#I want him to take a break and rest because he’ll have Multiple lifetimes to achieve his goal

[otaku553]

Learning how to draw him,

#hsr yanqing #honkai star rail #need more content for him. more character development #give me this guy talking with Dan heng and or his own mentor and gaining more insight on the extent of a long life and what can be achieved #I want him to take a break and rest because he’ll have Multiple lifetimes to achieve his goal #I want to see him geeking out over swords and their upkeep and maintenance! #I want him to start questioning his own ambitions after realizing how much violence his talent lends itself to

[nemeseos-noctua]

For Xiao, Zhongli and Albedo: what if their s/o (separate) made a song for them https://youtu.be/n8g-LdDf-pA note: S/O isn't immortal haha but they made the song in case they probs leave just to reassure their beloved loses them and uses it as some lullaby for them or something--

𝐅𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆: xiao, zhongli, albedo (separate) x gn!reader

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: mentions of death, xiao & albedo & zhongli story spoilers, not proofread

𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒: for those wondering: the song is abt finding ‘you’ (the characters in this case) over and over again, even after death. bc you (reader) are never truly gone bc u were in their (the characters) hearts

also srry if i trailed off w this request!! i didnt know whether u wanted an angst or fluff ending!

stares at u menacingly

is this. FORESHADOWING. that ur gonna DIE. hello?! 

once you clear it up that it’s just merely a song because you’re a mortal and he’s not, he’ll relax a bit

but then he’ll get a lil sad 😔

he knows. he knows death is inevitable, even for someone like him. he knows, one day, one day he will be alone again

but he wishes it didn’t have to be this way. the adeptus xiao, wishing for a happiness so unobtainable... 

Xiao was silent as you sang him your melody. The lyrics were so concise—yet, he felt as though you had rammed a spear into his heart multiple times.

He knew you were not permanent. That you were but a temporary, fleeting mortal soul, a soul who’d disappear like a wisp in the wind.

Your song—it reminded him of the Dihua Flute he had heard all those millennia ago. It reminded him of the eons he had spent, alone, the eons he had spent, cold. 

All of those memories he had hidden in the corner of his brain, racking up cobwebs ever since you came. You were the light that’d pierce through the darkness of the night, the darkness of his mind. You were someone so, so much more than a ‘mortal’ he had dubbed you as.

And yet, he wished he could dub you as anything, anything but ‘mortal’. Mortals meant temporary, mortals meant erasable. 

But you, you were not erasable. Never, never, ever. For as long as he’d live, as long as his name was ‘Xiao’.

You—you were the person whom he’d fallen in love with. [L/N] [Y/N].

he’d memorize the lyrics and tune of your song

though—as long as you live, he never wants to hear it again. hearing it once had already sent him into a dysphoric state, a state of which he seemed to mourn the future, to mourn what was about to come

and though—and though xiao knows, he knows you will leave him, that you will disappear like the rest...

he wants to believe. with his arms wrapped around you, with his hand clasped in yours, he wants to believe you will be by his side for eternity

The moon was silent, opening up a pathway for the Vigilant Yaksha as teal strands of hair fluttered with the wind, dancing like a needle and thread. 

Long ago, you were by his side. Long ago, you had sang these same words to him—

“I’ll love every version of you.

And you’re never truly gone

As long as a part of you in me lives on.”

The world was quiet without you.

Maybe because—because it wasn’t you who was singing the song.

zhongli will have a bittersweet smile etched onto his face

he, like xiao, has come to accept the fact that you are but a fleeting life in the sands of time. and though it pains him greatly—zhongli has suffered many, many losses

though, that does not mean yours is numb to him. goodness, no! if anything, yours would sting him for an eternity

but zhongli knows, for his wisdom is unmatched. he knows that he should take this time with you and spend it to the best of his expenses. he knows that though you may not be with him for the next hundreds of years, to have you in these mere decades is enough for him

and though his heart is already beginning to brace itself for a swan dive into the future, he—he, the mortal zhongli—will love you in this lifetime, and the next, and the next

“Did you arrange the lyrics yourself? They are quite beautiful, love,” Zhongli smiled, though, you did not miss the way his amber eyes flickered in melancholy.

“Hehe, yeah! I made this song for you, Zhongli! Because I know...” You trailed off, rubbing the back of your neck bashfully as the consultant wrapped his arms around you, the warmth of his body and the beat of his heart pounding against his chest. 

Walking among mortals—Zhongli is reminded, time and time again, life is temporary. It always is, and always will be—even to someone such as himself.

Eternity was impossible, unreachable, but the ex-archon must admit... 

He wanted to spend eternity with you.

albedo had told you of his concerns, of how he’s afraid to one day destroy mondstadt

it was obvious how he hinted the fact that he may break up with you. not because he fell out of love per se, but for your own good. 

and, a part of you had wished he had given you a chance. yet, you knew, you knew he did. he loved you, he loved you like how he loved alchemy, he loved you like how the sun would nurture and care for plants after the darkness of the night—

yet once again, albedo pulled through. he did it for you, he stopped loving you for— you

but you will never stop loving him.

Albedo sat in the corner of his camp, the fire doing nothing to alleviate the cold of his heart. 

He was alone. Again. The alchemist somehow always found himself in this situation—lost, forgotten, tossed away like a used beaker. 

But then he remembered, hah. It wasn’t him who was tossed away, it was you. It was your crestfallen face when Albedo ‘broke up’ with you, stating how he was ‘busy’ with experiments that you knew were just him shielding you from his inevitable doom.

Somehow, his mind always trailed back to you... as it always did. Whenever he felt powerless, the mere thought of your voice and laugh somehow brought him back to the known, back to hope. 

“But my love, I will hold you close to me.

‘Till you fade from my arms peacefully.”

The melody of that song you had strummed just for him still replayed in his mind like a broken stereo, like an endless music box that’d be played whenever he fell down.

Never before has Albedo wished to forget you—but, during this time, during this freezing snowy night,

He wished you never brought him warmth, for he feels colder than before. 

— constellations! 💫

#genshin x reader #genshin headcanons #genshin scenarios #genshin imagines #genshin impact #genshin impact headcanons #genshin impact scenarios #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact x reader #genshin #xiao x reader #albedo x reader #zhongli x reader #zhongli #xiao #albedo #constellarations

[panda-noosh]

unlike me {fred weasley x reader}

  Words: 8k

Summary: You, a shy Hufflepuff, have caught the eye of Fred Weasley.

Genre: fluff

Notes: support my writing or ask me about commissions! - did i just write pure fluff? wow. i’m learning.

----

  Fred Weasley doesn’t do things to impress others. He never has. Trying to please others is so far from his mind when playing one of his pranks that it’s almost laughable to think he and his twin brother do anything for the sake of attention. They live to amuse themselves, and nobody else.

    But sometimes the reactions of others do catch his eye. It happens rarely, but there have been the odd times when Fred and George are fleeing from the scene of one of their usual messy pranks, and Fred will look over to see someone standing there, staring open mouthed and wide eyed at the scene in front of them, and he will turn back to the path and smile because - yet again - he has left somebody speechless.

   More often than not these days, that person is you.

  Fred doesn’t know much about you; you’re clearly very shy, hardly ever being spotted in the hallways unless you’re making your way to your next class, and even then you’re prone to keeping your head down, refusing to talk to anybody who wants to talk to you. Fred doesn’t know if you have any friends, if you want friends, if you’ve ever looked at him and wondered what it would be like to talk to him…

   “So, Harry, tell me a bit about that one over there.”

   Harry looks up from his breakfast plate, eyes still fogged from a night of no-doubt restless sleep. Beside him, Ron is still trying to wake himself up and Hermione is hastily flipping through a gargantuan textbook. It seems to Fred like the Chosen One may be the only one at this moment in time in a fit enough state to answer his pressing questions.

   “Huh?” he replies.

  Fred leans forward a little more, so close that his mouth is very nearly touching Harry’s ear. “That one over there.” He nods over to the Hufflepuff table. “The one sitting on their own.”

 Harry narrows his eyes. “Y/N L/N? What about them?”

  “They’re in your year, aren’t they?”

  “I think so. I don’t really know too much about them; they’re quite quiet, really.”

  “Yeah,” Fred and George say together. “We know.”

  Harry raises a brow, flicking his gaze to the twins standing on either side of him. “Why? Are you both interested?”

  “Just ol’ Freddy Boy here.”

  Ron scoffs. “You? Getting in with Y/N L/N? Mate, that’s about as likely as Percy showing up for Christmas this year.”

  Fred slaps Ron on the back of the head. “Shut your mouth, you git.”

  “So, what? You really think you have a chance with them?” Harry asks.

  Fred shifts uncomfortably; he hadn’t meant for the conversation to get this far. All he wanted was for Harry to tell him a bit about you and that be it - he was fairly confident he could handle the rest on his own using his incredible charm and humour.

   But now these snotty little fifth years are making him second-guess his own abilities, which has never happened before in his seventeen years of life.

    “I think so,” he replies, trying to keep his voice as confident as possible. “Why wouldn’t I have a chance? I’m charming, and witty, and-”

  “And loud, and annoying, and centre of attention literally all the time,” Ginny finishes, waltzing into the conversation. She sits down next to Hermione, pinching a hash brown off Harry’s plate. “Y/N is the complete opposite of that. You’ll scare them away before you even get a chance to ask them out.”

   Fred frowns. George says something in his twins defence, but Fred has stopped listening, instead choosing to glance over to where you’re still sitting, smiling shyly at the Hufflepuff boy who has just taken a seat next to you. It’s clear - and always has been clear - that you get plenty of attention - you just don’t want it. Fred has watched you get shy and awkward, shuffling away from people who so much as grin in your direction. Fred has even watched you scurry away when he walks past, and at this point, he isn’t even surprised; the scenes Fred finds him in are far from the types of scenes you’ll want to be caught in.

   You really are very different people, and Fred isn’t stupid enough to deny that. Nonetheless, there’s something about you that has always caught his eye, from the day he was a puny little second year, watching you scramble up to the Sorting Hat. Even then he found himself staring at you, fingers crossed in the hopes you would get sorted into Gryffindor, that he could find an excuse to lead you to the Common Room himself - not Perfect Percy - but then you were being sorted into Hufflepuff and an awful long time went by in which Fred did nothing to pursue you.

   But now he’s in his sixth year. If not now, then when?

  “Have you ever tried speaking to them?”

   Ron’s voice snaps Fred from his daze. He looks down and shrugs.

  “Not really.”

  “That's not like you,” says Ginny. “Have we actually found someone who makes you shy?”

 Fred scowls. “I’m not shy. Y/N’s shy - I’m just respecting that and keeping my distance.”

  “Good on you, mate,” says George, before he ducks his head down and whispers loudly in Harry’s ear, “Every time he sees them, he wets himself a little.”

  Fred kicks his twin. “Would you lot give it a rest? I’ll talk to them today, alright? You’ll all see.”

  “Oh, don’t wind him up,” Hermione tuts, slapping Ron on the arm when the group of youngsters start laughing.

  “Oooh,” George says. “You’ve got Granger sticking up for you, Fred - who would have thought that would ever happen to us?”

   “I think it’s cute that Fred likes Y/N,” says Hermione, sitting up a little straighter. “I don’t know much about them, but I think someone bringing them out of their shell could do them a world of good.”

   Fred can’t help but grin; the thought of it, of you actually giving him a chance - it makes him unnervingly happy. “Cheers, Hermione.”

   Fred takes that tiny bit of assurance and carries it with him throughout the entire day - he doesn’t really know when he’s going to make his move, just that he is.

   At some point.

  He has no classes with you. He barely sees you in the hallways. He doesn’t share a common room with you - the situation is really not working in his favour, but Fred Weasley will not let such a drawback ruin his plans. He’ll find ways around it, just as he finds ways around everything.

   The solution finally comes to him at 11:00pm.

  He should be in bed. He knows he should be in bed, that if Filch were to see him right now, the old man would be going absolutely ballistic, overjoyed with the idea of giving another student a detention. Fred has the advantage of the Marauders Map, plus a lifetimes worth of sneaking around, but that doesn’t make him feel any less nervous.

  He’s been out of bed after curfew plenty of times before, but never has he crept into another common room whilst doing it.

   He heads towards the basement, checking the Marauders Map every few seconds to ensure Filch and his filthy cat are as far away as possible. His mind is working at a million miles per hour, because for the first time in his life, Fred is convinced he’s being stupid. The amount of protective charms that must be on the doors of these openings would be insane, and Fred is insane to think he could ever try and get past them, but god, he can’t go down to breakfast tomorrow without making some attempt to talk to you, just like he said he would, just like Hermione-

   “Eep!”

  Fred spins on his heel, nearly falling over a body of armour stood in the corner. Multiple paintings rouse from their sleep, and the ones that were already awake break into fits of giggles. Fred doesn’t even acknowledge the tiny noise that made him jump in the first place, instead choosing to desperately hush the paintings around him.

   “Shut up. Sh! Filch will hear and then we’re all in trouble!”

   “Speak for yourself, Weasley,” says Doogle Doolaly through a mouthful of giggles. Fred shoots the painting a glare before abruptly remembering what had caused him to stumble in the first place.

   He spins around. To his surprise, you’re still there.

  You, standing right in front of him with both hands clapped over your mouth, eyes wide. You’re wearing a pair of yellow bed robes, hair a mess. Fred has to take a minute to just stare.

   And then, “What on Earth are you doing out of bed?”

  Slowly you lower your hands, biting your lower lip as you stare right back at him; Fred, though pleased, finds this quite odd considering he’s so used to watching you avoid eye contact as much as possible. “I was walking.”

   Your voice is quiet, timid.

   Fred tilts his head. “Walking? At eleven at night?”

   “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Me neither.”

   You nod. Fred nods back. The two of you stand a good five feet apart, unsure of what to say or do to make the silence go away - of course, there’s so many things Fred wants to ask, considering he was previously convinced you would never step out of line, but none of those questions are appearing right now.

    Fred, however, knows this silence can’t last forever, so he’s the one to make the first move in breaking it.

   “You alright?”

  You look up, startled. “I’m fine. Why?”

 “I was just wondering. You look like you’ve seen someone use an illegal curse or something.”

   “Thanks.”

 Fred’s stomach flips. “Not that you don’t look really pretty, because you do, but I’m just saying-”

   “Why were you heading towards the Hufflepuff common room?”

  Fred pauses. Have you just caught him out?

  “How did you know that’s where I was going?”

 “Because nobody else comes down here this late at night unless they’re a Hufflepuff coming back from detention.”

  “You’re good at this, you know. Right little detective, you are.”

   You shrug.

  Fred sighs, rubs the back of his neck before saying, “I was just having an innocent little dander about. Those Gryffindor sixth years can be a rowdy bunch - it’s hard to get to sleep.”

   “Oh. Okay.” You trace your eyes along his towering form, and for a moment, Fred is almost convinced you’re genuinely checking him out. It boosts his confidence a little. “Well, I’m sorry you couldn’t sleep. I’m also sorry for making so much noise - you startled me.”

   “Yeah, well, I’m a pretty scary person I’ve been told.”

  Your lips twitch. “Who told you that?”

   He shrugs. “It’s not so much a verbal thing. Sometimes sweet little Hufflepuff’s run away when they make eye contact with me.” He raises a brow, smirks when he sees your own smile fade, replaced by a mild look of embarrassment because you both know exactly who Fred is talking about.

   You cough and awkwardly kick at the floor. “Sometimes sweet little Hufflepuff’s get a little shy.”

   Fred’s confidence is really flooding back into his system now, and he doesn’t know why it feels different. This isn’t the confidence he carries around with him on a day-to-day basis, the confidence that allows him to play these big pranks without a care in the world. This is a type of confidence he has never felt before, makes him feel elated, like he can do anything.

   He smirks, folding his arms across his chest. “I’m Fred Weasley, by the way.”

  “I know.” Your eyes pop open for a brief second. “I mean - uh - Ron. Ron is your brother, right?”

  “He is.”

 “I know your brother. He’s in my year. Goalkeeper for the Gryffindor Quidditch team, right?”

 “Right.”

 You nod, biting your lower lip in that way Fred has learned you do quite often when you’re flustered. “I heard of you - uh - from him. Yeah.”

  Fred nods. He stares at your flustered form, finding amusement in the way you quickly look to the floor, trying desperately to avoid his gaze which has apparently now become too much for you.

  He chuckles and pushes himself away from the wall he found himself leaning upon. “It was lovely talking to you, Hufflepuff. Try not to run away next time and maybe we can talk again.”

   You look up and nod, lips twitching. Fred grins right back, bows his head to you before he walks off down the corridor, pretty darn pleased with himself.

  ----

   “So how did it go?”

  “I don’t kiss and tell.”

  Ginny gasps, slapping Fred on the arm when her, Fred and George sit down to breakfast the next morning. “You kissed?”

   Fred snickers. “No. But we spoke, and it was great. Y/N L/N is actually a bit of a rule breaker.”

 Ginny raises a brow, reaching across George for a slice of toast. “Shut up.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” says George, at the same time Fred says, “I’m telling the truth.”

   “Wow. What were they doing to break the rules?”

 “Walking about after curfew. Lucky I was there, or else Filch would have had them.”

   Ginny scoffs. “Because god forbid anyone be as sneaky as you two.”

  “Exactly,” the twins reply.

   “So what was the conversation like?” Ginny prods. She wears a distracted gaze in the hopes that Fred won’t see just how curious she really is, but Fred sees right through her.

   “It wasn’t bad,” he replies. “A bit short, but that’s easily fixed.”

  “So you want to keep talking to them?”

  Fred raises a brow. “Of course I do.”

  Ginny hums around the slice of toast in her mouth. “Cute, Fred. Cute.”

  Fred opens his mouth to give a sarcastic retort, but gets abruptly distracted by the sight of you rising from the Hufflepuff table. He sits bolt upright, craning his neck to see over the heads of everybody else; you don’t spare him a glance, apparently retreating back to your usual, shy self. With your head ducked down and your books piled in your arms, you hastily make your way towards the exit.

    Fred is standing up before he can even process he’s moved. Ginny and George watch him, both smiling maniacally as Fred utters a half-hearted goodbye and follows after you. He really has no plans for what he could possibly say when he finally catches up, but he’s decided to take every opportunity he possibly can.

   He bustles out of the Great Hall, finding you only a few seconds after as you head back towards the Hufflepuff common room.

  “Y/N!”

  You freeze, spinning around as Fred jumps onto the step just below the one you’re currently standing on. He pants dramatically, clutching his chest.

   “You move quick.”

 You glance over his shoulder, hugging your books a little tighter. “Hi, Fred. How was breakfast?”

  “Oh, good. Great, actually. I - uh - had toast.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “Yeah.” He straightens up, rubbing the back of his neck; why is he suddenly nervous? “Where are you off to?”

  “I have to go grab some books for my first few classes,” you reply, and Fred can’t help but note the slight tinge of amusement in your voice. “Where are you off to?”

  Fred pauses; again, this was not something he necessarily thought through when he first decided to follow you out here. He really just wanted a chat, to hear your voice one more time before he was forced to go to classes.

   He folds his arms over his chest as nonchalantly as he can manage, leaning against the banister. “I don’t think it’s right for a lovely wizard like yourself to be walking to class on your own; I thought I’d offer my services.”

    You raise a brow, once again taking a cautious glance over Fred’s shoulder to ensure nobody is around to hear his flirtations; nonetheless, you make no attempt to stop him, which he takes as a relatively good sign. “Well, you can walk me to class if you like. I have to get my books first, though.”

 Fred gestures up the stairs. “Lead the way.”

  And so you do. Fred follows you all the way to the Hufflepuff common room, where he is forced to wait outside whilst you gather your belongings. His stomach grumbles, evidence of his uneaten breakfast, but he doesn’t even care right now. Not when you walk out of the common room, all smiles and nervous glances. Fred offers you his arm, and it’s with only the slightest bit of hesitation that you take it and allow Fred to lead you back through the school hallways.

   “What is it like in there?” he asks.

   “In where?”

  “The Hufflepuff common room. Surely you can hear all the house elves rattling about in the kitchens at night.”

   You shake your head. “The walls are soundproof; did you know Muggles have soundproof things as well?”

  Fred raises a brow. “You’re not obsessed with Muggle stuff, are you? My dad’s into all that stuff - I’ve heard enough of it for a lifetime.”

   You giggle, and Fred is fairly certain his hand starts trembling.

   “No, I’m not obsessed,” you say. “I do find some of it interesting, though. The similarities between our world and theirs.”

  “Are there many? Similarities, I mean.”

  You shrug. Looking to the side, Fred can see your face suddenly change; what once was an expression of nerves and uncertainty is now one of interest and intrigue as Fred asks you questions on a topic you are clearly very invested in. It makes his heart lift, and he has to bite his lower lip to stop the smile from spreading and making it too obvious.

   “A few I’ve picked up on,” you reply. “They still - like - wear clothes and stuff. Just different styles. And they live in houses, and go to school-”

  “School? Don’t insult Hogwarts like that. Muggle school and wizard school aren’t even comparable.”

   You furrow your brows, glancing up at Fred. “But they still learn.”

   “Not the important stuff. Not like we do.”

  “And what would you consider important?”

  Fred hums, gazing wistfully into the distance. You giggle again. Finally, he says “aha!” and clicks, whirling on you. “Right, tell me this - do Muggles learn Defense Against the Dark Arts?”

  You frown, grip tightening on his arm. “I don’t think so. They don’t have magic, so it would be a bit pointless, wouldn’t it?”

  “Ah, but it’s important. What are they gonna do if a Dementor comes knocking on their front door?”

  “There’s nothing they can do, even if they knew the basic stuff we know. They don’t have magic, Fred.”

  Fred grunts. “Must be a hard life having to do everything by hand.”

   “I agree.”

  Fred chuckles, glancing down at you. Your eyes meet his for a fraction of a second before you bite your bottom lip and avert your gaze.

   “Go on then,” Fred continues. “Tell me some more similarities. You’ve got me interested now.”

   “Really?”

  “Mm.”

  You tilt your head in thought. “Well. . . I suppose the way their government system works is quite similar to ours.”

   “Explain.”

  “They have people in power. A system of higher-up’s, if you will, who control everything.”

  “Is theirs as corrupt as ours?”

  “Oh, definitely. Sometimes I’d even argue they’re even more corrupt than ours.”

  Fred’s eyes pop open. “Blimey. How has the Muggle world not completely broken down?”

   You laugh. Full-on laugh, eyes squinting closed and head thrown back. Fred can’t even bring himself to laugh alongside you, suddenly too engrossed in your enjoyment to indulge in his own.

   You hiccough yourself back to reality before looking up and saying, “Surely your dad could teach you all this stuff if he’s so interested in Muggle affairs?”

   “He’s interested, but he’s also a bit oblivious. Doesn’t matter how many times Harry tells him what a telephone is, he still has no idea how it all works.” Fred shrugs. “Plus, I enjoy my lessons much more when you’re teaching them.”

   You stiffen, lower lip hiding - yet again - behind your teeth. You swallow thickly, and before Fred can do anything, you’re unwinding your arm from his and picking up your pace, calling a quick, “I’m gonna be late!” over your shoulder. Fred falters mid-way, staring after you with his mouth dropped open and confusion making his stomach churn.

   Someone crashes into his shoulder as you round the corner. “Nice one, mate.”

  “Shut up, George.”

   “It doesn’t look like it’s going too well.”

 “It’s - it’s going fine.” Fred curses under his breath - now you’ve got him stuttering? “They’re just a little shy. But I think they like me.”

    “Oh yes, the most obvious sign of attraction - running away.”

   ----

   Fred is beginning to get very tired of his classes.

  He’s only here for the sake of his mothers sanity; god only knows how Molly Weasley would react if he showed up at the Burrow six months early, claiming he was finished with school before he’d even managed to bag an acceptable amount of N.E.W.T’s.

   But he doesn’t want to be here any more. He’s getting tired of forcing himself to listen to things he only half cares about, getting tired of being told off for things that - honestly - the teachers should just be used to by now. It’s not like they haven’t seen it for the past six years.

   He grunts to himself as he and George walk out of History of Magic. Yet another boring lesson that seemed to drag on much longer than necessary; all Fred has to prove he was there at all is the doodle of a cat in the top hand corner of his notebook.

   “I need a sleep,” George says. “His bloody voice exhausts me.”

  Fred opens his mouth to respond, but his twin brother cuts him off by slapping a hand to his arm and pointing straight ahead.

  Startled, Fred looks up. Standing by the gargoyle just outside History of Magic is you, hugging your books whilst awkwardly looking back and forth, as if afraid one of the passing students is going to stop and harass you.

  George snickers. “Go on, mate. I think they’re looking for you.”

  Before Fred can object, get himself together, George shoves him forward hard enough to make him stumble. Your head snaps up at the sound of Fred saying “You git!” and Fred is quick to lean against the wall, look at you and say, coolly, “Y/N. What a pleasant surprise.”

   You stand up a little straighter, lips twitching. “Hi. How was class?”

  “Boring.” He smirks. “Much better now that you’re here, though.”

  The unmistakable sound of George snorting as he passes by floats between you. You smile, giving Fred’s brother a nod before you turn back to Fred and say, “Do you fancy taking a little walk before break ends?”

   Of all the things Fred expected to happen today, you asking him on a walk was certainly not one of them. It takes him a second to reply, and it’s only the realisation that you’re probably just as nervous as he is that he snaps out of it and nods.

   You wind your arm through his without him having to offer; his cheeks are burning.

  Together, you set off down the hall. It’s quiet for a little bit, Fred still trying to figure out what’s happening, and you inspecting each and every one of the sculptures you pass, as if too afraid to look over at Fred.

    Finally, however, you break the silence. “I’m sorry about earlier.”

   Fred’s stomach jolts. “What are you sorry for?”

  “For how I reacted. You were just being nice and I - uh - I don’t really know how to handle that kind of thing.”

  Fred perks an eyebrow, glancing down at you with genuine curiosity. “I find that very hard to believe.” Because he does. He finds it downright unbelievable that compliments are not something you have grown used to across the five years spent in Hogwarts.

   You shrug. “Well, believe it. I really appreciated what you said, but I just. . . I don’t know how to respond, or if you’re telling the truth-”

 “I was definitely telling the truth.”

   You bite your lip. “I shouldn’t have ran off like that. It must have made you feel awful.”

 Classic Hufflepuff behaviour - thinking more about other people’s feelings than their own.

  “You know,” Fred drawls, “if my flirting makes you uncomfortable, just tell me and I’ll stop.”

   “No!”

  Fred’s eyes snap down. You look back up at him, eyes wide before you realise the abruptness of your protestation and hastily avert your gaze to the floor.

  “No,” you say, softer now. “I - uh - I don't think you should stop. I quite like it, actually.”

  Fred smirks, keeping his eyes trained on you even as you fight desperately to look anywhere but him. “Do you fancy me, Y/N L/N?”

  “Oh, give me a break, Fred.”

   “I think you do.” He rubs his cheek against your own. “Just a little bit.”

  You jerk away, slapping his arm. “Well, it’s not bloody difficult, is it?”

  Fred falters, though his smile only widens. “What does that mean?”

  You groan, pulling your arm from his yet again. Fred stumbles back, unable to help the laugh that bursts from his throat at the sight of your flustered state.

   “I’m going to class,” you announce.

  “You didn’t answer my question!”

   “I don’t have an answer to your question.” You stand there a little longer. With a smile still beaming, Fred watches as you take a single step forward, a step back, another step forward-

  And then, as if telling yourself to just get it over with, you jump forward and press your lips to Fred’s cheek. His jaw drops open, but he doesn’t get the chance to say anything before you’re spinning on your heel and rushing away, rounding the corner without so much as a wave in his direction.

   Fred swallows thickly, reaching up to brush his fingers against the area you have just kissed, just like they do in those cheesy Muggle movies his mum is so fond of. He can’t believe the feeling that comes with it - his heart is going to explode.

    Oh, no…

   ----

   The Hufflepuff table is boring compared to the Gryffindor table. That’s the first thing Fred notices.

  Maybe it’s because his friends aren’t with him. Maybe it’s because George flat-out refused to accompany him. Maybe it’s because Fred is nervous, and he’s angry about it, because since when has Fred Weasley ever been nervous about anything?

   This morning, however, he is pushed on by the memory of your lips against his cheek. That is his only source of motivation, the only reason he doesn’t flick Ernie MacMillan on the back of the head when the Hufflepuff boy turns and scowls at the Gryffindor student currently making his way towards you, sat at the very end.

  You have yet to look up from your textbook. Fred takes great pleasure in wrapping his arms around your shoulders, your body jumping back against his in your shock. He leans down and chuckles in your ear, moving his head so you can see his clearly amused features.

   Immediately your eyes widen. “Fred! What are you doing here?”

 “I thought I’d come have breakfast with you.” He waves his wand; a sausage springs up from Ernie’s plate, which he catches before biting into. “Like a date.”

    You bite your lip. “Do you want to sit down?”

 “Uh, Y/N?” Ernie calls over as Fred takes the empty seat next to you; he doesn’t miss the way you barely look up when you hum in response to Ernie’s - quite frankly - rude call of your name. “You know the houses have to eat together. He’s breaking the rules.”

   You shyly look up. “Oh, Ernie, let him sit down…”

 “Yeah Ernie,” Fred jeers. “Let me sit down, you nosy little git.”

   You choke on the pumpkin juice you just lifted to your mouth, spinning in your seat to hide the amused smile growing uncontrollably upon your face. Fred grins, placing his hands on your shoulders.

  “Did you like that?”

 “You’re impossible,” you hiss, slapping his arm. “Just ignore him. He’s got a grudge against anyone who plays for Gryffindor.”

 “Yeah, I know.” Fred narrows his eyes, craning his neck a little to see over your shoulder, where Ernie sits with a scowl on his face. “He better not give you a hard time for hanging out with me, you know. You’d tell me if he was?”

    You shift so you’re covering Ernie’s face and are now the centre of Fred’s attention. “Of course I would. Plus, Ernie doesn’t scare me.”

   “I’ll certainly scare him if he so much as-”

 “Fred,” you laugh, nudging his knee beneath the table. His eyes drift back to you, his body immediately relaxing at the sight of your glowing smile. “Calm down, okay? He’s got nothing against me - it’s you and the Gryffindor team he’s got a problem with.”

   “Is that supposed to make me hate him any less?”

  You shrug, plucking Fred’s hands from your shoulders and placing a hash brown between his fingertips. “He’s got a point, you know. You are breaking the rules by sitting here.”

   Fred raises a brow. “Right, I’ll leave if you-”

  “No!” You latch onto his arm, pulling him back to the bench as Fred bursts into yet another round of raucous laughter at how easily flustered you become. “No, you should stay. Dumbledore isn’t even looking.”

   “If I was any less wise, L/N, I’d think you want me to have breakfast with you.”

   “I just don’t get to see that much of you,” you mumble.

  Fred coos; he’s trying so hard to keep up the fun-guy persona, putting on a mask of confidence despite the speed at which his heart is hammering in his chest at the moment. You make it so easy for him to feel this way, too easy, because sure, Fred has had crushes on people before, but never has he put himself out like this. Never has he wanted to make someone laugh so much. Never has he been so proud of being the reason for someone else’s smile.

    Fred leans forward, lowering his voice. “That’s very cute.”

  “Yeah, well…”

   He chuckles, flicking your heated cheek before he takes a bite from the slice of toast you’re holding. You jolt upright immediately, swatting him away with a glare. “Hey!”

   He licks the butter noisily from his fingers. “Yummy.”

  You roll your eyes. “Get your own breakfast.”

  “But yours is so much tastier.”

   You grab another slice of toast from your plate and push it against Fred’s lips. He opens his mouth, takes a bite and hums appreciatively.    

   And then the world stops.

   It really is like those scenes in those cheesy movies his mum watches all the time, where the room seems to go still and it’s like nobody else exists. Your fingers hover inches away from his face, your eyes cast to his lips where the slice of toast has just disappeared. Fred swallows, his own eyes drawn to your lips, slightly parted, so soft looking-

    “Weasley! What do you think you’re doing sitting at the Hufflepuff table! Get back to where you belong right this instant!”

   McGonagall grabs a fistful of his robes, pulling him up from the bench. Fred gasps, stumbling up with his eyes still locked on you. You hastily look back down at the table, pushing hair out of your eyes, trying to avoid being told off by the Deputy Head.

   “Awk, lay off, Professor!” Fred exclaims. “I was having fun!”

  “You were breaking the rules, Mr Weasley. You can integrate with your pals whenever breakfast has finished, but until then-”

   “Yeah, yeah,” Fred grumbles, giving you one last glance. It’s to his utter relief that he sees you looking back at him, a tiny smile on your face. Fred winks before McGonagall shoves him forward, back into his seat at the Gryffindor table.

   ----

   When Fred receives your note, he is sat in the Gryffindor common room with George.

  Homework litters the table in front of them, unfinished and not understood by either of them. Hermione had long since gone to bed, insisting she wasn’t going to help people who didn’t want to help themselves. And so, the twins sat up until the late hours of the night, staring at their homework with a sense of frustration building between them.

   Fred feels certain he’s going to snap at any given moment; this whole school thing really isn’t working out for him nor George, and the two of them have such prestigious dreams that sitting in a classroom all day just feels like a waste of time. Maybe that’s why he can’t bring himself to properly concentrate on his lessons. Maybe that’s why neither he nor George care as much about grades as all his other siblings.

   “Right, so clearly Flitwick was on something when he wrote this,” says George, scowling at his charms homework. “He didn’t even mention flying charms last lesson, so why has he-”

   The fireplace suddenly erupts.

  Both Fred and George jump at the sudden interruption, swivelling round in their chairs to catch a glimpse of what has happened; they both know full well the kinds of things these fireplaces can permit, and neither of them want to deal with anything too dangerous at this time of night.

    In the fire, however, is not the face of a Death Eater, or anything close to such - instead, a single piece of paper sits in the ashes, Fred’s name printed in bold across the top.

   The twins frown at each other. George makes a suggestive gesture, all but shoving Fred closer for inspection.

  Fred stumbles, sends George a glare before he bends down and picks the piece of paper up. Immediately the handwriting is recognisable by the lazy flick of the letters, how effortlessly neat it looks. It would take Fred hours to write a note that looks like this, and yet he’s watched you scribbling notes down; this is undoubtedly your doing.

   Suddenly he’s smiling.

  “Oh, here we go,” George groans, noticing his twins expression. “You’re sending love notes to each other now?”

