#I hope I gave a solid intuition? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jukeboxstan · 1 year

Text

Now that I'm back from my accidental hiatus (looking at you, tumblr support team) I'm catching up on all my notifs from the last couple months! @missjoolee tagged me once upon a time in a "share 7 sentences of a wip" challenge and since I've been gone so long I've decided to share a little a lot more than that. This is from my hallway!juke series where I'd planned to do something on Luke and Julie's first fight but honestly writing it gave me anxiety and I kind of lost momentum.

Without further ado, an excerpt from unreleased hallway!juke...

Luke was pretty much ready to prop his head against the frame of his locker and slam the door repeatedly into his own face.

He’d had a shitty night.

This one had really snuck up on him, too. He’d been poised to stay up late writing a song he’d been toying with in his head, hoping to have a solid first draft to present to Julie for edits in the morning. His 10 pm pantry raid for a handful of Oreos completely derailed his plan, though, because he’d come out of the little cupboard with his mouth stuffed full only to find his mother behind him wringing her hands in a way that immediately set his teeth on edge.

“Wha'?” Crumbs flew out of his mouth at the garbled question, and Emily flinched.

“I really don’t think you should be up this late, Luke. Don’t you have a history test on Friday?”

Luke struggled to swallow against the cookies that had turned to sandpaper in his mouth.

He should’ve known better than to double stack two single Stuf into his mouth. Amateur move. Julie’s family always bought Double Stuf. Way easier to swallow.

Finally, he chewed the two cookies into submission and forced them down his throat. “I’m studying with Julie tomorrow after band practice. I’ve got it under control.”

Emily’s frown only deepened. “Aren’t you guys up to band practice four days a week? Are you sure you’ve got the capacity to study after two hours of music? You should really be putting your focus more on school than–”

It was the same lecture he’d gotten a million times before. “Mom, I know the speech. You really don’t need to give it again.”

And of course, that had been the moment that Luke’s dad arrived in the room. He’d caught up quickly to the discussion and set his own disapproving gaze on Luke. “Now, son, you listen to what your mom has to say. She’s got a few–”

Luke’s head fell back on his neck, gazing at the ceiling. He knew this speech, too. The “respect your elders” speech his dad always gave him whenever he disagreed with his mom’s “school before music” speech. It was an endless cycle of lecturing, and they’d never seemed to pay attention to what he had to say in response.

Mitch snapped at him after that for his snarky impatience, and the argument completely devolved into yelling so many insults back and forth at each other that Luke couldn’t even remember them all this morning.

But he definitely remembered the reaction he’d had when Julie had come to find him at his locker after he hadn’t come to hers.

He wasn’t really sure how to handle this whole “fighting with his parents” situation now that he was in a relationship. He knew he needed to tell Julie about it, that he’d want her to tell him if she’d been in a similar situation, but being intuitively aware of it and actually being able to tell her had been two entirely different things. He’d wanted to wait until he’d cooled off enough to talk about it rationally with Julie, and he definitely hadn’t been there yet when he’d gotten to school that morning.

He had no idea what to say to her. Or that he’d be able to say anything to her without having a total breakdown right there in front of their classmates.

The idiot teenage boy in him hadn’t even considered that she’d come seeking him out when he didn’t show up for their morning routine. Which was really stupid on his part, because of course she would. He would have, too.

And then she’d shown up and been so sweet and affectionate and Luke’s only defense against crying into his locker had been to lash out, to brush her off and hurt her feelings so that he wouldn’t have to acknowledge his right here in this crowded-ass hallway before the bell rang for his English class.

And, yeah, the hurt he’d seen on her face had him ready to smash his face in with his own locker door.

He needed to have a really good apology and explanation ready whenever he found the time to finally talk to her. It had been churning in his mind all day long, what words he could possibly use to explain everything to her and ask for her forgiveness for his stupid reaction when she’d found him that morning.

Lunch came around and he still hadn’t quite decided what to say, but his time for debate was up. He’d be damned if he let them sit apart for the whole lunch period, and he wasn’t going to just sit next to her and let her keep thinking he was mad at her when really he was frustrated with himself. Whatever came to his mind in the moment was just going to have to do, and he’d have to hope that she’d find it in her heart to forgive him for being a total idiot.

Alex and Reggie had been lingering around him all day for moral support, to listen to his frustrations and to offer advice when it seemed he wanted it. They’d stuck around with him to head to the lunchroom, too, so they could sit with Flynn while Luke talked it out with Julie and then hopefully the groups could recombine for the rest of the lunch period like they usually did.

Except, the trio didn’t quite make it to the school cafeteria.

Because down the hall from the cafeteria was Julie’s locker, where she was standing facing a full assault from Carrie Wilson, her once best friend. A crowd of 10 onlookers had already assembled to witness it.

It only took Luke a second to realize that they were talking about him.

“It really is just so terrible that the whole school had to see that, Julie. How embarrassing! It’s only been, like, a month, and he’s tired of you already.” He sees Carrie’s eyes narrow, and he knows she’s going in for the kill. “But such is the way of life, I suppose. Everyone leaves eventually. Especially if you’re Julie Molina.”

Luke’s vision blurred red. Smoke poured out of his ears.

How dare she.

He took a step forward, ready to jump in, when Julie’s voice rang out so strong and clear that it surprised him into a pause. “It must really suck being so insecure about yourself that you have to tear everyone else down all the time to make yourself feel better. I hope one day you learn to love yourself.”

Carrie’s face turned as pink as her designer-labeled dress ensemble. Whatever insults she’d been planning had obviously stuck in her throat, and Julie took the opportunity to turn away with her head held high.

Except when she pivoted, her pretty brown eyes immediately locked on his, flitted over to Alex and Reggie briefly, and then her whole face crumpled into tears.

Luke was familiar with the reaction.

Like when you fell off your bike and scraped your knee as a kid but you still put on a brave face in front of your friends, until you saw your parents and suddenly all you could do was cry and seek comfort from the people you loved the most.

And in Julie’s mind, Luke wasn’t someone who would be willing to comfort her right now.

Because he’d fucked up and misplaced his frustration with his parents on her this morning, and she had no idea that he’d just been seeking her out to apologize and beg her forgiveness.

And so he watched his girlfriend cry because she’d spotted the person she usually went to for protection, and she didn’t think he would actually want to be there for her. She must have felt completely alone, trapped.

He wasn’t surprised at all when she ran straight past him and disappeared around the corner.

#missed these two so much #poor jules #poor luke #this is so insanely late i am not even going to try to tag anyone in it #but its fine tumblr i totally forgive you #my writing #writing

14 notes · View notes

callmearcturus · 2 years

Note

So I've been OBSESSED with TES recently holy cow the brain rot is real you did so well on that fic I can't stop re-reading it. I was wondering if you could go over how you came up with how the classpects work in dreaming? It is so cool all the ways you gave each one a purpose and a job without feeling wasted.

So in hindsight, when I did my 2.0 revision of TES, I wish I made one more change and that's to kick classes to the curb and just have Aspects. There is already a variable power curve in the foundation of the story. (If it's not obvious, you go "godtier" in dreaming by making it to Limbo, this is why Karkat is so overpowered, he's one of the vanishingly few who's done it.)

Time was always pretty obvious with how it worked, and is very powerful in a dream where this stuff is already malleable. Dave had the ability to rewind a dream, but at godtier I think he would have had a one-shot total restart of the dream.

Space was supposed to be linked the veracity of dreaming, and how real things feel, which either makes a Space dream feel very fake or extremely real with no middle ground. I think at godtier a Space dreamer who live-manipulate the architecture of a dream, though it'd be incredibly risky.

Void is hinted at thru the story, as Roxy is able to 'delete' empty space between her and where she wants to go. It works like the natural gaps you have in a dream, the unimportant pieces of continuity stripped out. Also she can go invisible obviously. I think at godtier, Void dreamers can interact with the blank gaps in a constructed dream, get into the 'back stages' that weren't intended.

Blood is easy. Karkat is able to hear the heartbeats of every dreamer and upon godtier generate his own shades.

Breath dreamers I think can just fucking fly. I think a godtier Breath dreamer can make anything fly, like telekinesis.

Mind dreamers I think can hear a little whisper of the sleeping thoughts of the dreamers around them, which lets Terezi have the same "who's real" radar at Karkat. I think at godtier they can reverse it and project their thoughts into others, which would be a mindbogglingly useful skill for team cohesion.

Light I never had a solid idea on, I'm gonna be real. I almost want to take it fully literal and have Light players able to control with the dreamers see and make illusions, adjusting the stage if not the setting.

Hope would be the aspect of the subconscious imo. I think having their onset ability be a constant humming intuition that drops them information about the dream and the dreamers would be good, and it gets more and more powerful the further they get into the dream, apexing with them being godlike in Limbo.

Heart was always about having a closer relationship to the projections and the shades. Being able to bamf through them at will, building up to the idea of permanence. I know I had a thing jotted down that a godtiered Heart dreamer could change what level of the dream they are conscious in at will, which is very dangerous but also supremely useful.

Those are all the ones I had ideas for, personally. Hope they're interesting.

#the eurydice suite

40 notes · View notes

i-t-guy-in-the-sky · 1 year

Text

Technology makes the world go round. The human race’s reliance on their computers and gadgets is all consuming and total. John had lost count of the number of rescue calls he had received for situations that were a direct result of their dependence on their phones and tablets, either from walking while looking at their phone or blindly following a GPS into a dangerous place.

People kept their entire lives in the palm of their hand, they spoke to the friends through their phones, they stored their memories there in the form of pictures, videos and documentation, they kept their worldly wealth at their fingertips, with access 24/7, they had every piece of knowledge they could ever wish for available at the touch of a button. Separation anxiety from their gadget was a very real thing, that same feeling of having left the stove on or the door unlocked, like something was missing.

He could understand that, his whole life revolved around the most advanced computers and technology in existence, none of it mainstream or in use by the general populace. He loved working out the kinks in a new system, loved crafting the perfect programme for his needs. Everything was intuitive to him, it was attuned to his touch, responded to his every command feeling like an extension of his own mind. His craft had always felt connected to him in some way, almost like it was a living, breathing, thinking entity and now, with the inclusion of EOS, it felt even more like it had a soul of its own.

This was his world, this was where he felt comfortable, in control, where he had the surety that he knew whatever the situation, whatever the issue, he could fix it. He was the voice in the sky, the one that answered the desperate calls made from the same technology and he made them a promise, his solemn vow, that he would send help, that they would be OK. And they would, because he was there, and so were his brothers, with their own technology, their highly advanced machines that existed purely to save.

He was the IT guy in the sky, the computer genius that could hack anything and anyone, that could decode machinery from an ancient civilization with his modern means, who could tap into a fix the onboard system of a plane without even having to think about it. Hell, he was the one that had accidentally created the world's most intelligent and self sufficient AI with old university game code. Which was why people found his love of books so strange.

Books were a world of their own, something tangible he could hold in his hand as opposed to something insubstantial that floated in midair, made up of nothing but lights and projections and computer chips. He liked the solid feel of them in his hands, liked the way the paper crinkled under his fingers as he turned each page. He liked the way the letters sat on the muted cream pages and the fact that he could read for hours without the glare of a screen.

Computers didn’t smell, they didn’t have that evocative scent blend of paper, ink and time that invoked images of bookshops and libraries, storage places of knowledge and old worlds that no longer existed, fantastical worlds that had been conjured up entirely from the mind of the author, weaving tales that could hold his interest more completely than any movie or computer game ever could. Books transported you into their pages, sucking you into a world that could be comforting, friendly, scary or just plain disturbing. They could contain love, horror, pain, sadness or hope all in one story.

Books never went wrong, they never let you down. They didn't run out of battery or break if you dropped them, they never picked up a virus or gave a strange access into your life. Books were safe, books were predictable, books were order in the chaos that the world often held.

Books were something that all the Tracy boys had a love and appreciation for, it had been drummed into them from a young age by their parents and grandparents. He remembered storytime on the couch, squashed in the middle of a pile of brothers, sharp limbs sticking into uncomfortable places but going unnoticed as their mother’s soft voice told them stories of magical creatures and selfless heroes, or their fathers deep baritone read out tales of far off countries, action and adventure, giving them a taste of how their lives would eventually become.

Whether he was on earth or in the sky he would always have one close to hand. In what little down time they had he’d most likely be found with a book in his hand. Alone on Five he’d relax in his bunk and read of exotic countries and far off worlds, in the lounge on the island he’d be camped out on a couch with a mug of coffee and a book, if the others were splashing around in the pool or sunbathing he’d be tucked under a sunshade with a book in his lap.

He loved nothing more than stretching out on his soft bed in his peaceful bedroom, feeling the press of gravity urging his sometimes aching body into the comforting embrace of mattress and blankets that formed his nest. He’d pick a book from one of their overly stuffed bookshelves, probably one that he’d read a million times before, lying with the window open to the night, to feel the ocean breeze blowing softly across any skin he’d left exposed. His hyperactive mind would finally calm, lulled by the rhythm of eyes moving across words that he knew by heart but could still capture his full attention. Often Selene would curl up beside him, either with a book of her own or just to sleep, her mere presence a soothing balm to his senses.

Books, and the stories they contained, were a solid presence that he’d never give up for all the technology in the world. Computers were never foolproof, they were never as safe as they claimed, he knew that from experience. You could take a book anywhere and it would always do exactly what you wanted it to, nothing more, nothing less. And in this world of unpredictable people, situations and unpleasantness, predictability was something that was worth its weight in gold.

Books and John Tracy might seem like complete opposites, something that really shouldn’t work but he’d found that in all honesty, they were a match made in heaven.

#john tracy #found this in my files #not sure if i ever posted it #possible reblog?#books #books and reading #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds 2015 #thunderbirdsarego #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #astronaut

16 notes · View notes

serenityreikiclinic · 1 year

Text

Ready For BIG Changes?

Hey there! Are you ready for big changes?

The upcoming eclipse is a significant cosmic event that holds great potential for positive change and growth, personally and globally. However, to make the most of this powerful alignment, it's important to have a clear understanding of the energy and what it entails.

With that in mind, I wanted to share some advice to help you get the most out of this event:

Do...

Take time to reflect on your goals and aspirations. Use this energy to manifest what you truly desire. *To do this you MUST clear those blocks that are holding you back!

Embrace the changes that come your way. This eclipse is a time for transformation and evolution. (Clear the fear)

Grab those opportunities! Be ready for unbelievable opportunities and good fortune!

Focus on self-care and healing. The energy of this eclipse can help you release old patterns and limiting beliefs.

Don't...

Resist the changes that come your way. Embrace the unknown and trust the journey.

Hold onto old patterns or limiting beliefs. Now is the time to let go of what no longer serves you.

Ignore your intuition. The energy of this eclipse can help you tap into your inner wisdom and guidance.

