#I think I’ve been submitting too many transparents- I need to make more for my own blog… | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shhhlikeme · 4 years

Text

“Losty Aone” / “Losty Mountain Man🏔” Series:

Outtake Collection #17: (NSFW)

———————————

A/N: taglist, I did not post one with the last marathon so check if you missed collections 13-15 |

I had a lot of difficulty posting this so if it seems unfinished and you don’t see the taglist please let me know!

Also, MATURE CONTENT BELOW! NSFW!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

———————————

Poor Aone………………………………………’s sexual composure. 🥵🤯🤸‍♂️

That following Friday, In the calm Date Tech Hallway….

Like a hurricane, Kenji and a kanji ran over to Aone-san out of breath.

“Aone!!!”

Used to his best friends being storms at home and at school, he turned to them at his locker. “Yes? Are you two okay?”

Kenji made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “—Just dandy. We’re fine. But you’re not. Or, you won’t be. You’re supposed to help Y/N with her tryout video today right??!!!”

Aone’s heart picked up speed, thinking about being alone with you again. He nodded. “Yes. Why? Is she alright?”

“Cancel it.”

Beside Kenji, Kanji bounced on his own two feet, repeating the brunette with wide eyes. “Cancel it, cancel it, cancel it!”

Aone looked confused. His best friends knew how much this plan meant to him, which included getting closer to you as a step, so he didn’t understand. Besides, they’d just spoken about it this morning and everything was fine.

“I don’t understand…” Takanobu tilted his head to the side curiously.

Kenji huffed. “Just trust us!!”

“Give me your phone Aone-senpai, I’ll call Y/N and cancel for you!!!” Kogane shouted, bustling in between the two of them to search Aone’s open locker…… for his phone, no doubt.

Aone stepped to the side so that the setter could search his locker, knowing his phone was in his pocket. “Kogane-san, please calm down. Is anyone hurt or injured?”

His friends looked frazzled as hell.

“No one is fucking hurt, you big giant. Just trust us when we say you need to cancel helping her film her stupid thing. Tell her to get a camera stand or pay one of the film geeks or something—“

“No.” Aone growled unintentionally. He didn’t mean to, he just really disliked the idea of another guy spending hours with the love of his life. Hewanted to help her. Aone removed the venom from his next words. “I want to see her, Futakuchi-san. You know that. What has gotten into you two—“

Kenji pinched the bridge of his nose, interrupting. “—Kusa said..... that apparently, Y/N’s cheer uniform had an issue with the order. The University—our University— sent her a uniform that’s a size or two too small. But she still has to submit her freaking audition in it and then they’ll apparently send her a new one, so—“

“I’ve seen Y/N in a cheerleading uniform before.” Aone stated calmly, feeling better now that he knows you weren’t involved in some incident or something. “You both really expect me to cancel on Y/N because of that?” Ridiculous, Aone wanted to add, but he didn’t. He tried his best to ignore, however, the way he felt a small stir in his lower belly because he recalled seeing you in the normal Date Teko cheer uniform. Not only is that cheer uniform what you were wearing the first time he ever laid eyes on you, but every male in this school—including the Mountain Man—thought you looked unbelievably hot in it.

Before you noticed him, Aone almost ran into a pole once because he specifically saw you stretching in uniform outdoors with your team. Kenji pulled him from the pole’s path in the knick of time.

Another time, When you were dating, Aone had gotten a huge boner after school just because he had received a text from him asking if your bra was showing through your white cheer top, with an attached photo of your chest. It was, in fact, transparent and Aone couldn’t think straight for the rest of his own practice. Coach was really mad at him that day….

Anyway, the point is that Aone has seen you in your attractive cheer uniform plenty of times. Perhaps his friends forgot?

“Aone-san, we can tell her that you’re sick, or that there is a family emergency or something, come—“ Kenji grabbed his best friend’s arm, steering him toward the exit. Aone let his friend turn him so that he does’t over exert himself like he usually did when he tried to move the all-muscle man, but he stopped just before they blocked the exit.

‘Aone! TRUST ME. You cannot handle—“

“—I can and I will. Kenji. Please let me g—“

Just then, you entered through the exit doors a few feet away that Kenji was about to lead you out of, cutting Takanobu off and immediately heading his way.

“Oh, hey, Aone! There you are!”

Aone:

Aone Takanobu can truly say—if he could speak—that he will never even question Futakuchi again.

Kenji whistled under his breath when he saw you too. “Too late.” he muttered, folding his arms and a blush setting in. “See you at home.!” The brunette yelled as he grabbed Kanji, who was still searching the white haired’s locker—with one hand, using his other to plug his nose because was trickling a bit of blood.

Upon seeing you, Aone felt as if all of the air in his lungs had been shaken out of his body like a damn salt shaker. He had to physically rub his eyes to make sure they were functioning correctly, and after he did that and you were still walking towards him, Aone pinched his own forearm, hard.

Still, you were walking toward him.

Fuck. This is real then.

Holy mother of God, Aone thought in a panic. This isn’t a wet dream?! It can’t be. He’s never seen that uniform on you before.

You stopped in front of Aone, ignoring the handful of boys that were drooling over you in your potential new post secondary school uniform.

“Ugh. I said medium, not extra small. If I didn’t need a scholarship to make up for my grades, I wouldn’t go to this damn school. Just for this.” You grumbled, walking right past Aone to his locker that was left wide open. Without thinking, you reached inside and collected his huge Date Tech Volleyball jacket, swinging it over your shoulder and zipping it up. Aone had so many of these, and you loved them. You could practically hear the collective disappointed-male groan when you covered yourself completely. It reached the bottom of your kneecaps.

When your eyes fluttered closed in pleasure because you were wrapped up in the most incredible warmth and scent in the world—Aone’s—you realized you had basically just performed theft, you looked down at your white cheer shoes sheepishly. “Oh my gosh. Sorry, Aone. Habit, I guess.” You apologized, too nervous to look up at him. Horny Mountain Man was in no position to respond coherently anyway, even if he didn’t want you wearing his stuff.

Which, for the record, always makes me happy as fuck.

Water. He thought. Water is what always helps in times like this.

“Please, second.” Aone blurted, turning quickly to speed walk down the hallway to the nearest water fountain. It was tucked away in a corner to where he was hidden, so Aone alternated between taking big, big, very big gulps and splashing water on his face. Repeat.

You were wearing a form-fitting yellow cheer uniform. It said Pirates across the chest that it squeezed, exposed your entire stomach, and then yellow met your waist again in a really short pleated skirt (skort) that was barely covering your ass. Just seeing you in it for two seconds before you put on his jacket alone made Aone store that visual in his spank bank for tonight. Uh, for tonight x3.......or tonight x4........and then tomorrow morning, ……because the way that uniform fit you made him fantasize about doing every position in it….... ugh, Aone splashed more water on his face again.

Back at Aone’s locker alone, You were so embarrassed in this uniform. You look like an absolute fool in a uniform so tiny, what the fuck?

Hearing a group of hurried footsteps coming from your left, from your two places you both turned to see a group of the biggest fuckboys in the school turning down this hall, searching for what Aone just knew was you with expectant expressions, positively gutted when they saw a giant jacket on you.

You narrowed your eyes at the group in a glare, giving them a sickeningly sweet smile. “Hi, Fuck off 😊🖕.”

“Heya to you too, Y/N.” Said the guy you briefly gave a chance to before you met a real man like Aone. The baseball player. He had such a disgusting grin on his face, as if he was looking to bring you home or something. As if.

Seemingly correct in deciphering what his look means, You had to hold down your lunch when he said, “Good luck with your online tryouts today. Care to show us that new uniform of yours?” He wiggled his eyebrows at you.

“Nope, thanks. I just want to send my audition tape and solidify my future never seeing your ass again.” You snapped back.

“Ouch, Y/N. We just heard it’s tryouts for the cheer squad today, and wanted to give all you ladies our sincerest thanks for being what awoke our hormones in first year. Is that so bad?”

“Gross. You’re disgusting.”

“And you’re newly single, right? C’mon, I’m leaving the country after graduation for baseball. Consider it a parting gift,” The baseball player licked his lips and took one tiny step toward you. “I can stretch it out for you,”

Takanobu—who was frozen in horny-for-Y/N-mode by the water fountain—was snapped out of it as soon as a threatening movement was made toward you.

Aone understands very well that this was not a good position for any female to be in, but especially not the most important female in his life.

Immediately, he was in front of you, completely shielding you from the other boys behind his broad, muscular body.

Not knowing how the fuck this giant man can move that fast again, you couldnt help the breath of relief that left you, knowing you didn’t have to fight this battle anymore. Your knight has arrived. Your ex-knight. ☹️

“I’m sure you all have something else to do this afternoon.” Aone stated, trying to be as civil as possible.

The baseball player threw his head back and laughed. “I definitely do…..but she’s just a regular student, not a cheerleader…… so it can wait. Oh, and—totally forgot to welcome you to the dumped-by-a-hot-cheerleader club—we’re all in it.” The baseball player gestured toward the group of boys he was in and they all laughed.

Aone felt his heart break a bit, but his anger didn’t allow him to falter. Girlfriend or not, these boys didn’t respect the love of his life or any female in this school, and it was obvious. Nothing made him more upset.

“Come on bro, tell her to take off the jacket, we all wanna see her new uniform—“ the creep tried taking a step around Aone to get to you, so Aone stepped forward blocking that path, pulling you behind him again.

“Take one more step toward her.” Aone growled in the smoothest voice. You couldn’t see it, but from experience with creeps trying to hit on you when you were together, you could tell Aone had his absolutely terrifying expression on and fit didn’t even mean to. The biggest teddy bear... that turned into your tough grizzly without the tiniest bit of hesitation if it meant protecting you.

“I dare you.” Aone added, for good measure.

Needless to say, like always, the group of creepos saw how serious this giant could be, and then scurried away faster than they came.

It turns out they’re not a fan of Aone’s dares.

You resisted every nerve in your body from acting on your instincts and grabbing Takanobu and kissing him as thanks for protecting you. Fuck, you just fell deeper in love with the man and if we are being g honest, hearing him become so respectfully protective like that, not only made your heart clench but your pussy clench as well.

Aone turned to you and bowed in apology for speaking for you.

You waved him off and thanked him wising words as you physically pressed your thighs together to keep yourself from throwing yourself on your ex and begging him to fuck your brains out like you wanted him to. Like he always did. Truth be told, you are so turned on.

Needing fresh air, right the fuck now—you grabbed Aone’s arm and he allowed you to pull him outside to the empty football field since school was over.

You found a small corner where you’d be hidden from prying eyes and it was a flat enough green surface for jumps and tumbling passes, so you liked it. you asked your beautiful Ex if it was fine to set up here for the audition. Daylight hit the area perfectly.

Takanobu nodded, but then a slight blush fell over his face and you didn’t follow exactly why that was. “What is it?” You ask, using your hand as a visor.

“Ummm,… this spot is fine Y/N. But I just realized that I forgot my flash in the photography studio.”

You shrugged. “Oh! That’s it? Okay, that’s fine. I can just wait here and start stretching.”

Aone’s pale cheeks darkened even more. You tried not to swoon. Oh my gosh he looked cute! But you still didn’t get why forgetting his flash made him so shy.

“Aone, what is it? Is there something wrong?”

Takanobu looked away, willing himself to speak with conviction. “No, I apologize again. It’s just….” He willed himself to meet your eyes, because that’s what his plan told him to do. “Do you mind accompanying me? Uh, to retrieve the flash? I can carry everything, that’s not a problem, but— I just don’t feel comfortable leaving you out here alone just in case that group comes back and I’m not around.”

You inside:

You sucked in a breath, trying so so sooo fucking hard not to shout how much you loved this man! If you were still dating, you would tackle him and showering his face with kisses right now, then probably tug him somewhere so you could drop to your knees and suck the soul out of his dick—that’s how much you loved him.

“Oh, that’s so sweet.” You nodded, pressing your thighs together as you walked his side, in his jacket.

***

2 hours later, Aone is almost done filming your tryout tape.

In the beginning, He managed to distract himself on his phone while you stretched, only stealing glances at you when you were in your splits (at which time Aone accidentally bit his tongue).

Then the middle section of filming wasn’t sooo bad, you had to tell the camera about yourself—in which Aone thought you looked so pretty and thought you didn’t list enough of your good qualities, but he wouldn’t interject to tell you that— he filmed you doing a few technical jumps, some sideline hand-only cheers that you yelled out, and a few tumbling passes, which Aone was able to handle if he was thinking about dead squirrels like Futakuchi taught him. But that was as far as the dead squirrel strategy went for him. It had served its purpose and now Aone was running out of steam, because you had just completed the flyer positions section: where you had to contort your amazing body in flexible positions that literally made his urges to fuck you hard come back, God damnit…

Even though that was tough, Takanobu had a plan to follow and it included being able to spend time with you like this, so he had to put on a brave face and endure it. He was so proud of himself so far—even if he had to overheat in the volleyball sweater he had to put on to hide his protruding cock. It was sunny, not hot, which is good. And it did a great job hiding his crotch, so he wouldn’t dare take it off.

But truth be told, a part of Aone Takanobu felt absolutely foolish for not taking his friend’s offer earlier and cancelling on you. If seeing a cheerleading uniform on you in the past almost made him walk into a pole, I don’t think anyone could imagine how seeing you in a much sexier, college cheerleader uniform that is 2 sizes too small makes him feel now. Fuck.

During the final portion of your tryout video, you had to showcase the choreography they taught you, and well, Aone was…………. He was……………

He was……………………

A/N: Imma try to just come out and say it.

During your dance segment…………………

You are of course, wearing that tiny new uniform, and Mountain Man is so fucking in love and horny for you, and you were also horny so you were unintentionally giving him bedroom eyes, and your dance for the tryout was semi provocative, and you are so flexible and bendy, slightly sweaty from over exertion, and did Aone mention that you are wearing that tiny uniform????

Yeah, this white haired beauty was going to cum untouched.

Why? How? Well:

“So, Aone, for this part, I need you to tell me how I’m doing, Okay? I know you don’t know cheer very well but just in this dance section if I look sloppy or Im going too fast, I’d appreciate the feedback since my future relies on this. Is that Okay?”

The white haired beauty grunted in agreement, the sound actually hurting his throat because it was so dry.

You smiled at him sweetly.

You looked so fucking cute, LostyAone.exe stopped working.

“I need you to make sure the camera is getting my entire body, Okay? So that the judges can judge my footwork too. Can you pan down to make sure you’re comfortable with the movement?

Using the camera, Aone panned down liked you asked and nearly died. He was glad his eyes were hidden behind the camera because they just about fell the fuck out when he caught a really good glimpse of your delectable ass under your cheer skirt. Inside his brain, dozens of little control-panel Aone’s erupted in chaos, running around his brain with towels trying to blow out the raging inferno in there.

SHE IS SO FUCKING SEXY, His mind yelled at him, as if he needed any more of a reminder. TOO SEXY, it repeated, and Aone’s dick twitched angrily in his pants.

DEAD SQUIRRELS. DEAD SQUIRRELS. DEAD—OH, SHE’S SMILING AT US.

Takanobu briefly thought about the fact that this footage was only going to be seen by your prospective cheer captains, coaches, and himself— but he couldn’t help but wonder how he was going to edit all of this together in the time frame he promised he would with only one hand. The incessant desire he had to pump his cock to the look of you in that tiny uniform was practically all-consuming. So when he has to stare at constant footage of you alone in his room this weekend, well............. he’d probably need to take more breaks than he’s willing to admit. He needed this to end, and quick.

“So there is one move, Aone, that I need you to make sure that part gets a tiny close-up of. It’s this part where I flip why hair like this, then I have to run my hands from my neck dowwwwwwwn my body slowly and back up to do a mini chest pump… but that move I am switching it to a mini chest squeeze…, because the coach said she wants her team this year to have a lot of sex appeal and the ability to make the dances their own, so I thought I’d add that to show her I have what she’s looking for. What do you think?”

Wait, Sex appeal? Chest squeeze? As in, squeeze your breasts?! Like how? And Did Y/N just insinuate that she needs more sex appeal ? More than she already…….………..huh🥵? Aone gulped in disbelief. If you had any more sex appeal, Y/N……….. he wanted to tell you. I’d be an absolute dead man. He already was.

You took Mountain Man’s silence as confusion. “Do you not get what I’m saying? Here, I’m thinking something like this.”

And then, if things weren’t bad enough, you showed this poor poor hanging-on-by-a-single-thread-of-composure Aone—the move that you’re referring to in slow motion so that he could recognize it in the dance:

Takanobu was going to lose his mind. Inside, he was all:

And he couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that he has what you just did on film.

Aone’s dick throbbed relentlessly in his uniform pants, practically having a pounding heart attack of its own. Luckily, it was hidden under his jacket, telling him loud and clear that this was all he could handle from under there.

“Umm,” Aone started shakily, turning his back to you and scanning the field. He thanked the heavens because he saw the girls entire soccer team starting practice really close to where they were filming, so if anything were to happen and those boys came back to bother you, you could just walk right over to the big group and the coaches. He wouldn’t be gone long anyway.

Not with how worked up he was.

Not even remembering what excuse he made because all of his brain blood resided in his cock right now, whether he said he needed to go to the bathroom or fucking Pluto he doesn’t know—but he finds comfort in the fact that whatever he said, you responded unsuspectingly, saying,

“Oh Okay, sure! I needed a break anyway!” you plopped down on the grass in fatigue.

Good.

Everything in Aone’s mind was a blur until he was inside one of the stalls in the empty boys volleyball locker room, his right hand down his pants before he could even think to unbutton or pull down a zipper, stroking his needy length.

“Ohhhh my God,” Aone sighed, using the immense amount of pre cum on his dick as lubrication. His dick was twitching in his palm as he stroked.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” chanted the middle blocker who does NOT use profanity regularly, shutting his eyes as tight as they could go. Immediately, images of you met the inside of his dark lids, especially this image: over and over and over.

So horny he wasnt even thinking clearly, Mountain Man immediately reached for his camera hanging on a necklace around his neck with one large hand. He immediately scrolled to the dance footage and moaned when your beautiful face and figure met the screen. He stroked himself through the dance you just did that wasn’t even the official dance yet, lidded eyes staring at your pretty face and amazing body in that fucking uniform. A hand job has never felt so knee-buckling.

He replayed the footage.

She’s so hot. Stroke harder. Rewind. Replay. She’s so fucking hot. Stroke faster. Rewind. Replay. She’s so UNBELIEVABLY fucking hottttttttttt. Fuck my hand. Replay, replay, replay.

Within 50 seconds of starting, Aone was releasing so hard into his hand that he was grateful the camera was around his neck because the force of his orgasm made it slip out of this hand.

Breathing heavily as if he had just run a fucking marathon, it was only one more minute later that Aone felt himself hardening again, thinking of you and needing another release. Home. His dick chanted. He needed to go home. Takanobu was so horny for you that he guiltily fantasized about taking the bra you left at his house all that time ago out so that he could paint it white and possibly fuck it, but he somehow thought that was disrespectful and felt a little ashamed for thinking of you so inappropriately while looking at your footage, so he decided not to do that again. Mountain Man cleaned up with a napkin, but didn’t move to leave just yet. He knew himself better than that, so he wrapped his hand around his pre cum lubed cock again, just waiting.

He loved you for so much more than just your physical appearance—Aone knew that—but sometimes how hot you were put him through a loop. Clearly, considering he’d just jerked himself off in his locker room in 55 seconds and was ready to do it again. Unbelievable. You are breathtakingly beautiful.

I can’t believe Y/N….. gave me a chance— What could the most beautiful woman in the world have seen in me? What am I doing trying to get her back, have I SEEN HER? As Aone was greeted with his self-deprecating thoughts again, he thought about your gorgeous face. This made Takanobu began thrusting up into his wet hand impatiently.

She’s so caring. And so loving. And such a force to be reckoned with, God I want to put a ring on her finger and cherish her forever.

Even his self deprecating thoughts couldn’t take him out of how far gone he already was, he almost forgot that he actually had to take off his pants unless he wanted to ruin them completely and chance you seeing him walk back out with a giant cum stain.

With an upsetting growl because his pleasure had to wait a millisecond, Aone roughly unbuttoned, unzipped, and shoved down his pants and boxers, moving so that when he came it would aim where he wanted it to down the toilet. His hand found his aching cock again and he resumed pumping, Aone squeezing at the base and tip and fucking his own fist. He felt just as worked up as the time you relentlessly teased him while studying, but this time you hadn’t even touched him once. He couldn’t believe it.

But then, well, he remembered it was you, so he could.

He loved you for years without you even knowing his name, so logically he knows that seeing you bend and bounce and do the splits in a small cheerleading uniform can easily make him cum in his pants unprovoked.

I want to make love to her soooo badly, Aone thought, feeling a little guilty for thinking of his ex so lewdly. I’d stick my cock so deep inside her unmatched pussy and hear her moan my name so loud until she was having one of her hard shuddering orgasms around me that Aone always managed to give that made his thrusts stutter, fuck fuck fuck. Aone thought about moving those tiny shorts that are connected to your skirt aside and pounding into your tight hole, pinching your nipples and sucking a hickey on your sweet skin. Ugh, he was practically pounding into his first now. It almost hurt, but hurt in a good way. He needed this. There is absolutely no better feeling in the world than being inside you, so he tried to remember it and pretend that’s what he was doing to the best of his ability to throw himself over the edge faster. It worked. His entire body trembled.

Aone bit his juicy bottom lip, actively keeping growls in his chest because he felt so carnal. He wanted you soooooooooo bad, and if you two were still together right now and you verbally agreed, thrice—you’d be in this stall with him, your legs wrapped around his waist as he,— oh god, just the mere flash-thought of you in here with him made Aone thrust into his hand even harder, thinking about your perfect ass under that small yellow skirt, how perfect your tits would look when you freed them out from under that constricting small cheer top (but kept the skirt on), and he thought about how wrecked you’d look because you both knew such a big guy like Aone would need at least three or four rounds until he was sated and you were always so fucking willing for him—

Aone let out a growl he’d been holding in as he immersed himself in the dreams, thinking about how fuck-hot you are when you dance, how amazing your breath sounds when its short and calling his name, the look of that chest squeeze and peek-a-boo’s you practically killed him with out there—and not before long Mountain Man was subject to an array of pleasure zaps shooting from his groin up his spine, making Aone close his mouth and let out a pretty loud “MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM..” As he shot cum after cum, spritz after spritz, into the toilet. His second orgasm was so intense that he needed to grab the top of the stall wall next to him with his clean hand to keep himself upright, because his knees were shaking.

Trying to catch his breath and calm down, Aone stayed in the bathroom for a few minutes until his heart beat regulated somewhat. Even though it felt like forever, it had only been maybe 5 minutes since he’d left you on the field chilling. Not enough time for you to even believe that he was pleasuring himself. It couldn’t have been enough time.

Takanobu cleaned up in a hurry—washing his hands four times before returning to you, feeling a little bit lighter—but not enough to say he is satisfied. Considering the fact that he didn’t have sex, Mountain Man would need a few more rounds with his hand to be satisfied. Mountain Man is a big guy and even though he is the kindest person on earth and thinks about buying you flowers and holding your hand, when he’s horny he needs a lot to satiate that hunger.

***

Aone returned to you only 6 minutes after he left, and right away you made his dick semi-hard again, looking so beautiful when you accepted his apology.

