because...it was the right thing to do," the Doctor put his hands over hers and gently pulled them off his jacket. "Because I can't do that to you. You have me falling in temptation, Ava. Being who I am, it's a dangerous thing."

"And I told you plenty of times that I like dangerous. Literally. I love the adrenaline," Avalon said with the most honest smirk on her face. She raised her head as if daring him to challenge her.

He honest to God loved that look on her. He could kiss her to death right now. He brought one of his hands to touch her face, very soon grazing her lips. "My Ava. You have no idea what goes through my head whenever you're around me."

"I would if you just told me," Avalon whispered.

"Thing is, Avalon, I've done this before and it never ended well," the Doctor's gaze lowered a bit.

Avalon could see the pain etching across his face, as if it were still raw because it happened yesterday. She didn't have to hear each individual story to know that the Doctor blamed himself for every ending. "You're 909, I believe you."

"I don't want you to be the next one. Because sometimes it's not the fact that they've left me, it's how they ended up leaving. You won't be the next one, not on my watch."

Avalon's eyes watered up. "Can you just say it, though? Say it once, please."

But the Doctor wasn't brave enough. If he said it out loud, then it would finally become real. And when it became real, the pain that came with it would also be real. He couldn't do it. "I can't...I'm sorry..."

The ground suddenly rumbled underneath them, nearly knocking them both to the wall. The Doctor grabbed ahold of Avalon's arm - even if she wanted to murder him for his inability to speak the truth - and searched the hallway for a good route.

"We have to go!"

"I hate you!" Avalon didn't hesitate to start and he would be smart enough to know that this wasn't the end of their conversation. Just because they were about to die was no excuse! Not for them!

~ 0 ~

The rest of the group had entered a new room after being chased down by ganger Jennifer (who was now the only one bent on war). They'd met up with Rory and the other Doctor again and were now trying to keep Jennifer away from them. As Dicken came to shut the door that would keep Jennifer out, he crashed into a running Avalon and Doctor.

"Where the hell have you two been?" called Rory from the end of the room, frankly offended they'd left them to their luck.

"Yeah, ganger Jennifer is still after us!" the Sapling waved his arms frantically. Of course then he dropped them when he noticed how angry his mother looked. "Why are you upset, Mother?"

"Ask your father," Avalon shoved the Doctor with her to the side.

A scream carried down the hallway and made everyone look out to see Dickens shut the door with himself on the other side. Jennifer had killed him and was making her way towards the group now. Ganger Dickens shut the door in front of them with the help of ganger Cleaves and the Doctor that had come in with Avalon.

There was a creaking sound from the ceiling and the other Doctor looked up to see a familiar blue square coming through. "Here she comes!" The TARDIS fell down and added an extra rumble to the ground. "Oh, she does like to make an entrance! Move!" he ordered as he went up to the doors and opened them up for the group, "Go, go, go, go!"

Ganger Dickens left the door and ran into the TARDIS. Cleaves was going to do the same but looked back at her ganger, "Get on board! Go!" the ganger shooed he off.

"I'm not leaving," Cleaves tried to argue but the loud bang Jennifer gave on the other side of the door cut her off.

"Go!" the ganger yelled at her and so went Cleaves into the TARDIS.

"Sapling!" the Doctor called from the TARDIS. "GO!" The Sapling nodded his head quickly and made a dash for the blue box.

"Now's our chance," Amy hurried to the TARDIS and looked back at the others, specifically the Doctor at the door.

"I have to stay. Hold this door closed. Give you time to dematerialize."

"What are you doing?" Avalon frowned, "What happens if you stay here?"

"Well, this place is just about to explode. But I can stop her."

"Both of you can survive this, OK?" Amy looked between the two aliens.

"Or perhaps you think I should stay instead... Mr Smith?"

"No, of course not. But look, this man, I've flown with him, you know? And you are amazing and yeah, I misjudged you, but you're not him. I'm sorry."

"Amy, we swapped shoes. I'm the Doctor," the Doctor by the TARDIS informed.

"And I'm...the Flesh," the Doctor at the door said rather nervously as he looked at Avalon.

"You're what now?" her eyes widened.

"I, uh, I...probably should've mentioned that before-"

"-right, because telling the truth is so easy for you clearly," she rolled her eyes.

"No, hold on!" Amy shook her head fervently as if that would make things more clear. "How's this even possible!?"

"Well, they switched places, didn't they?" Rory wasn't that surprised the Doctor would pull something like that. In fact, they should've just seen it coming.

"Well I'm not the original, I haven't been all along," the ganger Doctor shrugged, not able to explain much further.

"I don't know which one of you to kill right now," Avalon looked between both aliens, though the reactions from each were different. The one at the door looked heavily frightened while the one at the TARDIS was trying to understand what was going on.

"Ava? What happened?" the Doctor, the real one, asked her.

"Is there a way you both can survive?" Amy's hair kept flinging from side to side as she asked the two Doctors.

"Yeah, so I can kill both of them," mumbled Avalon.

"You okay?" Rory touched Avalon's arm, the only one who wouldn't die at the moment. She shook her head in response. "What happened?"

"Nothing!" she quickly exclaimed, shooting the ganger a sharp look, "Nothing happened," though her face was upset and sad, "Just, um, just tell us, is there a way of survival for you?" she genuinely wondered.

"Get to safety, Ava," was the answer of the ganger, a soft smile on his face.

"Well we can't just let him die!" Amy exclaimed, frantically shaking as no one seemed very worried about that detail.

"It's fine, Pond," the ganger Doctor smiled just like his other version would. "We got what we needed from this place, didn't we?" he shared a knowing look with the other Doctor, both nodding in agreement.

"What?" Avalon caught on and frowned even deeper. "Oh! I am so done with you two!"

"No Avalon, wait!" the ganger grabbed her arm and gently tugged her to his side. "You were right...about everything." She still shook her head, more ready to kill him before ganger Jennifer did. "Hey, I mean it," he tugged her arm again, forcing her to look at him. "You were absolutely right, but then again...when aren't you right?"

She wanted to roll her eyes again but he had that stupid grin she liked a lot. While she was lost in her thoughts - deciding whether to keep pretending to want to kill him or just leave - she didn't notice that the ganger Doctor had leaned to her side until he whispered something in her ear. When he drew away, she had her wide-eyed stare locked on him and she had a deep blush across her face.

"What he say?" Amy scrunched, wondering if it was some other secret the two aliens had kept from them.

Even the Doctor by the TARDIS was puzzled. "Ava?"

Avalon shared a small smile with his ganger. "You finally said it," she leaned closer to him, letting her nose rest against his cheek. "Thank you. And you know that I feel the same," she told him in a whisper. She pulled away and looked at the door he and Cleaves were desperately trying to keep locked, but ganger Jennifer was using all her monstrous strength to pound against it.

"You need to go," the ganger ordered her. "Please."

"But..."

"I'll be fine," he assured.

"You lie," she said sadly. He didn't say anything except give her another smile. She nodded, indicating she understood, but before she left she surprised him with a kiss on the cheek. She went right into the TARDIS without looking at anyone else, much less the other Doctor who couldn't be more confused in his life! What had that ganger of him said to her and why did she react like that? They were so close too...

Of course he soon turned an accusing look on his ganger, demanding questions with a silent glare.

"Oh shut up," went the ganger in return. "Maybe she's the one who can change things. Because if you don't, and I survive this, I'm coming back for her. You got that?"

"I'm interested," Amy remarked to Rory, both of them looking at each of the Doctors at the same time. "But I'm so confused at the same time."

"I'm not," Rory frowned. It was what he specifically wanted nothing of for the sake of Avalon. "Let's go!" he yanked his wife towards the TARDIS, leaving the two Doctors to work out whatever they needed to.

Avalon was inside with the Sapling but while the tree child was ecstatic to be safe inside the TARDIS, Avalon was lost in thoughts. Rory took a quick stride towards the woman, dreading what was going on through her head.

"Hey Ava," his voice, though gentle, managed to startle her, "Are you okay?"

"Uh...yeah, I think I am," Avalon answered but she still seemed like she was figuring it out. "I just..." she laughed humorlessly, "Why is he so...like that!?"

"Ava," Rory deeply sighed and brought a hand to her curly hair. "I really wish you hadn't..." he couldn't finish it out loud, for her sake, but she just smiled sadly.

"I couldn't help it Rory," she said with the tone of a child. She always did that whenever they had a serious talk. He was like the grown up because God knew she could never be an adult.

"Told you," Amy was smirking, completely the opposite of her husband.

"I don't get it," the Sapling suddenly said, his lips curled into a pout. "What's going on? What are we talking about?"

Avalon just laughed, wholeheartedly for the first time that day. "Oh Sapling, nothing. Nothing except your Mother is a true idiot."

~ 0 ~

After making sure the gangers were stable and dropping ganger Jimmy back to his son, the Doctor brought Cleaves and ganger Dickens back to the headquarters of their factory.

"You really want us to do this?" Cleaves sighed as they approached the conference room.

"Your company's telling the world that the situation is over. You need to get in there and tell them that the situation's only just begun," the Doctor pointed to the door, "Make them understand what they're doing to the Flesh. Make them stop. Dickens, remember, people are good. In their bones, truly good. Don't hate them, will you?"

"How can I hate them? I'm one of them now," he gestured to Cleaves beside her.

"Yeah, and just remember, people died. Don't let that be in vain. Make what you say in that room count."

"Ready? Side by side," Cleaves said as they'd stopped in front of the conference door.

"You got it, boss."

Together, the two co-workers entered the conference room. Amy moved closer to the Doctor and nudged him, "You okay?"

"I said breathe, Pond, remember? Well, breathe," the Doctor sighed as he knew what was coming next. He started making his way back for the TARDIS where Avalon had preferred to stay. Now, on top of a ganger Amy, he had to decipher what secret Avalon was refusing to tell him. And more importantly, what the hell his ganger had whispered in her ear.

"Why?" Amy called but couldn't say more when she doubled over in pain. "Ooh! Woah! Oh!"

"What's wrong with her?" Rory quickly tried checking her for any injury, but he didn't remember seeing anything earlier.

"Get her into the TARDIS," the Doctor ordered and entered the box.

"What's wrong with aunt Amy!?" the Sapling's cry pulled Avalon away from her journal. She looked up to see the Doctor and Rory helping Amy get into the TARDIS.

"Contractions," the Doctor bitterly answered as he went around the console, setting the TARDIS in motion.

"Excuse me?" Avalon hopped off her seat and hurried to help Rory.

"She's going into labor."

The Sapling gasped. "Aunt Amy's having a baby!? I thought it was Mother!"

"Would you stop saying that!?" snapped Avalon. This was no time to remind her that she needed to change diets.

"Doctor, what are you talking about!?" Amy asked in-between groans. She literally felt like she was being stabbed in her stomach. "Rory, I don't like this - OW!"

"You'll have to start explaining this to me, Doctor," Rory practically ordered. He could handle the secrets the Doctor kept from them when it wasn't about Amy. Something was happening to his wife and he wanted answers now.

"What, the birds and the bees? She's having a baby," the Doctor moved away from the console. The Sapling gasped again, in delight until someone would tell him it wasn't all that great when the person in labor didn't even know she was in labor. "I needed to see the Flesh in its early days. That's why I scanned it. That's why we were there in the first place. I was going to drop you off for fish and chips first, but things happened and there was stuff and shenanigans. Beautiful word, shenanigans."

"You're getting off topic," Avalon snapped. "Not to mention the fact I knew you were keeping something from us!"

"It hurts!" cried the second ginger.

"Breathe," the Doctor pointed at Amy, "I needed enough information to block the signal to the Flesh."

"What signal?" Amy didn't understand and quite frankly didn't have the head to decipher it with all the pain she was feeling.

"The signal to you."

"Doctor?"

"Stand away from her," the Doctor sternly looked at Avalon and Rory. He expected the simultaneous refusal from them, but it didn't mean he would be patient about it. Time was literally of the essence now. From here on out, they were at war.

"You need to start explaining now," Avalon's eyes narrowed on the Doctor, and with good reason.

"Given what we've learned, I'll be as humane as I can, but I need to do this and you two-" his voice suddenly rose in volume, "-need to STAND AWAY!"

Avalon flinched when he started yelling. She didn't say anything back, she didn't dare to. Instead, she looked at Rory and the two slowly backed away from Amy. Why were they leaving her!? Why was the Doctor shouting at them!? And why did her stomach hurt so much!?

"No, no, Doctor, I am frightened. I'm properly, properly scared!"

Even the Sapling had the good sense to be afraid now that he was looking at everyone. He slowly inched closer to Avalon who, once she felt him nearby, slowly took him into a hug.

"Don't be. Hold on. We're coming for you, I swear it," the Doctor stepped closer to Amy, putting a hand on her cheek. He felt terrible for taking this long to finally do something about her situation. "Whatever happens, however hard, however far, we will find you."

"I'm right here!" Amy clung to his arm, shaking him to get him to listen to her. But despite her insistence, she could see in his eyes that he'd already made up his decision about her.

"No, you're not. You haven't been here for a long, long time," he stepped back and held his sonic at her. The mere act froze Avalon and Rory in their respective spots. It looked like Amy was suddenly the enemy trespassing.

Amy whimpered in her spot, one hand still wrapped around her stomach. "No..."

With one click of the sonic, she turned into a Flesh puddle.

Rory gasped at the sight of what used to be his wife.

Avalon's eyes wide to the brim. Her grip around the Sapling tightened as if they were next on the list.

The Doctor slowly lowered his sonic but he couldn't look at Rory nor Avalon. What would he tell them? That he'd known for a while Amy wasn't really there with them but he didn't have the tools nor the knowledge to find her?

"Doctor," Rory suddenly spoke up. "Hey?" he had to call twice before the Time Lord would finally glance at him, but only then it was a slight glance. "I don't understand what just happened, nor what is happening but I bet my life that you knew about this."

"Rory-"

"-NO," Rory's voice sharpened quick, shutting the Doctor down in that moment, "You knew about it for God knows how long so right now, you owe me."

"Rory, stop," Avalon's voice was a frail whisper. She was truly afraid of what was coming next, but Rory was already thinking ahead and it included her.

"Avalon, be quiet," Rory snapped. It was so uncharacteristic of him but it was another testament of how furious he was. He walked straight up to the Doctor, and showcased his deepest glare. "You owe me and I'm gonna use that to save the other person I just know is in danger." The Doctor blinked at him, unsure of where Rory was taking this until Rory's eyes flickered to Avalon. "I've felt this for a while and nobody would listen to me, not even Amy."

"Rory, what are you talking about?" Avalon asked, about to walk towards them when the Sapling hugged her tighter. He was mighty afraid and the fact everyone looked so angry and upset didn't help ease his nerves.

"The letter, Avalon," the Doctor said, side-glancing her with sorrow eyes. Now it was Rory's turn to be confused. Neither he nor Amy had heard about the letter. "What did the letter say?"

Avalon's eyes would blink several times before she answered and when she did, she still wasn't sure what it had to do with their conversation. "Dear Avalon, I know this is strange and probably confusing but it is imperious that you listen to me. You must remain with the Doctor for your own safety. Bad things are coming, and they will be coming for you and all your friends." She swallowed hard, attempting to keep calm but her body was visibly shaking. "But it-it's not about me right now. It's about Amy-"

"-but they could be the same people that letter was talking about," the Doctor sighed. "I should have known from the start. I should have been more careful."

"Doctor, they got to Amy but we can still keep Avalon safe," Rory said, now more urgent since they finally figured out what he was trying to say.

"Yes, you're right," the Doctor nodded, turning towards Avalon. The woman took an instinctive step backwards, bringing the Sapling with her in the process. "Avalon, you might be next."

"No, stop it!" she snapped. "We need to focus on Amy and-"

"-you," Rory said. "I'm not losing you too."

"What...what are you going to do?" Avalon asked, her tone laced with a clear fear.

"Whatever it takes," the Doctor promised her.

#ocappreciation #doctor who #11th doctor #doctor who fics #11th doctor fics #dw imagine #11th doctor imagines #dw fics #doctor who ocs #oc: Avalon Reynolds #fic: falling in temptation

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clansayeed · 4 years

Text

Bound by Destiny ― Chapter 4: The Decision

PAIRING: Kamilah Sayeed x MC (Nadya Al Jamil) RATING: Mature

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Destiny ⥽

Nadya Al Jamil (MC) has been struggling from the day she moved to Manhattan, but her new job as assistant to the mysterious CEO of Raines Corp was supposed to turn her luck around. Until she finds herself caught in the middle of a war involving the Council of Vampires who secretly run the city. An evil from the birth of Vampire-kind stirs beneath, feeding on the conflict, and finds Nadya bound to a destiny she never asked for.

Bound by Destiny and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the Bloodbound series and spin-off, Nightbound. Find out more [HERE].

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

There is a lot of information forced at Nadya all at once, but she finds expensive wine helps her cope better than usual. Oh, also, Adrian is a vampire.

[READ IT ON AO3]

Because it takes forever for the wine to pour into the glass — okay not really forever but longer than instantaneous, which is what she needs right now — Nadya decides to save herself the grief and lets her mouth catch it instead.

It’s not a good wine. Well, it’s actually some expensive, twenty-something year old vintage from some remote place in Italy, which is probably the definition of good wine. But it’s a dry white and she’s always preferred her alcohol to be on the fruity side. Dry wine just makes her feel like an alcoholic jonesing for anything that will do. Even if it tastes like butt going down.

But of course the moment the bottle is empty she wishes it wasn’t. Gross or not, having alcohol is a lot better than not having alcohol.

She scans the wall until her eyes land on the speaker comm. near the door.

“If you need anything, anything at all, just buzz okay? The staff are pretty good at meeting needs.” Adrian’s voice echoes in her head, throws itself around every corner of her skull and it reverberates like ripples on a pond.

“My meeting won’t take long. It’s just… there are protocols for things like this. I’d rather stay here and make sure you’re all right, please believe that. But I might probably be the last person you want to look at right now. So… if you need me, just say my name on the comm. It’ll go right to me.”

He left his jacket on the coffee table. Nadya plucks her feet up from the plush rug and tucks her knees against her chest. Like the wool might bite if she gets too close.

No, not the wool. The vampire who owns it.

She wants to call Lily. Lily’s voice might make everything okay — or at least a little more okay than the very-not-okay she is right now. But none of her things — her coat, gloves, hat, phone, wallet — are in the lush apartment. It’s almost kind of a good thing, after she thinks it over. Keeps her from making any stupid choices.