   “Shut up.” Fred sinks down into one of the armchairs, reading your note thoroughly. “Y/N wants to meet up.”

  “Right now?”

   “Mhm.”

  George raises a brow. “Have you two even kissed yet?”

 Fred’s eyes snap up, cheeks heating before he can stop them. He never ever gets flustered around George, but the mention of such a thing has his stomach flipping. “Why do you care?”

   George raises his hands in mock surrender. “Never said I did, mate, but the smile on your face right now would suggest at least a peck on the cheek or something.”

   Fred scowls. “No, we haven’t kissed. We’re not even properly together, so drop it.”

   “How does that make sense? You both fancy each other-”

   “Yeah, but it’s nothing official.” Fred lazily flicks his hand, clicking his fingers so the note folds itself into a perfect square and zips into his robe pocket. “You wouldn’t understand these things, Georgie Boy. You’ve got to take it slow.”

   Goerge scoffs, throwing a pencil at Fred. “Very bloody slow apparently. But I forgot, it’s a Hufflepuff you’ve got your eye on. They tend to be a bit hard-to-get, don’t they?”

   Fred opens his mouth to protest, to stick up for you, but he can’t even deny the truth in George’s words; a fair amount of time has passed since the two of you first started talking, and all you’ve done is say you enjoy his company. There’s been no kissing, no hand-holding, nothing even close to being considered romantic.

   Fred is okay with this, of course. He’s in that very weird head space where even just being in your presence is enough to satisfy him; he catches glimpses of you as you parade from one class to another, and that is enough until he sees you again at lunch, or dinner, or during breaks.

   He sighs, pushing himself up from the armchair. “Don’t wanna leave them waiting, do I?”

  George scowls. “What about our homework?”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  “I’m not covering for you if Flitwick asks what you were up to that’s more important than his homework assignments.”

 Fred grins, not even giving a response as he clambers out of the common room and ducks into the hallways.

  He knows exactly where to go, even though he’s never met up with you after hours before - not since the first time, which he doesn’t even count considering it was entirely an accident. To this day, he still isn’t convinced that wasn’t some type of dream - a Hufflepuff, out of bed after hours? Not a single soul would believe him if he told them.

   Fred makes his way down the corridor and grins when he sees you standing there; you’re much braver than him. Fred, personally, feels much safer when he’s wading through the halls - it makes it more difficult for Filch to catch him if he’s not stationary. You, however, seem to have no issue with standing behind a suit of armour, waiting patiently for Fred to round the corner.

   “Hola. Bonjour. Hello. Hi.”

   You look round, face immediately lighting up. “Fred! Hi!”

  He’ll never get used to that greeting.

   “Y/N! Hi!” he mimics. “I got your note.”

  “Good. Great. I was worried I did it wrong.”

   “You? Do something wrong?” Fred screws his face up in an expression of mock confusion, which prompts you to roll your eyes and nudge him. He grins, stuffs his hands in his pockets and says, “Out after curfew again, eh? Have I finally corrupted you?”

   “You must have,” you reply.

   Fred tilts his head. “What’s the actual reason you invited me out?”

   And that’s when your expression shifts.

   You bite your lower lip in that way you always do, eyes darting to the ground awkwardly. Fred raises a brow, leaning forward a bit in his attempt to get you to look at him again, but you suddenly seem much too embarrassed to even be giving Fred the time of day. His stomach flips with uncharacteristic anxiety, and he can’t stop himself when he steps forward and places a gentle hand on your elbow.

   “Hey. Did something happen?”

  The words burst out of you in one breath. “I left my book in the bathing room and I’m too scared to get it myself but I really need it to help me sleep, so I was wondering if you could help me get through the hallways without Filch knowing and then I promise you can go back to bed and never speak to me again.”

   You take a sharp breath before looking away again, apparently too embarrassed by your request to even look at him.

   Fred takes a moment to reply. He has to untangle your words first, and then he has to bask in his amusement at how embarrassed you were by asking it; personally, he doesn’t see the problem. He’s happy to help. In fact, he’d be pretty annoyed if it wasn’t him you were asking.

   “Alright.”

  Your eyes snap up. “Really? I mean, you don’t have to, I just thought - well, you know your way around, and you’ve dealt with Filch-”

  “You don’t need to explain.” He offers his arm, just as he always does. “What book is it?”

 And it’s with only the tiniest bit of hesitance that you take his offered arm and allow him to guide you through the corridors he apparently knows so well; in truth, he doesn’t tend to go out after curfew all that often, because he gets all of his mischief done in the day time now. But you were indeed correct in saying he knows this place better than anyone else. He and George spent the majority of their school careers finding secret passageways and little hiding spots they could use at any given time. As he listens to you talk about the book he’s about to try and save, he recalls each and every one of these hiding places whilst keeping a sharp ear out for Filch.

   The two of you arrive at the bathing rooms and Fred pushes open the door. It squeaks, and you wince, glancing at Fred anxiously; he merely places a hand on the small of your back, pushing you further into the room.

   He follows, closes the door and exhales heavily. “Made it. Now where’s that book you’ve lost?”

   You skitter around the edge of the massive bathing pool; it’s still filled to the brim with forever hot water, always clean despite the amount of people washing themselves within it on a daily basis. Fred stands on the edge, hands stuffed in his pockets as he watches you rush to the far side of the room, rummage around in a basket of towels before pulling a particularly thick book out from beneath them.

   You look over, smiling broadly with the book pressed against your chest.

  Fred raises a brow. “Happy now?”

 “Overjoyed.”

 You skip back over to him, pulling open the front cover to look inside. Fred leans forward, reading the confusing inside blurb over your shoulder.

   “And you use this for a bit of light reading in the bath?” he asks.

  Startled, you slam the book closed. “It’s good, honestly.”

  “I’ll take your-”

   Fred’s sentence is cut off by the sound of Filch yelling.

  And it’s unmistakably Filch yelling, because Fred has heard it many, many times before. It always comes with that initial rush of panic, the realisation he’s been caught, and if he was with anybody else, that initial panic wouldn’t have even lasted. Now, however, he takes one look at your slack face, the horror swimming in your eyes, and he realises this is the first time you’ll have ever gotten in trouble with the caretaker.

   A traumatic experience for anyone.

  “Oh, god,” you whisper, dropping the book with a SLAM. You jump, scrambling to pick it up, but the noise only seems to draw Filch closer to the door. Fred has to think now.

   He groans low under his breath, fumbling beneath his robes for his wand - a wand that has been left on the table back in the Gryffindor common room.

  You jolt back up straight, hugging the book to your chest, and that’s when Fred does the one thing he can think to do right now - he grabs your arms and pushes you back, jumping into the deep end of the bath with you alongside him.

    He holds you close, opening his eyes as much as he possibly can. He can hear Filch’s yelling from above, aggravated screams of “I know you’re in here! I know you’re in here! I heard you!” Fred simply pulls you closer, urging you to hold your breath for as long as possible.

   But he can see you panicking, the air leaving you. He can see your lips threatening to split open so you can scream or cry or breathe, Fred doesn’t know, but he can’t let you do it. Not right now.

   Without magic, there’s only one thing he can think to do.

  He presses his lips to your own and pries your mouth open. He doesn’t know how this works. He read about it once in a Muggle Studies book, but he never thought he would ever actually need to pay attention to the details. He takes your relaxing body as a good sign, tightening his hold on your shoulders as he continues to breathe as much air into your mouth as he can possibly muster.

    And then the door is slamming, and Filch’s screams are muted behind the gold plating, and Fred immediately lets go of you and bursts to the surface.

   You follow, gasping for air, wiping water out of your eyes along with fat strands of wet hair. Fred pants, wiping his eyes roughly, trying so hard to find words for an apology but unable to gather enough breath to even think proper thoughts at the moment.

   His heartbeat soars. He looks over at you; you’re already looking at him, and the entire room is silent besides your synchronised panting breaths.

   You shove past the water, into his arms, and kiss him.

   Fred’s eyes pop open wide, but his arms wind around your waist almost instinctively. His lips mould against yours, and once the initial shock has passed, his eyes are slipping closed and he’s falling, falling, drowning, never wanting to resurface ever again.

   You pull away first. Water drips from your bottom lip, your eyelashes, your chin, and Fred has never seen a sight so beautiful. He reaches forward, swiping his thumb along your lower lip before he leans forward and gives you a final peck.

    “Always full of surprises, you are,” he whispers.

  ----

   Fred watches you. Leaning against the door frame with his arms folded across his chest, he watches as you run the towel down your face, grumbling beneath your breath about how impossible it will be to explain your soaked robes to Professor Sprout.

   Fred hasn’t even stopped to properly think about how the two of you are meant to get back to your respective common rooms without someone noticing; you’ll surely leave a trail of water in your wake, and Filch is already on high alert. Despite this, Fred can only focus on the kiss the two of you have just shared, and what it means for the future.

    You sigh, slamming the towel down and turning. There’s an adorable pout on your face, eyebrows furrowed, hair still soaked and clinging to your skin.

   “That really was a shock,” you say.

  Fred chuckles. “Just the bit where we took a swim?”

   “And the bit where you saved me from drowning.”

  “And the bit when we resurfaced and you-”  

   You groan, waving your hands in front of you as if swatting a fly. “Awk, don’t. I never do anything like that. I probably did it all wrong-”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Kissing is just something I never got the hang of. I’ve only done it a few times, because I don’t really tend to like people that way, but-”

  “But I’m a special case?”

  You scowl, deflating. “You know you are.”

  Fred grins that cheeky grin of his, pushing away from the door. He wades towards you and stops only when he’s close enough that you have to crane your neck to look into his eyes. “I think you got the hang of kissing perfectly fine. You’re a bloody natural.”

   You blink. “Yeah?”

  “Yes.” With that, Fred leans down and presses his lips to your own. It’s only slow, slow enough that Fred can feel you melt into him, your rib cage suddenly coming against his own, your fingertips brushing delicately against his waist. It’s adorable, feeling you lose yourself like this, barely registering what is actually happening.

   He pulls away just as slow, so you can feel everything when he does so. Your eyes stay closed for a second before opening, lower lip retreating between your teeth, face hot when Fred brings his hands up to your jaw.

   “Does - Okay, well, stupid question, but does this make us a couple?” you ask.

  Fred laughs. “If you want, yeah.”

  “Do you -”

  “Oh, Y/N, don’t even ask that; you know full well I want to be your boyfriend. Full. Well.”

   A grin splits your face. “Okay.”

  “Yeah?”

  You nod, wrapping your arms around his middle and placing your chin in the centre of his chest. “Yeah.”

#harry potter #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter fanfic #harry potter fic #fred weasley #harry potter x reader #fred weasley fanfiction #fred weasley fanfic #fred weasley fic #fred weasley x reader #weasley twins #weasley twins fanfiction #weasley twins fanfic #weasley twins x reader #weasley twins fic

[simplyclockwork]

I am a huge fan of your writing. I would love a post season 4 fic where we see John and Rosie move back to 221b. Sherlock has an accident and breaks an arm and a leg. As he is wondering how he will take care of himself John turns up to collect him from hospital like its the most natural thing in World that he will take care of Sherlock. The focus is John wanting a chance to redeem himself. Happy Johnlock ending please. I’m over 18. Smut optional!

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Hi, anon! Thanks for your patience with me filling the prompt. Hopefully, you like what I’ve written :) Please feel free to send a prompt anytime!

You can also read your prompt on Ao3 here. The rest of the fill is below the page break.

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It’s only been a couple of weeks since John moved back to Baker Street, with his few belongings and infant-daughter in tow. Sherlock is still adjusting, and so is John, while Rosie bounces about the place like a tennis ball. She provides a perfect distraction, a much-needed buffer between John and Sherlock, who are still trying to find their way back to something considered normalcy.

Whatever their new normalcy is, Sherlock doesn’t know. He just hopes they find it soon because the unresolved tension hovering over 221B is starting to drive him mad.

Things are different. Better than they were before when John… well, that was before, and this is now. Sherlock tries not to dwell on their brief tilt into insanity. Mary, the aquarium, Culverton Smith, Eurus and Sherrinford. Each has taken a toll on Sherlock in one way or another. Things are different. John works at the clinic more often than he joins Sherlock on cases. He has a daughter to provide for, and his evening spent in a well with chains around his ankles has made him somewhat skittish.

Sherlock can’t blame him, not when he feels a little skittish himself—but he’s the world’s only consulting detective. It’s him, or it’s no one, and he’s got a bit of life left in him yet. Casework feels strange without John at his side, but John hasn’t been there in any consistent capacity since Sherlock returned from the dead, so he adjusts.

Sherlock’s had more madness than most, more than enough for several lifetimes. These days, Sherlock tires more easily. Moves a little slower, reacts a little later. Retirement is a word he starts to hear more often, echoing in his Mind Palace and staring back at him from the bathroom mirror when he pokes at the new wrinkles in his face and as he tugs at the silvered hairs appearing at his temples with increasing frequency.

It is pure irony that on the day Sherlock decides to slow down on the more challenging cases, to focus on fours and sixes and the life he hopes to build with John and Rosie, he has an accident.

The case is a straightforward kidnapping that Sherlock solves in minutes. The kidnapee, a young woman in her 30s, named Alice Forbes, is taken from her London flat by an ex-boyfriend. Sherlock leads Lestrade and his team to an old building with a decommissioned lift. Narrow and festooned with disturbed cobwebs, the shaft is dark and accessible with a rusted but sturdy-looking ladder.

In hindsight, Sherlock should have known it was too easy. Should have waited, should have let Lestrade’s men go before him. But, true to his impatient nature, he is the first to rush down the ladder.

And he’s the first to fall when one of the rungs, eaten through by rust and time, gives way beneath his hand, sending him to the bottom of the lift shaft. The fall isn’t far enough to kill him, but it is far enough to break bone, and Sherlock winces at the double crack he hears before agony and fire spill through his left arm and right leg. A cross-body break, of all things, arm trapped beneath him and leg striking a cable at the wrong angle.

“Sherlock?” Lestrade’s voice reaches him from above, invisible in the dark, and Sherlock clenches his teeth to resist the urge to scream.

Definitely multiple breaks, he can tell. Nothing hurts like a break, and right now, Sherlock is ablaze.

“Don’t climb down,” he manages to reply, voice wavering and strained with pain. “One of the rungs broke. Could be others.”

“Fuck,” comes the reply from above. “Are you okay?”

Sherlock squints in the dark, wetting his dry lips with his tongue as he takes stock of his body. At least the two breaks, possibly a mild concussion, and sweat rising on his brow. Shock. “No,” he finally says, swallowing around the taste of bile. “I need an ambulance.

Lestrade spits another short curse. “With how much you hate going to the A&E, I take it that it’s bad?”

“Rather bad,” Sherlock replies, trying for humour and just sounding weak and ragged. “I believe I’m going into shock.”

Instead of answering, Lestrade starts barking orders. Setting his temple carefully against something cold and metal, Sherlock blinks in the dark and takes in his surroundings. A shape shivers and sags against the wall of the lift shaft not far from where he lies. Given Alice’s lack of response to the shouting, he’s not confident she is anything like okay. Only the constant shivering tells him she’s still alive, and he clears his throat before shouting, “Make that two ambulances.” Swallowing, Sherlock sucks in a breath at a ripple of agony from his leg and adds, “I found Alice. Alive, but not conscious.”

“Got it,” Lestrade calls back. A light shines down, and Sherlock squints. He can’t make out Lestrade’s face, and likely the DI can’t see him either, but the beam from the torch is a point of light in the dark, and Sherlock fixates on it. “We’re gonna get you out, alright?”

“That would be preferred,” Sherlock replies, trying for venom and only sounding tired.

A rope snaps down next to his head. Tossed from above, it hangs in the air with a silent expectancy. Staring at it, Sherlock hopes Lestrade doesn’t expect him to climb up the offering. When it begins to shake and wiggle, he knows someone must be climbing down. A small, shaky sigh escaping his lips, Sherlock tilts his head back and closes his eyes. “It’ll be okay,” he murmurs, though whether the comfort is for his benefit or Alice’s, he doesn’t know.

As his mind begins to darken and drift, he feels a pang of guilt for not letting John know where he’d be today. Sherlock has time for one last passing thought of how he’ll manage with two broken limbs, whether or not John will even bother to visit him at the hospital, and if this little stunt will shatter the tenuous connection between them before everything fades away.

***

The faint drone of voices draws Sherlock out of his head, and he opens his eyes to bright lights and white coats. He blinks, squints and blinks again, waiting for his vision to clear. When it finally does, he finds a young woman standing over him with a small smile.

“Hello, Mister Holmes,” she greets, and Sherlock blinks once more before she introduces herself. “I’m Doctor Seif.”

“Hello,” he replies, his voice rough. Clearing his throat, he tries again. “Concussion?”

Doctor Seif nods in sympathy. “Mild, but enough to knock you out. You came in and out of it until we set your leg, then we lost you for a bit from the pain.” She pats his shoulder with a gentle hand. “Your left humerus is broken, but not severe enough for a cast. So we’ve done a splint, but your leg will need a cast.” Moving to set his chart down, she pauses and turns back, adding, “We called your brother—he was listed as your emergency contact. We spoke to his aide, and she said he would be here once he finishes with a meeting.”

Sherlock waves a hand, dismissing both her words and the faint pang he feels at the reminder that John is no longer his emergency contact. “He’ll turn up. Always does, just like a bad penny.” Doctor Seif laughs.

“I have two older sisters. I know just how you feel.” Tapping his chart, she tilts her head. “Now, let’s get you fixed up and out of here, shall we?”

Sherlock’s smile is small and strained, but an attempt nonetheless. “Certainly.”

***

The cast is bulky, and his arm aches in the splint, his pain barely impacted by the basic painkillers. But Sherlock refused anything stronger, and he grits his teeth hard against the discomfort as a nurse helps him into the protocol-dictated wheelchair. Doctor Seif stands next to him with a script in her hand for prescription refills. She hands both the slip of paper and a crutch to Sherlock once he’s seated.

“Let me know if anything changes or you experience worsening pain or signs of infection,” she says, waiting for Sherlock’s tired nod. “Otherwise, I’ll see you in a few weeks to evaluate the arm. Good evening, Mister Holmes.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock says in a quiet voice. He is exhausted, his body heavy with fatigue and faded adrenaline. He tilts his head toward the nurse, who begins wheeling him out of the room and down the hall.

They make it only a few feet before footsteps sound behind them, and a panting voice calls out, “Sherlock!”

The man pushing his chair pauses, and Sherlock turns his head to see John trotting down the hall toward them. Bemused, Sherlock glances at the nurse, who shrugs. He turns his attention back to John, who pulls up in front of them with a sigh.

“Sorry,” he gasps, straightening with his hands on his hips as he pulls in a loud inhale. “Took me a bit to get Rosie to her babysitter’s, then there was traffic, and…” John shakes his head. “But nevermind that, I’m here now.”

Sherlock stares up at him. “You’re… here?” he repeats, confused. John’s brow furrows, first with confusion, then with understanding.

“Of course I’m here. Greg called me, then Mycroft.” His frown deepens. “Was surprised to hear he’s your emergency contact.”

Sherlock’s eyes dart away, and he doesn’t reply.

“Sorry to interrupt,” the nurse cuts in, his voice reluctant, “but I need the chair, so if I can wheel you outside…”

“Yeah, of course,” John says, picking up where the words trail off. “I can take it from there.”

The three of them continue down the hall, the nurse pushing Sherlock in the chair with John at his side. They walk in silence, with Sherlock darting quick, bemused looks at John from the corner of his eye. John either doesn’t notice or pretends not to, and Sherlock is grateful for whichever it is.

Once outside, the nurse stops, and Sherlock starts wrestling with the crutch, the chair, his own body until John quietly murmurs, “Can I help?”

Sherlock pauses and glances up at him before nodding once, a stiff jerk of his head. Something like relief and gratitude passes over John’s face, there and gone too quickly to verify. Before Sherlock can take the opportunity to study him, John moves around to his side, the one without a splinted arm, and loops his hand gently around Sherlock’s torso. John helps him onto his uncasted foot, slips the crutch in place, and keeps close as Sherlock tests out a little hop forward. He is clumsy and awkward but mobile and shuffles along slowly. John stays close, helping where he can, one hand resting light and ready on the small of Sherlock’s back.

When Sherlock finally raises his head, coaxed forward by John’s quiet voice, he sees a silver car and freezes. John almost bumps into him and stops just in time, steadying Sherlock.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, tilting his head to look at Sherlock’s face.

Brow furrowed, Sherlock blinks at the car. “You bought a car?”

“Yeah, last week,” John says, relief in his expression. “Easier with Rosie, you know? And paying less rent, well, I thought…” he shrugs, letting the words trail off.

Wordlessly, Sherlock nods and lets John lead him off the curb and toward the car. John opens the door and coaxes Sherlock to drape his uninjured arm around his neck, helping him scoot down into the passenger seat.

Once John is next to him, sitting behind the wheel and waiting for Sherlock to finish getting settled, he doesn’t seem to know where to look. When he, at last, opens his mouth to speak, he and Sherlock talk over one another.

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

“You didn’t have to come all the way here.”

They both go silent and still, staring at one another. Blowing a loud exhale out through pursed lips, John breaks the standoff first.

“First off, I’m glad you’re relatively okay, considering.” Sherlock braces himself for the angry words, the dressing-down. But John just looks at him with a small, tentative smile, and Sherlock stares as John quietly says, “And of course I came.” He clears his throat, eyes darting to the windshield before they return to Sherlock’s questioning face. “I know things have been… well. I know it’s not like it was before, but I… I want to try.” Swallowing hard enough to make his throat bob, John looks at Sherlock with a mixture of hope and uncertainty in his eyes. “I know I have no right to ask for it, but I want a chance to show you things are different.” Hands clenching slowly inward then outward in his lap, John’s voice drops. “I want to show you that I’ve changed.”

“John…” Sherlock starts, only to find he doesn’t have any more words. John seems to understand, a slight smile tugging at the edge of his mouth.

“I want to redeem myself, Sherlock,” he says and holds up a hand to silence the protests he can no doubt see rising on Sherlock’s lips. “Don’t tell me there’s nothing to make up for because we both know that’s not true.” The small smile fades, and he reaches out to slip his fingers over Sherlock’s where Sherlock’s hand rests on the centre console. It’s unexpected and entirely welcome, and Sherlock blinks down at their hands before looking up at John. “I’m here because we’re a team.” His eyebrows twitch upward, and he adds, “Just the two of us, right? Against the world?” His smile is small and hopeful, and Sherlock feels a rush of warmth at the sight and the words.

“Of course, John,” he replies, nodding. “Just the two of us. And Rosie.”

This time, John’s smile is firm and confident, his laugh pleased and just a little surprised. His fingers curl between Sherlock’s knuckles with gentle but firm pressure. “Just the two of us and Rosie,” he agrees. His eyes glitter, and Sherlock’s lips twitch upward in quiet acceptance.

When John starts the car and guides them out of the parking lot, their fingers stay slotted together on the centre console.

#johnlock #ficlet #prompt #simplyclockwork #Anonymous

[carnelianns]

Hallo! Can we request some Ikesen headcanons or reaction (whichever you prefer really) when MC died because she save them. If you can't do them all, can I get them with Nobunaga, Mitsuhide, Kenshin, Ieyasu and Masamune? Thank youuu! 😘

anon u sound so happy requesting something as sad as this i cried sm

Nobunaga Oda

Your life is precious to him — priceless. The Devil King himself said that nothing, not even his own, can take its place.

And yet here he is, alone, cold, and without you.

You were the only one who truly loved him, who supported him and who cared for him. Now that you’re gone he just.. breaks.

He’s the same Nobunaga, the same Devil King, the same ruler. But he’s not a man, not a human. You had taken the last place in his heart, and without one — without a heart, one is reduced to nothing.

And it’s his fault. Because time and time again has he said that he’d sacrifice himself for you, that he’ll do anything for you. And he’s failed pathetically.

He loved — loves you with his whole heart. Hell, he sees you in every goddamned thing. The stars remind him of how your eyes shined whenever you asked him a question, the pillows on his futon give him the illusion of you and your warmth, even the goddamned konpeito reminds him of you.

He can’t sleep at night. He never does anymore, really. The stars serve a better company than the emptiness of his futon. They remind him of you.

“Perhaps the gods deemed me unworthy of your love, Fireball.” He says into the night, chuckling out emptiness. “After all, I was the one who caused your death, no?”

It’s quiet, of course. He wasn’t expecting anything. Not even the lone tear that falls from his eye.

“I apologise, my heart. But even if I have to wait for five hundred years, or even for my next lifetime, or for the ones after that—” 

His voice cracks, though he is the only one to hear the painful sound. “I will do so. And not even the heavens will stop me.”

Masamune Date

Masamune had promised you time and time again that he’d protect you, that he’d love you, that he’d make you as happy as you make him.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. He failed, and he beats himself up for it every single day. 

What if he was just a second earlier, what if he moved faster, what if he trained harder… 

Countless of these thoughts filled his head every day. Not once have they stopped. 

He lives in regret, in pitiful what ifs, in memories he knows he’ll never get back. 

And so, he does his best to not regret, to not listen to those what ifs.

 Masamune Date turns into a reckless beast, not once stopping, not once thinking about the consequences of any and every action he makes. 

He kills the gang responsible for your death. He trains his own self to near exhaustion, to the point wherein he’s found passed out wherever on multiple occasions. He screams, hoping you’d come back, knowing full well that you never will. 

“Masamune, stop! You’re going to get nowhere like this, and you damn well know she wouldn’t want this either!” Hideyoshi yells one day, after striking the man down with one, hard punch. 

“You know what she wanted, Hideyoshi? She wanted to love me. Me. And look what it did to her.”

Sinking down against the wall, he grips his hair, longing for her touch, for her smile, for her. Tears flow down his face, caressing him just as he wishes you did.

“It killed her. I killed her. And I would do anything if it means seeing her again.”

Ieyasu Tokugawa

To live is to love, and Ieyasu only learned how to do both when he met you. 

And now that you’re gone, now that the only person he loves is gone, living isn’t an option for him. He’s simply.. enduring. 

Enduring life without you, without your smile, without the forever you promised him.

Now that you’re gone, he can’t go on anymore. Gone are his snarky comebacks, his sarcastic retorts. Gone is he, deep into the abyss he himself made. 

He cries at night. Or in the morning. Whenever he sees something that reminds him of you, really. 

Of course, he tries to stop the tears. To no avail, however. All his frustration, his regret, his sadness falls. Whether from one, lone tear or from a full-on breakdown.

He lives, yes. Enduring, and holding onto the little wisps of you around him. 

“Ieyasu, you need rest. You’re broken, man. Eat up.” Masamune pushes a bowl of otherwise delicious food towards the man. 

“I don’t need rest.” His voice is soft, barely audible, as he stares blankly at the bowl in front of him, at the meal he knows you’d be forcing him to eat right now.

“I need her. And it is so, utterly devastating to need something so far out of your reach.”

Mitsuhide Akechi

He does not admit that he has nightmares in the very rare moments he allows himself to succumb to sleep. 

He does not admit that each and every day of his life, all he can do is regret and regret and regret. 

He does not admit that losing her caused him to lose himself. That losing the one he loves, the one that allowed him happiness, caused him the last of the humanity he had. 

Mitsuhide acts as if it doesn’t. As if he’s fine. As if he can still continue living. 

And it works. The pitying glances stopped after a few weeks, the worried check ups after a month. Hell, everyone treats him as if he’s human now, and not some messed up, traitorous snake. Something only you did.

They had all fallen for the mask he hand-crafted himself. The mask of a liar. Like he always was.

All of them had fallen, except for one. He doesn’t lie when he says a call from his lord surprises him. 

“And what may I do for you, my Lord?” He asks, a smirk on his face at the eyes of the man he knows he’ll never get past. 

“I have one simple question, Mitsuhide, and you are to answer me truthfully... What is it you wish for?”

The silence is akin to that in his Manor now that you’re gone. And after a time that is close to forever, Mitsuhide smiles. He smiles, and it is oh-so fake, oh-so sad, oh-so pathetic.

“My only wish is to turn back time, to warn her not to fall for the monster that I will always be.”

Kenshin Uesugi

Kenshin is the epitome of anguish, of sorrow. The poor man has lived his whole life surrounded by it, and meeting you, he was able to escape it. To be happy. 

And now you’re gone. The only person he’s allowed himself to love, with no regrets, with no qualms, stolen from his grasp. All because of him. 

He’s gone through it once, and with you, he was so sure he wouldn’t have to again. Was. Because due to his failure once more, you’re gone, and he lives with the hard fact that you’re never coming back. 

He’s living in hell every single day of his life. If he had withdrawn from purely women before, now, he had withdrawn from every and any living thing.

Even himself. He couldn’t stand it — the face of the devil who let you, the only person who had saved him, die.

He’d stay in his room, only going out in the dead of the night to train and train and train with the very sword that failed to save you, withdrawing once day breaks and once he hears footsteps. 

Kasugayama Castle would try again and again and again to get him out of his destructive cycle, saying that it’s not what you would have wanted, yet to no avail. 

Because only you are you, only you are the one who taught him how to love once more, and only you are gone. 

“What are you thinking, Kenshin? What’s in that heart of yours?” Shingen tries, just as he does everyday. 

“Her.” He replies simply. The room is quiet, making the pain in his voice so, hauntingly obvious. 

“She’s the only one in my heart, Shingen. And she’ll always be. And so I ask, foolish and regretful and doomed to die…”

“Why? Why must I always be the cause of my own destruction?”

#ikemen sengoku #ikesen #ikemen sengoku x reader #ikesen x reader #nobunaga oda #masamune date #ieyasu tokugawa #mitsuhide akechi #kenshin uesugi #nobunaga #masamune #ieyasu #mitsuhide #kenshin #headcanons

[escxpedes]

loopholes (fin.)

Remember when I said I’d post this like two days after the last part? No? Me neither... Sorry about the delay, I’ve had a severe lack of motivation. (It’s mental illness innit.) I feel like every part of this story gets longer and longer, and makes even less sense. If you haven’t read the other two parts, I recommend you do so. These technically can be read standalone, but I think it’s cuter when you read them knowing the context. Even though, again, they seem to make less sense the more I write. Lots of new information came about season 5, and it’s both nerve-racking and exciting at the same time! Three cheers for anxiety, amiright? Hope you all are doing well, I’m excited to hear the feedback on the last part of this series. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to write, I’m a sucker for prompts! x  

part one | part two

~

loop·hole

noun | A loophole is an ambiguity or inadequacy in a system, such as a law or security, which can be used to circumvent or otherwise avoid the purpose, implied or explicitly stated, of the system.

~

hands that wrap around my wrists, (and arms that feel like home.)

Shutting down the monitors she was using, Riley tries not to think about how her sleep deprivation affects her body. It’s one thing to work as a distraction, but the drag in her pace tells her this coping method is wearing her down.

How is she supposed to save innocent lives when she’s so exhausted.

And she is, exhausted, that is. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. Every part of her is weightless, suspended in air, and it feels like she can’t do a single thing about it.

An irritating helplessness encompasses her, tightening its grasp on her sanity.

She wants to cry out, throw something, cause a scene. Instead, she buries her feelings deep in her subconscious and tries not to focus on how tight her chest is.

It’s an occupational hazard, she tells herself. It’s nothing she can’t handle, she repeats daily. It’s almost a mantra by now, echoing inside her head and ramping up what seems to be an infinite supply of determination.

It’s the only way.

Mac waits for her outside, leaning against the building while she locks up. Her vision is still kind of fuzzy due to lack of energy, and her body doesn’t seem to be completely awake yet. She can physically feel Mac’s concerned gaze burning a hole in her cranium as if staring hard enough will give him access to all recesses of her mind.

“Ready?”

She nods, feigning a smile, and bumping his shoulder with her own, “You never mentioned why you stopped by so late.”

Ignorance is bliss, right?

“I left my phone in the labs.” She can hear the exasperation in his voice; concern rushes forward and sends a pang through her heart.

Suddenly, she’s irritated too, not with Mac, but for Mac. He does the right thing for humanity despite all that humanity has done to him. She can’t imagine how frustrated he must be with the entire situation, once again putting the world before himself.

He’s had so little time to process everything.

She knows he could use a break but also knows that he won’t admit he needs one.

For how smart he is, he can be really stupid sometimes.

When she turns her head to look at him, she can tell she’s lost him to his own thoughts. His eyebrows are furrowed, his usually clear eyes unfocused, and his mouth is set in a grim line.

If she listens closely, she can almost hear the gears turning, working out possible solutions, and thinking through every outcome.

It’s not an uncommon expression.

She stops abruptly, “Hey.”

This seems to shake him from his trance, his eyes meeting hers in a questioning manner.

“You are doing the best you can under the circumstances, but pushing yourself too hard won’t solve anything,” Her hand finds its way to his arm and squeezes reassuringly, “You can take care of the planet, but make sure to take care of yourself, too.”

The look he gives her is so full of gratitude and affection that nearly every emotion that Riley’s fought to contain bursts through its confinement and surges through her body.

“Thank you.”

Her breath catches in her throat, making it hard to breathe.

“What for?”

She really hopes the shaky breath that follows goes unnoticed.

“For always believing in me, no matter what.” His gaze is piercing, robbing the ability to form words from her throat.

She rakes her mind for something, anything, to say that will stop her from doing something she would totally, one hundred percent regret.

“It’s what Jack would do.”

It takes everything in her to break eye contact and shrug nonchalantly. Humor laces her tone, despite the sincerity of her statement. It is something Jack would do, something he taught her to believe in. Not necessarily in Mac, but what her gut is telling her.

It seems that in any given situation, before or after Jack’s departure, Mac’s intuition has always mirrored her own. Since the second he broke her out of prison, they always had the same values. Just like Jack, she learned how to read and understand Mac.

She knows how to interpret his rambling. She knows that no matter the situation, he’ll always put everyone else first. She knows that whatever crazy plan he’s come up with, it’s constructed with the best intentions.

She knows that no matter where he goes, and no matter what he does, her instinct is to trust him.

So she does.

With every ounce of her being. 

She desperately wants to share this with him, especially if it would probably make him feel better. However, she knows the second she starts talking, she won’t be able to stop. Mac’s got a way of doing that, translating her thoughts into words that tumble out of her before she can control what they might mean.

The grin Mac throws her, which conveys understanding and amusement, allows the tension between them to dissipate.

“Speaking of Jack, he would absolutely kill me if I let you drive home in your state.”

