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#Revenged And Triple Threat endings together
sunlightmurdock · 5 months
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Operation Apollo | 2.8 | Jake Seresin x Reader (18+)
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Synopsis: After a threat is made against her life, the President’s grown up daughter gets her security tripled. Ex-Navy and current Secret Service, Jake Seresin is devoted to being the best at everything he does. He isn’t going to let a bratty little girl cost him this job.
Warning: age gap, power imbalance, enemies to lovers, danger and angst, manipulation, sucky parents, grief and manipulation, lying, distressing themes throughout but especially towards the end of the chapter. Graphic violence, dangerous situations, revenge, wc: 3.5k
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For as long as you can remember, you had known that your father was going to be president. It was always discussed as a given. It was the coup de grace; he had been working towards it much longer than you had even been alive.
Those fourteen hour work days, and sleepless nights. The hard decisions and the time away from his family. All along, Matthew had sworn that it would be worth it. It would, one day, be enough.
Then, the first set of polls came in after those primary debates the summer before his first election run and with it, intel that Matthew plunged a sixth of his savings in to. Politics and bribery go hand in hand across most of the world; this wasn’t even the first step off of the beaten path. 
The intel was clear as day; It wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be enough. All of that time, and work, and desperation that he poured into his career, it wasn’t going to be enough to win him the presidency. The guarantee was next to nil.
But there was still time.
He remembers one evening, in particular, sitting with his advisors in his home office, and just sobbing. Every birthday he had missed, every milestone — it was all going to be for nothing. 
“Look, Matt,” Arnie had said, stubbing his thin rolled cigarette out into a crystal ashtray and sitting back in the leather arm chair, sinking into it like the lazy waste of space that he was. He was a good friend of the family back then. “There’s still time. We’ve got options, buddy. Plenty of ‘em.” 
Matthew had rolled his neck back slowly — he still remembers the stress-induced stiffness those days had caused him —  and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Yeah, Arnie? — And what options are those?” It was a biting remark, untrusting and downright hateful by that point. Arnie had promised many things already, and rarely had delivered. On the times that Matthew thinks back to his twenty year friendship with Arnold Paulson, he finds himself glad that that asshole now resides six feet under.
The older guy had just shrugged, letting that snide little smile creep across his face. “I know a guy. I think he might be able to, uh… help you out. For a fee, if you get where I’m coming from.”
Ellis Armstrong. After three days, and more phone calls than you care to remember, you have a name. He’s a business-man, and a rather successful one at that. Works in corporate development — he’s not hidden from the public eye like you would expect a guy like this to be.
No, he’s got thirteen offices spanning three continents and a portfolio that would put the Forbes list to shame. Once upon a time, he had been a friend of the family. It’s easy to piece together the headshot of him sitting at the wide, mahogany desk in his new office and the fuzzy memories of the tall man in your father’s office late at night.
You remember him distinctly. The sound your bare feet had made, tiptoeing down that long, curving staircase in the old house. Far past your bedtime, your princess nightgown grazing your ankles. The halls dark, illuminated by lights pouring out from under doors. The house was never really empty back then. Pushing open the heavy pocket doors that separated your father’s office from the parlour. 
The gaunt, tall blond man sitting in the armchair. His sunken eyes that had seemed so dark in the dimly lit room. His thin lips and hollow cheeks. The long, straight nose and the deep lines between his brows. Skeletal and still, he had looked like a monster. Something that belongs in the dark, lurking in wait. 
“What are you doing up, princess?” Matthew had scooped you off of your feet and suddenly you were looking at him instead, in all of the warmth and glory and familiarity of a man adored by his little girl. 
“I couldn’t sleep.” You remember, but it’s hazy now. You don’t remember the softer, higher pitch of your voice or really what had made the man in the chair quite so scary looking, or what had driven you out of the safety of your bed that night. 
There’s a fondness to his smile in those hazy memories, a softness to his touch that feels so far away now. The stars and unicorns on your bedsheets, and the stuffie he had tucked under your chin. The safety of your childhood bedroom, with the warm pink glow of your nightlight and the embrace of your stuffed animal. How far away the fear of that man in the chair had felt once your father had kissed the top of your head and closed your door.
It doesn’t just feel far away, it is far away — everything about it. Your parents no longer own that house, you’ve long outgrown that bed and that stuffed animal ended up in the donate pile after one of your big moves. You’re no longer hiding from the scary man sitting in the armchair; you’re looking for him.
“I don’t understand,” You do, but showing your cards has never been part of your strategy. The woman opposite you forces her creasing mouth into a deeper frown as she pulls her coffee cup protectively closer. “Tell me, exactly, what you remember about your time working for my father.”
If Allen knew where you were, he would skin you alive. If Manny knew, he would be right here with you. If Jake knew, you wouldn’t be here at all. He would have locked you in a hallway closet before he let you set something like this up. 
The woman sitting opposite you is a timid little redhead with big brown eyes and a disposition that brings new clarity to the term ‘afraid of her own shadow’. She’s jumpy, and looking over her shoulder constantly. You, are considerably cooler for a person more alone than they have been in more than a decade.
Her name is Ida — she was your father’s personal assistant the year before his first election, and it cost you to even get her to this cafe in Pasadena. You remember the long skirts and the narrow glasses, but you don’t remember Ida being quite so… afraid.
“He wasn’t— he isn’t a bad man, darling. That’s what you have to understand, it’s just that—“
“Ida, slow down.” You bite, growing tired of this. You don’t have long before someone notices that you’re gone, if they haven’t already. The sky outside is grey, and sullen, the cafe is almost empty for now but the lunch rush is approaching. “This isn’t about whether he’s a good guy or not. Tell me where Ellis Armstrong comes into this.”
Sitting opposite you, the mouse-like woman’s eyes turn wide like saucers as she shrinks down further into her seat, wringing her hands into the checked fabric of her skirt.
“He wasn’t going to win the election by himself. There was intel out there that… painted him in a bad light.”
“Details, Ida.” You click the pen and stare across at her impatiently. She swallows softly and checks around her again.
“Your father had an affair. It was all going to come out — it would have tanked any kind of campaign he could have put together, and you remember what times were like then… the kind of money it would have taken to make that go away…” The coffee mug in front of her scalds her trembling hands as she finally lifts her chin enough for you to look her in the eye. Raindrops start to beat into the sidewalk outside. A silence sets across the coffee shop as the soft indie playlist stops between tracks.