The sun’s over the man-made horizon of skyscrapers by the time the elevator door signals an arrival. Nadya’s watched the entire morning, transfixed, as the room gets lighter. Lighter, but not too light. Her eyes should burn staring at the star for too long but whatever dark film coats the windows keeps her safe.

Safe. Ha.

Each footfall on the marble floor is pointed; purposeful. Measured steps that demand to be heard. He doesn’t want to scare her; doesn’t want to sneak up on her. That’s her Adrian — always considerate, always going above and beyond.

Only it isn’t her Adrian, is it? It’s Adrian; but not a version of him that she knows. Makes her wonder how much of everything has been a lie.

Does she even know the real Adrian Raines at all?

“I brought you some coffee and a bagel from the cart downstairs.” She’s never thought of Adrian as a man parallel to the word uncertain but he sure sounds that way. Doesn’t mean she wants to look at him, though.

“I thought it best to call you in sick today,” he continues, “give you time to… you know. Process everything.”

She wants to thank him. She can’t — doesn’t stop from huddling in on herself in the chair pointed outward towards the world beyond. It was always big, she knew that. But now it just feels… well, it feels big, still, and now inside-out.

Finally — Nadya doesn’t know how much time has passed but Adrian stood there, behind her, the whole time — Adrian clears his throat and starts to retreat from the room.

“I’ll come back tonight. See how you’re doing. Please try and eat something?”

He’s giving her space but somehow it’s… infuriating. She doesn’t want space. She wants ignorance; blissful ignorance.

The elevator opens. Nadya’s voice feels foreign in her own ears.

“Make sure Lily knows I’m okay?”

Her voice can’t be more than a whisper but Adrian hears it across the apartment. She doesn’t even question it — just another one of the things about him she didn’t know.

“Will do.”

“And don’t… don’t tell her.”

“I won’t, Nadya.”

She hesitates; doesn’t speak until she’s sure the doors have closed and Adrian’s on his way up (down?) to his office.

“Thanks.”

As promised Adrian returns that night. There’s a few bites out of the bagel but the coffee remains cold and untouched. He glances in the kitchenette and sighs at the four empty bottles placed in a neat little row on the countertop. One dry white — three sweet reds.

With her generous amount of free-time Nadya’s spent most of the day thinking about similarly shocking events in her life; something that might have any possible weight like this. There was finding out she was adopted — pretty earth-shattering but it didn’t change her relationship with her mom. Then there was walking in on her boyfriend of two years with a girl she remembered once partnering up with in their biology 101 — that, too made it feel like her life was ending but she got over it.

Naturally she’s come to the conclusion that no; nothing will ever compare to nearly being torn to pieces by a creature from a Stephen King novel one minute and being rescued by her boss the next. And then finding out that said boss was actually a vampire.

“Are you just gonna lean against the wall all night?”

Adrian masks his surprise well when Nadya looks up his way. She tucks her legs underneath herself on the sofa and gestures to the empty cushion beside her with a nod.

“You — really, you’re sure?”

Sometimes he’s so stupid that it makes her head hurt. Was that a thing; did you become immortal at the sacrifice of your common sense? It would fit a lot of pieces into the proverbial puzzle.

“You wouldn’t have come up here if you didn’t hope I’d wanna talk about it, so…” Another gesture. This time Adrian sits. He’s stiff, postured. Nadya tries to remember if he was always like that or if he feels like he no longer has to pretend.

There’s nothing but tense silence and the repeated drumming of Adrian’s fingertips on his pants. Then he stands — fast, but not inhumanly so, still makes her jump — and makes his way to the kitchenette while muttering to himself.

“We should get you some water. That much alcohol — you shouldn’t be intoxicated for a conversation like this. Have you eaten anything else? You need something in your stomach. Toast, maybe…”

When it’s apparent he’s not returning Nadya joins him. Takes a few hesitant steps on jelly-filled legs and curls her toes at the cold tile beyond the rug but eventually makes her way to the bartop seats where he pulls open a linen curtain to reveal themselves to one another.

He doesn’t miss the hurt in her eyes. She doesn’t miss the regret in his. It’s one of those moments film critics would call ‘sexually charged’ but in reality is anything but.

“‘M not drunk,” she says; not unlike every person unaccustomed to copious drinking ever, “see?”

Adrian stops with two slices of bread between his fingers. “What am I supposed to be ‘seeing,’ exactly?”

Her nose scrunches up in a small frown. “I’m balancing on one foot.”

“Sure you are.” He makes sure she is steadfastly attached to her stool and resumes his goal.

Yes, her head is swimming in a sweet-red sea, but who wouldn’t need something to take the edge off when faced with learning the reality you thought you knew wasn’t actually reality, but a fake reality, and a real reality existed and was much, much worse?

“Don’t think of it so much as a fake reality,” Adrian replies, “as… a curtain in the world. And we keep the bad things behind the curtain as best we can.”

Did she say that out loud?

A plate of dry toast cut in triangle-halves slides in front of her. “Yes, you did.”

He waits until she’s midway through the second slice to speak again.

“This isn’t how I wanted you to find out Nadya — please believe that. I… if I had my way you wouldn’t have found out at all. I went to great lengths to keep you very far from anything so much as tangentially associated with… my other work.”

The toast scratches her throat as Nadya swallows.

“You wanted to keep me in the dark.”

“Yes; for your own safety.”

“An’… And last night? Wasn’t so safe then, was I?”

There’s accusation in the slur of her words and it makes Adrian recoil. She wants to apologize out of habit and forces more toast into her mouth to avoid it.

Finally, Adrian nods. “You’re not wrong.”

There are so many questions — too many, it feels like — and not enough time for Adrian to answer them all. Like she’ll grow old, wither, and die before everything makes sense. Why couldn’t it ever be as easy as it was in the movies? Why was this such an impossible thing to accept?

When Nadya finishes her toast Adrian takes the plate and gives it a rinse in the sink; leaves it on a drying rack overhead. It’s the most domesticity she’s ever seen out of him.

“D’you live here?”

He doesn’t break stride to answer — coaxes Nadya out of her stool, waits until she can stand without swaying in a nonexistent breeze, and brings her back to sit in the main room. “No, well — it’s mine but I only use it if I leave work too late. Or if there’s a guest in need of it.”

“Too la—oh.” Nadya answers her own question without help. Curls back up on ‘her’ side of the couch and brings a rough-hewn decorative pillow to her chest. “The sun.”

When the air around them has grown more liquid, when their usual familiarity permeates the space despite Nadya’s attempts to keep that well and tight to her chest, Adrian turns slightly towards her. Gives her his full attention and stops pretending otherwise. His arm thrown over the back of the couch, one leg propped on his knee; they could be talking about the weather for how relaxed he is. It frustrates Nadya to no end.

“If you don’t have a place to start…”

“I don’t.”

“Okay,” he nods resolutely, “then I’ll go. My name is Adrian Raines. I was born in 1753. I’ve been a vampire for over two hundred years.”

It doesn’t make everything okay. Everything is very not okay. But hearing his confession doesn’t hurt. Actually, Nadya finds herself relaxing slightly. He’s brushing the lies aside.

“I’m a member of what we call the Council; six vampires — leaders in our fields, I guess you could say — that make and enforce the rules of our kind here in New York. Each Council member leads a clan, and in that clan there are 29 vampires underneath us by law. That way we, ahem, we can keep the city in control.”

Adrian adjusts his tie; fiddles with the knot before tugging it over his head in frustration. It falls on the floor at the foot of the couch. “It’s been this way for decades — New York under our thumb, I mean. It was necessary when America was expanding at a rate we almost couldn’t keep up with. And it’s been a good solution, until… recently.”

His voice falls flat. Every new fact spins in Nadya’s head like a bad carnival ride; throwing up a dozen questions and a dozen more each time he opens his mouth. But since she can’t decide on one she just listens.

“At the beginning of this year there were more reported Ferals wandering the city limits than the past decade as a whole.”

“Ferals?” Nadya doesn’t recognize her own voice, how it pitches with fear. New York was full of feral things; feral cats, feral rats, feral pigeons probably. But feral vampires weren’t so easily brushed aside.

“Yes, that’s what attacked you in the park.” Adrian answers her unspoken question. “Ferals are vampires without a Clan — without… well, here,” he starts unbuttoning his shirt and the suddenness makes Nadya shy away; until he shoulders off the fabric. He watches her carefully as she takes in what must have once been an angry, violently red scar but now only existed in the thinnest silver skin — a brand of sorts she’d never noticed before (well why would she, he’s usually very clothed and rightly so), “this keeps my consciousness, everything that makes me me, to my body. It keeps me from going —”

“Feral.”

“Yes.”

Like an out-of-body experience Nadya watches her hands take Adrian’s offered arm and cradle it gently. The scarred skin has puckered over time, only the barest ridges to outline it.

His hands are as cold as they’ve always been — but it feels as though she’s noticing it for the first time. There’s a pulse, faint possibly because she has no idea where to check for one, and in the quiet she can hear his breathing.

She looks up with a sudden revelation. “That’s why you started driving me to and from work, isn’t it?”

“Can you blame me for wanting to keep you safe?”

“You can’t keep the whole city safe.”

“No, but I’m trying my best.”

The throw pillow is a comfort as she resumes cradling it against her. It’s a lot to take in. If she hadn’t seen what she had… felt the hot, rotten breath dripping saliva on her cheek… she may not have believed him otherwise.

“So all these, uh, these Ferals, they mean people are being Turned and not… claimed?”

“In a way. What they mean is someone is knowingly breaking the pact by which the Council was founded and that can’t stand. Not everyone cares about the danger to the citizens the Ferals pose; some only care about the exposure risk and what that might mean for our lifestyle here.”

“But you care.”

“I do. Kamilah does too, in her own way.”

Kamilah. Now Nadya has no trouble imagining that woman as a vampire. Well — she is one. And she looks it, too. No one could be so… inhumanly beautiful.

Adrian’s shoulders move in a light laugh; it startles Nadya out of her thoughts. “What? What’re you laughing at?”

“I just wish she was here to see your face.”

“E-Excuse me?”

“She asked why I hired you at the Gallery. She’d said something to the effect of,” and never again would Nadya like to hear his impression of his fellow vampire, if only because it was as embarrassing for them both as it was terribly inaccurate, “‘a decent assistant requires a personality, which that lady lacks.’”

She didn’t expect to feel flustered any time soon and gapes like a fish for something to say, to defend herself as though this wasn’t all from weeks ago.

“I — well — she just —”

“Hey, I defended you.”

She huffs. “You’d better have.”

“I insisted it was because you were taken by her. But Kamilah… she’s worldly in every way but towards herself.”

Nadya’s glare doesn’t stifle his amusement in the slightest and, overcome with a sudden need to flee but knowing she’d fall on her face if she tried, she reaches over and punches his arm without remorse. He doesn’t even pretend to flinch.

“Perhaps try and be a little less transparent next time?”

Next time implies so many things; most of them Nadya doesn’t know if she is comfortable with just yet. But they had proven just then, together, that they could still have the same camaraderie as before. If anything she now had the opportunity to load herself with an arsenal of garlic-related puns. There is a visible ease in Adrian’s demeanor, too. They’d relaxed around each other and didn’t even notice.

Though her head is no less cloudy, Nadya puffs up her chest and brushes the mop of her hair away from her eyes. Looks Adrian right in the face and clears her throat as though she’s preparing to speak in front of hundreds instead of a lone man.

“So…” before she can even begin to falter Adrian offers a nod of encouragement and somehow it works; makes her try again, “So… I have a question. Or two. Maybe more.”

They talk until the sun starts to lighten the horizon. Until Nadya’s speech starts to sound a little more sober and then slurs again from exhaustion. Until she can’t keep her eyes open and the last thing she recalls is exactly how many currently sitting government officials are secretly vampires; which is apparently a number that should (and does) alarm her.

The digital clock on the bedside reads 18:44 when she drags herself back to consciousness. Still light-headed, she trades several frustrated words with the ticking seconds before she turns back over for another snooze. Just fifteen minutes, she buries her face into the down pillows — ten times better than any hotel she’d afforded in her lifetime, I’ll get up at the hour.

And when she doesn’t; when she wakes to the elevator’s bell and can see moonlight dripping through thick nighttime clouds, Nadya’s pretty sure — ninety-five, maybe ninety-eight percent — she’s dying.

“If I’m right in assuming you’ve never been to a wine tasting, I’ll have to get you to schedule one for us both. Wine that old needs to be savored — not put down like moonshine.”

Nadya can hear the smirk in Adrian’s telling-off; she’s never wanted to kill a man so much before.

“Lower… your voice…” she hisses, some eldritch horror balled up under a ratty mess of hair and the thudding of her college drum line on the squishy part of her brain, “or I’ll go Buffy on you.”

“Good to know you’re back to yourself. You should call your roommate.”

It’s a Herculean effort to turn around and face Adrian where he sits on the edge of the bed. But her reward of aspirin and a large bottle of water is totally worth it.

“I would,” she gasps after chugging the entire bottle, “if you’d give me back my phone. ‘M not gonna call the press about your big fangy secret.”

Confusion flits over Adrian’s face but he quickly understands. Nadya watches him reach over and open a drawer on the bedside table. There was absolutely no way that drawer had been there previously, because he pulls out her phone in a duh sort of way that leaves her feeling some kind of dumb. No, she’s convinced, he must’ve installed it during my coma.

Sure enough there are over one hundred texts from Lily all with the same effective aura of panic. Then she messages being contacted by Adrian and while the frequency of the panic subsides there’s a spike in offers of stalking, rescue missions, and a rather serious offer to call the police.

Rich people think they can get away with anything, well, not on my watch. She can hear it now.

[TEXT]: hey lil sorry about everything & 4 not getting back 2 u [TEXT]: I’m ok was mugged in the park by pizza & phone buttdialed adrian

Lily reads the messages instantly. The frowning emotion-icons are vehemently unamused.

[TEXT]: u dont expect me 2 believe that >:( [TEXT]: r u ok??? [TEXT]: ready 2 fial 911 [TEXT]: dial*

Before she can even think up a response the screen shifts and Lily’s ringing. The shrill ringtone is enough to make her head split back open and Nadya groans; hits the “REJECT” button.

[TEXT]: not now, big headache

[TEXT]: nadya I’m freaking out

After she runs a hand over her face an idea comes to mind. “C’mere,” she gestures to Adrian who awkwardly shifts forward on the bed. The angle is terrible and it would never see the light of her social media but the picture she takes of the pair of them should be enough to ease some of Lily’s tension.

[TEXT]: pic.jpg [TEXT]: c? I’m fine

She’s near ready to ask Adrian what will happen if the police arrive when Lily responds.

[TEXT]: get home asap. will borrow paper 4 new job [TEXT]: plz b safe [TEXT]: <3

Nadya sends a heart back and tosses her phone somewhere to be lost in the vast sea of king-sized blankets and coverlets. Adrian’s hand on her shoulder somehow feels like both a comfort and a burden.

“Are you alright?”

Is she?

“Yes,” a beat, “and no.”

To his credit, he acts like it’s an acceptable answer. “It can be a lot to take in. And usually… we don’t wait this long before debriefing. But there was a meeting and then you were intoxicated. So —”

All she has to do is hold up a finger. They’ve known each other long enough now that if it takes anything more then the problem at hand is much larger than Adrian’s making it out to be. She doesn’t even ask.

“Right, debriefing…” Says the word like it’s gone sour on his tongue. “It’s — well — you’re not the first person to stumble across this secret.”

“Stumble? I’m pretty sure I did a little more than stumble. And it wasn’t even my fault.”

“True. But regardless — we’d have been outed centuries ago if we didn’t have measures in place. Measures to ensure we can stay in the dark.”

He’s strangely clinical as he says it. Like debriefing is some operation that everyone has to go through at some point in their lives. Maybe they do and she doesn’t even realize.

“Why do I feel like you’re using a fancy word for making me forget about all this?”

He smiles. “Because I am, and you’re incredibly astute.”

“Why bring it up now? Why not bring it up when I was losing my… well, my sanity and sobriety?”

Adrian shrugs. “As I said; I didn’t want to risk it when you weren’t sober. When you couldn’t…”

For a man who always has something to say he’s hesitating an awful lot. More than Nadya can stand. “Couldn’t what, Adrian?”

He opens his hand palm-upwards — an offering. To no one’s surprise she takes it. Immediately he begins to leech her warmth, but at the moment she doesn’t mind sharing.

“I wanted to be certain you could consent to it. Most who go through what you did — that kind of trauma; the violent entry into our world — they want to forget. They want to go back behind the curtain and return to a more peaceful life.”

“And a more ignorant one. And arguably more dangerous.”

“You don’t need to convince me,” he chuckles, “you and I agree on that front. And because of that, especially, I wanted to make sure you got the whole story before making your choice.”

Before deciding not to go through with it. He doesn’t have to say it. The words linger between them, unspoken and strangely not unlike a plea. Nadya can feel it in the way Adrian squeezes her hand. He wants her to remember. That’s why he took his time — eased her into everything — gave her space and whatever he thought she needed.

To his credit Adrian wasn’t wrong. All the time alone (paired with the wine, never forget the wine) was helpful. As his assistant it was Nadya’s job to make sure she knew some of the more quirky things about her boss, but along the way he’d picked up a few things about her too.

“What happens if I do it; get debriefed?”

He sighs heavily. “You’ll forget everything I’ve told you, and your attack. Likely Lester would set up a cover about the attack — if we really needed we could stage a criminal assailant.”

“That’s…”

“Involved? Sometimes it’s necessary.”

“Would I forget I ever knew you at all?” Not only does the sheer potential of the power shock her, but it doesn’t sit right in Nadya’s gut.

“No, the debriefing doesn’t go that far back. But the best scenario would be your termination, a small severance pay, and help until you found a new job. This would just be another career that didn’t pan out and you’d go about your life better for it.”

“Who are you to decide what’s better?” she asks; can’t help but get slightly defensive over choices being made for her, and not with her.

Adrian doesn’t answer, instead just gives her a nod. I hear you, it says, I agree.

“And since you’re going to ask… if you choose not to be debriefed, well, things will change, inevitably. You’ll have to be formally allied with my clan, Clan Raines, in the presence of two other Council members at least. Your work won’t change much — you already work nights with me. I’d probably take over your health care costs more than the company basics. Just in case, you understand.”

It brings the first genuine laugh from Nadya in days.

“Oh, I’d expect it. Would you, uhm, you know…” While Adrian tries to finish her thought, Nadya subconsciously scratches her neck.

“Feed from you?” He shakes his head vehemently. “While one of the Council pacts is to only feed on the willing, it wouldn’t be a—a condition. I’m not hurting for donors.”