“Don’t worry about it, Aone. If I haven’t said it enough.... I really appreciate your help. Is there anything I can do to repay you?”

Takanobu bit back a groan because yes, there was a lot you could do to repay him. Starting with giving him one more chance..... but he couldn’t ask that of you. In any case, he knew what the answer would be right now.

“No, I’d like nothing in return. I am glad I could help a friend, Y/N.” he offered you a slight smile that made you feel all fuzzy inside.

You wanted to melt, he is so sweet, even after you shattered his heart. Your heart was swelling and you couldn’t wait to leave him, just so that you could go home to cry your eyes out for the man you let go of.

“We should finish. It’s getting late.” You collected your emotions and shook out your limbs to prepare yourself for the last section of your tryout video.

***

You performed the dance section even sexier than Aone could’ve imagined, and it made Mountain Man absolute putty. Due to the events that took place in the locker room not too long ago, Aone was able to get past his horny mind numb to recognize that his heart was exploding for you—for other reasons. His heart was bursting due to pride.

He was so proud of you.

You weren’t his girlfriend anymore, but you were still an absolute inspiration to him in that you always chased your dreams. Here he was, giving up volleyball, and here you are—killing your own audition in an uncomfortable costume. Wow. Aone would be sure to edit the most amazing tryout video for you to the best of his ability so that the team would be absolute fools not to give you a scholarship. If you didn’t get it, he’d find some weird way of secretly paying for your schooling anyway, if it came down to it. He loved you that much. But he just knew you’d make it.

When the last take was filmed and all was said and done, Aone was both positively enamoured and positively hard, of course. You looked beyond sexy and flushed, and when he gave you his water and you drank it, some droplet missed your mouth, skidding down your cheek and disappearing into your cleavage. Mountain Man just about needed to run back to the bathroom at that point, but it was time to go home anyway.

You changed and Kusa picked you up, waving to Aone and thanking him with a hug before leaving.

Aone sat in his car for 5 minutes once you left, his eyes closed and his head resting on the headrest, just trying to figure out how he would live with these feelings. He didn’t know if he could. A million questions jumped to the forefront of his mind:

How could someone be so beautiful, so perfect in every way to him?

What did you even see in him the first time?

Is it even worth it to try again?

What happens if his plan fails?

What would he do?

And, because his dick wanted to throw in a question as well: How fucking amazing did you look today?

Is it even possible to be this attracted to someone? Fuck.

Aone’s dick twitched in his pants as thoughts of your pretty smile while you cheered tonight filled his mind, alerting him once more that he has suffered through enough for a lifetime and he needs release again.

Aone raced home after that, unable to get your brilliant laugh and your perfect ass in that skirt out of his mind the entire time.

He’s a mess.

An aroused, lovesick, unmistakably heartbroken mess.

———————————

Taglist: @galagcica @chaichai-the-weeb @nairobiisqueen @bisasterrr @juminly @simply-not-the-same @marvelousbakugou @qyuanon

Outtake #18: CLICK HERE!

#aone takanobu x you #aone takanobu stories #aone takanobu fluff #haikyuu angst #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu boys #haikyuu!!#hq headcanon #aone x reader #aone x y/n #haikyuu headcanons #hq headcannons #haikyuu headcannons #koganegawa kanji #kenji futakuchi #haikyuuwritersnet

63 notes · View notes

duckprintspress · 3 years

Note

I'm confused about the scoring system. It was said on the website that people were scored (numerically) and yet someone with much higher scores than I got didn't get accepted nor was offered the mentoring/beta/get to know discord.

I can't help but feel there is an error here. Is there a way to explain this?

Hi anon!

So there are a few things going on here, and I’ll try to explain them all.

Thing the First:

The scores on the rubrics are raw scores. Once we really got down-and-dirty with rating things, and I did some data analysis, I discovered that some of our raters were being a bit more generous than others. By the time we were done with all the scoring, there was nearly a 2 point split between the most generous and least generous scorer, on average. This was clearly a fairness issue - if one writer got our three most generous raters, and a second writer got our three least generous raters, even if they submitted identical stories, the second writer would get a lower rating. Rather than leave things like that, I did some research on statistical models that would standardize our ratings.

Basically, with the help of an excel algorithm (the “STANDARDIZE” function), we calculated the average that each rater gave, and that rater’s deviation from the mean (standard deviation), and plugged that in to convert their ratings from the 0 to 20 scale to a different, standard scale - which ran roughly from -2.5 to positive 2.5. What the standardization really did was - for each rater, whatever score they personally gave on average was 0 (so, if rater one’s average score was a 15...that was standardized to zero. And if rater two’s average score was 10...that was also standardized to zero. So now instead of comparing apples to oranges, we were comparing apples to apples). Then, if they rated a fic 1 standard deviation above or below their average, that became a 1 or a -1. If they rated it 2 standard deviations above or below their average, that became a 2 or a -2. And so on. This ensured that all of the stories were rated on the same scale and everyone was treated equally - standardization of test scores erased the differences caused by some people rating more strictly.

So, if you and your friends are comparing rubrics (which you’re welcome to do!) and you noticed that some of you did better, numerically, but had different outcomes, that’s likely a factor - one of you may have had more generous or more strict readers.

(Here’s some more information on how Standardization, here’s the very basics...there are other forms of standardizing, such as fitting folks to a bell curve, or curving the entire score, but those were not suited to our needs)

Thing the Second:

The top 20 authors, statistically adjusted for fairness, were invited to contribute to Add Magic to Taste. As it turned out, these top 20 DID roughly correlate to our top 20 by raw scores; comparing the two rankings, there are only two people out of the top 20 who wouldn’t have made it based on raw scores but did when their scores were adjusted to be standardized against the same scale.

The next 20 authors (ranked 21 to 40, when statistically adjusted for fairness) were also invited to Discord, and we’ve also invited them to potentially be involved in a second anthology. Depending on how many of them say yes, we may be able to open that opportunity up a bit more, but we’re not sure yet. Two of these people, by raw score, would have made the top 20, and three of these people, by raw score, would not have made the top 40. However, again, when we standardized the data to reflect the differences in rater strictness, these were the results.

That leaves another 62 people, who had various ratings all below those top 40. Some of them had a raw score fairly similar to their standardized score...and some of them didn’t. For example - my wife was an applicant to this, and she gave me permission to use her numbers for this example. By raw average? My wife came in 49th. However, one of her raters was someone who USUALLY rated very high, and gave hers a (relatively, compared to that person’s usual hig haverage) low score - when that was adjusted statistically, it caused my wife’s fic to plummet to 64th, because even though the raw number itself wasn’t bad, it was statistically well outside the norm for that rater. So, believe me when I say - these standardizations can make a big difference. If you, or anyone reading this, would like, I’m willing to send you what your standardized scores were (while still maintaining reviewer anonymity). I was originally thinking of adding them to the rubrics but doing so would have been a lot of work, and so I passed - next time we do this, they’ll probably be on there.

Thing the Third:

Often, what separated a fic that succeeded from a fic that didn’t was the range of raters scores. For example, the fic that ended up with the highest rating (by both calculations) wasn’t anyone’s favorite fic - but all three readers thought it was solid, and that was enough. My personal favorite fic? Didn’t even hit the Top 20. What often happened was -

Top fics: either all three people liked it pretty well, or one to two people adored it and the other person or people liked it well enough.

Second tier fics: either all three people thought it was okay, or one person loved it and two people were fairly meh about it.

Middle-range fics: either all three people thought it was average, or one person loved it and two people didn’t like it, or two people thought it was pretty good but one person hated it.

Lower quartile fics: either all three people didn’t think the fic was “up to snuff,” or one or two readers really hated it while a third thought it was average.

This isn’t universal, of course - but a fic that had one really high rating could easily do worse than a fic that had three so-so ratings, because...that’s how averages work. And that’s also why we had three readers for each - to try to even out some of the differences that would arise if someone had an extreme reaction to a fic that others didn’t. Obviously, it’s not a flawless system - no system was flawless - but with the resources and manpower we had, we thought this was a fair way to handle things, and we truly did our best. As soon as we broke 20 applications, we were never going to be able to accept everyone, and so we strived to create a transparent system that treated all of our applicants equally.

Thing the Fourth:

Now, in addition to the “why might scores be higher/lower” aspect of your question, there’s the aspect of “getting the Discord invite.” Now, the top 40 folks got Discord invites automatically, and those offers were based solely on the rating they received.

The other Discord invites that we sent out were not based on ratings alone! Just like we had a “reader subjective feelings” category on the rubric, when we’d finished rating all the stories, we were left with a conundrum - all of us had fics we liked that didn’t make the top 40. Maybe it was that “one person love it and two people didn’t like it” permutations. Maybe it was that all of us thought it was “good” but not “great.” Maybe some aspect of the story caught our eye. Based on our reactions, and the fics we saw that we wished had made it, we selected people to get invites. Those Discord invites were sent out based solely on subjective criteria.

Yes, we worried about doing this. Yes, we went back and forth about doing it at all. But in the end, what we decided was - we didn’t want to give Discord invites to everyone, because there were plenty of people we didn’t think their writing was quite ready yet - mentoring is an intensive prospect, and one for which we won’t get paid up front and might possibly never get paid, and while this all looks wonderful from the outside please do remember that we’re running a business - one that I’ve been working my ass off on for more than four months and have yet to earn enough to draw a single paycheck. So inviting everyone was never in the cards. And on the other hand, if we chose to give invites to no one, that would mean potentially having some people that caught our eye “slip through the cracks.” What if they got too discouraged to reapply? What if we missed the chance to work with them, after they’d impressed us?

To use an analogy - we saw something in everyone who applied, but in some it was “this is an uncut diamond, and we aren’t in the position to take it from raw to finished,” and in others it was, “this is a diamond with a crack, or a flaw, or a rough spot...and we think if we put in the work, we can get it to perfection.” And our verdict on the uncut diamonds isn’t, “this is uncut and it will never be cut,” it’s, “all of these diamonds have spent years honing themselves and working hard to strive for flawlessness, and but some are clearly farther along that journey than others. Once these uncut diamonds have shaped more of their rough edges themselves, we hope they’ll come back when they are ALSO only one flaw from perfection, and work with us then!”

There was no way for us to win, and there was also no fair way to distribute invites based solely on the raw scores, or even based solely on standardized scores, because some of the scores were sometimes not reflective our actual opinions of the writing. For example - if someone wrote a grammatically perfect story, with a compelling use of language, but the plot and characters were inaccessible to us because it required fandom knowledge we didn’t have, that might have scored very poorly, but we have every reason to think that if they’d chosen a different work that was more accessible they’d have done much better. Or, as another example - if someone’s writing was really sloppy, because of a lack of editing or possibly because English isn’t their native language - but they have a skill for creating characters, or setting a scene, or had excellent pacing - then again, they could have ended up with a score that didn’t reflect the actual potential that we saw in their work - using our judgement and expertise.

So, flat out - yes, there are inequalities in how the Discord invites were distributed to the 62 people who didn’t make the cut for either anthology. And yes, we agonized over whether to give them out at all. And no, I won’t swear that we always made the right choices - we were going by the one story submitted to us, and we had to use our best judgement based on what we were presented - what each applicant chose to submit. In the end, we invited the people who - regardless of their score - we personally thought were the closest to being sellable - in the sense of, “probably only missing one piece that would help with to get them from ‘didn’t make it’ to ‘now we’re talking.” And I truly, truly wish that we could have everyone. But if we spend all our time mentoring people, then we won’t have time for doing any of the other aspects of this business. We are not a writing school. We are a book publisher. This ISN’T just fandom, and I DO have to think about what is sellable and what isn’t, because in the end...I’m trying to make money, and pay my staff, and give our authors the highest royalties possible, and, and, and.

As a further note on this topic? We are still issuing new Discord invites, based on e-mail conversations we’re having with people. Several people who didn’t initially get those invites? Have now gotten them. It just depends on how people are responding to us, and the conversations we’re having, and lots of other factors.

And, as I tried to say in the post I put up earlier today about notifications: even the people who didn’t get invites have potential. Every single writer who applied has potential. All of you, even if you struggled with multiple areas, had some aspect in which you shined. In a perfect world, we would help you all. But this isn’t a perfect world, and I don’t have the hours in the day to bring up the people who aren’t already close, and I’m sorry about that. So, please, please - if you didn’t make it, don’t be discouraged, and don’t give up. You’re the only one who can tell your stories - if you don’t do it, no one else will. Find fandom friends who will give you honest critique. Learn to read your own writing with a critical eye. Track down stories that really speak to you, and read them like a writer - to see how the original writer put them together, and deliberately emulate what you thought worked. There are many, many ways to improve writing craft, and if ya’ll want to be published, either with us or with anyone, we strongly encourage you to examine whichever ones appeal to you and work for you.

There’s isn’t a single person who applied who couldn’t, one day, be published by Duck Prints Press.

We were never going to make everyone happy, however much we hate making people sad.

We did our best to make as many people as possible happy, while also doing what we feel to be best for Duck Prints Press.

If we hurt you - we’re sorry. We said in the application process that we’d be giving honest feedback, and we’ve never made a secret of the fact that this is a business and our goal is to publish books that sell - nor did we pretend that we’d be able to take more than 20, but we were so impressed by the quality of what we received that we did everything we could think of to open the doors to more folks, while still maintaining the core integrity of our business model. That means we have to narrow the pool; we can’t just take everyone, especially now, when we’re so small and new. Our desire to take as many people as possible is why anyone who wasn’t in the top 20 got an invite, and why we planned an entire second anthology on the fly, instead of no one below the top 20 getting anything except a rejection letter.

Now, as a final thing - it IS possible we made a mistake. We’ve spotted one big one already, and we’re working with that author to rectify the situation. If you truly believe we made a mistake, please e-mail us, and we can look into it. Our email is info @ duckprintspress dot com.

Sorry this got long - but I figured, if one person wondered this, others too, and as we have since day one - our goal is to be transparent, and so I thought it better to answer more thoroughly rather than less.

#duck prints press #add magic to taste #unforth replies #god i hope this didn't end up coming across as defensive #i've been working ten hours straight on anthology stuff and i'm exhausted #Anonymous

12 notes · View notes

pynkhues · 3 years

Note

Hi ! I just wanted to say that I love your writing and I wanted to ask how you go about doing research for all your au's. Thanks!

Hi! Thank you so much, anon! And what a fun question! I could talk about researching all day, haha. My undergraduate degree is actually in history too, so research is something that’s sort of fundamental to my education in a lot of ways.

To talk about researching is kind of hard though, because while the steps are more or less the same, the approach is really different depending on what it is that I’m writing. For instance, the answer’s pretty different if I’m writing a modern day au where I can shorthand certain things because my readers know what I’m talking about vs an historical au where I really have to think pretty deeply about everything if I want to submerge a reader in a storyworld.

So I thought it might be fun to answer this question using my two biggest au’s as sorts of case studies! This is probably an extremely nerdy answer, I don’t know, haha, and it talks about both researching and incoporating research into the creative process while writing, so I hope that’s okay!

Generally speaking, all my writing starts with a question:

What’s the story that I want to tell?

This is always a process that tends to vary for me, but I rarely actively ask the question to myself prior to getting ready to write it? Usually it ends up as me sort of thinking over a concept then getting to a point where I know I’m going to write it, and it’s only when I really start to think seriously about that that I ask myself that question.

In both of these cases, it was pretty typical for me, haha:

And well, then we get to the next question.

What background do I need to know to be able to tell that story?

While this question might seem AU specific, it’s something that’s actually a step in everything I write. I was working on the second part of the Christmas fic today, which is technically canon divergent, but has made me think a lot about Beth and Rio’s canon cultural backgrounds.

I’ve always liked the headcanon that Beth and Annie are Jewish, but disconnected from their heritage (Marks is a traditionally Jewish surname, Annie’s used some yiddish slang before), and Rio’s obviously Latino, but of Mexican heritage if we apply Manny’s background, and wears rosary beads on the show which indicate that he’s Catholic. I wanted to embrace both of those things, so I’ve tried to thread them through the story where it’s appropriate to do so. For instance, there's a scene of a Las Posadas celebration at Sainte Anne de Detroit which required a LOT of research on my part and hopefully reads well!

The point is that those things felt important to me to include in a Christmas fic about Beth and Rio in the C&C ‘verse because the entire series is about their lives entwining and getting to know each other fully. I want to include detail that feels specific to what we know about them and embraces and (with any luck) deepens our connection to the characters in my fic.

What I’m getting to in a really roundabout way is that once I have a story idea, I start to think about what I’m going to have to understand if I’m going to do the story justice.

In the case of the pornstar and pirate aus, this couldn’t look more different:

Annnnnd so on, haha.

As you can see, sometimes that background research is really clear and straight forward, as it was with the pornstar AU. I looked up how it worked, and because I knew that I wanted it to steer clear of the seedy and toxic parts of porn, I basically researched ideal environments and best practice, put those in place, and then focused on how to get Beth from her suburban home into a legitimate studio.

The pirate AU was extremely different and much more of a mutable process. Without a clear sense of the era from the get-go, I had a much wider scope to explore when and where the story could take place, and when I realised that dating the story would inevitable force me to contend with parts of history I might not want to (i.e. the lead up to The Civil War), it let me re-shape a world around an era, but not feel entirely beholden to it.

In that sense, the research process for both of them involved me choosing fantasy over reality – I negated certain realities to focus on the things I wanted to write (I highly doubt you will find a porn set anywhere near as ethical as Thank You Ma’am after all) – but if I can’t do that in fanfic, where can I? The aim still is for there to be enough that is real that you feel grounded in the story even if I’ve taken certain creative liberties for the sake of telling the story I want to tell.

That’s the beauty of research. Once you know enough about it, you can make informed choices about what you use to shape your storyworld, and make it feel authentic even as you’re fictionalising it.

The point of that though is that this background research is so fundamental to the DNA of the story itself, that it can’t even begin to exist without it.

Loose plotting

It’s usually around this point that I’ll put together a loose plot. This is generally pretty thin, but I’ll start to put pieces into a bit of an order.

The pornstar au is, again, a really easy example of this. Three parts felt right for it, the shooting of the porno itself was always going to be in the final part, which gave me two chapters to get Beth there. I knew she was going to submit herself through an amateur talent callout which I’d discovered in my background research, so the question of it was more around why would someone like her sign up? Canon plot points help – Beth needs money! Fantasy kicks in again, haha – because she and Dean are finally divorcing.

On the other hand, the pirate au is pretty much unrecognisable from it’s first loose plot.

In it, I’d pencilled in Beth travelling on a ship with Dean and the children, pirates boarding, and Rio kidnapping Beth as collateral to help him escape.

My loose plots change a lot and usually grow in detail, evolve and change shape as I start to ask myself why, and there are a lot of reasons why the pirate au changed so much, but I’ll get to that a bit later.

The point is, once I have a loose plot, I’ll usually throw some more words down, see what I’ve got, and then get to the part of the research process I like to call:

Question time

With background research done and a loose plot and some draft scenes written, I hit a much more specific part of the research process where I don’t need to know broadstroke background detail, I need to know the answers to really specific stuff. I usually write a list and try to do it all at once so that the writing process isn’t too much stop-start. I bullet point the answers in my creative doc then too, so the information is right there when I need it.

Again, the questions I asked of the pornstar au and pirate au were pretty different (although there were a few similarities, haha). Some of the questions I asked were:

This is actually a case where the pirate au was, in a lot of ways, easier. History is well documented and fact checked after all, but current porn industry standards are, y’know. Not quite as transparent, haha. I’ve mentioned it before, but I actually started to fill out an amateur porn application (with a false identity of course, haha), so that I could see the full form and get a genuine sense of the questions they ask, which is hilarious, annnd brings us to sources.

Sources

In researching, there are definitely things I’ll just Google, but I also like to utilise sources pretty widely. In particular, Google’s not really going to give you a great sense of what - say - the life of a pornstar’s like, but there are some great podcast series where performers talk about their lives in their own words. Similarly, Google searches are great for the cliffnotes of an answer, but don’t hold a candle to era-made drawings, letters and newspaper clippings.

For the two, I’d probably say my sources looked something like this:

How do the answers to these questions affect the story that I want to tell?

Annnd of course, the answers to these questions frequently end up re-shaping and re-framing my story, both directly and indirectly. Originally for instance, I wasn’t going to have condoms at all in the pirate au, because I naively assumed they wouldn’t be invented yet in a loose 1800s-set fic, only to discover that some version of a condom has been around since Ancient Rome (it was made using the bladders of animals! Gross!).

Other times it’s indirect. The idea for instance in the pirate au to have Beth realise the houses that the men had robbed through certain items they were wearing came really from looking a lot at antique store sites and image archives and seeing how much was custom made for families and individuals. That in turn made me think how for someone who’s ability to think on her feet and observe are her strengths, that could really come into play as a plot point.

Re-Plotting and Writing

It’s usually around this point that everything comes together and I start to really map out a fic in a firmer, more meaningful way, and also just throw myself into the writing of it. I generally feel like I’ve got the tools at this point in the process, and start to talk to the story in a bit more of an informed way.

It’s also really where I start asking myself why? and what does this mean for the next scenes? a lot.

Jumping back to the original pirate au plot, this was really where it pivoted as drastically as it did. There were too many tropes in that premise that I didn’t like. I didn’t like that Beth had no agency in the act that connected her to Rio, I didn’t like the trope of the MOC kidnapping a ‘helpless’ white woman, I didn’t like that Beth would be taken from her children by force and how that would impact any connection her and Rio formed and ensure that a major part of the story would have to be devoted to Beth trying to get back to them.

Immediately that made it a case where Beth had to choose to go with Rio, but why would she leave her family? And why would Rio let this upperclass lady onboard his ship? So she snuck on. So she had to, because Dean lost everything again. Okay, but would Beth just leave the kids with Dean after he’d done that? No way, not with the implications of the time, so who would she leave them with? Annie or Ruby - no, I want Ruby on the pirate adventure. Annie. But what on earth could put Annie in a secure enough position that Beth would willingly entrust her children to her?

Thus the subplot of Greg wanting to legitimise Ben was born! Which I doubly liked, because it kind of mirrors canon, haha.

In that case, the research really helped me flesh out a story world that let me explore character storylines in a way that I wouldn’t always do, which is insanely fun to me, haha, so I forever am left hoping it’s fun to read too.

But yes! In a nutshell, that’s my research process. :-)

#fic asks #writing #fanfiction #welcome to my ama #Anonymous

19 notes · View notes

justanotherblonde23 · 3 years

Text

The Silvertongue and the Professor - Chapter 2

Author’s Note: Hello my internet buddies! Here’s the next installment of my Loki story. I was on vacation for a week, so it took me an extra little bit to put this up, but I think it’ll be worth it. Igna and Loki finally meet! Please let me know what you think. Your feedback is super helpful to me and gives me a chance to know if you all like where the story is going. Enjoy, friends!

Warnings: Maybe some language, definitely some violence

Chapter One Chapter Three

The God of Mischief looked up as he heard the door open and close. His eyes tracked the woman that entered. Well, this was different. The woman walked towards him; there was no fear in her eyes, no wariness. It looked as if she was almost...excited? She stopped in front of his cell, sizing him up. Loki did the same to her.