If you were still little, padding barefoot along the hall in your princess nightdress, this would have hurt so badly. The warm smile and his gentle disposition — and he was already betraying you, even then. You’re not little now. It doesn’t hurt like it would have then. You scrawl messily across the page.
“What was her name, who did she work for?”
Ida pauses briefly, blinking. Truthfully, she hadn’t been expecting this calculated coldness from you. She’s seen the videos of the frightened girl clinging to her bodyguard. She wonders how far he might be from you today.
“Suzy Blake. She was a political analyst for the New York Times back then.” Ida tells you, turning her head and checking through the rain-dotted front windows of the shop. You scribe the information and look back up to her, unsatisfied.
“All I’ve got on this is your word?” You prompt her.
“And her daughter — Matt never took a paternity test, but Suzy was always so sure.” This, Ida can see it worm its way under your skin, writhing under those years of collected conditioning. She blinks across at you and taps her nails against the coffee cup, glancing down at the milky liquid.
You have never heard of Suzy; couldn’t even begin to picture what she looks like. Her daughter would be nine, at least, maybe older. She could look like you, maybe. You press your lips together and grind the tip of the pen into the lined page, threatening to leave indentations of your anger through the rest of the book at once.
“So, Ellis paid for her to disappear?” You confirm, looking back up at Ida with an iciness that gives her a glimpse of her former boss. 
“Ellis paid for a lot of things.” Ida answers you suddenly faster than she has in the entire hour that you’ve been sitting here. She doesn’t look at you as she says it, lifting the mug from the saucer and taking a long drink of her latte. The liquid shivers in the cup, disturbed by her trembling fingers.
“Ida.” You sigh, growing frustrated. She turns her head and looks towards the window again, craning her neck slightly. Frightened of her own shadow, you condemn her cowardice. “Details.”
Her eyes follow two raindrops as the grey droplets race along the windowpane. “He bought the presidency for your father.”
Your father is a proud man. He has told you the story plenty of times, of how your grandfather had tried to give your parents the down payment for a house, how your father chose to spend his first year of marriage in a studio apartment rather than taking it. Back then, you wouldn’t have believed he could do such a thing.
Now, you aren’t sure where to draw the line on where your beliefs lie. 
“Extra campaign funding, promotions, big names,” Ida’s cup jingles as she sets it rockily back down onto the saucer. She turns her head back to the table, but avoids your gaze nonetheless. “Votes. Ellis made it all happen. He saved your father’s career.”
Your gaze flicks up from the scrawled information on the page, and lands on her hands. She picks restlessly at her cuticles, her attention shifting to every corner of the room but you. Your brows draw together seriously, taking a moment to check the empty space around you before you focus on her. 
“And what did my father do to him?”
Such a clever little girl — that’s what Ida remembers most of you. So inquisitive, and engaged. So interested. It’s such a shame that no one had time for you, you really deserved someone who would have answered those wonderful questions you came up with.
She swallows softly, unsure of exactly how much information is encompassed by the umbrella of ‘everything’. In her industry, you never let go of all of your secrets at once. That’s just bad business.
“He ran for re-election,” Ida says calmly, her voice more confident sounding, even in its soft tone. She exhales slowly. “And, after the successes in his first term, it became clear that he could win the presidency again. Without Mr. Armstrong.”
Across the table, you set the pen down on the edge of the notebook and check the time on your watch. You should be getting back before Allen has time to deploy a whole search party. 
“Again, Ida… I’ve just got your word on this.” You remind her. A jaded assistant from nine years ago isn’t exactly the concrete evidence that you broke out of your house for. The fear in her eyes is all the proof you need, but that won’t stand up in court.
You’ve been thinking about that a lot recently, as your research has deepened into your father’s past. You came across a picture yesterday, where he was your age, and smiling in the foreground of a Greenpeace conference. It struck you to consider if that young man would hate the man he was going to become as much as you have grown too — if maybe the two of you would have gotten along once, if things were different.
If you would be able to stand up in court and send the smiling young man, with the purest of intentions, to prison. 
“You’re right,” She starts to shake her head and her chair scrapes across the floor. The loudest sound that has come from her all day. She twists in her seat and grabs her jacket and her bag from the back of her chair. “You’re right, I can’t prove this. This was a bad idea…”
Your eyes go wide as she scrambles for her things. “No, Ida, wait—“
She pauses, briefly, to look you in the eye. “I’m sorry.” She turns swiftly, and heads for the door, dinging the bell above it and slipping out into the sheets of grey rain outside the door. You slam your notebook shut and fumble to slip it into your back, all thumbs and no fingers, stuck in the struggle as she disappears from the view of the front window. 
“Shit…” You mutter, slinging the bag onto your shoulder, forgetting your coat completely as you head after her. She’s much faster than she is loud. Rain chills your cheeks and dampens your hair before the bell above the door is even done ringing. Your shoes slap against the pavement, splashing fresh rainwater onto your jeans. You round the corner and squint through the grey ahead of you in search of her.
Her plaid skirt dips behind a car up ahead as she crosses to the driver’s side.
“Ida! Wait!” You call out for her, securing a hand around your bag as you jog to keep up, rushing for the blue sedan as she ducks into it. It doesn’t take you long, her hands are shaking too much to get the keys into the ignition. You slow, but don’t make it to a complete stop, reaching out to knock hard against the passenger window, as something cold, sharp-edged and hard slams into your right eye socket.
Your elbow hits the ground first, then your knee, then your left temple, before your body collapses to the wet pavement all together. Thrown off balance and reeling, your years of conditioning haven’t ever prepared you for this. Your skull aches, throbbing like you’re being hit with that first impact over and over, before you even feel the fingers curling around your arms and hoisting you off of the ground.
The car door clicks open. Blood rushes to the right side of your face, swelling in circles to form the deep bruise that will be left behind. Slow, blinking, your eyes drag themselves open and blink as you realize that it wasn’t the door of the car that opened. A second impact comes, but this one isn’t stone — it’s all skin. You can feel the warmth of the hand, and the ridges of each knuckle, as it drives forwards into your face.
After that, you can only imagine how easy you make for them to get you in that trunk. It hurts too much to open your eyes. Maybe that’s a pathetic thing to think, as you start to think of what they’ll do to you next — what pain is yet to come. But, it’s dark anyway, and in here, at least you’re alone. Your phone is in the bag. Maybe that’s still on th pavement, or maybe it’s in the car. But it isn’t with you. 