“Oh, good. Talk about inappropriate workplace activities.”

“Indeed.”

The silence is hesitant; filled with uncertainties. There were so many new directions opening up in front of her but Nadya could see it all boiling down to one choice. One of two.

Adrian doesn’t get the chance to ask; his mouth closes audibly at her held up finger.

“I think you already know my answer.”

Outside the clouds part to reveal the soft glow of the moon. Adrian smiles.

#choices #bloodbound #adrian raines #kamilah x mc #lily spencer #mc: nadya al jamil #; my fics #oblv: bound by destiny #oblv: new chapter

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btsjfans · 5 years

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Class Clown 12 (Finale)

Summary: The class clown Taehyung has a lot more going on than anybody realizes, especially you, the class valedictorian.

Taehyung x Reader, fluff/angst

part 11

masterlist

A/n: I know this isn’t one of my more popular fics but this one kinda means a lot to me, especially now. It was my first one, and I started it and kinda started putting stuff in throughout that coincided with my life, and I’ve closed that chapter of my life IRL so I think it’s important I close it here too. I’m kinda sad to end this but I’m excited to write new stuff :)

For a moment neither of you speak. You wait for him to start, he did call after all.

“Things ended...badly for us. And I know neither of us wanted that..” He waits for you to speak, but you can’t find the courage to. “I spent what I would consider my most valuable years with you. You really defined what high school turned me into, and you really...you taught me what love is. What love means...” his voice trails off, getting gravelly. “And I don’t want to forget what it means..”

You pull the phone away from your face, taking in a shaky breath. You really don’t know what to say. You’d imagined this phone call a thousand times before, but not now, not when you’d finally started to fall for someone new, not when you’d finally started to move on. You and Taehyung broke up because you had problems. You two had gotten together in high school, before you new what life had to hold for you. You two had even started to grow in different directions, as much as you didn’t want to admit it. Things that used to charm you began to bore you, even annoy you at times. His jealousy, which was once cute in high school turned to distrust in college. You two weren’t communicating as well as you used to, and it caused a lot of strife over nothing. Breaking up sucked but...you were kind of okay with it now.

“So what do you want now?” Your voice is a whisper as thoughts sporadically race through your mind.

“Y/n I want you back...I need you back! I promised myself years ago I would never let go, that I would never give up on us, because I love you. I am so overwhelmingly in love with you. I adore you, I always will. You make me so happy and Y/n it kills me to not be with you anymore. Please take me back.” His voice shakes as he finishes, obviously holding back tears.

You want to say yes. You want to take him back and let everything be sunshine and rainbows again but you know that won’t last. You know that as much as you two will relish in the satisfaction of being together in a relationship, your problems will once again arise. No relationship is perfect. You know that. But these problems...they’d followed you two for a long time. And you didn’t see them going away anytime soon.

“Taehyung we can’t. You know we can’t.” Your voice is resolute, but tears still swim in your eyes. “We were good together. We made each other happy..and you were my first love. But Tae that’s the thing...we were each other’s first loves. First. And the time we spent together was good but those days are gone ya know? We aren’t the same people anymore. I’m not the girl you fell for anymore, and you aren’t the guy I once new. And that’s..that’s okay. Breakups hurt. Letting go hurts. But you won’t grow or go anywhere by holding onto the past. It’s time to let go Taehyung.” Tears fall down your cheeks as you say it. You know you’re right, and it needs to be said, but that doesn’t stop the way your heart wrenches as you speak. The line is silent. “You there?”

“Yeah. Um you’re right. Sorry for calling and bothering you I-”

“Don’t be sorry. Goodbye Taehyung.” You feel bad but hearing him any longer just hurts, and you want this call to end desperately.

“Goodbye Y/n.” His voice is quiet before the line cuts dead.

Your phone drops from your hand with a soft thump and you let out a quiet wail. Flopping back onto your couch you sob. You didn’t want to be with Taehyung, you didn’t have feelings for him, but you loved him. You didn’t want to have to let go, you wanted everything to be easy and work and never have this happen. You wonder what would have happened if you stayed together. You worry you made a mistake. You just think this royally sucks.

Taehyung

I shakily hit “end call” before shutting my phone off. Leaning my head against the window of my room I watch the city lights flicker outside. Maybe she’s right. I’ve never really coped well with things. I usually just kinda shoved whatever was happening deep inside and laughed it off. I’ve never really “let go” before. I guess now is as good as time as any to start trying though.

You

Weeks had passed since your phone call with Taehyung, but you couldn’t help thinking about that call every night. What if you had gotten back together? Did you make a mistake? Was it too late to call back? You shook those thoughts from your head because you knew that running in circles would get you no where. At some point or another you’d just blocked his number and any other form of contact with him because having that link to him just made it too tempting. So for the time being, you liked to pretend he never existed.

3 Years Later

“So what’s next, grad school?” Xavier sighed and pulled you against his side. The two of you were still in your silk graduation robes from the ceremony earlier. While all your friends had gone home with their families to celebrate, or get ready for parties later, the two of you headed to the duck pond to chill and decompress.

“I guess so. That and start some crappy entry level job for experience. And you’ve got a lot more time huh, med school’s gonna own you for like the next decade!” You laugh a little, feeling his body hum as he chuckles. Looking up at him you feel your heart flutter. He really hadn’t changed too much. He’d just gone from a charming boy to a charming man. You don’t know how you were so lucky to find someone like him, especially after all that drama freshman year. You didn’t like to think about freshman year, just because of that. You hadn’t spoken to or seen Taehyung since then. Word on the street was he was heading down to Los Angeles for some fancy internship, but you weren’t sure, and didn’t really care either.

“Yeah, it’s gonna own both of us,” He winks down at you.

“Why me?” You give him a puzzled look.

“Because if you marry me we both gotta deal with it,” His voice gets soft.

“Well yeah...” Your voice is barely audible as you watch him get down on one knee and produce a small velvet box.

“And I don’t wanna that alone...and whatever crappy entry level job you won’t have to face that alone...so what do ya say?” He cracks a big grin, “Marry me?”

Tears fill your eyes and you laugh, leaping into his arms and embracing him. “Yes!”

Taehyung

I watch as the city disappears beneath the clouds. Sighing, I lean back in my seat and hit shuffle on my music. I was heading to L.A. because I got signed by a record label. I wasn’t going to major in music or anything anyway but after freshman year I kinda got into it, and this scout heard my singing at some big Yale thing and one thing led to another, and now I’m on the same label as Justin Bieber!

After Y/n I really thought my life was over, but I guess this is proof there is life after your ex. Sounds kinda obvious but hey, shit’s tough when you lose your first love.

Enough of that, I haven’t even thought about her in years, I don’t know why that came up. Whatever the reason, it was time to leave that behind. Here I am, on the steps of fame and fortune. And to think, I just started as some broke class clown.

#bts #bts v #bts taehyung #bts kim taehyung #taehyung #kim taehyung #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts fanfction #bts scene #bts series #bts scenarios #bts rm #bts jhope #bts suga #bts jin #bts jimin #bts jungkook

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destinyquest · 4 years

Text

Trouble at the Farm: Part 3

Evening, Somewhere in the forests of the EDZ Donnie had taken lead on scouting a path through the woods. Although she had only just been Risen, she felt naturally inclined to stalk through the unfamiliar territory. It also gave her a moment to herself, and a chance to emotionally cope with the incredible and terrifying day she had just had. It seemed like just yesterday she was tending to her farm, and now she was living in some sort of nightmare. As she deftly maneuvered the forest with a low profile, she would occasionally catch glimpses of the Exo Hunter and Awoken Warlock trailing her. In spite of his smug and charismatic personality, she couldn't bring herself to trust the robot. Last she remembered, robots were best at delivering packages and making coffee; she couldn't wrap her mind around the complex consciousness that defines an Exo. Even Nil wouldn't be able to comprehend his existence, if asked. The first alien Donnie met tried to kill her, and one of them actually did. The second alien species she met, this one significantly more human in appearance, saved her life. Although he has his quirks, she felt that he was at least honest. Zulgren spoke with a matter-of-fact tone of voice that, from most men, would be grating to Donnie. Something about his personality convinced her and convinced most people who met Zulgren that he knew even more than he was saying. His tone didn't come from a place of over-confidence, rather from a staggering wealth of knowledge. Most Guardians know this personality trait of void Warlocks far too well, not all are able to stomach it. After the sun set, Donnie picked a well fortified and hidden campsite. Even though she had been extremely active all day, she realized she wasn’t feeling hungry at all. The fireteam takes shelter in the cover of an ancient oak tree, and Nil begins to pick up firewood. He seems intent on winning the trust and approval of his new fireteam and forms an awkward fire pit out of some relatively damp wood he'd found lying about. He then attempts to set a flame by rolling a twig between his hands, spinning it as it bores into another piece of wood. Donnie has been watching as Nil attempts in vain to get a fire going. "Do you need a hand there? I remember, there used to be this show called Survivor and they had to start a lot of fires- I think that method you're using isn't gonna work too well." Nil grumbles and looks at his sad pile of wood. Still crouched over the fire pit, hiding his shame, he focuses his Light into Solar energy and throws a flaming knife into the heart of his kindling. The fire pit erupts into flame as Nil jumps to his feet in a celebratory pose. "First try", he says, smugly. The team make themselves comfortable and begin to settle in for the night. Nil performs a light-hearted dance to entertain his fireteam, claiming it is a "dance of his people." Donnie recognizes it as "The Robot" dance. "Some might say this dance is offensive to robot-folk, but sometimes you just gotta please the people", Nil says feigning a noble attitude. Zulgren is not watching the performance, instead he is staring deep into the sky. His eyes are not focused on the stars, but on a point beyond the glittery veil draped over the sky. He feels a gentle breeze pulling him in this direction, to a place he cannot see, to a location farther than he can comprehend. He is the first to fall into a deep slumber, levitating slightly off the ground. Donnie takes first watch as Nil also starts to doze off. She watches as Nil flinches slightly in his sleep, his lights dimming, blinking suddenly, then dimming again. She hears distant gunfights and the constant turbulent roar of the Traveler's Shard in the distant mountains. Eventually Zulgren relieves her of her duty and she manages to get some sleep. Morning comes, and Zulgren approaches a still groggy Donnie to ask her something that has been on his mind since they'd met. "Your Light, do you know how to wield it?" "I'm sorry, my what?" "I... I recognize the Light affinity you have. When you were Risen... I think you also share a connection with the Void." "The void?" Donnie asks. She rubs her eyes as she realizes that she has still not awoken from this nightmare, and wonders if it could get any more bizarre. "Reach out your hand, Donnie. Do you feel the energy within the spaces of the atoms? Do you feel the nothingness that binds everything together?" Donnie tentatively holds out her hand, and starts to lightly wave it around. In spite of her skepticism, she does feel something: a subtle yet thick fog of magnetic energy. "Close your fist, and collapse that energy into the space within your palm", directs Zulgren. Donnie chuckles lightly, and shakes her head. Zulgren stares intently at her, with unnerving stable eye contact. Donnie realizes he is not joking, and closes her fist and begins to concentrate. A moment passes, and Zulgren senses that Donnie's faith was wavering. Her fist still clenched, she mutters, "Nothings happening..." "The Void is not just the absence of light, but also the dark. It is not the vacuum of space, it is the space without the vacuum. There is infinite distance between every atom in the air, grasp it!" Zulgren suddenly sounds more intense. Donnie lets out a soft gasp as she feels something within her fingers. Slowly, she unfolds her hand and observes a violet orb. Staring into it, she sees the midnight sky. Zulgren gives something that could resemble a smile, and says to himself, "A Nightstalker, as I thought." Donnie anxiously asks, "Uh... hey... what is that? What's in my hand? What did I do!?" "That is a void smoke bomb. Throw it." Zulgren calmly instructs her. Donnie delicately tosses the orb a few feet in front of them. As the orb touches the ground, it bursts into an impossibly opaque dark cloud. "Whoa." Donnie is dumbfounded, "I didn't know I could do that." "Now you know. Let's move." Zulgren abruptly starts walking. Dinklebot indicates (with his usual dull tone of voice) that the Whispering Falls Lost Sector is only a short walk from their campsite. They spend a brief moment burying evidence of their campsite and hasten their pace towards their objective.