Before she can get a word in edgewise, he’s already opening the passenger side door of his truck. The tone in his voice leaves little room for debate, as if he’s ready to refute whatever argument she can muster up, so Riley doesn’t argue.

She wants to, but just the idea of operating a car sounds exhausting.

Besides, she’s missed this. She’s missed Mac, not just as someone she’s possibly in love with, but as her best friend. With everything going on, she’s hardly been able to see him.

The absence of him in her life hurts just as much as having him in it.

She literally can’t win.

The silence that follows is comfortable, the rumbling engine serving as white noise to Riley as she dozes off against the window.

She tries to, anyway. Driving with Mac is always an adventure, which is useful when trying to avoid being killed by a terrorist organization. Maneuvering Los Angeles traffic? Way, way less so.

“Maybe driving myself home wouldn’t have been such a bad idea.” She mumbles, fighting the urge to grab the handle above the door.

“Hey! I always get us home in one piece.”

“Physically maybe,” an amused smile finds its way to Riley’s face, “But mentally? I should sue you for psychological trauma.”

The look of disbelief that follows is enough to get her through several lifetimes, or it could be the smile he struggles to hide under his offended facade.

“Ouch,” Mac puts his left hand over his heart, “That hurts right here, Riles.”

The nickname throws her off, causing her stomach to flip. It’s just a silly name, it shouldn’t affect her like this, but her heart still clenches uncomfortably.

She attempts to brush it off, trying for a humoring grin that feels more like a grimace.

Though the comfortable atmosphere doesn’t change, the playful energy is replaced by more silence. As buildings pass outside, all Riley can think about is how much she hates silence. Man, what she would do just to get rid of it for a little bit. It’s constant these days, and it always finds her no matter where she goes.

Her fingers tug at her bottom lip, a nervous habit she’s recently adopted, as she tries to think through possible solutions to the predicament she’s found herself in.

She must be pretty engrossed because it takes her a minute to realize Mac’s spoken again.

“What?” Her brain slows down enough to pick out his words, something about how much sleep she’s gotten recently, “Oh, I don’t know.”

She tries not to notice how concerned he looks when he asks, “You don’t know?”

Not really

Logically, she knows that she sleeps almost every night. How long? It’s hard to tell sometimes. If she’s lucky, she can get a couple hours in before her brain goes into hyperdrive. Other times, she’d rather be doing something productive on her rig instead of staring at her ceiling fan.

She props her elbow against the window and rests her head in her hand, “I guess it hasn’t been a priority.”

From the corner of her eye, she can see him open his mouth and close it abruptly, trying to find the right words to comfort or soothe her.

As always, Mac is trying to rectify the situation.

“You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

She doesn’t miss the parallel and throws him the same reclusive look he had given her on multiple occasions.

“That’s my line.”

There’s an irritating tension that fills the space, like the feeling you get when you can’t get past a certain level on a video game. It’s a little stifling, urging Riley to do whatever it takes to make it disappear.

“C’mon Riley, you’ve been off ever since, you know, the whole codex situation. At first, I thought, well, it was kind of traumatizing for everyone involved, but then you moved out and,” He trails off, and she can physically see him putting all the working components together, “Is it the apartment?”

God, she wished it was just the apartment. Sure, it plays a part in all her problems right now, but she knows that it’s more of what the empty apartment represents than the apartment itself.

Still, she’s glad he came to that conclusion. It’s easier to lie to him when it doesn’t pertain to the actual issue at hand.

“The apartment’s fine,” she says after a moment of hesitation.

“It’s the AC unit, isn’t it?” His lips compress shortly before he shakes his head, “I knew I should have looked at it.”

As he starts ranting about the condenser coils in her air conditioner and how easy it is for them to get dirty, Riley can’t help but let a soft laugh fall from her lips.

“Mac, it’s not my air conditioning.”

When he opens his mouth to respond, she holds her hand up to stop him. “It’s not my heater either, or my ceiling fan, or anything that might require your unique expertise.”

“But it has something to do with the apartment.”

The statement is blanketed in excitement as if he knows he’s getting closer to uncovering the truth. He’s always been so obsessed with knowledge and learning, never quite capable of letting things go and living in ignorance.

His eyes light up with child-like curiosity; it’s highly annoying and endearing at the same time.

She feels her self control loosening.

With Mac, she feels secure, like maybe she can put herself back together again. She could confess to a crime, and he wouldn’t look at her any differently.

That helplessness kicks back in, tearing her apart from the inside.

When he slows to a stop in front of her complex, she hasn’t answered him yet.

In the back of her mind, she’s a little proud of herself for only joking about his driving once in the ten minutes it took to get there.

She stares at the lobby entrance and can feel the soft flannel of his shirt, giving him a hug before she exits his truck. She can hear the sleepiness in her voice as she leans against the door and tells him goodnight. She can see herself walk through the double doors and not turning around.

She can see it so clearly, but she remains planted in the passenger seat.

Fear tangles itself in her shoulders, in her stomach, in her heart.

Not just because she dreads the idea of spending another night counting the minutes before her alarm goes off, but because she doesn’t want to leave with their friendship in this state.

She just wants everything to go back to normal, to get back some semblance of their old friendship before she knew how she felt.

Mac waits beside her, a patient and comforting presence.

“It’s just so quiet. Up there, it’s just me and my thoughts. They never cease or quiet down; it’s a constant loop. I try listening to music or watching TV, but I can never focus on any of it. Then, I start panicking because I don’t know if it’ll ever go away. There’s no comfort, no stability. I’m just… alone.”

With every word, a little of the weight falls from her shoulders.

It almost feels like she can breathe again.

“The only time I don’t feel like that is when I’m working,” she clenches her hands in her lap, “At Phoenix, I can get to any room in the dark with my eyes closed, and I’m constantly surrounded by people I’ve known for years. It feels… safe.”

Mac’s silent, reaching over to grasp one of her hands.

“You don’t feel safe here?” He encloses her left hand between his own and squeezes, the pressure and warmth spreading through her body like wildfire.

She meets his eyes, “Not in the way that matters.”

He turns the truck off, hopping out before Riley can say anything else. He walks around the hood of the car and pulls the passenger door open, “Come on.”

“What are you doing?”

He helped her out of the truck, “You trust me, right?”

More than he’ll ever know.

“You know I do.” She eyed him suspiciously as he opened one of the complex’s doors for her, following as she entered.

“From what I can recall, Bozer got you a Nintendo Switch for your birthday earlier this year. It’s been a while since I’ve had the pleasure of destroying you in Super Smash Bros.”

His voice was quiet, trying not to disturb the people trying to sleep.

“First of all, you’ve never destroyed me in Super Smash Bros, and you never will if you keep playing with Luigi,” She grinned, watching as he shook his head in disagreement, “And second of all, it’s two in the morning.”

He shrugged, “That’s never stopped us before.”

He wasn’t wrong, but things were different now.

Riley tried not to think about Desi, wrapped up in Mac’s bed, peacefully sleeping and blissfully unaware of this entire exchange.

Not that she had anything to worry about.

It didn’t matter anyway because clearly, Riley had issues with saying “no” to Angus Macgyver.

“Fine, but prepare to get your ass beaten.”

He grinned triumphantly, “That sounds like a challenge.”

She unlocked her apartment door, stepping into the dark and quiet entryway. She faltered a little bit, her heartbeat quickening with newfound anxiety.

As always, the apartment radiated energy that always put Riley out of place.

Mac closed the door behind him, helping himself to any food he could find in her fridge. There was an intimacy to it, a closeness that made the apartment much more bearable. Her shoulders dropped a little, the anxiety easing a little as she took a deep breath.

She busied herself in the living room, connecting the switch to her TV and grabbing a variety of different pillows and blankets.

It was, after all, a tradition for these types of events.

Mac joined her after a couple of minutes with two beers, “Your fridge is worse than mine.”

“Will you get it started,” Riley ignore his comment, handing him one of the controllers, “ I’m going to change.”

When she returned in a comfy ensemble of leggings and a sweatshirt, Mac was scrolling through the character list. She hopped the back of the couch to sit next to him, watching as he hovered over Luigi for what feels like an eternity.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Mac’s determined expression didn’t falter, “You’re just jealous of my skills.”

Those skills proved to be no match for Riley’s, though, after she managed to beat him in the first game. It became much more entertaining when she did it again in the second. She tried not to laugh, but it became nearly impossible with his onslaught of complaints.

“You’re such a cheater, you can’t do that!” He pressed down hard on the keys as if smashing them harder will make Luigi speed up.

Jokes on him, Luigi was the slowest character in the game.

Very slowly, her exhaustion began to creep up on her. She knew she was done for when Mac actually managed to beat her. He seemed just as surprised as she was, but he suggested switching to a movie anyway.

They ended up choosing a documentary, something that Mac had been interested in watching recently. Riley didn’t care what they watched, as long as she got to lay down.

Mac placed a pillow in his lap and tapped it gently.

“So, was this your plan,” She comfortably adjusted her body, so her neck wasn’t in an awkward position propped up on the pillow.

In front of them, a monotone voice explained the phenomena surrounding the universe.

“Homo Sapiens are social creatures; we need people to survive,” Riley could feel Mac’s fingers coursing through her waves, creating a soothing pattern that calmed any remaining tension in her body. 

“You feel comfortable at Phoenix, sitting around the fire pit at my house, or spending time with the team at the arcade because we’re there. It’s okay to need us, Riles, because trust me, we need you, too.”

Mac’s words barely resonate with her, and she hummed noncommittally in response.

His fingers gently combed through the tangles at the nape of her neck, “I don’t think we build homes in material things like houses or apartments, but rather, in the people we surround ourselves with.”

Laying there, with her head on his lap and his fingers in her hair, Riley could only think one thing:

He couldn’t be more right. 

#macriley #macgyver #Angus MacGyver #riley davis #just cute things #hope you enjoy!!

[ananapanini]

Government Siblings Headcanons

IDC is older

America initially went through multiple versions and attempts with our domestic government but during the revolution we needed to negotiate with other countries for help so we got our international relations settled up early on, making IDC the older one.

Nooo, I'm not saying IDC had a twin that was the initial 'government' system during the revolution that died and was replaced by another little brother who was too weak or didn't work and also died, repeat process once or thrice before DC came about, not at all, what would EVER make you think such a thing?

DC was sick a lot as a kid

(I explain why in this post here)

This led to IDC missing meetings to check up on him and trying to stay home when she could to make sure he got better, along with doing his work too so he's get some rest.

She couldn’t loose another one

IDC wasn't taken very seriously at first

I mean, other countries already didn't take America that seriously when we first started out, why would their personifications take her, as "America" seriously either?

There's also the fact that America happened before women's suffrage did. When America started out as a country it wasn't taken that seriously. So here we have IDC, who in representing that, isn't taken seriously because she's a woman

Whenever meetings were held in the US they'd usually ask for DC to hold the meeting, telling IDC to wait outside of the conference room. This left DC to take notes for her so she'd actually be able to do her job. It was a tiring setup for both of them.

Related to the previous one

Once women gained rights and it settled into being the norm, meaning IDC could do whatever she wants, she instantly used the ability to its highest potential. She still doesn't let people tell her what to do, she's had enough of that for a lifetime thank you very much.

IDC will live however she wants and you can fuck off if you try and tell her otherwise.

They care a lot about image

DC is the government and needs to represent the country well, image is important to him, so if something is the norm he's gonna meet it. He wants to be perfect. Is he tho?

This extends to IDC but rather than her wanting to follow rules and act a certain way, she simply has to. You can make or break negotiations with other countries depending on how you present yourself.

This leads to her not having the energy for even the bare minimum of manners when she's just gotten back home from international duty, hence the ‘idc’ attitude (dc has definitely poked fun at the coincidence of her name)

DC was a Problem Child ™

He was a growing government and so in his younger years, before he chilled out, he did the crimes as practice. Vandalism, pick pocketing, cons, shop lifting, etc.

When he was little he'd trick the President's and White House worker's kids/grandkids into giving him their Holliday candies by giving them 'magic immortality gems' that were actually just shiny rocks. He got a l l the chocolate bunnies.

As he grew up he moved on to worse crimes until his late teen years when he fully calmed down and settled into underhanded shady government business.

Unless IDC actually cares she can't fake enthusiasm

All her energy to do so is used up during world meetings.

As a result DC got very used to saving news for when she gets back just to make sure the reaction is genuine (she has a history of going along with whatever will have DC happiest)

DC is bad at the self care thing and IDC will not hesitate to ground him

He'll forget to eat, or sleep, or drink water, or shower, or carry out basic self care because he's busy working. So what does IDC do when she hears about this? Grounded.

She clears his schedule, transfers all online documents to her own computer, takes away his paperwork, and makes sure he has no excuses for not taking care of himself. She'll also choose a state to follow him around and point out when he's not resting, usually this task falls to Florida since he'd never pass up the chance to bug DC and is always hanging around him anyway.

Yes he's an adult but as his older sister, IDC is still allowed to ground him, whether he likes it or not.

Nicknames

They call each other DeeDee and ID respectively

#government siblings #IDC #DC #headcanon hat #panini’s posts #welcome to the statehouse #welcome to the table #wttt #wttsh #ben brainard #theories

[handonhaven]

Okay Lizzie and Josie really pissed me off in 3x16. Like Hope just ran off with someone who tried to kill her and someone who manipulated Josie. With no clue why or where they were going. And Lizzie first thought was to try to find Hope a rebound. Not to try to find out where she went or if she was in any danger. And Josie was no help either she didn't bother to do any of those things. She just asked Lizzie with who. I also didn't like Lizzie comment either. When she said "we can't afford to be picky. Anyone who doesn't melt after having sex with her will do." Maybe it's just me and I'm taking that comment the wrong way. But when she said that I got so mad. Because what I took from that was being able to have sex is only thing that matters. So let's just try to hook her up with anyone. Doesn't matter if they're a killer or a psychopath as long as they can have sex then it's fine. I don't know maybe I'm just over reacting to that(but I can't be the only one to feel something like that after hearing that comment, can I?).

So, so many Handon scenes just hits so differently now knowing that Landon was really malivore. I'm not gonna lie after I found that out I went back and watched those scenes over again trying to see if I can find any clues or hints at it. But when I did that I start it to think about the fact that we had a whole season without the real Landon. Then I start thinking about the fact that Landon has had a whole season of going through trauma one right after the other since 3x02(when Raph died) and it only got worse from there. Then I got mad at the writers for doing that to him. It was bad enough that his life before coming to the school was hell. So were they just like yeah lets put him through a whole season a trauma too. Now before anyone says well Hope went through hell this season too. I'm not saying she didn't. But I feel like Landons was on a whole different level than Hopes. Because Landon had to watch his brother die, then had to watch himself melt, then he was in malivore, then in the prison fighting off monsters, to then having malivore take over his body. And who knows what he's going through in this own mind right now. But I think my biggest fear is that when they do get Landon back the real Landon. That they play off his trauma to save time(like they often do now). Or someone will try to downplay it like it was nothing. Because if they do that imma be pissed.

So I start it thinking about that maliLandon scene with Cleo when we saw both malivore's and Landons memories. And all of Landons memories were big Handon moments for season 2(I think there might have been some for season 1 but I can't remember). And I know they did that for a reason. I think in that scene it inspired both malivore and Landon somehow to do something. I just can't figure out what and I know myself this will be stuck on my mind until we finally find out lol. I'm already thinking up theories and all both make sense but don't make sense all at the same time. And this is really going to bug me.

P.S 1: I have to say this season had one very consistent thing, the "Logical" answer is wrong.

- Logic telling Hope, Landon was dead ....wrong

- Logic telling Hope, Landon was back.....wrong (Hope felt something was off but chose to ignore it bc she missed him)

- Logic telling Hope, she and Landon are doomed.....wrong

- Logic telling Cleo, to trust Landon and he was only traumatized.....wrong

- Logic telling them Malivore wanted Cleo to escape the prison world....wrong

- Logic telling them, the monsters were coming from a actual pit....wrong

- Logic telling Hope the only way to kill Malivore is to become a Tribrid.....wrong

- Logic telling Hope she caused Landon to melt.....wrong(okay I know we don't know for sure about that one. But that feels way way to much like a red herring with how much it's been said). Also another consistent thing is everything they say things Multiple times over and over again espesally things that have no concrete proof turns out to be False. They keep repeating these things; Landon is Human, Landon is dead, Landon is not a Phoenix anymore, Hope needs to become a Tribrid, Hope is toxic to Landon(once again I know we don't know for sure yet, but there's no way that isn't a red herring), Hope and Landon are doomed. Watch all turn out to be wrong.

2. The antis and H*sies are already coming out the wood works. And there this one line I see that they're really trying to hold onto like it's a win or something. How at the end of 3x16 when Hope said "we want our friends back" they're taking it like Hope sees Landon as a friend now(among other things but that would make this too long if I write it all out). Which is sad and means they're truly not paying attention to anything. And let me just point out that Hope was speaking for everyone not just herself. So it makes more sense for her to say "we want our friends back" then it would be for her to say "we want our friend and my boyfriend back". Since they're all friends with Landon and Cleo. Even though they're not very good friends to Landon(minus Hope because Hope is with Landon and treats him better than his "friends" does). But that's a whole other thing for another time. I do my best to say away from antis and H*sies but somehow one of them somehow always end up in my timeline. And it's gonna make these next three months so much longer than it needs to be tbh.

Same. Exactly! It was all so strange.

Lizzie was just upset over the fact that Hope ditched them, but Hope has always done stuff like that on her own to keep others out of danger. Yet Lizzie didn’t even seem to care, even though both her and Josie said they didn’t trust Clarke after all he had done. So they knew that Hope could’ve been in danger. But Lizzie’s highest concern in that moment was finding Hope a rebound as quickly as possible?? What on earth... And Josie acknowledged that Hope could be in danger, said she cared more about her actual life than her romantic one, but then proceeded to do nothing. And exactly! That comment really bothered me too! Yep, that’s also how it came across to me. Like Hope being able to have sex with someone was the priority, the rest wasn’t important. I don’t think you’re overreacting, I thought it sounded really bad. And the fact that Lizzie was focusing on that over Hope’s safety... I don’t even know what to say. Then Ethan shows up and they drag him into it, it was just a mess, and probably the weirdest way and time to bring in a love interest for Lizzie. Then they get to the school, are casually standing around chatting, then Lizzie wants to give Ethan a tour. All thoughts about Hope’s safety forgotten, besides Josie mentioning in passing that they needed to tell Alaric what happened. That was the full extent of their efforts to help Hope. Then she gets back and all they can talk about is how she ditched them? Not about what happened or if she’s okay? And they’re the ones who just promised Hope she wouldn’t be facing Malivore alone... not off to a good start.

And right? It’s crazy! Me too, watching the breakup scene is SO different now haha. But ugh, yes. We seriously had nearly an entire season without the real Landon... I can’t. And same. That’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about the most, and I’m honestly mad at the writers as well. Like, it’s actually shocking to think about just how much trauma he has gone through. And I don’t know what made them to decide to put him through that much because it’s unreal. Just... why?? So true, he had a lifetime of trauma before the show even started! Went through more trauma while at the school, going through death after death. And then went through the most horrible things this whole season. And yes, Hope did go through hell, but what she went through was very different. I agree, what Landon went through was on a whole other level. Exactly! He literally went through one trauma right after the other. And he went through them alone (apart from losing Raf). Without any help, and every single time he escaped one thing, he ended up in another and endured more trauma. He’s been through pure hell, nonstop, and I can’t imagine what state he’s in right now and how he’ll be when this is all over. Oh, and literally me. I’m honestly so worried they’re gonna do that too. That they’ll just ignore his trauma, that they won’t show how he’s been affected or have him talking about it. And it will just get cut off and forgotten and they’ll jump to the next thing and he may not get even a break. Because that really is what they do all the time. And right now is their chance to show what he’s been through. To go back and show what happened to him and show his side of things. We need to actually see what he’s been through and how he’s being affected right now. And once they get him back, they need to address it. They need to let him and Hope rest. I think season 4 needs to be about them healing together, though I’m sure they’ll be dealing with more crap. So I’m very worried about that, I will be pissed right along with you if they don’t go into that. That’s probably what I want to see the most at this point, and what I think is extremely important, not only for his character, but also because they shouldn’t ignore that kind of trauma.

And yes, they were! They had Landon remembering Hope telling him she loved him for the first time, and then those other huge moments for them, the 2x08 reunion, and the scenes in 2x11. I‘m wondering if those might be Landon’s most powerful memories. And I think you could be right, I’ve wondered the same thing, but I also can’t figure it out. Like they showed Handon memories with Malivore creating Clarke like... I’m so confused haha. They definitely left us with too many questions, and now we have to wait, it’s gonna suck.

Wow, you make very good points with that. That’s very interesting for sure. The writers really used “logic” as a way to mislead the characters in order to shape the plot for the season. And I think because of that, they also had to hold the characters back from investigating things further. When I feel like Hope, especially, would’ve looked into things more to figure out what was going on, but they couldn’t have them finding out yet so they just had everyone believing in the “logical” answer. Which does end up fitting with the idea that things are not what the seem, especially with all the things you listed that they keep repeating. Which does make it seem pretty obvious that they’re trying to convince us of these things that aren’t actually true. I think it’s gonna all turn out to be wrong as well. We already know it wouldn’t make sense for Landon to be fully human since he never was, and that he’ll surely get his Phoenix powers back. And I agree about Hope being toxic to Landon too, the more they’ve talked about it, the less I believe it’s true haha. And same now with them talking about Hope having to become a full tribrid, it seems like they might be doing the same thing. Or at least, if these things aren’t already wrong, Hope and Landon will find a way to prove them wrong by fighting their fate.

Yeah, those people clearly aren’t paying attention to the show and are grasping for anything at this point. Did they not watch Hope’s scenes with Clarke and how she responded to him talking about fighting fate? Did they not hear her literally tell Cleo that she still loves Landon? Obviously, Hope does not view Landon as just a friend. She was speaking for the group, just like you said. I don’t even think Hope sees Cleo as her friend right now. When Cleo told Hope that she hopes they can be friends again after all this, Hope said nothing and just walked away. So yeah, she was speaking for everyone else, although it’s weird that the rest of them would even view them as friends either. I’m pretty sure Kaleb is the only one who really sees Cleo as a friend. And true, they’re not even friends to Landon, none of them gave a crap when he died, so I’m not even sure why they were there. I guess since there’s a threat now? But anyway, yeah, I get that it’s hard to avoid those fans, the hate is everywhere. But knowing how ridiculous their reasoning is and how far they’re reaching helps me to just kind of laugh it off sometimes, although it is annoying. It gets so tiring to see, but I’m just gonna try to focus on enjoying Handon and ignoring the antis as best I can!

#answered #3x16 #legacies spoilers #spoilers

[monbeauloup]

Where all the poets go to die || 𝖂𝖔𝖑𝖋𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖗

Summary: Remus and Sirius write each other letters, while he’s in Azkaban.

Warnings: none

A/N: This is a fanfiction, which will be multiple chapters long. You might want to follow me for updates. I would also greatly appreciate some feedback or your thoughts on my writing in general.

❉───────•~❉•᯽•❉~•───────❉

(𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝟏)

Remus never felt so completely and utterly lost in his whole life before. He didn’t intend to tell anyone about the part, that’s tearing him apart and yet he’s sitting on the soft cushion of a chair, that belongs to no one other than the Weasleys. Like now, in quiet moments of reflection, he feels tears spring into the corner of his eyes and he quickly wipes away the ones, that have unknowingly begun to fall down his face. The room is silent, except for a kettle, which is quietly cooking on the kitchen stove. Through the open window, he can smell the cold autumn wind. It drifts over his head and when he closes his eyes, he comes up. Again and again, he comes to him and the once loved memories, the ones he now so despises, come crashing over him and ripple throughout his body.

"I never felt about anyone, the way i feel about you," Sirius says, thumb caressing Remus' cheek as they lie on the bed in their shared apartment. He’s tucked into Sirius' lap, resting his head against his chest how he did on that fateful day. "Nothing in the universe will ever tear us apart."

How wrong Sirius had been, Remus thinks. Swallowing, his eyes close tightly and he tries to find a way to drown his thoughts out. Sirius is gone and all he left him with is his crumpled heart. How could he join Voldemort’s side and betray both James and Lily? It feels as if he’s always on the verge of waking up from a bad dream and sometimes, when it all becomes unbearable, he thinks about giving up. Falling apart at the seams, knowing he’ll never be who he once was, but there’s a whole other side that he’s desperately holding on to. The part he fell in love with. The side of him that created a ‘happily ever after’ in his head. But then the realization hits. The realization, that it’s all been an act. He loves and was never loved back and the hardest part of this process is trying to reconcile the two seemingly polarised sides.

Before he was alone. Distracted by his own thoughts and emotions, but now, two figures stand by, observing quietly from the shadows. Molly Weasley gazes down upon him with concern and quiet understanding. The wonder of what to say lives in her mind. She startles slightly, as the teakettle begins to whistle and a few seconds later, the face of her husband comes into sight. Remus seems slowly return to reality, as Arthur Weasley kneels down with a cup of freshly brewed tea and eyes him worryingly.

“Remus -”

The silence lingers, the voice numbing his senses. He glances around before reaching for the cup.

“Thank you.. Arthur,” Remus whispers.

The tea soothingly warms him from the inside and it’s almost too much. He has gotten so used to the newfound cold within.

“Are you alright? Is there something you need?” The concern drips in Molly’s voice and Remus frowns. His wounded self screams at the back of his head. They don’t understand. He’s been hurt in ways, he never excepted to be hurt and there’s no way out.

“I’m fine,” he mutters instead. A sad smile curving his lips.

Molly just continues to look him concerningly due to her well known nurturing and caring nature. She and Arthur give each other a silent look and a nod before she leaves and Arthur takes seat in the chair opposite from Remus.

“You have to make something out of all these feelings within you,” Arthur speaks up. His voice is silent and raw and the fact that he sees him in such a vulnerable state, makes Remus' heart swell.

“Have you thought about writing him a letter?”

Remus takes a while to answer, too taken aback by his suggestion. A letter? How could he factor all his anger and frustration into just a mere letter? Besides, Sirius doesn’t care. He never cared. He took everyone down with him and did it on purpose.

“Well... i don’t know how,” Remus finally says with a shake of his head.

He feels Arthur’s big and warm hand on his arm, grounding him. His dark blue eyes full of concern.

“Write to him.”

Remus eyes stay fixed on him, feeling that Arthur isn’t wiling to let this go. He notices a tightness throughout his body and he didn’t even realize, that he had been tensing up and holding his breath.

“He betray-” Remus stops mid sentence. His heart pounding in his chest and tears burning in his eyes. “You don’t think there’s a chance that he could be innocent, do you?”

Arthur clears his throat. “I refused to believed it at first, but witnesses saw him... twelve Muggles.. an extremely powerful explosive curse....”

To hear it out loud, makes Remus fall still, eyes slowly closing.

“You have to free some of the anger and hurt, that lingers inside you. I can see it’s killing you,” Arthur says in a soft voice.

Remus looks up and nods, knowing that it’s true. He knows that Arthur is right and that all the memories inside his heart could break him in half. Shatter him.

“If there’s a way, i’ll write him. I’m sorry for -”

“Don’t apologize. You have nothing to apologize for,” Arthur interrupts him, while he shifts slightly in his chair. “Prisoners are usually not permitted to correspond with the outside world, but i'll talk to Dumbledore. You can use Asora, our owl, as well. Don't hesitate to ask us anything.”

Remus heart almost burst with untold affection for this man. “Thank you. For everything,” he says.

The slight hint of a smile he receives in return, makes him forget everything for a mere few seconds and Remus knows to treasure it well. Sincere or forced, it mattered little — The gesture was appreciated all the same.

“Anytime.”

He feels his heart unclench. A few minutes of silence pass by, until Remus gently nods towards the door.

“I better be leaving. It’s been a long day.”

He gets up off the chair and before he heads out the door, he gives Arthur a quick hug.

"Say thank you to Molly for me."

"I'll. Just keep holding on, Remus. We’re waiting for you."

With a tiny hint of a smile on his lips, he slips through the doorway and lets the sweet cold air reach his lungs. Arriving at home, alone, he warms himself in front of the fireplace, where a bright and cozy fire burns. It’s been a long day and all he wants, is some peace and quiet, but Remus feels a restlessness he can’t shake. Nothing is bothering him. No sound, no smell, nothing. Everything is calm, except him. Slowly, his eyes drift to his writing desk. Though his body doesn’t want to move, keeping still seems an impossible task. Finally, he just gives up, sits down at his desk and pulls out a jar of ink and some paper.

~*~

To Sirius Black

November 12th 1981

It’s almost impossible to forget you.

Your absence and betrayal is the most painful thing i had to ever go through. Being so close and watching you disappear hurts the most. James and Lily are dead because of you. How could you, Sirius? I’ve been lied to by the person, who has always treated me with the most daring respect, who listened to my interests and even for a little while, made me feel and know love in a way that no one else ever has. How could i’ve been so blind? I can’t take it anymore. I wish to depart so far and free. Is it easier to stay? Is it easier to go?

Truth is, shatter my heart and soul, i never wish to see you again. Sometimes, i long to feel the same one more time, but it hurts. My soul is frozen and there’s no sun to warm it.

You weren’t just a star to me, you were my whole damn sky.

I love you, but i hate you so much. You’re nothing but a liar, making us think that the friendship and love we shared was real and then you turn your back on us and betray us in such a vile manner. Your sins will never be forgotten.

Everything reminds me of you. Your scent is a sweet felony. Sometimes i wonder, if i'll ever fall in love again. I wonder what it would look like. How would i act? Is it the same as the first time? Or more cautious? I’m curious. I have this feeling, that i want to feel it again, but i don't at the same time. I’ve been hurt so deeply and i wish you a lifetime of coming to terms with the pain you caused. I hope you can live with yourself, even though i wish you’re constantly reminded of what you’ve done.

Farewell, Sirius.

Remus

There's a sinking feeling in his chest as he finishes the letter. For a while, he remains emotionless in his seat, while he processes every syllable.

His own words bring him to tears and suddenly it all seems too blurred in the way that his heart sinks everytime he thinks of Sirius in their bed. Waiting for someone who will never be his, who will never come to him. He picks the letter, reads it a second time and his salty tears burn the little scar, that rests on his chin. He goes to bed on an empty stomach that night, crying until his pillows are soaked.

#marauders #marauders era #remus lupin #sirius black #james potter #lily evans #molly weasley #arthur weasley #wolfstar #padfoot x moony #azkaban #harry potter

[youregoingtobe-thedeathofme]

if you pass by your soulmate but don’t meet them, the day you passed them will repeat over and over until you finally find them. (Ted and ??? )

oh my god and this would have been when Ted started working at THE OFFICE!!! Which totally fucking works for... CCRPOLY!!! All of them!!!

So He goes through his first day, getting all introduced and he’s funny but a lil slimy as a first impression instead of an unbearable douche (that happens after a few weeks of working with him)

He meets Bill, he meets Paul, Davidson, Melissa, Charlotte, some tech and warehouse employees, and to welcome him to the office they all go out for coffee and he meets Emma, too.

When Ted wakes up to the same damn day he’s kind of annoyed that This was the day, because first of all- it almost HAD to be one of his new coworkers, and secondly, that would take for Fucking Ever to figure out. Spending each day dwelling on one person with the odds slim would mean he’d be replaying this day for a week.

So he does, getting more and more frustrated because he kissed Bill in the parking lot and it felt Real but no, he wakes up to his first day again.

And Charlotte feels so comfortable to vent about her marriage (probably because she’s had to find soulmates that are Not her husband on 3 seperate occasions before now) and Ted and her share a cigarette and hold hands and he is in love with giving himself up for tragedy so He thinks it has to Be Charlotte but it ISN’T

So it’s got to be the assistant. Melissa’s pretty, but Ted feels awkward just talking to her, about how she looks at him. He quickly decides that he does not want someone to be his soulmate cause they see their Dad in him, so he actually gives up halfway through the day and speedruns through Davidson and the I.T department, beginning to flirt- He actually gets in quite a bit of trouble, so he’s almost hoping to replay the day.

And he does. He’s almost visibly bored and upset as the day progresses, and that’s when Paul notices him. And some kind of fire lights when Paul Notices Him. Ted’s thinking this has to be it, but his thoughts still manage to wander even as he bonds with Paul. He actually tells Paul he’s trying to find his soulmate. Paul thinks its very sweet, and its so charming that Ted has admitted this after spending a whole day with him. And then He admits he’s had several repeat days in the span of the last year, and this is one of them. They’re both convinced, and in their excitement hook up at Pauls place.

Something hurts within Ted when he wakes up in his own bed. He remineces the three people who have made him feel like this, and how he already cares about each of them.

And he decides the world must be a sick cruel place after all, so instead of focusing at work he speaks to those he brushes by, every single one of them. Learns their names.

Nothing. He wakes up more frustrated than before, far earlier than he’s supposed to due to restless sleeping.

So Ted, at 5 am, with 2 hours to spare until work, goes to Beanies. And he finally really gets to meet Emma. Because who the hell else in hatchetfield is getting coffee at this local version of starbucks at 5:30? So Ted begins to think- hey. This is my soulmate. She’s my soulmate.

In a spur of sudden confidence he asks her on a date, actually. Well, It’s not a date. He offers to take her to a different establishment somewhere else and taste something better than coffee, and she agrees to meet him when she gets off.

And its Lovely. It really is. While Ted is pondering over Emma being his soulmate, he’s also pondering over the other 3 he’s fallen a little in love with. And he feels terrible about it. But this has to be it, right? She’s one of the last people he met on this day. They have firecracker chemistry. He kisses her at the door of her appartment complex and she writes her number on his wrist all cheeky with a signature. They make out at the door of her appartment complex, But it’s Ted who has to pull away and bid her goodnight when all he remembers is how Bill tasted in that parking lot.

He shakes the feeling as he walks home, only punching Emma’s number into his phone as he slips into bed. ‘Goodnight, princess.’

He’s barely concious when the response comes. ‘G’Night, asshole.’ He beams, plunging into a restful sleep.

Ted wakes up slowly, for the first time. He rubs his eyes and something feels off. Maybe that something means it’s a new day, right? He can’t help his sleepy smile as his eyes adjust, reaching for his phone. If Emma just broke him out of this hell, she certainly deserves a good morning.

And then he can’t find the conversation, which is weird, but maybe its cause he was too tired to give her a contact name. He looks to his arm for the digits

It takes about a minute for shock to dissolve into some kind of frustrated sadness. He always thought he didn’t deserve a soulmate, but he didn’t know an eternal first day at work would be the result of his self deprication.