Each turn sends you forwards or back, your body rolling over the thinly carpeted trunk, slamming into the back of the seats or the metal of the hatch. You can feel your face swelling, the heat from it stings like a burn.
Jake’s going to be so angry with you, for doing this to yourself.
Maybe it’s just a short ride, or maybe you black out a little on the way, there’s no way of knowing for sure. But, when your eyes feel open, they’re trying to focus to the new bright light after ages of dark. When they’re closed, it doesn’t look much different.
It’s cold, and the echo of the voices around you tells you that the space you’re in is wide open and empty. A warehouse, most likely. The perfect spot for an execution. 
You’re held up by a hand on each of your arms, and your feet drag, scrambling for leverage against the ground as they tug you forwards. There’s some fight left in you after all. If it lasts long enough for someone to figure out where you are, that’s another story. You should have told Manny. Or left a note. Something.
The country is going to put your father on a pedestal when he’s grieving the loss of his beloved daughter.
Abruptly, you’re thrown down into a chair and your arms are torn backwards, making you cry out. Rope. Heavy, and fraying, rough against your wrists as you’re bound to the metal backing of a wooden chair. Fingers dig abruptly into either side of your cheeks, pressing the flesh of your mouth into your teeth until you’ve got no choice but to open up in complaint.
 The second that your lips part, something is forced between them. A dry rag. It’s tied tight at the back of your head, digging into your cheeks, muffling your sounds of struggle.
Muffled and restrained, there’s no way to defend yourself when another blow comes. It hits the centre of your face hard, another fist, this one harder than the first. Not pulling the punch in the slightest. Instantly, liquid streams from your nostrils and the taste of copper floods your tastebuds.
Your screw your eyes shut and force yourself to blink, you force your eyes to adjust. You refuse to surrender your last sense. Gradually, the room steadies and your vision focuses. It’s grey and industrial, illuminated by a singular lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. Empty, almost, bar a few storage crates, and a scary man sitting in front of you.
He smiles softly as your gaze settles on him and burns with rage.
“I know, I know,” Ellis offers with a small smile. He gives a small shake of his head. “This is none of your fault, darling. I know that. I’m sorry, really I am.”
You’re silent opposite him, your heartbeat thudding in your ears, sickened by the fact he has the satisfaction of watching you bleed. Turning your head slightly, you catch sight of the two men in your peripheral. Security, you guess, in case you do something.
This time, when you turn your head, you aren’t scared. The man in front of you is afraid of little, old you — so much so, that he needs backup.
“But Matt has a debt that I’m… not willing to forgive.” Ellis is wearing a green crewneck and black jeans, not like the suits in his pictures. This must be a casual kind of affair for him. His thin lips twitch, hinting at a smile as your gaze remains, unwavering, on him.
Saliva pools in your mouth, copper-tasting as your nose continues to stream with blood. It saturates the makeshift gag, spilling down your chin, your jaw aching and numb at the same time, pins and needles stinging through your hands as the restraints bruise your wrists. 
“You understand, don’t you? — Smart girl like you, you get why we had to go after you, I mean.” Ellis sits opposite you with his long legs stretched in front of him, his palms braced on the cargo box that he is perched on. Maybe it’s because he’s closer now than he ever was before, or maybe it’s just because you aren’t a little girl anymore — but you look into those dark, hollow eyes and there’s not a fibre of your being that needs your father to rescue you from him.
“Fuck you.” You spit. It’s easy enough to pretend that the damp rag secured around your mouth doesn’t cut into the corners of your mouth when you speak. You’re stronger than that.
Ellis presses his lips together and sits forwards, his gaunt face leering closer to you as he twitches towards a smile. He lifts one of those bony, skeletal hands and reaches for his phone, angling it towards your bruised face. “Don’t worry, darlin’ — we’ll get you back to your boyfriend soon enough. Just smile for the camera.”
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tags: @alanadetigy @thedroneranger @momc95 @basicchelsea @perpetuelledaydreaming @cherrycola27 @eviesaurusrex @xoxabs88xox@desert-fern @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @khaylin27 @cowboybarbie @marchingicenotes7 @marantha @lgg5989 @herladyshipxx @chaoticweirdogeek @mak-32 @obiwankenobis-lap @diamond-3 @wolvesofthewinter@shawnsblue@itsmytimetoodream
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Okay hold up- other endings that you had to scrap? And one of them had Ellie x Rupert?!?!? (I really like that ship as a platonic pare…)
May I ask, how would a TT or any timeline where Ellie goes against the clan work with this au? Since Ellie is/was a toppat and all…
Yup Yup! Lemme see…the two endings I definitely plan on doing are Toppat Civil Warfare (Crown of Thorns) and Toppat King (Queen of Roses)
Originally, though, I planned on doing a lot of endings- and even having some overarching story where either Ellie was allowed by Henry to borrow his multiverse powers…somehow, or where the CCC gets bugged by all of these multiverses and makes sure Reginald never betrays Ellie to limit the amount. Not super well thought out 😭
And yeah! Ellie x Rupert…I don’t know what drove me to do that. I think I just thought Rupert being the bossy jock that he always is would be super funny paired with Ellie’s…bossy kick-aaa kind of attitude, haha!
TT and timelines of the sort would mostly follow her resentment towards Reginald driving her to take down the Toppat Clan…especially after seeing how loyal Henry and Charles are. I remember planning a lot of emotional conflict but I can’t find anywhere where I wrote my plans :(
Update: Wait, I did find some notes! Here are the endings I still consider potential fodder if I ever did want to make more endings :))
(TK and TCW ARE canon, so I won’t go over them here)
Queen of Roses - Was going to be the final ending, which would’ve involved Reginald never betraying Ellie.
Bloodred Roses - This ending is one I still consider canon, and follows Ellie as she tries to hunt down the Toppats….only to find the remains of the Revenged Ending. She would meet the ghosts of her former friends, learn how they died in this ending and what life was like once she was gone…and she would try to give them peace.