Mid-Day, Whispering Falls Lost Sector The fireteam comes across a babbling brook and begin to follow it upstream. The brook grows in volume until it is a sizable river, nearly 10 feet across. By mid-day, they reach a large pool being fed by a roaring waterfall tumbling over a wide and rocky cliff-face. Donnie approaches the cliff face to inspect it. With a brief cursory glance, she turns to her companions and curtly states, "There's loot behind that waterfall." "How do you know?" asks Zulgren innocently. "Well, in video games there's always loot behind the waterfall." "Video games?" Nil asks, interested. "Oh, y'all don't...?" Alexa, Donnie's ghost, pops out excitedly, "Oh I heard about those! Used to be a source of entertainment for humans during the Golden Age. Humans used to have so much free time when they weren't fighting for their lives." Donnie frowns, as realization dawns that she will never be able to play the Dragon Age series again. She puts this upsetting thought aside and turns to properly investigate the waterfall. Peeking as close as she dared to the frothing water, she is able to confirm that there is some sort of cave entrance behind the waterfall. "See, told you." Donnie claps her hands and readies herself to climb. Taking a slight running start, she starts to grasp at the stone but is unable to grasp the slick rock and falls flat on her back. "Ouch." Donnie rubs her lower back as she stands back up, "Hey Zulgren, do you mind boosting me?" Nil has been staring nervously at the pool since they arrived at the falls, calculating it's depth and relative position to the hidden cave entrance. "Hey, uh... guys? I can't swim" admits the Exo. "What? What do you mean you can't-" Donnie starts to ask, but Nil simply points at his face with an exasperated expression. "Heavy metal doesn't float well, and, well... Yeah I can't swim. I might be able to climb in there, but if I fall then one of you better be ready to fish me out." Donnie and Zulgren ponder this unexpected setback. While they discuss alternative ways to enter the cave, Donnie notices a poorly maintained stone path leading away from the pond into the woods. "Ok, if Zulgren and I can hop in and take a peek, maybe we'll be able to help you climb in too. If that doesn't work, we might be able to explore that path and see if we find something else to help us out." The fireteam agrees on this plan of attack, and Zulgren begins to help lift Donnie into the cave. Donnie manages to crawl in, and turns around to give Zulgren a hand. The two push through the intense volume of water hammering down on them until they are both fully inside the cave. Between gasps for air, Zulgren hears a strange noise from within the cave. Unmistakable beeps and clicks: hexinary. Although he cannot understand what they are saying, he is certain there are some Fallen constructs within this cave. As he gets to his feet and his eyes adjust to the darkness, he sees the walls are lined with surveillance technology. He gestures to Donnie to be quiet, and turns his attention to a blinking Fallen control panel attached to an installment in the cave wall. Dinklebot pops out from behind him and begins to assist him in hacking the control panel to learn more about the cave and it's invisible inhabitants, but before they are able to learn anything valuable the control panel shuts off. Echoing through the cave, Zulgren hears the hexinary chatter amplify. Although the cave path disappears into darkness ahead of him, he makes out the glow of a floating construct approaching him and Donnie. The two Guardians start to inch back towards the mouth of the cave, as the floating construct enters within visible range. It is a shank, but instead of a repeater blaster assembled to it's underside, this one has a small satellite dish attached to it's head. Zulgren turns to Donnie and says one word, barely audible: "Jump." Nil is staring at the pool of water, about to summon his ghost to check on his companions, when two Guardians come bursting through the waterfall and splashing into the water below. Donnie and Zulgren swim ashore and breathlessly explain to Nil what they saw. Then, the three look to the waterfall, expecting Fallen to come bursting through. Instead, all they hear is the roar of the waterfall. "Seems the sound of the waterfall hid our escape" Zulgren notes. "Ok, we need an easier way into that cave, so that Nil can join us. Let's see where this path leads" Donnie points at the stone path she noticed earlier. The fireteam follows the path only a few yards into the woods and come across a small log-wood shack. Scratch marks line the walls near the door, and the window is shattered inward. As Donnie and Zulgren inch cautiously towards the door, they hear a heavy thud followed by scrambling from within the structure. "Oof. I'm good." Nil had attempted to dodge into the house through the shattered window... and landed on his face. "Uh, oops. This doesn't look good" says Nil. Donnie and Zulgren rush in through the front door and see Nil standing over three human bodies. Their flesh is lacerated and seared with jagged lines. Judging by the odor, their bodies have been here for a few days. Donnie gags, while Zulgren and Nil begin to inspect the bodies and the interior of the cabin. The space is quite small, barely enough space for 3 humans to live comfortably, and only enough resources to support a meager lifestyle. Zulgren finds a small steel key attached to a belt on one of the bodies, and uses it to open a large metal tackle box at the foot of one of the beds. Zulgren and Nil meet Donnie outside, who is getting some fresh air and trying to clear her mind of the grotesque scene she had just witnessed. Zulgren holds up some climbing gear he had found, and some fishing line. The gear includes more than enough rope and carabiners to help the three of them scale the wall, so they head back towards the waterfall. "Quiet, when we enter... ok?" Zulgren sternly warns his fireteam. Donnie and Nil nod and the three quickly ascend into the cave with the help of the climbing gear. The sound of the waterfall is reverberating throughout the mouth of the cave, but Zulgren can make out the distinct sound of hexinary chatter ahead of him. He signals for the other two to follow behind him as he sneaks forward. As they venture deeper into the darkness, they come across two carved cavities in the wall. Past the dark cavities, they see the path forks abruptly. Zulgren leans to peek into one of the cavities and spots the Sentry Shank that had chased them out earlier. He starts to gesture to explain the situation to the other two when another Sentry Shank appears from one of the forks ahead of them. "Ok, go!" Zulgren commands as he charges into the cavity, hand raised. Nil jumps into action and summons a dagger of solar energy. Zulgren's hand glows with violet energy and blasts the shank in front of him into atoms. Nil charges towards the fork in the path, his hand at the ready. The shank turns, and tries to move out of the way but a blade of pure solar energy carves into it's circuitry. The smoldering shank crumbles to the floor. "BOOM, nailed it!" Nil celebrates. Electronic lights suddenly begin to glow behind Nil as three more shanks suddenly become aware of intruders. Donnie notices the lights are coming from one of the forks ahead of her, and dashes with her pitchfork leading her assault. She enters into a small room and finds herself face to face with three more shanks, except these ones have blasters. Nil and Zulgren also rush in to help, and they manage to quickly dispatch two of the shanks with minimal effort. The third, realizing it's predicament begins to raise an antenna. Before it can signal an alarm, it is abruptly impaled by a pitchfork. Donnie dislodges her pitchfork, and the three Guardians freeze. The sounds of combat echoed briefly against the narrow walls of the cave and then died. Silence fell, and they could again hear the distant thunder of the waterfall coming from the entrance. As they left the small room where some shanks had been hiding, they returned to the fork in the path and inched cautiously down the other path. After a few minutes of tense sneaking through the damp and claustrophobic space, they come across a sharp bend in the path. At the crease of the bend an armored corpse is resting on the ground, with a small heap of shattered metal by its side. Nil rushes to the body and gently lifts the torso, looks at his companions, and shakes his head. Alexa appears in front of Donnie and approaches the pile of crumbled metal. Her frame seems to weigh down heavily, and her light dims temporarily. "His ghost has been destroyed. He isn't coming back." whispers Alexa, her voice wavering. "I knew him well" mutters Nil. "Oh no, I'm so sorry Nillion", Donnie can't tell if he's being serious or not. The armor is lacerated with tendrils of energy, and the helmet is severely crumpled. A hand cannon lies shattered on the opposite side of his destroyed ghost. "I can scan his- what remains of- his ghost to see what did this." Donnie nods silently at Alexa, who begins to point a beam of light at the pile of metal. After a brief moment, Alexa begins to softly play back what data she can recover. They hear the sound of the waterfall roar within the recording, and then the sound of the ghost speaking. "Leon, I don't like the look of this. We should call this in." "It's going to be fine... Fallen don't usually send high ranking officers to distant outposts like this. Besides, I've been itching to put some Dregs in the dirt." The playback is just barely able to produce the sound of wet footsteps slowing to a halt. "Did you see that?" "What? I don't think there's anything there..." "I swear, I thought I saw-" Suddenly, the sound of electricity rips through the air. They hear Leon gasp in pain, followed by a few blasts from his hand cannon. "Come out and face me you coward! Fallen scum!" Then, they hear a deep voice growl in Eliksni. "What the- AGH!" There is more gunfire, and then the sound of metal ripping through metal. "Leon!" yells a distressed ghost. The recording ends. Donnie, Zulgren, and Nil all look at one another. "Where is it." Zulgren says suddenly. "That is what the Fallen said, in the recording." They stand and Zulgren gestures towards the darker end of the cave. Nil grabs the body and hauls it over his shoulder. "Wait, what are you doing?" asks Donnie "Well, I don't want to leave his body here... seems wrong." "Oh, I guess. We could also grab him on our way out..." "It'll be fine, lets go." Donnie shrugs and accompanies Zulgren in delving deeper into the cave. As they progress, the walls begin to widen. They come into a large open room, so great in size that the far wall is completely shrouded in darkness. The only thing they can see from the other end of the room are tiny blinking lights in red and blue. Zulgren recognizes this to be from Fallen technology, and due to the near dead silence, he figures these lights do not belong to shanks. Donnie and Zulgren creep slowly towards the far side of the room while Nil falls behind slightly, encumbered by the body on his shoulders. As the far wall comes into view, Donnie and Zulgren see two large Fallen barricades; the far wall is a slightly concave feature completely stuffed with stolen goods and technology. Donnie gestures to peek around one of the barricades, and Zulgren leans up against one side. Donnie begins to sneak around one end and sees a Dreg sitting cross legged on the cave floor, sharpening its blade. Beyond this Dreg, she sees another hiding behind the other barricade. She turns around to hand-gesture at Zulgren, who nods in response. They count down, then Donnie charges out at the Dreg closest to her as Zulgren does the same. They are both able to subdue the Dregs with ease, but something catches Donnie's eye. She looks at the wall with the stolen goods, and rubs her eyes. The light is bending in strange angles, making it hard to focus on some of the objects. "Hey, Zulgren... what is-" As she turns to point at the wall, she realizes that she no longer senses the aberration. "Whoa... something weird is going on here..." Suddenly, an arc of electric energy slashes at Donnie, who yells out in pain. Nil quickly places Leon's body on the ground and draws his hand cannon. Donnie growls as she wildly swings her pitchfork in the direction of the invisible attacker. Her weapon makes contact, and for a brief moment she is able to perceive the outline of a formidable Fallen creature. Unlike the Fallen with two arms she'd faced previously, this one had four extremely large arms. Just as soon as she caught a glimpse of this creature, it disappeared. "It's a Marauder!" yells Zulgren. Nil focuses his vision in the direction of his teammates as he approaches them. He senses some unnatural light diffraction and quickly fires his hand cannon in its direction. His bullet blasts into the cave wall. Zulgren reaches out his hand in the same direction that Nil fired, and blasts as much void energy as he can muster. The violet energy from his hands explodes outward and encompasses a large Fallen creature. The Marauder stumbles backwards into a corner, its cloaking disabled from the immense damage it suddenly took. This Fallen is significantly larger than the Dregs lying at their feet, and lets out an aggressive shout at Zulgren. Nil and Donnie charge up to flank the Marauder and box them into the corner. Just as Donnie is about to lunge with her pitchfork, the Marauder disappears from view. Something large shoves between Donnie and Zulgren in the direction of the middle of the room. "Crap! Spread out!" commands Donnie. She backs away from the corner and stabs her pitchfork in the direction the Marauder dashed, but her weapon is unable to connect. Zulgren runs in the same direction and thrusts out his hand, also unable to find their assailant. Nil dashes in another direction, wildly throwing a punch at the air. Nil growls in frustration, and focuses as hard as he can in the dim light. He hears electricity crackle directly behind his neck, but is unable to react in time. A blade charged with intense arc energy tears down his back, dropping the Hunter to a kneel. Nil yells in agony as he feels the ripping pain nearly bring him to lose consciousness. "No!!" Zulgren quickly raises his pulse rifle, but is unable to hit any of his shots. Nil raises his eyes to meet Zulgrens', and though his body is still writhing from the savage attack he just took, he manages a wink. As rapid as the wink he gave Zulgren, Nillion-7 whips around while drawing his hand cannon. He falls onto his back onto the cave floor, aiming his weapon at a point 8 feet above him; he fires. The bullet penetrates under the Marauders chin with such force the creature is lifted into the air. The large Fallen creature crumples to the floor, uncloaked and dead. Nil sighs and rests his head on the rocky floor. "Nailed it." The cave is silent again, and being unable to see any other avenues for exploration, the fireteam decides to unhurriedly loot the various Fallen salvage. Donnie finds a small concrete token with a sigil inscribed on it, and a blank dog tag. Nil finds an expired ramen coupon and a brass-colored coin-sized tool. Pressing it emits a small burst of flame; he pockets it quickly. Zulgren uncovers a small marble made of an impossibly dark material, it is oddly warm to the touch. As he lifts it to inspect it closer, Donnie asks, "Whatcha got there? Find anything interesting" Zulgren quickly palms the marble, and grabs the first item at his feet. "Nothing. Just found a..." he looks at the object in his hands. It is an engram-shaped stress ball. He squeezes it. "A stress ball." Donnie nods slowly, "Ok." She sits down against the cave wall, and rests for a moment. As she watches her new companions sift through the wreckage of their conquest and feels the fatigue of combat catch up with her, she realizes this waking nightmare was not one she was going to wake up from. This was the world she lived in now, one devoid of sheep and goats and relaxed iced tea on the porch. One where a strange little robot brought her back to life twice in the same day, and where some aliens want to kill her while others want to help her. Zulgren mulls over the events of the day, absentmindedly squishing a stress ball in one palm while rolling the dark marble in the other. He could feel a mystery clawing at the back of his mind, something was not as it seemed with this mysterious new Fallen House. Although he was deep within a cave, his eyes locked onto a point far beyond the walls. He knew it was foolish to hope that he could find guidance in such a distant figure, but he wondered what she would make of all this, whether she would have figured it all out by now. Nil plays with his newfound Cabal lighter, having almost forgotten his near-mortal wounds.

#destiny2 #dnd #dnd shenanigans #dungeons and dragons #destiny #science-fiction #fantasy

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moistwithgender · 5 years

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Monthly Media Roundup (May 2019)

The march of time inexorably proceeds beyond my grasp and so I must write another post. I’ve been a bit burned out, just focusing on one diversion (it was Zelda, you know it was Zelda), but after finishing it I recovered enough energy to get a few more things done in the last half of the month. I didn’t watch any anime or read any manga in May, though I did read some 70s Marvel, which I liveblog in my “curry reads comics” tag. Last time I did an actual capital-P Post about my Marvel reading was a year ago after marathoning a full(ish) decade. If people are interested in more of that I could work at making posts for each year of issues I read, recapping the developments and my thoughts on them (which will become more relevant as Events become more common, I imagine). I’ve just got a few games to talk about this month, but I imagine I have a lot to say about at least one of them.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch): 2 years ago I did something I extremely rarely do: stood in line at a Best Buy at midnight for the release of the Switch so that I could buy it with BotW. BotW was also out on Wii U, which I had, but the promotional material for BotW had struck such a chord in me that it justified making the jump for the new console (this would eventually become troublesome when the first model of joycons failed, but, well). I got home, put some ten odd hours into it, and then put it down for two years. I’ve always had a problem where, struck with the intuition that I will end up forming a deep relationship with a work, I will put it off for years. I put off Persona 3 for five years after buying it at launch, and it eventually became the most personal game experience I would have, even seven years onward. I think the two factors that pushed me to finally play through BotW was wanting to watch a friend stream it (but also not wanting it spoiled for me), and needing a distraction for when I was taking care of my cat.

It’s been about two months now since he passed away, and I finally finished the game at 215+ hours about half a month ago. So, I was playing this game as a coping method while preparing for loss, and in dealing with loss. It’s appropriate that the game is effectively both a fantasy about reclaiming at least part of what you have lost, and a colossal exercise in coping. The game is as much about getting distracted from your responsibilities and fucking off to snowboard in the mountains as it is about being aware of the world around you. The Zelda games have frequently used themes of Shintoism to portray harmony in nature and in civilization. I’m currently replaying Ocarina of Time and the cosmogony myth (is it a myth if a talking tree explains it to you?) specifically words the goddesses as “[giving] the spirit of law to the world” and “[producing] all life forms who would uphold the law.” When I was younger (see: early 20s) I didn’t scrutinize the text much but now I figure it’s reasonable to read “law” as “natural order”. It should be noted that for an N64 game, OoT has remarkably good prose. BotW, in transitioning the series in what may be its third main genre (as opposed to the genres of Zelda 1 and OoT), has taken that Shintoist aesthetic and incorporated it into the entire philosophy of the game’s design. More than just being a game whose narrative concerns an imbalanced world, BotW embraces the trends of open worlds and immersive sims to create an immense, varied space where the coded laws of physics are always impacting the experience. Thunderstorms make metal equipment a liability, while rain covers the sounds of footsteps. Wind can sweep away items, fire and high temperatures affect flammable objects (including yourself), and aforementioned metallic items can conduct electricity, which can be used to solve puzzles in unintended ways. Weather changes regularly based on the region and changes the world in tandem. Rain doesn’t just fall, it actively collects, and ponds become bigger, and surfaces become slicker. Each systemic element (pun not intended) that was incorporated affected everything else in the world, and in interviews there were mentions that changing the volume of wind in one area had a butterfly effect on another, causing pots to fly off of patios in a village. It’s no wonder the game took five years to make, considering how rarely glitches occur in the game (and most that I know of have to be deliberately recreated for exploitation). You’re engaging with enemies as much as you are with the environment, and at times even with your own body, creating and consuming food and drink for the purpose of staving off sunstroke or frostbite. As a result, BotW’s Hyrule is immensely palpable, and easy to lose oneself in from how livable it feels.

When I first started playing at release, I was a bit disappointed to discover that villages existed in-game, as early promotional material and the state of the Great Plateau you start on painted a picture of a lonely world. In the end, the soundtrack and vast amount of uncolonized land does give an understated sense of melancholy that defines the game, though the fact that every five steps you’ll find a Korok micropuzzle waiting to YA HA HA and fanfare at you betrays that a bit (I still love those Koroks and their puzzles, don’t @ me). The NPCs in this are numerous, though, from the occupants of the villages to wandering traders, and their personalities are all distinct and charming, and probably the best I’ve ever seen in a game, or at least in a long time. If this game wasn’t railroading the Link/Zelda relationship so hard, I would have liked a Dragon’s Dogma-style “date any NPC (within reason)” mechanic. I’m just going to have to start a “NPCs you should marry” side-tumblr.

Another defining aspect of the gameplay, and easily what makes the game surpass arguably every other Zelda, is how Nintendo heard the decade or so of complaints about the linear Zelda lock-and-key formula being reiterated to the point of stagnation, and, after great success with A Link Between Worlds’ item rental subversion, just decided to make everything optional. You do the tutorial on the Great Plateau, and, if you feel especially gutsy, you can beeline it straight to Ganon. He’s in horse-riding distance, or running distance, if you’re tenacious. Will you make it to him, survive the hordes of enemies, and take him down? If it’s your first time playing the game and you haven’t learned the systems, probably not. Is it possible? Absolutely. Much like how the monthly cycle of a Persona game is a proverbial Rocky training montage of preparing for The Big Fight, everything you do in BotW is in preparation. A lot of open world games can feel dissonant in that you’re incentivized to be distracted as a player and make your own fun, meanwhile the protagonist keeps saying “I’m gonna get bloody revenge on the mafia boss!” during bowling matches. There is still, unavoidably, a sense of urgency played up for narrative sake in BotW, since Impa insists Zelda is waiting and can’t hold Ganon back forever, but it’s all much more narratively justifiable, if you want that. You know, because Zelda is for hardcore roleplaying.

I couldn’t resist a second playthrough, even after logging 215+ hours, so I went ahead and started a separate file on Master Mode, Nintendo’s weird in-house, in-franchise rebranding of, uh, a hard mode. Previously it was called Hero Mode. Why do you--well, okay, I know why they do it. They’re likely trying to distinguish it from a “we just tweaked the numbers” hard mode, and also want to make it feel less threatening than something labeled hard mode. If they’re going to go to the trouble to make it a distinct form of play, they want to try and appeal to everyone. And it is fairly distinct. All enemies are bumped up one rank, so a red bokoblin is blue, and a blue bokoblin is black, and so on. There is a new strongest rank of enemy, though in my run I did not seek them out. There are enemies (and treasure chests!) perched on flying rafts, which can be one-shot with proper bow aiming, but also carry dangerous elemental arrows, and can alert all other enemies in the area. Stealth is much more difficult, and pointless early in. All enemies regenerate up to a third of their health, including bosses! Though, that can be temporarily interrupted by inflicting any amount of damage on them, so it behooves you to be on the offense. Less autosave slots! This wasn’t a problem for me. Guardians randomly delay the firing of their beams! This was absolutely a problem for me and I avoided them entirely in my run. In the beginning when tools and resources are scare, particularly on the Great Plateau, Master Mode is at its hardest, and its most thrilling. Rather than aimlessly exploring, I was pressured to decide where I knew things were, and beeline it to them. Sometime in-between two of the four main optional dungeons, I had amassed enough valuable resources that the game had settled back into the same kind of difficulty as normal mode. Bosses were a little harder due to regen and my resources being somewhat scarcer, but they were manageable. Competently performing flurry attacks (upon successfully dodging attacks at the last second) was extremely valuable to me, but I imagine with enough food in my inventory, I could have brute forced my way through a lot of the fights (though, uh, obviously thou wouldst like to live deliciously (please hate me for this phrasing)). I chose to forego the Master Sword for the sake of challenge, and beat Master Mode with only seven hearts, in around 25 hours. You should play Master Mode, it’s fun.

Here’s a little gameplay SPOILER:

Something I haven’t done, but would like to eventually do, is avoid the main dungeons and just head straight to Ganon. When I played Master Mode, I wasn’t totally confident, and did the dungeons for the resources. After watching some speedruns I learned that if you skip the dungeons, and therefore the main bosses, you have to fight them all at once immediately before the fight with Ganon, without breaks.

That. Sounds. Great.

Wandersong (PC/Steam): Have you heard about Homestuck?

Okay, wait. Wait. Come back, wait. Stop leaving. PLEASE.

Okay, I got the most inflammatory sentence out of the way. Now that we’re eased into that: Wandersong is unignorably influenced by Homestuck. Homestuck conjured a lot of baggage, from having a really difficult, pretentious, arrogant author (I should know, I gave him the benefit of the doubt for way too long), to having some unfortunate narrative turns, to being a billion words long. Wandersong invokes the vaster-than-God scope, the minute and personal perspective of the heroes, and its inclinations toward emotional intelligence (it still surprises me Homestuck had these moments given the author’s deeply unsympathetic sense of humor), and… condenses it! It also makes it a light puzzle-platformer and is about performing music (note: not rhythm, you don’t have to have ANY rhythm), and looks like a Paper Mario game. It is very charming, very funny, very optimistic, and most surprisingly, uncompromising at times. Wandersong says that you, despite your role, are capable of great things, especially self growth and change, as long as you commit to it. If, faced with the consequences of your bad decisions, you choose to double down and keep at it, you will reap what you sow. This is distinctly different from Undertale’s brand of pacifism route optimism, where “no one has to die!” This brand of optimism is a measured but enthusiastic “you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, but you can save the rest” and I think that’s a uniquely valuable message.

I was a little confused about the resolution of the communist uprising chapter, but I recall the game bringing my cynicism into question, and the most important thing a work can do is make you question yourself.

(Also, if any of my mutuals are low on funds but interested, I do have a drm-free version I can share.)

Minit (PC/Steam): I don’t think I actually have a lot to say about Minit! It’s very fun and curious and short. You play a little… duck… thing, and you pick up a cursed sword which kills you in one minute. Then you wake up the next day, and die in a minute. Then you wake up the next day. Having only sixty seconds of vitality, you have to optimize your exploration. There’s a slow-speaking old man who you will die listening to, but the hint he gives at the end of his sentence will lead you to something valuable. There’s a guy in a bar angry about the lack of music. If you change the music, he will probably dislike it. If you keep changing the music, you might live to see him like it. There’s a boat ride to a tropical island you have to grit your teeth and wait through. Not all of the events are slow, some are quick bouts of hurried exploration. Most of it is, given the time limit. I’d say more, but given the overall length (it took me about an hour to finish), I’d risk spoiling a sizable fraction of the experience. It’s about $10, though I got mine in a Humble Bundle Monthly subscription. The spec requirements are very low, so your laptop can likely run it.