Let this cycle start without a plan. You need a solid plan in place to begin this new chapter of your life.

To assist you in making the most of this powerful energy, we're excited to offer you our Eclipse Clearings + Personal Live Session package. This offer includes a live personal clearing and a one-to-one Energy Healing Session. This exclusive package is valued at over USD 400, but for a limited time, it's available to you for only $147. Plus, you can pay in installments of $27 a month, so there are no excuses to miss out on this incredible opportunity. (I also attached a PDF checklist to this email for even more info. on the eclipse.)

While the eclipse will take place on Wed, Apr 19th, 8:34 PM - Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 1:59 AM Its energy will last 6 months! Imagine how different your life could look in a few months after removing old outdated beliefs? With this serious energy at work, you can overcome personal hurdles, welcome in abundance, accept love, and put an end to cycles of personal suffering. It's time to release the past and move forward with excitement.

Learn more here: https://sarahparkerthomas.podia.com/eclipse-clearings-personal-live-session

It's important to note that the energy of this eclipse will last for several months, so it's crucial to take advantage of this offer and clear what's holding you back. This is a time of great opportunity, and we don't want you to miss out on the abundance that's waiting for you.

Book your 75-minute session + (includes the energy clearing) now to take advantage of this special offer. You'll have 90 days to book your session, and it will be held via WhatsApp. Don't wait – this is a limited-time-only deal, and no coupon is needed today.

I hope this information has helped you understand the energy of the upcoming eclipse and how this offer can assist you in making the most of it. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Wishing you all the best during this powerful time of transformation.

Reiki Blessings,

Sarah

Sarah Parker Thomas, RRMS Serenity Reiki Clinic and Bliss Soul-2-Soul Coaching

What people say after an energy session:

"I can't believe how good I feel!" Mark S -Austin, TX

"I tried everything for my anxiety, and nothing worked until I booked a session with Sarah. She helped me get it under control. Now I rarely feel anxious. She gave me back my life." Anderson J. - Los Angeles, CA

"Sarah has helped me so much! Her grasp of energy medicine is unbelievable. She helped me when doctors couldn't." Ann W. Dallas, TX

Read more testimonials here: https://www.serenityreikiclinic.com/testimonials.html--

To learn more about the Reiki Clinic: https://sleek.bio/serenityreikiclinic

#solar eclipse #news #best deals #energy cleansing #energy blocks #energy medicine

2 notes · View notes

thiefking · 1 year

Note

Re: your post about tone tags - I feel like people who don't have these kinds of communication issues can also get side tracked by them as a be-all end-all solution, even when tone isn't the cause.

One of my problems is not being able to read "courtesy sugarcoating", as an example, when someone says "this is maybe bothering me a tiny bit, but I don't know" when what they think is "this is bothering me a lot, and I would really like you to do something about it, but saying it like that feels too rough". Similarly they treat my words as the product of sugarcoating, and think I'm always angrier or more upset than I am.

A person might see and start to use tone tags to fix that, and think they should have worked, because they don't really understand the nuances of different kinds of missed social cues. I hope I'm making sense, sorry, I'm very tired.

all made sense to me boss! and you're completely right, the advent of /hj (half-joking) is a good example of how— and i do not mean to imply only neurotypicals/people with no issue reading tone use this tag and (i have to keep stressing this because tumblr is tumblr) this is not a moral judgment, but— the system can be used as just, like, a secondary way to not say what you mean while thinking or pretending that you ARE saying what you mean. the term half-joking means a million things depending on who you ask. i classify that very post as being one made in half-jest, but what does that mean to someone else? to me, that means i wrote it in a humorous tone and i was silly on purpose, in particular where i suggest that you tack on a whole bunch of parentheticals at once including (scary), but my thought behind it was genuine. but for someone else, they'd just call that a regular joke, and to them half-joking means something else entirely. even the definition i just gave for my interpretation isn't solid: that's just what it means to Me, in that specific example. but people who use /hj generally seem to assume the other person will know what THEIR version is, intuitively, even if they themselves have issues with reading tone!

speaking in general, people will always be facetious, hyperbolic, and sarcastic, and they will always sugarcoat, and they will always lie on purpose sometimes, and they will always lie accidentally, whether by omission or by misusing a word they didn't know the real definition of or any other number of ways. tone indicators, whether they be tone tags or parentheses, will not fix this, i'm definitely not gonna claim that either of them would, and i don't think doing any of that is inherently a bad thing. humans are just gonna do that kinda thing, even autistic people. however, i do wholeheartedly believe typing out entire words, rather than truncating them to 3 or less letters when there are only 26 letters and nearly 200k words in active use in the english language, is a better idea to get things across and have people actually understand each other, you know? and with any luck, typing it out entirely might encourage someone to be a little more forthcoming with what they mean because they can explain the reasons they're bothered by something. even if they're still sugarcoating, if you have a reason for it, that's something you can address and ask about, and with any luck resolve before it gets out of hand

#ask #anon #i'm not even sure if *i* made all that much sense here to be honest #brainpower is lowering or maybe i'm just hungry

4 notes · View notes

godismommy333 · 1 year

Text

Definitions

I’m pretty solid with definitions. I will look them up afterward if I feel shaky to double check that I got it right.

The word rebuke started to come into my headspace a few months ago, and so I rolled with it. I would rebuke anything that felt icky. As I've made clear I am not a religious person. I do not associate with any particular religion or deity. I did find it interesting that this word was coming up for me though and continued on with my intuitive journey. As I edit my work, I felt compelled to find a different word to replace it. And in my search I found that the definition I had placed with rebuke is indeed not its given definition. The shame compounds me.

re·buke

verb

express sharp disapproval or criticism of (someone) because of their behavior or actions.

I would utilize this word when something or someone icky would come up for me, like the disapproval of my gender, my identity, or my story. However, this is not the definition that I had in my mind for the word. And honestly I kind of love that. Not for the consequences it gave me. Possible harm and fear done onto others. But reframing the fear within myself. It’s obviously a fear-based word a part of myself knows from somewhere and wanted reframed. I love that such a scary word, I found a simpler, kinder role for. Because in finding my truth, I know me, and I know that I never intend evil or hatred on anyone. I hope to make a living amends to anyone I harmed with the usage of the word by continuing to identify my authenticity and live in it. And anything I did “rebuke” were usually icky feelings coming up from some unknown source.

I never ever intend to express sharp disapproval OR criticism on anybody or anything.

I can’t even believe that IS the definition...

I can’t find the word I want to replace it with.... the only thing that describes the feeling of how I thought the word was defined; what I thought rebuked meant is this:

"I'm rubber, you're glue; whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you"

a school-ground retort used by children to suggest that one's insults are being ignored by the intended recipient of the insult and counter that the insult rather refers to the insulter.

is there a singular word that expresses....this ^

0 notes

laurelswritingblog · 2 years

Text

Day 7 Reflection

I’m so proud to say that I took the leap and downloaded Zotero after my discussion group made a great case for it! I gave myself some time to try to figure it out, and I was able to get oriented with it and get my chapter 2 sources all set up within an hour or so! I had anticipated a much steeper learning curve, so I’m really impressed with how intuitive and easy to use it is. I’m already saving myself so much time with citations as I continue writing my chapter.

I was also able to get a solid paragraph written. If I had been a bit more focused, I know I could write more, but I went into today’s writing session knowing that I would be battling fatigue, so I didn’t plan to have a lot of output today. I’m glad that I engaged with my work at all rather than writing off today’s work altogether. This writing camp has already radically shifted my habits in ways that I hope continue for the rest of the summer and beyond. Not every day is going to be spectacular, and that’s okay!

0 notes

waterbridge2 · 2 years

Text

Why Do Manufacturers Favor Instagram Over Other Social Media Platforms?

Typically, the vendor or marketer will give a special discount code just for the influencer’s audience to find a way to track how efficient the campaign is. The last thing I want to add is that you must track your influencer ROI with particular coupon codes. That method you'll have the ability to monitor the effectiveness of any given marketing campaign from any given influencer. What makes Instagram a fantastic platform is that many are finding that they can implement influencer advertising to help them attain a wider audience. As the only locations to speak about your self, your Instagram bio and description are important. In addition to your website URL, you must embody a slogan and temporary elevator pitch, as well as your most related hashtags. Don’t shy away from utilizing your brand as your profile photograph, either. What was once a easy photo-sharing app has reworked into an immersive social experience that enables users to explore a company’s visible id. When you switch to a Business Account, you do acquire entry to some limited analytics, corresponding to follower growth, impressions, reach, and engagement. Access these by clicking on the View Insights option under your uploaded images and videos. Double Your App Conversion Price With App A If your test took 5 months to run—and wasn’t a winner—you wasted a lot of money. Of course, you have to run your exams for no less than two weeks anyway. (My private minimal is four weeks, since two weeks is usually inaccurate.) Then, apply the seven-day rule if you want to prolong it. In any case, you’ll want to enhance your speculation and run a brand new take a look at. Any seasoned tester has had plenty of experiences in which a “winning” variation at 80% confidence finally ends up losing badly after getting pushed reside to a web site and uncovered to extra traffic. The management situation outperformed variant B by 7% and carried out equally with variant C. Also, few customers interacted with the new TOC module or the CTA inside the module. You can even try conducting an A/B take a look at on one other feature of the same internet web page or e mail you just did a check on. Prior to working your check you should establish what targets you hope to attain. Meeting your client’s or stakeholder’s expectations is more likely if you make clear upfront what you anticipate the result to be. If your metrics fall brief, the flaws within the marketing method will be more apparent and subsequently simpler to repair. Naturally, as you modify and take a look at design elements, pictures, and even the template or structure, it’s crucial to ensure accurate rendering occur across well-liked cellular devices. Your A/B checks must replicate the alterations you've deliberately selected, not some glitch in your mobile display. Versions (e.g., your control and variations) you need to take a look at and then cut up the obtainable traffic that your web page currently receives evenly among them. It may not appear intuitive, however adjustments in the greatest way you gather data out of your prospects can change the way they reply. Changing one field can enhance or lower the proportion of sign-ups by 5%-25%. This might embody colours, factor placement, general type and themes, ease of flow , and kinds of engagement parts. Well, the identical factor occurs with your web site guests. Every line of copy ought to encourage the customer to proceed reading it or take the Call-to-action you assigned. Consumer Sales Promotion Strategies But now, each offer you make, marketing marketing campaign you launch and promotional low cost you run might be accessible, recalled and distributed to clients. Unless you have a solid gross sales promotion technique that builds in a data-driven method to segmentation and personalization. Sales increase as a end result of providing discounts on new products and even giving price-off offers . It gave away free beers to its Twitter followers based on a contest the place followers needed to tag someone who they felt deserved a beer through the pandemic. The distinction being that coupons are given in a piece of paper or in a digital type. This provides the prospects a way of exclusivity and drives them to your store or web site. Fear of missing out or FOMO, is an attention-grabbing psychological phenomenon the place your customers at all times want to be in the know. According to a current survey, over 40 percent of social media users have encountered discount codes on Instagram. As promotional exercise follows client trends, cellular shoppers can also choose from a wide range of coupon apps. In 2019, gross sales and promotions have been among the many hottest kinds of in-app notifications amongst U.S. smartphone customers and the primary purpose for downloading retail apps. In addition, they fail to offer detailed tracking that comes with digital incentives, unless they are generated utilizing a digital system behind. You can encourage your clients to add extra objects to their basket to get the desired discount or free delivery. The greatest approach to do it's to show how much is missing to a selected deal straight within the basket. 6 Steps To Conduct Deep Fb Analysis However, if you’re a enterprise seeking to establish your presence on the social network, you’ll need to create a Page as a substitute. Below you’ll find every thing you should know to become a grasp Facebook marketer. No matter if your corporation has had a Page for years or you’re just getting started, this complete guide is for you. To get began, let’s have a look at the main People reviews out there in Insights to see how they differ and what they give you. You’ll wish to click on the Insights option above the quilt photo for a page you handle to view this information. So if you increase out your window, the primary merchandise there above the marketing campaign plan and artistic hub is you will find audience insights. If you have a decent amount of curiosity in your web page, this is a good place to go first. We’ve additionally proven you how to use advanced options to grasp your audience on a deeper level. With the following tips, you can hone your campaigns, reduce both your ad spend and social media budget, and in the end boost your ROI. It helps you measure the efficiency of your page and do many other issues. Steps To Customized & Pushed B2b Buyer Experience Again, this is a excessive value content piece which is great for lead era. Research stories and new data in your trade can even work for the notice stage though, as they're typically picked-up by the media or business press. With this sort of sponsored content material, a brand sponsors an influencer in its business to publish posts or videos related to the company on social media. Native advertising refers to ads which would possibly be primarily content-led and featured on a platform alongside different, non-paid content material. BuzzFeed-sponsored posts are a good instance, but many individuals additionally contemplate social media advertising to be "native" — Facebook advertising and Instagram advertising, for example. Manually drawing applicable intelligence from this data onslaught is inconceivable. Start with your small business targets and then give you campaign ideas that can help you in attaining these enterprise objectives. For a foolproof advertising strategy, it is essential to understand your target market and have a content strategy for every contact point. On the face of it, the worth of marketing automation is in time savings and business efficiencies. But if your interest is primarily in slicing your employees overheads, you’re lacking the primary opportunity. B2B consumers now anticipate a a lot more sophisticated, related and responsive digital-first, self-led expertise. What's Display Advertising? A Display Advertisements A Hundred And One According to Google, these ads offer advertisers twice the peak of their commonplace "cellular leaderboard". To save time in helping you get started, and once more, as a end result of we're a Google Premier Partner, we pulled the listing below of the show advert dimensions that Google says work finest. If you’re on the lookout for a complete list, Single Grain put together this awesome record of other ad networks to take a look at. Our associates at Wordstream put together a complete listing that we’ve put below of what you'll be able to anticipate to pay based in your industry’s average CPC in Google Display Network. The average value per click of an advert on the Google Display Network is under $0.fifty eight. The trick is to evoke totally different emotions similar to curiosity, urgency, or pleasure with each variant. This way, you’ll get the essence of what works greatest in your viewers. Due to space limitations, you’ll have to stick to at least one robust value proposition and put it together in fewer phrases. Avoid linking to your house web page as this is usually not particular enough. Instead, your audience ought to land on a page where they can e-book services or purchase the products advertised. Our brains are geared towards taking in visual data first before we learn text. Ad content material with attention-grabbing visuals is more engaging and will increase the probability of a click. Make positive your show ads additionally tie in with your overall brand identity to provide your prospects a consistent expertise that results in brand recognition. Display targeting lets you serve ads based mostly on what customers enter in search engines like google and yahoo, and subject targeting includes selecting websites that fit within a certain subject. What Is Seo Seo? For novices, though, the thought of studying about web optimization could be daunting. If these questions are operating via your thoughts right now, pause here and bookmark this beginner’s information for additional learning. As a newbie, it's also necessary to avoid crucial mistakes in e-mail advertising methods. We can tell you how – Common Email Mistakes and How to Avoid Making These in Your Email Campaigns. But the emphasis here must be on qualified traffic, or guests who are more probably to make some sort of conversion after they arrive. One of the most obvious benefits of an e mail campaign is that it might possibly drive site visitors to your website. With a monthly search engine optimization plan like the one above, plus a tracking doc like a search insights report, you'll be able to build out and execute on an efficient SEO technique. You also can determine and leverage low-hanging-fruit matters to discuss related to your trade. However, it’s most likely best to grasp the fundamentals of SEO (if it’s your main strategy) before getting slowed down in learning one other type of advertising. First, it’s necessary to know that not all backlinks are created equal. Examples of high web page rank sites embrace Wikipedia, the BBC, The New York Times, Mashable, and so forth. 8 Confirmed Inside Marketing Strategies You may even incorporate an internet component or use one thing like top-of-the-line QR code generatorsto your offline ad to encourage individuals to go to your web site or obtain your app. Paid social media advertising is amongst the least expensive kinds of advertising obtainable in the traditional and digital market. seo -to-play mannequin for these channels makes them versatile sufficient to focus on only the people your business wants to draw, subsequently you solely should pay for those you have the ability to reach. On Instagram, your ad campaign runs during the period of time you pay for. Since Facebook owns Instagram, you’ll be operating advertisements concurrently on both platforms and they're all managed on Facebook. Well, Twitter reports having 192 million monetizable daily customers , and when using their Ad software program, you can target your ad to a selected demographic. Get began right now and show your opponents what actual social media promoting appears like. The space of marketing planning includes forging a plan for a agency's advertising activities. A advertising plan can also pertain to a specific product, as nicely as to a corporation's overall marketing technique. An group's advertising planning process is derived from its overall business strategy. Pay-per-click advertising, branded or influencer-generated content, and display ads are all examples of paid social media. You’ll know a paid social media advertisement when you see one primarily based on the “sponsored” or “promoted” tag near the submit. This sort of paid media is likely the most acknowledged, as pop-ups, wallpaper advertisements, banners, and video adverts can be found on almost each net web page on the web. They are normally pretty affordable on a cost-per-click basis and are an excellent method to increase brand awareness and recognition. The problem with show ads is that as a end result of they're so prolific, customers tend to ignore them or even block them completely.