Blooming Gardens - The Triple Threat ending, which would give Ellie a sibling relationship with Charles and Henry and a father-daughter relationship with the general (who ironically would’ve been her grandpa-in-law if she and Reg got together…this makes me laugh.) Rupert was going to be especially judgmental of her past as a Toppat, but I planned on them slowly becoming friends and possibly hinting at a relationship, although come to think of it they’re way better as best friends
Yeah, a lot of chaotic stuff. Currently, I just plan for Crown of Roses to be the current comic, two endings, and maybe a comic about Suave’s generation…since I like them a lot :)….though I’d love to do a mini-comic about Bloodred Roses….
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Accidently Married | Tom Hiddleston x OFC | Chapter 4 | You should worry about the people you care about. I mean, I worry about you all the time.
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A/N:  Tom makes certain comments about an ex (who is unnamed).  It is a fictional girlfriend, take from it what you will.  Keep your hate to yourself.  
SERIES MASTERLIST HERE
Pairing: Tom Hiddleston x OFC (Molly Bishop)
Summary: Tom is stuck in a news cycle from hell; Molly is stuck in the dead end job of bartending with a pile of student and credit debt.  Tom has an idea to solve all their problems.  Get married, get the paparazzi off his back, divorce after a year and Tom pays off Molly’s debts.  Tom has everything figured out, that is until he sees Molly as more than a just a friend and so does someone else.  In this vying for affections who will win, the handsome Brit or the boy from Boston?
This Chapter: Molly is making friends and life is settling into a routine until Molly gets sick and Tom takes care of her.  
Warnings: fake marriage, smut (vaginal sex), mentions of:  child abuse/neglect, foster care, substance abuse, cheating.
TAGLIST IS OPEN! PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT TO BE TAGGED!  THANK YOU FOR READING!
Molly left that afternoon with two new numbers in her phone and a lunch date for next week.
“Can’t believe you are having lunch with my mother and sister without me.” Tom pouted on the way back.
“Once they heard I wasn’t working and didn’t know anyone, they insisted. Was I supposed to say no?” 
“You could have scheduled it when I could come.” 
“But you are so busy. And talented.” She poked his side. 
“I’m driving here, darling.”
“Sorry, but just one question…” They pulled up to a red light.”
“What?”
“Are you ticklish?” she attacked his side and Tom squirmed and giggled.
“You will be the death of me.” He panted as Molly stopped when the light was green.
“Note to self. Tom is very ticklish.” 
“No, no notes to self. That is something you can promptly forget.”
Molly batted her eyelashes. “But real husbands and wives would know these things about each other. We have to pull this off for an entire year, right?”
“Fine, but expect revenge.” Tom wagged a finger at Molly. 
“I’ll sleep with one eye open.” 
-
Over the next several weeks, Tom and Molly fell in a routine. The marriage certificate came in the mail and they applied for a family visa for Molly to stay there.
“I didn’t think you would want to become a citizen.”
Molly smirked. “No, not right now.”
A new debit card came in for Molly. 
“With great power…” Tom handed it over.
“Yeah, yeah, Loki.” she tucked into her wallet. “I am burdened with glorious purpose. To keep you well fed.” 
Molly had a standing date with Emma every two weeks, much to Tom’s consternation. They continued running together in the mornings. Tom, more often than not, ended it with a kiss. 
“This is becoming quite the nasty habit, Mr. Hiddleston.” she commented one morning.
“Then stop me, Mrs. Hiddleston.” He pecked her lips again. 
Molly blushed. “You just love what they are saying about us in the papers.” She pushed Tom away and towards the door. 
“I will admit the good news is definitely a perk. Plus, you are such lovely company.” He went to hug her, but she pushed him away.
“You are all sweaty, Tom. Take a shower and I will make breakfast.”
“French toast?” he asked hopefully.
“You ate the last of the bread yesterday.” 
“Pancakes?”
“I think I can swing pancakes, if…” She held up a finger. “You also eat a side of fruit.”
“Deal.” Tom headed towards his room wearing a huge grin. 
Molly shook her head as she grabbed a mixing bowl out. “Lunatic.”
-
One morning, Molly wasn’t awake when Tom got up to run. She almost always beat Tom up, sipping a cup of tea in the living room, reading a magazine or one of the books from his shelf. There was a small stack building on a side table of the ones she finished reading. But that morning, no half-drunk cup of tea perched precariously on the coffee table. No crossword puzzle half done in pen. 
Tom peaked into Molly’s bedroom. The covers, in colors of navy and grey, just like his, pulled up tight around her. There were a few prints of classic travel posters on the wall. 
“Molly, darling.” He called out. Usually that was all it took to roust Molly from her sleep and get her going for the day. Today, nothing. Tom stepped into the room. He felt like an intruder in his own home. 
“It’s time for our run, love.” He said a bit louder this time. 
Molly rolled over, groaning and coughing. Tom’s brow furrowed. He didn’t like the sound of that cough. Tom sat down on the edge of the bed and rocked Molly gently by the shoulder.
“Are you feeling okay, darling?” He hoped it was just allergies or waking up in the morning. But then she woke up.
“Uggh, Tom?” Molly croaked out before rolling onto her back. She was pale. So much more pale than usual. She coughed again, covering her mouth. 
“It’s me, Molly. Are you feeling alright?” He repeated. “That’s some cough.”
“I’m fine, fine. It’s just,” She waved him off and pushed up to sitting, only to fall back onto the pillows. “oh, that’s not good.” 
Tom placed the back of his hand to her forehead and replaced it with his lips, checking her temperature. She was running hot. 
“You have a fever. I’m making you an appointment to see the doctor.” He stood, but Molly caught his wrist. Her palm clammy against Tom’s skin.
“No! It’s just a cold. Go on your run. I’ll be fine. I just need some sleep.” She insisted.
“Are you sure? It’s no trouble.” 
“Go. I’ll be fine.”
Tom leaned down and kissed her very warm forehead. “I’ll keep it short. Go back to sleep.”
Molly nodded and rolled over. Tom tucked the covers around her and headed out. He barely made it to the end of the street before he returned home. It confirmed his fears when he stepped back inside and heard Molly coughing. Tom grabbed the phone and searched for a number and called it.
“Yes, Urgent Care? Do you have any appointments today? Name? Molly Hiddleston. Thank you.”
-
Tom helped Molly get dressed, averting his eyes when appropriate. Her entire body burned under his fingertips, but Tom noticed her shivering. She stumbled to the car where she slept the entire ride over to urgent care. Tom did his best to fill out the paperwork.
“What do you put for family history?”