This woman was obviously mortal that he could be sure of. She had a petite build, with extremely pale skin; he thought she might even be as pale as he was. Her hair was, well, strange, to say the least. It was pink. He had never witnessed anyone of the Midgardian realm with pink hair before. He assumed that it must be some sort of enchantment to make it thus. Her hair was long, hitting just above her elbows in soft curls. That pale skin was covered in tattoos, all different, and yet all somehow seemed to meld together, turning her into a piece of living art. Her face was beautiful with her large deep grey eyes, the color of the sea before a raging storm. Those eyes were following his every move, taking in all he did. She had a button nose, plump lips, and high cheekbones. Her expression was serene yet intense. His eyes roved over the rest of her body, feminine curves encased in a grey professional dress, topped off with red heels that added about three inches to her petite frame. His eyes stopped midthigh; she was armed. He could at least see the slight shape of a gun, maybe a knife as well. My, my, he mused, this one is feisty. This should be at least mildly enjoyable. His eyes bored into hers, the vivid green meeting her stormy grey. He quirked a brow, waiting for her to begin.

“Loki of Asgard, God of Mischief and Lies,” the woman began.

Loki tilted his head as he listened to her words; she was speaking to him in Swedish, remarkably similar to his native tongue. She spoke like a native Swedish speaker, yet something was off. He couldn’t quite put words to it, maybe something in the accent, which confused him greatly. Perhaps she had learned it at a young age but was from elsewhere?

“Where are you from, mortal?” he queried with a sly smile.

“Sigtuna and Igna is fine; it’s a little more specific than calling me mortal,” the woman replied.

“Ah, Sigtuna, Sweden’s very first town from the last age of the Vikings, how fitting that they send you here to me. You speak like a native, but your accent is ever so slightly off. Where are you truly from?” he pressed.

“I was born and raised in Sigtuna, as I have said. I may sound different than the others, but I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been able to hear myself speak since I was five, or anyone else for that matter.”

The God of Mischief paused, he had heard rumors of such a thing, but it was a Midgardian ailment, not one of Asgard. He wondered what it was like, living in the silence. It occurred to him to ask, but he didn’t want to seem too interested in the woman standing before him. He would refrain from his line of questioning; there was a reason that she was here, after all.

“Interesting,” he murmured, studying her face. “Well, Igna, I suppose Fury has sent you here for some reason or another; best get on with it.”

Igna walked closer to him, stopping only a foot or so away, still watchful as ever.

“You let them catch you; you let them put you in this cage. It’s all too easy, far too easy. Three against one? Even with the enhanced strength of Captain America and the Ironman suit, you still could have easily won without breaking so much as a sweat. I’ve read about your kind, the Aesir; you possess far many more abilities than humanity. We used to worship you as gods, yet you are still flesh and blood as I see you standing here. Made of sturdier stock, of course, but still flesh and blood. I wonder why you let them take you, why you allowed them to throw you into a cage not designed for you. And I think you’re going to tell me.”

Mischief sparkled in his eyes as she talked. He was only killing time talking with her, staving off boredom until it was time for him to go.

“Clever girl, you see things that the others have missed. You do not underestimate me, and I wonder why. Did they send you from the lab to take a look at their newest experiment? Did they pluck you from an office to manipulate my mind? What good can you do here, mortal? At what do they think you can best me, Igna?” he hissed.

“I know more about you than anyone on this planet. I specialize in all things of the Aesir; I am a scholar that shares my knowledge with others. I do not simply see you, Silvertongue; I observe where others miss. There is a reason you chose to be here on this ship, and you are the reason that I chose to be here. As long as you are here, as I am I,” Igna replied.

“And what happens when I depart this ship, as you say I shall?”

“Then I will do everything in my power to find you once more. If you’re here, you’re up to no good. Not that I won’t be the first to admit your actions intrigue me. Have you come to rule humanity? To force us all on our knees?”

Loki smiled, almost like she was his prey, “Precisely, darling. I have come to give you the gift of subjugation. I will eliminate your needless wars, your manipulations of each other, your senseless slaughter in the name of freedom. I shall bring you all together, regardless of race, religion, or creed, and rule you. You, Doctor Andersson, will kneel before me, just as everyone else. Your mind isn’t too hard to skim, you know. I will admit that your mind is stronger than the others, but it can still be read.”

He smacked the glass close to her face, causing her to startle a bit.

“Oh, how I’ll enjoy seeing you kneel in front of me to watch you break and crumble. And once you’re broken, you shall come to me. You will come; you and I both know you will.”

“I think you may be mistaken; I have no desire to kneel, to submit, not to you, not to anyone. Enjoy the thought, though.”

A dark chuckle reverberated in his chest, oh how truly wrong she was.

“ Your defiance is amusing, my dear, but it’ll pass. In the end, there is no escaping me, you’ll see.”

Igna nodded, her eyes brightening as something flew into her mind.

“Well, I do believe I have all I need at present. I know who’s coming for you, and I know it’s soon. You’re simply wasting the clock with me. As such, I’ll be going now and see if we can’t modify and improve security around here. I’m sure Agent Barton will be here soon enough. Possibly with reinforcements too? Yes, I thought as much. It’s been a pleasure to encounter you in the flesh, truly.”

As she turned and began to walk away, a voice, an actual voice, something that she had not experienced since childhood, reverberated in her mind, filling her with icy foreboding.

“Do not fret, Igna Andersson; this will be far from our last encounter. You have my word.”

Loki watched her stop short as the words filled her mind. He saw the shiver run down her spine; he could practically feel her emotions coming off of her in waves. He would come for her; she was far too interesting to slip through his fingers. As she began to walk away, the ship shook. Igna grabbed onto the railing, attempting not to fall as the world moved around her. She turned back, catching the Prince’s eye, he smiled wickedly.

“Don’t worry, darling; I’ll be coming for you.”

The professor pulled herself forward, up the stairs, and out the door. She barreled into Steve, who caught her before she could bounce right off of him. He stooped down a bit, getting her eye contact.

“Ma’am, I’ve got to go suit up; something isn’t right here. I have to see where I can help. I don’t feel right leaving you here, though.”

She nodded, understanding his predicament.

“Captain, go, I’ll be fine; I know how to handle myself. I’ll make my way up and see where I can help, as well.”

Steve squeezed her arm gratefully before running off to do his part. Igna paused for a moment; she knew what her part was, for now. She kicked off her heels, abandoning them next to her purse; she needed to be fully able to run if necessary. Her gun came out of her holster, securely in her hands as she walked back into the room containing the god. She stood steady, careful of her step as everything shook. She looked around, scanning the area for any threats while she made her way down the stairs towards Loki. He was still in the cell, smiling delightedly, fully aware of the chaos and havoc that was happening around them.

She warily watched him; she knew someone would be here for him at any moment. Something moved in the corner of her eye, but before she could fully react, a hand shot out over her mouth, and a powerful arm snaked its way behind her arms, pulling her tight. The gun fell from her hands; the more she struggled, the harder the hold became. Fuck, she was trapped.

Loki smiled mischievously while he put a finger to his lips, motioning for her to hush. She watched as men clothed in SHIELD defensive armor made their way into the room. Her eyes widened as the God of Mischief duplicated himself, strolling out of the cage, leaving a part of himself still in there. Then it dawned on her whose ice-cold fingers were solidly clamped over her lips. It was the god himself, or at least a piece of the god. Fuck magic, fuck the spells he had woven so precisely to make all of this fall into place. This would not end well. She felt herself being backed into a corner, the world shimmering ever so slightly around her. It was transparent but felt different; there was clearly magic surrounding her. She could see out; everything was somewhat hazy, though she realized there was a distinct possibility that others were unable to see her.

Igna could do nothing but watch in horror as Thor was deceived by Loki’s apparition, effectively trapping him inside of the glass cell. Her horror overflowed as the scepter the Trickster wielded made its way through Agent Coulson, impaling him. She fought harder against her captor, utter despair rushing over her in waves as the man fell, blood making a steady stream down his mouth. She knew, in her heart of hearts, that he would not survive that wound. She was sure the scepter was woven with dark magic, dooming the one that was unfortunate enough to be at the receiving end of that weapon. Even as he gave his last hurrah by blowing Loki through the wall with that huge gun-like contraption, she knew it was the end. There were men littered around the floor, dead. Thor was blown out of the helicarrier in a prison not designed for him. Everywhere she looked, the professor saw death and destruction. Her legs began to buckle, but the presence behind her forced her to remain standing against her will.

Before she had a moment to register it, she was partially carried, partially dragged through the ship. Her bare feet repeatedly stumbled, leaving her to be dragged on her knees. She could feel the burning pain from each scrape as she was pulled along and then hoisted back up again. She kicked, bit, screamed, and struggled with everything in her, but it was no use. The god that had her in his clutches was far stronger than her mortal self. She was destined to lose this game before it had even started. As they reached the deck, Igna tried harder to fight back, struggling against his hold. He gripped her harder, those freezing hands digging into her skin. She turned with her shoulder, trying to regain some type of control, but it was as if Loki could see what she would do before she did it. He yanked her arm in the other direction, she could feel the shoulder dislocate, and her bones crack in half like a twig. She let out a scream of utter agony as the edges of her vision became fuzzy. The last thing she saw before she blacked out was Tony Stark suited up with his mask off, looking in her direction in a complete panic as she lost consciousness and was hauled onto the waiting quinjet.

Let me know if you’d like me to add you to the tags list for this story!

Tags: @autumnleaves1991-blog @silverwolf319 @themarcusmoreno @moonlight-prose @flightlessangelwings @steeeeeeeviebb @maharani-radha-writes @ladyblogger-margie @the-purity-pen @cinewhore @recklessfangirl-blog @phoenixhalliwell @rae-gar-targaryen @justpedropascal

#loki #loki laufeyson #loki laufeyson x oc #loki x oc #loki x original female character #avengers #mcu #the god of mischief #justanotherblonde23 writes

3 notes · View notes

rpbetter · 3 years

Note

I genuinely don’t think the problem is as deep as people are seeing it as, with that whole resource blog and vent blog drama. I was there when it began, and it started because someone sent a submission that was recognizable enough to trace to that resource blog, who ended up calling themself out, and then a bunch of people dogpiling them, and then it turned into the 2021 edition of good old tumblr wank, mocking sockpuppets included. I essentially watched a bunch of 30 year olds call each other doodooheads like a couple kids on the playground, but at least kids forgive and forget after a day or two.

That’s probably why they’re avoiding this situation like the plague. The first time a submission went through about that resource blog, it made people feud like the Montagues and Capulets. Obviously they don’t wanna risk fueling that type of drama again. If it’s true that they aren’t letting these submissions through and it isn’t tied to reasons like tumblr eating the ask, then it’s probably because they don’t wanna be involved in this drama anymore. And I don’t blame them, because honestly, even as an observer I’m tired of seeing it, I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be for y’all who are actually involved. Geez. Who even has the energy for this much drama anyway? I’m tired just getting outta bed.

Sorry, Anon, I really had to!

Anyway, I'm sorry it took forever to get to your message, not only did I need a break from this, I needed to space out things related to it, it had taken over the blog. I appreciate that, despite how over it all you are, you were polite about how you feel. I know that is not always easy, and I do really appreciate it!

I hope that you don't feel I am being hostile to you about anything I say, it isn't meant that way. Differences of opinion, when not expressed hatefully, are always welcome here. I'm just going to try to express some of this situation from another perspective, and full disclosure, I'm pretty pissed off about it whether or not I actively want to be. This did impact my hobby, it did hurt people I care about, and I cannot believe such an unnecessary act lead to shit that is still going on.

On the first point...most things aren't as deep as we're given to feel they are after we've been made to feel incredibly unsafe, targeted, repeatedly let down and lied to, and experienced an astronomical level of sketchy behavior out of muns in a position that one is supposed to have some minor level of responsibility (as well as decent comportment) within. So, maybe it isn't that deep, but at this point, I very much cannot blame people for their concerns and suspicions.

And it was incredibly sketchy. CoaR, I'm just going to say it, everyone knows of which blog we're speaking at this point, did all of the following, breaking their own rules for moderation repeatedly:

allowed an actual, openly stated, callout blog to interact with their posts

allowed a meme blog to use their posts for the point of off-blog drama mongering, callouts, and outing themselves

would not moderate this situation as stated in their rules, when they've a bit of nasty record in the not too distant past of mass-blocking for far less and far more questionable reasons

did bother to post about how they weren't getting involved, as though this did not break multiple rules and absolutely is one's problem if it is your vent blog someone is using to create and foster bullying - simply giving the bizarre statement that blocking won't help anyone, when that isn't the point at all lol the point is being intolerant of people using your blog, that has to operate on a basis of being as safe a place as possible for venting (which is drama), this is about a stance and blog security, not being anyone's parent

just as weirdly vaguely threatening everyone first with all the mods "watching," because that's not actually implying an Orwellian parental role no one asked for, then with Sky once again misunderstanding the difference between being a " disciplinarian" and an ass

consistent lack of transparency on all counts

and then, yeah, there is the choice of publishing submissions/rebuttals combined with all of this and those submissions/rebuttals being what they are - not all related to "the drama," or in violation of the rules either, but the apparent willingness to publish them from one side of "the drama" there for a bit

I cannot blame people for feeling like all of this combined is a legitimately sketchy situation. One in which they've already, again, been made to feel unsafe within because COAR was used as a list for callouts.

When people see someone like Raven getting wildly different treatment by not being so much as warned, they're going to feel suspicion about the mod(s). It makes it so much worse that they chose to make the statements they did instead of a transparent, reasonable one like, "We apologize that CoaR was used the way it was, we should have blocked the callouts blog right away, but didn't. To reiterate the rules we've had in place for years, this blog is never to be used for callouts or taking bullying off-blog. Due to how widespread the problem has become, we will not be publishing anything related to it any longer. Submissions will be deleted so we can begin putting this behind us."

Acknowledge fault, apologize for it, say what you're doing to mitigate it now. That's it. Don't actively make it worse!

About the submissions...I know I'm alone in having tested that out. It isn't limited to things that either break the rules or are related to the issue. It's very select topics that are a bit uncomfortably aligned with the bias displayed, and from very select blogs. That's a problem. It's not selectively publishing based on drama-avoidance or rules, what CoaR has always done and no one here is taking an issue with.

I have 0 interest in things like trackers, they're far too easy/tempting to use maliciously for most people, and at the very best, they foster an environment of paranoia. What I know about them comes from really minimal personal experience (I wanted to see what posts people were most interested in on another blog, but it felt creepy with the amount of information I had, so I dropped that very fast) and what mutuals who use them have told me/questions they've answered.

So, is it possible the mod(s) is selectively deleting submissions from blogs they feel are a problem? Yes, it is totally possible. Do I know that for a fact? No, I totally do not. My point is that this is exactly the sort of paranoia that takes off when too many suspicious things happen back to back. You begin seeking the answers you are not getting, and you're seeking them because every day for a month or two, your experience logging in has been one of what the fresh hell. It's a need to insulate yourself from further exposure to harassment.

It's a very simple formula: act sketchy, people look at you like you're sketchy.

And I'm not going to condemn anyone for that.

I will also say that, unless several people deleted their comments or have me blocked in multiple places they somehow know of and take issue with, I did not see what you are describing when I read over the total explosion that happened...what, like a month, two months ago at this point? It was very fresh at the time.

What I saw was someone having submitted about a meme blog screenshotting their mutual's rules. Raven going off about it in a reblog. Two commentators trying to discuss the issue and finally, just saying they weren't surprised what meme blog it was once Raven outted themselves like a fully hinged individual interested in following CoaR's rules.

One of those s commentators is a friend, the mun whose rules were in the posts is a friend. I've never been anything but transparent about that. I'm also familiar with some of the other parties who ended up going on hiatus, but only from discussions on the vent blog over the years. So, yes, I do have personal investment here, and I do not feel like any of those people telling Raven and the callout blog they were at least involved with that their behavior was bullshit can be equated to immature shit slinging. There were even two muns who repeatedly tried to have a civil conversation with Raven, specifically, and for their efforts, got some of the most wildly juvenile treatment.

The worst things I saw came from hate anons and the callout blog.

The people receiving that treatment were largely driven off tumblr. For a time, forever, it differs with all of them. So, I feel like saying that about the thirty-year-olds thing is a little off. I'm not trying to be shitty, Anon, but the muns who tried to address Raven's bullshit were all of that age range. They're definitely continuing the drama, they're not here. They can't feel comfortable enough to be on their own blogs still.

I also am required ethically to say that we all really need to stop with throwing around ages like this. Again, I'm not trying to be hostile to you, Anon. I've been trying to show other people's perspective in this (it doesn't matter if you agree or not, I just think it's important to understanding, stopping, and prevent problems to have a fuller perspective that we often lack because we are incredibly tired of whatever is going on, and you're right, we are all really damn tired and also Tired), and as it is an advice blog, I try to address problems here. The pervasive ageism in the tumblr RPC is a problem.

It's a problem that gets discussed when it involves adults not wanting to interact with minors and, as I've seen it put several times, "treating them like the plague." There are a billion "conversations" and complaints about that, but there aren't many at all when it comes to the RPC's bizarre ideas about what age constitutes an adult (you're an actual child until around 23, you're ancient and need to die already, you pedo, at 26) and what being an adult actually is.

You do not turn thirty and lose your hobbies. You also do not turn thirty and become an ultra-mature adult, no leveling up into arcane Adult Knowledge and Behavior unlocks when you wake up on your thirtieth birthday. Between the ages of 17 and 27, you go through so many rapid changes in your cognition, but it levels off considerably after that. You're largely the same person at 32 as you were at 27, and you cannot say that about being...17 and 20, 22 and 25. It begins to take longer to see changes in who you are, those changes are less extreme - your personality, preferences, and viewpoints remain largely the same, they just refine a little here and there.

There is no line at which people "should" stop engaging in any hobby, and it's incredibly gross that the RPC seems to think anyone out of college-age should have no interests, let alone passionate ones, outside of going to work, having a family, and paying bills. That's a bit horrifyingly 1950's isn't it? It's also really misogynistic, considering that the primary base of the RPC is female or afab. When you deal in this, you're literally telling thirty-year-old people with uteruses that they should have no interests outside of birthing children and caring for them.

This isn't what you were doing, Anon, but it's part of the tumorous growth of this ideology that we casually throw around things like "a bunch of 30-year-olds" to make a point. We've seriously got to stop doing that, it isn't a message that most of us would agree with. There are other ways of saying "I think these people should behave more maturely since they're adults."

If I said something like, "well, they were just in their mid-twenties lol what do you expect?" I'd get hate anons, pants would be shat in, and more importantly, it would be wrong. That needs to work both ways, this isn't a separate issue.

An issue that repeatedly comes down to the absurdity of finding differences and drawing lines into cages around people in an environment in which we have the freedom to be more equal than in offline reality. We're all just people here, all just writing and interacting and loving characters. That's all we need to be, and all we need to be judged on is our behavior.

I'm sorry that anyone behaved in a grossly inappropriate manner during any and all of this. It was a heated thing that came to involve too many people and too much harassment, and those are factors that will always see people behaving in ways they would not normally engage in.

And like I said, you don't become some wise master of maturity at thirty! There is a problem mun I'm currently dealing with on another blog that is my age who is one of the most immature people I have ever run into. I have mutuals and friends in the early to mid-twenties who I'm confident weren't as childish as this mun when they were literal children. So, do people thirty and over behave in a seriously unbecoming, childish as hell manner? Yes, they so do! Whether it should be this way or not, you can't expect everyone to be at the same maturity level psychologically at any given age. To me, that just says that I shouldn't age-type people negatively. It isn't relevant where their behavior is.

Otherwise, I'm holding people at some nebulous age over thirty to higher expectations than other equally adult-range people. It isn't acceptable for anyone to behave in the ways I witnessed and was subjected to. It's not even acceptable in teenagers, it's just more understandable (not excusable) because they're working with many things they quite literally cannot control at all times. To act this way is telling everyone below thirty that they're just immature, irresponsible, dicks. It's insulting to them to be labeled in this way, too, even if too many of them see it as a free pass and are, thus, okay with it right now. They won't be, eventually.

Anyway, again, I'm not trying to be shitty to you! I don't think you meant anything in your message in a nasty way, and I cannot say how much I appreciate that after the bullshit brought to this blog and that I've been dealing with privately to help some of those affected feel like the RPC is a place they're safe and welcome in again.

I am definitely tired! Everyone else involved is as well. At least, on what I have to term as "this side" of the equation. I cannot speak to the other side, obviously, but I think they got tired enough of it not being tolerated to be quiet at least. When you make it unfun for people like that, that's usually what happens, after all.

So, I don't think it's them trying to continue the drama. Most of the people I know have remained in their corners happily or been obliged to leave for a while. As for the other people with suspicions...like I said, there are a lot more factors going on here than wanting to perpetuate drama. Sometimes, when we try to make ourselves feel safe, vindicated/vindicate a friend, there isn't any other option but to have the topic come up or breed into suspicions, correct or incorrect ones.

It's a situation that CoaR had a great deal of culpability in, and as such, had a lot of power to mitigate this well before it got to suspicions of who was modding the blog. That wasn't done, and won't be. Like Raven's antics, I have to feel like they've brought some of this on themselves. I do not and will not condone any hate messages sent their way, but again, right or wrong, people do have a right to feel the way they are.

If I were you, I'd stay as far away from it as possible. I don't go on CoaR unless I have to in order to answer something. I had a single blog blocked over here until this all went down (hilariously, it happened to be one that was involved, too, sometimes the red flags are legit, folks), now I have a sadly large number of them. It's now added to liberally, and I hate to do that, I like this blog to be open even to people who disagree with me. I can't deal with the constant drama, though, and I'm not going to be in a new callout every month until I die. Outside of being true to my word about accepting any and all vent messages, I don't want to see it, I don't want to be involved with it. I tag the posts so that followers can filter it, but I'm not going to function as a semi-callout blog by telling people who they should avoid. Just that they should avoid anyone who is making them feel this tired and done. Myself included.

I hope things have settled down in your corner of the RPC since you sent this! They have over here, thankfully. I think most people are staying away from the vent blog and hoping a new and better one comes along. It's back to the usual drama of "stop calling muns pedos for aging up characters."

#answered #anonymous #drama cw #misogyny cw #ageism cw #coar drama cw #I think that's all of them...#tumblr rpc

0 notes

selestialhealing · 3 years

Text

With May being Mental Health Awareness Month, I thought I’d share that I have every intention of taking care of myself and seeking help to get back to the person I know I can be. I’ve struggled with waves of not being well since I was a child, but this past year has really affected me in ways I never expected.

Not only did everything change in the blink of an eye with everything being shut down and moved online, but I also entered a new program with a lot more responsibility. I’m happy to know I finished strong, but I still sit here and think of all the ways I could’ve performed better and gotten through the days easier if only I had taken the time to take care of myself and get back into therapy. I look around and see so many others doing the same thing, and I’m hoping we can all work towards doing what’s truly best for us.

I’m tired of feeling overwhelmed from the moment I wake up until the moment I lay my head down, only to stay up for hours struggling to slow down my mind. I’m tired of feeling inadequate because I fail to do what I used to do so easily and what I know I’m capable of. I’ve struggled a lot with imposter syndrome, wondering if I belong where I am after being so certain this was where I was meant to be—living life on screen and away from others has proven to be difficult, sucking the creativity and ability to relax out of me. I’ve struggled to create. I’ve struggled to write, especially over the past semester. I’ve struggled to sleep, to get up in time, to stay on top of everything, to allow myself to be human—all while dealing with technological issues and adjustments and balancing the obligations I feel to others, myself, and the many things I choose to be part of.