A Hat in Time (PC/Steam): Heads up, I’m gonna get into a lot of spoilers for this game, including endgame spoilers, but also heads up, the story isn’t really the point in this game. This is a game about tone and platforming. That said, I’m gonna be talking exclusively about the weird ideas in this game, and if you want those weird ideas to be a surprise, then just skip ahead until I put up big letters.

I’m somewhat hesitant to be critical of A Hat in Time because despite a number of weird Things about it, I recognize that it’s quite popular with a lot of people, and that always makes me pause and want to figure out what it is that makes it pass the bar for others. My guess at this point is that it invokes nostalgia through its unmitigated imitation of games that came before. The games it chooses to ape are all your childhood’s Greatest Hits, Wind Waker (which it most resembled in its earliest development), Super Mario Sunshine/Galaxy (which it most resembles now), Banjo-Kazooie, Psychonauts, etc. It never really surpasses those games, for me, and at times cribs from them to the degree that it obscures the game’s own identity. After all, what you enjoy may help define you, but you wouldn’t say it’s your personality. Well. Unless you kin the Gamecube. I guess. There are bonus levels to the game’s different “worlds” (I thought they were different planets, since your hub area is a spaceship, and you access them via different telescopes, but it turns out it’s just one planet?), and you can collect photographs, which sequentially tell a story about the residents of that “world”. Psychonauts did this because each level took place in the mind of a character, and the photos together told a story about the character that fundamentally changed the way you thought about them, and made the whole game feel richer as a result. I collected the photos for all but the DLC levels in AHiT (those are Really Hard), and of those five or so worlds, none of those bonus photos told me anything that changed how I thought about the characters. There’s a dock town run by a mafia (s-sorta) led by a chef, but did you know they all used to work at a processing factory before going there? There are two manipulative bird directors who are fighting over the same studio to produce their own film and win an award, but did you know they… wanted to be directors since they were kids? There’s a devil analogue who steals people’s souls if they wander into his forest, but did you know he was a prince, and the princess was mad he talked to another girl (it was a flower girl, he was getting flowers for the princess), and imprisoned him until they both the prince and princess turned into evil ghosts? That’s the only one that comes close to being an “oh” moment, but I don’t think it does for the reasons the writer was hoping for. In general, these are prologues without substance.

Speaking of substance, the game has a bit of an issue with theming. At least, it does at first. The first town is the previously mentioned dock town, run by a mafia. By “mafia”, I mean a bunch of meatheads who talk about how they like punching people, and refer to themselves individually, in the third person, as Mafia. Mafia loves to punch the poor and the birds. Mafia is a one-dimensional character copy-pasted across 20% of the game. Mafia laughs. They’re run by a chef, but also they can’t cook, so there’s a cat chef in hiding who routinely swaps out their food with his so no one has to eat bad food. I don’t know why, when the town has maybe three non-Mafia character. He does eventually leave and board your ship, so maybe he’s just looking for something to do. The leader of the mafia also boards your ship, for a joke and to sell you an upgrade. The mafia are also afraid of mud monsters, or aliens, or something. There’s a girl with a moustache named Moustache Girl who wants to use your Time Macguffins to overthrow organized crime, and Hat Girl decides that’s a no-go. There are giant faucets around the town that replace all the water with lava. You might be noticing these things have little to no connection. You might be suspecting this level was made first when the dev was inexperienced. I might be suspecting this. It’s fine.

Later worlds do a much better job of theming. There’s the movie studio split between two birds. One of them a penguin, who prefers science fiction, the other a…

...hmmm. I suspect this guy, The Conductor, is an OC the director has had for a while, maybe since childhood, that they just decided Is A Bird, and carried it into the game, since the game occasionally is like... bird?? Alternatively, it’s some sort of corruption of Woodstock from Peanuts. Possibly both. Anyway, this guy just wants to make movies that take place on wild western trains. He has a strong fake Scottish accent, and the penguin, named DJ Grooves, is some sort of disco Elvis. They’ve both hired owls as actors, and some crows have snuck onto the train set (the crows are so obviously the G-Men from Psychonauts’ Milkman level it bothers me a bit). This is already a little busy, but it’s okay! Birds, movies, two distinct genres, and you trapped in-between them, just trying to collect your macguffins. It works. You take part in both of their movies, and your performance in both determines the winner, when suddenly… CORRUPTION WAS AFOOT, and you have to explore the depths of the studio and engage in a showdown.

Another world is a spooky forest where your access is restricted by completing certain contracts for the devilish character. Sometimes it’s murder (reasonable), exploring a haunted mansion in survival horror format (ooh!), fixing the plumbing in a well (wait, what), and doing mail delivery (back up back up). Half of that works. The finale of the forest makes up for it, though. This game insists on most of its bosses having like 4-5 phases and breaks for dialogue and the gall required to get away with that honestly earned my respect. They’re pretty fun times.

The best level to play is, unsurprisingly, the first DLC. I say unsurprising because it’s clear the dev is learning as they go, and the level design improves as they go along. Aside from bonus levels, the first DLC takes place on a massive cruise liner titled the SS Literally Can’t Sink. Ha ha. It’s split into three parts. The first part has you exploring the many interconnected rooms of the ship to find broken shards of a macguffin, the second part has you taking that mental map and using it to frantically complete multiple timed fetch quests at once, and the third part, now that you understand the ship pretty intimately, capsizes the ship, requiring you to traverse frigid waters and overturned scenery to retrieve babies and the ship’s incompetent but adorable baby seal crew (the seals speak in hewwo talk, the game is unforgivably loaded with memes but let me have this). This progression is my favorite in the game, and while I haven’t bought the Nyakuza Metro DLC, I’m looking forward to it.

The ending level had me a bit bewildered at first because in the beginning when Hat Kid refuses to use time powers to stop organized crime, I saw it as a hamfisted way to create tension between Hat Kid and Moustache Girl. Apparently it was working up towards the moral of the story. In the final level, Moustache Girl has stolen all the macguffins, and possessing ultimate power, becomes corrupted ultimately, and summons everyone in the world to her Bowser castle to be judged and die. On first glance, I thought “well, sure, that’s sensible,” but when Hat Kid finds the support of all the villains in the game, I was a little confused. The villains sacrifice themselves to give you infinite health, explicitly stating that they’ll just come back through time magic if you win so who cares (cool stakes), and you overcome authoritarianism with the support of corrupt hollywood, organized crime, and the literal devil. This would be fine if at some point Hat Kid, you know, took them on a Zuko Quest to face turn all of them, but that doesn’t happen. They just all decide “hey yeah, fuck this girl! Also we don’t have time for the nuance this might require!” After all is said and done and you collect all your macguffins, you’re given the choice of leaving the defeated Moustache Girl a single macguffin so she can defeat the mafia (whose side are we on) or just saying nahhh. Neither appears to make a difference, but maybe in a year or two we’ll get a DLC that makes you regret your words and deeds. You try to fly your ship to your home planet, and the villains all grab on to your ship, which is in space, begging you not to leave. I seriously suspect they intended to incorporate face-turn scenes and just couldn’t find the time, because nothing but physical proximity implies these guys would have any emotional attachment to Hat Kid, and that’s a bit of a stretch. Anyway, Hat Kid brooms them off the ship to plummet down to earth and flies away. Sheds a tear about the whole thing. In the end, the moral was that Order good, but too much Order bad, except if you are Hat Kid, in which case Chaos good. Or maybe…

After finishing the game I decided to look into any left over secrets, since my completion score was in the 80s of percents. Turns out that if you use the camera badge to finagle the free look feature into a marginally open armoire somewhere on your spaceship, you can find a shrine to Hat Kid with a couple skulls, a bunch of blurry photos, and some strange symbols. If you doing this while wearing the mask that lets you see the secrets of the dead (for platforming and puzzle purposes, of course), there’s a bunch of alien text you can decode. And then there’s some youtube channels. And a twitter account. All sharing more of those decodable ciphers, all talking about vague dreamy apocalyptic histories and dark betrayals. Or something. That’s right, this game’s got a fucking ARG. I cut things off there. If the developer Gears for Breakfast is gonna make an occultist grimdark sequel to A Hat in Time, they can put up a trailer for it.

OKAY I’M DONE TALKING ABOUT A HAT IN TIME, the short of it is that I had a lot of mixed feelings but had fun.

How did I end up talking more about A Hat in Time than Breath of the Wild? What are my priorities?

Well, that’s everything I finished in May! Will I get back to anime and manga in June? Guess we’ll see! Again, let me know if you want me to do year-recap Marvel posts, since my liveblogging is mostly just shitposts, and the occasional attempt at thoughtfulness among those posts feels kind of out of place. Honestly, I’m probably gonna do that anyway, but it’s nice to see interest. If you read all this, thanks a lot! Go play Breath of the Wild and Wandersong.

#curry plays games

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sonderisms-blog · 5 years

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❛ Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering. ❜

Spotted at Grand Central, bags in hand, {KAREN GILLAN}. No, that’s a mistake. It’s {AMELIA POND}, they are a {CANON CHARACTER} and come from {DOCTOR WHO}. They are {TWENTY-NINE} and I’ve heard they are {CREATIVE}, as well {OBSTINATE}. They happen to hold {THEIR} memories. Don’t believe me? See for yourself. Lucky for us, {jinx, 23, pst, she/her & they/them} sent us proof.

Welcome to New York, what is your character’s name?

Amelia Jessica Pond-Williams. Though, she took on the last name Williams when she was transported back to 1920s New York because she couldn’t really legally hyphenate + it was a testament to how much she loves Rory & how she was willing to leave behind her old life with the Doctor behind. But she prefers to just be called Amy!

Where have they been pulled from in their fandom?

Right when Amy & Rory make their exit in Doctor Who, in the Angels Take Manhattan. I imagine that she wakes up in her new life in this RP from that point.

With the curse, how has your character’s life changed?

Well, I don’t want to godmod the potential Rory player but if Rory isn’t in her life then that’s a major change ( though, I’d love if they were best friends who grew up together or something in the new life ). Like in canon, Amy had the belief the Doctor was real but instead of him coming back, he was just a story. She still grew up the same way in canon, the weird girl who turned ginger bombshell who was a kissogram but in this verse ( to mirror canon ) she gets picked up by a modeling agency and moves to New York. As far as Amy knows she’s lived in New York for 10 years, now a successful science fiction author and currently working on a children’s book both illustrating & writing it. Her life has changed because she turned her childhood shit into stories that have sold pretty well. She didn’t get married to Rory at a young age, she’s had quite a few years to develop who she is and live her life outside of Leadworth.

With Amy’s memories coming back, to put it simply, it hurts. All over again. Remembering it all, losing it all, it hurts. Though not a drinker AT ALL, Amy has found herself doing anything she can to forget remembering, working on a much darker novel than her previous ones. It’s been disorienting because even though her life is beautiful & brilliant as it is -- it’s not real. The feeling of things not being real, the blurring of lines between reality & falsity has really done a number on her as she does deal with mental illness, worrying that she’s finally, properly, losing her mind. Frankly, she doesn’t know if it’s real, she doesn’t know what’s real, though she tries to be Amy Pond, this blurring of reality is something that scares her. Another feeling she feels is anger, anger about what happened to her in canon, anger about having to doubt her own mind all over again and a determination to fix this and/or find the person responsible.

Do they have a job, and if so what is it?

To dive in more about her job, Amy isn’t the most famous person around but she definitely has mild celebrity due to her early modeling ( a model turned scifi author intrigues a lot of weird fanboys that’s for sure ), her books are what has really launched any celebrity she has into something more recognizable. Sometimes asked to help host D list red carpet shows, etc. Amy is not Known Known but you find her face recognizable. She’s done a lot of activism as well for mental illness and the LGBTQIA+ & Queer communities as she’s openly bisexual so there’s definitely a funky little cult following she has and she’s fairly popular in Scotland as well as a hometown hero in her town of Leadworth ( something she finds HILARIOUS as they hated her for years ).

Is there any other information about your character that members might find helpful?

THIS SECTION WILL BE FOR MY RAMBLING. Because where else am I GONNA DO IT??? I’ve been playing Amy for 5+ years now and I’m going to give y’all some insight on how i play her as well as how i see her. I’m watching an episode right now that’s helped come up with some of this as well. I’ll probably add more HCs as I slowly rewatch her scenes, etc.

A Sagittarius!!!!!!!!!! which literally fits her so well if you love astrology and Amy Pond, you already know!

One of my favorite aspects of Amy’s character is her empathy & intuitiveness. While sometimes lacking social grace and not always the best with interpersonal relations, she can see people for who they are deep down, their intentions, the emotions she feels like she feels from others often overwhelming but something that does lead her. A gut instinct magnified. She’s intuitive and empathetic because she’s got such an active imagination paired with a creative mind, she’s able to put those two things together, not only painting a picture of who someone is, painting colors on them they might not see themselves. Maybe this is a bit naive at times, maybe even a bit dangerous if it steers her wrong ( which is why Rory Williams is so important to her, her impulsiveness paired with this can get her into tough situations and he always has her back, always by her side ). Amelia is not always one to think before jumping into situations if she feels it’s the right thing to do, a prime example of this is her running off with The Doctor EASILY. Both as a kid and an adult. Luckily, not many have taken advantage of this as she can be extremely closed off emotionally. She’s a good judge of character and if she puts her faith in you, know while it could be surprising, it was a very much calculated, thought out, and a felt through choice. Amy’s extremely stubborn so good luck getting her to do something she doesn’t want to do ESPECIALLY if she doesn’t feel it’s right. Amy is usually able to connect to anyone and everyone some sort of way when she tries due to all of this, usually better with connecting to people than the ( Eleventh ) Doctor himself is.

[ EMOTIONAL NEGLECT MENTION, ALCOHOLISM MENTION ] Verbal, straightforward, blunt, but it when it comes to her emotions, the ones that hurt, the ones that can’t be wrapped in something beautiful or lightly joked about are the ones tucked away. Amy’s got serious commitment issues as well, as shown throughout Doctor Who, that stemmed from the Doctor leaving her multiple times as well as never knowing her parents. I play her Aunt as a high functioning alcoholic, growing up she was never really home much less attentive to Amy ( also due to the whole crack in Amy’s wall thing, but, that’s a whole other topic ). For insight on how this effects her, I once played her in a multifandom at hogwarts rp where she was in a relationship with a character and they were really fucking cute ( I still rp them to this day w/ my friend ). But she was SO cared of this relationship not working out / losing Rory because he had just confessed that he romantically liked her, that she broke up with the other person ( who she had deep feelings for who never EVER would’ve left her ) because Rory meant too much to her, he’d been there through everything, the thought of losing him? Unthinkable. this isn’t to say she didn’t love them both ( polyamorous Amelia Pond ftw! ), or value Rory as much ( I felt pressured to go into canon as well so I had to find a believable fault/fear/issue to really sell this but I think there’s something to be said for this ), I don’t play it that way in THIS rp, of course. [ END OF EMOTIONAL NEGLECT MENTION, ALCOHOLISM MENTION ]

It goes to show that she will make fear based decisions as well as decisions based on her insecurities that she’s not enough, that she’s more pain than she’s worth, out of not being able to give someone she cares about what they need. For example, when in canon Amy breaks up with Rory because she feels so guilty she can’t have biological kids when she knows he ALWAYS wanted kids. She was scared if she stayed with him, he’d hate her, that she was keeping him from having a fulfilling life, that she wasn’t enough and didn’t fit into what he wanted. Rory deserves everything to her, she couldn’t give it to him, when he gave and gave and gave to her. She didn’t feel worthy, but she didn’t express that fear either, making Rory feel completely shut out because she was shutting him out. She’ll self sabotage easily, because commitment is scary to her and she’d rather be the one leaving than being left. Amy can’t stand to wait for the worst to happen, for the other shoe to drop, she isn’t the fucking girl who waited -- not anymore.

Amy is diagnosed with major depressive disorder previously diagnosed with psychotic features added on as well until the Doctor came back but after having 4 psychiatrists in her youth, Amy definitely fits into having MDD. There are many evidences in canon besides her literally going to psychiatrists that suggest that Amy is mentally ill / ND, another hint in the episode ‘Vincent and The Doctor’. Amy empathizes with Vincent Van Gogh ( my Amy is an extreme art history lover as well, especially Vincent Van Gogh ), she says she’s been where he is, that she gets it. [ SUICIDE MENTION ] She is physically effected when he talks about dark shit and in another episode with the Dreamlord, she talks about how she doesn’t want to live in a world if Rory’s not in it, then killing herself in the show. The way she does it in my head ( and in the show ) is extremely steely, easily done, because Amy has dealt with mental illness, because she’s been in dark places & suicidal ideation. [ END OF SUICIDE MENTION ] In this RP, she’ll also have been diagnosed and is taking medication because we stan healthy characters who cope with their mental illness! Even though she’s definitely having a hard time currently.

Rory Williams really is everything to her. Her best friend, a love of her life, her partner, the only person who stuck by her side through everything. She never waivers in this love for him, even though she does have doubts due to her own commitment issues ( and regular issues ) but she doesn’t have doubts about who Rory is. She loves him. The Doctor is also someone she loves passionately, though she could’ve loved him romantically and often could see that sort of a future with him -- he’s completely unavailable and unreliable. If there’s one thing that Amy can’t do in a partner romantically it’s unreliable. Plus, after finding out her daughter was married to him in canon? She’ll pass. The Doctor is more like a twin flame sort of thing for her, a very kindred spirit. She loves him because in her little town of Leadworth, full of boring, sensible things, where she was the weird girl in town -- he was just as weird as her.

If I had to pick a Hogwarts house for Amy, it’d be Gryffindor.

#intro: amelia pond.#amelia pond: she's mad but she's magic.#intros make me nervous bc i never learned the art of brevity & my name is jared im 19 i never learned how to read #so we got a MESS ur honor!#but i just tell myself no one is paying me to rp STOP CARING SO MUCH fewoijfw #i aint getting no AWARDS #NO GRADES #this took so long bc its a high pain day and im slow! LRIJFFWE

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firebunnylover · 6 years

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Hannah Watches LoSH - Chain of Command

Ho boy... has it been a while since I've been doing this. I apologize to everyone for the wait, but a lot of things been going on for me IRL. I recently got approval for student loans so I’m just waiting for that to come in before school, which will be full time this next semester. I'm trying to resume this on a regular basis as means with coping with recent... frustrations.

Also, if you notice inconsistencies with the different gifs regarding fonts, that is because I was busy figuring out how to make sure they stood out. And then I had computer problems right as i was halfway done making all of them. And then I thought I lost them.

BUT WHILE MOST OF THE FILES WERE OKAY, I HAD TO GO AND FIND EACH GODDAMN INDIVIDUAL FONT.