But he gets up. He doesn’t know how, but theres still a little drive in him.

Ted’s been fueled by the lifetimes he thinks he’s lost.

So he goes to work. He chats up paul on break and gains his attention cause he knows how to now.

He talks with Charlotte at lunch, but instead of just holding her hand for comfort he admits that Sam sounds like an asshole, and she deserves someone who legitimately could fall in love with her. Every morning. Not just once. And this time they Kiss. And Ted’s delighted enough to decide if the day repeats he’s doing the exact same fucking thing for forever when they do.

Ted chats with Paul at the end of the day, and something drives Paul to kiss his cheek. Something very similar drives Ted to squeeze at his hand and double-check he has his number. It’s another moment he’ll revisit when he wakes up today, but for now he’s living in the current today when he spots Bill.

He tells Bill he’d love to get to know him, cause they’d be working so closely. He teases Bill about his dresshirt while he’s at it, and Ted’s delighted when a flustered Bill offers beanies. Because he’ll see Emma before she gets off.

And he hits on her, just to see how corny he can be and still land her number. Instead of in his wrist this time, Ted gets a scrible on his coffee cup. But it feels just as right, when he goes back and gives Bill his drink. “What, you said surprise you- it’s called a frappecino, Come on you’ll like it.”

And Bill and Ted are at beanies until closing. Ted listens, which is a new sensation, but he does. As Bill talks and asks for some kind of sympathy which Ted gives generously. Bill’s situation is shit. He wants nothing more than to help him out of it. He places his hand on Bill’s, and not even two minutes later Bill is walking out nervously, citing something about his daughter as he nervously puts his coat on

And this is really new. Ted didn’t know what he had done, honestly. He calls after him, manages to stop him in the parking lot. The sun is going down when he finally puts a hand on bills shoulder. “What- what’s wrong- We can really just forget it, I’m sorry, Bill i just-“ “I can’t- I just can’t-“ “can’t-what?” “You. Again.”

Ted’s left with some kind of shock in his stomach as Bill heads to his car. “Again?” He repeats, but Bill’s already got the doors shut and Ted Can’t Move.

He blows it. He can feel it, when he walks home. He doesn’t even bother texting Emma.

He goes to sleep, knowing what he’s going to wake up to. And gets ready like he did the very first time. Goes to work like he did the first time. Does everything like the first time, cause he knows they’ll all go to beanies.

He gets everyone their coffee, as in their favourite kind, without prompt, and asks very politely if Emma can take it to the table for them. He tips her 50 bucks, and assures the rest of them he’ll cover their bills.

They sit at a table and the other three try to get Ted caught up on work details or people he may not know enough about. He quiets them as their coffees come, and before Charlotte can ask him how he knew how much she liked chai lattes, he clears his throat and asks emma to just take a breath here.

“Alright. It’s my Fucking millionth time doing this day. And I have a theory. Paul, you mentioned something about multiple repeat days? No- not today, the second today.” He pressures, and all Paul can do is nod and blush, muting himself with his black coffee. “Good. Now, we’ve all been here before, haven’t we?” Ted’s eyes are on Bill now, who can’t hold the stare. Emmas transfixed now, nodding a little. “You know-“ “sshhhh, princess. I do know. Multiple soulmates exist. You typically pick the one you find first or the one closest to you- but look what happened, huh?”

“What happened?” Charlotte questions, and ted stands, grabbing for his iced latte and lookinh down. “Nothing, Charlotte. I just fell in love with all four of you. Because I think you’re all my soulmates.” Ted gets it out, looking over puzzled faces. “Damnit- it doesn’t matter, does it. Because either you’re not and I wake up today again, none of you remember, or you ARE all my soulmates, and tomorrow we talk that out. I’m exhausted, theres my number.” He points to the scrap paper on the table.

“I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” He dismisses, and then He’s Gone.

He wakes up to 3 messages, but 1 comes up as he finally rises from bed.

‘Good morning, asshole.’

#GOD THAT WAS LONG #this one really delighted me #ccrpoly #tgwdlm #ted tgwdlm #get me a chai iced tea alright?! - ted #designated driver - bill #uhh fuck you? - emma #i dont like musicals - paul #cuddle night - charlotte #muse musings - asks

[cherryplasmids]

☆ all that could have been ☆

pairing: john seed x deputy!reader fandom: far cry 5—non-game sequence prompt: it’s about time john knows how you truly feel, but it couldn’t have come at a worse time.  notes: first time doing far cry so please be nice lol — i was encouraged by @hopecountyhellcat​ and @punisherpage​ —check out my other works; masterlist

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

    Everything went wrong in a matter of seconds. In one moment, you’re flying high in the air with the intent of going to the Rye’s house for a drink of beer and some laughs. After a successful day of bothering the Seeds with no violent moments, you wanted to end the day right with your favorite people. You messed with the radio for a bit before turning it off in favor of humming your favorite song. The next moment, the engine explodes and you have no choice but to jump out of the plane. The parachute doesn’t do much to give you a safe landing. Instead, it gets caught in the sturdy branches of the tall Montana trees. It rips easily. 

And you’re going down fast, bruising every body part as you hit multiple branches on the way. 

There’s no time to think before your back slams against the forest dirt, head bouncing off the ground and connecting with loose rocks. A mixture of an agonized groan and a winded gasp emits from your lips. Tears gather up in your eyes immediately as obnoxious ringing vibrates through your head. Other than that, you can’t hear anything. Not even the loud explosion from the destroyed plane rattles you. You wouldn’t even notice it happened if it wasn’t for the flash of bursting colors and heat warming your skin. 

You want to scream for help. To let out something besides the pathetic and agonized croak gurgling out of you. Your bruised throat disables that from happening.

 Hopefully, the engulfing fire catches someone's attention. 

An eternity later, you decide to move, no matter how excruciating. Every movement sends a stinging sensation through your arms as if a thousand wasps stung you all at once. Lifting yourself up into a sitting position, your eyes zero in on the rest of your body. It hasn’t faired any better. A rusted jagged piece of shrapnel sticks out of your thigh, with blood steadily pouring out the wound. With just the tip pointing out, a passing thought breezes by—10th-grade anatomy class mentioned important veins in the thigh. You never memorized the placements, but you might have an inkling now. 

The watch on your right-hand beeps. The screen is scratched up but not cracked enough to hinder any information from being displayed. Messages upon messages come through, all from the Rye’s and Sharky. As you read through them, your mind gets all foggy, jumbling the words together. Removing your eyes from the bright screen, you begin to move with no direction. There’s no way you would die alone in the middle of this godforsaken county. 

It takes a long time until you reach a clearing. Of course, it happens to be John Seed’s massive ranch. With nowhere else to go, you continue crawling to his front porch. When you reach it, you sit propped up against the wooden banisters. Despite the pain, your body begins to relax. You’re safe here. Always safe on John’s ranch. With the crash being in his territory, there’s no doubt he would go investigate. He’ll know it’s your plane once he sees the cropped baby blue sweater he bought you three days ago in the back seat and the expensive black jeans he left there after a quick rendevous a week ago. If he digs any further, he might even find the polaroid nude you tucked away in the back pocket. Only if the fire didn’t burn them.

Noticing the blood trail, you realized there isn’t enough time left before the inevitable demise. The thigh injury is pumping blood faster than a cheetah running to catch prey. By the time John comes, you’ll be done. 

Jacob will celebrate the news. 

You take a deep breath as you hear John’s orotund voice, mixing in with the low ringing still prominent in your ear. The pulsing sensation is thumping in your head is triggered, flaring behind your skull. He’s most likely a figment of your imagination, conjured up to keep you company until you die. A lazy hand travels slowly to touch your head. The matted hair is covered in blood and you let out a choked laugh. 

“Rook?”

It takes a couple of seconds to register John’s walking toward you, eyebrows furrowed. He lifts his sunglasses and perches it on top of his head like normal. The closer he gets, the more his body mingles with the blurriness of the trees, swaying to the sporadic wind breeze. You wave at him, blood dripping from your hand. 

He’s actually here.

“Hi, John.” Your raucous voice echoes in your head but you could tell it doesn’t affect him. In reality, it’s a whisper he isn’t close enough to hear. He runs to you once he notices the blood, his shiny Gucci belt beaming in the sunshine. A tired smile reaches your lips and you sigh, attempting to ignore the throbbing headache, the difficulty in swallowing, and the continuous blood loss. John’s here now. He’ll save you from this fuck up. 

He’s yelling something but your hearing goes in and out. The words don’t make any sense when you attempt to piece them together. It only hurts to try. Once he reaches you, he tucks you into his muscular arms with his lips forming words. His lips are moving too quickly to be understandable so you opt to read his expressive eyes. Tears prick the baby blues for a few seconds before spilling over like a waterfall. 

“Ro—Rook—Rook!” His voice like a high-piched foghorn, John successfully pulls you out of your daydream. 

A smile still plays at your lips. “I had a little accident, John.”

He’s shaking his head. “A random fucking Angel shot down your plane.” He sniffles and cradles the back of your head. His body shudders when he sees blood oozing out onto his hands. Never once did he ever cringe from the substance in his adult life and yet, here is practically breaking at the sight of it. He doesn’t care if other people suffer—actually revels in the sight of it. But now, with you in his arms sporting the same pained expression as the rest, he’s afraid. A childhood flashback of Jacob bleeding from parental abuse takes over for a moment. The fear is vivid. 

“I’ve called an ambulance.”

A thought conjures up in your head. He’s utterly stunning. Somehow John remains mesmerizing in every way. The splotchy redness on his cheeks, the peeking snot, and his frightened eyes do nothing to deter that fact. 

“Joseph isn’t too happy, I bet.” You let out a weak chuckle before peering up at him. “You came for me.” 

“I’ll always come for you.” 

“What a tiring job.” Your words begin to slur, saliva gathering in your mouth. However, the way John’s eyes comically widen, you know it isn’t saliva. 

“You’re going to be okay. The ambulance is coming and you’ll be fine—back to annoying us, okay?” 

You cough up, blood splattering John’s left cheek in small droplets. “Maybe not.”

“No!” He yells and you flinch. He visibly softens, a fresh batch of tears seeping out of his eyes. The redness of his eyes interferes with his beautiful baby blues. You want him to stop crying, so you grasp onto his hand and give him a strained, reassuring smile. 

“Sorry,”

He shakes his head and caresses his thumb across your split bottom lip. With such tender care mixed in with whispered lovely words, your body eases into relaxation. Every word or sound coming out of his mouth is like butter, all warm and comforting. Even in this time, the raging pain subsides for a moment to allow some clarity—to listen to John’s rich, calming voice. 

Everything about him is magical. 

“Do you think we could ever be together?” The pain from your bruised throat causes the words to take ages for it to come together. Soon, coherent sentences won’t be possible. 

“Of course, we are meant to be together. Joseph said so himself. God wills it, Rook.” 

You ignore his words and continue with your frayed thoughts. “Not in this lifetime. In another where your brother isn’t a psycho—” You take a deep breath, cutting the sentence short. The anger bubbling within your stomach at the thought of Joseph uses more energy than you would like. You’d be damned if your last words were about him. 

“I love you, John Seed. It took me some time but yeah. I love you.” Your words are choppy, consciousness falling in and out as you strung your last sentences together. 

He begins to sob.

“Would’ve married you too. Spend every day loving you. You deserve it, Johnny.” 

After feeling numb for so long, John can’t lose you. You’re the only thing that encourages real, raw emotion from him. To come to terms with his traumas and twist it into a positive outlook. “You've been through shit, Johnny.” You told him months ago, the first time you stumbled upon his ranch. Why let that shit get you down? Stop you from living life? I’ll teach ya, free of charge. With a wink and a pat on the ass, John knew he was hooked. And you’ve done exactly that. Taught him that there’s more to life than suffering. A life where he doesn’t have to inflict pain to feel something. A life where he can live happily without the idea of sins carving him up at any given moment. You’ve been ingrained within every aspect of his life to the point where he doesn’t remember ever being without you. 

What will he do when you’re gone?

Another heart-wrenching sob emits from him. His alarmingly begins trembling even more. Through all the anguished cries, he says your real name, chanting it as if it’s the only prayer he knows. He’s talking again and moving frantically. But nothing computes in your brain. He does all sorts of things in seconds: wiping his snot on his blue Prada shirt, tapping your cheeks when your eyes close for a nanosecond too long, waving at something beyond your restricted vision. All the quick movements send your mind spinning like a gravitron. It takes you back to the first time you ever went on one. You were 10 and they had to stop midway because you threw up in it. 

Your eyes begin to feel heavy “Let’s take a nap, Johnny.”

“No,” his voice sounds like he’s speaking underwater. “You have to stay up, Rook or else—” He breaks off, choking on his own words before pulling you further into his arms to cry into your chest. “Please, just listen to me for once.”

You try to nod but your head is filled with heavy lead, weighing it to the point where it hurts to even twitch. All the words you want to say die in your throat, replaced by blood. It creeps in your throat before spilling out of your lips in a thin trail. 

Slowly but surely, you begin to fade, sinking into a deep abyss of empty blackness. Your last thought is about John’s baby blues and all that could’ve been. 

────── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ────── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ──────

word count: 1,848 published: april 18, 2020 [my birthday!] edited: n/a

#far cry #far cry fic #far cry fanfiction #far cry 5 #far cry 5 fanfiction #far cry 5 fic #john seed #john seed x reader #john seed fanfiction #far cry imagine #fanfiction #video games #my writings #original works #original masterlist #joseph seed #jacob seed #faith seed #x reader

[cosmiceverafter]

The Pieces Want to Be Together

Pairing: Alex Manes/Michael Guerin

Characters in this chapter: Alex Manes; Michael Guerin; Gregory Manes; Isobel Evans; (mentions of Flint & the Scooby Squad). 

Rating: T

Words in chapter: 2k

Read on ao3

Ch.1/Ch.2

**Content Warning for this chapter: mention & slight evidence of torture/abuse during a kidnapping; blood warning; minor violence; mention of death (no character deaths). None of these are graphic.**

Summary: Day 3: | REUNION | faith, loyalty, optimism, resilience.

A/N: A lot of what I wrote, is speculation for the episodes to come for the rest of this season. It also shows my hope that Gregory Manes is in fact a good guy and Flint Manes can be redeemed.

I hope you enjoy the last chapter of this fic for Missing Alex Manes Weekend! I really enjoyed writing something that was a bit different for me. But you should always know, with angst will always come to a happy ending full of hope. Thank you for reading!

To you Alex Manes: I love you very much.

Ch. 3: Fit Together with You

Alex flutters his eyes open, feeling a searing slash of pain from his head.

All he sees is darkness. He is unable to make out any features around him.

Where am I?

Trying to make sense of everything, he calculates strategically the surrounding area.

Why would someone want… him? Was he getting a bit too close to something? Did this have to do with the aliens of 1947? Did this have to do with Michael?

His hands are bound, but he tries to feel the ground. Cold hard pavement.

He will find a way out. He owes it to himself and the love he has for Michael.

Alex will not go without a fight.

***

Michael thought he understood fear after a lifetime of hopelessness. But fear was finally understood when Alex Manes was gone.

Alex had been kidnapped, and his brain had short-circuited any reason or patience.

When he had been searching location after location without a trace, that was when the fear settled in as well as the realization he couldn't lose Alex.

This human boy had taught him so much, not just what love truly meant, but learning about who he was and what he wanted from this life here on earth.

He fell in love early on with Alex in high school, staring constantly at the way Alex’s eyes fluttered when he got into his music. He was so talented and Michael admired him from a distance for so long.

But Alex had offered not only a safe haven to call his own, but his heart as well.

Michael for the first time in his life felt what having a family could feel like.

The two of them had made mistakes, more times than he could possibly count, but they kept coming back to one another in a way cosmic lovers would.

Alex was the shooting star in his night sky and together they made the constellation of peace, love, and hope.

It was the melody he had heard every single time Alex had played on his guitar. Quite honestly, it was the most moving moment of his life.

These were the thoughts that swirl in Michael’s mind as he searches all of Roswell. He would travel to heaven and hell to find one simple clue to Alex's well being.

After hours of nothing, he receives a phone call. It’s Gregory Manes.

***

Bright lights shine in his eyes, and Alex swallows, “Who are you?”

There is shuffling and Alex knows there are multiple people around him. He can’t make out faces but he can see figures standing around.

Finally, a deep unfamiliar voice says, “You’ll know in time. This is for the greater good.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We know who you are, Alex Manes, and who you associate with. That is, what you associate with. We will have answers.”

So this was about aliens.

Alex isn't clear on much of this situation, but one thing is crystal clear: He will protect Michael Guerin with his last dying breath.

***

Michael had always been right about Gregory Manes. He was the next best Manes after Alex.

The guy was good. He cared about his younger brother, more than even Michael had realized. He didn’t fit the mold that Jesse had once created for their last name.

Gregory had also found out Alex was missing when he had come to visit Roswell. He too had entered Alex’s house and went on his own search when he had seen the evidence of a struggle.

Apparently, he had inquired information from their other brother Flint, who wasn’t always the guy you’d want watching your back. But Michael also thought there was more to Flint than meets the eye.

After hours of figuring information out, they had all come to terms with the fact this wasn’t Jesse’s doing, much to all their surprise.

It was another puzzle Michael realized, that he didn’t know how to fit back together. Story of his life.

***

They ask questions; he doesn’t answer.

He’s hit, repeatedly; he’s had worse.

They press further; he doesn’t cry out.

Their frustration grows; he stands his ground.

They use fear and hate; he uses resilience and love.

***

Michael refuses to give up, he can't.

His phone rings and he looks down. It’s Isobel now.

“Iz?”

“It’s Alex.”

“I know...I’ve been searching for him with Greg,” Michael says as his eyes fill with tears. No use trying to stop them. “We can’t find him. Anywhere.”

He looks at Alex’s brother who is now driving his truck, and his brother looks as solemn as he feels.

“Michael, listen to me!” Isobel exclaims on the other side, “I know where Alex is!”

***

Alex’s whole body aches and he finally lets a moan escape his lips. He’s not sure how much more he can handle. He’s tough, but hell, he’s only human after all.

Whatever these things are...he's not entirely sure they are human. However, feeling delirious will do that to a person. He can no longer make sense of it all.

It’s been hours, and Michael never leaves his mind.

Michael is his anchor that keeps him tethered to his strength; it keeps him grounded and sane. He’s grateful even though his alien isn’t even there.

Truthfully though, Michael is always with him.

It all seems so trivial now; their arguments the inability to connect through the pain.

If only they both had foreseen this future, maybe they would have communicated what they had wanted so much sooner.

Being at rock bottom will do that to a person though. Your regrets, your mistakes, all of it, comes crashing into you like a current in the ocean.

These thoughts stay in Alex's mind. He realizes he probably won’t make it through the night. But at least he will go knowing he didn’t budge; he kept Michael’s identity and whereabouts hidden, as well as his pod siblings.

Some things are worth dying for.

As he allows himself to lean against the wall and close his swollen eyes, he hears a commotion outside the cold dark room he’s kept in.

There is yelling, a boom, and screaming.

He can’t make sense of it; he doesn’t have the energy to even try.

But that’s when he hears it, the most beautiful sound in the world.

Michael’s voice.

He found me, Alex realizes as he finally breaks. The tears run down his cheeks as he succumbs to darkness.

***

Isobel, that brilliant-not-by-blood-sister of his, was right! She had given them a location, something that she had seen when she had gone to Alex’s house.

Isobel had touched the floor where Alex had fallen, and that’s when she had a vision. The warehouse had been clearer than the light of day, and she explained it perfectly.

It was miles out of Roswell, but luckily, Michael knew exactly the one. He had driven past it many times over the years.

Gregory is by his side as they enter the location. Michael does not see who the people are that took Alex because their faces are covered, but that doesn’t stop him from throwing them against the walls. Hard.

Michael knows he's probably just given away his identity. He just doesn't care.

His anger is unmatched at this moment.

Gregory stops and looks at him with a look of shock, but Michael just shrugs and keeps on moving. There is no time to talk about the “what are you and where did you come from?” speech.

Unfortunately, whoever they are, escape quickly, but his number one mission and priority is to find Alex.

They will be dealt with later, that much is certain. A vow of his for the mere fact that they ever thought they could touch Alex Manes.

Gregory yells at him to come over and he sees a locked door against the metal wall. Gregory gives Michael the look with a bit of hesitation.

Michael opens it easily with his powers and scopes out the room quickly.

Alex.

His stomach falls as he sees Alex crumpled in the corner of the small room. Michael almost collapses, but Gregory steadies him.

Alex’s brother rushes over to his younger brother’s side, clearly checking for a pulse.

Michael has never felt this before. Before when trying to find Alex, he was on a mission. But this… this is different. If Alex is not okay, Michael will not make it. He knows this to be true. They are too connected and intertwined.

He won’t survive that type of pain.

So he’s stuck. Unmoving. He literally cannot breathe.

“He has a pulse,” Gregory calls out, which adds faith and hope back into Michael’s life. “It’s weak though. We have to get him to a doctor.”

“Valenti,” Michael replies, still scared to see Alex and the damage they caused the love of his life. “Kyle Valenti. He’ll help.”

“Here,” Gregory exclaims as he rushes over, “let me talk to him.” Michael punches in the number for the good Doctor and gives his phone to Greg. The guy looks over at Alex, and his eyes are full of sadness, “Go be with him. He needs you, Michael.”

Gregory leaves the room for a moment and Michael can hear him talking to Kyle.

Slowly, as if in a dream...a nightmare, Michael walks over to Alex.

He bends down and starts to cry instantly as he takes in Alex. All the emotions he has felt searching for Alex and the horrific outcome of this reality is too much.

The bruises are all over Alex. He’s swollen and bloody. Not Alex. God, no. Not to Alex….

Michael lifts Alex’s hand up gently and sees damage there as well. “I’m so sorry, Alex.” He cannot stop crying. The heavy sobs leave his body as he trembles uncontrollably. Michael realizes he’s not just crying because of what happened to Alex, he’s sorry for the way he has treated Alex over the last few months. He took Alex for granted and now here his love is, broken and in pieces right before him. “I’m so damn sorry.”

He bends down and kisses Alex’s battered forehead. That’s when Alex moans. He squeezes Alex’s hand softly, “Alex! Alex, I’m here. I’m here. I won’t leave...I’ll never leave you again.”

Alex squeezes his hand back.

***

It takes Alex a while to heal, but luckily with the help of Kyle, Michael, and his friends, he makes progress every single day.

It's both mental and physical healing he needs and that in itself, takes time.

The group continues digging deeper to try to figure out who took him. It’s nice to see everyone working together for a change. He’s wanted that for some time. Maybe that was the good of being taken after all; they stopped taking each other for granted.

As far as Michael, he never leaves his side. That gesture doesn’t annoy him though, if anything, it’s beyond comforting and welcoming.

Neither of them is walking away. They prove that more and more each day.

Michael is generous and gives him space and time, not expecting anything. It means so much to him.

But he does give Alex several hugs a day; clinging on to him tightly as if to make sure Alex is real. Alex gets his strength from Michael every time. 

They finally have their breakfast and open up about it all, even the parts that hurt. But that was the point of healing, true healing. In doing that, they break the barriers of their cycle once created.

Their talk wasn't a one-time thing either; they talk for weeks and weeks, sometimes going late into the nights. The nights where they make each other laugh, are Alex's favorite. He realizes that even though during their time apart when they weren't together, they had been building that friendship all along.

Sometimes during these chats, he catches Michael just staring at him, and he can’t help but smile. Their love has only grown. Deeper than even he could have imagined it would.

One sunny morning, he decides to finish the song he has been working on. Alex is staying at the cabin that Jim left him. It offers peace and solace, especially if Michael is there. Which he is, always.

Alex smiles as he pulls his guitar out of the black case. It's funny how an object can cause so much joy. The gift of music was just that, a gift.

As he holds the guitar in his hands for the first time in a while, he closes his eyes from the comfort it brings. His fingers sometimes still ache, but he plays anyway.

He plays the trauma he grew up with, the pain, and the sorrow, but also the resilience and the strength to rise from the ashes. He adds the hope, faith, and love that Michael has brought into his life. The joy of friendship and unity as he sees his friends smiling back at him. And most importantly, he plays the love he feels for himself and the growth he has made, with a nod of gratitude in Forrest’s direction.

It is the melody of his life. The melody that makes him...Alex.

“That was so beautiful,” he hears softly behind him as he finishes.

Alex looks over to see Michael beautifully leaning against the doorframe holding two cups of coffee, his curls tousled from sleep.

“I hope I didn’t wake you, I know it’s early.”

Michael shakes his head, “Nah, it's the best alarm clock there is actually.” He walks over barefoot on the wooden porch and hands Alex a mug.

He sits down and looks at Alex with a genuine loving smile, “Truthfully though. It might’ve been the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard you play.”

“Thanks,” Alex replies with a smile of his own. “I’ve been working on it for…well, a very long time now.”

“Is it finished?” Michael asks. Alex looks deeper into those hazel eyes. Not for the first time around the guy, hope fills him up like a balloon. “I think it’s just the beginning of a very special story actually.”

Michael nods and takes Alex’s hand softly. “I hope to hear each chapter of that story then.”

Alex moves Michael’s healed hand to his lips and kisses it gently, “You are and will always be a huge part of this story, Michael. The story is a part of us.”

“You always have a way with words, Alex Manes.”

The words he has wanted to say every day are right there. They are the only words that truly matter when it comes to the alien sitting next to him, “Speaking of words, there are a few more important ones I need to say to you.”

Michael smiles once more as he leans in closer to Alex, “Please, tell me.”

Alex takes in this moment, never looking back, “I love you, too.”

Tears fill both of their eyes as they come together as those two pieces of their puzzle, finally fitting together as one as they kiss.

The missing piece was there all along.

Hope was the melody that would always bring their love home.

#missingalexmanes #missingalexweekend #alex manes #malex #malex fic #alex x michael #my fic #Michael guerin #gregory manes #isobel evans #otp: cosmic #tw: kidnapping #tw: some violence #tw: evidence of torture during kidnapping #tw: blood #tw: aftermath of torture and kidnapping #tw: mention of death - no character deaths #cosmiceverafter #hope #healing #angst and comfort #love #self-worth #roswell nm

[celestialholz]

A Good Day To Die

Hello, dear Qcard squad - happy slightly belated Tapestry Day! <3 I’m SO SORRY this is a little late, though for once it’s absolutely not my fault! I’m visiting some family up in northern England, and there’s been a hell of a storm that’s outed several power lines locally - they’ve only just reconnected this morning, so I’m finally able to pop this up as my laptop now has some charge! I shall be reblogging all your lovely contributions with commentary tags today too. <3

Let me tell you a quick story before the actual one though, friends, of a girl on a Saturday afternoon playthrough of TNG for the first time, about six years ago now; already a huge fan obviously because we’re in series six, already very much in love with Q and the indomitable captain, but I’d wondered here and there: why was Jean-Luc so special? Sure, he was clever and wonderfully diplomatic, even a bit nuanced, and a nice change of pace from Kirk, who I also loved - but where did this spark come from? Why was he a rebel sometimes, when he seemed to play so much by the book most of the time?

... And then we get to this. A fascinating premise right from the word go of an immediately deceased/critically injured Picard, going into the fascination of a void space, a god cloaked in white with his usual wondrous enigma, and what’s always been to me the single finest piece of character exploration in the whole of the Trek canon. It’s intelligent, deeply amusing, philosophical, psychological, fascinating... we watch this man fall apart and rebuild and learn his lessons, and all the while we have this gorgeous chemistry, this blatant and beautiful homosexual coding, between our two stars, with Q’s ambiguous motives and goddamn, I was enchanted. 

... Honestly, it’s my favourite fucking TV hour of all time, and it’s my pleasure to finally celebrate its anniversary properly. My great thanks to @q-card​ for taking my idea and running wild with it, you marvellous being you. <333

I’d planned to make something much grander and mad for this accordingly, but... well, you know how it is. Very long week, depression... eurgh. So instead, please accept something a fair bit shorter but no less lovely: a parable of ancient Egyptian culture, a delicious dose of angst and love, and the promise of forever from a man who really can’t understand the meaning of the word, but wants nothing more than to offer it anyway. Set during STP, and I for one think this would be a lovely way to end it all...

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It’s fitting, Jean-Luc, he thinks serenely as he disengages the autopilot with a pang of adrenaline, a silent resignation, stoicism etched into his weathered features. Everything has its time, dear man, and you’ve had more than most.

There’s no real other method of death he’d have been content with, if he’s being honest with himself. It’s explosions, fireworks, heat, when he’s too old for any of it physically, when he’s exhausted mentally, but can still lay claim to the most youthful and adventurous spirits, the very soul of a captain; it’s plunging into a supernova at sub-warp to take out the rejuvenated Borg fleet in the resultant fire, beings he abhors so profoundly, is still so very haunted by all these years later, still has nightmares of his time amongst their number.

The protests of his newfound crew echo through his mind, the panic of five minutes prior naturally fresh; a simple plan, ultimately, forged days after he’d discovered their real enemy. Emergency transport, patterns already established, ready for the simple verbal command of a destination within reach; his friends enveloped, incapable of escape without the certainty of scattering to atoms, horror absolute.

“Admiral, you can’t be fucking serious - ”

“This cannot be how our quest ends! I will never forgive you!”

“... No, no, I know that look - JL, you can’t , you bastard - !”

“They took you once, Captain; we’ve won, dammit! There is no need to prove it further!”

He shivers with their regrets, jaw setting in defiance of his actions - it isn’t about proving anything, and he’d imagined Seven of all people would know that good and well. It’s about setting the universe to rights, ensuring continued prosperity from a species who deserve simply to be left in peace, who had been through more than enough to last them multiple lifetimes... to perhaps finally repaying a fraction of the debt he owed to the dead, the assimilated, of Wolf 359. It will never absolve him; nothing ever could.

But he can ensure it never has to happen again - not to him, not to another living soul in this quadrant. This is their last stand, and he will eradicate them. He isn’t a threat, of course - why would he be, in his tiny vessel?

Resistance is not, and never has been, futile, he acknowledges coldly, teeth beared in disgust. You wanted me to lead you, didn’t you? Allow me to make it so.

“Warning: recommend immediate retreat. Heat shields at thirty-one percent integrity; collision course with Elphoric Supernova in three minutes, thirty seconds.”

“Computer,” he announces frostily, “cease warnings.”

“With respect, my dearest admiral, perhaps you’d do well to pay attention.”

His mechanical heart skips several beats in the same moment, frenzy racing up his spine in anger, anticipation, anguish -

He hasn’t seen the speaker in four years, but he’ll turn up for the last three and a half minutes?

The flash claims his vision, the signature ping resounds, and the air falls immediately silent as he stares at eyes that read eternity and burn solely for him.

“Would you mind explaining what the hell you’re doing?”

He takes a full ten seconds of his remaining few minutes to simply absorb his husband’s presence, the faint lines that crease his forehead, the unspoken despair and the silent love and the carvings of exhaustion, and it’s as though something snaps once more back into place in his soul; as though he’s finally returned home after a solid millennia of travelling, embraced instantly by recalled warmth and comfort and precious, precious familiarity.

... Perhaps he ought to be less furious.

“... War’s over then, I take it?” His voice cracks through the stagnant bridge, and for the briefest of moments, he forgets entirely that he’s voluntarily crashing to his own destruction.

Q’s gaze flickers, stricken, and he regards his spouse with disbelief, crouching before him.

“Hardly the moment.” He curls fingers around shaking ones, squeezes tightly. “Honestly, I leave you alone for five minutes -”

“Four years,” Picard intones, hollow, charcoal eyes ablaze. “Four, dammit.”

Q winces, digs finely manicured nails gently into aged skin with sorrow. “Bit difficult to keep track when the universe is falling apart, though I thought my dearly espoused was rather above the ultimate display of tragic hubris.”

“This isn’t arrogance,” Picard snaps in response, suddenly furious.

The god raises a brow, turns from him for a moment to consult the cosmos; he analyses the situation quietly, eyes falling shut before they wrench open in horror.

“... Oh,” he realises aloud, returning a pitying gaze to his husband. “Well, I was planning to take you for dinner, celebrate our reunion, but... it had to the Borg, of course. It was going to be magnificent, you know. All candles, oysters, Risan teal whiskey - imagine you’ve grown a little weary of the family vintage by now -”

Picard’s internal chronometer, borne of years of starship clockwork efficiency, ticks over to ninety seconds, and he’s kissing him with desperation, with the misery of parting, the anxiety of war, the coldness of a universe where no one else can ever quite understand -

It’s brief because it has to be, given the circumstances, but it’s no less intense for it, shot through on both sides with passion and need and loss and reestablished harmony; they break eventually, slipping back to rest foreheads together, and Q is breathless with pain as he whispers.

“My universe has already shattered once, Jean-Luc.”

Picard blinks against the tears that threaten, the anguish that engulfs him at the very thought.

“It’s the Borg, Q,” he explains simply, voice woven with apology.

“... And it doesn’t count for anything that I could click them to dust, I imagine, stop them threatening anyone ever again?”

He smiles warmly, bitterness rich - not at an entity who has been trying to save his people, he could never be angry at that. He’s trying to do the same, isn’t he? Always has. 

No, life is merely unfair, and it has to end eventually. 

“‘Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it,’” he quotes gently, and a rasp of a sob trips from Q’s tongue.

“Stupid, noble, self-sacrificing idiot,” he breathes, thumb running over the wedding ring unconsciously. “The shen ring, Jean-Luc; you’ve always admired the ancients. The symbol of eternal protection.”

A single tear slips down his cheek, a stammered exhale follows, and he locks eyes to his in true dread. “Please, darling - tell me we can still go for dinner.”

Everything in creation drowns in silence, even as the console roars at him that he’s thirty seconds from death; nothing matters but his words, his long-spoken promise - that his husband absolutely comprehends them.

“I’d be offended we didn’t, frankly,” he whispers. “Haven’t seen you in years, we’re rather overdue a catch-up.”

He kisses his brow tenderly, physically feels the permanence of the relief that bursts through the god; he has to make sure, nevertheless.

“Perhaps tomorrow, we could watch the meteor shower on Tansid VI.” He softly pulls Q’s thumb back to the wedding ring, to the tangibility of what it offers, the vow it proclaims, and runs his own preciously across it. “Croissants. Champagne. Different region, different grapes - I’m not quite bored of that one yet.”

“And the day after?” Q’s voice cracks, brittle as sand.