Since I first started experiencing symptoms of anxiety, depression, and OCD in elementary school, I’ve struggled with convincing myself I’m okay by consuming myself with distractions—more specifically extracurricular activities, taking care of others, and my education. Sometimes, I get so angry with myself when I feel like I’m at my breaking point because I know I spread myself too thin. I convince myself everything’s fine and I’m just overwhelmed with my workload or the responsibilities for the day when it’s not that simple. My symptoms have only gotten worse: not eating, not sleeping, not drinking water, not exercising, not feeling, not waking up until I’m no longer stuck in a vivid dream (and y’all, I really mean STUCK). I’ve been on the same medicine since high school, and it hasn’t seemed to helped a bit since we first returned to school in the Fall. I haven’t been back to counseling because of the influx of new patients and backed up waiting lists in surrounding areas. I haven’t been back to counseling because I keep putting it off, because I don’t have insurance, because I don’t want to deal with paperwork or making appointments. I haven’t been back to counseling because I’m scared.

Mental health is not talked about or taken seriously enough in a time that everyone is truly being affected. Since I’ve officially submitted my last final for the semester, the first thing on my to-do list is to find an office to start counseling with. The next is to follow up on new medication. And after that, who knows... Lots of healing. Lots of accountability. Lots of doing the work no matter how unfair it is.

I want to write. I want to read. I want to sit outside because I can, because my soul demands it. I want to dance and listen to music and play music again. I want to socialize and connect and be the best version of myself, the person 12-year-old me would think is the coolest. I want to take selfies again. I want to look in the mirror and see a twinkle in my eyes, to wake up and feel worthy and deserving and alive. I want to feel more than a heavy weight in my chest or my mind being crushed by the feeling of impending doom (over something as simple as waking up later than I intended when my body clearly needed rest). It is so exhausting to live a life where you feel you’re just going through the motions, not making memories or processing everything you’re experiencing. It’s scary to forget the feeling of lasting joy, to wake up and feel like nothing you do can make things better, to realize you just keep distracting yourself and setting yourself up for failure just because you’re “making it” through.

I am so much more than I have been lately (and lately dates back to a long time ago if we’re being wholeheartedly honest), but I’m trying to be kind and forgiving and patient and gracious to myself just as I would be to any other person struggling to get through the day. I’m trying to tell myself it’s not too late, that it’s worth it, that it will get better—even when my mind tries to convince me otherwise. I haven’t been as transparent as I used to be, acting like everything’s fine and posting the most put-together-looking versions of myself and only sharing the good parts—if I even have the energy for that.

The truth is there have been lots of cloudy days over the past year, lots of tears, lots of out-of-character moments, lots of backsliding in any progress I’ve ever made, lots of falling back on unhealthy coping mechanisms I spent months unlearning. There have been lots of moments of almost giving up, of being mean to myself, of doubting myself and my ability and my worth. Our minds are so powerful, carrying the power to build or destroy. Mine has been destroying me, little by little, every day. I haven’t slept or eaten like I should. I haven’t listened to my body. I’ve pushed aside the obvious symptoms and convinced myself it could be dealt with later, all while knowing I’ve been sinking deeper and deeper. Every. Single. Day.

Here’s to going on this journey once again and hopefully staying on top of it, giving myself the time and space to thoroughly heal. I’m so used to pouring myself into others, into a paper or my classes, into organizing events and performing jobs that drain the little bit of energy I can muster up (and yes, these things are rewarding when I accomplish the task at hand... but I’m still not okay). So much of my worth has been tied to the accomplishments I achieve. This will be my third time scheduling a consultation with a therapist. This will be my third time switching medications after building up a tolerance or dealing with side effects since the age of 17. I don’t like to think this will be forever, but until I do something, it will be.

Life is hard, especially with everything going on. Please check in on those around you. Check in on yourself. Encourage yourself to do what’s necessary to stop giving into what you have the power to change, even if it takes a bit more time or energy than you’d like. If you read this far, thank you for taking the time to do so. Thank you for caring. For once, I’ll say openly and publicly I’m not okay. Most days, I’m far from it. And I haven’t been for quite some time. In so many ways, I’ve been in much lower places mentally. Yet in other ways, I’m lower than I’ve ever been before. I’m tired. But I’m tired enough to do something to change this narrative before I’m too tired to do anything at all. And I’m hoping if you feel this too, you will hold yourself to the same standard. Reminding myself and everyone who’s read this far that progress is never linear, but that doesn’t mean progress isn’t obtainable either. I hope you learn to remind yourself this too.

That degree isn’t everything. That job isn’t everything. That inconsiderate person in your life isn’t everything. It is not the end of the world, no matter how much it feels to be crashing and burning down around you. And nothing you do or don’t do matters if you’re not capable of soaking in the moment, if you’re not all here to experience it. I hope I can learn to remember this. I hope you can too.

#text #mental health #mental heath awareness

2 notes · View notes

unforth · 4 years

Note

Hi there! I absolutely loooove the destiel fic collection and think that it's a genius way to expose fans to fics that might not always get as much attention on fic recs and when searching on ao3. I was thinking of trying to create a similar collection for another fandom and was wondering if you have any tips? Or if there's anything that you wish you knew when you started it? Thank you!

Hi!! Just for openers, sorry I didn’t reply to this yesterday, my mom’s basement flooded and took with it all my writing time, sigh. ANYWAY. On to the topic at hand. How to make a “faves survey” for another fandom, and have it resemble what I’ve made for Destiel? Well, here’s what I’ve done, hopefully some of it will be applicable to you...

1. This is the most important part: Do NOT let it become or be perceived as a popularity contest. Never release the raw stats (except perhaps to a small number of people who you trust to help you). Never announce a “winner.” Never share a ranked list. Never act as if more votes equals better. Never ever suggest in anyway that your purpose to find “the best.” Treat people and fics who get one vote with just as much fanfare as people and fics who get 50 votes. I do release a “top 20″ list just because so many people asked, but even then, it’s in alphabetical order, and meant more as a snapshot. Encourage people to vote for their favorites that aren’t already in whatever collection you end up making, and encourage people to vote for things they don’t usually see on rec lists. Aim for an expansive range of types of fics being voted for, and make it clear - no ship shaming (or secondary ship shaming, if yours is ship-based like mine, rather than being general to a given fandom) or kink shaming.

2. Keep the survey super simple. People don’t read complex instructions, and they’re not going to want to rank lists or anything like that. You can see the one I use here. Feel free to emulate it, copy it, modify it for your own purposes. I used to just do boxes but people would routinely put in way more than 5/10, and while I didn’t really mind the extras, it greatly increased the amount of work I had to do, and since the survey routinely gets a couple hundred replies that I go through, I decided to make it a little harder for people to go over the limits. Don’t bother asking for people’s names or trying to validate the results. I’ve tried. People don’t want to put their names, and validation encourages people not to submit...AND doesn’t prevent cheating...so is really pointless. Just keep it anonymous, after four rounds I can say...that works best.

3. And, speaking of people going over the limits, and cheating...people will cheat. No matter how clear you are that number of votes don’t matter, no matter how much you insist that whatever data you’re collecting will only be used in so-and-so a way...you will spot people “cheating,” for various definitions of the word cheating. People who vote for their own works. People will submit multiple surveys. People will “ballot box stuff” for their favorite(s). People will list more than the maximums you’ve asked them to. People will submit works from other ships, and - though it’s never happened to me - if you make it fandom-general I’ll lay heavy odds at least one dumbass will submit for some other fandom entirely. It happens in different permutations every time, some more obvious than others, but it happens. And the conclusion I reached is...so fucking what? In the end, since the idea is to highlight as many different great works as possible...screw it. Let people vote for themselves. Let people ballot box stuff. Let people submit multiple surveys, or list more than whatever maximums you’ve set. In the end, since every work is treated as equal and one vote is worth as much as a hundred...if they’re cheating to up the vote count, it’s irrelevant, and if they’re cheating to vote for more works, then yay! more works to include! and basically the only thing I’ve found that reduces cheating is to make it absolutely clear to people that I’d really rather they not but ultimately I can’t stop them, so do their thing I guess? And it does help. I got less cheating each time I do it, or at least less that I’m able to catch lol. (as a side note - the one exceptions is the “works for others ships.” Those you can see listed on the “INELIGIBLE” sheet of the spreadsheet I link below, but I don’t add them to the AO3 collection.)

4. Spreadsheets are your best friend. You’re going to want some way to organize the data you’re collecting. I’ve got a public version of the sheet I use that you can see here. It’s pretty similar to my “private” version, except the private version includes actual vote counts, separated by which time(s) I did the survey that the work in question got votes. I mostly use that data so I can do comparisons over the years (“this year X works were added to the collection that were never in it before!”) and because I like numbers. However, depending on how exactly you plan to use the data, you may not even need to tally vote counts, and you could do one that’s more similar to my public version. Also, if you make an AO3 collection, you’re going to want some way to track which works you’ve invited, which have been added, etc., cause otherwise it’s just a nightmare to keep track of. (a little more on this later).

5. Decide how and where you’re going to share your data - as an AO3 collection? As a public spreadsheet? On social media? Maybe you want to make a side Tumblr just for it? Or a Discord server? etc. etc. Like, I’ve got a pillowfort group (though I hardly use it) and a channel in a Discord server (thanks again to the PB folks for making space for me!) with the AO3 collection being the main portal. You want to make sure that it’s advertised enough that people know it exists, and also be prepared that short term you’ll hear basically no feedback on whether people use it, and even long term it’ll be once in a blue moon and suddenly eight people will be like WAIT YOU’RE THE PERSON BEHIND THAT THING I LOVE THAT THING. In that respect it can feel a little thankless but I’ve definitely found that people do use it, it’s just that there’s no real way for people to let YOU know they’re using it (and, honestly...good? This isn’t really about us, after all, it’s about all these fic writers, the goal is to bring attention to them, not ourselves, we’re just a go-between for the writers and the readers.)

6. For making an AO3 collection, you’ll have to invite every single work individually. Some people have their accounts set to auto-accept invites, but otherwise whether the work actually gets added will depend on the authors. Some people will never accept the invite. Some people won’t know how to accept the invite. Some people will accept the invite and then subsequently remove their work. Some people have left these parts completely and will never even see the invite. That’s why it’s important to track who has added and who hasn’t, and periodically double check it (I double check every six months or so). For the people who don’t accept the invites for whatever reason, you can bookmark the item to the collection. HOWEVER, if you do this with your personal account, every single one of those bookmarks will be listed under your personal AO3, which is why I ultimately made the Faves survey its own account - it’s entirely to facilitate bookmarking. You can also use the “Bookmark External Work” feature to link to works that aren’t on AO3, and to tag them to whatever extent you want to. Here’s some examples of how I chose to bookmark external works.

7. Things will inevitably get complicated. Authors will change their names. People who do the survey will use shorthand you’ve never heard of for some fic you don’t know. People will misspell things and you’ll either recognize it even with the typo...or you won’t. People will vote for things that list eight different ships and you’ll have no idea which one is endgame. People will vote for things that have been deleted, or they’ll tell you it’s definitely on AO3 when it’s not, it’s on some other platform. The list of random things I’ve had to deal with is stupidly long and I’ve probably forgotten even more. Just...roll with it. Do your best. Ask for help (“Someone nominated a fic abbreviated as ABC to the collection and didn’t give the author and I have no idea what it is, help me Tumblr!”). And in the end, if you’ve done everything you can think of and you still don’t know...let it go. It’s just not that worth worrying about. And sometimes if you step away and look again in a few days you’ll figure out another way to search and it’ll pop up. But honestly I’ve got a handful of works I still haven’t been able to track down, and that one work that someone submitted that’s only available in Finnish and is explicit and behind a log-in wall on a small independent Finnish-only fic archive...well, I spoke to the author and confirmed the work exists, but otherwise...whelp, it’s not linked, and I did my best. That’s all you can do.

8. No matter what you do, someone somewhere will probably get upset about it. The first time I did the survey, when it got the most traction, I actually got a little hate, and I got some anons who were like “oooooo did you know that ~x~ is cheating” and I had a little “HOW DARE YOU NOT PLAY FAVORITES WHAT ABOUT MY PERSONAL FAVE?” and just...decide how you’re approaching the survey, and stick to your guns, and if anyone is a douche, hit the block button. And, related...

9. Transparency is most important imo. Not transparency for vote counts obviously, but transparency for what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it, and what you hope to accomplish. Make sure your goals are clear from the start (mine weren’t that first time, hence some of the problems I encountered) - if it’s to highlight as wide a range of works as possible, say that. If it IS to pick a favorite, say that too. Just be clear, and honest, and above board, and it should work out okay.

10. Side note...one of the saddest things about all this is that if you do it over an extended period you’ll see authors deleting their works. As such, I personally chose to download every work that gets a vote, that way it’s at least preserved. I then expanded that into a much larger archive that I’m still adding to all the time, trying to save as much Destiel as possible. But then, I’m an archivist at heart, whether you want to branch out in that kind of direction is up to you.

...okay, that’s everything I can think of. Hopefully I didn’t scare you too bad. I don’t know what fandom/ship you’re looking at but for perspective...first time I did the survey I got about 400 replies, and then the next two times it got about 200, and this most recent time it got about 300. I chose to do mine annually, on the assumption that gives some time for people to come and go for fandom and a lot of new works to get created, and I deliberately timed it for about a month after the biggest fandom event (the DCBB) that generates fics, to give people time to read those fics and consider them in their voting. For me, that means I happen to run the survey starting on January 1st, and I keep it limited to 15 days, since usually it tapers off anyway. But you could try experimenting with different schedules, or leaving it open all the time, etc., it just depends how much time you want to devote to monitoring and updating it. For me, I mostly want to do a big burst of work and then not have to think about it most of the rest of the time, lol.

So...questions? comments? thoughts? wanna tell me I’m dead wrong? I’m all ears, lemme know how I can help!

#destiel favs survey #unforth replies #sorry if this is a mess I've GOT to do some writing so I don't want to take the time to edit it #treatlouwithkindness

12 notes · View notes

chiimmchiimm · 4 years

Text

❝ 𝖒𝖔𝖓𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗 !¡ 𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓇𝓉𝑒𝑒𝓃 ❞

CHAPTERS “ 01 - 02 - 03 - 04 - 05 - 06 - 07 - 08 - 09 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 “

The northern jail was the most dangerous in the country, social scum, thousands of criminals were locked behind their bars. Who would tell poor Blair that he would end up there because of his father’s mistake. The problem was not the lack of hot water, but that inhuman obsession that many of the prisoners had for “new toys.” Rookies had two options; be submissive and abide by veterans’ orders or suffer the dangerous anger of those disturbed minds. It all started one night when Blair had the bad idea of going to shower alone.

𝒫𝒶𝒾𝓇𝒾𝓃𝑔: Jungkookoffender au x (female: Blair). 𝒢𝑒𝓃𝓇𝑒: Genre: smut.(later), offender au, fluff, angst. 𝒲𝑜𝓇𝒹𝓈: 4.3 k 𝑅𝒶𝓃𝓆𝓊𝒾𝓃𝑔: +18 𝒲𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔: dirty language, lies, mood swings, spectacular and close bodies, muscles, biceps, problems, very big problems, resolved threats, future friends, jealousy on her part, sad but spicy conversation in the end, rare metaphors ... 𝒜𝓊𝓉𝒽𝑜𝓇’𝓈 𝓃𝑜𝓉𝑒: A long time, dear readers, I paused to finish the story completely. I will try to upload the chapters more often. Great things are coming !! Thank you very much for reading and enjoy the chapter !!

Did you have me for what?

Fucking shit because every time we talked, he left me with the word in his mouth and left, leaving the greatest suspense in history. It seemed like her favorite hobby, confusing me as she tried to make sense of everything she said. But all that was a dead end because every time I reached a conclusion he would come and make me think a thousand different times. I never understood men, much less this one. I did not like the feeling of uncertainty that settled in my chest every time I had the privilege of being the recipient of such ambiguous words.

My fist hit the leather material with enthusiasm. I did not know at what point I had arrived at the prison gym, I was only aware of my actions when I noticed the cold latex contrast with the heat of my knuckles. Maybe I had found my way to let off steam. When he hit the bag he didn't think, he just moved the muscles unconsciously. I needed that, let go of instinct and stop thinking about deep eyes and strong arms with wonderfully perfect tattoos.

I liked that inmates ignored me, it had been a long time since I had heard loud compliments and overly embarrassing sexist comments. In a way, they had learned to respect my space and they didn't bother me as much, of course, the presence of Thirteen had been a mitigating factor worthy of note. In these weeks my relationship with Thirteen (if the strange bond that unites us can be called that) had advanced to such a point that I did nothing without him at my side. I suppose that we had a common goal, to protect his sister, but in fact, I liked that he will also ensure my safety. Since the occurrence of the baths he had not detached himself from me, and in a way, his company did not bother me as surprisingly I thought he would. He was not as bad as he thought, his grumpy character had been lowered considerably in these weeks, he was no longer the same serious boy whose only facial gesture was manifested through a slight involuntary blink. Without going any further, he continued to maintain that firm and regal posture but there were times when he thought he saw a small smile appear.

A smile like now.

"If the sack had a mouth, it would be laughing at your blows." I hear his mockery between the roars of my fists hitting the leather material. His back was turned to him but I could imagine how his corners rose in a mischievous smile that only screamed the desire he had to make me rage. His longtime favorite hobby. Buffet exhausted and then stop hitting the stuff to turn me around. Thirteen received my frown with a small laugh.

"Yeah, but you have to understand that not everyone lives three meters away and has arms bigger than their head." I blurted out, she seemed to look annoyed but both he and I knew that my contemptuous tone was overactive. Cross your arms to calm the hectic movement of my chest. For him it had been nothing more than small blows but he had really left my breath. Long heavy breaths with her mouth ajar as she skeptically watched him. I felt how the beads of sweat gradually accumulated on my forehead and then bathed my neck with pride. Thirteen observed me sitting from an exercise table, with his dark eyebrow raised as he followed the path of a drop that went down the column of my neck towards my tank top. My breathing increased dramatically for reasons other than exercise when her tongue came out in a provocative dance to wet her two parted lips. I squeezed my arms to cover the view of my semi-transparent white sweatshirt. I felt very intimidated on my feet, as her eyes traveled everywhere she had exposed. Even more when her dramatic silence began to bore me and my mind began to produce thoughts about how good the white T-shirt she wore today looked, how well her tattoos stood out in the artificial light of the bar lamps and in the wide and fluffy that turned his thighs when crushed when sitting.

I swallowed hard to catch my breath as Thirteen scrambled to her feet to impose her height on me. I had to tilt my neck up to see the dark glow in his eyes.

"I'm not ten feet tall," I groan with a small pout as I wrinkle my nose and frown. Her gesture made me laugh a little. However, I stopped laughing when his eyes dropped to my wet little cleavage. My breath hitched and the mouth of my throat began to dry. I part my lips in a snap, causing her to soon admire his movement. "However, I have parts of my body that are quite large."

Snap your fingers in front of your face to catch their attention. Immediately his eyes stopped admiring the beginning of my breasts to settle on me as if nothing.

"My face is up here, Thirteen."

I pass a slanting self-sufficient smile as I stared at mine. A look too intense to hold for too long. For a fraction of a second I wished I had closed my mouth, because at least the other way I didn't notice how nervous I was when his pupils dominated mine too easily. Turn the sack around and hit it to camouflage the tension that had formed from the awkward silence.

Center the force of my punches at one point to increase damage to the bag, isolating myself from around me. Suddenly, my back hit the hard surface of his chest. I immediately froze by canceling any future moves I intended to make. I swallowed so that the dryness of my mouth was not so bothersome. My stomach clenched as the weight of his hands began to warmly embrace my hip. I tried to glance askance at his body but his hands held me in place. One of his legs came slowly down the side of my body, when his thigh brushed against mine I swore I heard a gasp escape from his lips that landed directly on the surface of my ear when he leaned enough so that I could feel the wetness of my skin from his lip.

"You are too weak to leave all the weight of the blow in your hands," he whispered in a graver tone than usual. I deduced from the movement of his chest that he looked more disturbed than the normal stability of his voice reflected. He raised his hands leaving a silky path too nice, I closed my eyes unconsciously when he left them on my waist. By then, my breathing was too strong to try to hide it. It was as if after his hot walk my joints would stop working, submitting to the sweet torture of his overly provocative caresses. In a movement that caught me completely off guard, he thrust his knee into the hollow of mine and dug his fingers into my waist to propel me forward so that my fist hit the material. Incredibly the bag moved for the first time since I started my workouts. I opened my eyes forgetting, or rather, trying to ignore how good my whole body felt when feeling the cozy warmth of his big hands.

“But how?” I asked, too surprised by the simple fact that I never thought I would ever be able to move the bag on my own. In a quick blink I managed to glance askance at her face, her sharp detailed jaw in front of my eyes giving me a perfect perspective of her wonderful profile. His well-formed cheekbones and the relief of his large nose. I even managed to discover amid the roughness of his broad neck a small mole that caused a sweetness to the eye. Thirteen realizing my devotion to new discoveries of her skin, I turn my head completely. His wild pupils dominated mine leaving me at his disposal. The moisture on my lips felt a sharp chill as it contrasted with his hot breath.

"You are small, you have almost no muscle and you hardly know how to defend yourself." All you can do is attack strong enough first to give yourself time to run away.

I felt ashamed for her lack of confidence in my physical state, more than hurt, however, deep down I knew she was right and that's why I kept quiet. I was never a physically strong girl before, I did not win a fight in my life and if I did it was not for me, but because someone interrupted. And maybe that was what bothered me so much that even knowing I was right I didn't want him to see me as a helpless animal that had no other way than to flee. I've been running away from an abuser all my life, and I think sometimes people get tired of running away. In my case, quite a long time ago.

"Well then, teach me how to defend myself," I whispered in a conciliatory tone. Thirteen I raise one leaves surprised by my interest, however, a short time later began to form a smile marked by pride. I felt good at the time, able to do anything.

“Do you see the black area of the bag?” He pointed his eyes forward, making him turn his head towards his directions. Take a close look at the black stripe that covered the top of the bag. He bit back an unsatisfied moan as he remembered that it was the hardest area. At first I had tried to soften her but had done nothing other than bruise my knuckles thoroughly. I nodded a little confused for not understanding what was the interest of her looking right there. His finger reached to the start of the sack just on the edge as the material slipped in to form a flattened circumference. Raise your head to facilitate my perspective. It was almost funny to see how his hand reached that height without any problem knowing that I would not even jump. I gave a little frightened gasp when I stick his lip to the cartilage of my ear and whisper softly as if he were telling me a story. "This area corresponds to the beginning of the forehead. and the small fissure that corresponds to the mouth, lower is the jaw and a little lower is the jugular and finally the neck. "I was amazed to be a spectator of so much strategy. It was true, if I could get a better look there were marked parts that corresponded to all the parts that he had named, it was only necessary to pay more attention to the details. His finger attached to the hand of his tattooed joint looked powerful, large, so mesmerizing from the dance of his marked veins. "You just have to look for the area that you think can fuck the most." But if I give you some advice, the first blow send it directly to the neck, you will leave it breathless for a few seconds long enough so that you can punch it and knock it to the ground.

"I will," I swore safely.