#seo

1 note · View note

savrenim · 5 years

Note

Hi! I'm kinda having a hard time understanding the Green-Ostrogadski theorem/Divergence theorem and I'm wondering if you can help?

OH this is a lot of fun and by fun I mean an absolute nightmare, and it gets very long because trying to explain the bits of how to calculate it and then what the calculation of the parts means and how it fits in with physics/a geometric picture and then math as a whole, so let’s go under the cut.

So we’re going to go with this

as our formulation, same as Wikipedia does, and actually talk about what every bit of that specifically means and how to visualize it; “memorize it and then just do it” usually cuts it for getting through problems but knowing what it means helps with not writing the wrong thing down before taking a crack at the equation.

Let’s start with what is F? it’s some kind of vector field, it needs to be reasonably smooth enough so that you can differentiate it. It’s going to come, in the 3-D case, with an x (or maybe called i), y (j), and z (k) component: ie F(x,y,z)=f(x,y,z)x+g(x,y,z)y+h(x,y,z)z. The nabla/upside-down triangle is the divergence, which means you apply the x derivative to the x part, y derivative to the y part, and z derivative to the z part, and then add them together. So

$\nabla\cdot F(x,y,z)=d/dx f(x,y,z)+d/dy g(x,y,z)+d/dz h(x,y,z)$

(they are partial derivatives, so you hold all other variables as fixed as you take the derivative in the one you want to take, as ya do) and now you have something that F(x,y,z) used to be a function that produced a vector and now it’s something that produces a scalar and you can just integrate that sum like you’d normally integrate something in 3D. Usually this is stupidly easy to calculate and then it’s going to be pretty easy to integrate back.

V and dV are the boundary of the object and the volume (so probably given in dxdydz and then boundary values, or get getting told “it’s a ball” and then you probably want to do spherical coordinates so r^2sin(theta)dr dtheta dphi). But that’s the space you’re doing the integral over. That one should be provided pretty easily in terms of equations/bounds of x, y, and z. Volume integrals are easy to do, they’re just three integrals in three different variables. It becomes a surface integral over the boundary of the surface when you switch to the right side of the equation. dS can be pretty annoying to calculate if you’re not given it or if it’s not for something super simple like a sphere/square/rectangle and setting up the integral involves taking partial differentials of the equation of the surface and/or parametrizing and first of all you’re usually going from the surface integral to the volume integral and secondly I’m assuming you know how to do that because it takes a bit long to explain. (this is a fairly straightforward page that talks about it/ ask me about surface integrals if you want me to try to get into it?) But yeah, that’s usually why the divergence theorem is used to go from surface integral to volume integral because the volume integral is easier to do, UNLESS you’re using the 2D version in which case it’s *so* much easier to do a path integral because that’s just along a path, but then tbh you’re using Green’s Theorem and there’s a picture at the very bottom about infinitesimal squares canceling each other out that is just the picture of what’s happening. But we’re in 3D so we’re looking at surfaces and volumes.

So now we’ve got the left side and the concept of “so we’re going from volume to surface or surface to volume” and the question becomes why? The punch line of what is happening is “for well-behaved functions, everything that is happening inside the shape can be determined by what is happening on the boundary of the shape.” This is actually a really common theme in mathematics and it doesn’t come from nowhere – so many differential equations that people try to solve, like for example the heat equation, you are given boundary conditions only and those determine the behavior of the function over the entire domain. In fact, you’re usually given boundary conditions and the derivative of the function in the space and asked to come up with the function, that’s the setup of pretty much every initial value problem, and you can just….do that. Because when functions have derivatives they Behave In Predictable Ways. The entire field of ODE’s/PDE’s is about Doing That. But the Divergence Theorem in particular has a cool physics interpretation that specifically makes it easier to picture.

Alright let’s move on, what’s that n? The n is the unit normal vector to the surface. It’s pretty much the right angle going out, Wolfram Alpha has a really good picture:

We want it normalized (ie length 1) so that it doesn’t contribute any “noise” to the overall integral, after all, what we care about is the field F, and this is just defining a surface so you make sure that you’re looking at what happens with F over the right shape. The way that you calculate the normal vector is if you can write the surface as an equation s(x,y)=z, then N=[ds/dx, ds/dy, -1], and n=N/|N|. (and if you haven’t done vectors in a while, length of N=|N|=sqrt(N-dot-N)=sqrt((ds/dx)^2+(ds/dy)^2+1).) This is going to be useful because:

The dot product! The dot product is what answers the question of “how much are these two vectors going in the same direction”. [a, b, c] (dot) [x, y, z]=ax+by+cz – and note that this is just a number, you don’t have to care about components of vectors in a direction. It’s a scalar. Which is great because dotting [nabla] with F also gave us something scalar instead of vector-valued, so you can tell that the equation makes sense.

We care about F dotted with the normal vector instead of just F integrated over the whole boundary because the only thing that actually matters at the boundary is what is happening in the same or opposite direction/if stuff is going in or out, not stuff going sideways. So by taking F[dot]n you’re just calculating what’s flowing in or out of the surface. Because n points out, it’ll be positive if F is also flowing out and negative if F is pointing in.

Now that we know how to do absolutely everything on either side,

What does this mean re the physical picture? Well, it’s pretty much a conservation law. The easiest way to think of it is with fluid flow. Take your favorite fluid, water maybe, and picture it flowing a whole bunch. Make it as weird and turbulent as you want. Add sources (so throw some hoses in there) or sinks (so throw some drains in there.) The vector field F is the velocity – so speed and direction – of the fluid at any point. The divergence of F basically gives the strength of what’s going on (that’s just Newtonian, force = mass* acceleration, and acceleration is the derivative of velocity, which gives you an intuition about why the derivative of F matters). Your volume is any shape that you drop into the fluid. The Divergence Theorem basically says that it doesn’t matter what weird stuff or eddies or currents or sources or sinks are happening inside your shape, the only thing that matters to characterize what is going on is watching the velocity of the fluid on the boundary of your shape and that tells you everything you need to know. Which kind of makes sense, the stuff flowing in or out should tell you how much is entering or leaving from the inside. Or what direction and how fast it’s all going on the inside. And if it’s doing any weird stuff in forward and backward directions, that bit cancels out, there’s a net flow conservation. Your liquid has to move in a way that makes sense and the places where it appears or disappears are going to be accounted for by how much is going in or out of the boundary. You can also do the same thing with heat flow or electric current, but fluid is the easiest way to picture it. The divergence theorem is stating “fluid can’t appear or disappear for no reason, we can tell overall what’s going on, on average because integrals mean average, inside a shape and whether or not there are spots where fluid is draining or being inserted into the shape by looking at how much and in which direction it flows across the boundary of the shape.” It’s divergence/derivative/nabla for everything inside because of how velocity relates to acceleration, it’s dotted with the normal vector on the surface because that’s exactly measuring the flow inside or out. This is one of the few times where physics is a lot more elegant than math and tbh the physics explanation is the thing that should be listened to, and it’s just that the equations make sense for any differentiable fields F you stick in. That’s what’s really going on. The physics of fluid flow. Conservation of matter.

There’s actually a larger mathematical context for the Divergence Theorem, and two other theorems that are usually taught, namely Green’s Theorem and Stokes’ Theorem. Green’s Theorem goes like:

and Stokes’ Theorem goes like:

That thing that you see on the right side is actually the generalized exterior derivative which kinda involves a thing called wedge product and is just overall a bitch. But it does work in pretty much the most general cases/now just in a bunch of dimensions and on manifolds. If you’re a physics student they will be explained via a drawing on a chalkboard one time that is of little lines circling and cancelling each other out (although for Green’s it’ll be 2D with the arrows circling the boundary), like this

as if that makes the “proof” of why only the boundary matters, and then Just Memorize Them And Use Them When You’re Told To For These Specific Physics Problems That Use Them. The Divergence Theorem is then just a special case of Stokes’ Theorem. (Actually so is Green’s Theorem, but Green’s Theorem is used often enough that it’s usually memorized/explained separately. Also Green’s Theorem comes up independently in Complex Analysis in a way that the others don’t.) The cool thing about Stokes’ Theorem is basically it can be used in any dimension/topology, as long as certain smoothness conditions are satisfied, so it’s nice and general. But those are the other two versions of the theorem that come up a bunch.

There are a lot of really good examples of working through the divergence theorem both ways here: http://www-users.math.umn.edu/~nega0024/docs/2263_S14/GaussExamples.pdf and I would highly recommend just reading through them? They’re great, straightforward, and give you a sense of getting used to the calculations.

Khan Academy also has some pretty solid resources of a video of a person doing problems/examples with it here, if watching a thing helps: https://www.khanacademy.org/math/multivariable-calculus/greens-theorem-and-stokes-theorem/divergence-theorem/v/3-d-divergence-theorem-intuition covers it pretty thoroughly. They do a nice drawing on their little video chalkboard describing the whole fluid flow thing.

Lemme know whether or not that makes sense? It’s A Lot, and I’m more than happy to go into different/more detail.

#bob-newby-superhero #the math fandom #sorry this took me so long to answer the divergence theorem is p ugly #and typing things up on tumblr that are math is fairly hard #I hope I gave a solid intuition?#please let me know because I want to fix any holes I've left

4 notes · View notes

earthxangell · 3 years

Photo

who is your soulmate + channeled love letter || pick-a-card-reading

Take a few deep breaths and let your intution guide you towards a certain pile. Choose a gif and read the meaning down below.

Only for fun purposes. Based on information that my intuition, astrology oracle deck and tarot gave me + automathic writing. Take what resonates and leave everything else behind.

If you want to leave a tip (it’s not necessary but always appreciated): ko-fi.com/earthxangel

Pile 1

Oracle: Your soulmate may soon experience Saturn return or already doing that. Big 3 in Capricorn or Taurus. Capricorn Sun/Moon, Taurus Sun/Moon. Saturn-Sun aspects, Stelliums or major placements in 2, 8 and 7 houses. Strong Jupiter placements. Pluto in 7th House. Abundant, reliable, responsible, organized, failed attempts at relationships or may have experienced rough endings or blockages when it comes to romantic partners. Care about their image and social status, like attention. Have business or a very stable & secure job, don’t have troubles with money.

Angel numbers: 50(50), 2(2(2(2))), 52(52), 32(32), 7(7(7(7))). 31(31), 14(14), 11(1(1)), 26(26).

Tarot: Your soulmate had seen the world around them as pure restrictions and competition for the place under the sun. Felt like a survival show at some point or another. ‘The Hunger Games’, you may say. It took a lot of time for them to see that it’s not true & understand that they’re actually pretty free to do anything they want. So they did. They feel very lucky to have a harmonius and stable life. It’s a victory that they worked really hard for. If you’ve already met each other - they think that they won, when it comes to you. The fact that both of your give and recieve equally makes them feel happy and proud. It feels quite nostalgic too - maybe you had connection in the past life as well. They worry a lot about financial and material things - it’s the main source of happiness, security and joy for them. It’s very important for your soulmate to have a solid & strong foundation. They need to feel grounded & surrounded by material wealth, otherwise they’d freak out and won’t feel safe. They strive for a peaceful and honorable life when they get old so they could look back and see how much they have achieved and that they don’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore. They want to gain respect & attention from others. They want to be recognized for what they do.

Love letter: “I love you. Sometimes I think these 3 words aren’t enough to describe what I truly feel for you. It’s hard to put my feelings into words as well so this is why I’m trying to show you it with my actions. I know that I don’t say cute stuff to you like those characters from your favorite stories or tv shows you’re always talking about but I hope my stable and reliable presence is more than enough to prove you my true feelings. I’m sorry that I don’t say ‘I love you” that much but maybe I should start doing it more often because I love how your eyes sparkle and shine when I’m doing so. You’re the most beautiful person in my life. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have you. Please, don’t ever leave my side because I’m not planning to leave yours like...ever. You’re too important for me to do so.”

Pile 2

Oracle: Karmic relationship, past life connection, stelliums or major placements in 5, 8, 9 or 12 houses, big 3 in Gemini, Sagittarius, Capricorn. Venus in Libra, Pisces or Scorpio. Very spiritual person, religious, may practice some sort of a magic or etc. Very wise and likes to learn stuff. Know how to dress and always look good. Libra Rising. Sensitive as well. May express themselves through art, writing or other creative hobbies.