So if it takes me a while to get the next one out, know that there is a good chance it’s because I had a heart attack OR/AND I seem to take my frustrations out on my pillow via screaming...

Chain of Command

We kick off the episode with the Cruiser going highspeed someplace, while the Legion are trying to maintain contact with people, Lightning Lad seeming to be the most concerned.

Wow the same face syndrome here is worse than with Disney.

Lightning Lad asks the people on screen how they're holding up, to which they reply that they need help as the storm they're experiencing is getting worse.

You gotta give this show credit for constantly making Bouncy pilot on board.

Oh. That ain't good.

DON’T GIVE THIS PLANET SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE TREATMENT GARTH!

… Ohhhh...

As soon as the opening finishes playing, we see the Cruiser is still speeding, and Lightning Lad is incredibly anxious about arriving to his home planet. To the point he's constantly asking for updates from the team.

Sooo history class time?

He then goes to describe Winath, stating it's the "breadbasket of the galaxy", as it provides most of the galaxies food supply.

Certainly makes his farm boy insults from the first episode look weak.

But he moves on to discuss that cosmic storms used to be a big problem for Winath until they built "THE CORE DIFFUSOR STATION". A station that turns storm energy to usable energy. But unfortunately, the current storm is way more powerful than the maximum the station can handle, which makes the Legion's first priority to make sure the station doesn’t overload.

Awwww~

However, as soon as they approach the planet, turns out that storm is way worse than anticipated. Saturn Girl manages to get in contact with the people on the planet that are in the shelter.

SO MANY TWINS.

Ah, parents... gonna have to discuss them later.

Saturn Girl you should have caught him in your arms. You're the only one who hasn't!

Seeing as the Cruiser wasn’t built for the storm either, Lightning Lad instructs the Trips and Bouncy to stay on board while everyone else takes the battle pod.

Wait. Battle pod?

Huh.

Don't crash, this isn't the Intergalactic games.

Well, that's what he get for telling another person to do something outside their capabilities.

Unsurprisingly, Lightning Lad crash lands. Typical.

And that's why Lightning Lad is not the pilot on the usual schedule...

Upon entering, the place looks trashed but Lightning Lad says they got there just in time. Mm-hm.

Whom?

Aww he lookin a little heartbroken for a moment~

Bromance.

And then the introduction between Superman and Cosmic Boy. And honestly, Cosmic Boy starts to fanboy a bit.

JEALOUS GARTH!

Lightning Lad demands to know what Cosmic Boy is doing on Winath, and he states they got a distress call...

Wait. Plural?

Turns out he brought someone along. Ferro Lad.

Ok I can't help but laugh a little bit at this.

Cosmic Boy encourages Ferro Lad to demonstrate his powers, which is turning into Metal. And then Lightning Lad interrupts. He tries to give orders, but Cosmic Boy quickly overrides him, having Superman Lighting Lad and Colossal Boy and Ferro Lad stabilize the building while he and Saturn Girl and B5 go to the core.

Aww.

He snaps out of his emo mode pretty quickly though and goes to work.

The core meanwhile is well beyond f***ed, making Cosmic Boy project a magnetic field over the central part, but doesn't seem like it will last.

Outside, Lightning Lad is whining to Superman about Cosmic Boy about bringing in a new member with no audition, only for Superman to say it seems like a good choice.

Wow, it's like this show loves making Superman compatible with just about everyone.

Unfortunately, the generator they were trying to put back together outside overloads.

Ouch.

He isn't able to contain the core, and Brainy is unable to work on it, and the radiation happens to be building, getting ready to blow. When trying to reaching Superman, due to communication problems caused by radiation from the core. But who needs communicators when you got Saturn Girl?

She quickly instructs Superman to get the core out ASAP, and he does. But when it blows, he passes out, making it impossible for her to reach him.

As Superman is falling back to Winath, Bouncy goes to save him.

What a pure relationship.

Unfortunately, they lose sight of him in what I assume is smoke. THankfully he lands on the ship.

Bouncy then has to maneuver the ship to prevent debris hitting them, which does make superman tumble, but Triplicate Girl catches him from the hatch door.

But the debris decides that the cruiser isn't enough to pick on, and targets the guys that are still on the ground, while throwing in cyclones into the mix. So ground team goes to meet up with inside team.

As there is no core to help pacify the weather, Cosmic Boy and Lightning Lad get into an argument on getting the system back online vs saving whatever they can.

When Lightning Lad asks who's going, much to his surprise, Ferro Lad and Colossal Boy volunteer. Brainy stays, being the nerd he is.

And there's the jerk persona again.

While outside and fixing a bridge, Ferro Lad confronts Lightning Lad.

Okay. That would include the entire BatFam on Lighting Lad's suspicious people list.

… WELL NOW I DO.

Back on the cruiser:

TRIPLICATE GIRL IS THE TEAM MEDIC!

Bouncy notices a pattern to the storm, but gets ignored by the ground team. And then despite protests, Superman leaves as well.

I feel u.

Meanwhile, Brainy is building a replacement for the old core. When Saturn Girl asks what she can do, Cosmic Boy tells her to step back so she doesn’t get hurt.

The outdoor squad is still struggling with the damn but Lighting Lad flies off when he sees a farm getting wasted by the debris, despite Colossal Boy's statement on not being able to save everything.

He tries to blast away the hail that's falling, but can only split the largest piece in half, which still does a lot of damage. Superman does arrive to help knock the hail stones away, but the ground starts to fall out from underneath.

DUDE THE HOUSE IS FALLING APART WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED?!

Wait. That room.

Oh.

OH SHIT OW NO STOP MY HEART IS NEVER READY FOR THIS PART

Just as the house is going into the ground, Lightning Lad flies out just in time.

Ow.

After this, we cut to Lightning Lad telling Superman that it was his home.

OW.

Saturn Girl contacts them to inform them that Brainy fixed the power system, and they fly off to go back.

When asked where she’s going, Saturn Girl states she's going to the shelter, to which Cosmic Boy says she's too vulnerable. And thus she lays down the best burn she made yet on this show.

List of things that have happened to her beforehand:

-Carried off by Timber Wolf while he was in full feral mode

-Nearly blasted by Alexis

-Trapped in a fear-feeding abomination of a space station AND GOING THROUGH HER WORST FEAR OF ROLLER COASTERS

-Trapped in the Phantom Zone

She’s dealt with worse.

Ok if even Brainy, one of the least sociable of the group, knows you f***ed up, then you f***ed up big time.

Back on the cruiser, Bouncy predicts where the next massive part of the storm will hit. The damn, where it will rupture, causing mudslide and sinkhole at the shelter.

But the people on the planet won't listen. At first.

YAS BOI

Yeee

With everyone finally getting in line, Bouncy gives instructions.

As the boys are working on this, Saturn Girl arrives to the shelter, offering assurance they will be ok.

Back with the boys, yes I know, that was fast, Lightning Lad starts a fire intentionally, and Superman moves a tornado, directing the flood into what I assume is another river, lake or possibly ocean. It ain't a pond, I know that.

The station finally goes back online, and it seems to be functioning.

WElp, Brainy certainly likes to leave his signature.

So pure~

Back with Saturn Girl as she and the Winathians begin exiting.

Sarcastic SG is what I live for.

Lighting Lad arrives, with the picture he saved from the house. But doesn't go for Saturn GIrl.

Hmm.

We cut to the cruiser leaving Winath, and Cosmic Boy and Lighting Lad soon dissolve into another argument.

Wait, MONTHS?! Yeah, Lightning Lad has a right here to be mad, give an update at least once a week.

Fair enough. If Lightning Lad knew where you were, he probably would have made a massive bad impression.

I thought that was Tinya's role... then again I doubt she enjoys it.

Aww, poor ferro lad.

So, to put this argument into the ground, they hold an election. Probably will end better than the american ones can.

Nothing but respect for my team leader.

THIS SHIP IS CANNON!

Is Mekt in jail? Or do you consider him more of a nuisance on the level of STAR FINGAH?

But yeah I guess nothing can go wrong.

… SHIT.

So final thoughts on the episode overall and the characters

This was the first episode without a villain character. The main conflict is among the team and trying to keep the planet from being shredded. It's also the only episode with no villain character. I really wish we got more episodes like this, or even on the Legion's everyday mundane lives.

As for the storm plot point, it does remind me a lot of actual natural disasters and nuclear disasters. Which I think from a writing stance is a good thing.

Now. Winath. In all honestly, I kind of want to do a whole post on Winath culture and on the Ranzz family and my personal thoughts, but I'll put some tidbits of that discussion in here.

Big source for food in the galaxy. How big is that planet? Earth size? Moon size? Seems suspicious they only showed us one shelter and that there's only one station, so I'll have to go with moon, maybe smaller. So that should mean that year-round it is the optimal place for most crops. Minus cosmic storms.

But onto the whole subject of why there are so many twins.

In the comics, it was completely normal for twin births, while solo children are the minority. We aren't given any particular reason why though. We did see some people without twins in the shelter, but that doesn’t mean they weren't born single.

Another thing from the comics I want to mention is that Solo children were stereotyped as psychopaths.

Hmm. Wonder how that could possibly negatively impact kids who were solo on Winath. I said sarcastically, looking at a certain trash baby.

When I first watched this, this was when I started doing research into the old Legion comics. Where Mekt was about as sane as a cat on catnip. And had no sense of fashion.

Yes, of course I'm bringing the Trash Lord into discussion, he was in a photo! Don't worry, I'll keep the topic on him short.

Mm. He doesn't seem very happy. Pretty distant from everyone else. Gonna have to go with the possibility that solo children don't get the best treatment on Winath.

… Wonder how he felt hearing about the whole event for this episode?

And then there is the subject of Mr. and Mrs. Ranzz. How did they treat their sons exactly? Because clearly they love Garth and he did a lot of accomplishments, but Mekt came out as a mess.

In a post from Tom Bierbaum, who worked on the comics, located here, he describes the family as ”...Bit of a mixed bag. There was a lot of good there, but the parents were probably highly accomplished, career-driven people who expected nothing less of their kids but were so wrapped up in their own responsibilities that they weren't giving their kids the kind of attention and support they'd need to reach their positive potentials.”

One thing to keep in mind is that the family were a bunch of farmers. And farming is not easy. So it is possible that being too busy was one of the reasons that the kids ended up as they did, although unintentionally.

But I just gotta mention something based on personal experience.

So most of my Dad’s side of the family live in North Carolina and were in the countryside and worked with farms.

And most of them conservatives.

Like, racist homophobic conservatives.

You can imagine how uncomfortable I, a biracial pansexual Latina girl, can get around them.

So, based on a personal experience, I am suspicious if there was some neglect towards Mekt as he was a minority that was discriminated against, and favoritism towards Garth and Ayla for being twins.

But it’s hard to say given that we barely see them or their behaviors.

Moving on.

Now the actual characters in the episode.

Starting with Superman. His fanbase grows. Not much development but we also see he's a little impulsive here, judging by how fast he went to get back out of the cruiser.

Brainy doesn't get much development either. But he definitely seems far more open to people now, given he was smiling at Cosmic Boy. Smiling. Our little grouchy pants. SMILING. The writers are keeping consistent with how he has been becoming more and more open to people emotionally, as well as expressive.

And then we have Colossal Boy. This is his second speaking role episode. He seems rather close to Cosmic Boy. Not exclusive to pet names. Which does warrant... shipping grounds. As far as character development goes, it is interesting to note that even though he's close to Cosmic Boy, he volunteers to help Lightning Lad outside the core. So, he might be more pro-active than CB1. But he also says Brainy has a big head. This could be seen as a jab at B5 because of his intelligence, but Brainy also asked if he could get any smaller than what he currently was. Perhaps being asked go get smaller is something he has to deal with frequently, and that was one of his ways of throwing it back into another person's face.

Ferro Lad... so, he seems generally nice in this episode, a bit on the social awkward side, and prefers to stay out of arguments that don’t necessarily involve him. But he keeps his face covered to hide whatever is underneath it, saying people don't want to see what's underneath. We can easily figure this means that he has been disfigured somehow, but whether or not he himself is conscious on it as well is another matter.

Which reminds me of Deadpool, who is self-conscious in his movie and that serves as the motivation to find Axe – oh I'm sorry, FRANCIS.

But let's talk some trivia about his comic book origins. Originally, Jim Shooter, a white guy, who worked on LoSH comics, wanted to make him black. However, as writing the character took place during the 60s, DC shot down the idea, saying they would lose distribution in the South. Whitewashing him in the final product.

So, good on Jim for trying with good intentions, bad on DC for tearing it down.

As for where that goes as a consequence overall in most media for LoSH, we'll discuss it in the future.

But... that now begs the question... have other adaptations tackled this race-change? In the cartoon, we can see the skin around his eyes as well as his hands, which are light. So, it’s probably unlikely.

Given Jim Shooter's original idea, I would totally be down for seeing a POC version of Ferro Lad.

But I only found out Ferro Lad's backstory thanks to a friend in the last year, so it's might not well known, and the people working on the show might not have known at the time. And I've stated this before, and I'll say it again, the show originally had Triplicate Girl with darker skin, and given that they made her lighter in the final product was executive meddling, so who knows?

Speaking of Triplicate Girl, this episode once again gives us a lot of character development with her. She seems to be the medic of the group, or at least seems to have sufficient knowledge to give medical treatment. And that's a pretty interesting idea in the show. I personally would love to see more superheroes with more real-world skills. Most of the time.

(Glares at Marvel's Doctor Strange)

But she is shown around Bouncy for the majority of the show. But she has her own individuality, as she has more confidence than him, and reassures him that there was no mistake with the votes.

And now, our lovable Bouncy. This is episode gives him A LOT of development, as we watch him assess the situation and take control, making the best decisions on how to treat the situation. And accidentally becomes the new leader during the polls. Something he also has a hard time believing.

Okay, so he had to try multiple times to get into the Legion, and even when he’s in, he finds people questioning his abilities. So now, all of the sudden, he has been elevated to LEADER. That’s a definitely a big shift.

This does look like a good thing (especially since most of the legion think their worst enemies are behind bars based on what Lightning Lad said), and back when I first watched this show, I thought it was the best outcome. But now I can’t help but wonder, what are the qualifications?

Because as much as Bouncing Boy is a good person and does have skills and can assess a situation, we do have to acknowledge that if he doesn't meet the qualifications, he really shouldn't be in the position. Good intentions don't automatically mean good results in the long run. I think the next episode looks into this a bit more but keep it in mind.

I never thought I would criticize the show on that aspect when I was younger, but given the 2016 election results and where that has led, can you blame me for being concerned with this now?

Which reminds me – PLEASE GO VOTE IF YOU ARE ELIGIBLE THIS NOVEMBER!

And now, the founders.

So this is Cosmic Boy's first major off screen appearance. And the show quickly show he's Lightning Lad's foil. He does take his duties seriously but does leave the team for a time to try establishing themselves to others, without contacting anyone. Diplomacy seems like a more reasonable reason than just because you're going through the ego-emo phase, but still.

Does seem to like Saturn Girl, but unlike Lightning Lad, seems to be more overprotective, where he won't have her do anything. Something similar to Timber Wolf in the degree of unintentional misogyny. Something she calls him out on. And like Lightning Lad, doesn't back down from a challenge. But there doesn't seem to be any malice/anger on his part, unlike Lightning Lad.

Saturn Girl also gets developed as well. But it is in terms of her relationship between the two boys, in a love-triangle sort of way unfortunately. She reassures Lightning Lad that she would be with him regardless of what happens, but as soon as Cosmic Boy shows up, she goes to him. And when Lightning Lad is getting ready to go outside, she chooses to stay to serve as communication. But she makes her own decision on going to the shelter. And later, she lets Lightning Lad go to his parents without intervening or apologizing. She practices agency in these relationships, and makes it clear no one owns her and she is capable of doing things, which I really like to see.

And now our favorite Trash Child.

Lightning Lad is confronted with a threat to his home, so he takes this mission far more seriously than most other missions we have seen so far. He is going out of his way for all efforts to protect Winath. And it is understandable why. As for his jerk-and-pride personality issues, he seems to be in better control, except he seems to have focused most of it on Cosmic Boy. However, it does pop up in the tone of his voice when Saturn Girl stays behind. And has trouble trusting new people. But he seems fast to warm up to Ferro Lad.

But he doesn’t demand any apologies from Saturn Girl for siding with Cosmic Boy, showing he truly respects her.

When Bouncy becomes the new elected leader, he doesn't hold anything against him. Instead, he is supportive. We wouldn't have gotten that with our Lightning Lad in the first episode.

And can I just say the quiet moments in this episode really delivered? Both the moment when he goes to his room and when he goes to his parents show his vulnerable side.

But before I wrap up this episode, I just want to thank everyone who has put up with me taking so long to resume these reviews.

Hopefully the next one won’t take as long to get out, but... we’ll see.

#hannah watches losh #losh #legion of superheroes #legion of super heroes

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cerastes · 6 years

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Life’s about to get kinda busy, so I’m just writing shit here to get it in order in my head and because, as usual, if it can help or steer someone, all the better. Nothing negative (on the contrary), but still under a Read More so as to not give you a faceful of What Is This, and because maybe some stuff gets a bit heavy.

February was quite atrocious. It’s the first and only time in years that I have a really, really strong relapse, strong enough that I cut my internet off for a few days out of fear of saying something stupid in what was a very unstable period for me, as well as to not overshare. It was bad enough that I resorted to some old coping mechanisms I hoped I’d never have to rely on again, such as spending some seven or so hours walking back forth the hallway of my apartment in complete darkness while just thinking about solutions to problems and doing dumbbell sets. I used to do this quite a bit back in the ol’ depressive suicidal days since it kept my mind busy and it would tire me out so I could go and sleep, but thankfully it only happened once now. When I say “relapse” now, it wasn’t anything suicidal, by the by, just, in this state of immense stress, so don’t worry.

I should be sad about this, and in a way, I am, but the joy more or less overshadows it: I disowned my father. It had to be done. I gave him a lot of chances, I tried my damn hardest so we could get along well, psyched myself up for it so very hard, but in the end, if you pull the toad from muddy water, put it in a pristine pond, and it jumps back into the muddy water, well, whatcha gonna do. Throughout the end of January to the end of February, we had some very severe fights, one of which escalated into a physical confrontation, and since he simply refuses to change and, well, is still the same son of a bitch that made my life so damn miserable that I grabbed my shit and left home when I was 19, it made me very sad, but I had to admit it once and for all: I have no father. Never did. As much as I wanted to believe I had one or could even have one, if we tried hard enough, it really was just wishful thinking. It made me very sad.