“Oh, moons of Tanothry Prime, I imagine. Driver’s choice. Though I’d quite enjoy a trip to the Magellanic Clouds, perhaps in a few centuries.”

Another sob, profound this time, raises, stuttered, from his immortal spouse.

“I reserve the right to make it hurt less.”

“Oh, please do, my love. My Thoth.”

Q stifles a laugh, so wondrously enamoured. “The Egyptian god of the dead, of magic and wisdom.”

“‘As for Thoth, he crosses the sky in my presence; I pass safely.’“

“Yes, you do,” the deity vows, adoration warming the severity of his features. “Nothing will ever have to hurt you again, darling.”

It’s a strange experience, dying without fear. He’d been so certain, so determined, but so very afraid.

“Ten seconds to impact,” the computer chimes, emotionless.

“I have a dog,” Picard tells his husband, eyes falling closed. “You wouldn’t much like his name.”

Q smiles tightly, clings to him.

“I do hope it isn’t mine,” he replies dryly, and the human chuckles as the ship ignites around them.

“Oh, it’s so much worse.” He beams tenderly at him, braces for impact. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Yeah,” Q breathes, caressing his ring, and together they burn.

#qcard #Jean-Luc Picard #Q #writing #tng #star trek picard #tapestry day #happy anniversary guys! <3

[btsonmymind]

Seoulmates : Chapter One

P A I R I N G : Model!Jungkook X Reader X ?(You’ll just have to read to find out ;))

G E N R E : Angst (if you squint very hard), Soulmate AU

W O R D  C O U N T : 2.3K

W A R N I N G S : None

S U M M A R Y : For thousands of years, the closer humans got to their soulmate a electric feeling shoots through the air. Only about 40% of the population will find their soulmate. The sparks you feel when the two souls meet is a give away, but what if there’s another way you could find your soulmate?

*BREAKING NEWS*

ACTRESS, LUNA YOUNG, FINDS HER SOULMATE ON A TRIP TO PARIS! SHE RECALLS THE PICTURE PERFECT MOMENT, “It was magical, a moment any girl would kill for.” STAY TUNED TO HEAR MORE ABOUT THIS ONCE IN A LIFETIME STORY. ONLY ON…

“Hey, I was watching that!” My best friend, Jimin, whipped his head in my direction, glaring at me. If looks could kill, I would be dead right now. Both of us were sitting on my couch watching the new channel for almost two hours. Jimin lived for those celebrity news shows, it was like a drug to him.

Throwing the remote on my coffee table, I shrugged my shoulders, “It was almost over anyways. Also, how do you even know she’s telling the truth? What if they are doing that for publicity? Science says it is a one in a million chance you would be able to find your soulmate anyways.”

Rolling his eyes, he turns his body toward me, “(Y/N), you are over exaggerating. It’s, like, one in a thousand. And, celebrities have money to travel and do all sorts of things, so it’s easier for them to find their soulmates.”

Sighing, I get up and walk to the kitchen. It’s really hard for “ordinary” people to find their soulmates. None of my family members ever found their “true love”, so they just married whomever they pleased. There are only a couple of stories of people actually finding their other half.

Everyone, who has found their soulmate, says the closer you are to them you get this tingly feeling, like electricity almost. And, the less distance between you and your “true partner” the stronger the sensation becomes. But it is hard for average people to find their “other half” because most of the time they live in other countries. Like Luna Young for example, she found her soulmate is Paris! She has the money to travel anywhere, at any time she wants. That’s why every month there is a new celebrity that found their soulmate.

Following me to the kitchen, he opens up my fridge and grabs two Cokes: one for me and one for him. “I just don’t get why you are so against finding your soulmate.”

“It’s because I don't want to waste my time and give my hopes up. If I find them, I find them. If I don’t, I don't. It’s not my dream to find my “one true love” and I’m not going to dedicate my whole life searching.” I crack open my drink and take a sip. The bubbly liquid going down my throat is nice and cold.

“Watch, with that attitude, you would be the first one in your family to find your soulmate.” He says with a slight attitude.

We sit there in silence, scrolling on our phones until Jimin speaks up again. “One of my mom’s friends is moving to Seoul next week. He’s going to be going to college with us. My mom wants us to show him around and to befriend him.”

He flips his phone to show me a picture of a guy around our age. I would be lying if I said he wasn’t the most attractive man I have ever seen. “Damn, he’s hot! What’s his name?”

“I think it’s like Sebastian... or something along those lines.” He shrugs his shoulders and continues to scroll through his phone.

Jimin and I start our first year of college next month and I couldn’t be more excited. Having the freedom of living on my own and not having my parents breathing down my neck 24/7 is life changing. Jimin made sure we both signed up for the same classes. For the most part we do except two classes, which I have to remember to make friends in.

Jimin and I have been best friends since we were 15. Jimin’s mother and father left South Korea when he was around 5 or 6 years-old. A couple months after arriving in California, his parents decided to open a bakery in the Los Angeles area: Cherry on Top. To this day it is still well-known and a popular spot for tourists to go.

Jimin and I first became friends our Freshman year of High School. He was always my seat partner in every class we had. So, being forced to talk to each other, we found out we had a lot in common. We've gotten closer and closer ever since.

Now for me, I’ve always lived in California. My father owns a popular modeling company in California: Star Modeling Agency. He travels all over the world recruiting new people to replace the old. But, recently, he has been traveling less. So, to continue his recruiting, he buys the recruiter their plane tickets to Cali. Father is trying to expand his company to South Korea. Having one in Los Angeles and the other in Seoul will double our income.

My father wanted to give Jimin a modeling gig, but Jimin politely declined. His dream was going to college and taking over his parents' business. So, in the future he wouldn’t have time to model and run a whole business at the same time.

Jimin and I had the same dream, except I was expected to take over the Agency. My father trained me all of my life. Yes, I could have skipped college and went straight into the business, but I wanted to experience college. Living in Korea, far away from my father, is too special to pass up.

After sitting around and doing nothing for another hour, it was time for Jimin to go home. “Text me when you get hime, so I know you made it there safely.”

Yanking me into a bear hug, he smiles “Yes mom…” He says in a mocking tone. I wave goodbye until I can’t see him anymore.

Going to my room, I get ready for bed. What if moving to Seoul is my chance to find my soulmate? What if Jimin was right that I’ll be the first one in my family to find my other half. “(Y/N) why are you even thinking about that?” I shake the obnoxious thoughts out of my head. Closing my eyes, I fall into a deep sleep.

*DREAM*

A GUYS LIPS CAME INTO MY LINE OF VISION. THE FLIRTATIOUS SMIRK ON HIS FACE TOLD ME THAT HE COULD HAVE ANYONE HE DESIRED. HIS FACE AND WAS FUZZY, BUT THE BACKGROUND WAS ALMOST HD.

“Who are you?” I REACHED OUT TO TOUCH HIS FACE, BUT BEFORE I COULD HE BACKED AWAY. I STOOD THERE AND WATCHED HIS BACK RETREAT UNTIL HE DISAPPEARED INTO A HAZY FOG.

Every night I would have that dream, my heart would be racing and my cheeks would be hot. I haven’t told Jimin about the dream, scared he would make fun of me or go on a rant about “soulmate this” or “soulmate that”. It’s not possible to see your soulmate in your dreams, especially if you haven’t met them. So, how could the guy in my dreams be my soulmate if I have never met him.

This is crazy! I don’t have a soulmate. It was only a dream, there could be a logical explanation to it. Should I tell Jimin? No, he’ll just overthink it. But, what if he is right and it is my soulmate. No, that’s just stupid. Stop thinking about it (Y/N)! I hit my head multiple times directing my attention to something else.

“Are you okay? You look like you’re going crazy,” Jimin looks up at me from his bowl of cereal, “Are you stressed about college? Did you forget something?”

Jimin and I sat in the back of my father’s car, riding quietly to the airport. A month has passed since I’ve seen him last. Both of us were dressed in a tank top and sweats. He had one of his airpods in his hands waiting for my response. It has been a month since I’ve last seen him. His hair has grown out a little, covering his eyes slightly.

Should I tell him? He is my best friend and I’m desperate for advice. “No. I packed, it’s just...if I tell you this, you have to promise me you will not tell a soul.” I whispered to him, so my father wouldn’t hear.

Nodding, he listens to every word I say. “I’ve been having a dream for the past month. It’s the same thing over and over. I’m standing there looking at a hazy face. But, the only thing I can see, clearly, is his lips. Also, he is smirking at me, which makes me feel hot all over. I try to reach out and touch his face but he chuckles deeply and turns around to leave. I can’t move or anything, I just watch him leave. The dream feels...real.”

He sits there staring at me, trying to process every word that shot from my mouth. “Let's be honest, after Luna came out with her soulmate, you have been trying to picture yours. I read on the internet that it’s completely normal to do that. It’s your brain trying to picture your soulmate for you.”

What Jimin tells me makes perfect sense. I’m trying to imagine what my “true love” looks like, so I can be satisfied with not meeting them. That’s the only logical explanation of my dream.

Groaning, I rub my face. Jimin can sense how bothered I am by it, so he changes the subject. “Hey look on the bright side, we are almost to the airport! A new beginning is waiting for us.”

I am excited. It is an opportunity to go to Korea where no one knows who I am. And, everyone who knows my name won’t associate it with my father.

Father did a great job by keeping me out of the camera’s eye as I was growing up. But, once I became a High schooler everything changed. Kids only became my friends, so they can get a contract with my dad. Jimin was and still is my only true friend.

The closer we got to the airport, I started feeling weird. It was like I was having constant shivers. I wrap my arms around my body, curling into my knees.

Looking at me worried, Jimin asks, “(Y/N)? Are you okay?” He rests his hand on my shoulder, lightly squeezing. The feeling is so hard to explain.

“Yeah, just a little cold.” I chuckled. I reached in my bag and yanked out my flannel jacket.

Jimin looks at me questionly, but ignores it and goes back to listening to his music. Looking out the window, I watch the cars zoom pass. Looking at my father drive, I wonder if he’s happy that I am leaving? I know he doesn’t hate me, but a part of me knows he is more relaxed with me gone. Father told me before that this is a great opportunity for me and that I should get used to Seoul, whatever that means. It was always just my dad and I. My mother left us when I was around 3 or 4. My father has always told me that I look just like her, and I think that is a part of the reason why he wants me gone so much.

I never knew the reason why my mother left us, my father never told me either. So, as I grew older I just let it go.

The closer the three of us got to the airport, the stronger the chills got. It was almost like needles pricking my skin. I was interrupted by my father speaking, “We are here,” he shifts in the seat to look at me, “I can’t get out because of the-”

“Paperazzi. Yeah, I know.” I rolled my eyes. Two security guards opened the truck of the SUV getting Jimin and I’s baggage. Jimin was standing waiting for me.

Before I could open the car door, my father spoke, “Text me when you get there, okay?”

I nodded and got out of the car. Jimin and I walked side by side. Both of us put our sunglasses on  one the flashing began. The paparazzi yelled questions at both Jimin and I. With both of our heads held high we walked to our gate. The security guards helped us until we were safe inside the plane. As we walked, the chills got worse. Now feeling like energy crackling around me, I double over. Jimin grabbed my arm leading me onto the plane.

Once we sat down in our seats, Jimin grabbed my face so I could look at him. “Are you okay?” His eyes are blown wide, staring me down.

Grabbing his wrists, I reassure him, “I am fine Jimin. My stomach started cramping up, that's all.”

Throughout the whole plane ride the electric feeling stayed the same. I could tell Jimin was worried about me, so every so often I would squeeze his hand and smile up at him. I couldn’t have been happier when we landed. Putting shades on top of my head, I walked out of the plane, Jimin following me.

“I’ll go get our suitcases. Just stay right here.” I nod at Jimin, watching him leave. The shivers were back but that’s the only “pain” I am feeling. As I stood there waiting for Jimin. The electric feeling came back tenfold. Turning around I brace myself on the wall closest to me. Leaning on my left side I wrap my arms around my body. Can this feeling please stop. The feeling is getting worse. Should I go look for Jimin? Debating whether or not I should, I decided to go look for him. Whipping around, I hit right into a chest.

Right when I look up into the person’s eyes I feel like the time has stopped and everything is in slow motion. The sensations I am having feel like sparks. I’m pretty sure if you look close enough you can see the sparks shooting from our bodies.

The man that is holding me is smiling from ear to ear. Before I can comprehend what is happening, the fine male staring into my eyes speaks up.

“Hello, my name is Jungkook. And, what is your name, soulmate?” He stares into my eyes and smirks.

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{A.N.}

Hello guys!!! Thank you so much for reading! Chapter 2 will be out as soon as I finish writing it !!!

#bts scenarios #bts #bts reaction #namjoon #kim namjoon #bts namjoon #RM #seokjin #kim seokjin #bts kim seokjin #BTS suga #suga #min yoongi #yoongi #bts yoongi #hobi #Jung HoSeok #hoseok #bts hoseok #jimin #park jimin #BTS jimin #taehyung #bts kim taehyung #kim taehyung #jungkook #BTS jungkook #jeon jungkook #bts imagines #bts smut

[bananafishmetas]

Random and Various Banana Fish metas

I think, more than anything, whether Ash intended to kill the baseball coach or not, and yeah, like you said, he was more than jusified in killing that monster, he was simply too young to understand the full consequences or implications of what killing a person actually was.  An eight year old might have a vague, undefined understanding of what death is, but they can’t fully grasp the reality of it, the finality of it, etc… So I think, even if Ash took the gun with the full intention of using it to kill the baseball coach, he couldn’t possibly have had a full comprehension of what killing another person actually meant, and that’s important to understand.  There’s a reason they don’t hold a child really responsible even when they kill another person.  Their brains aren’t fully developed, and because of that you can’t expect them to fully grasp the consequences of taking another life.

I also don’t think there was any malicious motivation behind Ash’s killing here.  This wasn’t a “revenge” killing, but simply the desperate act of a child who knew and had no other way to defend himself, because nobody else was helping him, and he probably feared that, eventually, if he didn’t do something, he would be killed himself.  Him paying the baseball coach may have kept the guy from killing him right away, but still, the guy was a child murderer, on top of being a child rapist.  When you have those kinds of sick, twisted urges, more likely than not, you’re eventually going to give into them.  I think the baseball coach would have killed Ash eventually, and Ash knew that, or had an idea of it.  On top of which, he obviously just wanted the rape to stop.  I can’t even imagine how horrific it all must have been, especially with knowing his own father wouldn’t and couldn’t do anything to help.  I guess one of the saddest things then is how Ash was forced into doing something as traumatizing as killing someone when he was too young to even really understand what that meant.  What that must have done to him emotionally and mentally, how that must have damaged him, is heartbreaking to think about.  

Also, it’s interesting that the original text doesn’t contain the line “When I came back one day.”.  I never thought Ash had followed the coach to his house, but that this had clearly become a routine, where he came for Ash, either during little league, or just simply took Ash off the street and brought him to his house to rape him, and then sent him away.  This is also confirmed by Ash’s dad saying the coach had “dragged Ash to his house a few times after that.” The exclusion of that line in the original text just confirms that then, that the coach brought Ash to his house on his own, clearly intending to rape him again, when Ash shot him.  Well, that’s confirmed also by the panel of Ash sitting up in the bed with his shirt open.  Ash must have known that the coach would at some point come and take him, bring him to his house and rape him again, because he’d done it multiple times already.  And so he took his father’s gun because he didn’t know what else to do to stop it.  Nobody was helping him, nobody was offering him any kind of protection.  Ash had the gun with him as a means of defense at that point.  He took it to protect himself for when another, inevitable attack would occur, rather then to seek the coach out with the sole purpose of killing him.  He didn’t follow the coach, hide, and then jump out and shoot him.   He didn’t attack the coach first.   He used the gun only after the coach had him on the bed and had begun to undress him.  Only when he was already in the process of being, again, sexually assaulted. That’s purely self-defense, not a malicious intent to murder.  

You have to think Ash must have been terrified, when he realized what had happened.  After his experience with the police before, them not only not believing him about what his coach had done to him, but then blaming him for it, and then with how useless and incompetent his own father was in protecting him, that’s when he decided to run away from home, probably scared he would be blamed again and punished, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong.  The whole set of circumstances must have set off the notion in Ash that he HAD done something wrong though, given the way he was treated by all of the adults around him.  That, coupled with the horror of seeing a person shot to death and bleeding out on the floor, knowing that you had caused it, along with all the trauma of the repeated sexual assault, would have caused irrevocable damage to Ash’s mental and emotional state.  Trauma so deep, it no doubt would have affected him at even a subconscious level.  Just this one experience alone would have been enough to probably require a lifetime of therapy to deal with.  As it was for Ash, he ended up being plunged into a world of nonstop nightmares and hellish misery for the rest of his life, suffering trauma after trauma, all easily on par with what happened in Cape Cod.  I don’t think people ever stop to really, fully comprehend the kind of hell Ash went through in his life.  If they did, they might understand better why it was he chose to die in the end.

//

ash-in-the-rye

You’re going to shoot yourself in the head. If you do, I’ll swear never to lay a finger on him. Can you do it?

This scene is so heartbreaking.  Jeeze man.  There’s no hesitation.  No fear even.  Just acceptance, because Eiji’s life means more to him, Eiji’s safety means more to him, than his own ever will.

Yut-Lung’s shock too.  He doesn’t at all expect Ash to actually do it because he doesn’t understand selfless love, while Ash embodies the concept here.  Despite thinking he knows who Ash is, this stone cold killing machine who feels nothing, Yut-Lung is completely wrong.  He gets angry afterward because he doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand how Ash could love Eiji this much, because Yut-Lung himself has never loved anyone, and because he was desperate to prove that Ash was just like him, and instead, Ash proves to him how they’re nothing alike at all.  I think it’s interesting too, because what Yut-Lung is trying to do, besides just his petty jealousy driving him to want to take away from Ash something he himself doesn’t have, is he’s trying to use Ash to replace his own brother’s as an enemy, to give Yut-Lung’s own, empty existence meaning, something, or someone, to define himself against.  He tries to force Ash into that role, just like all of Ash’s other abusers, seeing Ash as not a person, but as a thing that exists solely to fulfill Yut-Lung’s own needs.  Trying to shape Ash into this heartless monster for his own pleasure and sanity.  But that isn’t who Ash is, and he refuses to be anyone’s puppet anymore.  Yut-Lung doubles down on his efforts to rip Eiji away from Ash after this, letting his petty jealousy roar out of control because he wants to punish Ash for daring to defy the role Yut-Lung has chosen for him.  This goes back to what we see Ash say about his abusers throughout the story, that they always get angry when he dares to fight them off, like they can’t believe he would dare to ruin their fantasy.  This is exactly what Yut-Lung does too.  

I think, in the end, when Yut-Lung finally understands that Ash isn’t like him at all, and he never will be, when he finally accepts that, that’s when we see him give up the game of trying to make Ash into what he wants and lets him be, which is more than you can say for most of the people who abused Ash.  At least Yut-Lung could accept it, finally, and stop.  I think, in a way, he was able to, because Ash himself never really held any hatred towards Yut-Lung.  He never wanted to hurt Yut-Lung, not really.  We see Ash say to Cain, after the standoff in the museum, “I should have killed him when I had the chance.”, and Ash has this resigned, sad smile on his face as he says this.  There’s no anger there, no disgust even.  Just a quiet exhaustion and acceptance.  Like he knows Yut-Lung could very well be his demise (and tragically he is, if inadvertently), but even then, Ash feels no real malice about it.  He just looks tired. He just wanted to be left alone.  And I think, in his own, screwed up way, Yut-Lung could sense that, could sense that Ash, despite all that Yut-Lung had done to him, never really hated him, and maybe Yut-Lung even felt some gratitude for it, and was able to realize his own pettiness and cruelty for trying to hurt someone who had never hurt him.

//

emeraldeyes23

I love this scene from the manga where Ibe’s crying for Ash. Sadly his feelings towards Ash just don’t come through in the anime...

I guess you can’t just animate every little scene😔

ash-in-the-rye

Ibe represents the whole fandom here.

cosmicjoke

This is one of my favorite scenes, and one of the moments that stuck out the most to me in Banana Fish.  Ash tells them he’s sending Ibe and Eiji back to Japan soon, and talks about himself in the usual, self-deprecating way which defines so much of how he sees himself, when he says Eiji will be okay because he’ll “be sick of me” by the time they go back.  

Ibe’s heartbreak over Ash is so vivid, and captures the sense of tragedy in Ash we all see and feel in such a raw, visceral way.  He sees what a good person Ash is, how self-sacrificing he is, how much he gives up to help all of them.  He isn’t blind in his perception of Ash like most of the other characters in the story, seeing Ash either as some sort of dangerous, devil-like animal, or some emotionless object to be possessed.  He sees Ash for who he really is, is aware of Ash’s innate kindness and even sweetness, and it breaks his heart, because he also knows how alone Ash is, and how none of them can really help him, the way he so readily helps them.  Ibe grows emotional after Ash tells him how much he wishes he could have seen the pictures he took of Eiji, and there’s such a profound sense of wistful, longing melancholy to Ash’s words, the naked dream of a better life, which he knows he can never have, but still expresses a desire for.  He sees how Ash doesn’t begrudge them for it, despite that.  How he doesn’t hold it against them, for having what he doesn’t.  Instead he’s happy for them, and hopes they continue to live a good, long life.  This is in such stark contrast to how Ash is expecting to die soon himself, and I think Ibe can sense that too.  He starts to cry because he sees how deeply Ash cares about the people around him, and how willing he is to give up everything to help them have what he doesn’t.  It’s the definition of selflessness.  He says “When I think how he must feel, doing this- I just, you know…”  He knows how hard this is for Ash, sending Eiji and him back to Japan, how much of a loss it is for Ash, but how willingly he’s doing it because keeping them safe and giving them the opportunity to live is more important to him than his own happiness.  Ibe cries, because it hurts him to see someone so good thinking so little of himself, dismissing his own wants and needs as unimportant.  It hurts him to see such a good kid in so much pain, and yet, despite that pain, having a heart so big and generous, he wants and fights for others to have that long, better life that he knows is impossible for himself.  

Really, this is the defining quality of Ash’s goodness.  

Even in his own suffering, loneliness, hopelessness and pain, he was never jealous, or resentful, or angry at others for having what he didn’t, or couldn’t.  Freedom, friendship, love, hope, happiness.  A normal, long, peaceful life.  Rather, he sought to protect that life for them.  Something which for him had only ever been a distant dream.  If he could  give them that thing he had always longed for, but never had, then to Ash, that was worth every sacrifice of himself.

“He’s a good kid.  He’s such a good kid, you know…”

//

Anonymous asked:

Hi:) May I ask what your personal interpretation of the Bf ending is? Did Ash chose to die or not? If he did, what do you think was the reason for his decision? And did he believe Eiji's letter? Sorry if this has been asked before and I bother you with these questions...

silverquillsideas answered:

Hello Anons! It’s not a bother at all! Thanks for asking! I’ll club these two together since there’s going to be a lot of overlapping parts.

I feel like the more I try to delve deeper into why and how the ending was written the way it was, the more number of interpretations open up. I’ve talked about my views on the ending in the above posts, and as for whether he believed Eiji’s letter, my answer is yes, definitely. I’ll elaborate why below.

First off, when I read the manga and later, GoL, it always occurred to me that Ash’s death wasn’t immediate, that he had time to drag himself back to the library and collapse slowly from blood loss, and the same is repeated by Sing in his musings in GoL “in the long long hours before death, as blood slowly drained out of your body”….so, I believe that the stab wasn’t lethal, and that Ash’s death was, ultimately, by his choice.

Now coming to why he chose what he did. These interpretations are entirely my own, and they are called ‘interpretations’ for a reason, there will be other equally valid points held by the fandom, and that’s completely okay. This is just how I see it. I re-read the manga recently, and this time, I tried to look closer at all the subtle hints at how the ending was kind of… foreshadowed in a way?

I’ll begin with the way Ash was constructed as a character : he was multifaceted, complex, a genius with superhuman reflexes and intellect, he rejected all kinds of authority and the law, since he never had reason to trust them all his life. Ash conditioned himself to be ruthless and put on a hard front at all times, since that was the only way he could have survived in the world he was thrown into from the tender age of seven or eight. He used his physical beauty as a weapon, a shield to disarm opponents, so that they never got any hint of his lethal side until it was too late; it was simply another tool in his fight for survival. Eiji is probably one of the first and only ones to get a measure of what Ash really is like, by the time we get to the arc of Shorter’s death. He comments on this :

Curiously enough, we, as readers get to know this along with Eiji, that Ash has this duality to him : on one hand, he is the cold and ruthless killer and gang-boss, the wild, untamable Ash Lynx. on the other hand, only with Eiji, he can be the carefree 17 year old Aslan, the little boy Griff loved, who’s scared of pumpkins and gets flustered when teased, and loves to bicker with Eiji over silly things.

Its this humane side of Ash we all latch onto. The facade of a killer that Ash has to put on for the rest of the world, falls apart when he’s with Eiji, and we can see that : we realise that it’s a shield he has to hold up for his survival so that the truly compassionate, softer side of him can survive. Eiji sees through it, we see through it. But does Ash? His self image is exceedingly negative.

This becomes a recurring point of arguments between Eiji and Ash throughout the manga. A constant pull and push of opinions on who Ash truly is, who he can be. Eiji tries so hard to pull out the humane side of Ash, the one who is Aslan, back to the surface, so that Ash Lynx may not forget who he really once was. Eiji lets Ash be vulnerable, he makes him laugh, allows him to be silly, he tells him that it’s okay to be scared, to be hurt, because Ash is deeply hurt, only he has trained himself to never acknowledge that even to himself.

Does Ash consider himself entirely worthless? I beg to differ. He relies on his intelligence, his skills and capabilities, and he had confidence in them. He has his gang members to protect and lead, even before Eiji shows up. He has his pride as a boss, and his constant refusal to be controlled by Dino or other characters who hold authority (and consequently, abuse their powers to further their own greed).

But was that enough to hold out till the end? More than the battles with Dino or Mannerheim or Foxx, I think Ash had to fight bigger battles with himself, about his own perception of what it means to be accepting of who you are as a person, and what you choose to believe in within yourself. Throughout the manga, we see this constant warring : we have literally everyone telling him that keeping Eiji by his side, is him being selfish, that Eiji isn’t there to salvage Ash’s guilt, that letting him go would be better for both of them. And Ash is conflicted, he wants to have this connection, this friendship with Eiji above all else, it becomes his single motivator in the entire second half of the manga : to protect and keep Eiji safe

By the time Yut Lung manipulates Ash into giving up Banana Fish and go into Dino’s captivity for Eiji’s safety, Ash is already too far gone on his bond with Eiji. he pulls the trigger without a moment’s hesitation. If it meant keeping a loved one safe at the cost of his own death, Ash was ready to make that choice, perhaps for a very long time.

Ash was someone whose actions always did the talking. The fact that he had allowed himself to care, to demand or crave for himself the comfort of a selfless friendship, or even love, is more of an indicator of him slowly growing to value himself as a person, to try and love himself a little more. He acknowledges this openly to Blanca : that there is nothing that made him happier than being with Eiji, of knowing that at least one person in the world had tried to see himself for who he really was, had tried to make Ash see that too.

The conversation between Ash and Eiji about the leopard in the mountaintop, about Ash’s views on death and what it means to live, is one of my favourite moments in the manga. Ash had never feared death, but he had never wanted to die himself. Even though, at numerous points in his life, death had seemed like a peaceful, enticing alternative, compared to the hell he was going through. Ash states that he views himself as the leopard, trudging on and on upwards to the summit, until it collapsed. His conflict was on whether the leopard was facing downwards or up? Was he trying to came back home, or simply go on until he could no longer carry on?

The journey of the leopard paralleled Ash’s own. All his life, he had been forced to go on a steep, uphill climb, against whatever harsh trials his life threw at him. In the end, would he be too tired to carry on? Too tired that he would want to give up? Or Would he still have the strength to try and find his way back down?

Eiji pulls him back once more : he reminds Ash of his own humanity, that people were not obligated to remain as the leopard in the story forever. In the end, we are all human beings who can have a choice, to find our way back home. And Ash, after a thoughtful pause, agrees with him.

But agreeing with an idea on principle is a far cry from putting that into practice.

As the arcs progress, Eiji gets shot, and Blanca again harshly reminds him of what his reality was, that Ash and Eiji’s worlds were, as he saw, too far apart for them to exist together. And Ash is torn by guilt. His one objective, of keeping Eiji safe, had somehow started backfiring. He pleads with God, to take him instead, in exchange for Eiji’s safety. And that was when I personally got the foreshadowing, that maybe the ending could only be either one way or the other.

It’s interesting that Eiji voices almost identical words, that he’d take Ash’s place any day if he could, that he wished Ash would never have to hold a gun anymore, before he takes a bullet for Ash without a minute’s hesitation

There was always a residual sense of guilt with both Ash and Eiji about Shorter’s death. Eiji breaks down crying in front of Sing, and he wasn’t even an instigator in all the events that happened. I can’t imagine how much more Ash would’ve been carrying around with the knowledge that he was the one to pull the trigger, under extreme duress or otherwise.

That brings me to the involvement of Lao. Shorter’s death had triggered a mistrust between the Chinese gang and Ash. Even though Sing, because of knowing the truth, had ceased blaming Ash altogether, Lao didn’t go anywhere near. His only goal was to protect his brother, and his hatred for Ash magnified when Ash pointed a trigger on Sing in the mad rampage immediately after Eiji was shot. Sing understood Ash’s rage, and he apologized and desperately attempted to make up for what he saw as a ‘betrayal’ from the Chinese side. But Lao, stubbornly refused to acknowledge Ash, even though Sing tried multiple times to reason with him. Had Yut Lung’s childish grudge against Eiji not prompted him to abuse Lao’s familial ties with Sing, had Lao been more reasonable, had Sing communicated with him better after the end of all the fighting…. The list of ‘what ifs’ go on.

In the end, Ash’s decision was prompted by all these moments adding up together. He had vowed just the day before to Blanca, that this time, he’d never see Eiji again, in order to keep him from harm’s way. Did that mean that ultimately he never learnt to love himself? That’s difficult to answer.

I believe that to some extent, he did realise how much he was valued as a person : by his friends, his gang, Max, Blanca, Cain, Shorter, and most of all Eiji. He never admitted out loud how much Eiji meant to him and vice versa, but it was always proven by their actions and confirmed by the words of those who were close to them.

Ash knew how much it hurt him to see Eiji wounded because of him, and I get the inkling that he could at least guess that Eiji would be equally devastated if their places were reversed. But he ultimately chose to eliminate himself from the equation : the solution, according to him, that would keep all the danger away from everyone he wanted to keep safe. That is the dark side of love, of how far you’re willing to go to protect those you hold dear.

Just as Eiji took the bullet for him, just as Ash himself had no hesitation in pulling the trigger back then, I see this last choice also as a final act of sorts, keeping good on his prayer to God : Eiji’s safety in exchange for his own. It wasn’t a perfect decision by any means, there were n number of ways a different choice could’ve been as good, but I feel than in his final moments, Ash was really too weary to keep on pushing forward.

It brings me to your question, anon, in the end, was love enough to save him from himself? Did Eiji’s constant attempts to bring out Aslan, win out against the shackles Ash Lynx put on himself?

In those few moments immediately after reading Eiji’s letter, we see the way Ash reacts : his eyes fill with hope, disbelief, love, and a hundred other emotions as all thoughts other than Eiji’s words flee his mind. Eiji’s reference to the leopard was especially important : he gave Ash a reminder, once more, that even lost souls have a way of coming back home, and that one’s humaneness was something we discover throughout our whole lives, it’s not just expressed by a handful of actions. Eiji reminded Ash once more, that it was okay to hope, to dream, and to live for himself. And that was what prompted Ash to take off running. In those few moments, it really looked as if Ash had finally broken free of all that was holding him back.

But at the end of it all, I feel that Ash Lynx won out. The question of saving us from ourselves, of realising our self worth, is a complex one. Ash was happy in the simple knowledge that Eiji had loved him back unconditionally. All his life, it was the one thing he had never received, and in his final moments, that mere confirmation was like a closure of sorts for him. It wasn’t fair to either of them, but it was how things finally ended.

In an ideal world, we’d have no doubt seen Ash and Eiji having their happy forever after, given everything that happened, but sadly, the author chose to write in Lao, as if to prove a point : that more often than not, dreams and reality are separated by just one moment of carelessness, one second of letting your guard down, and for Ash, that moment was fatal.

ash-in-the-rye

Beautifully written♥

cosmicjoke

One thing you bring up too, which I think is really important in understanding why Ash let himself die in the end, and wanted to examine more, is the weight of his guilt.  Particularly, you mention Shorter’s death, and Ash’s role in that death.  Ash HAD to kill Shorter in order to save Eiji (which ties into what you were saying about the lengths Ash would go to in order to protect Eiji and keep him safe).  Even at this fairly early point in the story, we already see how much Eiji means to Ash.  I remember when Ash is chained up and being tortured by Arthur, when they bring Eiji into the room, Ash gets this incredibly warm, loving look on his face when he sees him, calling out his name, palpably relieved to see Eiji is alive and okay.  Ash already loves Eiji at this point, I think.  So when he’s forced into this situation where he has to watch his best friend gone insane with the drugs coursing through his veins, thrown into a murderous rage against Eiji by it and the people who have done this to him, Ash is made to make one of the hardest decisions of his life.  Either let his best friend kill Eiji, or save Eiji by killing Shorter.  

Ash was no doubt already consumed by guilt over the fact that he’d let both Shorter and Eiji get involved in all of this in the first place.  If you remember, near the beginning, when Ash first escapes bail and is looking for Shorter in Chinatown, he tells Shorter that he wants him to stay out of what’s going on between him and Dino and Arthur.  Shorter flat out refuses, even using emotional manipulation on Ash by making him feel guilty over Skip and “all the others” who have died for “such a pig headed boss”.  Ash doesn’t want Shorter or Eiji involved at this point, because he knows how dangerous it’s going to be, going up against Dino.  He’s ready to take that fight up on his own, WANTS to take it up on his own, because he doesn’t want anyone outside of himself getting hurt.  We already see a self-sacrificial tendency in Ash from the very beginning.  He does the same when he goes after Skip and Eiji after Arthur’s boys have abducted them.  Ash, without hesitation, gives himself up to Arthur when Arthur threatens to shoot Eiji.  Ash doesn’t even know Eiji at this point.  He literally just met him a few minutes before.  Ash from the start showed a willingness to trade his own life for those he loved and cared about, and even those who he didn’t know, but who he deemed innocent.  It’s important to note here too how Ash tells Shorter’s guys to let the assassin go that’s been sent for him, and Shorter is miffed and scolds Ash for “playing softball” still.  Ash tells Shorter there’s no need for it, that it would only cause more trouble for them.  Ash, even before he really gets to know Eiji or has Eiji as an influence in his life, shows a powerful moral conscience.  He doesn’t want to hurt or kill anybody he doesn’t have to, and acts in ways entirely selfless in nature to protect people he cares about and even just people that were roped in by accident, like Eiji.  Anyway, Ash gives in to Shorter’s manipulation, even saying he feels like he’s been “had”, but not refusing Shorter’s demands.