Angel numbers: 36(36), 33(33), 44(4), 29(29), 32(32), 22(22), 42(42), 40(40), 21(21), 15(15),

Tarot: Balanced & mature person when it comes to their feelings, they don’t like to lie about things even if it’s making a profit for them. They’re very honest & know their way around people - talkative, wise, have a great sense of humor and undeniable charisma. Likes to travel & see the world, even if it’s the nearest town from them - it’s still an adventure. Like to go on a walks, hiking. Very quick to take actions when they have an idea - otherwise, they’ll burn out and move onto another one. Busy, hectic, fast, impulsive, charming & curious about everything and everyone. Sometimes people judge them for their impatience & or stuff they’re learning or skills they may have or trying to build. Whatever the case - it can be bothersome at times but they’re quite motivated person when it comes to studying something. And when I say to you that they love to learn - THEY L O V E to learn. Really. It’s something that makes them proud and gives them confidence. They’re quick learners too. I’m also getting a message that they can work as a teachers or coaches. They may also have their own courses about spirituality/practice/religion they’re passionate about. Hard-working, carry a lot on their plate but don’t show their weaknesses. If it’s hard - they may share their burdens but still solve them all on their own.

Love letter: “I’m sorry for rambling about my passions but I really appreciate how you listen to me with genuine interest in your eyes. You support me no matter what and I’m so grateful to have you on my side. I promise that I’ll show you as much support as you’re giving me even though it’s not something that you care about. And don’t lie to me - I know how girls go and learn football in order to be closer to someone they like. It’s charming and a very nice thing to do so but still. I’m surprised every time when I talk and you listen with an actual purpose of listening to me. No one has a ever done this to me. But you did and still do. I promise that I’ll be as supportive as you are. I love you. Thank you for being my fan number one.”

Pile 3

Oracle: Highly intuitive person, care about their family & house situation. Also about their image, first impression and body. Stellium or major placements in the 1st, 3rd and 7th Houses. Cancer Sun/Moon/Rising. May have spiritual gifts - they can be a tarot reader or practioner. Was born on the day of Solar Eclipse. Vivid and prophetic dreams, lucid dreaming, sensitive & empathic. Can recognize & interpret signs in their dreams very well. Their soul’s purpose is to uplift humanity and raise the vibration of the planet. Could have a spiritual account/or work as a spiritual advisor. Have a quite mysterious aura that is hard to deny when you look at them for a first time. Do not like to overshare things with others. Past life in Egypt or another ancient civilization.

Angel numbers: 37(37), 41(41), 12(12), 52(52), 44(44), 50(50), 16(16), 25(25), 46(46), 27(27), 31(31)

Tarot: I would say that they’re very calm & balanced person. It’s hard for someone to make them angry or mad. Their presence is really nurturing, you just feel so nice and understoon when you’re around them. They don’t like to judge others or participate in gossips. They like to help others when they especially need it and I’m also getting a vision that a lot of people come to them for an advice. Very mature, very stable and secure as well. Sometimes they get confused about world around them and feel like won’t be able to leave their mark on our planet. This is something that they care and stress about a lot because their desire to help others can have a quite large scale. On another side of this problem they shyness and thoughts that they aren’t qualified enough to make a difference. (Spoiler: it’s not true) What is interesting about this person being such a balanced and overall nice: they absolutely hate it when someone judge others for their passions and likes. They instantly move into a protective mode and participate in these conflicts because they can’t stand it. Like pretty bad. Your soulmate may suffer from inner conflicts as well. I’m getting that it was some sort of the trauma for them - for some reason, in the past they couldn’t express themselves the way they wanted. They felt ashamed doing something they loved and maybe were bullied because of that. But this past made them a really strong and confident person. They do not feel ashamed of themselves anymore and quite corageous to explore any area of their interests. They’re definitely a leader and inspiration to others as well because it seems that only a close part of their circle know about that. And the fact that your person survived from something like that makes them really respectable and loved. Plus, I feel like your soulmate also likes to participate in some sort of the charity. They may work or volunteer in charity organisations, donate to them (personally or through some price percent of their own services that they donate after).

Love letter: “Do you feel as though our meeting is not a coincidence? Me too. It’s like meeting someone who you knew for your whole life despite the fact that I’ve never seen you or talked with you before. My soul recognized you instantly - something about you made me never forget you after we’ve met for the first time. Will you count out the time that is left for us or would you look forward for the time that is awaiting us in the next life? Whatever the reason Universe had to bring us together - I’m grateful and happy to be with you. As a lesson. As an experience. As a lover. As a friend. Because my soul will recognize you anywhere and still would want to be with you. It still will search for you whenever you are in order to spend time together as much as we can. I love you. And it’s such a selfish thing of me to say but I don’t want leave your side. Will you let me?”

Pile 4

Oracle: Natural healer and highly intuitive person. Aquarius, Sagittarius Sun/Moon/Rising. Incorporates spirituality in their daily life (meditation, journaling, shadow work and etc.) May work as a doctor. Emphatic, knows their way with romantic partners. Dreamer, great manifestor, embody their beauty and worth. Sometimes things just happen to them and everybody is wondering how is that even possible. Quite hard to understand them because they don’t like to overshare things or talk about their feelings. Tend to be idealistic about the world and people around them and can get really hurt when something happens to their ‘ideal’ image. Friendly, kind, likes to help and take care of others more than let others do the same. Despite being quite talkative & chatty, enjoy the silence and solitude with their whole heart. Likes to spend their time near water bodies and with the nature. Great with technology & sacred knowledge. An old soul, might receive information in the very odd and unsual ways.

Angel numbers: 46(46), 12(12), 4(4(4(4)))), 21(21), 24(24), 40(40), 23(23), 30(30), 8(8(8(8)))).

Tarot: They have a really big heart. They care about global matters and it’s quite heartbreaking for them when they see violence, war or other problems that someone may face, while leaving in another continent. I’m also getting a message that they had a pretty rough past. Their parents may have been cold and distant and this is why it’s hard for them to deal with their own emotions. To express them healthily or honest with others. But despite all of that, they have no problem indetifying emotions of other people and feel them as if these feelings are their own. Very unique and very special person - when you meet them, you just can’t move away your gaze from them. They stand out so much that it’s very hard for people to not notice them. They do not judge others and are very open-minded person, curious and always ready to explore and experience something new. They’re very proud of their achievements and skills. They’re quite confident in them too even tho reaching some level of qualification can be pretty boring for them. They do not shy away from their responsibilities and are very hard-working. This is why their manifestation are pretty successfull. They just talk about their intention, let go of it and start working - they’re always ready to take a leap of faith and make first steps towards something they want. Because they understand that no matter what - they’re supported and guided. Even though they didn’t felt and thought like that before at all. Back then, they thought of themeselves as a victim of this big and unfair world. But not anymore.

Love letter: “I wouldn’t even imagine that the day when I’ve met my second half will come but it did. I’ve never trusted anyone as much as I trust you, because no matter how understanding and friendly someone may look, there’s always something that they’ll never accept and never forgive. But with you I can be completely honest and myself. Sometimes I think that there’s no way you would approve this part of myself but you do. Every single time. And this is such a nice feeling - to talk without ‘inner’ filter and any fears of judgement from the person you love. You’re truly a miracle. I cannot express how grateful I am to have someone like you in my life. And I promise you - I will accept, support and love all parts that are you. No matter how ugly, bad and sinful they may look to you. Your trust in me is something that I’ll never forget. So I hope that you’ll share with me everything that you’re scared to talk about even within your own self.”

#free readings #free tarot reading #free oracle card reading #free oracle readings #free pick a card #pick a card #pick a card reading #free pick a card readings #tarot #tarot readings #tarot reading #oracles #oracle reading #oracles readings #oracle readings #soulmate reading

718 notes · View notes

keilemlucent · 3 years

Text

“i’m here”

NSFW (minors dni)

hawks | takami keigo x reader

word count: ~2.2k

keigo comes home and you’ve both got old wounds on the surface

warnings: sex-based breakdown/panic, depictions of ptsd, safe-wording, trauma (😎), vague descriptions of dissociation

a/n: hey folks, mind the tags! this is some vulnerable, self-indulgent hurt/comfort. i’m a bit shy posting this one BUT all the same enjoy <3

Keigo cared.

You could tell, so easily. It radiated around him when you were together, this aura that he never carried publicly. It was saved for you, a different type of adoration and tenderness that solely belonged between the two of your souls.

It was never acknowledged, but felt, and that quiet recognition was enough.

There were things you couldn’t tell him, not yet and fuck, maybe you never would. Everyone has their demons, and you knew Keigo had plenty of secrets he kept to him.

(How many times did you help him pluck and preen feathers still wet with blood? He assured you it was never his, but that didn’t ease the knot in your gut.)

It was just boundaries, maybe. Maybe. The things you couldn’t, wouldn’t tell each other. Little lines drawn to keep the two of you safe from your pains. Better to lock them up than share them, right?

Except, things are never that simple and ills hate staying hidden for too long.

...

He’d been gone for a while. A mission far off and secret.

By proxy, Keigo had come home haggard and hungry.

For you.

He entered your home and without pause, he was on you.

He tossed you into bed. His wings flared out wide and ruffled. It made him look bigger than he was, and the light in his eyes had a starved gleam that sent your heart racing.

You tried to ignore his new, plentiful bruises and bumps. The colors bloomed over his skin, even in the near dark of the bedroom.

What does he do when he’s away?

It was better to not ask questions.

He ravaged you, naturally. How could he not? He’d been gone for weeks, sending you the nastiest, most yearning texts. Nothing too long, but little notes that communicated how much he missed you, how much he fucking needed you.

And he was certainly showing you.

His lips were over yours, nipping and sucking and devouring you in every sense of the word. Hands tugged and ripped your clothes off, his nails long and unmanicured with his mission. They weren’t quite pointed, but they were still too sharp to be scratching down your ribs.

It was all a bit too much, a bit too fast, but you tried to catch up the best you could.

“Keigo—” You sputtered as he bit his way down to your breasts, tugging on a nipple with his teeth.

“Hush,” His voice sounded far too low and it made your stomach flip (in the worst way oh my god). “I’ll take care of you. Doesn’t that sound nice, dove?”

The pet name should’ve soothed you.

(‘Should’ve’.)

Your inside did flips as he trailed lower.

Your mind was going lower too.

Mentally, you scrambled, clawing for a ledge to ground yourself on. Sensation whirled, pleasure and fear mixing into some fucked up cocktail in the front of your psyche.

Why are you so scared?

Your heart pounded, nearly ached in your chest as Keigo played with your clit over your panties.

It should’ve felt good.

His tousled hair was so fucking pretty. Keigo was gorgeous in every way, the wings were just a part of his visage. You were so lucky, so privileged to have him looking at your cunt so hungrily.

You’re so scared.

Why are you scared?

(You knew why, you just didn’t want to remember any more than you needed to. But that wasn’t really in your control, was it?)

You felt like you were falling as Keigo cleanly licks your cunt through your panties, soaking the cotton with his drool.

No, no, no.

Tears pricked your eyes as he pulled aside your panties, just enough to get a look, going in for a taste—

NO, NO, NO—

“N-no. Stop.” You gasped the words, cringing at how they broke in your throat. “Keigo, s-stop.”

Keigo froze immediatly, gaze flickering up to your face before his expression fell hard and fast.

No, no, no, you made him upset.

Dumbass.

He shot up, wings folding tight to his back. You scrambled up on the bed, arms wrapping around your shoulders. They shook in your grasp, you shook in your own hold as you tried to comfort yourself. Your breath was coming too fast and hard, but that was another issue entirely. You tucked into yourself tighter and let your vision go blurry in the ripples of the sheets.

Keigo sat in front of you, eyes wide and lips parted in terror and unsure words.

“I’m so s-sorry,” His hands folded in his lap. So tense they looked painful.

You shook your head, laughing, “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

You just couldn’t do this right now.

“Can I help?”

You didn’t reply for a moment, trying to reign in your racing mind.

Truly, Keigo didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe moved a bit too fast, but nothing out of the ordinary. You’d done this song and dance so many times, you loved it. Most of the time.

Sometimes, someone with your secrets had bad days that made you scared of the people that love you the most.

A thick sludge burrowed in the back of your throat as you shook your head.

Thinking felt too hard.

“Not yet,” you choked out rubbing at your cheeks. The tears smeared over your cheeks, turning them hot and angry as the rabbit’s heart buried in your chest. .

Keigo hovered, unsure.

It wasn’t like him not to know what to do. He was intuitive and saw through people easily, even if he didn’t say it. And he knew you particularly well. Very well. Little details about you and your being were tucked away in his mind, always brought out in key moments.

“Dovey?” He asked softly, like trying not to startle a terrified animal (isn’t that what you were?) “Do you want me to go?”

“N-no,” The words burst from your lips as your chest squeezed so tight, you could’ve checked. “No, no, no, please don’t go.”

You gagged on air and slammed back into the headboard.

Sure, the odd mix of emotions and very unwelcome memories was rawing your mind and body from the inside out. Sure, Keigo knew nothing of what you were experiencing. This was private, all of this part of you held far away from him. This was your burden. You had therapy, and self-help books, and deep breathing.

But, none of that was working. Instead, you were staring down your lover, helpless.

Your eyes flickered to the nightstand.

“Water?”

Keigo was already sending off a flurry of feathers to freshen up the liquid in the glass.

Good start.

Keigo’s hands twitched, wings restless as he regarded you. His breaths were even and solid, counted and practiced to keep himself calm in the face of your panic.

A chilled glass was delivered to you by a bundle of feathers. You snatched it, holding it to your cheeks before taking a few fat gulps.

Slow down.

You’re going too fast.

“Little sips,” Keigo reminded you, voice soft.

You pulled back, looking at him in your hazy vision, “Little sips?”

You tried again, taking a smaller sip, swishing the water in your mouth before swallowing.

“Was that good?” You looked at him, inching closer to him

He nodded, golden and glowing, “Very good.”

The praise was a little bit of salve for a much larger wound, but it felt wonderful nonetheless.

Keigo wasn’t the issue.

He wasn’t, truly. You knew that, despite all the swirling fear.

The only issue with Keigo was that he suddenly felt too far away.

You gave him a desperate little look, hands itching across the covers.

He noticed because of course he fucking did.

(Thank fucking god.)

“I’m here.”

It was a reminder, a needed one.

Keigo, your kind, sweet partner was not the memories swirling his mind. He didn’t hurt you, he didn’t harm you.

“... Yeah?” You sniffled.

“I am.” His face was soft, softer than you’d ever seen. The pre-mature wrinkles looked too deep in the moonlight. His eyes looked too old, too worn, as he silently acknowledged those goddamn demons without a word. A little, rumbling coo broke from the back of his throat and felt yourself relax with the sound.

And, fuck, bless him—

Keigo gave you a soft smile that felt like warm honey in spiced tea that seeps into the cracks between your ribs.

“Hold me?” You finally asked, words shaking but not hesitant.