“Nothing. Unless there is a place for mental illness, then check that. That’s all I know about. Mom didn’t chat much.” Molly muttered, leaning heavily against Tom. “Meth does that…” Her brow furrowed and she coughed again. 
“Shh, darling.” Tom soothed her. “Only happy thoughts.”
Molly hummed and smiled. “Happy thoughts.” More coughing. 
It took twenty minutes before they called Molly back. They didn’t let Tom back with her. He alternated between sitting with a bouncing knee, pretending to read on his phone and pacing the waiting room, making the other people nervous. After forty-five minutes, before Molly returned with several papers in her hand. She coughed again.
“Upper respiratory infection,” cough. “Along with a sinus infection and a viral infection.”
Tom smiled. “Triple threat. Let’s get you home.”
Molly’s hand, holding the papers, flopped up. “I have prescriptions and they want to see me again in two weeks. To make sure I don’t get pneumonia.”
Tom’s eyes widened. “That’s a possibility?”
Molly nodded. “It’s all in here.”
Tom took all the papers, skimming them, including a script for antibiotics as well as a cough suppressant. It all sounded grim. “Let’s get you to bed and I will take care of getting these filled.”
Molly coughed and nodded. “Thank you.” 
She fell back asleep in the car. Tom carried into the house, not having the heart to wake her up again, and settled her into his bed, which was bigger, more comfortable and the bathroom was right there. Once she was settled and asleep, he headed off to the pharmacy. While waiting in line, Tom dialed Luke. 
“Luke, is there anything absolutely pressing in the schedule for the next three days?” he asked after Luke picked up. 
“Nothing I can’t reschedule, why?”
“Molly’s ill.” He bit his lips and sighed. “The doctors are afraid it might turn into pneumonia. And I…”
“Consider your schedule cleared until Monday. And tell her I hope she feels better soon.”
“Thanks, Luke. I’m worried about her.”
“That’s because you love her, Tom. You should worry about the people you care about. I mean, I worry about you all the time.” Luke chuckled.
Tom paused at Luke’s words but pushed it away. Of course he cared for Molly. That has the tendency to happen when you live with a person for nearly three months. Especially someone as congenial as Molly. Congenial wasn’t the word. Lovely. Molly was lovely. He laughed it off. “I worry about you too, Luke. I got to go.”
“Take care of her. Bye, Tom.” 
After picking you the medicine, Tom popped into the grocery store and picked up some soup, drinks, and Molly’s favorite cookies. When he got back, she was still asleep. And still coughing. He put away the groceries and then checked on her.
“Darling, I’m back with the medicine. Time to take it.” He helped her sit up, Molly groaning the entire time. She swallowed the pill with a sip of water, gagging.
“That’s awful!” she coughed. 
“Now the cough medicine.” Tom poured out the cough syrup and handed it over to Molly. She hesitated, sniffing it first. “Take the medicine and get a biscuit.” He held up a package of cookies.
“They’re cookies. I thought I ate the last of them.” she moaned, downing the cough syrup. Her face contorted. Tom smiled and handed her two cookies. “Good girl. Now rest. I’ll check on you in a few hours.”
“Don’t you have work?” Molly muttered as she laid back down. Tom pulled the covers over her, putting the cookies on the nightstand. “You had… interviews… or something…”
“My schedule is clear through the weekend. I am at your disposal.” Tom rubbed Molly’s back, and she purred. 
“You don’t need to do that.” She half-heartedly complained, dozing off.
“And leave you to fend for yourself? What kind of husband would I be? It was no trouble. Now sleep, darling.”
“Mmm… kay.” 
-
Tom busied himself with absolutely nothing. He flitted from reading a book to watching a TV show to peeking into the bedroom. At one point, when Molly was particularly quiet, he seriously contemplated putting a mirror under her nose to just make sure he was still breathing. He managed to get her to eat half a bowl of soup. 
“You need to eat, love.” he scolded.
Molly coughed and croaked. “Says the man who considers chocolate a food group.” 
“Look at that, some humour.” Tom smiled. “Eat please.”
“Yes, sir.” She slurped the soup off the spoon before falling back asleep. 
Tom, worried, did the unthinkable. He called his mum for advice.
“She’s coughing. A lot. And all she does is sleep.” Tom ran his hands through his hair. 
“Is she eating, love?” Diana asked. Tom could feel the smile across the phone.
“A bit, but not as much as usual. I brought her soup.”
“Soup is good. And she is taking her medicine?”
Tom nodded. “I set a timer.”
“Of course you did. And the fever?”
Tom blinked. “What about her fever?”
“Has it broken?”
“I don’t—”
“Tom!” Molly’s bedraggled voice called out.
“I gotta go. She needs me.” Tom hung up the phone and sprinted to the room. 
“Molly! What is it?” He noted she was shivering.
“I’m cold.” she chattered. Tom grabbed the blanket at the foot of his bed. 
“Is that better?” He tucked it under Molly’s chin. Tom touched her forehead. Hot.
“Much.” 
“I’ll let you rest.” He patted her shoulder and stood. Molly reached out for him.
“Stay.” She coughed. “At least until I fall asleep. Please lie down. Just five minutes.”
Tom’s heart broke in that moment for Molly. That confident woman he grew so fond of seemed so small in that moment.
“Of course, I’ll stay. Anything for you.” Tom crawled on top of the covers next to Molly. He laced his fingers in hers. He heard her exhaled, and he exhaled too. 
“Sleep well, darling.” But Molly had already fallen asleep. Tom soon followed.
-
Molly woke the next morning in sweat soaked pajamas and on top of drenched sheets. She still coughed, but her fever was gone. As she blinked her eyes open, Molly realized she wasn’t in her bed, but Tom’s. And Tom was there too. Asleep next to her, fully dressed, holding her hand. She had vague memories of Tom bringing her soup and her asking him to stay. And some very not safe for work dreams. 
“Fever dreams.” she muttered. “Tom…” Molly rocked his shoulder.
“Huh?” Tom sat up. “I guess I was more tired than I thought.”
“It’s hard to be a nurse. I think your sheets may need washing.” she smiled.
Tom pressed his lips to her forehead. “No fever.” His spirits lifted. 
“It must have broken last night.”
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“Yes.” 
Tom noticed their hands still laced together. He let go and stood up. He made a poor attempt at smoothing out his sleep wrinkled clothes. “Up to move to the couch? And maybe some movies?”