"Yes," he whispered, dragging me into a world full of chills. Her lip had settled on my skin like it was her second home. The contrast was so relaxing when enough time passed. Her lip was so soft as well as hot. In an instant I found myself casting a longing gaze at him. I did not know why I simply began to feel an exaggerated desire to see his black eyes again. He reciprocated in seconds. I regretted when I realized the very compromising position I was in. His face was too close to the point that his nose was caressing mine. The long arm I had as a support began to slide down until it was inches from my neck. Everything seemed to disappear around me when Thirteen began to bow her head with a desperate slowness.

“Am I interrupting?” A voice foreign to us interrupted the moment too abruptly. Thirteen stopped leaning quickly to look at the unknown person. Suddenly, I noticed how his jaw clenched and his nose widened. When I could feel the tension in his shoulders I couldn't help but turn around and understand why Thirteen had reacted that way. "I was looking for you, Thirteen."

I instantly recognized that wicked smile and that piercing look.

"I don't have time for your psycho shit, Hong Kong." Thirteen replied with a tired air in the reflection of his voice. The named broadening the smile further exposing his tongue pircing more than macabre. His yellowish, sharp teeth began to create small retches at the beginning of my stomach. I don't know if it was fear of everything I had heard from him or simply because I didn't like how tense everything was getting, I just knew that I wanted to leave urgently.

Suddenly, Thirteen's hand caught my wrist too hard to push me on its way. However, we could not take two steps as miraculously two men appeared in front of us just as creepy as the other one standing in our way. I heard a deep sound come from Thirteen's throat as a warning. The taller of the two, a blond with a beard, seemed unaffected, however the smaller one truly doubted his position.

"I said I was looking for you." He spoke again in the same neutral tone. I looked at Thirteen immediately but he didn't stop terrifyingly shooting the bearded blond. His fingers wrapped more and more tightly around my wrist, letting me understand that he was getting quite angry, but also that he was getting nervous.

"Take off," he growled at the blonde. I was quite surprised by the cold and terrifying tone I use. It had been a long time since I had seen that part of him. And I admit, I wasn't liking seeing her again, it was too scary.

"You should thank me that I have had the education to introduce myself here to ask you myself if the rumors I have heard from some prisoners are true."

Suddenly, the air became much heavier. I watched with some panic as he closed his left hand into a fist. I had never seen him lose control like that, it was as if his rational part had suddenly vanished and another good had appeared instead. There was a moment when his fingers were clenching too hard, he groaned silently but with enough plea for him to hear my complaint. As if it was a sign that she was being carried away by the impulse her hand loosened suddenly causing her to exhale in relief.

"Surprise me," he spelled slowly but very demanding.

"Well, it turns out that one of my trusted men was suspiciously sent to the hospital with a broken jaw. Rumors have it that it was because he messed with the wrong girl."

My mouth clenched impossibly to hold back a gasp. I had an urge to cover my lips to hide a scream but I held steady for the sake of both of us. You didn't have to be very smart to know what he was talking about. My good imagination played a trick on me, scenes of a guy lying on the floor drinking his own blood while Thirteen kept giving him more blows. I felt guilty because this was all for me. I knew I was that girl Hong Kong was talking about as I also knew that my problems were starting to affect Thirteen and I felt pretty bad.

"Yes, he messed with the wrong girl."

Hong Kong slowly shook his head to the side. His smile exuded amusement, an ironic glow that had rendered me speechless. Thirteen managed to move a little toward him to keep his gaze. He positioned himself with his back to me and when I was afraid to stay behind with the two Hong Kong men, suddenly, I felt a hand catch mine to calm me down. Ironically, this was the first time he had shaken my hand. I couldn't turn off the disappointment of my heart because I really waited for that moment for a long time without realizing it. Fears left me when the warmth of his hand took mine.

However, my eyes caught an abundant body moving from the corner of my periphery, I slightly turned my neck and it was when all the nerves returned ripping without mercy. The sweat suddenly turned cold as I froze as I saw something shiny and pointed mockingly peek out of the blonde's sleeve.

When he took a step forward, I knew in that instant his terrifying intentions. His eyes glued to a fixed point on Thirteen's back as his eyes sparkled with anticipation. I really didn't know what to do, not when I knew what was going to happen if I didn't do something. Thirteen was on his back, he was protecting me, he was ignoring two psychopaths so he didn't have to deal with Hong Kong's bloodshot eyes. My chest rose so high that my heart began hammering inside my ear. Taking a rather exaggerated exhalation of air I placed myself in front of him with open palms.

"Don't do it! Are you really planning to take that out here when you have a camera pointed directly at the nape of your neck and another in front of us?" I whispered quite upset. I controlled my tone with concentration but if I could analyze the nuances of my babble I could Successfully deducing that I was truly terrified. The blonde remained impassive at my little hysteria and just then laughed at me. I felt small under his wicked gaze, I opened my mouth to cover an overly revealing gasp.

It was at that moment that Thirteen turned suddenly to make sure with a quick glance that he was fine. Afterward, I watch the blonde glaring at him with so much fury permeated by every detail of his pupils that I cut his laughter abruptly. Thirteen wrinkled his nose and grunted in his direction as he took two steps causing the blonde to back off at the same time colliding with his partner.

"Don't go near her, motherfucker."

His roar was too aggressive. Her nostrils flared at the strong breaths. His brow furrowed together with his nose. But really, really it was the dilated vein in his neck that could really stand out from the whole scene.

“The wrong girl, huh?” Hong Kong cooed quietly. Thirteen seemed to lose track of the situation for a couple of seconds. He blinked nervously for a couple of seconds but knew how to compose himself skillfully. I didn't even need to look at him to know that he was controlling himself terribly. Her knuckles couldn't be whiter and I could swear her nails were digging deeper and deeper into her palms. When Hong Kong spoke again the air came back to me again. "Let's go, I already got the answer I wanted."

True to his word, Hong Kong and the other two left when the Asian signaled for them to follow him. The tension returned to me when the blond collided his shoulder with Thirteen's when it passed by him. Thirteen smirked as he moved his leg to sneakily hit his stomach. The blond whimpered weakly intending to turn but his friend dragged him out of his reach.

When I thought the scare was completely gone a loud scream made me jump in my place.

"What the hell do you think you're doing!"

I opened my eyes with regret as my mouth closed uneasily. Thirteen was furious. Killing me back. Leaving me more nervous than I already was.

"I don't know," I stuttered. I buffeted, closing my eyes before swallowing hard. "What did you want me to do when I saw I had a screwdriver under my sleeve?" I have acted on impulse, sorry.

But my attempts to get him to listen to me evaporated as fast as water in the summer. Thirteen remained royal. I knew that deep down it was nothing more than a reprimand for intervening in other people's conversations and also, that I really did not want to behave in this way but I assumed it was due to the constant accumulated tension.

"Damn it, Blair." Hong Kong really isn't a person you can screw with. ”I gasp, forcing myself to calm down before completely losing patience. He slid his palm across her face as he whispered a couple of curses.

"He didn't come to speak and both you and I knew perfectly well. Did you want me to stay on the sidelines when his friend wanted to stab you with that thing? ”I insisted with overwhelming urgency. The sharp point returned to my head causing a terrifying chill.

Thirteen clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes contemptuously.

"I don't need anyone to defend me," he clarify loudly, rejecting the idea of needing help from someone other than himself.

"Oh, believe me I know." I laughed wryly as I recreated inside my head the memory of him boxing.

"You are too impulsive."

"And you're too dependent." Furious, I let out an agitated sigh. Thirteen raised an eyebrow to declare how unimportant my view of him was. “I know you've probably always solved problems just because you've gotten used to not depending on anyone but this is different. You must tell your friends so that ...

"I'm not going to get you into this," he growled, completely opposing what he had said earlier, drawing out a weary sigh.

"Stop wanting to be alone! Because you don't think of all the people who love you, Lucy, Jimin, Taehyung even though I don't show it very often I think Suga does too. Accepting help from others does not make you a weak person, on the contrary, it only shows that you are strong enough to correct mistakes and find the right solutions”

"And you love me?"

I was blank for a few seconds when I cut myself off with that question. I blinked uneasily at his direction trying to understand if my ears hadn't really played a shovel at me. Inevitably I began to ask myself, an immediate answer came out, one that, despite being totally confusing, was still secret to me. I mean, yes. I mean, yes. Thirteen mattered to me. He was a good friend and besides, he was always there when he needed it. But...

Those were really the reasons?

"649 report in the direction immediately." When the metallic voice of the intercom broke into gym Thirteen and I turn our eyes to the device hanging on the corner of the wall. Taking advantage of his oversight, I ran away. And I must admit that I felt like a complete coward at the time. But he didn't really blame me, I wasn't ready for that conversation.

"Hello." I greeted Brian cheerfully as I approached the principal's door. He smiled warmly sending me feelings of security and tenderness. My heart skipped a beat. It had been a few days since I saw him and I must admit that I missed those striking green eyes.

"Hello, Blair," I reply back when I finally get in front of him. Despite his smile and his good demeanor I couldn't ignore the tension that was building up on his shoulders. He turned on his side and opened the door. "Come in, they're waiting for you."

Slightly tilt your head, getting lost in the situation.

"Who?"

Brian intended to reply, but his mouth was immediately closed when a tall, stout, and dressed man took up my entire field of vision. She frowned in confusion. I briefly looked at Brain who nodded at me nervously.

"Miss London, have a seat please." The director's sudden voice distracted me for a few seconds. Not knowing how to deal with this situation, I decided to sit down and wait for things to clear up.

"What is all this?" Despite the fact that it was the director who had been in front of me, the question was thrown into the air so that both the man from before and the other, who had just seen when I entered the room more, they will take the initiative to speak. There was a brief pause that further condensed the oxygen in the office. The man in the suit took enough authority to stand next to the principal. The sockets of my eyes almost shot out when I managed to visualize the gold plaque hooked on his belt. However, it was different from the regulation in my country. I was much more confused, and worse still, much more scared.

Did they come to tell me about my father's dirty business?

Did they come to threaten me so that I will plead guilty at trial?

"My name is Kim Hyulin, I'm an inspector for the Seoul Police Station Homicide Squad. We came here because we have to ask you some questions." His foreign accent took me by surprise. The alterations that navigated his pronunciation were very similar to those of Thirteen and his friends. Suddenly Hyulin put her hands on the table. Watch the gesture suspiciously. There was something in its tonality that told me that it had not been entirely clear and that there were things to say. His expression was harsh, he frowns enthusiastically trying to scare me but his attempt was in vain. The unnatural wrinkles on the length of his skin gave him the image of a mature man in his forties. However, the other man dressed in a much cheaper suit was young and it was obvious that he was a novice.

"What kind of questions?"

"Limit yourself to answer and you have not asked," the rookie roared with an air of superiority. The contemptuous tone that I use accompanied by a look full of pride bothers me. He was looking at me like I was some trash he had to deal with.

“Answer what?” I breathes out nervously at her planned circumlocutions.

Hyulin blew out a breath as her lips parted with a snap. I don't like his accusing look. Nor his ways of analyzing my gestures as if from them he will get the answer he so longed for. I glance quickly at his apprentice, who quickly straightened up. Then he spoke:

"Tell me Miss London, how much do you know about Jeon Jungkook?"

31 notes · View notes

eternalcantarella · 4 years

Text

Entropy - Chapter 2: Horseman of The Apocalypse - Joker/Reader

Entropy

Summary: We all seek for some measure of uncertainty. Working against the mob is a dangerous game, you might as well be signing a death warrant. You would think it was all by a stroke of chance, the multiple run-ins with Gotham’s Jester of Genocide. When crooks begin to make more sense than do-gooders ― that’s anarchy. He’s no ordinary crook, however. And he’s still wrong. At least that’s what you'd like to tell yourself.

Word count: 17.9k

A/N: Medical specifics - I know the rod of asclepius is more for professional healthcare usage and caduceus is for commercial usage, but I chose to use a hybridisation of both asclepius and caduceus rods instead because its symbolism was slightly more in line with what I want to portray. Sorry for the inconsistency with practical usage! This chapter took me a while to write, and I didn't expect it to turn out this long. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy it!

Inspirations: Trafalgar Law’s speech on the new era (One Piece), Amaya & Aiko no Akatsuki's Deisaku writing - Pinky Bruiser (Deisaku fans should totally check this out), Town of Salem's Plaguebearer role.

Available to read on AO3! Check my blog description for link to my AO3.

###

He sat in the long corridor, his legs crossed. His posture was laid back, with his tablet propped up on his lap. He tried to get used to the stiff teal plastic seat, secured to the wall behind him, but it was extremely uncomfortable and he kept readjusting his position. He tried to distract himself with the forthcoming plans for the week ahead with Gotham Press Holdings, refreshing his email to check for updates from his superiors. Unfortunately, he could not find the urge to open those mails. He leaned forward in his seat, his hand instinctively searching for the familiar spot on his chin.

The thin and bitter smell of antiseptic and cleaning products was invasive, acrid and stinging as it caused him to look away and stare at his other hand, twisting and knotting it as if doing so would hold back the unrest threatening to break within him. A man was whisked on a hospital bed right past him down the narrow corridor, and he was greeted with the disturbance of coughing, hacking and wheezing in the Emergency Department waiting room. He found the closest antibacterial hand dispenser, which was fortunately right beside him, and started working it like a gambling addict hitting up a VLT machine.

In a disorienting ambulance ride earlier, claustrophobia had closed in on him. He stood hovering over the stretcher, trying to rationally articulate the details surrounding your predicament, trying to discard feelings of his rising worries for you. However, with every bump the ambulance made, his unease peaked higher. As expected, the paramedics had briefed him that prompt delivery to the Emergency Department should be a priority, and had administered their prehospital care procedure onto you.

While otherwise appearing to be asymptomatic, the fact that you lost consciousness was alarming. They had secured the airway as required, delivering high-flow oxygen by cupping a respirator mask over your face, obtaining IV access simultaneously. There was a tenseness to his muscles, his head a violent whirl of confusion, trying to organise the newly found chaos in his life. They had also administered a beta-antagonist as a nebulised treatment for bronchoconstriction, a paramedic explained to him as she spritzed short bursts of liquid spray up your nostrils.

And here he was, waiting. A suspense ate at him internally while he awaited the ED doctor’s examination results.

While he was willing himself to check on instructions from Gotham Press Holdings, his hands betrayed his line of thought, and he instead found himself looking through his archived emails. His eyes glossed over the subject title.

‘Application for Blake Accounting Consultancy - Junior Data Analyst Applicant; Resume Included’

He crinkled his eye, his lips stretching against his index finger resting against it. He always found himself unknowingly going back to this fateful letter, at different, random times with no real reason connecting them with each other. He didn’t like to express it, both visually and verbally, to you that he had come to care for you deeply. And he was wondering if he was regretting ever holding back and hiding his actions to show that care. With the current uncertainty, and your life at stake, it’s always easy to see in hindsight that there were many things he could do differently. He clicked onto the email he archived, going through the motions that took him back to simpler and more pleasant times. He indulged himself in the light breeze of familiarity and nostalgia. He would always have a sentimental longing and affection for the past, especially when it came to you.

He remembered looking at your application and how absurd he thought it was at first glance. He vaguely recalled the contents of his job listing on Craigslist, having clearly stated that a bachelor’s degree in Computing or Data related fields was a prerequisite and lowest qualification one must have at the very least. Yet your highest form of education was trade school and coding bootcamps.

This was almost ludicrous in his eyes, that he found it to be amusing. He was about to dismiss your application to sift through the others, without even looking at your resume. However he felt compelled to click on it, probably out of some sick sense of curiosity and humour, he supposed. He wanted to see what laughs or kicks he could get out of this.

A condescending sense of jest bubbled in his chest when he started reading it. Perhaps this was just a joke applicant, he thought. Well, humour me. However, he found that the more he read into it, the more his smile started to falter. Being a data analyst requires very specific skills. You had recorded a very all-encompassing list of individual qualifications from courses painstakingly taken and they were all relevant to the job scope. Technical, analytical, math and creative skills. This was impressive for a non-uni graduate. You had also taken the initiative to contribute to opensource projects, demonstrating a fire and drive for the role. Not to mention the attention to detail and the amount of work put into organising this resume, to frame and market yourself in the best way possible. You had done a lot of research into this, evidently.

From this, he could sense that being a data analyst was something you wanted to be strongly at this point in time. And while strongly wanting to be one is often not enough for a data analyst, you had the puzzle pieces arranged and chops to back it up. Perhaps what sealed the deal to offer you an interview over coffee was the thing that set you apart from other applicants. Other candidates wrote about what they wanted from this job. No one cares what they want. No one cares that they want to “leverage their skills working with a highly effective team”. Yours was focused solely on the employer’s benefit, rather than for personal gain. And one thing in particular had caught his eyes to show you were perhaps a best fit for the company.

‘To build an ethical and positive culture for the company from the ground up and inspire change in Gotham.’

Given the current legal and political climate in Gotham, especially with the battles between parties of power going on, no one would care to write statements like this. No one even knew if they were submitting applications to companies deep within the mob, entrenched in corruption, or held hostage after having had debts to repay them. The mob had an iron grip on affairs at every nook and cranny of Gotham City. These types of statements were too fluffy, too idealistic, and often were not considered on job offers. However, things were changing. In a world where caped and masked vigilantes were jumping off roofs and Falcone was locked up in Arkham, he had hope. Politics were becoming more transparent, as candidates like Harvey Dent stepped up to the plate. And he would stop at nothing to make the most of this hope for a better Gotham. He had to believe in a better Gotham. He clenched his wrists and swallowed. He wanted to realise this idealistic vision he had.

“This mask for the anger I’ve been hiding… It’s not enough.”

“Then channel that anger to something good, I dunno. Frankly speaking, it’s not that hard.”

You two were sitting around a mahogany coffee table, with two plush sofas clad in burgundy fabric offering you two the luxury of sinking back into the comfort of its softness. However, you two were on the edge of your seats, not allowing yourselves to be lulled into its false sense of security and let your guards down. Your eyes were trained on each other, the air electrifying. You took a sip from the mug of your macchiato, eyes never leaving his as you tilted your coffee mug. You looked at him through your lashes, hiding behind a coy smile. Intrigued by your boldness, he quirked a brow in amusement. He sighed and pushed his laptop away from him on the table, finding no real need for it.

“Charming. If you’re so impressive, why don’t you tell me why you hadn’t attempted college?”

This definitely did not feel like a job interview. He leaned back, arms folded, a smugness tugging at the corners of his mouth. He was challenging you. You sure as hell weren’t one to back down.

“Well, maybe it’s because some of us aren’t so lucky to have our parents afford our college fees, just so we can chase our dreams.”

In a saccharine voice, you leaned forward, tilting your head, no longer smiling. Your lips showed the hints of a pout. John Blake stared at you, slightly confused for a moment. Was this a personal attack or something?

“That’s very valiant of you. However, Miss, if I had to remind you of something,”

He maintained his composure, leaning forward with a slight tension in his jaw, his smirk not falling.

“You don’t know the first thing about me, darling.”

You remained neutral, staying in the same position.

“Well, I’m sorry if I offended you.”

He had been the one to poke you first, you thought, slightly indignant. You bit your lip and spoke again, treading dangerously.

“If I had to take a guess, I would say you feel threatened by me.”

John Blake raised his brows at you, possibly in disbelief at your brazenness. He lightly clenched through his teeth. Were you perhaps right?

“Far from it, kid.”

You glared at him for this obvious condescension. If you were anyone else, the blatant disrespect you showed him earlier would have immediately gotten you rejected. But the chemistry between you two was palpable, even then. His eyes looked at the laptop in front of him. His eyes avoided yours. He looked away, and nonchalantly he asked you.

“Don’t you think it’s impossible to really foster an ethical company in Gotham? I mean, it’s a pretty corrupt city.”

He stirred his coffee to feign apathy. This question wasn’t important to him. You furrowed your brows and shook your head, your voice raising in tone. You felt your indignancy rise. Affronted and outraged. What kind of question is this…?

“What? Gotham is full of people ready to believe in good and compassion.”

You had his attention now. And he stared at you, his eyes hard.

“Hey, don’t you think that’s pretty naive of you?”

“You can say that all you want about me. I don’t gain much from being an idealist, but I have to do the best I can.”

Your voice softened towards the end. This was perhaps the first time you allowed yourself to be vulnerable in this… “Interview”. The man in front of you shifted his weight in his chair and stood up. This prompted you to stand up as well, befuddled and just mindlessly mirroring his body language.

Satisfied with his find, he stared down his nose at you with an unreadable expression. He stuck his hand out towards you.

“Well then kid, I believe we have a deal.”

Dumbfounded, you took his hand hesitantly, and he gave your hand a firm squeeze, bobbing it lightly in the process. Your jaw was slightly ajar and you were confused. After all that, you were in a state of doubt. Did you really just pass this… interview?

“Check your email for updates.”

He picked up his coffee, downed the rest of it and held his cup up towards you, a last gesture signifying his leave. He set it down against the table with a clink and left swiftly with his laptop.

You will become my weapon. My tool. You will fight for me, and in exchange, I will ensure that you realise your vision, and sate your burning desires.

He smirked. A diamond in the rough indeed.

He was stirred out of his daze when he heard the sound of the sliding doors of the emergency ward. It revealed a doctor dressed in blue short-sleeved scrub top and pants, with a white lab coat. She held a clipboard and wore a surgical mask. The mask could not hide the sunkenness in her eyes, fatigued from being overworked during her residency. Blake stood up immediately seeing her, desperate to know the outcome of your medical evaluation.

“Sir, I’ll cut to the chase. She will have to remain under our observation for the next forty-eight hours, and we will periodically image her with serial chest radiographs.”

Taking a moment to take this news in, he nodded, signalling for the doctor to continue.

“We seek your understanding, patients may develop significant signs and symptoms for as long as thirty-six hours after exposure. We checked for burns in the nasal cavity and tested for particles.”

She sighed and stared at her clipboard, shifting her weight onto her other foot. Her tennis shoes squeaked.

“Burning was spotted, but minimal. Her airway functions are still relatively stable. Our test results revealed in her system a complex of zinc chloride and the fear gas toxin compound found in our water supply months back.”

“I understand. Her condition is stable enough and she will recover, right?”

He looked her in the eye, searching for any signs that would betray her jaded features.

“I’m afraid nothing in this world is certain, sir.”

Her voice was somber. His brows knitted. What was that supposed to mean? Realising what she uttered out, she quickly switched her expression to mask what she just said, to a more amicable one for professionalism.

“But of course, nothing is likely to happen to her. We have databases storing synthesised antidotes and counteragents to the compounds we found.”

He sank, his muscles losing their tension as he deflated. At least there was some solace in this situation.

“You can check back around the same time after two days, if you’d like. She will be placed under our care til then.”

He nodded and took that as a sign to take his leave. He grabbed the laptops from the seats and gave himself another couple of pumps of hand sanitiser solution. He sighed and felt the tension in his forehead subside a little. You always had to cause trouble for everyone involved, didn’t you? He turned his head and looked at you through the glass panes, lying unconscious on a hospital bed. He gave a snort and didn’t slow down his pace.

Luckily for you, you had someone who didn’t find you to be more trouble than you were worth.

###

He found the darkness strange. In the heart of Gotham city, he had grown used to having the warm, yellow-orange glow of streetlamps outside his window, light filtering in through the gaps in the curtains and seeing them whenever he walked down the street. It felt safe. Come to think of it, it was a privilege. When he took a first drive through the Narrows, there were no such safety blankets in the form of regularly spaced streetlamps. He continued staring up at the Bat-Signal, its rays projected an emblem.