He nodded, and before you could comprehend, he was tugging you down into the sheets, pulling you to his chest and squeezing. It wasn’t rough treatment, but it was firm, grounding at the very fucking least. His arm wrapped around your middle, pulling you to his chest and holding you there. Your cheek squished against the chill of the cooling sweat over his sternum, a shaking breath finally coming slow enough to give you a bit of ease.

“Is this okay?” Keigo asked, one of his wings adjusted to barely ghost over your bodies.

You pressed closer, greedy and scared, “More. Tighter. Please.”

Keigo wasn’t one to deny you.

His grip got firmer, fingers stroking up and down your spine in time with his own slow breathing. The wing over you relaxed, bearing down just enough to be comfortable. It was maybe a little too much. You dealt with it, let the weight of Keigo be next to you and over you because he was good. You were good or going to be. You clung to the thought.

“You’re safe, I promise.”

You clung to that thought too. Keigo was good and safe. You believed him if only a little bit.

You hoped Keigo knew that this wasn’t about him. That the poisonous memories and awful thoughts weren’t about him, rather than he’d caught their thin, nearly invisible tripwire.

You’re safe, why are you panicking?

Because sometimes this just happens.

You pressed your nose between his pecs, tucking a hand between the roots of his wings. It made him startle; the area was sensitive. He quickly relaxed and went back to petting your back and taking deep breaths.

The two of you laid for a long time, surrounded by each other's breathing and grounding in the heat of the sheets and the white noise of the world. You remained in some sort of a daze for most of it, the memories fading, but just leaving you numb and out of it.

“More water?” Keigo asked, tentatively kissing your clammy forehead.

You nodded, sitting up slowly and rubbing a hand over your cheeks. The air felt less suffocating, your mind calmer, but you still felt like shit—

“Drink,” Keigo brought the glass to your lips with a combination of his hands and feathers.

You gulped down half of the freshened water, letting a bit dribble past the corner of your lips. The leftovers were swept away by your thumb and rubbed in your hot cheeks. The cold was a grounding, and the world was finally stilling as you needed it to.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” You met Keigo’s gaze from where he sat across from you. He sat upright and on his knees, hands and wings folded to his center. The posture made him look smaller as he watched you. His bright eyes took you in as well as they could, but you could sense he was still a little on edge.

Your words made his brows shoot up.

“I should be telling you that, not the other way around,” Keigo bit his lip and frowned.

You snatched his hands in yours, “We both need it. I need you to know I’m not upset.”

“You... should be. At least a little.”

You gave a little shake of your head, thick in your resolve.

Keigo stayed silent before taking a deep breath, wings readjusting with thought, “I suppose you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I... I don’t,” Maybe sometime, but not now. “But, I still need you to know you didn’t do anything wrong. It just moved too fast for me and I got...”

You lost your words and your vision went hazy at the bedsheets once more.

“Overwhelmed?” He finished your sentence with a squeeze of your hands.

“Yeah, fuck, that’s the word,” You shook your head. “I’m still not feeling great.”

“That’s okay, “ Keigo assured you with another squeeze. “Can I help at all?”

You shook your head once more.

Not right now, not more than you’ve already done.

“Just be here, if that’s okay? Like you have been.” You fully intertwined your fingers, noticing the remnants of something dark under his fingernails. More than likely dirt, but it was still a reminder. “It’s just nice to have you close.”

Everyone has their demons.

“Can I still kiss you?” Keigo asked as you dragged him under the covers.

You mussed on it, wondering if it would bring back the thick fog and panic.

“Only a little,” You told him, once again burying yourself in him. “I’ll let you know if it’s too much.”

It was more than enough for the two of you.

Keigo tilted your jaw up with his palm, giving you the gentlest kiss he could. His touch remained firm everywhere else, but he was tentative in giving you the space you needed.

He pulled away and you tuck yourself under his chin.

“Thank you.”

Keigo’s wing stretched over you, blocking out whatever thoughts and ills clawed toward you. In a wordless squeeze, he said all that needed to.

‘Of course.’

#salem writes #hawks x reader #hawks #takami keigo x reader #takami keigo #tw ptsd #tw trauma #if y'all read and think there should be other warnings added #please shoot me an ask or a message #i wasn't sure i was gonna post this one but #here we are #enjoy lovies <3

687 notes · View notes

myherowritings · 3 years

Text

anywhere the wind blows

SUMMARY. After hunting a bounty near Wangshu Inn, you sensed the faint scent of qingxin blowing in the familiar wind. It seemed like it was leading you somewhere.

PAIRING. xiao x reader

WORD COUNT. 2.2k

GENRE. fluff, pre 1.3 release

A/N. my first genshin fic of my fav character xiao !! i’m definitely still getting used to writing for this world and for him but i hope this isn’t too bad 🥺 i’m so excited for xiao’s story and banner and can’t wait to learn more about him! if 1.3 comes and totally undermines the small guesses abt the lore i added into this fic then…we pretend we do not see u.u ANYWAY PLS ENJOY xx sof

“A rock shieldwall Mitachurl with a resistance to cryo,” you murmured to yourself with a satisfied smile, picking up the ominous mask and heavy horn that it dropped from the fight. “No more terrorizing Wangshu for you.”

You had just accepted a bounty handed out to you in Liyue and arranged for the proper party to come pick it up. The rewards were promptly transferred to your tab and you bade the team who came to collect the Mitachurl a swift goodbye.

It wasn’t normally on your daily agenda to hunt bounty for money—though the mora was quite appealing, you couldn’t lie—but when the beasts were too close to civilization and scared both residents and passerbyers in Liyue alike, you felt a greater need to step in. And now, after a job well done with some mora in your pockets, you realized just how tired and hungry that search made you.

Looking up, you saw the peak of the inn from a distance and followed the silk flower-covered path there. It wasn’t often you frequented Wangshu Inn, but you have visited enough to know their Jueyun Chili Chicken and Almond Tofu were pretty solid reasons to drop by again.

Your appearance was rather disheveled from your fight with the Mitachurl but you weren’t too messy-looking—certainly decent enough to interact with other humans you hoped. Smoothing down your clothes and practicing a smile, you headed over to the outdoor dining area and were greeted by a waitress who led you to an empty table as she asked for your order. The exchange was pleasant enough and you were soon left to your own devices once your food swiftly arrived.

It was dark out in Wangshu. The bounty hunt took most of your late afternoon and by now the sun had fully set. The dining area was quiet and empty with only the moon watching over you.

You hummed, taking in a mouthful of the sweet Almond Tofu. The night was nice and peaceful and quiet, just like most of your evenings.

A familiar breeze blew against your face, chilling yet warm. Captivating. There was a faint smell of qingxin, like the flowers you grew fond of during your explorations around Liyue’s stone forests.

The wind was different from what you experienced in Mondstadt. That air was light and playful. Free.

The wind you felt just now, on the other hand, seemed to convey something more wistful. Almost yearning.

And it wasn’t your first encounter with this qingxin-filled breeze either. When you helped comfort Little Luo back in Qingce Village and fended off the pesky Hilichurls on her trail, this wind blew around you and cooled the heat from your cheeks. Around Bubu Pharmacy when you spent time with Qiqi, a zombie you happened to stumble upon one day, you felt the same curious breeze.

Part of you felt like you were being watched over. But not in a bad way. It made you feel safe and protected, yet empowered enough to continue your bold expeditions and help the people of Liyue when you were needed.

The wind stuck around as you finished your meal, the aroma of Almond Tofu wafting through the air from the wandering breeze, almost as if it was seeking a taste. Once your plates were cleared and your drink emptied, you headed inside the inn and hoped they had a spare room on such a short notice and—to your surprise—for once they actually did.

On the way up the stairs, you passed by an open balcony near the top of the inn where you caught a glimpse of a lean figure with dark hair looking up at the night sky. You normally would have walked away from the balcony and left the man to his own devices, promptly going to your rented room to get some much needed rest, but the familiar scent of qingxin flowers dancing in the wind made you freeze mid-step.

Wangshu Inn wasn’t too far from mountain tops where qingxin grew… It could have been a mere coincidence.

But in Liyue, you knew that believing such things could be a coincidence would simply be fooling yourself.

The person on the balcony gave no indication that he felt your gaze, but you knew intuitively that he had already sensed your presence despite not having moved a single inch. His stance was so steady you might have thought he was a statue if not for his teal-tinged hair blowing in the wind.

Could he have been the cause of the qingxin breeze that recently started following you around?

“Hi,” you said gently to more formally announce your presence. On the off-chance he didn’t realize anyone was there, you definitely didn’t want to startle him. But judging by the unsurprised expression on his face as he slowly looked over his shoulder, you sincerely doubted he was one to startle easily. “May I stand here?”

His eyes were scrutinizing but not unkind as they looked you up and down. You took your time examining him as well— From the top of his silky-looking hair to the blue tattoos wrapping around his arms and to the mysterious horned mask hanging from his hip.

“I suppose you may,” he finally replied with a single nod, his voice neither welcoming nor rude.

You stood a few feet away from him, leaning against the wooden balustrades as you let the cool air hit your face. The night was quiet and calm, dimly lit by the moon peeking through the foggy sky. Sighing, your eyes fluttered shut in contentment as you felt the wind soothe the aches from the bounty hunt in your muscles.

You wouldn’t normally let your guard down like this in front of someone you just met, but for some reason you weren’t the least bit on edge. He didn’t seem like a stranger. And you had a feeling that maybe he wasn’t.

“Have we met before?” you found yourself wondering aloud. The mask on his hip looked familiar, though you couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, like you’ve seen it in a book you’ve read. And the air around him certainly felt familiar, though it seemed strange to describe why.

He didn’t respond.

Huffing, you tried a different approach. A more direct one. “Have you been following me?”

His brow raised but he uttered no words.

Was that approach too direct?

After a moment of silence, he said, “Were you not the one who followed me out onto the balcony? If I remember correctly, I was here first.”

“But were you not the one who drew me here with your qingxin-scented breeze?” you shot back, tone more curious than biting.

To your surprise, he said nothing to deny it. “Attentive, I see.”

“I’m not sure it’s quite that I’m attentive rather than you wanting me to know.” You hid a smile. He wouldn’t have made it so obvious otherwise, you were certain of it. For someone who held more power in his little finger than you could possibly fathom, you knew that him alerting you of his existence couldn’t be a mere accident.

“You’re right.” He shrugged. “But it’s not so much that I wanted to call you here than I didn’t mind if you happened to stumble by.”

You ran the palms of your hands over the railings, craning your neck to the side to face him. He was a puzzling creature, giving off the aura of something greater and more powerful than a human. The ominous mask dangling around his hip seemed to serve as a word of caution to indicate a menacing side he hadn’t shown you, but his calm stance and the small tilt of his head made him seem curious—almost inviting.

It was intriguing, to say the least.

“And why did you want me to, as you say, stumble by?” you said. “Not that I mind.”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly, shaking his head and looking confused himself. “Intuition? I noticed you fighting, helping the people of Liyue. You’re doing a...good job.”

You shrugged, rubbing at the back of your neck as you shied away from his praise. “So you summoned me here to thank me?”

“I don’t know,” he said again, his impassive tone sounding almost frustrated.

At the small frown playing on his lips, you couldn’t help but let a noise of laughter escape you. He gazed at you in question. This whole situation seemed strange and peculiar, straight out of a dream you’d have at random only to forget the next morning. He seemed strange and peculiar, like a figure out of a story book lost in the ruins of Liyue.

And yet you found yourself enjoying this odd encounter.

“Well, Mr. Stranger, since you seem uncertain of so many things still, are you going to continue to have your wind follow me around Liyue until you figure whatever it is out?” you questioned teasingly, not at all minding that prospect.

He glared, looking slightly embarrassed. “It’s not that I was following you. I only sensed someone in need but happened to see you rushing along the way and decided to let you handle it. The less involvement in the affairs of mortals, the better.”

So he wasn’t a mortal himself, you thought, his words confirming your previous suspicions. Still…

“Is that so?” You quirked a brow. “And what is this if not for involvement in the affairs of a mortal?”

He folded his arms and didn’t say a word.

“Let me guess— You don’t know?”

“Hmph.”

You smiled. “Well, I guess it’s okay you don’t know. It’s okay not to know sometimes, you know?”

He blinked. “You aren’t making sense.”

“And you are?” you retaliated. “I still don’t know who you are or anything about you yet. But… I know you smell like qingxin flowers and feel like a cooling breeze. And I know that I rather enjoy it.”

The mysterious entity looked out into the mountain scenery, gloved hand resting on the dark balustrade. He seemed both lost in thought and completely aware of his physical surroundings at the same time. Suddenly, he spoke up.

“Xiao.”

Your gaze met his as he nodded once. “Xiao?”

“My name. Now you know who I am.”

You laughed, startled by how blunt he was. “I guess you’re right. Nice to meet you Xiao.”

“Hm.” Xiao waited one moment before he asked, “Do you plan to keep exploring Liyue?”

At his question, you briefly considered your options for the near future. You liked Liyue and there was so much you had left to see. Was it like home to you? No— Not yet anyway, though it could be if the situation was right. But that didn’t mean you wanted to leave just yet.

Not when you may have found a reason you would want to stay.

“For the time being, yes.”

He nodded in satisfaction. “That’s good. You being there to help the people of Liyue means less involvement with mortal affairs for me.”

Though his tone was haughty, he didn’t seem like he actually minded what he considered mortal affairs. If he did, why would he be so alert when he sensed people in need?

“And, if you ever need assistance during your ventures, I’ll be there.”

Xiao’s words comforted you as you looked at him, his hair blowing in the wind. Maybe one day you could reach out and touch it. But not today.

You sensed this meeting was about to end. The breeze picked up and you could feel him getting ready to leave. Whether he was going to leave to go to bed or leave the mortal world, you weren’t sure. But you would rather treasure this encounter than dwell on an inevitable—and hopefully temporary—farewell.

“Thank you, Xiao. And if you ever need assistance with...whatever it is you do, I’ll be there too!” you said confidently. “As I’m sure you’ve seen, I’m pretty handy at weilding a sword myself.” You doubted he would ever need much help in the physical or martial department. “Or, I could simply lend an ear as well.”

It happened so fast, you weren’t sure if it was actually there, or if your eyes were playing tricks on you— Xiao smiled. At least, you thought he did. But in the mere blink of an eye, it was gone.

Still, you don’t think you would ever forget that peaceful image no matter how hard you tried. Not that you wanted to.

Sensing the night coming to an end, you asked, “When will I be able to see you like this again?”

He paused. “In this human form, you mean?”

You nodded, though you figured the answer would be those three familiar words he had said many times tonight.

“I don’t know.”

A wry smile played on your lips. Knew it.

“The mortal realm is not where I naturally belong,” explained Xiao, amber eyes glowing brighter than the moon in the sky. “But I will meet you again in this state soon.”