“I would like that.” She slowly sat up and got out of bed. “But first a shower.”
Tom frowned. “First medicine, then shower.”
“Nurse Ratched.” Tom didn’t smile or budge. Molly sighed. “Fine, medicine, the shower.”
Tom grabbed the bottles and dispensed the medicine, which she took still gagging. “And a biscuit.” He handed her a cookie. 
“Cookie.” She popped it into her mouth and headed off to her room and Tom went to his own bathroom. 
-
Once they were both showered and dressed, Tom popped his sheets into the laundry and made a makeshift bed on the couch for Molly.
“You pick the movie.” she offered. “That way if I fall asleep, you won’t be bored.” 
Tom picked The Jungle Book. “One of my favorites as a child. I still watch it when I feel under the weather.”
“I don’t think I have seen it.”
Tom’s mouth fell open. “That is a travesty.”
Molly shrugged her shoulders. “You know, group homes, foster care…”
Tom stopped. “Well, we are going to watch this right now and you can listen to the vocal genius that is George Sanders as Shere Khan.”
“More of a vocal genius than you?” Molly raised an eyebrow while she settled onto the couch. 
Tom blushed. “A man-cub, how delightful.” He purred deep in his chest, sending shivers through Molly.
By the end of the movie, Molly’s head was in Tom’s lap and his hand in hers. They watched Disney movies for the rest of day, alternating picking the title. Tom made sure she took her meds on time and ate more than just cookies.
“I will eat a meal if you do.” Molly chided.
They both ate soup and Tom also ate a sandwich. It was late when they finished up Robin Hood. Molly stretched and sat up.
“I should go to bed.”
“I can put the sheets back on the bed.” Tom moved, but she stopped him, squeezing his hand.
“My bed. But I will keep the door open so you can spy on me.” She smirked. “I can’t take your bed again.”
“It’s fine if you did. I don’t mind sharing.”
“I know but…” She glanced away. “We should keep our own space. To keep things from getting complicated.”
Tom nodded. “Right. No complications here.” he lied to her and to himself.
Molly hugged Tom tight. “Thank you for everything, Tom.”
“My pleasure.”
She coughed a bit as she headed off to her room. Tom turned off the TV and cleaned the dishes before going to bed himself. He spent most of the night tossing and turning.
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spenciegoob · 3 years
Text
Triple Edged Sword Part 3
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A/N: This really got more angsty than smutty whoop.. also it’s short but this has been sitting in my drafts for months and it’s time I finally posted the last part.
Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader
Category: Smut/Angst
Content Warning: brief mention of physical violence, female masturbation, overstimulation, lack of aftercare, potential dub-con interpretation
Word Count: 1.5K
Series Masterlist
Masterlist
Part One | Part Two
____
A good friend of hers and Spencers once said “life is a hell of a thing to happen to someone,” but what happened to Spencer was not just life.
It was an almighty power exacting a revenge on the wrong human. Spencer had to pay the price for a crime he did not commit his whole life figuratively. That was, until it was literally.
She watched the man she loves look back at her as he was dragged out of the courtroom in handcuffs with no solution, eyes full of terror. She couldn’t help the fact that her face wore the same expression, her mind full of the what ifs.
What if he never comes home? What if they kill him in there? What if prison breaks him? What if.. What if.. What if..
And unfortunately, one became the truth, because when Spencer did come home to her, he only returned as an empty shell. There was no more light left, his battery not just dying, but short-circuiting, making it so there was no way to recharge.
Spencer Reid, the most forgiving person on this planet could not find it deep within him to forgive himself. He couldn’t let himself off the hook after he left her there, terrified and alone, and he most definitely couldn’t forgive himself when right after the first time she visited him, he turned around one last time to see her finally cry because she thought he wasn’t looking.
But what he really couldn’t forgive was the day he returned home to her.
Spencer was sitting on the couch, staring ahead with eyes that were both hyper focused and not focused at all on what was surrounding him when she touched his shoulder. He was quick, too quick, to spin around and grab her wrist so tight that it made her knees weak.
Immediately he had let go, backing up so far into the room that he was close to cowering in the corner.
“It’s okay,” she said, holding her hands in front of her in the most nonthreatening way. Spencer had hurt her, and yet she still worried that she was the threat. “It’s just me. No one’s gonna hurt you. You’re okay now.”
But was he? Because after that, he didn’t allow himself to touch her. Sure, when they went out, he would hold her hand, pulling her close, and he kissed her goodbye when he left their apartment, but behind their bedroom door? It was his way of punishing himself; of not forgiving.
Spencer sat at the foot of their bed, looking down at her with eyes blank enough to scare her. They had done this dance plenty of times before, the moves carved behind her eyelids so she could never forget. 
It happened on accident at first, Spencer walking in after returning home from a case to find her stark naked on the bed, the vibrator pressed against her clit as soft moans masked the sounds of his entrance. 
From the doorframe, Spencer just watched even as every cell in his body screamed at him to step forward and replace the red bullet between her legs with his cock. But he didn’t, and when she realized she was no longer alone, she almost stopped. 
Spencer instructed her not to, and the hesitation she had melted away with the realization that even this little indulgence was new, a first step in thawing the cold wall Spencer built.
He watched her take her panties off, her body on full display for the man who did not let himself indulge. She reached over to grab her bullet vibrator, something that was added to the collection a while ago after they both realized that while he was away on cases, she deserved the pleasure it gave her.
“Spence, you know it’s okay to touch me, right?” She asked, trying to pull the man she once knew back from the darkness that surrounded him. Spencer didn’t look up to meet her gaze, keeping his eyes on her cunt that invited him in by glistening under the moonlight that seeped through the curtains.
“Keep going... Please.”
Only once did he allow himself the slightest of movements when he heard the vibrations kick to life, his hand twitching involuntarily, aching to reach out and finally touch her. But even when the vibrator touched her clit, causing her back to arch and a moan to claw its way from her chest, he didn’t touch her.
And while pleasure spread through her like a wildfire, her heart still hammered to a beat not meant for the bedroom. It still sat heavily in her chest, wishing for the one thing the man sitting at the foot of their bed refused to give her.
Her first orgasm was quickly approaching, Spencer could tell my the way her chest stopped moving every 3 or 4 seconds. He watched her explode, the muscles in her body spasming with the vibrations rocking through her, and yet, he still didn’t reach out. 