Tie this back to later down the line, when Shorter’s been forced into betraying Ash by Yut-Lung by threatening to kill Nadia, and it’s all of Ash’s worst fears from the start come to fruition.  Ash was afraid of this very outcome, which is why he didn’t want anyone involved in the first place.  Now he has to watch as Shorter is driven insane by the very same drug which turned his own brother into a vegetable, and make a split second decision to end Shorter’s life in order to save another, and to release Shorter from the pain of his suffering.  Ash did nothing wrong here.  He did the only thing he could.  But, think about what it must have been like, knowing you’ve just killed your best friend.  That your best friend is dead by your hand.  Ash looks at his hands immediately after he’s done it, like he can see the blood on them, his expression one of stricken grief and horror.  

Ash could only have thought, at this point, that all of this was his fault.  That if he had just stuck to his guns a little harder, and refused to let Shorter or Eiji get involved like he had originally been planning, then none of this would have ever happened.  That just serves to amplify the already overwhelming sense of guilt Ash feels over having killed Shorter with his own hands.  Ash would have felt awful guilt already, even if it had been someone else to end Shorter’s life.  But it’s made exponentially worse by him being forced to choose between two people he loved.  

Ash’s reaction afterward, the way he begins sobbing, and begging Arthur to end his life then and there, tells you everything about what the weight of that decision does to Ash.  It overwhelms him with so much grief and guilt, that he wants in that moment to die.  He’s in so much pain, that he wants to die.  It’s the first and I think only time we see Ash actually beg someone to kill him.  We see Ash risk his life plenty of times to save others, but here he wants to be killed, he actively seeks to have his life ended, because he’s just had to do the worst thing imaginable, and already doubtless blames himself for the situation arising at all.  The weight of Shorter’s death, and the guilt he feels over it, nearly destroys Ash in that moment.

Later still, when Ash finds Shorter’s mutilated corpse in that science lab, his reaction is just as extreme.  He collapses to his knees, beginning to sob and asking in a lost, horrified voice “What did you do to him?”, before he falls into a kind of detached state, his eyes streaming tears, but vacant in their expression as he shoots Dawson until the clip of his gun is empty.  This parallels Ash’s reaction to Sing’s men after they shoot Eiji, when Ash empties the clip of his gun into them, here showing extreme rage instead of empty shock.  After Ash kills Dawson, his emotions come flooding back in, and once more he collapses to his knees and just SCREAMS.  At the top of his lungs, Ash just lets loose a primal roar of grief and despair over what’s happened, over what he thinks he let happen, and over what he’s done.  This moment right here… this is when you knew Ash probably wasn’t going to ever, really be okay, not with himself.

I don’t think Ash ever got over this, and I don’t know if he ever could have.  Ash feels extreme guilt and remorse and pain over every life he’s taken, even as he’s convinced himself he doesn’t feel anything, simply because he’s trained himself not to be aware of those emotions while he’s in the act of killing.  Again, this is done as a survival mechanism because, if he’d allowed himself feel what he really did in those moments of life or death, he wouldn’t have been able to make himself kill, and he himself would have met his end long before if he hesitated like that in the world he lives in.  This kill or be killed world.  The tragedy of Ash hating himself because he sees himself as an emotionless monster who can’t feel anything when he takes a life is that it’s so untrue.  Ash was never emotionless.  He always felt too much.  He was overwhelmed by his sense of guilt and was never able to forgive himself for the lives he took, no matter how justified he was in taking them.

I think this relates back to Ash’s incredible intelligence, actually.  While Ash’s genius level IQ helped him survive all these years, it also, ironically, also ended up being his undoing.  Extremely, highly intelligent people like Ash are very often extremely sensitive.  They feel and absorb things at a much deeper level than people who aren’t as smart.  That’s where the idea comes from that being smart is painful, that it’s easier to be dumb.  Really smart people are often depressed because they see so much into things, and feel so deeply for it.  We don’t see the other characters in the story who kill nearly as guilt ridden or troubled by their actions as Ash is.  We don’t see them weighed down in the same way, or unable to move on and forgive themselves the way Ash is unable to forgive himself, unable to justify his actions.  Even as the other characters try to make Ash be more accepting of himself, and not feel so bad about everything, like when Cain tells Ash to stop giving himself such a hard time, telling him he’s a good friend and a great boss.  Ash doesn’t believe it.  He can’t.  

It’s ironic, again, that Ash has been convinced that he doesn’t feel anything, because the heartbreaking reality is, he feels more than all of them.  He cares too much, feels too much, and that’s why he can’t unburden himself from his guilt and grief and the trauma’s of his past.   In the end, it’s too heavy a burden to keep carrying up the mountain, and it’s in the knowledge of Eiji’s love, of knowing he’s somehow attained true and unconditional acceptance from another person, despite the hatred he feels for himself, that I think Ash finally found permission to at last place that burden down and find release from his pain.

Source: silverquillsideas

Banana Fish

Ash Lynx

Shorter Wong

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Commentary

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potato-in-glasses

bananaflavoredfish

Fly Boy in the Sky Appreciation Post

Credit goes to @treesha-san for providing these Fly Boy in the Sky English scanlations

Re-reading Fly Boy and thinking about how the reason why Eiji is so empathetic—the reason why he was easily able to see the lonliness hidden underneath Ash's facade of being an "intimidating gang leader" unlike anyone else had, was because he saw a piece of himself in Ash on some level. He too, had been doing the same exact thing in Japan. Putting up a front to dismiss any worries people may have about him, suppressing his emotions, isolating himself from the world...when Ibe first meets Eiji, he is almost completely closed off from others, focusing primarily on pole vaulting alone.

Over the course of Banana Fish, we see many instances of Eiji being compelled to watch over Ash from a far as well. One of the most prominent instances of this is when Eiji decides to go visit Ash at the library after their first argument. An experience he ends up sharing with Ibe in greater detail on the plane home to Japan.

In both instances, Ibe/Eiji can understand their pain for what it truly is, resulting in a powerful desire to protect the person they care for and admire.

Further along in Fly Boy, Eiji steadily begins to let his walls down, allowing himself the freedom to open up to Ibe's camera lense—and by extension, Ibe himself.

It should be noted that up until this point, Ibe has only experienced the Eiji tied down by anxiety and doubt, which explains why his description of Eiji as "a cat in the sky" is so significant here. Typically, cat symbolism is exclusively associated with Ash but in this case, it extends to Eiji as well. Mirroring Ash, Eiji was also a land-bound animal who was shackled to his fears/hesitation. It is only when he's finally able to break away from the things tethering him that he is able to essentially overcome the impossible and soar through the sky.

Ibe came into the picture at a time when Eiji felt extremely lost and his self-esteem was arguably at its lowest. Ibe was the one who believed in Eiji's potential when he felt everyone had either given up on him or were close to doing so. And it was Ibe who wanted him to realize his own tremendous worth more than anything. So it only make sense that his presence would serve as the catalyst for Eiji becoming more forthright in his actions.

This scene, to me, is also very reminiscent of Eiji's words to Ash when comforting him as he struggles to cope with the aftermath of Shorter's death.

Personally, I am of the opinion that it was Ibe's strong faith in Eiji during such a turbulent time in his life that likely inspired him to want to be that person for Ash even if he wasn't fully aware of it—someone who would never give up on him despite the odds. Eiji would've known better than anyone how suffocating it is to feel like there's nobody on your side and how empty said lonliness warps you. Because of Ibe, Eiji was finally able to find hope within himself and turn his life around. He has experienced what an immense impact just one person can make on someone's perspective. Now, he wishes to convey the same to Ash, who coincidently even states this Blanca.

In conclusion, Shunichi Ibe is a criminally underrated character and we should all love him a heck of a lot more.

ash-in-the-rye

THIS.

cosmicjoke

One of the lines that stuck out the most to me in Banana Fish was during the scene when Ash goes to see Max and Ibe, right before his fight with Arthur.  Ash tells them he’s sending Ibe and Eiji back to Japan soon, and talks about himself in the usual, self-deprecating way which defines so much of how he sees himself, when he says Eiji will be okay because he’ll “be sick of me” by the time they go back.  He leaves then, and Max and Ibe both sense that whatever Ash is going to do is dangerous and even life threatening.  Ibe than starts to cry, and Max asks him what’s wrong, and Ibe says, about Ash, “He’s such a good kid.  He’s just such a good kid.”.  Ibe sees what a good person Ash is, how self-sacrificing he is, how much he gives up to help all of them, just like Eiji.  He isn’t blind in his perception of Ash like most of the other characters in the story, seeing Ash either as some sort of dangerous, devil-like animal, or some emotionless object to be possessed.  He sees Ash is truly just a young boy who cares deeply about the people around him, and is willing to give up everything to help them.  He cries, because it hurts him to see someone so good thinking so little of himself, dismissing his own wants and needs as unimportant.  It hurts him to see such a good kid in so much pain.  I think this fits with what the OP is saying here, about how it was Ibe’s ability to see Eiji’s own pain and vulnerability which then allowed Eiji to see Ash’s.  Ibe sees it in Ash too, but of course, Eiji is the one who allows Ash to be that boy without fear, who allows Ash to feel human and truly accepted for who he is without expectation or demand.  Who makes Ash feel like he doesn’t have to be someone he’s not.

//

The four men who loved Ash- Rebirth translation

Every guy that met Ash was fascinated by him, but they all loved him in their own way. Let’s try to examine those four men.

- Banana Fish Official Guidebook Rebirth

More translation here tagged banana fish rebirth

Ash was born with exceptional intelligence, talent and an attractive appearance. But having natural good looks turn out to be harmful, as he grows up bearing sexual abuse starting from the early childhood. He stops believing in love from adults entirely, instead he learns how to live by using adults. It goes without saying his biggest patron is Golzine. With his plentiful resources and great authority, Golzine tries to control Ash physically and mentally, his body and spirit.

On the other hand, by letting Ash interact with the street kids it seems like Golzine is giving Ash freedom, but that is only freedom under Golzine’s range of control - it’s like the master letting his dog run in a dog park.

First Golzine saw him as nothing else than a sex object and a toy boy lover, but when he found out Ash’s talent and potential he started to raise him as his heir.

While it’s a very distorted form of love, Golzine was enchanted by Ash and in a sense he loved Ash enough to risk his life for him.

It could be said Ash’s abilities changed Golzine. In a way, Blanca implements Golzine’s ideal “Ash”. When Blanca started as Ash’s tutor by Golzine’s request, he saved Ash from the hell of daily sexual abuse.

Before Blanca knew it, Ash turned from an apprentice to a friend, and then…

Perhaps Blanca was the first “normal adult” Ash had encountered. The love Blanca feels for Ash is not sexual. It’s the love that a teacher feels for his favorite student to allow him to grow.

After his talent bloomed, Ash got confident and made up his mind to leave the nest and raise the banner of revolt against Golzine. That’s very ironic for Golzine. He tries to get Ash back by hiring Foxx, but it has the complete opposite effect.

Foxx tried to control Ash by sexually abusing him.

Foxx, who has a sexual sadist side to him, like the men who Ash has encountered before, tries to control Ash by power but that is just Golzine’s first mistake being repeated again.

It was a mistake because the Ash who submitted his own body in order to live was already gone. From Blanca Ash learned how to live as a human, by meeting Eiji he learned what love is.

On the other hand, although Ash was the boss of the street kids who respected and feared him, and even though he trusted them and relied on them as the like-minded comrades, Ash was lonely.

Ash tends to take care of others and has a strong sense of sympathy for other people. Despite hiding this strength inside of him, being attracted to Eiji like to a small weak animal might have been a natural course of events.

Ash, who protected Eiji in a cruel environment where death was always present, suddenly realizes somewhere in his soul that he had been protected by Eiji’s kindness, no, but by Eiji’s whole being.

That is called the selfless love of friendship. Ash is not lonely anymore.

Ash can show his true self, a young boy, only in front of Eiji !

cosmicjoke

This is interesting.  Of course, Eiji’s love for Ash is the only actual, true love out of all these men.  Golzine certainly doesn’t love Ash.  He wants to possess and control Ash, like a prized puppet.  Everything he does “for” Ash isn’t actually done for Ash at all, but for his own benefit and satisfaction.  It’s actually one of the moments in Banana Fish that most angered me, when Blanca was trying to convince Ash that he should be grateful to Dino for giving him an education and luxury, etc…  As if Dino had done all of that because he cared about Ash and his well being.  No, he did it because he saw Ash as a very useful tool and weapon that he could use to further his own power and influence, and to satisfy his own sense of control over this boy’s life, and to bolster his own, egomaniacle sense of self-import and legacy .  Dino only kills Foxx to save Ash in the end because Ash is DINO’S to kill.  Nobody else has that “right”, in the sick bastards mind.  Dino won’t tolerate anyone else killing Ash.  It either has to be by his hand, or by his orders.  Foxx is exactly the same.  He’s more sadistic than Dino even, but the way they view and regard Ash is exactly the same.  Ash is a means to an end for Foxx.  He wants to use Ash to take control of Dino’s empire, and because he gets a sick pleasure from controlling Ash, from the idea of submitting a kid as wild in spirit as Ash is.  

Blanca is more complicated, but still, he doesn’t love Ash in the pure sense of the word.  He cares about Ash, as much as Blanca can care about anyone.  But I spoke about this in another post recently.  Blanca forces Ash back into Dino’s hold because he THINKS he’s doing the right thing.  He thinks he’s helping to ensure Ash’s survival by giving him back to Dino, and taking him away from Eiji.  So Blanca’s actions here are coming from a place of well meaning intentions.  But… when he sees what happens to Ash while in Dino’s possession again, the way he falls into such a deep despair that he literally and figuratively begins to waste away, he begins to realize his mistake, and that’s when he starts taking tentative steps towards helping Ash for real.  The thing to note about Blanca’s actions at the beginning, and what Blanca himself later comes to realize was his mistake, is that he takes away Ash’s ability to choose for himself, which, ironically, puts him in the same boat as Dino and Foxx.  Blanca DECIDES what’s best for Ash, without asking Ash what he actually wants or feels is best for himself.  Blanca DECIDES how Ash should live, without caring that Ash doesn’t want to live like that, or doesn’t want Dino’s offers and “gifts” and promises of “power”.  Blanca decides that Ash is incapable of living outside of a world of violence and crime, and so concludes that he can’t allow Ash to continue out there by himself, or continue on with Eiji in his life, because that doesn’t comply with what Blanca has DECIDED is best for Ash and his continued survival.  He never stops to consider that maybe Ash would rather risk dying just to have that brief taste of true love and friendship by Eiji’s side then go on struggling to survive without it.  Ash’s feelings aren’t important here. Ash’s decisions for himself don’t matter.  And so Blanca steals away Ash’s choice by threatening Eiji and forcing him back into Dino’s control.  Ironic, because it’s this very robbing of Ash’s own agency, his own control over his life and what happens with it, that all of his worst abusers are guilty of as well.  Blanca, without intending it, perpetrates the same crime against Ash that all these other, horrible men have.  He treats Ash like an object, like a thing that is his to control and steer, rather than a human being with his own wants and needs and thoughts and feelings.  The difference of course is that Blanca eventually realizes the horrible thing he’s done, and he works to amend it.  Blanca isn’t a bad person like Dino and Foxx, but he still doesn’t treat Ash like a person.  He still doesn’t understand that Ash has a right to choose his own path, or to make decisions about his own life.  Not until the very end, anyway.  And really, because Ash looked up to and trusted Blanca as much as he did, it makes this particular betrayal on Blanca’s part all the worse.  Blanca was the only adult in Ash’s life up to that point who had protected and defended him against his abusers.  Ash looked up to him as a kind of guardian.  As an adult man who didn’t want to hurt him like all the others, and actually protected him against those others.  But then he turns around and does exactly to Ash what all those other men had done before, taking away his choices, taking away his ability to decide and choose for himself what he wants and needs, treating Ash like his humanity didn’t matter, his pain didn’t matter, his feelings didn’t matter.  Dehumanizing Ash, just like Dino and Foxx and Marvin and all those other pieces of trash.  

Only Eiji ever treated Ash like a human being.  Only Eiji ever showed Ash that his feelings and his thoughts mattered.  That his pain mattered.

//

i-swim-best-free-for-the-team

Thinking about this scene again... Ash was in a really weak condition but insisted he needs to find Eiji and make sure he's okay. Ash wanted to say "I'm glad you're okay too" but he couldn't... Maybe he was scared or too proud. Hugging Eiji back must have been his way of getting his feelings through without words.

ash-in-the-rye

I’ve always loved this scene for two major reasons:

1. How quiet it is

Eiji just silently hugs Ash, tells him he’s glad he’s okay, but for the rest of the scene, not a single word is said. And any further words are also not needed. Everything that needs to be portrayed is just there. In Ash’s reaction, in his expression, in him returning the hug shortly after, in them just standing there, hugging each other in silence while the camera zooms out, giving them some privacy.

There’s just so much being told during that scene even though actually nothing is said at all and that’s not something you encounter in literature that often: A moment which is just perfect, even though it’s completely quiet.

2. Ash’s reaction

It’s such a tiny moment but it actually tells us so much about Ash.

His expression after Eiji walks up to him and hugs him. Surprise and uncertainty clearly written over his face, which raises the question of how long it has been since the last time Ash had been hugged by someone or felt the warmth of another human being in such a caring and loving way.

The visible hesitation he as returns the hug. We all know what he must have been thinking in that moment:

“My hands are dirty. And covered with the blood of all the people I killed. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve him, yet alone to touch him. I’ll only taint him, drag him down into my world of blood and crime, put him in chains, prevent him from flying.”

If it had been any other person, Ash would had never let them hug him, yet alone get so close to him. But it was Eiji and Eiji was always an exception to literally everything, being the only one able to tear down the walls he had built around himself and being allowed to step into his personal space. Eiji, who gives Ash warmth, comfort, love, happiness and also the possibility to act like a 17 year old boy when he’s with him. Eiji, who isn’t afraid of him and doesn’t treat him like some kind of almighty being or a monster but like an actual human. Eiji, who’s patient with him, doesn’t force him, doesn’t pressure him and above all, doesn’t expect anything from him in return.

Ash wanted to push him away, not wanting his world to swallow Eiji, not wanting to put him in danger, not wanting him to get hurt or killed. But he couldn’t push him away. No matter how hard he tried, Eiji still remained at his side, continuing to only ever give without taking something from him.

Ash knew he’s in love. He knew that for so long and he tried to fight it because he knew the world he lives in won’t allow this love to last. He fought against it over and over again, trying to return Eiji to his world to keep him safe.

And then, this scene happens. Eiji expresses how glad he is that Ash is okay and hugs him.

Ash wants nothing more than to hug him back, but he hesitates, his mind being filled with doubts and the fear of ultimately crossing the line and reaching the point of no return.

But Eiji’s there. Holding him in his arms. Letting him feel warmth, comfort, love and at home. And that’s when Ash just stops fighting. He allows it. He allows Eiji’s touch, allows himself to touch him back, to hold him, allows himself to think: “I want him to stay by my side”, allows himself to completely fall for him without resisting any longer and above all, Ash allows himself to just have this.

This little and short lived moment of bliss and contentment, of them standing alone on the rooftop in each other’s arms with little to no space between them.

At this exact moment, Ash allows himself to have this love and shortly after even makes clear to Eiji that he wants him to stay:

For once, Ash allows himself to dream, to hope that maybe they will both make it and Eiji won’t get hurt, won’t get targeted like the girl he was in love with at 14.

But sadly, this hope gets shattered the instant Eiji gets shot by Blanca, causing everything to head south from then on and marking the point of no return in the story.

cosmicjoke

Another awesome analysis @ash-in-the-rye​

Honestly, I don’t think Ash had probably been hugged since before Griffin left for war.  I really doubt Blanca ever hugged him, except I suppose that one moment, after Blanca finds Ash in that motel room, after he’s been raped by Marvin, and Ash was having a severe panic attack.  And we know nobody else in Ash’s life then would have hugged him, like Dino or any of those other pigs.  

I pointed out in a post of mine about Ash and Michael and Skip that we see Ash hug Michael, which is incredible in itself, when you think about it.  I’ll leave that commentary here, if you want to check it out: https://cosmicjoke.tumblr.com/post/616740970875207680/ash-skip-and-michael

But what you said here, about this hug on the rooftop being the first moment that Ash just finally gives in to what he’s been feeling for Eiji, and allows himself to dream that they could really be friends and be together, is so spot on.  It’s at this moment when Ash finally just accepts what Eiji is offering him, symbolized beautifully in him accepting and returning the embrace, and literally in him telling Eiji he doesn’t have to go back to Japan.  Ash tries to convince himself here that it’s better this way anyway, because this way he can “keep an eye on” Eiji and protect him directly.  Ash tries to ignore all of his own fears and concerns regarding this, because he’s never felt anything like this before, this kind of absolute acceptance and love from another person, this kind of kindness.  Ash has never really been shown real kindness at all, in his entire life, except probably Griff.  And so he tries to convince himself that it’s okay to hold onto this, if even just for a little longer, and dares to dream that he could have something like this in his life, this kind of companionship, in a life that’s otherwise been consumed by loneliness and despair.

It makes the eventual shattering of that dream all the more heartbreaking, as you pointed out, when Blanca starts to target Eiji, forcibly reminding Ash that his life never has been, and never can be, normal, and that means he’ll never be allowed normal things that the rest of us take for granted, like love and friendship and acceptance and even just the simple kindness of one person to another.  They’ll always be someone who’s trying to rip that away.

//

Gang leader Ash

vashak

I think what Eiji means by “exceptional” here is the same as the reason why Arthur hates Ash. Let’s unpack this.

Of course, I know nothing about how gang mentality works. From what I see in Banana Fish, I assume that in the world of gangs the laws of nature apply and one is relatively stripped from one’s own free will. Ash must have found himself in this world around the time he went to juvie. I think other kids who got influenced by his intelligence, charisma and fighting skills kind of stuck close to him to ensure their own safety by siding with the strong. And that’s how Ash became their leader. So just like how these kids chose Ash as their boss to guarantee their survival, Ash’s survival depends on how good a boss he is to his gang members. That means there is a very fine line between becoming a gang leader and being chosen a gang leader. Judging from the following two scenes, it’s not really up to whether the said gang leader wants to be boss or not.

Then there are scumbags like Frederick Arthur who will do whatever it takes to become boss without being chosen as one. Arthur can see that Ash with his natural leadership abilities has the potential to become the king of the underworld (just like Golzine wants him to be) and he wants so badly to be in his place. So he plays dirty to thwart him at every chance. Arthur can also see that Ash has no desire to rule the underworld. Ash doesn’t want any of the qualities he has that make Arthur green with envy. And this just drives Arthur mad. That’s why he hates Ash with all his guts.

There’s a pattern in Banana Fish in which Ash gets raped, is almost killed and finds himself in a situation where he has to do stuff he doesn’t want to like killing people, all because of the qualities he didn’t want in the first place.

Keep reading

cosmicjoke

This is an awesome meta @vashak!  Thank you for sharing!

Particularly, I think it’s important to take note of the fact that Ash never wanted to be a boss.  Neither does Sing.  Both of them are, as you point out, chosen to take on that role by the other street punks, because it’s decided among those groups that people like Ash and Sing are most capable of offering them protection.

Focusing on Ash specifically, it speaks volumes about his character that he accepts this responsibility, even as it isn’t something he ever chose for himself, or at all desired.  

We see in Angel Eyes, after Ash’s fight with Frankie and his men in the library, that the other inmates start treating him like a Capo, basically attaching themselves to him and showing deference to him, because they’ve realized Ash is strong, and can protect them.  Again, this is really important to point out, because Ash didn’t want this, or have designs to this affect.  Shorter even points out that Ash is made uncomfortable by the sudden deference, by the other inmates treating him like the leader, and Ash also shows confusion later on, when Shorter is talking about how Arthur tried to take a hit out on Ash because he could see Ash would eventually inspire that same kind of deference and following on the outside, making him a direct threat to Arthur’s rule.  Ash doesn’t understand what Shorter means, and expresses his confusion over it.  We also hear Dino talking about Ash to Arthur, explaining that Ash never had any ambition, directly in contrast to Arthur, who’s ambition knows no bounds, and how regrettable Dino finds this, because he knows if Ash did have ambition to be a boss like Arthur, there would be no stopping him from taking over every single turf in New York.  Dino initially sends Ash out onto the streets with the hope this will happen, setting Ash up to run jobs for him, whether that’s selling drugs or taking out hits on whoever Dino decides needs to be eliminated.  He forcibly injects Ash into gang life and culture, doubtless under various and horrible threats from Dino himself.  We know from Dino’s own words to Ash, and the way he mocks him by reminding him about how he used to cry with every job Dino made him do, that he was likely either threatening Ash’s life if he didn’t do as he was told, or threatening to put him back to work at Club Cod as a child prostitute.  And we know how horrifying that was and continued to be for Ash.  Ash didn’t want to be in a gang, or engage in criminal activities, but he didn’t ever have a choice.  He was completely under Dino’s thumb.  

Eventually, Ash does gain a loyal following.  It really becomes a substantial thing in reform school, and once he gets out, he doubtless has an entire crew that have attached themselves to him.  Again, because of his superior abilities, charisma and intellect, the other kids are just naturally drawn to him.  Ash doesn’t even have to try.  They just go to him because they can see he’s strong and capable of giving them protection.  But Ash never moves beyond this specific territory or specific group.  Eventually, he does come into conflict with Arthur, because that’s the territory Ash operates in, and of course he beats Arthur in one on one combat.  Further, the fact that Ash doesn’t kill Arthur, but spares his life, is more proof still not only of Ash’s ambivalent feelings towards killing, but of how he never particularly sought after the role of boss in the first place.  If he’d really wanted to solidify his position of power, he would have killed Arthur.  Again, this just all serves as proof of Ash’s reluctance to be in this role and position.

Ash never planned on becoming a boss.  The role was thrust onto him because of his superior abilities and intelligence.  The other street kids align themselves to him because they know he can protect them.  And even though Ash doesn’t want this role, he accepts it, because, and again, this speaks to Ash’s moral character, despite what he thinks of himself, and what others perceive him as, he feels a moral obligation and responsibility at this point to take care of these other kids who have selected him for exactly that.  He could easily refuse the obligation, and abandon them to be run by Arthur, who treats all of them as disposable.  Ash more than once proves his capability in handling himself.  He doesn’t need a crew to survive out there on the streets.  In fact, Ash is most effective and capable when he’s operating on his own, and doesn’t have to worry about anyone else.  His chances of survival are highest when it’s just him on his own.  And he’s not doing it because of any kind of loyalty to Dino, or because he thinks Dino will come after him if he doesn’t have a crew.  At the beginning of Banana Fish, Ash is already operating separately from Dino, and is only willing to work with Dino on equal terms, meaning they both benefit from whatever jobs they run.  He doesn’t operate out there anymore FOR Dino.  Which is also why he kicks those two members out of the gang at the beginning, for betraying him and going behind his back to run a job for Dino.  Again, Ash could have and probably should have killed them, but he showed them mercy instead, once more, because Ash doesn’t want to ever kill anyone if he doesn’t absolutely have to, and he has no actual desire for power.  He kicks them out because they’ve proven they can’t be trusted, which would endanger not only himself, but the other members of his gang and which, subsequently, they prove by immediately running to Dino and ratting Ash out, for which trouble they get themselves killed.

Ash accepts his role as boss because he cares about other people.  He understands that they’ve chosen him as their leader because he can protect them, and he takes that responsibility seriously and takes it onto himself willingly, even as he doesn’t want it and would in truth be better off on his own.  We see this proven also in the way Ash purposefully leaves his gang out of any truly dangerous business which is likely to get him or them killed.  He initially didn’t involve any of them in what was going on with Dino and Banana Fish, and didn’t want to involve Shorter either.  Circumstances led to all of them eventually getting roped into it, but Ash fought hard to keep everyone out, and was 100% ready and willing to take Dino on completely by himself.  He protects them constantly at risk to himself.  And it’s not only his gang that he tries to protect.  He tries to protect Sing’s gang, and Cain’s as well, by keeping them out of his war with Dino and Arthur.  Again, circumstances eventually lead to them getting involved, but Ash tried very hard to not involve them.  

It’s once more just an example of how Ash’s own choices and own wants and needs are never really something he’s allowed.  His entire life, he’s been under the control of one person or another, whether that be Dino, or Marvin, or any of the other men who have abused him, or even, unintentional though it may be, his own gang.  Ash’s life is more or less defined by his own free will and agency being robbed from him, and his endless, heartbreaking struggle to gain some small amount of it back.  

When Ash says to Eiji “I wish I could have been like you, Eiji.  I always wanted to live a better life than this.  A more normal life.”  He means that exactly.  He never wanted the life he has, he never asked for it, or tried for it.  It was thrust on him by other people, by other people’s decisions and other people’s needs and wants.  Ash was never asked what he wanted or needed.  Those things were never even considered.  It was just decided and chosen for him.  Like Ash says multiple times, he was treated by everyone around him like he wasn’t even a real person, like he didn’t have any real thoughts or feelings of his own.  Like he was just a doll, there for the benefit and pleasure of others, to do with as they pleased. One of the most tragic results of that, is that the life he has, has done nothing but bring him misery and despair and a crushing sense of guilt and self-hatred.  

It’s why Eiji treating Ash like a person means so much to him, and is so significant.  Because Eiji is the first and only person to ever actually do that.  To ever actually realize or care that Ash was a human being with his own thoughts, his own needs, his own feelings.  He was the first and only person to ever treat Ash’s pain like it mattered.

//

99adelheid99

throwback to another beautifully painful scene in banana fish :))))

Ash talking about how incredibly happy Eiji makes him is one thing to pull at your heartstrings, but for me, another one was Ash saying "I can't believe how lucky I am."

This boy who pretty much had no "luck" his entire life, whos days were mostly filled with hopelessness, and where almost every day was a struggle just to survive. This boy considered himself lucky, and even more so, couldn't believe how lucky he was. All because he met one boy who gave him everything and asked for nothing in return. And because Ash never got that once in his entire life, never got to experience such a pure form love, something so unconditional, Ash considered himself so incredibly lucky.

asurin

The sad thing is that, it really led him to his destruction. But not in the way everyone meant.

Ash let himself bleed out because he couldn't deal with the pain anymore, he thought to himself that he had lived his life already and experienced so much. And fulfilled his soul with the existence of Eiji, and with the affirmation that Eiji's soul is with him, forever, he chose to die because he felt happiness in that. I believe if he hadn't met Eiji, he would have gotten help instead of bleeding out for hours.

cosmicjoke

@ash-in-the-rye​ This scene is such a powerful, heartbreaking moment, and for all of the reasons you pointed out.  That he would call himself “lucky”, when his whole life had been the most unfair, cruel and wretched existence imaginable, all because he was granted a single chance at love and kindness… It speaks volumes about the pain and suffering of Ash’s life.  This thing that almost everyone else takes for such granted, the love and warmth of another person, whether it be family, or friends, or a partner.  A privilege that so few of us ever consider or truly appreciate, was something Ash had been denied his entire life, leaving him in a world of endless night and aloneness.  And so for him, having just a taste of that, just a taste of what it felt like to have another person truly care for him, and love him, without expectations or demands or conditions, was more than he ever dared to hope for, to even dream of for himself.  It meant everything to him, then.  More than all the money and power and luxury in the world could ever hope to match.  It’s Ash’s gratitude in this scene, for that simple, basic kindness which the rest of us are afforded every day, and which the rest of us take for granted, that makes this scene so emotional.  Ash’s gratitude for Eiji is so much, so powerful, for giving him something so simple, for giving him something which should never be denied any child, by right, that he’s willing to give up everything for him.  His life, his freedom, himself, just to keep Eiji safe.  

@asurin That’s an interesting thought, that if Ash hadn’t met Eiji, he wouldn’t have let himself bleed out.  Of course, if Ash hadn’t met Eiji, he never would have been left vulnerable enough for Lao to land an attack on him in the first place, so yeah, it’s a bitter and heartbreaking irony, that the one thing in Ash’s otherwise tragic life to give him true, pure happiness, is also the very thing that led to his destruction.

I agree with you that it was the gift of Eiji’s love that finally allowed Ash to be okay with letting himself go.  I think Ash felt, in that moment, that he had reached the ultimate happiness, the greatest joy he would ever know, the greatest peace, and with that feeling in his heart, with Eiji’s love in his heart, it finally allowed him the permission he sought to let go of all of his pain.  To set down the unbearable burden of his trauma at last.  He no longer had to struggle, for Ash, there was no longer a need to survive, because he’d found in Eiji’s love the one thing he’d always been denied, but had needed so very desperately.  The one thing all of his abusers had told him again and again he would never have, and would never deserve.  He found it in Eiji, and that was more than he ever hoped to have, and more than he would ever ask for.  For Ash, it was never going to be better than that, and so he took it with overwhelming gratitude, and with peaceful acceptance, let go the rest.

//

rottengirlrin

Skipper

Cursed thoughts

Did Ash save Skip from the same fate he faced or was he just a small child aware of the worlds evils? Skip didn't even bat an eye at Ash's little display for Marvin. Did he know about Ash? I pray he didn't face anything similar.

He is such a precious soul. Just look at that smile

I think we can agree Ash is a really good judge of character(We all love the gang) and we know he identified a lot with Skip. I'm sure at first he just didn't want another young child out there completely defenseless against people like Marvin, so he was quick to offer the boy a safe haven and he paid Skip, probably well too, to run errands just so he wouldn't resort to hood work. Ash was boss he didn't need to pay the "runts". And for a reason Ash trusted Skip so much. So much that he entrusted the kid with his biggest secret, a secret that would have Ash at the mercy of anyone who was looking for leverage over him, Griff. Sure tiny Skip obviously wasn't a threat to Ash but if you really think about it, the amount of trust he gave him is enough power to possibly become one, so damn. How great of a kid do you have to be for Ash to see so much potential in you and to completely have his guard down around you? He saw something in Skip and took him under his wing. I mean remember the bar fight? The kid was quick to act and cool as a cucumber. He even had some badass fighting skill. Maybe Ash taught him?