It was shrouded in darkness. Gotham City is a bustling, urban metropolis. The signal was alone in the night sky, not a single star there to accompany it. Light pollution makes us unable to see stars in big cities. The bat was cursed to be alone in the dark. It was the only way he could exist, anyway. After all, most sightings of him caught on tape were filmed around the Narrows.

He combed a hand through his honey blond hair, while the balmy breeze smeared against his face. He heard footsteps. Immediately, he whipped his form around, hands affixed tightly on his hips.

“You’re a hard man to reach.”

He walked forward, trying to seem cordial, as much as he could be. His posture was strained, however, his neck craned forward from waiting too long. He walked forward, closer to the figure and swung one arm loose, by his side. He sized him up. This was the first time he had seen him up close, and he simply remained silent. They regarded each other for a cold moment. He couldn’t expect much from him, even a response would be too much, not without Gordon around.

He almost blended in with the darkness. His suit mirrored the plated armour of specialised jousters, but with a much more modern and practical design. He looked rigid and reminded him of a man from medieval times, a mounted warrior with ideals of chivalry and a code of conduct befitting for a nobleman. The difference was, he did not work with the state, and was in no way a perfect courtly Christian warrior.

I believe in Harvey Dent. People needed to believe in something, just as he believed in the Batman.

His presence, despite being mostly subdued and shadowed, did invoke a bearing to be idolised. If he weren’t Gotham’s District Attorney or the up-and-coming choice political candidate, he might have even been star-struck and giddy-headed at the sight of him. He scoffed at this. They were of the same standing in the city of Gotham, on equal footing, and they both knew it. He could feel it in his stare.

They waited.

The jarring sound of the door clicking open broke the uncomfortable silence. He studied Gordon, who looked just as miffed as he did. He tried to get Gordon’s attention.

“Lau’s halfway to Hong Kong.”

Gordon ignored him, storming forward to switch off the Bat-Signal. This rubbed Harvey Dent the wrong way. He was a little vexed.

“You’d asked. I could’ve taken his passport―I told you to keep me in the loop.”

Gordon was aggravated by his unpleasant overbearing insistence on being involved in the Gotham City Police Department’s investigations. He raised his voice.

“All that was left in the vaults were marked bills. They knew we were coming, as soon as your office got involved-”

Gordon was motioning with his hand. He waved it around temperamentally, emotion clearly clouding his judgement and choice of words. Dent felt his blood pressure rise and he definitely would not stand for these accusations against his team. He felt a vein jutting in his neck, tensing as he matched his voice level to reach Gordon’s.

“My office? You’re sitting there with scum like Wuertz and Ramirez and you’re talking-”

He jammed a strained finger at the ground as he stressed his words. He paused for a moment. Realisation in a recent finding gave him the upperhand. He sneered. This was turning into a full-blown argument.

“Oh yeah Gordon. I almost had your rookie cold on a racketeering beat.”

He jabbed more accusatory fingers directed at Gordon. God forbid his argumentative habits from the high court show through now. This was making things a lot worse.

“Don’t try and cloud the fact that clearly Maroni’s got people in your office, Dent.”

Gordon’s statement was final and harsh. They stared each other down. This was going nowhere. The night breeze blew against them. The Bat was silent. Quietly, he stood and analysed whether he could really trust both of these men to solve crime in Gotham together. The wariness and doubt was palpable. What makes them think they could make him trust them, when they couldn’t even trust each other?

Dent didn’t know how to respond to this. He went silent. He couldn’t dispute or disprove this. The Maronis’ got their reigns deep within all walks of this city.

Gordon sighed, giving up. If they couldn’t have transparency at this point, they could forget about asking for Batman’s help. He would not accept this if they were to only hinder his goal. It was embarrassing, to say the least. They would only appear to be a joke to the man. He had to relent, for starters.

“We couldn’t detain him. He has too much power. We can’t conclusively accuse Lau at this point, and we were denied prior warrants on him. We have no data on him aside from pure speculation.”

Looking down, Gordon bit on his bottom lip, his facial hair caught between his lip. He tugged at his pocket with exaggerated movements, looking like a jovial dad who thrived on telling dad jokes, pulling out a scrap of notes. He skimmed through it. Harvey Dent’s hands were still on his hips, gripping at his hipbone. He turned to look at the man in the dark suit.

The three of them stood in formation, on the rooftop of the Major Crimes Unit, circling each other. They formed the three pillars of justice in Gotham. All unyielding in their beliefs of their methods of crime fighting, and their ideals. Coming to a compromise seemed near impossible moments ago.

“We need Lau back. The Chinese won’t extradite a national under any circumstances. Not that we even have the right documents to prove his involvement with the mob.”

Batman took this chance to respond, for the first time.

“I have no jurisdiction. I believe I personally have enough proof to track that rat down.”

Harvey Dent raised his brows a fraction. The gall of him to talk about legal power or authority having no control over him, right in front of the DA no less. If he didn’t know better, he would say he was boasting about operating outside the law. Even if he was a vigilante, that was a bold statement. He liked that.

“If I get him to you, can you get him to talk?”

Batman’s voice was deep and raspy. Dent did not expect his voice to be like this. The corner of his mouths tugged a bit. This was his area of expertise.

“I’ll get him to sing.”

Nodding for further assertion and poise in confidence, he said so knowingly. Gordon unfolded the scrap of notes handed to him by his officers. They had brute-forced their way into the systems of the recent bank heist at Gotham National Bank. Apparently, they had digital tracks of code and graphs as potential sources of evidence for this case from a foreign system. The department, however, was not specialised enough to interpret this data definitively.

“The GCPD only recently uncovered leads to prove Lau’s dirty work in the mob, but I suppose it’s better late than never.”

This caught Harvey Dent’s attention. He signalled for him to elaborate.

“We traced the source to be devices registered under the Blake Accounting Consultancy company.”

Bringing a finger to his lip, Dent bit against it lightly. He pondered

“We can do this concurrently while Batman forcefully extradites Lau. We need to do this fast, however. Set up an interrogation with this company, as soon as possible.”

Dent and Gordon looked at each other. For once, they saw each other eye to eye. Gordon took in a deep breath, and nodded, this time with a lot less hesitation than before. The Bat looked at them, his focus flitting between the two, and pressed his lips together. Maybe there was hope in this after all.

“We’re going after the mob’s life savings, things will get ugly.”

Gordon inclined his head, indicating the urgency of this harsh truth. Gordon gave Dent a hard stare, a direct warning to the man. A pretty-boy working high up in the office, who had never gotten his hands dirty like that in the life of a city cop. He had to know what was in store for him, and Gordon wanted to see if he really was all that serious about this, rather than being purely concerned with racking political points.

“I knew the risk when I took this job, lieutenant.”

Harvey Dent leaned back, seeming a tad bit offended by his warning. As if he didn’t know already. Hell, someone had even pulled a gun on him in the courtroom. In Rachel’s words, as Gotham’s DA, if you’re not getting shot at, you’re not doing your job right. He decided to let it go.

“How are you getting back in-”

He directed his attention back onto Batman. He vanished into thin air. Dent was at a loss for words. How dysfunctional this agreement between the three of them seemed. He dared Gordon to give him an explanation. Do I really want to know, he scoffed. Gordon cocked his head derisively, a wry smile in place.

“He does that.”

Pretty crude sense of humour, even for someone flying from building to building with a cape. He relaxed his upper body, hands still on his hips. He looked at the ground. He gave an audible groan. He was going to need a cold shower after all this―This absolutely baffling and absurd confrontation. It almost seemed comical. Well, he couldn’t complain. After all, he did ask for it.

###

It had been a while since you’ve woken up from your blackout. You could only see darkness.

Distant static noises from the television muffled in and out through your ears. When you cracked open your eyes, they still felt raw and fluttered back shut repeatedly from your drugged up state. You had no idea where you were.

“-according to eyewitnesses, each man wore a clown mask.”

You gripped the bed sheets. This news was… unsettlingly familiar. You felt a mild stinging pain on top of your hand with the restricted movement. It felt like plastic taped against your hand.

“-used grenades to intimidate the hostages into submission.”

Suddenly everything came flooding back, the feeling of fear re-imagined. You tore your eyes which were sealed shut open. You remembered the clowns. And the clown beneath the clown mask. And the sight of a live grenade beside you. You stared up at the ceiling wide-eyed, the whirring sound of a ventilator a droning hum beside your ear. You reached up to your face and touched the plastic sterile respirator cupping over your nose and mouth.

Oh. You were in a hospital. It took a while for you to register this.

You looked at the television and saw Gotham Tonight News. Your thoughts immediately shifted to John Blake. He had saved your life. Your eyes desperately searched the room, darting around all corners. You only saw other patients as you were in a public ward, and in your movement you unknowingly hit a button on your hospital bed with your elbow. Distant beeping noises of machines could be heard, with the occasional coughing and hacking. The feeling of grogginess was slowly subsiding. You heard footsteps coming.

In your silent hope, you half-expected it to be John Blake. But much to your dismay, it was a doctor. She held a clipboard and wore a mask that was tucked under her chin, and a white clinical lab coat. She offered you a warm, hospitable smile, despite the tiredness that dragged down her sunken eyes.

“Miss, I see you have woken up. We can let you rest for a while before we discharge you, you slept for longer than we have expected.”

Longer than they had expected? How long were you out? You needed answers. You resisted and slowly tried to sit up. You gestured towards your respirator and flailed your hand around slightly. She seemed to understand you.

“Ah, I understand. Eager to get out?”

She continued smiling tiredly. She dislodged the mask from behind your head and took it off your face. You felt a drastic change in pressure as you tried to adjust to the current atmosphere, taking even deeper breaths and sputtering slightly. You suddenly felt breathless. She let you take a while to get used to this before working on the tube that went up your nose and down your throat. She pulled it straight from your nose, much to your horror, and you felt the friction of it sliding against your pharynx. You could have sworn you felt blood trickling down your throat. Excruciatingly, you let out a prolonged sob the more she pulled onto it. When she was done, you panted, using the back of a hand to wipe against the saliva that dribbled around your mouth.

She took your other hand in hers and tore off the IV access, effortlessly and with little pain around that area. You stared at her behind tearful eyes. Nurses and doctors were so amicable yet did actions like this with that much intention and precision. It was daring, courageous and you guessed it took a lot for them to not be squeamish. You licked your chapped lips and proceeded to thank her.

You looked at the golden badge pinned on her breast pocket. It was the Caduceus symbol. The omnipotent Staff of Hermes. A staff once carried by Hermes in Greek mythology, slender and splendid, entwined by a serpent coiling around the body of the staff in a downward spiral. The wand of healing. It was beautiful, magnificent, if not a bit eerie and otherworldly. You sucked in a breath. You were lost in thought. Must we really fall prey to the deceptive trickster of Eden in order to achieve greatness? Medicine is a holy tome, the all-encompassing, for the most glorious knowledge in the world.

Break the rules.

To achieve greatness, you must know the truth, and to know the truth, you must take the forbidden fruit for the knowledge of all things good and evil.

And that means walking away from the lies you were told your whole life.

Your eyes glazed over, starry-eyed over the dreams of a past life. You stared at the healthcare worker with eyes of green.

No, that dream simply isn’t possible.

Disillusionment tore at your eyes. No, it really wasn’t.

She returned you your set of clothes from before and you changed out of the hospital gown. You were given a brief rundown of your condition, as well as pictures and radiographs of chest scans. You had suffered minor burns down your air passages and suffered from acute zinc chloride and fear gas poisoning, but the counter-agents had already been administered. Luckily for you, the actions taken against the fear gas were swift and that prevented long-term effects from creeping into your system. You would hate to be plagued with images of that darned clown for life. Soon, you found yourself at the counter, ready to be discharged. You groaned inwardly at the hospital bills this stay would rack up. You would experience mild discomfort and difficulty breathing for a while, but it wouldn’t be anything serious. You guessed that you really did owe Blake one for this time.

Speaking of whom, you would have expected him to at least pay you a visit this one time, seeing as it was in fact a weekend. If you hadn’t gone through that terror that previous day, you would have felt a petty disappointment in him, for you felt that you were important enough for him to do that much for you. But this time, you felt a bit worried. You chewed at your cracked lips, hoping that nothing bad had happened to him while you were out.

You signed the relevant documents and walked towards the entrance, ready to head out when you suddenly saw a head of familiar, clean cut chestnut hair walking towards you. He wore a navy suit with a cool-toned pink tie. You felt a warmth bubble inside of you when you smiled at him. Boy were you glad to see him, and he had made it to visit you after all. You were about to reach out to him and say something, but he stopped you in your tracks only to turn you around and walk you in the same direction as him.

“Hey kid, glad to see you’re out and all, but we have no time right now. You’ll understand when we get there.”

His jaw had a greater tension to it than it did normally, and his dark features were serious and silent. He didn’t really have a smile gracing his lips, but his eyes showed a hint of relief seeing you well and recovered. You were confused by this and felt a slight dejection constricting at your chest. What was with him and wouldn’t he be happy seeing you? You furrowed your brows for a moment and avoided his gaze. He handed you your laptop he stowed hastily by thrusting it into your hands. You fumbled with it and nearly dropped it. You felt your blood boil slowly, you thought to yourself, oh no you’d better not expect me to work overtime like this. You stopped in your tracks.

“Hey―You really think I’m going to work for you at this hour, under these circumstances? You’re out of your mind.”

He simply continued walking, not slowing down his pace. He only turned his head behind indifferently, regarding you coldly, then returned his gaze in front of him.

“You’re not working for me today.”

Your jaw agape, you stared at his back that was getting smaller by the second, incredulous. You’ve had it with this caginess, he was tight-lipped. Why couldn’t he just tell you anything at all? You pulled at your hair and ran ahead to catch up with him, the heels of your pumps clacking against the hospital floor. At this, you felt a fiery burst pulsating down your throat and windpipe. You ran out of oxygen very quickly and sputtered for more, the friction of air against the burn marks up your nostrils raked mercilessly through your nerves. It was obvious you couldn’t do much physically for a while. Your footsteps slowed down, but Blake’s did not. You guys had perfect communication most of the time and today was one of the rare times you couldn’t tell what he was thinking. You pleaded again, between agonising hacks, clearly vexxed.

“Could you... at LEAST tell me what’s going on-”

He stopped suddenly, at the west-wing entrance of Gotham General Hospital. You caught up to him, about to lose your mind at him. You gawked, your gaze landing on the sight in front of him. Your brain stutters for a moment and your eyes seem to betray you. To say that you were shocked was an understatement. You wanted to turn to Blake to confirm that you were indeed working for these people, but you couldn’t find it in you. There stood two of the most authoritative men in Gotham, hands on their hips, feet tapping impatiently. They weren’t facing each other. The vibe felt a little off. Gotham’s White Knight, Harvey Dent, and Lieutenant James Gordon.

“This is your Junior Data Analyst, Consultant Blake? I hope you had a speedy recovery, Miss.”

Jim Gordon adjusted his spectacles and nodded at you, his brows frowning, a sorry expression written on his face.

“We uh, apologise for bothering you on such short notice, but we hope you can understand.”

“Pleasure to meet you, the name’s Harvey Dent. I’ve heard a lot of good things about you,”

Harvey Dent stuck a warm hand out, smiling affably as you took it to give it a firm shake, shifting his eyes onto Blake at the last sentence. He was charming, just like the clips of him you’ve seen on television. You expected no less, but this level of charisma was unprecedented. You introduced yourself and smiled hesitantly, unsure, before you turned to look at Blake, hoping for an explanation. He looked at you and nodded reassuringly, the first time he had shown any real emotion to you this whole time. That made you feel slightly more relieved. The two men still didn’t exactly look at each other. Did they have some kind of beef with each other…?

“We’re not going to waste your time and get to the point,”

Gordon ushered you out of the hospital and into a cop car. This was your first time in one, and you were sure that you weren’t in it for illicit reasons, after seeing how John nodded at you earlier. It still unsettled you a little bit, you couldn’t be too sure. You had a read on the atmosphere after your initial shock subsided, and it was grim and urgent. You did not like this energy, no one says anything unnecessarily, probably to save time. It’s no wonder Blake was acting so unusually secretive, and uncommunicative. You felt bad now for blaming him. Blake and Harvey Dent sat to your left. Gordon took the front passenger’s seat.

You looked up outside the windows. It was dark outside much like the way the cop car’s leather seats and roof were painted black. A return back into the concrete jungle was imminent.

“We need your combined efforts in decoding whatever work you had on Gotham National Bank.”

You loosened your grip on your laptop. At least you weren’t in trouble for anything. You tried to maintain eye contact with Jim Gordon through the rear-view mirror, his kind yet profound looking eyes looking deep into yours. You could almost feel his burdens undoing into you. He had a weight on his shoulders and immense responsibilities you could not even dream of imagining. Gordon was the open-book type of person, evidently.

“Oh, is it the one proving Lau-”

“Yes, Lau’s fraudulence and involvement with the mob. He’s still in Hong Kong. Your data could really help us with his case and get him to talk. We need to take out the big dogs.”

Harvey Dent interjected. You turned your head towards him, and you saw his profile with his strong nose and golden hair. The golden boy of Gotham. Normally, you would be rather bothered by someone who cuts you off like that, but it felt different with Dent. Even you would defer to such absolute authority and apparent righteousness at a pressing time like this. From all his campaigns and court hearings, you could tell he was sincere in his pursuit of goodness in Gotham, he just overflowed with integrity and honour. He embodied that All-American charm, handsome, deep blue eyes monumental with some form of knightly honour. A heroic presence, almost like the kind Robert Redford sort of had. He shifted his cleft chin in thought, a hand to his temple, before he looked at you.

“Can you present us a full analysis of your findings and write out a report by tonight?”

He raised his brows a fraction, looking at you pleadingly with his blue eyes, lips stretched slightly with a gentle half-smile.

How could you say no when he had asked you with such sincerity? While he appeared to be brash at times, it was a quality that came with the job of being the city’s persecutor. It couldn’t be helped, you supposed.

After all, wasn’t this a dream of yours? To serve in the movement for change in Gotham.

This city is dying. It’s rotting.

No, it was rich land for the seeds in the car sitting right beside you. And you had a part to play too, a golden opportunity had presented itself.

“I already planned to expose that little rat, I didn’t need to be told.”

You looked away, snorting. You felt a slight tightening in your chest, and you cursed at the breathing difficulties caused by the smoke bomb. Blake eyed you from the corner of his eyes, trying to hide that twinkle, and his cheeks aching from holding down the pull of the sides. Harvey Dent paused, lightly taken aback by your statement, quirked his lips downwards in an arc, nodding his head unexpectedly.

“Well then, the youth these days never fail to surprise me. Welcome aboard, Miss.”

“Listen Mr. Dent, you’re still considered a spring chicken compared to those insufferable old farts we tolerate on a daily basis.”

You smiled. Harvey Dent let out a hearty laugh within his chest at this joke you cracked. It did well to ease the tension for critical times like these. You did consider him to be part of your generation, at the forefront leading this revolution. John Blake looked over at Dent, adding onto your statement.

“She’s right, you’re cut from the same cloth as us, you’re our peer. And you are the cream of the crop, the very best of us. Gotham is changing because of you.”

“Well, I feel very flattered, but I’m not the only one. It’s all thanks to the Batman.”

You grunted, a rumble through your chest, ignoring the pain. You’d agree to a certain extent, Batman was just the beginning. However, Harvey Dent was the culmination of all this. He was the hero with the face, the hero grounded in reality and tangible change. Batman can only go so far without the help of Harvey Dent.

“This is inspiring stuff and all, but are we forgetting something? Or someone? Or an entire generation above you?”

All of you turned your heads to Jim Gordon in the front seat. On the rear view mirror, Gordon had an expectant look on his face, his lips underneath that mustache pressed together in a thin line. The three of you in the backseat felt a light feather ticking your insides, threatening to break free at your throats. You all chuckled weakly, subdued laughter as you all darted your gazes, looking away at all absent corners of the cop car. You hid the humour in your voice with a stinging cough. Heaven forbid you all make light of the situation at a time like this.

###

You cleared your throat, feeling the lingering effects of the smoke on your system, the noise resounding off the washed out concrete brick walls, frosted white with an almost steely-blue. The small room made you feel sick and oppressed, with its air-conditioner temperature set to an isolating sixty degrees fahrenheit. You stepped back, the soft clicks of your heels hitting the concrete, non-tiled floor as you brought up a finger. It shuddered slightly, and you raised it up to point to the projector screen fabric hoisted on the wall, the shadow of your hand looming over the makeshift light projector setup the GCPD had provided, sending ripples through the fabric.

The room felt like a prison cell, almost deliberately designed to make you feel alienated and scrutinised. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling, a fluorescent lighting irradiating through the room with a cool toned jarring brightness that made you squint a little, yet not completely illuminating the dark shadowy corners of the squarish room. A grey rectangular table sat in front of you, with Harvey Dent and Lieutenant Jim Gordon sitting back cross legged in their foldable plastic chairs, while John Blake sat hunched over on the other end of the table, furiously typing out a report on his laptop. You guessed you couldn’t expect anything too fancy from the Major Crimes Unit of Gotham. You needed to push through this presentation, despite the building physical discomfort following your predicament from the day before.

You made eye contact with Jim Gordon, with a little bit of difficulty, but you still pressed on to make your point. He had his hands clasped together, sitting between his thighs, and avoided your gaze to favour studying the data presented on the screen. Harvey Dent had a hand wrapped around one side of his cheek, and an elbow propped on the table, resting his head against it and listening intently. You had been given unreasonable demands to give impromptu presentations rather frequently at work, but definitely not within an hour of getting discharged from the hospital. Your nerves fired off a little bit and you tried your best not to let your voice betray you. You tugged your blazer tighter around your waist, blaming the cold for this action.

“I think we have a pretty strong case here. This is all the information you need, reallyㅡto charge Lau, especially with the insights from Mr. Blake. He was a forensic accountant.”

Gordon and Dent shared a pointed look at each other, expressions unreadable, before Gordon turned back to you to nod a gentle ‘thank you’. You took this as a sign to give them ample space for their own discussion and consolidation, and you let out a huge sigh, walking swiftly over to John Blake after being granted the permission to be dismissed. You dragged another foldable chair and scooched over to sit beside him. You leaned over to look at his laptop, then at him expectantly. He ignored this and continued looking at his screen.

“Little nervous there, weren’t you kid?”

You puffed your cheeks and let a stream of air out. You were punished for this motion as you felt searing pain up your larynx and flaring at your nostrils. You were about to lose your mind on him but you remembered the presence of the other two justice hounds in the room. Blake snickered inwardly. You supposed two compliments in two consecutive days was unheard of from the man. You hadn’t been silly enough to hope for that. Yesterday, what he said to you at the bank was possibly the most acknowledgement you had ever gotten from him for your worth as his partner, and you will take that to your chest and run away with it.

“Yeah, yeah. Why don’t you try giving a presentation after literally being discharged from the hospital?”

He decided to let it go and brush this off, his smile still not withholding however. He scrolled down the document he had impressively typed out. It seemed he had been working on it while you were out. It was way too detailed to have been put together in the short amount of time you were here, while you gave the presentation. You raised your brows, he was on his A game tonight, more so than usual. Working behind the scenes, after hours. You wondered what sparked this escalation in work ethic and quality. This little rivalry between you two felt slightly more visceral.