He sat frozen, his cock painfully hard by now, and still, he refused to touch her.
Slowly, her breath evened out, and she retracted the device from between her legs to shut it off.
“No,” Spencer said sternly. “Again.”
The vibrator kicked back to life, and with trembling fingers, she placed it back on her sensitive clit. During this entire time, she maintained enough composure to keep her eyes on Spencer, but when pleasure bordered on pain, her eyes shut.
Her second orgasm hit her before she had time to process that it was approaching, and she screamed out, broken curses and Spencer’s name bouncing off the wall. 
“Spencer,” she whimpered out once the wave of her second climax settled. “Please.”
“Again.” His tone before was stern, leaving no room for argument or pleads, but this time it was broken. Spencer wanted to touch her, more than anything in this world, but how could he when the looming thought that he would hurt her further loomed over him like a ghost haunting his mind for eternity?
“I- I can’t.” Spencer tore his gaze from her to look at his hands, not in disappointment like she feared it was, but because tears welled in his eyes at her tone. She was exhausted, worn-out, but by far the worst thing Spencer could pick up from those two little words was how sad she sounded.
 And like history repeating itself, she reached out to put a hand on his shoulder only for him to shoot up and grab her wrist. This time he didn’t let go.
“It’s okay,” she reassured him, and his grip tightened.
“Y/N-”
“It’s okay,” she repeated once again, and her other hand came to softly cup his cheek. “Come here.”
And when their eyes met, Spencer saw it all. He saw the day she invited him upstairs for the first time, he saw their first morning together consisting of stolen kisses over burning pancakes. He saw the way her eyes lit up when he surprised her with takeout and a movie on his day off. 
Spencer saw the way she still loved him after all this time, throughout all the death, the destruction and the pain, she still loved him.
But she shouldn’t, and he couldn’t let it go on any longer.
So instead, Spencer released her wrist and stepped back until he was out of reach. He watched the hope drain from her eyes, and god how he wished he could put it back, but he shouldn’t, so instead, he made it worse.
“I have to go.”
“Spence-”
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, stepping further away from her and reaching for the doorknob. “I really have to go.”
Before he could hear her response, he swiftly left the bedroom, closing the door behind him even though he knew she wouldn’t chase him. Not because she didn’t care, but because in the end she always knew how to truly take care of him, and if space is what he needed, space was what he shall receive. 
It didn’t hurt any less knowing that, however, because when she was certain he was gone, she broke down. Naked and alone, she collapsed on the bedroom floor with sobs choking her. 
With every step away from her Spencer took, more ‘what if’s’ turned to ‘what now.’
___
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plantcrazy · 3 years
Photo
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Henry Stickmin AU Concept Art/ideas
AU 1) Triple Warfare [1-4]
I’m thinking it could make a good ask blog due to the nature of the idea and how I’m planning on writing the story.
The idea for this one is basically a cross-over between (in my opinion) the best and worst ending for the characters (if we go by the fact in TT the main 3 (Henry, Elle and Charles) are friends and in TCW they’re trying to kill each other).
I really look forward to writing this one since in my head I’ve got the greatest ideas for how the conversations are going to go down between the two different groups of characters, like TT Charles is more of a cinnamon roll and then TCW Charles is like...well remember in Valiant Hero how he gets dark for a minute saying “It’s starting to... G E T   P E R S O N A L”? Well when I saw that, I honestly thought Galeforce had died or something, so I’m working off of that idea to a bit more of an extreme since we get the whole Rapidly Promoted Executive ending in there to really annoy him.
AU 2) The Lost Children of the CCC [5-7 ]
This whole Au ended up being a spin-off from the idea of Right-hand Man’s origin story for the whole mystery name thing and Henry’s powers idea which just...spiralled out of control into something else completely and is strongly connected to the side comics (current & future) I’m working on.
The current story line I’m building the story around is after the Triple Threat ending, where a mysterious person offers Reginald a way out of the Wall for him and the Toppat’s for the small price of a blood sample form RHM and Toppat membership. I really like the dialogue scene in my head so here’s a little sample for you ^^
- - - -
[Reginald] And why would I agree to that? [Person] “Because! You get ya freedom and I’d like ta say quite a valuable asset for the Toppat Clan…” He watched Reginald's gaze remain cold and sceptical. [Person] “But, if that’s not good enough for ya then let me put it crudely: I’ve been sent to obtain that blood sample and attain it I will. I personally like the Toppat’s, use ta hear all about ya as a kid, an’ this seemed like a great retirement idea; joinin’ ya all since this is my last job, and I’m out. Think I can’t get it? Well I can. I’ll take it from his cold lifeless corpse as he lays there twitching on the ground, glazed eyes and the fading buzz of electronics in the air. You think these guys here care? One less inmate- and a dangerous one at that- gone. All I have to do is say he threw the first punch, ‘I didn’t have a choice, I was fighting for my life! I thought I would have been a goner. I was so lucky that those cybernetics of his allow for easy disabling of life support systems with a correctly angled blow to this little spot here and here’.” He twists his hand like on a nob by the neck and no doubt follows pulling essential wiring out with the over and a wide brimmed grin.
Reginald scowls back; he’d lost.
This guy is really going to make him choose between the life of his loyal Right-hand man and best friend, or the clans.
[Reginald] And if I do agree… how do I know you won’t betray us?
[Person] Asides from settin’ ya all free and joinin’ the Clan? Agree and you’ll find out in 10 minutes~
- - - -
(And then, I remembered one curial piece of info writing this awesome scene...
RHM isn’t a cyborg in triple threat -_-;
or is he~)
(Concept designs + more in original idea post)
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AU 3) When Endings Collide [8-9]
I don’t really have any sketches for this one (just some very rough first concepts for each of the endings), a handful of ideas and a rough storyline. It’s quite a complex story since it involves all 16 endings, so I haven’t done too much work on it and instead have put it aside for a later date since it’ll need a lot of planning and work to pull off effectively.
The basic idea I had for this one started with a “What if Valiant Hero Henry ended up in Triple Threat in the middle of a mission and proceeded to try and kill Elle (A Toppat in his ending) and then had a mental break down seeing a not dead Charles? And then what if Revenge Henry ended up in Toppat King in the middle of the government raid and in the middle of this proceeded to help a very confused Charles (who hates him) capture an equally confused Reginald and hand him over to the government (The idea for Revenge Henry working for the government came from this fantastic fic I recommend reading). And then I think I was messing with Stickmin Resort in either Valiant Hero or Broverts.” A lot of the over endings has been messing about with which ones work the best together since I haven’t quite figured out what to do with Cleaned ‘em Out - Little Nest Egg (below) & Pardoned Pals & Capital Gains I’ve missed ^^; .