I just wish we had more of a back story for a lot of the characters especially Shorter, Sing and Skip...he probably would have grown up to be as amazing as Ash and definitely cooler than Cain.

cosmicjoke

I think Skip had probably seen Ash get hit on and sexually harassed innumerable times.  We see Ash talk about more than once how his beautiful face had men constantly harassing him and making passes at him.  He tells Max that men have grabbed him just while he’s walking down the street and dragged him into alleys and shoved their hands down his pants.  It’s just an everyday reality for Ash, I think.  That, and we saw in Private Opinion that Marvin was still sexually abusing Ash even at 14.  We see Marvin take Ash off the streets, right in front of the other kids, to bring him to a motel to rape him.  And at the beginning of Banana Fish, there’s tense confrontation between Ash and Marvin, with Ash mocking Marvin, and Marvin making threats in return, calling him a slut and a whore, if I remember correctly.  It was probably pretty widely known among Ash’s gang that Marvin wanted to do bad things to Ash.

As for Skip, it really would have been interesting to find out how he and Ash met, and grew so close.  It’s easy to infer from the trust that Ash puts in Skip with taking care of Griff for him, and Arthur knowing that targeting Skip would be a sure fire way of luring Ash into a trap in his attempts to rescue him, that Ash deeply cared for the kid.  Not to mention how Ash reacted when Marvin shoots him.  I think Ash felt so protective towards Skip because Ash understood better than anyone how dangerous it could be for a kid living on the streets, and he understood the fragility and vulnerability of childhood innocence.

One thing that I don’t see get talked a lot about is where Ash was and what his life was like right after he’d run away from Cape Cod.  We know that Ash got picked up by Marvin when he was ten years old and brought to Dino, and we know that Ash ran away from home when he was eight.  So that means that Ash was living on the streets for two years, or close to two years.  I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been, and the kinds of trauma’s Ash must have faced as such a young child, alone and having to fend for himself on the streets of New York.  I’m sure Ash looked at Skip and wanted to prevent the same horror that must have been from happening to him.

//

Anonymous asked:

Do you think issues Eiji had with Ash that were especially visible during the time they lived together would have continued further if the plot didn't go in another way? Like feeling isolated in the apartment all day, Ash lying to him or not telling him anything, making decisions for him. Ash doesn't notice or acknowledge that, Eiji knows it's to protect him and it's nothing as dramatic as what Ash is going through but still, it's all about Ash, Eiji mostly rolls with it.

http-eiji answered:

I do wonder about this sometimes. I think it depends on what you consider “continuing” if we mean had the cat and mouse game between Dino continued for longer or if Ash had lived.

Because, if we look at the former, we know Eiji was beginning to start learning to defend himself and help out (such as learning to use a gun) I’m sure he would have gotten Sing and Bones and Kong to teach him more, like hand to hand combat and properly learning how to use a gun.

As Eiji would become more able to protect himself I wonder what would happen then, If Ash would go back to insisting he leave, if he’d let Eiji have more freedom or if he’d stay the same like Eiji was still the naive boy.

If we look at the latter scenario, I think there would still be issues but not the same. I think Ash would still be on edge all the time and worry about Eiji’s well-being even when there’s no threat. I think, with more time though, they would start talking about their issues more so they would help each other.

ash-in-the-rye

Eiji learning how to properly use a gun and being able to protect himself better is actually such an interesting concept because I can imagine that it had greatly affected Ash and their relationship, especially if it had come to the point where Eiji had needed to kill someone.

I still remember when episode 15 aired and some people were complaining about Eiji not shooting Yut Lung right then and there (as well as about Eiji not shooting Dino during the dinner party in episode 20). Not only would it have been pretty out of character for him, but it also would have affected his relationship to Ash.

Even though he had told Eiji he has to take care of himself if he wants to tag along right after stealing Charlies car and giving a gun to him before he tried shooting Dino on top of a truck, Ash later changed his mind and actually didn’t want him to use a gun:

It’s not because Ash thought of Eiji as naïve or too incapable, but rather because he simply didn’t want Eiji to lose his innocence, didn’t want him to possibly taint his hands with the blood of others because he knew it would have changed him and also because it would have meant that Eiji had become a part of his “world” which most probably would had prevent him from returning to his own.

If Eiji had learned to handle a gun and had indeed killed someone at one point, even if it had been out of self-defense, I think it would have taken a toll on both of them. On Eiji because he would have had to cope with just having taken a life and on Ash because he would have felt extremely guilty. No matter the reason, even if it had happened out of self-defense, Ash would have blamed himself for it. Because in his mind, he would have been the one responsible for dragging Eiji in all of this, for “making him this way”, for bringing him closer to the point of no return, for making him kill.

Ash wouldn’t have wanted that. He would have wanted for Eiji to stay out of this, to never touch a gun, to remain innocent, to not climb the mountain, to not get chained down to the earth by committing severe crimes but to continue flying and being free.

If it had resulted in Eiji killing someone, I’m certain Ash would have tried to send him back to Japan more than ever, seeing it as the last possible opportunity to get him out of there before something like this happens again. And just like in canon, he would have tried to completely cut ties with him.

Eiji learning how to protect himself by learning to handle a gun may seem like a good alternative, but the way I see it, it would have actually done more harm than good in the end.

cosmicjoke

Spot on @ash-in-the-rye  Ash, the more he gets to know Eiji, and the closer to two of them become, grows increasingly determined and adamant to shield Eiji from the kind of world he lives in.  This world of violence and crime and desperation.

Ash knows better than anyone what toll the taking of a life exacts on a person, what it does to a person’s mental and emotional health.  What you say here, about how Ash would have blamed himself if Eiji had ended up killing, had ended up becoming a killer, is completely accurate.  Ash feared deeply that by being around him, not only would Eiji get hurt and/or killed, but that he would end up being corrupted by Ash and the kind of life he had to live, the kind of actions he had to take.  We have to remember how Ash views himself to understand his actions too.  Ash suffers from deep self-loathing, almost exclusively because of the lives he’s had to take in order to survive.  If Eiji ended up in the same place as him, having to take lives, like you said, no matter the reason, when he’d been so innocent and pure before, Ash absolutely would have viewed that as an unforgivable failure on his part.

Several times we see Ash attempting to shield Eiji from all of that, hiding his gun, not telling Eiji what he’s doing out at night, not talking about it. He’s ashamed of himself, and he fears that Eiji, the first person to ever see him as and treat him like an actual human being, will start to view him as the monster, the animal, the demon that everyone else views him as.  He doesn’t tell Eiji what he’s doing because of the shame he feels, and the fear of losing Eiji’s love and respect, not because he thinks Eiji is naive or incapable.  And, like you said, Ash will do anything to keep Eiji from becoming what he thinks he himself is.  Will do everything he can to preserve Eiji, body and soul.  

It would have only added to Ash’s already crippling sense of guilt and self-hatred, if Eiji had ended up a criminal like him.  

//

ash-in-the-rye

Remember what Shorter told Ash in “Angel Eyes”?

Even though Shorter clearly feels guilty about giving him that “advise”, it’s still scary how it’s basically the same Jim had told Ash back then:

And after hearing that from Shorter, Ash’s first reaction is this:

Showing no kind of emotions on the outside, just keeping a straight, unfazed face. But we all know how frustrated and disappointed he must have felt like at Shorter saying this to him, how angry and fed up at hearing this “advise” once again he must have been, and how how he must have been thinking:

“No one can help me. All of you are the same. I’m all alone in this world with no one understanding anything about the hell I’m living in.”

cosmicjoke

@ash-in-the-rye Man, I totally forgot about that scene with Ash’s father, and how it directly parallels what Shorter tells Ash in Angel Eyes.  God, it makes Ash’s reaction all the more heartbreaking, for all the reasons you point out above.  That must have been what Ash was thinking, and Shorter even realizes it, as Ash walks away and tells him thanks for the advice.  Shorter’s internal monologue even says Ash had this look in his eyes that said “If you can’t help me, just keep your mouth shut”.  Exactly because of his experience with his father, no doubt, and the realization that, once again, like you said, nobody had any clue as to the hell Ash was actually living in.  It’s no wonder then, too, that Ash became so furious and upset over Shorter telling him if he played with people’s feelings, it made him no different than the assholes he hates.  Because, well, it’s just simply not true.  Ash only manipulated those who first tried to hurt him, and he only ever did it as his best and only means of defending himself.  That’s intrinsically different from the intention of his abusers, who did what they did because it gave them a perverse thrill to dominate and control someone, and to hurt them.  I think this is also why Ash later explains his intentions to Shorter, because it hurts him deeply, that Shorter could ever think Ash was anything like the people that abuse him.

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komorebi2460

“Sorry for keeping you locked up for so long. I hid away all your pictures, as if that would make any difference.”

— Eiji, Banana fish

ash-in-the-rye

This and this scene here that follows right after never fail to make me cry and is by far the most beautiful, but at the same time most painful scene in the whole series:

Painful because we get to see how happy and carefree Ash and Eiji have been during those two years they had spent together. But sadly, as happy as these short-lived moments were, they’ll also never come back, forever captured in these pictures, bound to remain mere distant memories.

It hurts to be faced with that realization and to imagine what could have been if Ash hadn’t died and it hurts to see Eiji having to come to terms with that realization during that scene as well.

But like I said, it’s also so beautiful, for various reasons even:

Keep reading

cosmicjoke

@ash-in-the-rye Brilliant commentary all around, truly!  But I’m particularly  moved by what you said here about the intimacy of the photo’s of Ash, and what they say about his relationship with Eiji, and the deep level of trust he had in Eiji.  Your point about Ash’s fear of having his photo taken, and that relating back to the abuse he suffered as a child, is so observant and accurate.  We see it referred to several times throughout about Ash being subjected to this kind of torture, of being filmed and photographed while he was being raped and molested.  One of the most heartbreaking and painful scenes in the entire series I think was near the beginning, when the cops have picked Ash up for Marvin’s murder, and that detective forces Ash to watch the films they found in Marvin’s apartment of Ash being raped.  This scene stood out to me so much, because it’s the first time we really see Ash lose control.  The first time we see him really have a panic attack.  He freezes up, starts sweating and shaking and after a few, weak protests to stop, he just shuts down and has this haunted, terrified look on his face.  It’s the first time we as an audience are really confronted with what Ash has been through, and confronted with the damage it’s caused him, and continues to cause him.  I mean, Jesus, I can’t even imagine the pain of an experience like that, both the rape itself, and having the evidence of his rape shoved in his face like that.  My heart was in pieces for Ash during that scene.  We also hear Ash make repeated reference to him being photographed for kiddie porn magazines.  So yeah, this experience of being photographed and filmed during what’s truly the most horrific thing that can happen to a child was obviously something that happened to Ash often, and left him deeply traumatized.

With that truth in mind, it makes what you pointed out here all the more extraordinary.  That he was able to trust Eiji that much, with something as intimate as taking his photo when he was, as you said, just being himself.  Just this 17 year old boy who had never been allowed to BE that until Eiji came into his life.  That the photo’s are all of Ash as he really was, tells you everything there is to know about his connection to and relationship with Eiji.  Eiji captured Ash’s heart and soul in his photographs.  Not the feared beast of the youth gangs of New York, or the prized possession put on display by Dino, but just a boy, seeking desperately for someone to see him for who he really was.

I think Sing’s realization about why it was Ash loved Eiji so much, when he thinks to himself that Eiji was probably the only one who ever really saw Ash’s pain, relates perfectly to this.  Ash fell in love with Eiji because Eiji was that person who finally found him.  That person he always sought in his otherwise suffocating loneliness.  The first and only person to see who he really was, and to see the hurt he carried with him, and to CARE.

I also love what you said about how we never learn what the context of these photo’s are, and how because of that, they remain intimately private moments shared between Ash and Eiji.  Memories that belong only to them.  Feelings that only they shared.  And now Eiji is the keeper of those memories, and those feelings.  He’s the one who remains, the custodian of Ash’s memory as he truly was.

In that way, too, you can see the ending of the story as Eiji accepting this role, to be the one to share with the world the truth of who Ash Lynx was.  To keep him alive in his own heart and memory.  To validate Ash’s existence, and not let him be forgotten by time.  I think that too would have helped Eiji to heal and process his own grief.  To know he could give that to Ash.  To make sure Ash’s life hadn’t been lived in vain.

//

Anonymous asked:

Have you ever wondered if Ash knew that choosing to die in the letter that Eiji was telling him how he felt about him, if he knew he would keep Eiji to himself forever, if not his response to Eiji's promise to him, in his twisted way. That Eiji would be attached to him and he would never forget? It's morbid and sad but it's almost like peace to think about it as I remember Eiji's life.

iamtrashforash answered:

Hi, Anon, I have certainly seen this interpretation around — Sing himself seemed to hold a variation of this view regarding Ash’s motivations. However, I have to say that my personal headcanon of Ash lends a very different perspective to his final moments in the library.

I think to have such logical progression about Eiji requires a great deal of selfishness from Ash’s part. The internal struggle between his desires to keep Eiji by his side and to keep Eiji safe is not a minor theme in Banana Fish. The weight of Eiji’s own will gave them their time together, while Ash’s attitude towards Eiji’s personal safety had always been utterly selfless, to the point of self-destruction (partially fuelled by self-hatred, some might argue).

I do not subscribe to the theory of Ash calculating his death as a way to “own” Eiji. On the other hand, the theory of Ash choosing death to guarantee Eiji’s continued safety does not ring true to me, either. People, enemies and allies alike, are quick to paint Ash in their own not-quite-human images of him: bewitching beauty, computer-like brain, beast-like instincts, a leader, a tool, a demon, an angel…. Eiji’s perspective in the Banana Fish series arguably serves a single purpose: to humanise Ash and let both Ash and the audience see him as who he was. An eighteen-year-old boy, incontrovertibly human. An extraordinary one, but so achingly human nonetheless.

My personal theory of Ash’s state of mind in the library is based on two things: the fact that the finale is an emotional one, not a logical one; and my own attempt to reconcile Ash’s humanity with the weight he had placed on Eiji’s shoulders. I don’t think many people would argue the claim that the finale is a twist demanding certain suspensions of disbelief and, to an extent, riddled with plot holes. It is an ending meant to rouse and rile emotions, not to act as a satisfying denouement of a detective/mystery/action-adventure story. It is late ‘80s and early ‘90s melodrama.

I accepted the ending on my first read-through; it was only in hindsight did disbelief start to seep in and I began to question, if not the choice, at least the execution. But I still remember how I — and I think most of the audience — was with Ash when he read through that letter, was with Ash when he let Eiji’s love pour into him, was with Ash when he threw away all the caution that he labelled “cowardice” to the wind, was with Ash when he let go of all the weight of his past and who he thought he was and who people said he was to run to Eiji and answer Eiji’s call instead. For those brief moments, he forgot about dangers and risks and calculations; he was simply a man, running towards his love.

(This was not a theme newly introduced in the ending. Ash had had to guard himself since too young an age. He lacked the privilege many of us takes for granted: the right to simply exist in the moment. Eiji somehow managed to let him taste this privilege from time to time, and Yue Long did not miss the implication of this fact.)

When Lao shattered the dream, we shattered along with Ash. He returned to “reality” for a while, but then he chose to slip back into that moment of existing in Eiji’s love, by gathering those sheets of paper off the pavement and by making his way back to the library to read the words over and over again. Some have said that he chose to die then because he knew he had Eiji’s love. My thought process is slightly different: when he made that choice, I don’t think he was choosing to die; I think he was choosing to exist in love, and it brought about his death. For Ash, everything — his past, his pain, his life, and death itself — fell away in the face of Eiji. There were no calculations to be made; he was too busy being in love and being loved in return.

I don’t think he would ever forgive himself for what he did to Eiji, even though it was neither his choice nor his fault. Many people have said that they did not have closure, that the ending did not feel real, until they have read Garden of Light. I think it is partly because the finale feels like a dream, and the dream is the most intoxicating one there is: of a man existing purely and simply in love.

cosmicjoke

Amazing analysis all around @iamtrashforash  That’s a truly beautiful and I think maybe the most accurate interpretation of why Ash died in the library that I’ve seen yet.  That he was so overwhelmed and consumed by Eiji’s love, that the struggle to survive, and all the stress and effort and tireless, unending frenzy that went with it, simply fell away with the warmth of Eiji’s love, and Ash could, in those final moments of his life, simply, and for the first time, really LIVE.  That sounds so plausible to me, and is so in line with everything we know about Ash.  He chose to live in the moment, exist in the moment, and because of that, he slipped into a state where the encroachment of death didn’t even register for him, and was no longer something he was even aware of needing to fight against.  That’s a truly brilliant analysis.

I think you also have to consider that anger is one of the stages of grief, and Sing’s own ideas regarding Ash’s “motivations” was most likely fueled by that.  He was angry at Ash for leaving him and Eiji behind, which is normal for people grieving the loss of a loved one, for the pain they’re left with.  I doubt Sing could have really even meant that, as the very notion that Ash had any motivation, or “plans” at all in those last moments is absurd.

He was bleeding to death, for one thing.  So to think that he could think in terms that complex and elaborate is totally unrealistic.  His thoughts would have been indistinct and vague at best, extremely jumbled and confused at worse.  Secondly, it would totally contradict everything about who Ash is, the kind of selfless and heroic actions he takes all the time, and how we see him behave throughout the entirely of the story.  The word you choose here is really important and vital, I think, in countering this notion that Ash calculated his death as a means of possessing Eiji’s soul.  You used the word “owned”.  

Ash’s whole life was a constant struggle to break free from people who thought they “owned” him.  From people who treated him like an object and a possession, not like a human being.  All those men who sexually abused him and controlled him and threatened him into doing their bidding and satisfying their desires.  Ash felt more fury and pain and disgust at those people than anyone else.  The people that wanted to lord their power over others, and control them, and “own” them.  He felt totally repulsed by that kind of behavior, and that kind of possessive, selfish, entitled attitude.  Ash expresses at several points obvious disdain and distress towards those who want to dominate and control others, who want to submit others to their will.  Ash would never do to someone he loved, or even anyone at all, the very same thing that was done to him, the very same thing which ultimately destroyed his life.  He would never do that to anyone he cared about, let alone Eiji.  He would never try to “own” Eiji.  Not on purpose, anyway.  Even when Ash manipulated people, it was only ever in self defense, or in defense of those he cared for, not because he was on some sick power trip.

The last thing Ash would ever want it to cause Eiji the kind of grief and sorrow he had to carry around after his death, or for Eiji to feel like he could never love again.  All Ash ever wanted was for Eiji to be happy and safe, and to live a good life, and all of his actions throughout the entire series are geared towards that, like you said, to the point that he’s willing to sacrifice everything of his own to that cause.  He’s ready to die for Eiji, to throw away his freedom for Eiji.  Everything.  There’s also the point that Ash very much hated himself, and what he thought of himself had a direct impact on his belief that Eiji was better off without him.  He realizes that Eiji loves him, in the end, despite it all, and that’s more than Ash ever thought he would receive in his life.  Just the knowledge that he was loved by another person, without condition.  Ash would never be selfish enough to demand more than that, because he never thought he deserved even that much.  He could never forgive himself for the lives he’d taken.  He felt blessed, and happy beyond words, to know that Eiji simply cared about him at all.  And he was ready and willing to give up that happiness and love for Eiji’s benefit in the end.  To keep Eiji safe.  How anyone could think that Ash would purposefully let himself die because he knew it would “keep Eiji’s soul with him forever”, and that if he died, Eiji would never be able to love again, is beyond me.  Just from a physical perspective, Ash was dying, and to think he could think that clearly, and formulate some far fetched, not to mention vague, intangible plan like stealing someone’s soul to keep with him for all time, while suffering profuse blood loss, is ridiculous.  More than that though, to think Ash felt anything but pure gratitude and thanks for the love he received from Eiji is a failure to understand Ash as a character at all.  Ash didn’t ask or demand Eiji’s love.  Early on, he even tried to refuse it as a way of protecting Eiji.  Eventually, with Eiji’s persistence, he simply accepted it, and with absolute gratitude and a feeling of profound disbelief, that he could ever be so lucky as to have anything like it at all, in a life otherwise filled with misery and loneliness.  A feeling of utter gratitude, that an a boy like him, who’d been treated his whole life like he was worthless and only existed for the pleasure and amusement of others, who was always treated like his own thoughts and feelings had no weight or validity or meaning at all, could receive the love of another person, and that for the first time in his life, was treated like an actual human being who’s own wants and needs MATTERED.  Ash never believed he deserved it, he never felt like he was deserving of that kind of unconditional love or treatment, and was more or less in shocked disbelief that he had it from Eiji throughout the story.  And so how could he then suddenly decide that he was going to selfishly execute a plan which would ensure he had it forever and nobody else could ever experience the same?  How could Ash purposefully and with intent decide on something like that, when all of his actions and thoughts and even private expressions directly contradict such a notion?  When he himself felt so undeserving of it in the first place?

This idea that he would purposefully want to hoard Eiji’s love and soul for himself, with no regard to Eiji’s own happiness, doesn’t square with Ash as a character at all.  Ash suffered so much in his life, to a degree basically incomprehensible to most human beings, and in the end, he had this one happiness, this one light, which was Eiji’s love, and which Eiji gifted to him.  Ash never demanded it of him.  Eiji gave it freely.  To call him selfish for wanting to keep Eiji by his side, and never with the intent of it being forever, always with the understanding and acceptance that it would one day end, is an awful and inherently wrong way to view Ash’s friendship with Eiji.  As you said yourself, it was Eiji’s own strength of will that kept him with Ash for as long as he was.  Ash tried so many times to make Eiji leave, to send him back to Japan, but Eiji just kept finding ways to stay, refusing to abandon Ash.  Ash didn’t want Eiji tangled up in his life precisely because he didn’t want him getting hurt, either physically or emotionally.   It’s that very thing, this concern that Eiji was getting too attached to him, and would suffer if Ash died, that Ash feared deeply, I think, along of course with his fear that Eiji would get hurt or killed himself.  Ash would NEVER want either scenario.  How could he want Eiji to suffer like that on his behalf when Ash thought so little of himself in the first place that he didn’t even think he deserved a better life to begin with?  When he didn’t think redemption was possible for him?  When he thought he was a bad person who would one day corrupt Eiji’s goodness?  Of course, Ash never was a bad person.  The exact opposite, in fact.  He had such a pure heart.  But he could never see that about himself.

I think Ash always knew, deep down, that he was going to die young.  He lived in a world of brutal, unforgiving violence and uncertainty.  A world in which his life was constantly under threat, and in which he couldn’t afford to let his guard down for even a moment because of that.  A world where the lives of everyone he had ever cared about and loved were ended violently.  Skip, Griff, Shorter.  Very nearly Sing.  Even his own father and his girlfriend.  I think Ash knew he wouldn’t live long, and we see him make allusions to this feeling throughout the story.  When he tells Eiji the story about the snow leopard, and confesses that he isn’t afraid to die.  When he confesses that there had been many points in his life when he thought it would be better if he did.  When we see him after his fight with Arthur, and he’s contemplating death in this dreamlike state, and the peace he can find there.  We see Ash with an expression of such despair in those moments when Eiji tells him to be careful, to please come back safely to him, that he’ll always be waiting for him.  The moments before his fight with Arthur, for example, when he looks at Eiji sleeping beside him, and we see the stricken grief Ash feels, because he’s expecting to die that night, and his death is going to hurt his friend.  He wants to send him back to Japan then because he doesn’t want Eiji to be exposed to that cruel, violent uncertainty that Ash lives with every day, not knowing, not even really expecting, to make it to the next.  Ash looks so sad in these moments because he expects to die, he knows the threat of his dying is very real, and he knows, because of Eiji’s words, how much it’s going to hurt him if he does.  Ash looks sad because he doesn’t want that.  Again, it’s a direct contradiction of this notion that Ash could ever be selfish enough to consciously dismiss Eiji’s feelings for his own happiness or satisfaction.  He tries to keep Eiji away from him, even at points tries to make Eiji hate him, precisely so Eiji won’t be hurt when Ash dies.  He doesn’t want Eiji to hope for something which he himself doesn’t believe is possible, because false hope is the most painful thing of all when it’s shattered by reality.  I think Ash knew, with the continued deepening of Eiji’s care for him, that it would become harder and harder for him to deal and cope with the constant threat and ever present danger to Ash’s own life, harder and harder for him to accept that that was Ash’s reality and that it always would be, and that’s also one of the reasons why he’s so resolved to stay out of his life in the end.  Because he doesn’t want to cause Eiji that kind of pain, that kind of worry, that kind of anxiety.  Ash knows he lives in a violent world, and that his life will one day end in violence.  He knows and accepts that as his fate.  One, despite Eiji’s constant attempts to convince him otherwise, he doesn’t ever believe he can change.  With all that as something we know for certain with Ash, his dying in the end, his letting himself die, can’t have been something he ever intended as an act of selfishness, or an act of self-absorbtion.  He couldn’t have been thinking of how his death would affect Eiji’s life at that point.  If he’d truly known how it would hurt Eiji, he would have fought to live, even if it meant his own continued suffering.  I think that relates directly to how Ash could never understand why Eiji loved him at all, because he couldn’t love himself even.  I don’t think Ash ever really believed that his own life could matter that much to another person, or that they would truly miss him after he was gone, because he saw no real worth in himself.  Whenever Eiji tried to convey to Ash how much he cared about him, Ash always had this shocked, almost sad look on his face.  He couldn’t understand why this boy from Japan cared so much about him, a lowlife street hoodlum.  Nobody until Eiji had ever shown him he was irreplaceable, or that he would be missed when he died.  I think Ash’s happiness in the end at the realization that Eiji truly did love him was so overwhelming to him, like you said, that he just forgot everything in the face of it.  That he forgot everything but the feeling of that love, filling up his heart and soul.  It’s why Lao was able to get the drop on him at all, because he was blinded by Eiji’s love to everything around him.  The feeling of it so overwhelming to him, because he’d been starved of any kind of real love his entire life.

Your view here, that instead of Ash choosing to die, he simply chose to live in love, is so beautifully, perfectly put.  I don’t think it’s only a personal head canon for you, but is supported by actual canon.  Blanca even says this to Yut-Lung.  That Ash chose love, even at the cost of his own destruction.  That Ash doesn’t mind if he doesn’t survive, because the value of Eiji’s love means more to him than anything, including his own life.  It’s why he dies with a smile on his face.  He’s finally found peace in love.  

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banannerfish

He’s basically saying “I don’t have to kill Eiji anymore so prepare for an escape, son”. CHECKMATE, BLANCA HATERS.

I agree that Blanca always had Ash’s best interests at heart, or rather, he THOUGHT he did.  But in reality, at least at first, Blanca’s actions, and even his words later on, are actually extremely destructive and damaging to Ash.  The thing is, Ash only ended up in Dino’s possession again as a direct result of Blanca accepting Dino’s “job” and going after Ash.  And all of the subsequent fallout, like the shootout in the sewer systems, and Eiji and Sing’s gang getting captured, happened, again, because of Blanca.  Ash then having to sequester himself in the Natural History Museum, and face off against all of Yut-Lungs henchmen, having to kill even more, dealing even more damage to his already overburdened and damaged self-esteem, etc…  

I believe that Blanca accepted Dino’s job to force Ash back into his clutches because he really believed that was the best thing for Ash.  But here’s the thing.  What right does Blanca have to tell Ash what he should and shouldn’t do?  That’s what every adult in Ash’s life has always done to him.  Basically tried to dictate to him and force him into being what they thought he should be, or what they wanted him to be.  And Blanca is doing exactly the same thing.  He isn’t allowing Ash to choose for himself what he wants.  Blanca doesn’t want to see Ash destroyed.  He wants him to keep living.  I get that.  But in his pursuit of trying to protect Ash, he’s dismissing what Ash wants for himself, which is to be free from Dino and his sickening abuses, and prioritizing his own wants for Ash.  He’s making his own desires for what he wants for Ash more important than Ash’s desires for himself.  That’s fucked up, I think.  Yes, he does all this because he thinks he knows what’s best for Ash, but he doesn’t stop, at least initially, to consider that Ash has his own wants and needs.  Blacna even calls Ash “selfish” for daring to want to keep Eiji as his friend, and at his side, when Ash’s whole life has been a living hell of pain, abuse, cruelty and manipulation at the hands of others, consumed by loneliness and despair.  He tells Ash he’s “selfish” for wanting something of his own, for wanting a friend, when he’s never had anything like that in his whole life.  Nothing of his own choosing.   Nobody who ever really understood him or who he really is until Eiji came into his life.  It’s like Ash says again and again, none of the people who abused and used him ever stopped to consider that he was a human being with his own thoughts and feelings.  They never treated him like he even deserved to have wants and needs of his own.  Like he was just a vessel to do with as they pleased, no matter the consequences to Ash’s own well being.  

Blanca is guilty of this too, without meaning to be I think, but he still is guilty of it.  He decides what’s best for Ash without ever even talking to Ash, or asking him what it is he wants or needs, or trying to understand why Ash wants so desperately to get away from Dino.  Without ever considering the reasons for why Ash feels the way he does.  I think that’s one of the root causes for why Ash is so mistrustful of people, and adults in particular, because that’s all he’s ever known from them.  This constant disregard for his own feelings and own agency.  This constant disregard for him as a human being with his own rights and choices.  And of course, Blanca later realizes this, and finally does the right thing by going to Ash and helping him directly.  He finally realizes that Ash would rather love and be loved at the risk of his own demise then live the “life” that Dino was offering him, which in reality wasn’t a life at all.  I think Blanca finally starts to understand this about Ash when he sees how Ash falls into despair while in Dino’s clutches and literally starts to waste away and die.  He thought Ash would simply assume this role, and become this idea that everyone had of him as this “devil” or this “Prince of Darkness”, and become a powerful crime lord or whatever.  He assumed that was what was best for Ash.  But he finally starts to see that he was wrong, and finally starts to understand why Ash broke away from Dino in the first place, and why he struggled so hard to free himself from that life, because he would rather have died then be trapped like that, a slave to another person, like he had been since he was a little boy.  And when he is trapped again, being in that position again is so soul crushing to Ash, that he just begins to fade away.  Blanca finally sees that being in Dino’s hold is the worst thing for Ash, because that isn’t who Ash is.  He isn’t this devil that everyone thinks he is.  Blanca finally starts to see Ash as an actual person, not an idea, or an object, and when he starts to see Ash as an actual person, he starts to see Ash for who he really is.  Not a demon or a devil, but just an 18 year old kid who’s been brutally abused and who just wants the abuse to stop, and to not be so alone anymore.

It’s like Blanca realizes for the first time that Ash is a human being, with his own mind, his own heart and soul, his own wants and needs and dreams.  Once he realizes this, that’s when Blanca really starts questioning his own role, his own agency, and his own choices, and is able to decide for himself to break away from Yut-Lung and go to Ash to help.  When Blanca says Ash is his own “salvation”, I think he really means that.  He means Ash has shown him by example of himself that Blanca doesn’t have to play the role he’s been assigned.  He shows Blanca how to be a human being himself.  And Ash shows him too that he was projecting his own perception of himself and the circumstances of his life onto Ash and deciding based on that, not on who Ash actually is, what was good for Ash.  That he was assuming Ash was like him and couldn’t love or be loved, and making decisions for him based on those assumptions.  And he learns, after seeing the consequences of his own actions against Ash, that he was wrong.  That Ash ISN’T like him.  That he does and is loved, that he cares too much about those around him to become the cold-hearted monster that everyone keeps trying to make him into and claim he is.  That his own survival doesn’t matter to him compared to the survival and well being of those Ash loves.  That his own survival doesn’t mean anything to him if it comes at the cost of his own humanity, if it means becoming a puppet and a pawn to the will and desire of others.  If it means giving up who he really is.  That he would rather die then live like that.  Blanca then learns to then step back from trying to control Ash and let him be who he wants to be, and who he actually is.  He learns to recognize the humanity in Ash and respect Ash’s choices.  He learns to let Ash go, and no longer try to control him.  He grows to respect and accept Ash’s decision to live like a human being, instead of a demon or a slave.  

So yeah, Blanca eventually comes to realize that he’s wronged Ash, and then he does the right thing by helping him.  I do think he always cared about Ash, and thought he was helping him at first.  But in reality, he was just trying to control him and take away Ash’s ability to choose for himself, take away Ash’s own agency.  The difference between Blanca and the other adults who did this to Ash, of course, is that Blanca never really MEANT to do it to Ash, and he eventually recognizes that he’s doing it and stops.  

//

thelastsummer

Banana Fish: Ending

I realize I’m two years late to this discussion but I’ve seen quite a few people become angry and hostile when someone says that Ash’s death was the better ending. First of all, it is a fictional story so different interpretations are ALLOWED. I don’t think anyone thinks that people should be given the message that people with trauma can’t recover, however Ash was made a symbol of this without even really being meant to. Lots and lots of anime main characters are given copious amounts of abuse as backstory yet the topic of healing from trauma is not nearly as frequently brought up.

Ash’s character is very realistic and it hits home for a lot of people. His character and eventual death weren’t supposed to represent a boy who suffered, experienced brief happiness, and found his only option left was suicide. He wasn’t supposed to represent this traumatized boy that could NEVER recover. If you want to read something that really touches on that, go read A Little Life. In the case of this story, Ash represents the tragedy of dying young. This topic has an effect on just about everyone, knowing someone who’s died young.

I believe Ash represented this youth of kids who “live their life in 17 years rather than 70” (quote from Yoshidas interviews). He was described by Eiji as this brilliant life force that lived at 100%. We see this in characters like Skip as well. Gone too young for no reason. My last reason why I believe Ash represents this topic and why it’s the reason he died in the end is Yoshidas connection between Ash and River Phoenix. He was a young actor that lived vibrantly and died too young. Yoshida herself expressed her feelings on how River was a vegan and activist yet still died from drugs. This is why Ash represents people who are taken from this world early for no true reason.