Covertly, you stared over at Gordon and Dent, who looked cold and calculative under the subtle hue of blue-toned lighting. They seemed to be in some kind of disagreement, brows furrowed and stubborn towards each other. Did this happen often? You chewed your lips and tapped lightly at the table. You could see Blake at the corner of your eyes rubbing his chin again. While you two were confidently secure in your abilities as analysts and consultants, working with public servants required a different form of rigour. It required a different kind of convincing. Not one that was only concerned with profits and risk-bearings, like your previous clients, but something that held ethical weight and certainty. You two had done something that could be classified as immoral, and you weren’t sure if this level of convincing was enough to gloss over that fact. Judging from John Blake’s body language, he shared the same sentiments. You took in a deep breath, despite the pain, desperately needing the extra air to catch up on your shortness of breath.

Gordon and Dent signaled for the two of you to come over and show them the written report. You could feel your heart beating quickly, hammering against your chest. The desire to please the authorities made your senses go wild, and it would only serve as a testament to your abilities if you could help the highest forms of justice in the city in these respects. Blake took this chance to explain briefly the navigation of the report, and to bring focus to the more important details of your presentation highlighted in the report. This would allow them to utilise the information more effectively and constructively should they ever need to take this to court. This once was his area of expertise, after all. Gordon and Dent gave each other another look and they looked pleased. Well, at least they came to a consensus on something. They had their attention on you again after the mutual confirmation.

“Astounding work you two,”

Harvey Dent smiled politely at you. Your erratic heartbeat calmed as you felt heat radiate off your face like a hot pan. Slowly the high of authoritative validation crept within your system. His words definitely felt like honey.

“I’m gonna need you to come with me to County tomorrow, after hours, to account for certain data and ledgers regarding Lau’s case. Could you spare me some of your time, Miss?”

You gulped. It was extremely hard to say no to this man. You weren’t going to turn down a request like this anyway, if it meant one step closer to saving Gotham City. A little sacrifice for something you love was nothing. You nodded tentatively at first, charting a rough impression of your weekly schedule in your head. You had work the next day and it would be very hectic for you. Blake looked impassive. You couldn’t get a read on him. Harvey Dent leaned back in his chair, threw the documents on his lap back onto the table and stood up to be eye level with you.

“Well, that would be all for today. I need to rush back, so I thank you all for your hard work.”

After Harvey Dent promptly left the room, Gordon shifted the laptop in front of him and stood up. The room felt significantly emptier with Dent gone, he had quite the presence. You looked around the room again, eyes scanning the white brick walls, squinting as your gaze briefly landed on the bare LED light bulb. You silently waited for Gordon to collect his thoughts.

“Consultant Blake, you're not going off the hook so easily, I’m afraid. The GCPD needs your help in tracing the mob’s money while it is being stowed away indefinitely.”

Blake pressed his lips into a thin line, giving a single nod of understanding. Gordon shifted his weight to his other foot, pondering. He cast his eyes downwards, then back onto Blake and you.

“You know, you two enjoy fighting against crime, right? I see something very special in you youngsters. Well, I have a proposition for you... So, here’s some food for thought.”

Gordon looked a little more intently at you two.

“We really could use your skill sets for our ongoing and future investigations for our fight against organised crime. We-uh, don’t receive nearly as much funding as we need from the state… So our financial forensics department is not as developed as it should be.”

He paused. You saw those worn down eyes again, beaten down by the world around him. He was an old soul, and he made no effort to mask the worry in his eyes, his forehead grazed with permanent crease lines, perhaps from constant frowning. You could see however, the silver lining behind his dark irises. The one thing not jaded, remaining pure and undiluted, was his hope in enforcing justice for Gotham City. That is where his true passion lies.

“We don’t have enough people with the relevant technological or knowledge based capabilities. I know this is too much to ask of you… But the offer is always open―I could negotiate a permanent spot for you two on the team, if you were to change your mind in future. That is, if you want to, of course-”

Gordon fumbled a little with his words, his hand waving about slightly. John Blake held a hand out, saving Gordon from his apparent awkwardness as he felt it unbecoming. Cops should at least have some pride. It would not do well for a lieutenant to be appealing to two private sector workers for help like this, it was almost completely undignified. Had the cops really been pressed thin to the brink? Pushed into a corner? Here, he had thought that the state of Gotham was improving immensely. Evidently, the fine balance of all powers in Gotham has been knocked over. Something was brewing. There was a storm coming.

You interjected.

“We’re, uh, very flattered! Thank you, Lieutenant Gordon. We will definitely keep your words in our hearts, and keep your offer in consideration.”

You all regarded each other for a moment, unspeaking―completely aware of the implications of all this. This whole agreement, and Gordon’s open proposal to you. John Blake stared hard, his jaws fixed in position. You sensed the energy in this room and it held an excruciating weight. You didn’t even know what you all were waiting for. You clenched your fingers at the hem of your blazer. You looked discreetly at John Blake, not really knowing what to expect. As if you didn’t want him to catch you staring.

“It’s been nine months since the first appearance of Batman. Since Falcone’s incarceration.”

Blake started, his voice sure and certain.

“Did anyone actually accomplish anything?”

His voice echoed through the room, piercing through everyone that stood. He stepped forward slightly. His gaze flitting down to the laptop in his hand.

“All Batman did was end Falcone’s era. The Police Headquarters rounded up new forces. The mob replaced the figurehead at the top. Dent’s attempts to take down the top dogs have been, to no avail. The big-timers didn’t take any action.”

You adjusted your collar, uncomfortable and unable to stare at him for any longer.

“Sure, petty crimes have been reduced, one by one. Things have changed. But at the root of it all… Nothing’s been fixed.”

He pondered wistfully.

“It was like… everybody was just preparing for something.”

Blake adjusted his tie.

“...And now you’re here, Lieutenant Gordon―You and Harvey Dent. Asking us for help, knowing very well that this-”

He waved his laptop around in his hand.

“-data right here, was gained unscrupulously. And it’s not too far-fetched to believe you two are corroborating closely with the Bat, despite that official policy is to arrest the vigilante known as Batman on sight.”

John Blake tilted his chin downwards, looking up at Gordon, a purse evident on his lips. You flinched a little.

“You are resorting to outlawed measures to fight the outlaws. And you’re telling me.”

Gordon could not find the right words to this. He responded carefully. He would have to humble himself and swallow his pride for the sake of Gotham’s future, and he had in fact pitched you all a rather unreasonable request. He hoped to be able to earnestly appeal to the parts of your hearts, no matter how small, that cared deeply for the city of Gotham. It had to be there, he assumed, otherwise you wouldn’t have aided in the investigations as readily as you did, at the drop of a hat.

“The mob had… squeezed us to the point of desperation, as much as I hate to admit it. I realise the first step to having a successful collusion with all parties involved is to drop the act and acknowledge this.”

You gulped, and finally said something. At this point, the tension in the room had made you forget the slightly debilitating pain in your trachea.

“Frankly speaking, we crossed the line first. We aren’t the only ones, and soon they’ll be hammered to the point of desperation, Lieutenant Gordon.”

Gordon grunted, a hum low in his chest.

“I know very well.”

John Blake, for the first time in this confrontation, allowed a smirk to grace his lips. He looked over at you.

“You always told me, kid…”

His gaze on you was unnerving, and compelling.

“...that the new era of the daring ones is coming along with an unstoppable swell. Batman is just the beginning. He... broke the gear. And we’re not going to be the only side taking up arms, fighting back.”

He shifted his gaze back onto Gordon.

“Expect a storm. Expect escalation. Expect a resistance like we’ve never seen before. There’s no turning back.”

You watched as their eyes locked, their hard expressions unyielding. Gordon was obviously not new to this line of thought, but perhaps no one had been courteous enough to engage with him in discussing the implications of such. He was at a loss for words, but not caught by surprise. His deeply emotive eyes stirred, and he spoke quietly.

“I am well aware of all this Consultant Blake. It’s not anything new to me. But I am prepared for anything and will stop at nothing. I do the best I can with what I have.”

Blake’s eyes softened a little, but still retaining their edge, knowing fully well what all of you had gotten yourselves into. The very moment you had engaged in these investigations and accepted the request in lending your contributions, you had placed all of your lives at stake. He stuck a palm to him out of habit, always one for the conditioned nicety.

“We have a deal, then. We will lend you our tentative aid. ”

###

Your teeth gnawed slightly at your lips as you made your rounds around the main office room in the MCU. The administrative office had been closed long since you arrived here. You reorganised your datasets you gathered from Gotham National Bank, and printed out the required evidence for your visit to County the next day. It occurred to you, with the impromptu presentation you delivered earlier, that you needed to revise the formatting of your work before it was court-ready. You stood by the printer, listening to the squeaking of ink running across paper and the whir and buzz of the mechanism inside.

You exhaled, the first time this night since being discharged that you could take a brief moment of respite. You had a newfound respect for crime fighters in Gotham, if this was what their lifestyles consisted of. Gordon hadn’t even left the MCU, he resolved to return to his private workspace at the top floor of this building. Justice never sleeps, you supposed. You looked out the window, groaning then pinching the bridge of your nose. It was a special kind of blackness out there, one you would probably only see during the witching hours. You wouldn’t be able to get the rest you needed to recover properly, since you probably only had a couple hours of sleep at best before you had to wake up to head for work. Then, when you were done for the day, you would have to rush over to County, grab a bite on the go for dinner if you were lucky, and turn in late again.

Never would you have thought that you would find yourself working on the side of justice in this way, having a direct hand in adjusting things in Gotham for good. Although, it did seem like a sort of calling to you, in a way. Things were a little bit too convenient, and pieces fell into place together too easily. It was like a feasible chemical reaction in a way that was bound to happen at any given point in time, so long as time had stretched on. You tapped your fingers against your chapped lips, deliberating for a while.

You did always wish you had a reliable way of measuring what was guaranteed and what wasn’t. It would provide you with a greater control over your life than what you had over the past few years, one that you sought after.

Serendipity.

You weren’t exactly too sure if you could call it that.

Your thoughts wandered back to your coworker and boss, John Blake. He was pretty much done for the night and didn’t have much else to wrap up on. He would wait for you at the porch of the MCU. He had been acting rather strange. Ever since you first saw him, he had been pretty cold to you. But now, it was currently walking along a fine line of coldness and slight, dare you say, hostility. You supposed that he had always been pretty insufferable to you. God, since the start, he had been pretty provocative even when you were sitting round the coffee table at that one boujee cafe. But it had, well, mostly always been in playful jest, or friendly banter. You supposed you always did feel the strife of competition with him, always needing to prove something to him.

You groaned again, feeling a pinch behind your eyes. You had to save all this thinking for later when you weren’t exactly sleep deprived. You ran a final check through all your printouts, languidly flipping through them with an index finger. Satisfied, you tapped the width of the entire stack a couple times against the surface of the wooden table, aligning the sheets within. You slotted it in an empty file supplied by the GCPD, and headed to the entrance with the large front doors.

Harvey Dent and Gordon sure made the impression on you, though you did have your doubts towards them. Their relationship seemed… unnatural, kind of strained. You could even describe it as seeming dysfunctional. And it was obvious to you. You couldn’t really blame them, though. With corruption levels so high in this city, you wouldn’t know who to trust either. You would love to have faith in the system, but if they were so good, they wouldn’t be turning to you and Blake.

You stepped out into lights cast upon the porch by the warm streetlamps, lost in your thoughts.

John Blake.

You squinted upon the intrusion of the flaring streetlamps. You saw two streetlamps in the spot where there should only be one.

What the hell?

You rubbed your eyes with your free hand. You couldn’t hear anything.

Where is he… anyway?

You strained your eyes open again.

The streetlamps were like a desert mirage. You saw the two balls of light separate slightly, then start to converge.

Your hair stood on ends, from the back of your neck to the entirety of your arms. Something scraped along the inside of your ears, a high-pitched screeching that bounced within your ear canal.

You blinked, your shoulders tensing up. You took a step forward, your breath faltering.

Your feet wobbled slightly as you made your first descent down a step. You gripped onto your laptop and file even tighter.

No…

You broke into an all out sprint, almost nose diving down the long flight of stairs, the sensation pulling at your lungs disorientating.

Does it depress you? To know that your reality is based on comforting lies?

Poor little girl... You think a safe space will actually help.

You felt something black and long, emaciated fingertips reaching into your ear and scratching lightly. They were charred and felt like the bark of scorched trees. They were lanky and skinny like tree branches, about a foot long and grazed at the walls of your ear canals.

If you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back at you.

It was a creature of the underworld. One of the most fearsome apparitions, not from the corporal realm. Then… What was he doing here? You bristled.

Judgement had been passed, and the final fight between good and evil awaits.

He was the plaguebearer, the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse. He was the harbinger of the pestilence. When the time was right, he will besiege the world with pure pandemonium.

Flesh thudded against stone tiled floors. A strangled scream tore gutturally through the streets. These sounds were incredibly muffled to you.

He barely turned his head to give a brief, uninterested, side glance.

And all of a sudden, all your senses returned to you in one compounding moment, everything came crashing down dramatically upon you like a surging, symphonic orchestral blare, and you were met with your fears. The scratchy fingertips stabbed and pierced into your eardrums, and a sharp, debilitating throb pounded through your head. No amount of alcohol could make you forget the sight of his gruesome face.

Here he stood, in the corporeal world, insidious and spectral. The time had come, and his presence heralded the arrival of world’s end, the armageddon before Judgement Day.

You were unfortunate enough to be caught, dead in the center of this maelstrom.

You looked death in the eye, watching carefully as you anticipated his next course of action. He opened his mouth to speak.

“Ah, uninvited guests―Always a, uh, welcome surprise.”

He slurred the last word. You tried your hardest to react, to at least do something, anything at all really would do at this moment. Ounce by ounce, he filled every space and cavity your physical being had to offer, and then those your spiritual and mental being as well, for there seemed to not be enough space for this surreal and... grotesque thing. You couldn’t breathe, it felt as if his mere presence was asphyxiating. You wanted to move, you wanted to run, you wanted to curl up into a ball, you wanted to move at least one goddamned muscle in your body.

But you can’t.

Sighing exaggeratedly, as if the world owed him a living, he trudged forward slowly and expectantly towards you. He put both his palms up, facing you, stretching and spacing out all his gloved fingers, perhaps in mock concession, a friendly gesture showing that he had nothing to hide. He raised his brows at you with his lips in a sulk, derisive in his condolences. All at once, the air was knocked out of your lungs, and your torso was constricted. You could barely comprehend what was happening, and he seized you by warping behind you as quickly as his stature allowed for. You bit into your lips, tears pricking at your eyes that you could allow such a thing to happen without having the guts to put up a fight. You thrashed your head around, struggling against his grasp, his leather gloved hands muffling a yelp that escaped your lips.

He grumbled about something related to people minding their own businesses, but you were far too busy trying to pry away at his iron clasp around your figure to comprehend what he was really saying.

You couldn’t breathe properly. You sucked in as much air as you could through your scalded nostrils. Your lungs burned. Perhaps it was because you couldn’t see his face, that you could muster the courage required for this display of resistance to his restraints. Your laptop and files were left forgotten, dropped by the pavement and driven into the soil.

“Kid, it’s fine, just relax and don’t―urgh! Don’t...don’t do anything rash.”

You peered down as he rasped, the side of his face pressed mercilessly down into the concrete slabs of the sidewalk. Your shaky pupils searched the scene in front of you. The darkness was illuminated by the mellow streetlamps. John Blake was pushed, head first into the ground with a big, pale, brown-haired man kneeling against his form, restraining his arm behind his back. He was armed. That put you slightly more on edge, and slightly more willing to comply. The wraith behind you removed his hand from your mouth, and just as you were about to let out an ear-curdling scream, you felt a cold smoothness of the point of a knife tickle you lightly at your neck, drawing circles around your pulse point gently. Stubbornly, you slackened your arms a little, but still maintained a hold on his forearms.

Let… Let go of John.

You saw another man a couple feet beside him, frightened out of his wits, held at gunpoint by another goon, this one wearing a clown mask. He was quivering slightly, both his arms behind his head, clad in a grey suit, a piece of paper duct-taped at its front with words scribbled sloppily―‘Please deliver to Lieutenant Gordon.’ You scrunch your nose a little, tracing your eyes up to look into his panic-stricken, beady eyes.

“Lau?”

You spit out in disbelief, momentarily forgetting the compromising position you were in. The phantom circled his arms around you tighter like a python, a ritual they performed before they devoured their prey. It was no use, your arms were wedged by your sides at this point. You tried one last time to fight it, but it was met with a mere chuckle.

“I see we’re all, uh, acquainted here?”

He gestured in sardonic formality with his fingers that weren’t latched onto the trigger. He had an incredibly erratic cadence to his voice. His intonations and inflections were completely irregular, he stressed words in a pattern that seemed completely… random. This made even the way he spoke instinctually threatening, for you didn’t know what to expect from him, a sort of jagged edge that laced his words. It granted him a heightened sense of unpredictability, and a malicious air of danger that felt even more tangible. You felt this, it was all too real.

“You’re working with the police to sell me out, is that how it is? You would betray your own company’s affiliate.”

Lau, with as much disdain he could gather within him in his sorry state, glared daggers at you. His hands shook more violently, unable to control the trepidation of fear and anger mixed together in a deadly concoction. The ghoulish man who held you shifted you in his grasp a little, pressing your head closer to his cheek, and you felt the stickiness of his greasepaint latch onto your hair. You cringed and recoiled, lips contorting in disgust. He swiped his tongue against the ridges along his bottom lip.

“I wouldn’t be so ah... concerned with that, if I were you. Seeing that our boy-o over here so valiantly jumped in to save your little-ol life.”

You snarled at this implication, how dare he mock John? You clawed at his forearm, digging your nails into the velvety textile of his purple sleeve, and jerked yourself against his grasp. Roughly, he tensed his arm against your body. He shifted his lips closer to your ear, his slimy breath stroking the shell of your ear, smearing some hot waxy face paint against your cheek.

“Ah-tatta… Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.”

He growled that last bit menacingly into your ear, pushing the slender tapered point of his blade deeper into your neck, sashaying side to side ominously as he adjusted his hold on you to expertly elude his arm from your long nails. He played around with the butt of the knife, tapping it and twisting it around absentmindedly. The blade slid against the delicate skin of your throat carelessly, with varying pressure. You froze. Just because you couldn’t see him didn’t mean he wasn’t there. As a grim reminder of his presence, he knowingly did this, intruding all boundaries of your personal space. Your blood ran cold, frosted by the chilling metal digging into your neck, and your sight remained trained on John Blake.

Events that happened at the bank flipped through your mind like the pages of a comic book.

Terrorist. Master-manipulator. Criminal. What the hell are you?

You weren’t sure if you should be more afraid of this more talkative version of the clown, or the dead silent dirt green-haired man under the frowning mask.

If there was one thing they had in common, you couldn’t fully understand either of them.

Your life was in the hands of a madman who treated it all like a game.

You saw John looking straight into you, seething underneath all that pressure. You tried to seek solace in him and calm him down at the same time, trying to convey your emotions through your eyes.

Tongue in cheek, the man behind you was clearly watching this interaction, unamused.

“For a couple of party crashers-ah? You guys sure are bor―ing.”

With a low rumble in his chest, he shoved you forward and seized your hands behind you, pressing the knife against the back of your neck. A gasp escaped your lips, not used to the crassness of which you were being handled.

“Ooh, I have an idea, something real fun. It wouldn’t do to do this at our, uh, current venue however…”

He gestured his goons towards the abandoned building in front of you.

Catching your breath, you twisted your head to the side to look at John Blake, your eyes widening and searching his face desperately. You had no choice but to be subjected to this… sick game of his.

“It’ll be okay, John. We’ll be okay.”

You only managed to catch a glimpse of his jaw clenching and his hard eyes looking back at you, before the clown in the purple suit pushed you forward again. The clown smacked his lips together.

“Make it fast, lovebirds.”

###

Your head spun feverishly. You were sleep-deprived, couldn’t breathe well, and in a… sticky situation. You were just slammed forcefully, thrown head first into a fiberboard office desk. Through a teary-eyed vision, for a moment it was pitchblack, with the dim light of the city at night filtering through the window. Then, you were blinded by the sting of office-grade LED strip lights arranged neatly on the ceilings above you. Your trachea was already burning from being forced to climb up a flight of stairs. You had just about enough. This debilitation and lightheadedness gave you a newfound strength, ironically.

You thought back on the 9/11 attacks, and on every other occasion you felt this similar genuine terror strike up in your heart. You vaguely remember some quote, to never negotiate with terrorists, or something like that. Terrible advice really, to anyone who was actually in a terror situation where it was life or death, but to hell with it. You were at your limit for the amount of bullshit you could tolerate. Being absolutely manhandled was not in your itinerary this night. You thought back on every good thing you’ve tried to do for Gotham, sickeningly undone by thugs like these. Your hunched form felt an animosity that was like acid, burning, slicing and extremely potent. And luck has it, you’re trying to stop me again.

Your forehead was propped against the desk for support. Your hands were free, but your world was spinning too much for you to do anything with them. You bared your teeth, and you swear you could feel fangs growing where your canines were rooted.

Violently, you hurled your voice against the desk.

“Haven’t you done enough to us at the bank?”

You squeezed your eyes shut and gritted your teeth, clenching your fists tightly. Your blood was hot, and you could no longer feel the coolness of the blade against your neck.

“I’m not afraid of you terrorists. Frankly speaking, I am absolutely sick of you little bastards.”

Venomously, you spit the excess saliva in your mouth against the desk, overwhelmed with emotion.

You felt him tugging at your white blazer sleeves, and an excruciating force wrenched at the crown of your head by the hair, lifting your body up slightly, with it still looming over the desk. You felt a suppressed rage as you ran out of ways to express your anger in this awkward position, and you prepared to resort to launching a spit at him to resolve this compulsion.

But the moment you were face to face with him, the hairs on the nape of your neck bristled. Trapped in your own psychosis, you were wheedled into a living nightmare tailor made for your own brain to play on your deepest fears. Two holes gouged out for eyes, and a bloodied smile carved in place of lips, all splotched onto a chalky white canvas. He looked like a corpse, and you felt the urge to puke. You felt your stomach lurch, and you clutched at your mouth to coax the acidic feeling back down your throat.

He studied you, frowning deeply and narrowing his eyes, straining his head sideways to get a better look at you. God, when he narrowed those eyes, his sclera disappeared and they looked like the eye sockets embedded within a skull. His greasy hair frayed around framing his head stiffly, lifeless with its strands starched and stiffened together with muck, as if it were dipped in formaldehyde, its proteins coagulated rigidly like it belonged to a cadaver that had long been embalmed. They were bleached off of their natural colour and a faded wash of pallid, acid pale green remained. The fact that he smelled strongly of a queasy mixture of many different chemicals definitely did nothing to help.

“Ah, so you are that little doctor girl back there. I remember you... Who else on earth wears a, uh, white blazer?”

He snorted at the end, pinched at your sleeve at the same time, causing your forearm to be lifted, before he let it go. Your wrist bone landed, smacking against the table with a loud snap. The bite was sharp and pointed. You quickly grabbed your hand and held it to your chest, rubbing over it soothingly. You had no idea why you felt offended by this.

“Glad you made it, little girl-”

“Doctor... What? And says you! You’re-you’re dressed in a purple trench-”

You cut him off. He regarded you with a slow lick of his lips, gliding languidly over the fringes of his scars. He gets even closer, up in your face. He stares down at you, looking directly into your very being. You try to look away, but you could only see ink black. You could even smell the greasepaint in this enclosed space. You felt the world spinning.