The scent of qingxin grew stronger as the wind picked up. His skin grew paler, almost translucent as he met your gaze one last time for the night.

“Even if it takes time, at least the wind will tell me when you’re near.” You smiled, raising your hand in a wave. “Goodnight, Xiao.”

“Sleep well, traveller.”

And in your dreams that night, with qingxin in the air, you felt contentment and serenity in ways you never had before. You would see the entrancing being who called himself Xiao again. Soon. But you had the wind to keep you company while in wait.

#genshin impact #xiao x reader #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #xiao fanfiction #genshin fanfiction #genshin imagines #xiao imagines #genshin #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact scenarios #genshin xiao

752 notes · View notes

animereaderinsertwriter · 2 years

Text

Of Rats and Men (Levi x Reader)

Part III: Fighting For You (Us the Duo)

part I here

part II here part IV here

ao3 link here

Excerpt: "Tomorrow, they would get up, (Y/N) would pack her things, and they would pretend none of this had ever happened. They would each go to work, and when— not if, they too often worked too closely together for that— they saw each other in their discharge of their duties, then they would greet one another cordially and act as though they were nothing more than casual acquaintances. They had done it many times before, but now— now there was finality to the act that had not been present before. This was truly the last time they would be together like this."

Description: This is a tale of Staff Sergeant Levi Ackerman and ADA!Reader, and how they desperately try to convince themselves and everyone else that they aren't in love (and, of course, they fail miserably) while trying to take down the biggest crime syndicate in Shiganshina: the Marley family. Also, there are songs involved in the chapter titles.

Warnings: Smut, angst, Cop!AU, Happy ending, conflict of interest, MINORS DNI, non-graphic violence

Marley's biggest, best safehouse was a mansion on a hill just outside Shiganshina. The outside was made of solid stone except for a few windows on every floor, all of which could be sealed with titanium plates. The inside, however, was luxury itself— the softest carpet, the most expensive furniture, and the loveliest and rarest paintings from every era in living memory hanging on the wall.

It was here that the whole of the upper level of the Family was gathered to discuss a shipment that was to be made in two weeks. Eren, who had worked his way to the top of the food chain, was leaning against a cold stone wall, his arms folded as Reiner gave him the details of the car bombing at the SPD precinct.

"Really? Porco? I didn't really peg him for an expert in explosives."

Eren kept his face open and curious to disguise the burning need for vengeance that welled in his chest. Porco was a slimy, cowardly underling with no conscience and even less substance; to think that he was the reason (Y/N) almost died was galling.

Reiner grinned, and Eren wanted to hit him.

"That's because Piek pegs him."

Eren grunted. Everyone knew that Piek had a thing for Porco— except Porco himself, naturally— and, naturally, interpersonal relationships had been the first Intel that Eren had passed back to SPD, so it was safe to say that even Porco's enemies knew more about his love life than he himself did.

"So, why the ADA?" Eren asked, tugging at his eyepatch. "I mean, I get that she was in charge of Annie's case and that she's a general pain in the ass, but why to try and take her out? It's not like she poses much of a threat to the Family anyway."

Reiner was silent for a moment, pausing to consider Eren. Eren stared right back, keeping his expression carefully neutral.

"She's tenacious— her willpower inspires others, and attacking a public figure like her always rattles everyone involved," Reiner replied carefully, his honey-gold eyes giving Eren a suspicious once-over, "But the real reason she was targeted? Our rat had a sneaking suspicion that she and Sergeant Ackerman are… involved."

"I should hope so," Eren replied smoothly. "They work together to decide when and how to arrest our people."

Reiner gave Eren a nasty, suggestive grin, and Eren's heart sank to the pit of his stomach.

"Not that kind of involved. I meant involved as in romantically involved."

Marley knew. Marley knew about Levi's affair, and they intended to use it as leverage. Eren had to consciously work to keep his frantically beating heart from leaping into his throat.

"Seriously?" Outwardly, Eren was all wonder, his one visible eye growing wide. "How did he know?"

"He's got good intuition." Reiner thought for a moment, then added, "It's also not improbable that he has other eyes to look for him— people watching their houses, bugging their phones, the whole works."

Eren nodded, and felt strangely relieved that his suspicions were correct. Marley's possession of an inside man would be the only thing he could have thought of that would reveal what Levi and (Y/N) shared. In truth, the only reason Eren even knew about the clandestine relationship between his sergeant and the ADA was because he'd known Levi long enough to know what to look and listen for in his daily life to indicate an attachment; outside of having several years of experience or being told directly, Eren couldn't possibly imagine how someone would so much as suspect Levi and his paramour of being more than colleagues at best, and irritable acquaintances at best.

"Must be a hell of a guy."

Eren was eager to probe for information on the Marleyan rat inside SPD, and oddly enough, Reiner seemed eager to provide it.

"Yeah, he's amazing, a real tactical genius," said Reiner, smiling distantly, as if speaking of a superhero he wasn't entirely sure was real. "You gotta be a real beast of a man to work with the pigs day in and day out like he does. I can't imagine what that would do to me."

In his younger days, Eren would have been chomping at the bit to defend SPD after a comment like that; fresh out of the Academy, Eren would have blown his cover all to hell by stomping on Reiner's face until it looked like ground beef. Now, all Eren had to do was inhale, then exhale, and all the anger was gone. What was left was determination, the kind that was as cold as steel and twice as strong.

"Probably kill you," Eren said off-handedly, and Reiner gave him a look.

"You sure are a funny one, Eren Jaeger. What would you know about pigs?"

Eren shrugged. "Not a whole lot. I do know that they say we have a pig in sheep's clothing around here though. Y'know, someone undercover, feeding them info."

Reiner frowned. "I think that's why we're here."

This was news to Eren.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Boss thinks somebody’s been leaking locations. Somebody here.”

Eren fought against the urge to close his eyes and pray Mikasa and Armin would find enough of him to bury.

“Any suspects that you know of?”

Reiner shrugged. “Boss is secretive, but… between you and me, I think he suspects the Azumabito. That’s why there are so many of them here today.”

“I see.”

The Boss—Theo Magath— wasn’t too far from the mark. The Azumabito Clan had long been informants for SPD in exchange for certain favors, but they weren’t the ones who had bugged the mansion, Magath’s home, and various other places deep in Marleyan territory. If someone had found the bugs… well, Eren was newest to the fold. It wouldn’t be hard for Boss to deduce the source of them.

“Well, on that note, I’m going to take a piss,” said Eren, stuffing his hands in his pockets to feel the comforting smoothness of the burner phone in his pocket. “Don’t let Boss start the meeting without me. I wanna look the bastard traitor in the eyes when he’d revealed and ask him what gave him the fucking right to rat on his family.”

With that, he turned and walked casually to the nearest bathroom. He locked the door behind him, and once he was sure no one was listening, he dialed Levi’s number.

“Talk.”

That was the sergeant’s warmest greeting, and Eren was somehow comforted by its coldness.

“Cronus is ready to eat his children,” said Eren as quietly as he could. “It’s time the titans fell.”

There was no change in Levi’s tone; he was the very essence of stoicism.

“Location?”

Eren gave it, and despite the crash in the background from Levi’s end, he believed Levi when he replied,

“We’ll be there. Stay alive, brat.”

Eren squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself with a hand on either side of the porcelain sink in front of him. He could do this; if his cover was already blown, then the only thing he needed to do for the next hour was survive. His commanding officer's last words to him echoed in in head over and over again—

"Stay alive."

***

"Mislabeled evidence?!"

(Y/N) was raging, a woman on the warpath as she grabbed Jean Kirschstein by his lapels.

"The best and only chance we had to take on Marley besides our U.C.s was to make a deal with Annie Leonhart, and that chance was squandered by mislabeled evidence?"

(Y/N) and Detective Jean Kirschstein were standing in the middle of Levi's office— an honor reserved for only the most trusted of the SPD— and, unsurprisingly, they were using their precious time in the best office in the building to argue.

"Oi, I labeled everything myself, I triple checked every single ziplock baggie, every piece of glass, every photo!" Jean tried to jerk away, but Levi knew from experience what kind of grip that woman had. As it was, Jean only made himself look silly, a large, squirming child in (Y/N)'s unrelenting grip. "There's no way it was mislabeled, and besides, how can a judge throw out a solid case on those grounds?"

"It doesn't matter how— she can and she did, and if you didn't mislabel the evidence, then for fuck's sake, find me the bastard who did!"

"I hate to interrupt," said Levi, tightening the last strap on his Kevlar vest, "But we have a situation."

(Y/N) turned immediately to him, her brows furrowed, and Levi wanted desperately to embrace her. "Please tell me it's dirt on the Leonhart case."

Levi shook his head. "Nothing that good. Eren requested backup. He thinks his cover might be blown."

Jean's hands were in white-knuckled fists at his side, and (Y/N) paled at the news.

"Kirschstein, get your ass in gear, we roll in five," said Levi. He paused for a moment, considering, then added, "Counselor, I would advise staying at the precinct for now. It's safer for both you and your protective detail."

At that, (Y/N)'s eyes blazed, and Levi fought against a sigh.

"Like hell I will. Get me a vest, I'm coming with you."

A headache began to form behind Levi's eyes.

"This isn't a discussion. If you don't carry a badge, you aren't going. Do what you will otherwise, but you're not going anywhere near Marley."

"I'm going because you and your team keep fucking up," she replied tersely, her arms crossed. "If I'm there, I can keep you people from bungling everything."

Levi scowled, only halfway for show.

"Out of the question. You'll distract my team and get one of us killed."

Translation: I'll be so worried about trying to keep you safe that I won't be able to do my job.

"You can give me a vest and let me go with you, or I'll go without a vest and be it upon your head if something happens." (Y/N)'s look told him that she was deadly serious. "I'm going, Levi. Don't try to stop me."

Levi sighed. He'd hoped it wouldn't come to this, but in the end, he'd known it would.

"Alright," he relented, nodding at Jean Kirschstein to go and fetch the vest. "Whatever you say."

As soon as Jean left, Levi allowed the magnetism between himself and (Y/N) to pull him in, and even though he knew exactly what he was planning to do, he touched her face before he even realized he'd intended to.

"You drive me crazy," he told her as she wrapped her arms around his neck. "I can't ever tell if I want to kiss or strangle you.'

"Let's try both of them and see how you feel," (Y/N) suggested with a mischievous grin, and Levi noted that for all that they had mutually agreed that separation was necessary, (Y/N) was always willing to take, and take, and take from him anything that she could get her hands on— which just so happened to be everything, even Levi's very own heart. "Y'know, for science."

Levi smiled at that, grabbing (Y/N)'s wrists as she leaned forward, closing her eyes for a kiss. For a moment, Levi was sorely tempted— it had been days since he'd last been this close to her— but at the last moment, he used one fluid motion to twist (Y/N) around and slip one handcuff over her wrist. The other handcuff, he closed over the drawer handle of a locked filing cabinet, and (Y/N) whirled to face him, impassioned.

"Bastard!" she raged, her eyes full of hurt. "I can't believe you would—"

"Would what?" he snapped, crowding her so that their noses were almost touching. "Protect you from doing something stupid?"

"Would use our relationship like it's— like it's a weakness!"

It is a weakness, Levi wanted to say, but that was a conversation for another time.

"I could have knocked you out, pistol-whipped you right here in my office. I decided that this was kinder." At (Y/N)'s cold look, he added, "If you come after me, I won't hesitate a second time."

Levi backed away then, and as he did, he was rewarded with the full view of (Y/N) in all her reckless, untamable glory. Her blouse was rumpled, bunched up from being flush against him, and her chest heaved with the anger that was seething inside her; her eyes were bright and wild, like that of a she-wolf whose paw was caught in a hunter's trap, and Levi thought he had never been more in love than he was in that exact moment.

"When I get back, you can do whatever you want to me," he said, stepping close enough to press a kiss to her forehead, but no father. "But for now, I just need you here to come back to."

"I'll hold you to that," (Y/N) replied, worry coloring her expression for a brief moment. "Come back to me so I can slap your stupid, handsome face, Levi Ackerman."

Levi took that to mean "I love you."

"I will."

Thus, Levi would have made his exit, but on his way out, he bumped into Zeke Jaeger. Zeke Jaeger… who was moving to enter Levi's office, where (Y/N) was handcuffed. Levi thought that was strange indeed, as no one except himself, (Y/N), and a precious few others had access to that particular office— a list which explicitly excluded Zeke. Levi's office was the most secure place in the entire precinct, and for good reason.

"Can I help you?" Levi asked, standing firmly in the doorway as Zeke peered down at him with those creepy Jaeger eyes. Levi wanted to kick him.

"Yes, Sergeant," Zeke replied coolly, all ice in the face of Levi's flaming distrust. "I was coming to tell you that we're ready to leave as soon as you are."

"Fine. Leave."

Zeke Jaeger stood before Levi a few seconds longer than was necessary, then turned on his heel to stride out of the room. Levi should have followed immediately, but he lingered for a moment, his long-held suspicions gaining substance as he considered Zeke Jaeger's character.

"I don't trust him," (Y/N) said from across the room, echoing Levi's own thoughts. "Levi, I can't explain it, but— promise me you won't depend on him for anything, or be alone with him. He's dangerous."

(Y/N)'s expression was fervent, her eyes pleading, and Levi couldn't hold back a smile.

"I always said you were the smartest person working with the SPD," he told her, his heart swelling with fondness. "I'll be careful. That, I promise you."

With that, Levi took his leave, only taking enough time to grab a face shield before loading up with his team and pulling out, tires screeching and engine roaring.

Hang in there, Eren, he thought as he willed the car to go faster. Help is on the way.

***

Zeke Jaeger disliked Sergeant Ackerman on principle. Although Zeke supposed he could acknowledge and perhaps even appreciate the skill set that made Sergeant Ackerman a cut above— he could outrun, outshoot, and outthink nearly anyone on the force with a very few exceptions— but Zeke would certainly have found it easier to admire those traits ever they not attached to such an unpleasant little man— an unpleasant little man that Zeke would likely be obliged to kill one day.

"Jean, your skills as a sniper are unparalleled in the force," Levi was saying, turning to a tall, lanky cadet whose face was reminiscent of a horse. "I don't care how many trees you have to climb— if you have to fucking levitate to get a good vantage point, then I expect you to do so. Understood?"

Jean nodded. "Yes, Sergeant."

Levi prattled on talking about this strategy and that strategy, but Zeke wasn't really listening. His hand was buried deep in his pocket, typing a message to Theo Magath.

Your rat thinks he's been found out, said the message. We're coming in with a team now. Take account of who's acting jumpy.

Before he could hit send, though, Levi's eye met his own, and Zeke froze. The Sergeant's eyes— small, cold, and calculating— bore into him, and Levi Ackerman's answering scowl was unmatched with anything Zeke had ever seen.