But it also was liberating. It was very liberating because no one can say I didn’t try. I tried oh so god damn hard, and it might have been “pointless” from a results point of view, but it definitely wasn’t pointless, overall, because I tried, I didn’t just give up, and that’s all I needed. I can go on for the rest of my life knowing I didn’t give up on it, that I didn’t run away, and that while I failed, it really was beyond me (it takes both sides to accomplish something, after all). A father that threatens his son with a knife is no father at all. That happened many years ago, and it almost happened in February again, but this time, I didn’t give him a chance to get close to the knife rack in the kitchen, oh, no, not again. Hit him right in the chest and away from the kitchen door. Took one warning to dissuade him. I’m bigger and stronger than him, and most importantly, no longer afraid. I made it clear that if he tried to approach the kitchen again, I would not stop until he had lost consciousness. Told him to get out. Never felt such a curious combination of sorrow and pride, to be honest. But look, the reason I am putting this here is that you really cannot live in fear. Not everyone has the same circumstances and options, but if it’s possible for you, and you have someone in your life who is to you what my father was to me, do put a stop to it. Resort to threats of violence, if you really must, to guarantee your safety. If it’s not possible, then try to make it possible in the future, if that’s an option. Pave the way. For me, it was living by myself for years and cutting ties with my family, growing independent and growing as a person through my suicidal depression. For you, it’s gonna be whatever your context demands of you. Don’t give up, please. Don’t let a fucked up family or whatever ruin the future you that could be be happy. Don’t deny your potential happiness.

Well, after that, it was some pretty hard days. He may be a filthy son of a bitch and a piece of shit whose death will be good news when it happens, but he’s still the figure of a ‘father’, and well, it’s hard mourning that. I didn’t really care about the individual as much as the figure in itself, the role, if you will. I wanted a father, but shit, sometimes shit doesn’t pan out, and to try for any longer than I already had was inviting disaster. Half a decade is enough time. I’m 26 years old, turning 27 this year, I can’t spare any more of my time on a bastard that will keep hurting me, so I decided not to. I wish I could say “simple as that”, but well, it’s not ‘simple as that’, bwahaha. I’ll think about him nowadays and get really upset, really angry, really resentful. Sometimes it even ruins my day and I gotta step away from things a little to catch myself. I’ll think about all I endured and that I thought “I am such a bitch for not being able to endure this...”, because that’s how you think when you are on that Depress Express: It’s your fault somehow, and you’re just weak and immature. One of the biggest steps towards my recovery from depression was, and this is gonna sound weird, that I had been done dirty. You have to admit and acknowledge that it’s not you, it’s really others that did you fucking dirty, that you were treated unfairly, that your frustration and sadness are valid, not just you being dumb. I kinda hate the “you’re valid” joke because it rather makes a mockery of a really important word and concept here. Your utter sorrow is valid. I’m not saying you gotta blame things onto others entirely, just, you gotta learn to accept that some stuff really was out of your power, and that you aren’t dumb for thinking otherwise. This more or less was that for me, again: I realized I’d never really have a father. Sucks, but that’s it. I’m still coming to terms with it, but my life really has been richer since the end of February.

After disowning the ol’ fuckhead, I called my mom and my best friend, and, well, did something I think I owed myself: I came clean to them about my depression and my suicidal tendencies. Told them everything. I never had told this to anyone outside the internet, because honestly, I was afraid I was just gonna be shut down with “no you weren’t, you’re lying”, another of the many scars left by the living failure that never was my father (he’d never believe anything I said, verbally demeaning me and telling me to stop lying or exaggerating; if I ever was awkward with any of you by trying to prove or back up anything I said, even something small, well, here’s why I have that habit). It’s silly, now that I write it, but to my surprise, they believed me. My mother was pretty distraught, and apologized over and over (she too had part in the mess that was my childhood, albeit in a very minor was compared to everything else, and in her case, it really was well-meaning, plus, she’s apologized for it) for not noticing and for other things, whereas my best friend cried as I was telling him and, well, that fucked me up because here I had two people that cared so much for me that they would even show it this way. At no point they doubted me or told me I was being a bitch or exaggerated or lying, they took it and believed it without contest or question, and I really, legitimately didn’t expect that. It also was a huge, huge load off of my chest, because, well, I really just wanted to be able to fucking tell someone about that really hard period of my life in which I really just had myself. During those years, I had cut all contact with everyone. Friends, family, just everyone. When I did reestablish contact with people, I was not out of it all yet, but I was functional. Like, I had regained my sense of hygiene, I had sold my gun so I wouldn’t kill myself (I sold it because I loaded it and pointed it at my head twice with the intent to end it; thankfully, I never followed through, but I couldn’t risk it a third time), I had energy to get out of my room and do shit without having to juice myself up on alcohol, etc. They never did see me at my worst, and in both cases, they did want to know about what happened with me during those years in which I outright disappeared. It’s awkward to write about that here because this is entirely from he PoV of someone who, well, vanished for some years, haha. Well, whatever.

Point is, it was a very healing experience. I felt light as a feather afterwards. Not only did I manage to come clean about that, the people I told it to believed me. I didn’t know how much I needed that. With this, I am trying to say that, if you believe you need to have your suffering acknowledged, go and talk about it to whoever it is you want to share it with. A parent or a best friend, I don’t know, you know who your special someone is, and believe me, they want to know about this, it’s not a drag for them. Because they care about you. Mind you, there’s a difference between only exclusively talking about your pain and suffering 24/7 (no one deserves to be saddled with that shit) and making a special occasion in which you can tell them about this. Take a whole day to do so if you need to, see? Again, I didn’t know I needed this, I just ended up coming clean to them because I just needed to get it off my chest years after the fact, on top of the whole disowning thing, and it helped more than I could’ve imagined. This is my experience, at least.

I also told them of the whole knife situation with my father years ago, something I also really wanted to just stop keeping a secret, which helped a lot.

Mom’s also grown. She understands and respects my hermit tendencies now, and she made it explicit that she does, which has its worth in gold for me. She realizes she’s guilty for that one, and not to be a “Told You So” guy, but well, now that entire family is fragmented to shit. I don’t wanna get into details of that particular mess, but know that I have three half brothers, two step brothers, and one step sister, a countless amount of cousins, uncles, and aunts, and man, that side of the family is just a fucking mess. Just a hot pile of shit. My own mother is kinda a hermit now, ironically, haha. She realized just how rife with drama and deceit over money it all was, and has taken some distance. She also finally understands that her last ex-husband was a fucking idiot, and more importantly, that she was a fucking idiot for keeping around a freeloader and his three kids for so many years, paying it all out of her pocket and ruining her health. She’s told me I am free to visit and all, but well, I can’t just change overnight, nor do I want to change too much in that aspect: I never really was loved much in the family due to being my father’s kid, and after I had enough, I openly antagonized the family since I wasn’t gonna take that lying down. My mom and an aunt are the only exception, but aside from them, that entire burning ship can keep sinking, I want none of it. Hearing my mom say “yeah, you were right, this family fucking sucks lmao” felt really good.

I’m pleased with how far I’ve come, really, and that’s another important point here: You gotta be good to yourself, recognize your growth, and celebrate your victories. Because no one else will. You’re on your own, and if you don’t give yourself that love or kindness, well, who will? And you deserve it. You may not believe me right now, but trust me, you deserve it. You really, really deserve to be able to look at the mirror and not see a disappointment. You really fucking do, believe me. I’ve gone from suicide waiting to happen to working on getting my Magister’s degree. I’ve gone from getting shitfaced daily to having the charisma to influence others. It feels good as fuck, man! You also do this. Start little, aim for little goals, like “showering” or “eating” (if this sounds like a joke, it isn’t; I understand that even these things are immensely difficult when you are depressive, I’ve been there), and then think about how you’ve progressed. You went from having bad hygiene to showering daily. You went from spending all day in bed to getting some food in. Fucking good on you, I personally congratulate you. Today, it’s a shower and a sandwich. Tomorrow, it’s a job and a hobby. The day after, it’s the reflection in your mirror and how proud you are of the person in there and you don’t cry every day anymore. Shine, diamond. You fucking deserve it.

Ever since coming clean about these things and disowning that piece of shit, honestly, my life’s improved. My life’s been good the last three years! I’ve had fun. I’ve matured a lot, I’ve grown a lot. I still have much to learn, absolutely, but I am happy that I’ve learned what I have so far. I’m in that Cloud Nine Freight Train now, I dropped all the tickets to the Depress Express, ‘cause I don’t wanna be in that train anymore. Getting over depression is never as easy as “think positive :)” haha, man, I wish it was, but, but! Thinking positive is a good start. A small step, but a good one, because from thinking positive, you got to acting positive, and living positive, and so on until the depresso days are gone, in the past, and are a thing you write lengthy Read Mores about with the hope of helping others get through their own depressive periods.

You never stop growing. Years ago, I thought I had it all figured out: Just cut people off if they are a negative for you. I thought I had learned a lesson, see? Because I used to be extremely forgiving, and it bit me in the ass, so I figured, do the opposite! Well, that was dumb as shit, too. You can’t do that, either, because then you just burn bridges eternally for the littlest shit, when real maturity is being able to look for options first before taking drastic measures. Balance is important. Don’t go black or white. Correct answers usually lie in the grey or gray. Moderation and all that. I’ve reached out to people I felt I unjustly cut out, for instance. With some, we speak again. With others, we simply buried the hatchet and decided to go in different directions. Of course, there were people who deserved getting cut off, so I haven’t bothered talking to those, nor I think I will, but those, in a way, serve as a good reference point as to what is “tolerable” and “actually actively malicious”. This paragraph is in reference to those posts I see sometimes that are like “if someone is a negative influence, cut them OUT of your life!” I used to be that way and I regret it because I’ve come to realize, especially lately due to something that happened not long ago and the other person’s completely understandable reaction in front of the situation, that it’s something that has planted the seeds of doubt and paranoia in older friends of mine. I’ve no one to blame but myself for those seeds. Actions speak louder than words, so I want to show accordingly that I am not like that anymore. It’s true that negative aspects ought to be cut off of your life, but do understand that you need to have good judgment and not do it just like so. Talk to the other person, let them know that they are being toxic, and tell them you want this to change because you want to remain friends but you can’t with them like this. Of the people I’ve cut off completely years ago, as I said before, with some I talk again, with some, I don’t, and others that I feel truly wronged me, I didn’t even try to contact them again. Well, even thought there’s a group I didn’t even contact again, I still regret not having let them know I was parting ways with them or that they were being dicks to me. Were they wronging me? Absolutely. Do I want to forgive them? No. But that doesn’t mean just cutting them off with no prior notice or even a chance for contact was right in the slightest. I regret that. I don’t want to talk to them again, but I do wish I had talked to them prior, because it’s only human decency. Talk to the other person, please. It’s only fair to them and to yourself. If you must cut them off after, or if it’s talking to them specifically with the intention of cutting them off, talk to them nonetheless. Communicate. You never know what might happen, and even if you have to cut them off, at least you did it the right way.

That’s all I have to say. If you can take something from this, then mission complete. Especially so with anyone depressive and/or suicidal that might be reading this, I hope it helps you in some way. Look at me. You can get out of it. You can beat depression. You can enjoy life again, or start enjoying it at all. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it, and every great achievement start with the small steps. Take the steps. You’ll be glad you did. Remember that you always keep growing, so set objectives to keep an eye on this growth. For example, right now my current objectives are to be less of a hermit, to show my writing in public again, and to embark in creative endeavors with others. Objective three, if you notice, directly correlates to the first and second objectives. Set goals and work towards them, and make them realistic, bucko. No need to aim for a Nobel Prize right off the bat.

You have this shit in the bag. Best of luck!

#I'll delete this tomorrow #not out of like regret or anything #simply because it's just something to read and then act upon #don't want it lingering because I don't want YOU lingering #ya gotta move!

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gingerstarburns · 6 years

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I cope with my symptoms by projecting them on my favourite characters, so how about Bitty having dissociative episodes? Here goes.

(Disclaimer: I am giving him my exact brand of dissociative disorder and writing from personal experience. This is me coping. Feel free to expand tho.)

(Also this got....long. It’s basically a bullet fic.)

CW: mental illness, dissociation, description of major dissociative episodes and hallucinations, paranoia, amnesia, hospital/ER, mention of medications, bad coping mechanism (but also good coping mechanisms), kinda overprotective friends.

- So, the first time it happens is sophomore year. Jack is awake pretty late watching a documentary when somebody knocks on his door and when he opens there’s Bitty, looking bleary eyed and swaying on his feet

- “Bittle are you ok” “Yes I just...I needed another pillow. Because mine is breathing.” “It’s...breathing?” “Yes. And the walls. The walls are moving.”

- Jack thinks he maybe took something but Bitty says he didn’t. Still, he’s not exactly in the right state of mind so he checks his room and finds nothing

- Since Bitty doesn’t want to go back in his room (”The walls are gonna crush me while I sleep, I just know it”), Jack puts him on his bed, gives him some water and tells him to sleep, and decides to sleep on his beanbag, but first he watches some more documentaries so he can keep an eye on Bitty in the meanwhile

- It doesn’t work. Bitty is restless, keeps saying things are moving around, then gets up and starts pacing around the room. Jack leaves him be until he tries to open the window

- Bitty is adamant that he has to get to the reading room and Jack is like NOPE. He compromises by having him sit on the floor under the window so he can touch it with one hand (apparently that calms him) and goes to get Shitty

-Shitty also suspects there might be some substance involved, but there’s no trace of it and Bitty insists that he didn’t take anything and he seems sincere, he even starts crying. They get him to drink some more liquids, just in case.

- After almost two hours it hasn’t gotten better, so Shitty suggest they take him to the hospital, because giving him anything without knowing what’s happening could be risky

- At the ER they manage to make him lie down and give him some Valium, but he never lets go of Jack’s hand because he’s extremely scared. He keeps asking Jack why did he bring him to a “fake hospital” which is. Worrying.

- They make him talk with a psychiatrist who tells the boys that it’s most likely an isolated episode caused by stress. He tells them to take him back home and that the meds are gonna make him sleep anyway (in fact, he falls asleep during the journey and Jack has to carry him upstairs. He puts him in his own bed, but brings his pillow and blankets and sleeps on the floor.)

- The morning after Jack wakes before Bitty. He checks on him and then manages to leave the room without waking him and goes to make some breakfast (is Bitty gonna be hungry or nauseous after a night like that? Would granola bars be ok? Or fruit? He might be planning a small buffet just to give him options) (Spoiler: you just had a major dissociative episode and got taken to the ER where they gave you Valium? You’re gonna be hungry AND nauseous, and also extremely picky about food because you’re in a shit mood, good luck)

- After a while Bitty comes down. He looks like he’s having the worst hangover of his life. Jack asks him how he feels

- “Oh, good, I just...didn’t sleep well I guess. Had a weird dream.” “...you did?” “Yeah, it’s actually funny! I dreamed that you and Shitty took me to the hospital.”

- Jack realizes that. Bitty has a strange recollection of the night before.

- “Uhm, Bittle, we...we did take you to the hospital actually.” “Haha! Sure!” “I’m not joking.”

- Bitty stares at him with a blank expression for a full minute. Jack actually worries he might be hallucinating again until he speaks

- “Did I really say my pillow was breathing?” “Yeah.” “And that the hospital was fake??” “...yeah” “Oh my God”

- Jack worries Bitty might have a panic attack, but the truth is that he doesn’t even have the energy for that, so he just slides down a wall until he’s sitting on the floor

- Jack sits besides him and tries to reassure him. He tells him what the the doctor said, that it was most likely an isolated episode. Bitty nods and says nothing, but there are tears in his eyes

- Jack suggests he go see a therapist. He doesn’t insist because it feels like something really personal, but he got scared the night before and if it was really caused by stress then therapy should help

- Bitty promises he will go

- (Spoiler: he doesn’t)

- (Now he’s scared too and investigating this would mean admitting that there’s something wrong with him. He figures that ignoring the problem will either make it go away or kill him, so the odds are not bad)

- Anyway, Jack gets into the habit of saying good night to Bitty. Every night, before going to sleep, he pops into Bitty’s room, asks if everything is ok and says good night. Bitty doesn’t actually seem to mind, in fact he finds it funny

- (And maybe having the guy you have a crush on quietly knocking on your door every night and then coming into your room wearing pajamas to ask how your day was is kind of nice)

- (Shitty: why don’t you do this with me?? Jack: you already come into my room without permission five times a day)

- Anyway, it’s good for a while. Jack usually finds Bitty doing homework or watching his phone, sometimes he’s watching some show on Netflix, in which case Jack gets invited to stay

- Until one day Jack opens the door and Bitty, wobbly on his feet, is trying to put on a mismatched assortment of clothes

- “Bittle...why are you getting dressed?” “I’m going for a walk Mister” “...it’s late” “The stars are so nice and. And I need fresh air.” “...*sigh* Let me put on some clothes”

- So they take a walk around campus. Bitty is much more euphoric than the previous time, but he’s barely standing upright, so Jack has to hold him by his arm a lot. He doesn’t seem to be aware of this.

- Sometimes they have to stop because Bitty wants to touch something on the ground

- “Is there a particular reason why you’re caressing the grass?” “Soft” “Ok” “Try it Jack” “...alright”

- They spend five minutes kneeled down and caressing the grass. It is soft.

- When they get near the pond Bitty declares he wants to “feel the water”, so Jack steers them in the opposite direction. Bitty cries for a bit but then gets distracted by a cool rock.

- After a while they circle back to the Haus and at that point Bitty is tired enough to go to sleep. Like the previous time, Jack sleeps on the floor in Bitty’s room.

- The next morning Jack thinks Bitty is still sleeping, but then realizes he’s actually awake, wrapped up in the blanket. He’s not crying but it’s close.

- They talk. Bitty remembers parts of the night before, like it was a dream. He tries not to think about what could have happened if he got out before Jack found him.

- Jack tells him again that seeing a therapist could help, but this time he insists. He tells him that, if he wants, he can wait outside the office and he will buy him coffee afterwards

- (Because you really needed an excuse for that, right Jack?)

- So there’s therapy. Bitty also gets prescribed Valium, to take at the beginning of episodes, and works on grounding techniques.

- Obviously things don’t get immediately better. There are more episodes, but he learns to manage them. Now he can recognize the symptoms, so when they start he can get help. He tells the other guys in the Haus what’s happening so there’s always someone to take care of him. (But, let’s be real, it’s usually Jack) The Valium helps too, in that it makes him sleep the episode off. Usually in Jack’s room.