“C’mere―Hey. Look at me.”

He rasped, dragging the clipped point of the dagger against your cheek, pressing it against the corner of your lips.

“Y'know, whenever people say they’re... not afraid of me,”

He looked away, inflecting his voice. Then he pointed at his face with his gloved hands, gesturing at the distance between you two, etching even closer. You felt an internal score rising in pitch.

“I do this. I get all up in their face.”

He nodded at you. To this you sealed your eyes back together. You dared not look. The world had not stopped circling around you. He yanked your head.

“Hey―come on…”

Cooing, he sticks the blade in your mouth. It took all your strength in order to keep your eyes open, just to stare helplessly into back his cavernous ones. The straining notes were reaching an unbearable dissonance, tearing jarringly into your eardrums. It was excruciating. Your ears ached and bled. They reached a frequency that was no longer audible to you.

“And guess what? They’re always silent. Like you, right now.”

He smiled, patronisingly, with a sympathetic look on his face, shaking his head slightly.

“People that, uh, put on a show… are spineless, more often, than no-t.”

He patted your face gently with his leather finger tips, then rubbed loose patterns around. He had you in his trap. You were his prey, no more than a little mouse to a cold-blooded viper. He flicked his tongue rapidly out of his mouth, then retracts it. What he said wasn’t… false. You couldn’t take it any longer. The revolutions around you were excessive.

“Hey―Freakshow. Does it feel good intimidating someone smaller than you? Behind a mask?”

You saw his eyeballs shift to the side with the weight of a boulder, this time jarringly wide, and you could only see the white of his eyes. He really did not look amused. He shifted his bottom lips in a restrained tick, almost like a controlled form of madness. He leaned back slightly, his grip still firm on your hair, wobbling it around slightly. His body bent a little backwards from the hips, and he dramatically gesticulated his hand holding the knife into an open palm.

“Very well, your dashing knight in ah, shining armour has given us a great suggestion.”

Your body was pulled towards him and he faced it towards the center of the room, with that familiar careless grace you witnessed days ago. His arm was hooked suffocatingly around your neck, and you were face to face with the setting of an abandoned office room. The only furniture was the shabby office desk before you, and floorboards were uncovered, revealing nails sticking out of the ground. The wallpaper was partially torn, a pale beige staining at the edges with a rusted brown. A few slider windows were spruced along the walls surrounding the room.

John Blake and Lau were pushed all the way to the windows, both of them still held captive by the two goons, edging dangerously close to the borders. Lau stood on the left, and Blake on the right.

“Let’s extend this little… game between us,”

The grisly clown tongued along the scars on his inner cheek.

“To our guests here with us.”

He reached around beneath his coat, into his back pocket.

“You deranged fuck, what you’re doing here is sick-”

Bones cracked. A fist connected with John Blake’s skull.

Lau just stared on agitatedly, his tongue curling against his bottom lip as he inhaled deeply, his breathing rate increasing. His hands were still behind his head.

“Between one life or the other,”

The clown craned his head into your line of sight, to check if you were still listening. Your chest constricted, and your breathing picked up. The pain escalated.

“You’ll get to choose…”

Reaching around you, he presented a gun, glinting silver. You stared at it, horrified. He cackled scratchily, the sound of his voice grating to your ears like sandpaper. From behind, he wrapped his hands around yours as gingerly as he could at first, as if he were handling a delicate little child, teaching them a valuable life skill, such as tying their shoe laces. Soon he gave up on this idea and thrust it in your hand, then unceremoniously clasped his hands tightly around yours, fumbling slightly with the butt of the gun. He made a throaty noise. His varnished gloves rubbed mercilessly against the skin on your knuckles.

No, no, no, no....

You squeezed your eyes, an epileptic meditation amidst the prelude of a panic attack. He hunched over, jutting a sharp chin into the tender flesh between your neck and shoulder. You squirmed, and felt purple walls around you constricting further as his arms enclosed around you, your heart sinking further down and squished into a box. You did not like him pushing past your personal boundaries at all.

“You can’t make me do this.”

Your voice was barely a crack above a whisper, croaking silently.

He lifted his chin and pushed back down on your shoulder to get a closer look at your face, making a nasally grunt as he did so.

“You do know what’s gonna happen to you if ya don’t play along now, don’tcha?”

He bobbed your hand around slightly, the gleaming danger of the pistol hypnotic. You stay rooted to the spot, coercing your hands into relaxation. You were being lured into its spell, it was like a siren that serenaded, and the barrel of the gun looked like that of a deformed pipe. His arms were caged around you, you were locked in place.

You followed the sound of the pipe.

Your eyes were steely.

He turned his cheek a little, nudging the side of his cheek against yours to direct your attention to the left side. More wax was smeared on your face. You felt stifled.

“Your… corrupt boss who cares about nothing but money,”

Your gun was still pointed to the middle of Blake and Lau. But you were bewitched to keep your gaze on Lau, and he stared at you with the same flecks of red in his eyes as he did a couple days ago at the office.

“You know, my car is worth more than both of your entire life savings combined-”

“Or…”

He jerked his head slightly to the right and made another nasal sound to redirect you, along with the disgusting lick of his lips. The walls were slowly caving in.

“Your tall, dark and handsome squeeze over here.”

He crooned suggestively.

“Y’know, he is pretty gallant―Maybe he wouldn’t mind sacrificing his life so that little squealing rat could live.”

You watched John Blake as he was being jostled roughly by the brown-haired man. You didn’t know how to react, and you couldn’t find the right words to say. For some reason, that statement made you feel somehow… sorrowful. Why?

“He… We’re not attached.”

You silently blurted out. You felt a low rumble vibrating against your back, before the clown behind you burst into a fit of light, high-pitched giggles, incredulous. On top of his voice, even his nasal laughter sounded like a cynical, washed out clown who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, who put on a red nose and laughed derisively at childrens’ misery at their own birthday parties.

This was something you felt the need to clarify? Right before all of your untimely deaths? Oh, how entertaining this was to him. You were beyond foolish to the clown.

“Talk about ice cold, little girl.”

The clown scoffed in disbelief.

“My brother over there, I’m so sorry. Trust me, I feel for ya-”

He jeered, wiping a fake tear away from his eyes, letting the last waves of his laughter tide through. You frowned, puzzled and bewildered. You caught John Blake’s gaze, helplessly searching for answers from him. He tensed his jaw further, collecting his thoughts. Clearly, the clown’s antics were getting to him. You couldn’t blame him. You fared no better. He took a deep breath and calmed.

“It’s fine, just relax. Don’t fall for his twisted mind games.”

The clown pouted at him. He was pushed even further against the edge of the window, the brown-haired man pointing his gun underneath his chin and painstakingly shoved him further backward. His lower body was the only thing anchoring him to the floorboard. The corpse clown's hands clasped over yours tapped it impatiently a couple of times.

“We don’t have all day, y’know.”

He deadpanned. You inhaled slightly and closed your eyes. Your mind sifted through many memories, sharp and bright, of all your interactions with Lau. Of all the conversations you’ve had with John over Lau.

That man is nothing but scum. He has contributed to the steady crumble of Gotham, peddling drugs, perpetuating murders, and ensuring that the mob ruled the city with an iron fist.

It was scary how you were able to rationalise this.

No hard feelings Lau. An eye for an eye. That’s all it really is.

You slowly felt anger and vengeance bubbling in your stomach. You were overwhelmed with the savagery of the beast. You sought retribution, reprisal and revenge. This… was you. And you had all the power in the world to take the law into your hands, to play your own judge. You slowly traced the line of the sight of the gun to your left. The music of the pipe resounded melodically. It’s dangerous. But it was so… incredibly sweet. You looked up from the barrel to the man its sight landed on. Your eyes were glazed over. The clown behind you hummed in assent, pleased with the results. Your fingers hooked at the trigger, hesitating.

“Excellent choice, little girl.”

He licked his lips. He toyed around with the gun, playing and fiddling with its hammer, flicking it and letting go absentmindedly.

“If only it weren’t so, ah… pre-dictable.”

He rested his fingers atop of yours. Your hands shook a little.

“Is it because it goes ‘according to plan’? I mean, he’s the obvious baddie over here, and all you… do-gooders. You clearly deserve to live. To bring him to justice.”

He purred into your ear, his breath fanning you hotly. John Blake struggled further against the man holding him back. He had no hands to grip onto the frames of the window. His fall was imminent. He had to speak up now. There was no better time. Desperately, he wheezed.

“You know kid,”

He sputtered slightly.

“I always told you that you were like a… like a siege engine. I’m only saying this now because it’s a matter of life or death,”

His words were initially spat out at a fast pace, his voice was very strained from his extreme and awkward position, and his breath was laboured. Eventually, he slowed down to get his point across more clearly.

“You’re a fine weapon. A valuable asset to my company, and your work is remarkable. I’ve always entrusted you to make the right decisions as my junior analyst… But I’ve come to realise you’re so much more. ”

He tried to peer down at you from his obstructed view, toiling as his voice was weak from holding this position. For so long you worked so hard for him, and you barely got rewarded with words of confirmation. Your eyes went wide and you hastily looked at him, they were glossy and large like a puppy dog. Your heart squeezed gut wrenchingly, for months you pined for this truth. You yearned so deeply to now what he truly thought of you and everything you’ve done for him.

“You’re always by my… my side. It’s two of us against the world. You’re the only person I want to do this job with. You’re a bright girl, with so much flair for what you do. And that’s not the only part,”

You felt yourself drift higher and higher, and you were now a lightweight. Drunk on his words, you’ve never heard him speak so personally about you before. It was always sparse little words of affirmation sprinkled around sparingly. He was an incredibly stingy man. He was so ungenerous with praise. It was always snarky jabs at you. He always made you feel the need to prove yourself. But he was the first one who gave you the chance to.

“That’s not what makes you special. I want you to remember our vision-”

He implored earnestly.

“Our vision… has been tainted. But that doesn’t make it any more invalid. Sometimes... we do have to get our hands dirty, for-for the greater good.”

He breathed, in between jagged gasps. If this was what he truly thought of you...

“I’ll trust you again. To do the right thing.”

Intently, you listened to his words, your eyes watering slightly. You tried internalising the wealth of what he said to you. It was a lot to take in, it all happened so fast. This conversation was happening prematurely. You had no idea who was playing the pipe at this point. Where was the sound coming from…? The alluring music converged from all corners, all directing to the source of the instrument in your hand.

The clown behind you went uncharacteristically silent. He licked his lips slowly, studying the exchange between the two of you. Siege engine, huh? What a funny word to describe you with. Siege engines were colossal battering rams, castle forged and an exalted war machine that delivered victories to the warring states for centuries. Monumental goliaths, they were the front lines, the fortress breakers, the castle crashers, leading the furious charge on battlefields when zero hour arrived. They were medieval trebuchets of acclaim, a necessity for triumph in war. As glorious as they were, they could only be as great as their role allowed them to be. At the end of the day, they were nothing but a mere pawn of war.

You slowly looked at Lau, and he no longer looked at you with that malice from before. It was replaced by a look that was… strikingly familiar. He reminded you of the mob bank teller days prior. Pleading, frightened, like a cornered animal, desperate and fighting to survive. His gaze pierced right through to your heart. This struck a chord within you. You observed how his eyebrows knitted into the shape of a mountain, quivering lightly. His lips downturned and parted slightly. His eyes were large. The look of a man whose life flashed before his life.

Yes, he did cause you a lot of trouble at the office. He did utterly degrade and humiliate you. He made your job hard. The moment he stepped in, he made you hate your job. No actually, that’s the understatement of the century. He made you loathe your job, detest it, abhor it. Pretty much anything to do with a severe hateful feeling you felt for this job, where you used to feel joy or any small amount of excitement, he had killed it for you. But did he really deserve to die for this?

“I-”

A croak filed through your dry throat. It felt like a type of flesh eating insect was festering within your insides. Starting at your heart, they feasted at the tissue down into your stomach, and they were coming up through your gullet. The moral conscience weighed inside of you like a heavy pendulum, one swing away from breaking off from its support and crashing through to your very center. You couldn’t bear the moral weight of such a decision. This was not a burden you could carry for the rest of your life.

“I can’t. I can’t do it.”

John Blake looked at you while he sucked in a breath, unreadable. Lau fell to his knees, a wash of relief coming over him. He continued being kicked and kneed in the face by the goon wearing a clown mask.

“Ah... you’ve already chosen unfortunate-ly. And you’re not backing out of this one, sweetheart.”

You flinched hearing the voice that you had forgotten was there. This stirred something within you, and you refused to give into his demands. You would rather die than make a choice like this.

“No, I am not giving into your stupid, twisted pseudo-social experiment-”

You twisted the gun barrel to face yourself, and for once, you heard no more music.

“It wouldn’t even matter who I chose anyway… would it?”

Shakily, you looked into the head of the barrel, and you felt… grief. It was cold and empty looking. For the second time that night, it felt like you were looking death in the eye. A knot twisted in your stomach. Your tears spilled over your cheeks, flowing hotly. You wept silently. You were stubborn, you would go to this extent just to prove something. Your ego knew no bounds. Your hearing blanked out for a moment, and you vaguely heard Blake shouting at you. You suddenly plunged into purgatory, existing solely on the plane between life and death. You teetered on the edge. Lau looked on from the ground, body tense and deeply perturbed. This turn of events was greeted by silence from the clown.

The clown stared, wide eyed. His face twitched. His lips quirked into a frown. Why… would you do something like that? His eyes narrowed a fraction. He couldn’t comprehend this. It wasn’t exactly easy to render him speechless. Why on earth would you throw your life away for another’s? This he could not understand. Humans are... selfish creatures. At the core of it, they were all rotten and purely motivated by self-interest. Then… then why? Why hadn’t he been able to predict this? This ate at him. Got under his skin. It grinded his gears. His arms wrung around you tighter. He observed the pistol pointed at your forehead. This was pathetic. Absolutely ridiculous. Confusion quickly dissipated in his chest and boiled into a seething, frothy rage. His jaw jutted forth and tensed, trembling slightly, his lips pursing together. He cackled through his nostrils, sounding a little manic. If you really wanted death, he wasn’t going to just give it to you, no. Ah, ah, ah… I’m not letting you get your satisfaction out of this. He couldn’t let you off the hook this easy.

“Well then, little girl. You can’t be a… a sore loser and quit playing our game now.”

His lilt sounded crazed. He gripped your hands tighter, you felt the leather skirting against your skin.

“I suppose-ah, I’ll have to finish your job for you.”

He spat, his words practically dripping with pure spite and malice. He wrenched your wrist to aim the gun away from you. Alarmed, your senses were heightened and you let out a sharp bark. At a speed you’ve never seen yourself move at before, you bent forward and locked your jaw around his fingers, chomping down forcefully. Your teeth sunk into his leather glove, and clamped down straight into his last finger. Squawking, he was caught off-guard. You heaved your foot and aimed a kick at his crotch. He let out a muffled noise of pain, and you tried your damndest to take advantage of this and get out of this situation.

You struggled in his grasp, elbowing around at the sides, hoping to worm your way out of it. Unfortunately, he was unrelenting. Your hands were still on the gun, your fingers idling at the trigger. He doubled over, sickling an arm around your neck and gripped tightly onto the pistol, a finger slotted between the gun hammer and the rear sight, pulling it back. While he was in his position bent over, he was looming over you, laughing slightly. You were choking, beyond freaked out at this point, not exactly getting the reaction you wanted from him, and now you were completely unsure as to what he would do. The feeling of confinement was too much and you were at your breaking point.

“Y’know, forget being a siege engine,”

He grabbed your jaw, forcefully burrowing his fingers into your cheek.

“I think she’s more of a, uh, pinky bruiser.”

He tore your head upwards, and latched his hands back onto yours. He yanked at them, and aimed the gun at Lau. Ready, aim... He fastened his index fingers around yours. You widen your eyes, panicked with alarm bells shrilling through your head. Fire!

“No!”

He pulled at the trigger. You jerked your arms violently to the left, frantic. Recoiling, you were sent careening further back into the clown. The sound of the gun shot pierced through the air like a firecracker. You saw the goon with the mask fallen to the ground, his denim jeans getting soaked through with a fresh, gurgling red dampness around his thigh.

Before anything else could be registered in your mind, the brown-haired man on the right side of the room displaced John Blake’s leg, and grabbed his lower torso, flinging him over the ledge of the window sill. You tried to lunge forward, demented and crazed, you were quickly becoming hysterical.

“Ohmygod John-”

Completely out of control, a scream tore through with your whole body like a shard of glass, you took no notice of the pain in your lungs as you were rapidly turning unhinged. The man who flipped John over like he was a light, airy pancake, faced you and you heard the click of a gun.

You saw the sight of a gun cocked in your direction. You felt tears well up in your eyes at this very fraction of time.

Bang!

You screwed your eyes shut, expecting the most intense agony you would ever feel in your life. But the pain never came. Your eyes fluttered open slowly, and you saw the goon drop unconscious like a fly zapped through an electric swatter, most likely dead.

“Did I tell you to shoot her…”

The clown behind you muttered to himself, the smell of gunpowder burning your nostrils and you saw streaks of smoke smouldering and rising from the gun barrel in his hands. You tensed your shoulders, mouth slightly agape in bewilderment. You mouthed something soundlessly, but words could not form. What are you doing-

The crackle of wood being busted through splintered at your ears, the noise tearing through the room sickeningly. You didn’t even have time to decide whether you should feel relieved or not.

“Drop the weapon, now!”

Lieutenant Gordon came bursting through with a team of policemen, their pistols aiming at every figure present in the room. He looked at you and the clown, and kept his gun trained in your direction. He dared not edge closer, in case you got harmed.

The clown, with his hold still vice-like on you, stumbled backwards pulling you along ungracefully. He still kept you imprisoned under his reign for one final moment in time. You were at his mercy.

“Drop it now!”

A pair of lips pressed intimately into your ear. You felt a shiver run down your spine.

“You know pinky bruiser, you were a lot of fun today. Sorry for, uh, calling you a party pooper.”

He rasped. A chuckle rumbled lowly in his chest.

“I think... you and I both know―Fate wouldn’t have it if this was our last time together.”

He murmured and you were about to pass out from this lightheadedness and claustrophobia. You were constricted for far too long. You were way past your breaking point. A huge force tipped you backwards. You grabbed onto the ledge of the window sills, your veins popping from exerting such a strong force on your arms.

All of a sudden, the clown’s hold on you was relinquished.

Your lungs overflowed with air, and your body was dramatically jerked forward, pain flooding your systems as you dry-heaved. Gordon hurried over by your side, extending a tender hand to rest on your arm. Realisation dawned upon you, and you swiftly spun around, bending over the ledge, looking out the window. You craned your neck as far down as you could see, hunting down and examining the perimeter.

Gone.

Gordon was pulling you back, preventing you from falling out the window. He was trying to talk some sense into you, but quickly gave up when he realised your current, panicked state of mind. Your strength was fading, and you allowed Gordon to reel you back into safety. Why didn’t you just… kill me? You thumped, falling to your knees, grabbing your hands to your head, sobbing and whimpering your sorrows away. You finally allowed all the pent up emotions to crash, not that you could control it now, anyway. It felt like a mallet crashing through from behind your eyes and nose, the twinging sensation unbearable as you wailed. It should have been me, goddamn it.

Gordon knelt down, sighing and furrowing his brows in sympathy. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, then closed his mouth. He felt useless in this situation, clearly unable to help clear your head of any type of trauma that resulted from this unfortunate event. He was aware of this. He hated feeling this powerless, he hated not being able to help. He had perhaps felt this way his entire career, with a town like Gotham so rotten, the GCPD was basically made a mockery at this point.

Lau was about to be taken by the other cops back into custody. He ambled past you, and looked over you and your pathetic form. For once, his expression was not one of scorn. It wasn’t one of anything really, he just looked a shell of the person he was just moments ago. You were pushing it if you said he looked like he felt bad for you, and that he held a thankful expression at the same time. You weren’t sure if you believed him to be capable of that.

You were escorted out the abandoned office building, swaying and staggering around. You went to pick up the devices strewn all over the soil, with some help from Gordon. When you saw a glowing cop car with shattered windows and John Blake being supported by two cops, relieving pressure off his shoulders, you quickly rubbed at your tear stained face and hobbled over as quick as you could, relief pumping through your chest as you were hopeful that he survived the fall.

The paramedics were on their way, and from the looks of it, John had a mildly serious shoulder injury and got extremely lucky. He had fallen from a height of 1 story from the ground, but as luck would have it, his fall was broken by the cop car stationed coincidentally below the window. He also fell on his side, which allowed for the best chance of survival and led to the least immobilising injuries.

You couldn’t help yourself and gave John a quick hug and squeezed him lightly, after hearing him speak about what you were to him, and after experiencing the fright and grief of losing him. You were met with an involuntary wince. That probably felt soul-crushing to him, taking into account that he just fell out of a building. The ambulance finally arrived and they proceeded to bring down a stretcher. You were glad it was over. But something told you this was not the last of the clown you’d see. You thought, I mean… he practically promised you that you’d be seeing him again soon enough.

“I’ll be fine. Just go get some rest.”

He assured you, idling around, not really wanting to leave. He tried prolonging his stay with you before they eventually persuaded him to get onto the stretcher.

“Heh. This time you’re the one sending me off.”

You smiled, wanting to follow but he refused. You weren’t really sure why he wouldn’t allow that, feeling a pang of hurt in your chest. He quickly convinced you that it was too late and you had your own injuries to recover from, not wanting to disrupt the healing process. You were doubtful, but you shrugged away this nagging feeling and tried to take his word for it, mustering a final warm smile on your wary face. Your eyelids were starting to droop. You bid him farewell for the time being and watched as he was whisked away.

You hated to admit it, but your mind was still plagued by that sadistic clown. Your mind raced with questions, and you wanted answers. What did he mean by his parting speech?

You were disturbed from your thoughts as Gordon offered to send you home, but you couldn’t reject his sincere offer. You didn’t want to disappoint him any further. As much as you didn’t like to leech off his kindness, it was the least you could do to repay him with the validation of being able to do something right. You sat in the front seat of the car, preparing to be saddled with desultory conversations on the ride home. However, you realised perhaps things would be different with Lieutenant Gordon. He had a type of heartfelt presence within, and was incredibly perceptive. You rested assured in your car seat. Yeah, he was different.

You heard the revving of the engine after Gordon slammed his front door shut. You stared out the window. The moon cast a buttery glow over the town, dancing in the velvety black-blue sky. The thought of the clown flashed through your mind once again. You closed your eyes, dispelling the cursed imagery. The blast of the air conditioner was adjusted to a pleasant breeze brushing lightly against your neck. Gordon placed his hand on the gear and recalibrated it. He breathed in, turned his head and landed his gaze uncomfortably on you.

“So, you uh, from this town?”

You felt something pleasant blossoming inside of you, being humoured by this awkward attempt at starting a conversation from Gordon. You chuckled lightly. You appreciated the effort.

“Yes, yes I am. What about you?”

You looked back and smiled politely. He stepped on the pedal and accelerated the vehicle.

“Well, no. I moved here some decades ago with my wife…”

You guessed it would do well to get to know more about your partners in crime fighting. You hummed, patiently listening.

Yeah, this wasn’t too bad, you supposed.

Now, if only you could stop yourself from feeling like passing out in the front seat.

That would be great.

###

#joker #Heath Ledger Joker #ledger joker #ledger!joker x reader #the dark knight

18 notes · View notes