"Stop playing with your dick through your pocket, you fucking pervert," Levi snapped. "I don't need anyone acting twitchy, especially a mean bastard like you."

Zeke shrugged, all innocence.

"Maybe if you told us the identity of your U.C.s, we wouldn't be so twitchy. I think I speak for everyone when I say that I’d feel much better knowing who I wasn’t supposed to be shooting at.”

At once, Levi’s eyes widened in outrage, even as a few around them tentatively nodded their agreement. Either unknowing or uncaring of his men’s falling morale, Levi lunged forward at Zeke, grabbing him by the front of his vest.

“You will never know the identity of my undercover officers,” he growled, his eyes never leaving Zeke’s. “If you ever ask me about the identity of my undercovers, I’m going to assume that you’re a rat, feeding information to Marley, and if I ever so much as suspect that of you, I’ll break your back under my foot and jerk off thinking about it later. Understood?”

Zeke nodded ever-so-slightly, and Levi released him slowly, leaving no doubt whatsoever about his sincerity. As soon as the sergeant’s eyes were off of him, Zeke shoved his hand back in his pocket and sent the text that he’d been typing earlier, deciding to add one last bit before hitting the send button.

If you get a shot at Sergeant Levi Ackerman, take it. He’s the biggest threat to Marley that walks this earth.

Zeke wanted to attach a photo, but he didn’t have time; Sasha Braus drove the armored vehicle like a twelve year-old at a go-kart race, and they were at what Zeke had supposed to be the most secret and secure safe house in all of Marley’s territory before he even knew what was happening. Soon, Levi’s team was unloading, and a S.W.A.T. team wasn’t far behind. As Levi barked orders, Zeke could only hope his message had gotten through in time. If not, it would be a sad day for Marley indeed.

“I want this place surrounded,” Levi said, “Give me eyes everywhere I can get them; wait for my signal, then we go in.”

The S.W.A.T. captain tried to speak to Levi, clearly miffed that he hadn’t been the one to give the orders, but Levi strode right past him, dismissing his authority as though it held only the weight of a wet sheet of paper.

“Jaeger, you stay close to me,” Levi ordered, not even deigning to glance in Zeke’s direction as he spoke. “There won’t be any laurels for you today— if you're so scared of shooting someone you aren't supposed to, you'll need me as a babysitter.”

Damn Levi Ackerman and his powers of perception; Zeke’s job would have been made so much easier if someone more stupid had been made Sergeant.

There was silence for a long moment as everyone got into position, and Levi’s eyes never left the front door of the mansion. Zeke wished he knew whether or not his message had been received— it would have given him great comfort to know that there was a reason that the steel shutters weren’t raised to prevent a sniper’s bullet— but he supposed there was no worrying about it now. All their fates lay in the hands of Levi Ackerman.

At length, Levi looked down to check his phone, typed a message, then said into his radio, “Fire at will. This is our best and only chance to save our U.C.”

The grassy hilltop exploded in gunfire. Zeke, completely, utterly in shock, couldn’t believe his eyes. Such an order could hardly be considered legal— it was completely and utterly against the law to order policemen to open fire without even the slightest hint of imminent danger present— and yet the sergeant had taken matters into his own hands, essentially going rogue in order to protect his inside man. It was completely unheard of in the history of the SPD for an officer of Levi’s rank to go this far against protocol, and Zeke could never have predicted it, not in a million years.

“Bust that front door down!” Levi called to the S.W.A.T. team, who stood at the ready with a battering ram. “We’re going in!” As directed, the S.W.A.T. team heaved the ram against the door, and it burst wide open like the maws of hell itself— only, instead of fire and brimstone, they were met with gunfire raining down like hail.

Fine, Zeke thought, stopping in his tracks behind Levi, who was moving to enter the fray. If he can go rogue, so can I.

Abruptly, Zeke changed course, headed for the opposite side of the hill where he knew there was a secret exit, but even as he moved, he felt Levi’s gaze land squarely on him, heavy as lead and sharp as a knife’s point.

“Jaeger,” he began, his tone a grisly warning, but Zeke was already too far gone. He sprinted around the hill, stretching his legs as far as they would go, knowing but not caring that Levi was gaining on him with every twist and turn.

If he catches me, he’s going to kill me, Zeke thought absently as he found the tunnel and entered it, not bothering to look behind him. If he kills me, then all my efforts will be in vain.

That would not do. Generally, Zeke was neutral about the matter of his survival, but that of his cause… he would make any sacrifice to ensure its success.

Zeke reached into his pocket, fingering the ridges of the grenade he’d stolen from the armory. He couldn’t risk Levi killing him, or ratting him out to their superiors; the best way to ensure that neither alternative took place was to take Levi out of the equation entirely.

“Jaeger!” Levi rounded the corner, his gun trained on Zeke. “Put your hands in the air or I’ll—”

Zeke didn’t even need to think about it. He pulled the pin, lobbed the grenade, and turned back down the tunnel.

In his hurry, Zeke missed the fact that a shadowy figure was pressed against the side of the tunnel.

***

(Y/N) had just managed to free herself from the handcuffs Levi had left her in when a call came through on her cell from Hange. Worry pulling at the pit of her stomach, (Y/N) answered, and it was worse than she could possibly have imagined.

“Levi’s in the hospital,” Hange said, forgoing a greeting. “He’s in critical condition, they’re taking him into surgery now. I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you, but I thought you should—”

“I’m on my way,” (Y/N) replied, her heart racing. “If you get a chance, tell him—”

She choked, unable to finish her sentence, but Hange saved her the trouble.

“I will,” said Hange, swift and sure. “I’ll tell him. Just get here in one piece. He’ll need you when he wakes up. If he wakes up.”

Hange’s tone— worried, frightened— didn’t bode well. (Y/N) refused to acknowledge the possibility that Levi wouldn’t make it. He had promised her. He’d promised.

“I’ll be there.” (Y/N) felt totally and entirely numb. “See you soon.”

In retrospect, (Y/N) had no idea how she made it to the hospital unscathed. She barely retained any memory of the drive, and once she arrived at the emergency room demanding to see Levi, the only thought she had was of his well-being.

“Ma’am, you really can’t go back there,” said the receptionist, standing from his desk. “We don’t even know what room Sergeant Ackerman will be in once he’s out of surgery, and since you aren’t a family member—”

“Hange!” (Y/N) cried out, caring little whether security decided to throw her out on her ass or not. “Hange, I’m here!”

As if summoned by some otherworldly magic, Hange appeared just around the corner.

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” said Hange to the receptionist with a strained smile. “She’s with me, she can take my place in the waiting room.”

The receptionist looked doubtful, but allowed (Y/N) to proceed. Hange held her arms open to (Y/N), and the ADA allowed herself to fall into the other woman’s arms, holding onto her like a life preserver in the middle of the ocean.

“There’s a girl,” said Hange, patting (Y/N)’s back as they embraced. Whispering, she added, “He asked for you when I found him.”

“Oh, God,” (Y/N) choked out, and she realized that she was crying. “Can you take me to him?”

Hange shook her head. “He’s in surgery. The best we can do is stay in the waiting room— that is, if our receptionist friend here is permitting?”

The receptionist looked at the two women for a long time, then sighed.

“Fine,” he replied, “But if anyone asks, you never spoke to me.”

(Y/N) nodded gratefully, and Hange led her to the waiting room by the hand. They sat together in tense silence, and (Y/N) couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. In the back of her mind, she had always known something like this might happen, but to experience it so suddenly was unexpected and terrifying. How Hange seemed to keep herself together, (Y/N) would never know; suddenly, she understood what Levi must have felt when she was targeted by Marley, and she forgave him for everything he had ever said to her in a fit of protective, possessive anger.

“I hate this place,” said Hange, looking up at the once-white ceiling tiles. “This is the same waiting room they put Levi and I in when Erwin lost his arm.”

(Y/N) nodded, remembering. Those had been the early days, when she and Levi were just figuring out who and what they were to each other. During that time, there had been screaming matches followed by the best sex (Y/N)’d ever had, quickies in the bathrooms at work during particularly gruelling days to let off steam, and all other manner of wild, passionate shenanigans, but the most wrecked she’d ever seen Levi was after that operation. He’d been a shaking, furious, bloodthirsty mess after the incident, and at night, when he’d wake up in cold sweat after another horrific dream, she’d find him sitting up on what had become his side of the bed, trembling with fear and anger and helplessness. On those nights, (Y/N) would bring him a glass of water, make him drink it, and then sit silently at his side; if he chose, Levi would talk to her about what he was feeling, and if not, he would reach out with his pinkie finger to touch her own. It was in those moments, the ones where only the tender skin of their smallest fingers and the very essence of their hearts were touching, that (Y/N) had decided that she might, in fact, have gotten a little out of her depth with the whole “fucking a cop” thing.

It was in those moments that she’d realized she loved Levi more than anyone else she’d ever been with.

“He’s going to be okay,” (Y/N) said, apropos of nothing. “Levi, he’s a fighter. He wouldn’t die on us now.”

Hange looked at her a little strangely, then huffed a laugh.

“I don’t guess you’re wrong,” she replied. “I’ve just seen a lot more people die fighting the titans of Marley than I ever thought I would.”

(Y/N) reached out and clasped Hange’s hand once more, and they stayed that way for a long while. Half an hour passed and there was still no news; Hange went to get some coffee a few minutes after that. Thirty more minutes, and (Y/N) began to feel a little queasy. A full forty-five minutes later, and Hange’s name was called out by a young woman in a white coat.

“My name is Dr. Stankowitz, and I have good news for you, ladies,” she told them, flipping papers on her chart. “Mr. Ackerman is stabilized, but we’re keeping him medicated for the moment so that he’ll rest. I could give you more information about the extent of his injuries and explain the recovery process to you, but you seem pretty anxious to see him, so I’ll bring you back before I go more in-depth. Sound good?”

Hange nodded and thanked her, and she and (Y/N) trailed anxiously behind the doctor as she led them to the room Levi had been moved to. The stark, empty walls of the ICU seemed to stretch on forever before Dr. Stankowitz stopped in front of a doorway, but once (Y/N) was to enter, she wasn’t sure she would have the strength to accept what she might find there. As if she could sense (Y/N)’s sudden reluctance, Dr. Stankowitz put her hand on (Y/N)’s shoulder and said,

“It’s not as bad as all that. Your sergeant was extremely lucky— a grenade caught him at close range, but thanks to his face and body being shielded by his gear, his injuries are as minimal as they can be in a situation like this. Thankfully, he doesn’t have as much burnt tissue as we might have expected, but he did sustain multiple lacerations that cost him one eye and a few of his fingers. He’ll be alright, though, and so will you.”

(Y/N) swallowed thickly, but nodded. Steeling her nerves, she slipped quietly into the room behind Hange, who was already seated by Levi’s side, holding one of his hands in her own, and when (Y/N) came close enough to see Levi’s face, she was both pained and relieved. A long suture went from above Levi’s right eyebrow down over his eye, ending only on the bottom left side of his face. There was another, more shallow laceration closer to his ear on his right cheek, but what concerned (Y/N) most was the hand that Hange was holding— Levi’s right hand— which was missing the index and middle fingers.

“He looks so grumpy,” Hange smiled a bit sadly, tears welling in her eyes for the first time since (Y/N) had seen her. “He looks like he could sit up and scold us at any moment.”

(Y/N) nodded, but before she could reply, Dr. Stankowitz cleared her throat.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but now that you’ve seen that Sergeant Ackerman is on the mend, the hospital’s policy is that only one visitor is allowed at the time to allow maximum rest and recovery for our patients.” The doctor looked pained for a moment, then her features smoothed back into a neutral mask of professionalism. “I’m sure you understand.”

(Y/N) nodded, moving to go— after all, what good could she do Levi by staying around and crying when she could be working this case?— but Hange stopped her, standing and straightening her blazer.

“You stay,” said Hange, wiping her eyes. “I’ve got to do the paperwork on this. You take care of him, and we’ll focus on catching whoever’s behind it.”

“Alright,” said (Y/N), unable to argue with much of anything in her current state. “Be careful out there, Hange.”

Hange nodded, patted (Y/N)’s shoulder in farewell, then made her exit. Dr. Stankowitz said something in regards to hospital visiting hours, then departed as well, leaving (Y/N) well and truly alone with Levi’s broken but resting body.

Or, at least she would have been alone, had a figure not stepped out from behind another the curtain of another section meant for a different patient, casting its own shadow over her as she took up Hange’s seat next to Levi.

“… Eren?” asked (Y/N), blinking up at the much older-looking version of the police cadet she’d known before. “What are you doing here?”

Eren glanced around as if to make sure they were alone, then tugged his baseball cap further down over his eyes and said, “I know who the rat is.”

It took (Y/N) a moment to process what she’d just been told, but once she did, she launched herself to her feet, adrenaline pumping through her veins.

“Who is it?” she demanded, her hands balled into white-knuckled fists at her side. “I want to find and kill the bastard myself!”

A dangerous glint rose in Eren’s eyes, and he put his hands on both of her shoulders, grounding her.

“I know who it is, but before I tell you, I want to run a plan past you and see if it could be admissible as evidence.”

Eren spoke at length, and (Y/N) listened carefully as he described his plan in detail. Once he finished, (Y/N) sat in stunned silence, flabbergasted by how stupidly simple it seemed, yet how effective. If they managed to pull this off well enough, the two of them could take down Marley with one blow. Sure, Internal Affairs might roast her alive over a fire made of paperwork, but what was a little bureaucratic scolding compared to sweet justice with a side of vengeance?

“And you’re sure this will work?”

Eren nodded. “I’ve seen it a hundred times if I’ve seen it once. It won’t be easy, though, and even if we manage to pull it off and survive, Sarge is gonna kill us.”

(Y/N) glanced over at Levi, took in the angry, puckered, pinkened flesh that ripped its way across his face, the missing fingers, and the pallor of his complexion, and her decision was made.

“I can handle Levi,” she said, determined. “I’ll do anything if it means we can take Marley down.”

Eren nodded. “I’ll be in touch. ”

With that, Eren took his leave, and for the first time in a long time, (Y/N) felt hopeful that they would finally be able to destroy Marley for good.

#attack on titan #aot x reader #levi ackerman #levi imagine #aot fanfiction #aot smut #cop au #ao3

16 notes · View notes

rumblelibrary · 3 years

Text

The Diary of Doctor Laszlo Kreizler

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2

Synopsis: Alienist’s notes are private, sometimes gruesome, secrets of others and of himself.Those pages belongs to secrecy and decadence, have a glimpse to this world made of drafts, notes, accidents and reflections. Or maybe it is you the only person that should ever reach for it.

While you read this imagine Laszlo mostly at the end of his day, scraping the ideas and the thoughts, adjusting previous notes with additions, closing the day behind himself with a couple of sentences while sitting in his evening robe, a good glass of whiskey and his glasses bridged almost at the tip of his nose. Or maybe imagine yourself, you sneaky thing, reach for it from a far shelf.