I think this part gets a lot of people mad, the “no reason” part. And it’s okay and actually good to be angry at that. You don’t always have to be complacent with death. But it’s also a thing that is very much realistic. Losing people for literally no reason. I myself had someone I loved who died in his sleep, no reason, not even a medical explanation, completely healthy. Maybe that’s why I interpret it this way, but it’s on the same level of saying that Ash choosing death is glorifying suicide as the only option for trauma survivors. If you don’t watch what you say then you could be saying that if I had done something, if Joaquin Phoenix had taken Rivers drugs away, if Eiji had gone to see Ash, then they would have lived. Things happen for a reason and sometimes they don’t, it’s a hard pill to swallow if you’ve never seen someone you love in a casket.

Exploring these topics in writing isn’t morbid or unnecessary. Sadness and grief are things we are taught to be ashamed of and avoid, but that’s why people choose to bring us these things through stories. Also, this reasoning isn’t “psychotic”, “glorifying suicide”, or a result of bad writing. It’s simply finding messages in a good story. Trust me I have a version of why he should’ve lived and maybe I would express it more if I wasn’t so dedicated to what’s canon.

If you can’t have a decent conversation about the meaning of stories that people choose to tell even when it comes to heavier topics such as death, then this story is too mature for you. Not every story has a happy ending, but they remind us to live 100% like Ash did and take advantage of the lives we have.

cosmicjoke

Amen to all of this.  If people are upset about the ending of Banana Fish and express that anger in accusations of bad writing, then yeah, it’s as you said, it’s simply too mature a story for those people.  Banana Fish is 100% dedicated to the realism of its situations and consequences.  Bad things happen to good people, for no reason at all.  They just do.  Ash was a good person, who suffered the most horrific abuses imaginable.  Child physical, sexual and emotional abuse from the age of 8 to 18.  He was forced into unimaginably terrible situations, having to see his friends killed, having to kill his best friend in order to save the one person who turned out to be his soul mate.  Constantly having to fight tooth and nail simply to survive.  Ash’s entire life was unfair and a tragedy.  And so was his death.  But what makes Banana Fish so powerful, and such a good story, is its refusal to compromise on that realism.  It doesn’t force a happy ending on an otherwise tragic story.  It stays loyal to it’s tragic narrative right through to the end.  Ash is a tragic hero, and as you said, he represents to us the unfair and unjust nature of reality that we, as human beings, are faced with every day.  Ash didn’t deserve any of the bad shit that happened to him.  That’s the point.  He was a good person, with a good heart, who did everything he could to help those around him and protect them, and sacrificed himself and his own well being constantly for their sake.  And being that good person didn’t exempt him from suffering.  He didn’t act good because he thought it would save him from suffering.  He was good, because that’s just who he was, regardless of his suffering.  That’s real.  I think Banana Fish is just too real for some people to handle.  But that doesn’t give them an excuse to crap all over people for feeling like the ending works and is right.

cosmicjoke

@thelastsummer​ Completely. But that’s not the message of the story at all. It’s not telling people that trauma can’t be overcome or dealt with. Of course it can. But just as much, of course, there are cases where it can’t be. That’s just realistic, and true.  And Banana Fish deals in realism, despite it’s extraordinary circumstances.  

People who insist that Ash could have been happy with Eiji in Japan are, I think, undermining the seriousness of what Ash actually went through and experienced.They assume that simply being with Eiji should have been enough for Ash to overcome all the pain of his life and be happy, but man, that’s not how these things work. The shit Ash went through was about as bad as it can get, and it wreaked havoc on him and his perception of himself.  He HATED himself, and throughout the story, there was always such a deep sense of melancholy and consuming sadness and loneliness to him.  He could never forgive himself for the things he’d done, no matter how justified they were. All of the people he killed, including his best friend.  All of Ash’s actions were in either self-defense, or in defense of those he loved and cared about.  But Ash always felt too deeply, and cared too much, had too much respect for life, to ever just “get over it”.  Even the scene where Lao is attacking Ash verbally and says he’s “not human, he’s a monster”, Ash does nothing to defend himself, because he agrees.  It’s completely wrong, but that’s how Ash sees himself, because of the abuse he’s suffered and the way he was brought up.  

It’s unrealistic at best, and dismissive of severe trauma at worst, to think Ash’s experiences could have been so easily wiped away by simply moving away to another country. Anyone paying attention to the story could have seen where it was going. The set up for Ash’s death was always there, woven into the narrative. It wasn’t sloppy writing, or done for “shock” value.  Anyone who claims that is instead guilty of sloppy reading and projecting their wish fulfillment onto the narrative, instead of paying attention to the actual themes and what’s happening in the story.  Death, and particularly Ash’s death, was a recurring theme throughout, constantly referred to and alluded to and foreshadowed.

The message I think the story wants to drive home is the seriousness of what it does to a person when they’re as severely abused as Ash was. It doesn’t want to trivialize that, and with integrity refuses to undermine or trivialize child abuse by making it all okay in the end, because for real life victims of child abuse, it never really is “okay”.  It’s never something they can just move on from.  It’s something that stays with them and continues to effect them for their entire lives.  Of course, they can learn to live with it, but it never leaves them entirely.  And in truth, I think, it’s more damaging to insist to people who have suffered from severe child abuse that they should be able to move on.  What if they can’t?  Does that make them a lesser person somehow?  No, of course not.  That’s just the reality.  Sometimes trauma can be too much.  Sometimes we aren’t able to overcome the things that have been done to us.  It doesn’t make us any lesser of a person.  It doesn’t make us weak.  

But of course, there’s such a powerful message of pure love woven in too, with the relationship between Ash and Eiji, between all of the horrific sexual abuse Ash has suffered. It shows a true, pure love, not romantic or physical in nature, but a love of the spirit and heart.  It shows that true love is possible, even for people who have been made to feel and think they aren’t deserving of or capable of being loved.  Ash knew in the end that he was deserving of love, that he was capable of BEING loved, because of Eiji’s love for him.  He died knowing that.  And that’s a beautiful, powerful, and moving ending to a life which was otherwise marred and defined by devastating tragedy.  It’s hopeful, in it’s own, strange way.  Ash died knowing he was loved.  That was more than he ever had in life.

cosmicjoke

@thelastsummer Totally.  Shorter’s death, and the impact it has on Ash, is something that is constantly glossed over when it comes to the way the story ends, and Ash’s inability to forgive himself.  Shorter was Ash’s best friend, and Ash had to KILL him in order to save Eiji’s life.  Think about what that would do to a young boy who’d already suffered so many horrific abuses?  Think about the mental and emotional impact that must have had on Ash?  Man, I don’t think that’s something he could have ever really gotten over, or been okay with.  The way Ash reacted when he saw Shorter’s mutilated body, the way he just collapsed to his knees and screamed, really says it all.  It completely devastated him, because he blamed himself for Shorter ending up that way.  He killed Shorter, because he had no other choice, but then he had to see his best friend’s mutilated, violated corpse, cut open and apart.  He didn’t want Shorter involved from the beginning, but Shorter insisted, and Ash finally gave in.  And then that happens to Shorter.  Really, people I think need to stop and think more about what Ash actually went through, and the weight of his own sense of guilt and the pain he was carrying with him.  If they did, they might better understand why he wanted to let himself go, in the end.

cosmicjoke

@thelastsummer And you know, that’s a really interesting view of Ash and Eiji’s relationship.  Of course, Eiji would be extremely desperate to rescue Ash, as we see from him throughout the story.  Eiji tries SO HARD to make Ash see himself in a better light, but Ash just isn’t ever able to do it.  He can’t see himself as what he really is, which is a victim.  He sees himself as a monster.  And Eiji’s attempts to help him grow increasingly more desperate and frantic.  It’s another element of tragedy in the story.  Like you said, if you really pay attention to the scene when Ash comes across Shorter’s body, and how he reacts, yeah, you can’t realistically watch or read that scene and think Ash is just going to be okay with himself someday.  Ash’s continued self-loathing, despite all of the love and care Eiji shows him throughout the story is a heavy indicator of that as well.  Eiji is able to help sooth and calm Ash down for these short bursts of time.  But as soon as Eiji goes from his side, we see Ash fall back into this melancholic, depressed state.  Eiji would have to dedicate himself to Ash all the time, at the expense of his own well being, it seems, to keep Ash’s thoughts from straying to those dark places, and really, when you think about it, that’s the last thing Ash would ever want.  He wouldn’t want Eiji to sacrifice his own well being for him.  

cosmicjoke

@thelastsummer I really agree with what you’re saying.  We see that within the story too, with the famous moment between Ash and Eiji, when Ash asks Eiji to stay, and he says “I won’t ask forever.  Just for a little while.”.  And Eiji replies with “forever”.  Ash always understood that he was so deeply entrenched in the world of violence and horror that he was in, that he could never, truly escape, and that tragically was driven home to him again and again, with how often Eiji was either kidnapped or hurt.  Really, with how everyone Ash was involved with was either kidnapped, hurt, or even eventually killed.  Like you pointed out with Skip and Griff and Shorter, and several members of his gang.  Whether it was true or not, Ash saw himself as “bad news”, and as someone who would only bring misery to others. And he obviously loved Eiji so much, that he couldn’t bear the thought of bringing that misery into his life too.  Which, yeah, is why I think Yoshida said what she did about Ash remaining separated from Eiji, even if he had lived.  As it was, Ash could remain with Eiji in his heart and soul for all eternity.  When you say how happy Ash was to get to have the time he did with Eiji, that’s really important to understanding Ash as a character, and the story as a whole.  Until Ash met Eiji, he had only ever known pain, loss and abandonment.  He’d never known actual, real love.  He’d never had someone see him for who he really is, and accept and love him for it.  So when he found that with Eiji, even knowing it was temporary and couldn’t last, it made Ash feel like the luckiest person in the world, that someone like him, who’d suffered so much, and who thought of himself as this monster, would get to taste that pure love and acceptance, even if only for a little while.

It’s incredibly poignant and moving, and so, so emotionally powerful.

Also what you pointed out about that scene between Ash and Jessica, where Jessica asks him how he can have it so together after being raped again by Foxx, and how her question really highlights just how immense and terrible Ash’s trauma actually is.  When he answers her with “If it took me a year to get over all the times I’ve been raped, I’d be dead from old age”, it drives home the horrifying reality of Ash’s day to day life.  The way he’s literally forced to repress and hold in the devastation and trauma of having been repeatedly raped and molested since he was a young boy in order to simply function and survive.  Ash never had the luxury of processing and dealing with his grief and trauma, because he never had a moment to even breathe.  If he’d stopped fighting for even a moment, he would have died.  And, eventually, that’s exactly what happened.  He stopped fighting for a single moment, and he paid for it with his life.  I think people fail to really consider that aspect to Ash’s character and his life too.  How absolutely exhausting and draining it would be to have to live like that.  To always have to be looking over your shoulder.  To always be so on edge that you can’t go through a single day without looking at everyone and everything with suspicion.  To never have a real moment of peace to just try and deal with all the consuming pain and tragedy Ash was dealt in his young life.  

I always think that Eiji’s love is what eventually made Ash feel like it was okay to finally just stop fighting.  To let himself go.  Because for those few years he had with Eiji, he knew real happiness, which is something he never dared to even hope for.  It was more than Ash ever thought he could have, and more than he thought he ever deserved (even though Ash completely deserved to be loved).  But because Eiji gave him that, because he showed Ash what it meant to be loved, truly and unconditionally, Ash could finally stop struggling and stop suffering, and just slip away.  

cosmicjoke

@thelastsummer That’s a great point about us as the audience being in the same position as Eiji.  The ones left behind after a loved one has died, and of course, it’s those people who continue to suffer from that loss.  And of course, anger is one of the stages of grief.  But death, as you’ve pointed out, is a reality of living, and even though some people don’t want to acknowledge it, and even become irrationally angry at even the suggestion or mention of it, real art of course never shy’s away from the harsher realities of life.  That’s something you really have to admire Banana Fish for, is it’s unwillingness to compromise on it’s realism.  Some people don’t want to be made to deal with genuine heartbreak or sadness, but avoiding those realities never helps anyone in the end.  Ash’s death is brutal and hard to accept, hard to take, but it’s also extremely sincere and real, and it’s why the story is so affecting.  It doesn’t ever betray its tragic nature.  Ash surviving would have been a direct betrayal of the entire tone of the story, and the arc of Ash’s own life, I think.  But like you said too, in sharing Eiji’s grief, the audience also shares in Eiji’s love for Ash, and as Ash will continue to live on with Eiji forever, he also lives on with us the audience.  Banana Fish refuses to let us forget Ash and what he went through.  It refuses to let us grow complacent towards him or what he went through by undercutting the tragedy of it.  It basically grabs us by the neck and forces us to confront the ugly reality of child abuse and violence, and the impact it can have on a person.  It’s just such a real and powerful story.  And believe me, I’m as happy to have found you to discuss the story with.  It’s not a hugely mainstream, popular manga/anime, I think because it’s just too real for a lot of people.  So being able to discuss it with you is a real joy.

cosmicjoke

@thelastsummer Definitely.  Banana Fish stands as a real piece of art because of how it reflects the actual human condition, and what it means to be alive.  It doesn’t shy away from those things.  Like you said, and it’s so true, people who have lost someone in real life can’t just magic it away because it makes them upset.  You have to eventually learn to face and accept it.  Banana Fish never compromises on its dedication to realism, or the brutal consequences of its subject matters, like child abuse.  If it had had a happy ending, it would have been easier to digest, sure, but ultimately, it would have been forced and contrite and left us feeling hollow.  The reason the actual ending is so impactful isn’t because it makes you feel empty at the end, it’s because it makes you feel almost too much.  It creates such raw, real emotion in the audience, because everything it depicts is so sincere and true and, ultimately, relatable to being alive.

ash-in-the-rye

All of this was really beautifully said and really enjoyable to read❤️ Thanks to @cosmicjoke and  @thelastsummer for these great interpretations.

Literature is all about interpretation which can come in various forms because everyone sees and perceives it differently. It’s interesting to talk to people about it and see them interpreting things in a way you haven’t considered until then yourself. That’s why it will never stop baffling me when people just only ever complain about how much they hate the ending, how “Yoshida doesn’t deserve rights”, how she dares to to tell them to die by letting Ash die in the end, how much of a “bad” and “lazy” writer she is because of that and how they basically tell people they’re not allowed to like the ending because it means they support the “message” of it.

First of all, not liking the ending is completely valid just like it’s just as valid to like it, and it’s also valid to express why you don’t like it.

However, badmouthing the author or other people is just a no-go. The author had workd hard on this manga she created for years. Yes, the ending may not be to everyone’s liking and she was aware of that, but it’s still the ending she chose for her story. If we had ended it dfferently, that’s okay, but we’re not the author, just like MAPPA isn’t the author and couldn’t change the ending. It may made no sense for some people, but for Yoshida-sensei, it did. It doesn’t mean it was “lazy” or “bad”, it just means we have a different perception of what would make sense or not.

And lastly, the “message”. A message is only ever what you take away from it for yourself and not necessarily what the author really wanted to say with it. So if people say the message is “people who experienced sexual abuse deserve to die” then it’s is what they took away from it and not what the author ultimately wanted to convey. So accusing people of supporting a message you personally took away from the story is really pointless because just because you feel like it’s the message of the story doesn’t mean others see it like that as well.

Anyway, if all people only ever want to do is complain and bashing the author, then they really should move on and read a more happier story if they so badly want to see a happy ending. They definitely won’t find it here and the author also doesn’t owe it to us because again, it’s her story.

I think nowadays, people are really too spoiled with stories always ending happily so when they have a story that’s having a sad and tragic ending for once, they’ll get angry quickly and dismiss it as being “bad” just because they’re not satisfied with it.

I personally really enjoy talking about the ending with other people and see how they interpret or perceived it. But I really think this only works with people who either like it or at least accept it (at least for me). People who only truly hate it and only ever point out the “bad message” behind it seem way more quicker in starting to only ever complain about it rather than actually talk about it and this can get really tiring.

When it comes to me regarding the ending, even though it greatly breaks my heart and makes me cry every time I see it, I think the ending is fitting.

The way I see it, it could only have ended in two ways anyway. Either with Ash and Eiji parting ways right then and there (just like the alternative ending Yoshida-sensei had in mind as stated in one of her interviews), leaving it open when or if they ever see each other again or with Ash dying. Sadly, it was the latter and I really wish it had ended the other way, but that’s just how it is.

Banana Fish was a tragedy from beginning to end (just like the stories it references like “A Perfect Day for Banana Fish” or “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”). So we had never seen the happy ending where they both go to Japan and live happily ever after in the first place. It would have been really unrealistic, especially if Ash had suddenly thought of himself of deserving a second chance and a normal life. Until the very end, that’s just not how Ash thought. It had never crossed his mind to start a new life in Japan because he thought of himself as an unredeemable monster which is only fit for the street life.

Of course, that’s not who he really was. We all saw how caring he was and how willing he was to sacrifice himself when it meant saving other people. He wasn’t a monster but a human. A human who deserved to live a happy life more than anyone else. But that’s not how he saw himself. Maybe he thought of himself as a human in the end, but that doesn’t mean he also thought he could be forgiven for all the people he had killed. Yes, mostly it was out of self-defense, but Ash still thought that this was no excuse. So in the end, he maybe even thought dying was the only way to redeem himself. Again, Ash’s perception and not necessarily the truth.

People seem to forget how damaged Ash’s view of himself was until the very end. There was no way this could have changed that quickly, him suddenly starting to love himself and finding self-worth, not even with Eiji’s help. After all, Eiji’s love was a comfort but not a magical healing tool that could fix everything. Over 10 years of abuse and people making him feel like he’s worthless won’t go away within 2 years which also weren’t that peaceful.

However, I do think, Ash would have been able to overcome his traumas eventually if he had granted more time and a quieter environment. It wouldn’t have been easy, but I think it would have been possible. But actually getting there would have been a a whole other story and I doubt Yoshida-sensei would have had the energy or wanted to actually write it.

cosmicjoke

@ash-in-the-rye Thank you for contributing!  And thank you for your measured, insightful, and thoughtful commentary.  I agree with everything you said, and I know we’ve discussed this before as well!  It’s always such a joy to talk to you about this.  Definitely, I think the message behind Banana Fish, which people lose sight of because they’re so angry or heartbroken over Ash’s death, is compassion for victims of child abuse.  Ultimately, Banana Fish refuses to white wash the damage caused by child abuse, and how it can destroy a person.  The abuse Ash received didn’t destroy him in terms of who he was as a person.  Ash remains a good person despite what was done to him, which just shows an overall incredible moral strength, I think.  But the abuse he suffered definitely destroyed his perception of himself, and his ability to think of himself as deserving of love or a better life.  Like you pointed out, Ash’s perception of himself is severely warped and wrong.  He calls himself a monster and a brute, when in reality, he’s got such a kind and compassionate heart, capable of so much love.  But like you said, the two years he spent with Eiji just wasn’t enough to free him of the pain of more than ten years of the worst kind of abuse, and to fix how lowly his opinion of himself was, and to expect that, to expect Ash to just get over what was done to him like that, isn’t only unrealistic but, I think, unintentional though it might be, disrespectful towards Ash and what he endured.  It shows I think an unwillingness to consider the depth of his suffering.  

It’s absolutely possible that he could have gotten better, or learned someday to love himself, but yes, the road would have been extremely hard, with no actual guarantee of success.  Ash died knowing he was loved, whether he felt he deserved that love or not, and that means something.  

By the way @ash-in-the-rye I sent you a PM!  I wanted to get your opinion on something!  

ash-in-the-rye

It’s always a joy talking to you about different aspect of Bf as well, @cosmicjoke ^^

Indeed, Ash’s trauma caused by having been sexually abused never got dismissed in the story. It was always present and we saw how it affected and shaped him over the years. The abuse he has suffered from was never downplayed and instead presented as what it is:

Something horrible and something no one should ever go through.

We sympathized with him, we rooted for him and wished he could have had the chance to get his happy ending because that’s what he honestly deserved. That’s also why the notion of his death sending the message of: “All abuse victims deserve to die” doesn’t make sense to me.

Everyone who watched/read the ending thought: “He didn’t deserve this.” So how can this be the message if we all agree that he should have lived and deserved a normal and happy life even if it had taken some time to get there? Even the narrative makes clear that he shouldn’t have died if we look at GoL. Eiji and Sing are still hurting so much after all those years and only learn to cope with their grief bit by bit. The fact that they’re so affected by Ash’s death signals me that his death was a tragedy and that he should have lived. Otherwise, we would have seen a much happier epilogue which would have portrayed Ash’s death in a positive way. But it didn’t and that makes all the difference.

Another thing would be people projectiing onto him. I’m not saying that it’s bad to identify yourself with a character who’s similiar to you or has gone through similiar things like you. On the contrary, it’s always good if you have such characters because it makes us feel not so alone with whatever we’re going through anymore.

However, we should always bear in mind that we’re not actually that character. We are our own person with our own decisions and our own personal way and eventual end. Just because Ash died doesn’t mean that everyone who went through the same as him have to die, too.

cosmicjoke

Again, perfectly said @ash-in-the-rye

That’s a brilliant point, that nobody had the reaction at the end of Banana Fish that Ash deserved to die.  I mean, if you had that reaction, there’s something seriously wrong with you, I think.  Everyone was so devastated because they knew that Ash was a good person and he deserved to have a good, happy life, and to see him suffer as much as he did and then die so pointlessly was nothing but a complete tragedy.  And as you also pointed out, from both Eiji’s and Sing’s reactions to Ash’s death, it’s absolutely framed as a tragedy.  There’s nothing good about him dying.  It’s just brutal and tragic.  So again, I think it’s people twisting the ending into something it’s not because they don’t want to face the reality that the story is conveying, which is that bad things happen to good people, and also refusing to downplay the damage caused by child abuse.

And also, yes, there is an element of projecting going on.  This idea that because Ash dies in the end, and because Ash never really learns to love himself, that must mean all victims of abuse are going and/or should end up the same way.  I don’t get that notion at all.  Ash’s circumstances, for one thing, were so extreme and so brutally bad, that it would be difficult to find any kind of parallel in real life to that anyway.  But even if you did, like you said, Ash is his own person, separate from anyone else, and how Ash reacted and felt about what happened to him and how his life went doesn’t reflect  100% how someone else who’d been through something similar would react and feel.

Also though, because Banana Fish refuses to just magic away Ash’s pain and trauma, I think it also sends the message that it’s okay if you can’t just get over the abuse you’ve suffered.  It doesn’t make you a weak person, or a lesser person.  Ash is anything but weak.  He isn’t pitiful or pathetic.  He’s so strong and courageous and kind.  Banana Fish shows us that even if you can’t recover from your abuse, even if it always haunts you, it doesn’t mean you aren’t a good person, or a person with value.  You can still be an extraordinary person, even carrying the weight of suffering.

//

Anonymous asked:

I feel like I can relate to Ash alot because he was so haunted by everything that happened to him. Survivor stories just kind of depress me since I'm stuck and I feel like I'm taking way too long to get better...Or I guess I feel like I haven't gained anything from what happened to me like they all say they have. They made Ash so realistic in his suffering so to me he's a really comforting character to love.

softasheijis answered:

ash never became a stronger or better person because of his trauma. you can argue that his strong aversion to sexual harassment, pedophilia, and rape culture is a result of this, but these are all things decent human beings are capable of feeling. you can argue that his intelligence is directly related to the suffering he endured in order to survive, but the truth is he was that smart to begin with, and being privately schooled by someone like blanca heightened his tactful abilities immensely.

like i said, ash never became a stronger or better person because of his trauma. it absolutely crippled him from beginning to end. it ruined his life and turned him into a person he never wanted to be. it’s okay to feel that way.

i’m not saying it’s wrong or impossible for people to grow in spirit and mind from these things, but a rape victim should never have to force on a brave face to show others that their pain meant something. trauma shouldn’t have to make you better to be seen as valid. horrific acts are often senseless and can happen for no reason at all, and you are absolutely not in the wrong for feeling the way that you are because of it. that is out of your control entirely, but recovery is in your control. it will take a very long time to get there and it is likely the hardest thing you’ll have to do, but you will absolutely get there no matter how long it takes. i think the most important thing to remember is that you are never alone in these things.

please remember to love yourself and take things one step at a time!

on a side note, it makes me really happy to know that you take comfort in a character like ash. i’m sure many others feel the same way as you.

cosmicjoke This is exactly why I don’t understand people who get angry at others for saying Ash’s trauma was too much to just easily overcome, or even overcome at all.  That’s just the reality for a lot of victims of abuse.  Sometimes it’s too much for them to ever move past, or get over.  And that reality doesn’t make victims of abuse weak people, it doesn’t make them somehow lesser.  They shouldn’t HAVE to get over it, just because everyone tells them they should.  Sometimes it’s too much, and that fact needs to be respected and treated with compassion.  If the abuse someone has suffered continues to affect and impact them for their entire lives, then that’s normal, and instead of expecting the victim to recover and “get better”, maybe it’s other people who need to work more on themselves in understanding and accepting the pain another person is in.  Banana Fish, and Ash as a character is completely realistic in the portrayal of what child sexual abuse does to a person.  It destroys their lives, and destroys who they could have been if it had never happened to them.  

People don’t like to face the bleak nature and reality of child abuse, and how it can irrevocably damage a person, and that’s why some people have such an issue with Banana Fish.  But in truth, the story is about the most fair and accurate depiction and representation there is for real life victims of abuse.  It doesn’t whitewash it, or make it more palatable for those who haven’t been victims like Ash was.  It forces us to look at the reality of it and accept it for how awful it truly is.  It doesn’t let you grow complacent towards the ramifications of child abuse.  If that makes some people uncomfortable, well, that’s just too bad for them I guess.  Ash never overcomes the abuse he was subjected to.  He never learns to love himself, he never moves past it or makes peace with it.  He never puts it behind him.  It continues to affect him and make him suffer right until the very end.  And by ending it that way, the story forces us to acknowledge the harsh reality of what child abuse does to its victims, and Banana Fish proves itself to be absolutely compassionate and understanding towards victims of child abuse for it, because it refuses to trivialize it by magicing away its consequences.  That’s the opposite of what people accuse the story of doing.  It’s a call for people to wake up and pay attention to the real consequences of what happens when we let children slip through the cracks, the way Ash was allowed to slip through.

//

jadeashes

I realized today that Dino Golzine has a code lock to get out of his bedroom to keep his victims from getting away. The code is Ash’s manga birthday (68/8/12). Since most 4-digit code locks don’t allow a repeated number the code becomes 6812.

I wonder how many times Ash tried random numbers to try to get out, never thinking to use his own birthday. Why would a man who hates him enough to abuse him that way care about his birthday, better try the other 10,000 combinations first. I wonder how Dino thinks of it now, how desperate he was to make Ash his “wife” and force him to be complicit in all of his crimes, going as far a using a number tied to Ash’s very existence as a means to keep other children from freedom.

cosmicjoke

Ugh, this is so twisted and adds yet another layer to Dino’s cruelty.  God, just imagining Ash being locked in Dino’s bedroom, literally trapped and unable to get out, is horrifying and heartbreaking.  I mean, think about it.  Ash was ten, eleven years old when Dino “bought” him, and started raping him.  I can’t even imagine what Ash must have been feeling at that point too, after running away from home, after everything that had happened with his baseball coach and his father failing him… only to find it all happening to him all over again.  God, it must have been so horrific.  And people wonder why Ash acted so harsh and closed off sometimes.  

#Banana Fish #Meta #Commentary #Ash Lynx #Eiji Okumura #Blanca #Dino Golzine

[i-turned-the-emperor-to-dust]

Movie/Musical Theory

Astruc has already stated that this is an Adrinette song. So knowing this, automatically, there are certain things to assume while approaching the lyrics. My theory, then, is that Marinette knows Adrien is Chat Noir, and here’s all the reasons why:

SOURCE: https://twitter.com/ThomasAstruc/status/1137182300737888256). 

Since each line builds off the next, I’m going to address Marinette’s lines first, and then sum up Adrien’s at the end.

[1] When I see him, I’m not me anymore. I turn red and talk softly. I run out of breath, and my heart beats fast. [2] But why? I dare not tell him anything. I want him just for me. His light, his smile. For one night crossing this wall between us.

Marinette is referring to how shy and nervous she gets around him, and how she “dares not tell him anything”. Naturally, we’re meant to assume she’s talking about her crush on Adrien, and her inability to confess her feelings… but if you approach those lines from a post-reveal standpoint, what if she’s not? What if the “anything” she’s referring to is the fact that she knows he’s Chat Noir? What if she dares not tell him she’s Ladybug and that she knows he’s Chat? 

Likewise, this may mean she’s not acting like herself around Chat Noir anymore either.

[3] You and me. If we could see each other beyond the mirror, forget our masks for one night, let's break off the pieces of this wall between us. (these lines are sang in tandem).

It’s actually quite interesting that these lines are sang by both of them. They make sense from Chat’s point-of-view: he’s always wanted to reveal their identities and know each other outside of their superhero personas, and if he’s suddenly experiencing feelings for Marinette, it makes sense he’d want them to reveal themselves even more… then they can be together and he’ll no longer have to “duel with his heart” over these mysterious feelings for another girl. Feelings he’s trying to run away from.

However, this has never been the case with Marinette, not in her feelings towards Adrien. So why do the lyrics include “us”, “we”, and “our” [our masks/we could see each other]? Why not “I”, “me”, my? [remove my mask]/[show you the real me]? That would make sense for both of them, and especially for Marinette, who could be singing to Adrien about wanting to reveal her identity as Ladybug so he’ll love her too.

But if you approach it from the viewpoint that Marinette does want to reveal her identity now, but can’t, suddenly those lines extend to both of them, not just Chat, and it makes a lot more sense in context, because frankly, there’s no reason for Marinette to think ADRIEN should be wearing a mask… there’s nothing for him to remove or to reveal.

[4] A day will come, you will discover, the happiness of being two, you and me. When we will hug [embrace] each other.

Another word for hug in English is to “embrace”, and an embrace can be physical and metaphorical; she could be speaking of embracing both parts of their identities, in addition to the physical aspect of “hugging”.

[5] Yet, I feel it, this whirlwind of feelings that takes hold of us firmly. In the sun and in the wind, a unique chance. Magic is spinning/stirring. It's strong when I see it. I want to shout it from the roofs, our love that reaches out to us, but I know I shouldn't. This is not the moment. We have to be patient. Be patient. [6] I know that one day we will fly. Because, my love, one day you will see, that with me, you will become who you are.

Marinette talks about how strong their feelings are: “our love that reaches out to us” and how she wants to “shout it from the roofs” but “it’s not the right moment. We have to be patient.” I can’t help but think this whole line is hiding something in plain sight: It’s almost as if she knows her feelings are reciprocated, but something is holding them back from being together. Otherwise, why would their love already be established?

She later goes on to say that the day will come when “you will see, that with me, you will become who you are.” When you think about it, that’s actually a very deep thought to be coming from Marinette who tends to put Adrien on a pedestal and sees him as perfect - yet here she is talking of his duality, and how he can’t be himself. Which means she’s aware that there are two sides that he keeps separate/hidden… something that’s only possible if she knows both of those secret sides for herself. After all, if she was referring to the dichotomy of Adrien’s model-persona/home-persona, those aren’t so secret, not since he has friends who know of his lonely home-life: so technically, he can be “himself” with Nino, Chloe, and all his friends. But Ladybug is the only one who knows his secret superhero persona, and that’s the one that needs to meld with “Adrien” - thereby allowing him to become the man he truly is. The Ladybug and Cat miraculous are meant to be two halves of a whole, so it makes sense that both sides would eventually need to come together. And that can only be accomplished through Marinette.

So why isn’t the moment right yet? Marinette has already tried multiple times to confess to Adrien, so what has changed now? This is merely speculation, but maybe it’s because she knows both sides of him, but he only knows one side of her. It’s only when he learns to love Marinette just as much as Ladybug, that they can “shout their love from the rooftops” - that’s why they have to be patient, because he’s not there yet. But what she doesn’t realize (and we do, thanks to all of Adrien’s lyrics) is that Adrien has already found himself falling for Marinette, despite the fact that his heart has already been taken by Ladybug.

[7] We will be together in the night, like in the day, when all that glitters, our love will be to infinity. [8] Despite the wall between us, love goes from one side to the other. We are, together, a rare strength. For you, I will wait a lifetime. Because, yes, I love you to madness. I will love you to infinity.

“We are together a rare strength” is another line that brings to mind Ladynoir, not so much Adrinette, connecting back to the idea of the miraculouses and how they’re stronger together. And “together in the night” could be referring to their alter-egos, and how they are not yet able to see each other clearly as Chat and Ladybug, since they wear masks, and keep themselves hidden (aka, the dark). But during the day, those masks are removed, and they can see each other as Marinette and Adrien, though they yearn to know each other in both day and night.

And the rest is pretty self-explanatory: they love each other lots, which is evidenced by how they fell for each other “despite the wall” from “one side [of the love square] to the other”

[1] She is standing right behind me. She smiles at me and turns her eyes. I think I understand her funny game. [2] Get away! It's the only thing to do. My heart is upside down. I sense a power that pulls me beyond the wall between us. And yet, when I think of her, I feel unfaithful. I want to run away in the night to see my Ladybug. I have a heart to duel.

All of Adrien’s lines are pretty self-explanatory: He’s awakening to his feelings for Marinette, and has come to realize that those “funny games” she plays (being shy, silly, awkward) is because she likes him.

He then goes on to explain that this new realization has got him spooked! He wants to “get away” and escape, because it’s confusing his heart, and making him feel guilty towards Ladybug. He feels like he has to “duel” his heart and make an effort to stop feeling the way he does towards Marinette, but if the duel’s any indication, it’s a struggle.

[3] I do not understand what I want. I do not want to fall in love. Where does this mysterious feeling come from? [4] But why, if my heart is elsewhere, do I feel in my soul, a warmth? A thrill that brings me happiness.

Adrien’s such a romantic, it must be terrifying for him to admit that he’s feeling torn between two different girls, so he’s in denial. He does not want these new feelings for Marinette and doesn’t understand where they came from or why. Yet, he can’t deny that she brings him happiness, and that she brings warmth to his soul. However, undeniably, he loves Ladybug… so whyyyyyy? He’s no player! His love is true (he swears) and yet…

Orrrrrr, I could be wayyyyy wrong and will laugh at this post once the musical is released LOL.

Either way, it was fun to think about, and I could pimp my video at the same time. ❤️

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous spoilers #season 3 spoilers #my theories #vidding keeps me sane #my own special edits #miraculous musical #Ladybug & Cat Noir Awakening #the walls between us #I have way too much time on my hands #sorry not sorry #I'm probably wrong #sooooo wrong #LOL