- He also gets some exams done because the disorder could have physiological causes, as in the concussion he had. When the results come back and there’s nothing wrong, it’s both a relief and a disappointment. Pinning it to a concrete, physical issue would have made things easier.

-Then, after a while, the episodes seem to stop. His therapist warns him that they could still come back. He tries not to worry about it but it’s something he’s always aware of.

- Sometimes, if he’s particularly tired, he asks Jack if something is actually moving or if he’s the only one seeing it. Jack always reassures him without making fun of him.

- Time jump! There’s graduation, Fourth of July, summer break...Bitty still sees the therapist but has no more episodes.

- Then one night, Jack is going to bed when he gets a message from Bitty: “hlp the tihngs r movig”

- He never drove to Samwell so fast

- The day after Bitty scolds him for coming, because Jack could have just called one of the guys in the Haus and told them what was happening

- After they come out to the team, they kinda start working on a system. The guys try to regularly check on him, both in the group chat and private messages

- It’s not the best thing. Sometimes Bitty wants to snap at them, especially after receiving six different variations of “are you ok” in the span of an hour, but at the same time it makes him feel safer

- So they usually catch his episodes at the beginning and they get managed

- (Except for that one time when he decided he was going to walk all the way to Providence and left his phone behind. He only made it to the other side of campus before Dex found him and brought him back.)

- That’s basically it. There is no definite happy ending, except for the fact that Bitty gets better at managing both the episodes and the stress causing them. He learns to face his anxieties, which means that his brain doesn’t need to dissociate to avoid them. He also learns to live with the fact that for all his life he will be at risk of having episodes, but they’re not the end of the world. He goes for long periods of time without having them, and if he realizes one is coming on he just goes to take his meds and gets ready for a day of basically sleeping. Jack is with him all through his recovery.

- The End

#check please #omgcp #eric bittle #jack zimmermann #zimbits #check please comic #mental illness #headcanon #au #mine

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soybeantree · 7 years

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be careful what you wish for - pt. 5

excerpt: “’Are you feeling alright, hyung?“ JB asked, eying her. Hyung? Why was he calling her, hyung? “Like I said we’re leaving in 10 minutes. You need to be ready.” He eyed her again before walking back out, closing the door behind him. What the hell was going on? She ran a hand threw her hair and nearly screamed. Her hair was gone! She jumped out of the bed and nearly tumbled over. Her body felt awkward, and she had to focus on moving her legs as she made her way to the bathroom. She flicked on the light, and this time she did scream. “What the-” She clamped a hand over her mouth. That wasn’t her voice. That wasn’t her face staring back at her. Hyung made sense now. JB only had one Hyung in Got7. Mark.”

pairing: erm…ofc/mark, ofc/jinyoung, markjin…kind of parts: o1 | o2 | o3 | o4 | epilogue genre/rating: LITERALCRACK! fluff. word count: 3.4k+ a/n: these wonderful markjin gifs are not ours. like before italics translated.

Mark’s body was still alive and uninjured for the most part. Jay massaged her back. There had been a lot of apologizing and bowing to got7’s manager. The man had some strong lungs and a lot to say. Jay didn’t think he would ever stop berating her/Mark for sneaking out on a concert day, but he had finally run out of things to say and told her to join the rest of the boys on stage. Walking out onto the stage, she nodded to got6 and received cold stares in return. She stopped a few feet from Jinyoung and turned her attention to the stage manager who was reviewing the schedule for the night. They went over the set list, when the boys would change, when they would have a break to interact with friends. All of that seemed doable. It was when they started talking about choreography and who needed to be where during each song that panic started to set in. Jay had seen the choreography for each dance during music videos or fancams, but watching it didn’t mean she could perform it. If she was lucky, Mark’s muscle memory would take over, but she was certain she had used up all her luck with her wish.

“Alright, let’s do a dry run through.” The stage manager announced. Jay could feel the blood draining from her face and settling in her stomach where it proceeded to make her nauseous. Got6 took their places for the first song. The music started and abruptly stopped. “Mark, is everything okay?” The stage manager asked. She hadn’t taken her place in the line up. All of the boys were staring at her, waiting. She shook her head and bowed an apology before taking Mark’s spot. Her face still had no blood in it, and she was certain she was either going to pass out or puke. The music started again, and Jay was determined to fake it. But, there was no need. Dry run through meant walk around the stage in the general area of where you need to be, sing into an imaginary microphone, and do ridiculous dance moves when the stage manager wasn’t looking. However at the end, Jay found herself worn out, not physically - Mark’s body was accustomed to the strain - but mentally. She plopped onto the floor and allowed herself to breath. There was no way she could survive the full concert. Forgetting the fact that she couldn’t perform, she didn’t have the mental stamina for it. Jinyoung walked over to her with a water bottle in hand, and she had never wanted to kiss him more. He handed her the bottle and settled down next to her. She didn’t mean to, but her head found its way onto his shoulder. He didn’t shrug her off. Jay smiled enjoying the simple pleasure. His shoulder was softer than she thought it would be, and while there was a hint of sweat his natural musk over-powered everything. She closed her eyes and tried to commit the scent to memory. “Why are you so different today?” Jay sighed but kept her eyes closed. “You wouldn��t believe me.” His shoulders stiffened, and she feared he would leave. He relaxed though, and she cracked an eye open to glance at his face. Her lungs constricted at the sight, and she wanted to smack herself. She kept forgetting that she was speaking for Mark. She lifted her head, so she could face him. “I mean… I don’t mean…” Not only did she not know what to say, she didn’t know how to say it in Korean. “You’re a good friend, Jinyoung, and I will tell you why I’m different today. But not now. Please don’t be mad. Tomorrow I will be better. I promise.” She hoped she wouldn’t have to break that promise. Scanning Jinyoung’s face, she tried to gauge his reaction, but his face was a statue, a beautiful statue carved from the purest marble. Up close she could see remnants of stubble and small blemishes, but they only enhanced his perfection. “You’re not Mark are you.” He finally spoke, and the words knocked the breath out of her. Her eyes widened, and she gaped at him. “You two, head to hair and make-up and then wardrobe.” JB’s blessed voice came to her rescue. Jinyoung started to respond, but Jay jumped up and raced off the stage before Jinyoung tried to stall for more time. She did not want to finish their conversation.

The car ride to the concert was silent. After a third trip to buy snacks and break her last bill, Mark had landed a coin in the wishing well. He had closed his eyes, but when he opened them he was still standing by Palseokdam Pond. They’d headed out after that to meet back up with Jay.

Dee sat on the opposite side of the car, staring out the window, and Mark found himself staring at her. He could tell she was thinking. Her eyes were glazed over, and she was chewing on her lip. She had done it a lot today. She was probably thinking of a way to get her friend back. The two definitely had a deep bond. He had experienced a bit of it being in Jay’s body. Dee sighed and rubbed her temple. Reaching over, Mark grabbed her free hand. She jerked, looked down at their entwined hands, then at him, then back at their hands. Mark cleared his throat. “You looked upset. I was just trying to make you feel better. Is that not how Jay’s comforts you?” Dee snorted and immediately covered her mouth, her cheeks flushing. Mark turned away to hide a smile and give Dee a chance to collect herself. “In answer to your question, no. Jay doesn’t know how to comfort people. She either gets really quiet or does something ridiculous to make the other person laugh. Often times it’s both.” Mark nodded. “Is it okay if I hold your hand?” Dee managed a nod. She told herself repeatedly that it was just Jay’s hand and there was no reason for her heart to race, but that didn’t stop it from racing. She had to think of a way to get her friend back in her body, or she was going to go crazy. The taxi pulled up to the stage, and Dee paid and thanked the man before climbing out. She came to stand next to Mark. “Do we just walk in?” “I think it would be best to go around to the back and have Jay let us in. There is less of a chance of someone stopping us.” Dee nodded, and the two headed around back. Pulling out her cell phone, Dee sent Jay a text asking her to come let them in. She hoped her friend wasn’t in the middle of something and that they wouldn’t be left waiting until the concert started. Just as she was beginning to fear they really would be left waiting, the door squeaked open, and Mark’s head popped out. Jay nodded for them to come in. They entered into a back part of the venue, well away from the chaos of concert prep. “Why are you two here?“ Jay’s voice was hoarse from having to suppress her scream. "Could you really not get it in, Mark?” The idol snorted while Dee looked aghast. “Jay!” “What? It was a prime opportunity. You really wanted me to pass it up?”

“I want you to take this situation seriously.” “Dee, if I were to take this situation seriously I would be curled up in a ball having a panic attack right now. Please let me have my small moments of goofiness because they are my only way of coping with the fact that my wish is about to ruin this poor boy’s career.” She gestured at her body then Mark’s then back to her body. “Whatever. Mark’s career. Because there is no way I can rap and perform the choreography. Everyone is gonna think Mark had a stroke. And not only that, but I am going to have to stand in front of thousands of screaming fans while I fail to perform.” Dee sighed in response. “Sorry, a lot of stress going on right now. So what happened with the coin and the wishing well?” Mark cleared his throat. “I made the wish and threw the coin in and here we are.” “So our plan didn’t work, and we have no other recourse?” Jay verified. Mark and Dee nodded. “Awesome. I’m going to have to perform then.” Mark nodded again. Jay took a deep breath, held it for a moment and then exhaled. She repeated the process as she tried to stamp down the ever present panic. “How did rehearsal go?” Mark asked, breaking the tension. “You know it wasn’t bad. I think I panicked more internally than was absolutely necessary, and I’m sorry if I ruined any of your internal organs.” “With what I eat I think I’ve already destroyed them.” He smiled. The words eased the tension in her shoulder, and brought a smile to her face. “Too bad, we can’t get any of that crappy food right now. I’m starving. Nobody has let me eat all day.” “That happens. Sometimes we just get too busy to eat.” “That’s a sad life.” Mark shrugged but said nothing. He was used to it. “Not to bring the stress and panic back up, but-” “Mark-Hyung.” Dee froze at the sound of Jackson’s voice. Mark took a step forward, only to remember that he wasn’t in his body. He tapped Jay on the shoulder, and she spun to face the idol to find that he was not alone. All of Got6 was heading towards them. She spared a glance towards Dee who on the outside looked pale but calm. On the inside however, she was freaking out. Jay had had the entire day to get used to the idol group. She was being bombarded with all of them at once. She told herself to remain calm even if she felt like vomiting, passing out, and/or screaming. “Is this, Dee?” Jinyoung asked, and Dee nearly fainted at the sound of her name on Jinyoung’s lips. “Yes, this is my friend Dee.” Jay gestured to her, and she managed a weak nod. “And this is her friend Jay.” Jay gestured to her body. “Hello, I’m Jay.” The amount of aeygo Mark put into his greeting snapped Dee out of her shock. She glanced at Jay and watched her friend swivel Mark’s head to face her body. Her eyes were wide, and she had pressed Mark’s lips into a thin line. Mark returned the look with one of pure innocence, and Dee knew this was not about to end well. Pulling from the deep depths of her soul, Jay forced Mark’s voice to falsetto. “Dee, Jay, this is JB-oppa, Jinyoung-oppa, Jackson-oppa, Youngjae-oppa, Bambam-” A hand slammed over her mouth. “Stop now.” Her voice hissed. She was proud of how threatening her voice could sound. “What’s going on?” Jinyoung voiced the rest of the boys’ confusion. “I don’t think Mark is feeling well.” Mark said. Having been muffled long enough, Jay slipped her tongue between her lips and slathered saliva on the hand over her mouth. Mark screamed and jumped away from her. “You just licked me!” “Yes, I did.” She stated matter of factly. “You’re disgusting.” “I’m disgusting?“ Jay paused a moment, trying to formulate a response in Korean but couldn’t so in English she said, "Actually, I can’t think of a response to that. It is disgusting, especially since I don’t know the last time you washed that hand. Please tell me you didn’t slide it over any handrails in the park or-” “I will choke you if you don’t shut up right now.” Dee ended her tirade. Jay glanced over at her friend and gave her a cheesy grin. Dee ignored her and faced Got6. Bowing slightly, she said, “I apologize for both of these idiots.” Then she turned to the two idiots. “Both of you follow me.” Jay glanced at Mark who glanced back at her before both followed after Dee. Jay made a quick apology to the other boys as she walked past them. Once in a secluded area, Dee rounded on the other two. “Are you two long lost siblings or something? Why do I feel like I have to corral you two? Could neither of you tell that I was freaking out?” “Of course I knew you were freaking out, and I know the best way to help you when you’re freaking out is to give you something else to focus on. Mission accomplished.” Jay patted Mark’s back and then her own back. “I’m done with you.“ "When you say done with me do you mean me/Mark, me/me, or Mark/me?” “All three of you.” “What have I done?” Mark protested. “I don’t think I can see you the same way after my friends been in your body and you’ve been in hers.” That was a lie. She still found Mark extremely attractive even if Jay was in his body, and she had enjoyed spending the day with him even if he was in Jay’s body. Forcing herself to focus on the task at hand, Dee turned to her friend and nearly choked. The look in her eyes, Mark’s eyes, pierced her to her core, and she was grateful her friend was staring at her like that and not Mark. “What?” She asked, but Jay just shook her head, relaxing Mark’s features. “Did I miss something?” Mark glanced back and forth between Dee and his body. Spending the day with Dee, he’d learned early on that the girls relied primarily on non-verbal conversations which had made it difficult for him. Watching one of their non-verbal conversations was fascinating but also irritated him. “Dee thinks she can get away with lying, but she can’t.” Jay smirked. Before Mark could delve deeper, Dee brought them back on track. “It’s two hours till the concert right?” Mark nodded. “Do you guys usually do anything during that time?” Mark shook his head. Dee’s eyes misted over as she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and began to chew on it. Mark smiled watching her. “I saw that.” Mark jumped at the sound of his voice. Jay was inches from him, boring into him with his eyes. He’d never thought of himself as an intimidating person, but Jay somehow brought it out. “Saw what?” “Jay has to go on stage.” Dee saved him. “There’s no way around it. We don’t know how to switch you two back, and I doubt we’ll find it in the next two hours. However, there is no way Jay can go on stage for you. My friend is all limbs when she dances. It’s ugly.” “She’s not wrong.” Jay nodded her affirmation. She had completely transformed his face. Gone was the intimidating glare. Replaced with resignation. “Which means that you need to spend the next two hours teaching her everything, so she won’t be as horrible as she would be if she went on right now.” “If we’re lucky, Mark’s muscle memory will kick in.” Jay offered. “Let’s hope it does.”

Screaming filled the auditorium along with flashing lights, countless signs, and countless fans. Jay peaked out at the crowd and choked on her panic. She couldn’t do this. There was no way she could do this. Everything Mark had taught her during past two hours was gone, completely. She couldn’t remember a word he’d said. All she knew was she was about to embarrass Mark in front of thousands of Ahgase. “It’s intimidating isn’t it?” Jinyoung came to stand next to her. “How do you do it?” The words slipped out, leaving behind mind numbing horror. Jay faced Jinyoung her mouth moving but no sound coming out as she floundered for an explanation. “It’s okay. I know you’re not Mark. I don’t know who you are or how this happened, but I know you’re not Mark. If I had to guess though, I’d say your one of the girls from earlier.” His voice was even and assured, and she knew there was no point arguing. “I’m Jay.” He nodded. “How did this happen?” “You know the wishing well in Palseokdam Pond? Stay away from it.” A chuckle slipped out, but Jinyoung was quick to school his expression. He didn’t say anything for a bit then, “This morning when Mark touched my butt, that was you?” He turned, pointing at her reddening face. “What? I don’t… I didn’t… That happened? Are you sure? I don’t remember… Is the concert starting? I think I’m ready. I’m not even nervous anymore. Thank you, Jinyoung.” She bowed and robot walked away. Laughter sounded behind her, full bodied laughter, the kind that came with eye crinkles and clutching sides. She wanted to die, and if she wasn’t in Mark’s bodied, she would have walked into the ocean. She hadn’t made it far when she was stopped by got5. It really was time to go on. They ushered her back towards Jinyoung, and she did her best to ignore him as she prepared to face the ahgase. What she had told Jinyoung was the truth. She wasn’t nervous anymore. Her embarrassment over road any nerves. She would gladly face the crowd naked than face Jinyoung. The intro video started, and the screaming increased. It was time to do this. JB led the charge onto the stage, and Jay followed close behind with the other boys. She stopped at her spot, ready to horribly fake it through the choreography. The music started, and she started to move but couldn’t. Black spots filled her line of sight. She closed her eyes and fell into oblivion. “Mark! Mark! Mark!” The call pierced the oblivion. Jay creaked her eyes open to find Dee kneeling over her. Emotions splayed across her face, chief amongst them worry. “Dee, why did you run out on stage? What are the ahgase going to think?” Now, that she thought about it the ahgase were extremely quiet. She glanced around to see that she was no longer on stage. They must have carried her off after she passed out. “Where are the rest of the boys? Why did they leave me with you?” She glanced back at Dee to find her friend staring at her. “Jay?” “Yes?” “Is it really?” “Wha-” Realization struck. Jay sat up glancing down at her body. There were her boobs and her hands and her legs. “It’s me! It’s me! I’m back in my body!” Tears streamed down her face, and she threw her arms around her friend as she sobbed into her shoulder. “I’m back in my body. The wishing worked.” She cried. Dee hugged her back fiercely. “You don’t know how happy I am to have you back.” At the same moment, the girls pulled apart to stare at each other. “Mark!” Dee pushed herself up and pulled Jay up. They rushed towards the stage. The ahgase were a low murmur, and they could see why. A crowd of people stood in the center of the stage. While they couldn’t see what they were crowding around, they had a pretty good guess. “They can’t ignore an idol passing out in the middle of a concert. They’ll probably take him to the hospital.” Dee said. “Which is the right thing to do, but I guarantee you he’s just fine, except for a minor headache. I feel so bad for Mark and all the ahgase. Why couldn’t we have swapped before I went on stage?” Jay growled. Mark was escorted off the stage. They tried to get his attention while he passed by them, but there were too many people and too much commotion. “What should we do now?” Dee asked. “It looks like got6 will finish the concert.” The rest of the boys were still on stage comforting the ahgase. “I think you should stay and watch. I’ve spent all day with these idiot in a body that wasn’t my own. I want to go and shower and sleep and eat but not in that order.” She took a few steps and stopped. “Wait, I’m not hungry. I want to eat so badly, but I’m not even hungry because this body has already eaten.” Tears started flowing again. “I’m so over this day!” Dee walked up behind her and hugged her. “You and me both. I don’t need to see the concert. I got to spend the entire day with Mark Tuan. Let’s just go back to the hotel.”

<- part 4 epilogue ->

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