Word count: 3.5k

Warnings: listen, this is the set of ideas and confessions of a man living in the 1890’s. Most of them will be outdated, rough, even deprecating in some analysis of the roles of men, women and social status, religion, etc.So be prepared, my point is to make Laszlo reflect upon those topics, but to be as faithful as I can to his time. Mention of death, mutilation, self harm and sex. Psychologically troubled young children ahead! Author’s note: The story is placed between season 1 and season 2. Thank you for everyone that encouraged me to keep going. I have to wait for my local drop of serotonin to get fully Laszloed to go through this.

Lyra’s Contellation, Illustration taken from Uranographia by Johann Bode

Routine. Routine is comfort. Habit stabilises the character.

If you follow a routine, you won’t ever be victim of imprudence, of evil jokes of fate. The stability earned through calculated and repeated actions brings a sense of fulfilment that forbids other thoughts to come bashing in, breaking rules, breaking hopes that a solid scheduled routine forbids to have. I take my time to begin this week, I planned the things to do, the next steps for the case, the people to meet, the resources I am allowed to contemplate. I feel good, I feel back to myself and the events of the weekend seem far from me and my own perception. I probably got ahead of myself, carried by some instinctual though and random rush of emotion, to be always in contact with the same people and mostly kids probably doesn’t help my stance in the presence of other adults. I feel silly now reading back the last page, I felt tempted to tear it off, but to keep it there should be a small memento of not losing my temper so easily. I read it over and over and I know I am not as charmed as I thought I was. I am just lonely. I have always been and it is normal to face ups and downs even for a man of my age who is more accustomed to it. To desire a partner is a natural instinct, to find somebody attractive is meant by nature, it is the body calling for the natural fulfilment of the reason we are put on this very Earth. But even in a state of nature my own condition would be forbidding me to be part of the natural process of growing my own kind. I am the type of male that would be excluded because of his impossibility to give the protection to the pack, therefore it is just more reasonable to me to adapt to my condition. No matter what my Potentia generandi might be (the ability to procreate).

With all the smugness that characterises him, Niki showed off that he passed my challenge. But to be really of an help to his antics I didn’t show any kind of surprise. I treated him like he did the bare minimum, like he didn’t prove me any kind of superiority. He has a natural attitude toward challenging the figure of power, he is trying to overpower me, but I won’t satisfy his need. I have noticed he has a very technical brain, he finds ways to solve problems in ingenious way and not by throwing himself into the task. I proceeded giving him to work on a clock, an old broken one we had in the institute, one of the kids hit it with a ball years ago and nobody ever worked on repairing it. I gave him the clock, a couple of screwdrivers and a book. He called me a number of German names I won’t transcribe, but it gave me a certain amount of satisfaction. If my intuitions are right, I am sure the clock will be repaired by next week.

Analysis of the victim’s body through John’s eyes. The drawings and sketches are as detailed as I requested, all of this thanks to you joining him. I deal with art critic section, I am used to notice these things. You assure me, you play yourself low and I wonder why, nevertheless you did notice things neither John or I did, which pleased me. It fooled me, distracted me from my purpose to not give in to your witchery, as I leaned closer watching your pale hand move across the pages tracing this or that line, showing how this must be done with the killer on this side and not that side, with words so deliciously elaborate, your way of composing your speech is compelling, you could sell the drawing of a kid like it was a Botticelli. I noticed the shape of your hands, the way you move them, I wonder if you play an instrument, or played, some habits just stick with you through life. I focused on taking notes, your ideas and instructions giving me a new point of view, a new stimulus. What if that is the only way the killer can communicate? Or what if this is the communication that works for him? Could our killer be mute or deaf? Or that’s how society made him feel? This man, or woman, needs a listener and I am afraid that now, since he got our attention and the public’s, he won’t stop. Another killing could be just as close.

Scheduled: meeting with the parents of Alex Garel for new admission, Monday next week at 11 am. Love at first is a fetish and like all fetishes it is based onto an object that hides a deeper meaning, like gloves mean hands, to love at first sight means to see somebody that you think, and think only, to have the chance to share not only a sensual kind of bond, but an intellectual. Love at first sight is based onto not knowing someone well enough, but having the time to idealise most of that someone. I can see why I feel this attraction, using a particular phrase that Sara often mutters when investigating: you tick all the boxes. I know you do, your beauty is everything but conventional, you’re the kind of face that painters would paint and musicians would write hymns about, but any animal on the street would never be allowed to see. You have the grace of the body and the fire in the eyes, and then you speak. When you speak, I realise, you could bring the world to its knees. Also, you never speak out of context, and if you do it is to ease somebody’s position. You do it often with John or with Stevie, you say something really silly in order to put them back to a place of comfort. Some women would call it self deprecating, but I see that you only pick wisely your fights and your wins. You don’t need to earn your peace and quiet by neglecting, but by lifting up the others. I wonder if you do it with me too, if your silences are just you allowing me to be in a better place while instead your judgment is tearing me apart. I shouldn’t care, but I keep wondering, sometimes I take my time to answer you, I analyse every shade, every peculiarity of your question, I am looking for sarcasm, for a condescending voice, for something to hang on and bare you open. To prove myself you’re not perfect. But deep down I know that you do, you judge me and you do well.

Mother never said so. That’s what one of the girls in my care said today. Ursula. She is tough. Skin as thick as an alligator and the tendency to pull her own hair at night or when under a massive amount of stress, enuresis alongside erratic episodes of mutism. I tried the soft approach, it didn’t work. She is too accustomed to be indulged. Therefore today I pushed her a bit overboard, I teased her over opinions on the female body, the female role, she is only 12, but she is soon to bleed, she knows, I can tell from the way she clenches to her skirts, from the way she looks at me as a threatening figure. I am the incarnation of danger to her. Under her steady silence, I pushed a bit more, asking how her mother taught her to be nice and submissive. Does her mother tells her she is going to be a good wife? The phrase, which I reported at the top of the page, surprised me. What is her mother teaching to her then? What closed her so much, locked her soul away, making a small bird like this choose the silence and the retirement of self inflicted pain over, what? Mankind? Or just Men? Is that even a curse? Should I cure her from a truth that her own mother whispered to her ear one night before bed and made a child decide that the world wasn’t a place to share her time with? Am I the man supposed to teach her that men are worth of trust? In the eyes of modern society, who measures its own value over the modesty of the women, she would be a champion, but at what price? I can’t in any way let her parents bring her back home after our recent meetings. Nevertheless, I have to make up my own mind on how to give her troubled soul ease without making her believe in fables. I, as a man, regard myself not worth of any of the trust they expect me to teach her.

In all of my years practicing with people’s feelings and traumas, I challenged myself to find those same traumas within my own mind. It is a tricky game, terrible, anguishing at times. But it straightens me, the pain of others, the pain of kids mostly, so unadulterated and pure, breaks the curtain between me and the lies that I often surround myself with. Pain is made of method, you can open it up, you can scrutinise it, part it piece by piece dividing it in sectors and, partitions, centre part, side part, heart of the problem. Pain is reliable. Happiness is not. It is random, cruelly sudden, unexpected, it washes over you in such deflecting way only to leave you alone a moment after ashamed and alone. I saw you again today. You were in a table full of what I could only guess as your former university colleagues, I saw pain in you, not heavy but constant. Annoyance, a bit of sadness. Your head titling on side and your eyes drifting on the left, you’re imagining something away from them. A place? An object? Or maybe someone? Your hands play circles at the bottom of the flute of your drink like kids do, your smile only one sided. I don’t see you speak at all, only listen. What could keep your voice down? I almost gulped down my own breath as you looked up and I realised how I must have looked. I was having lunch on my own, in a very private table and even entertaining myself with a newspaper on the side. I wish you didn’t, but you came over, your eyes shining. Did I save you? Or maybe I was just a good excuse to leave that painful meeting behind. Don’t be so nice to me, it is not healthy. Don’t look at me like you expect anything more from me than me listening. I won’t smile back at you, I won’t give you care, attentions or thought. I won’t lean for your perfume, I won’t obsess over that dress you wore, that pin that adorned your neckline keeping your undershirt in place, a silver robin, I remember. I won’t remember the number of the buttons on the side of your glove, three. I won’t observe the little moles just under your ear. A small constellation, I later realised, hidden between your ear and the beginning of your neck. I don’t need to check in my books. It is a constellation. It is Lyra. Why? Why you must be like this? Are you the Lyra? Are you the instrument of Orpheus come to me to drag me out of Hell? The Tartarus holds my soul and you should know already, I am not worth the quarter part of Eurydice to be saved and she never came back anyway. I won’t be now recollecting the way your teeth sunk in the inner side of your cheek when you apologised for the annoyance. You apologised twice, I ignored you both times with a raised hand to request peace and silence. I am not letting you in.

Reserved: Tickets for Wednesday’s evening Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi. The guest female lead promises a beautiful show.

Leonardo, as I am learning through Paul Valery essay, is who I would define as a figure of projective identification of the Subject or, to better explain it, of the knowledge of the Subject that formed and grew through the use of sketches in the experience of the Artist. I have always thought that the finest form of art was the representation of knowledge duly undressed by any personal identification. Leonardo, instead, proceeded to represent the figure through the essence of the artist, a representation technically unlimited on objects and symbols and that keep expressing the transformation and development of Leonardo’s own being.Some artists are testimony of the destruction of the world, of the loss of eternal beauty over decadence. And then you have Leonardo, who creates an art that is the gravity of the world’s system, of the nature, of thoughts and abstractions. I wonder if our killer does the same, if the way they presents the victim through their own personal view, if what we can read there it is their stories, their pains, their needs. Their happiness and troubles. What are they trying to tell me? I need to know, I need to know to save a life, of course, but I also need to know to be able to sleep at night. Hair, hair are the epitome of femininity in any era. I keep studying Ursula and her habit to pull the. I took notes on it: she picks them by the bottom, slowly separates them until she gains an amount her mind defines satisfactory and then she rolls her finger and pulls, she does it until her finger is empty and there are no hair left. I find her process incredibly interesting. In men’s case the display of physical attributes is not as vital, a beard can be appreciated but does not modify the power of seduction of a grown man. On the contrary, for women hair are a vital part of their attractiveness toward the opposite sex, society sees the hair of a woman as part of their vital characteristics, also in ancient times for a woman to cut her hair or have her hair cut was a sign of deep separation from the society. Only heroines or whores wore that mark and the association of the two is so rooted into the way society always parted the role of a woman in two that it is nauseating to think of. I am still fearing to let Ursula go away, the repulsion that she is showing toward her own body makes it difficult even for me to crack her shell open as a man, but my deepest worry is when that hate will take a scarier and deeper tool on her. How a girl with such a fear of what her body can do, like sex or pregnancy, can endure in the future to have an husband? Or even to be courted by anyone?

John is helpless and I admire him for that. He doesn’t hide it, he just is. He is vulnerable and exposed, he is an open well bursting with doubts and feelings and troubled waters. He is genuine in a way I could never be. Maybe that’s why I despise even more him talking about you, how he sees you every morning, how you greet everybody, how you behave even with interns, how you like your coffee. Your talents, your wits, how you said this and acted like that and reasoned through him. How you forbid him to drink even when he felt tempted. How you stayed late over to help him collect all the informations I requested him to get. To him. Not to you. The evil demon of envy scratching in the back of my head screaming like a siren out in the sea, he demands to be heard, he demands to be allowed a part in this game. I won’t allow him that. I won’t allow myself any of that. This is a pure game of chess, if I give in a pawn now, I will lose my knight, and I know it. I advice him to not be so closed minded when he praises you, only to get surprised by the charms of a natural logical mind. I find a way to hurt him, he is an easy target, I look at him as his eyebrows twitch and he summons his patience on me. He lost the plot about you already, his bruised pride taking over. You won’t come into my life.

“Un dì, felice, eterea, mi balenaste innante, e da quel dì tremante vissi d'ignoto amor.” (“On a day, happy and ethereal, you appeared in front of me and from that day, trembling, I lived on an unknown love”)

The words of Alfredo in the first act of the Traviata keep running through me, a chant that won’t let me go, almost painful. The Opera House, that was my hiding place, a place where in plain sight I could let out myself, unleash. The catharsis of the characters involved running through me, I didn’t need anything but their voices and those musical instruments to let out my fears, doubts and anger. When Alfredo came to the scene tonight, the lights were strong and slightly pinkish, the performer bursting out of the seams with passion. My eyes diverted only to see you there. Alone. Those blinding lights gave you the the radiance of a vision singing the notes of greek myths and heroes, that dark blue evening clothing rang through my eyes like it was a bright yellow, the little shiny details that adorned you so clear against the heavy lighting to look like transparent pieces of water collected to adorn your beauty. I wasn’t me, but Alfredo, and I was helpless against you sitting so far and yet too close from me. I was naked in front of thousands. I am aware of the effect you have on me and our last conversation was barely regarded as one. This is infatuation, this is the pure work of a lonely mind and not something worth of any of all the words that I am dissipating here. Yet. I saw you cry at the climax of the opera, Violetta, the protagonist, heartbroken falling on stage consumed by pain and regret for her lost love and ultimate sacrifice. Your eyes shone as you tried to hide the tears and collect yourself. Through my binoculars, I saw your throat tremble and gulp down something more than just a sigh of pain. Your jaw clenched, your gloved hand moves to hide your shaking lips. I reckon, I have never seen such sad lips look more inviting. You look at the wall on your side breathing through your nose and not even that can save you by the strength of the voice of the soprano. You’re defeated and so you brought a fine silk handkerchief to your eyes, your shoulders bent inward in self defence. The Opera won. It won you like it always wins me. I wonder if you felt like this because of a past lover, somebody that broke your heart and made you feel wrong in any way. And because of that little wonder it is even more clear to me why I am a man worth of no trust. Because for a moment, I know, I wished to be the one that broke your heart. That gave you just the pain you’re inflicting on me so mercilessly by offering intoxicating kindness and beauty. To own your thoughts, tears and shame. To be the one man you have to look away from. I want to own all of that and, maybe, I will be freed of you the day you’ll be just another human being that hates Dr Laszlo Kreizler.

Tagged @cazzyimagines @lieutenantn @handmaiden-of-mischief @thesunflowersutra @zemomybeloved @fictionlandslanddreams @charistory @greeneyedblondie44 @apparrio @hb8301 @whatawildone

Let me know if you want to get tagged too <3

#the diary of doctor laszlo kreizler #dr laszlo kreizler #laszlo kreizler #dr laszlo kreizler x reader #dr laszlo kreizler imagine #dr laszlo kreizler x you #laszlo kreizler x reader #laszlo kreizler headcanons #thealienist #the alienist fanfic #the alienist fanfiction

73 notes · View notes