And then once endings are sorted, next is figuring out how for all of this to happen and them all to end up in each other endings, which I have an idea for but definitely needs more work to run smoothly. I’m thinking the CCC and what if someone tried to use them and the chaos to make their perfect singular ending? Maybe one where a very hated protagonist never existed~
Again, I think this AU has a lot of potential to be great, but it’ll need a lot of work.
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gingerwritess · 4 years
Note
In response to your pre-dating idiots call!!!! PLEASE expand on what Loki said in "so there's this girl" about pretending to hate reader!!! I'm in a very angsty mood!!! Also good luck with ur studying
here’s a long ol fic for some predating idiots developments! lots of foreshadowing and implications, oooo…
part 14, masterlist (Loki’s happy ending) in bio :)
―   ―   ―   ―
There’s really nothing left to like about Loki.
He’s mean, he’s cold, he’s vindictive, manipulative, calculating, blackmailing you for your generousity.
Luckily, he’s leaving you alone.
Sometimes you’ll wonder if Loki thinks he has your memories of him, that he successfully ripped himself out of your mind—you find yourself checking, every once in a while.
Eyes closed, you’ll lean back. Focus.
Jagged cuts, barely scabbed lashings, pale skin stained red…Loki flinching away from your touch with such a wince of pain you may as well have sliced him open again.
The memory is definitely still yours. 
It’s stayed on through the weeks, in your new office and devoid of any fake-boyfriends and blackmail threats—which makes for a fairly quiet work life.
Since the discovery of Loki’s double, security in Stark towers has tripled. Now you can’t go anywhere without an escort, you’ve been gifted a new taser, and you can call yourself personally aquatinted with the Avengers—though that might be your least favourite parts of the day.
They’re nice, you guess, but trying to keep up your story when Tony Stark and the Black Widow are grilling you with questions only gets harder by the minute.
To make matters worse, they’ve been asking about your little faux-boyfriend, too. You had to settle on a backstory, how you met, what he did before Stark Industries (which you vaguely remember him mentioning shield), all without speaking a word to the god in question for the past three weeks.
As far as you’re concerned, you fake-broke up. But like, for real.
You don’t want to see him. You don’t want to talk about Laing, or Loki, or anything that’s ever happened between the two of you, but they bring up the day you met and almost killed him, they ask you if he threatened revenge, if he hinted a second attack, and you say no.
Over and over, you say no.
At this point, though, you are pretty certain that revenge isn’t Loki’s motive. You’re not quite sure what could be taking its place, but bloodlust or pure “evilness” aren’t options anymore. If they were, he wouldn’t still be treating his patients as Dr. Laing, and he certainly wouldn’t have just stopped and knelt next to the thin woman sitting in front of the Tower, hugging a small boy to her chest.
Yourself on your way to work, too, you immediately duck back around the building on the corner, not wanting him to know you’re watching. Whatever he’s doing, this is all Loki…well, Laing. Not trying to keep up another cover or impress anybody, right?
He speaks too quietly for you to hear from your distance, but the mother, you guess, has tears in her eyes as she cradles the coughing boy and pleads with Dr. Laing.
Loki stands, and your heart twists. Of course he’s leaving her there, her and her child all alone. You curse yourself for being surprised.
You’re about to march out there yourself and demand that Loki take them in, threaten to rat him out if he doesn’t, but before you can, Loki’s back by her side, holding out a hand to help her to her feet.
Your jaw drops.
Loki—Laing, or whoever the hell possessed him—carefully takes the little boy from her arms, laying a hand over his forehead and saying something to the mother with a soft smile.
A smile you’ve never seen on either of his faces.
Still quietly talking to the mother, he takes them to the elevator, casting a wary eye around the fairly empty lobby as you hurry to keep up with them. With a split second to make your decision, you run through the doors after them.
Loki gives you a tired, incredulous look. 
“What floor?”
“Same as you,” you reply with an all-too-cheery smile.
He doesn’t seem too happy to have gained your company.
The elevator ride goes by in an uncomfortable silence, the wanted criminal holding a sick child and offering his mother a few strained smiles while you watch on, trying to comprehend what the hell is going on. 
Luckily it’s over soon, and you quickly turn the opposite way from the strange little trio, pretending to go the other way before turning around and sneaking after them to Laing’s office. 
If you’re not careful, your assigned guards are going to come looking for you. Technically they were supposed to meet up with you the moment you arrived on premise, but today, you’d rather see what Loki’s up to on your own.
The strange little trio is already in the room, the little boy laying on the examination table while Laing looks over him. That’s strange, but the strangest part is the fact that he’s still smiling—at the mother.
She’s slowly breaking down, you can tell. 
You can’t look away, peeking through the window to the exam room as Loki sits the boy up, trying to console the mother as she drops her head to her hands, shoulders shaking.
Loki steps away from her and looks right at you.
“Come in here.”
Startled, you jump away from the window and hurry to the door. “Need any help, uh, Doctor?”
He just grabs you around the arm and drags you outside.
“Let go of me—”
 “I need you to distract her,” he whispers, and surprisingly lets go. “The boy is sick, I can’t help him without a bit of my own help, but she can’t see.”
“O-okay.” You blink at him in shock. “That’s it? No scheming, you’re just helping them?”
Loki sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “They can’t pay. I’m not going to let her child die when all it would take it a wave of the hand. Will you help me?”
You try not to let the shock—and blatant disbelief—show on your face. 
“Sure…”
“Just comfort her,” he tells you, ushering you back to the room. “Keep her distracted and please, please stop her crying.”
The woman looks up when you enter the room, her eyes bloodshot and tear-brimmed. 
“Thank you,” she whispers, and Loki quickly returns to the boy’s bedside.
You plaster on a friendly smile and sit down next to her, drawing her attention towards yourself. 
“Is this your son? Lo-Laing will help him, don’t worry.” 
She nods, and you see Loki moving out of the corner of your eye to cover what he’s doing. “He’s been getting worse and worse, and no one will see us,” she explains quietly. “Dr. Laing is the first person to help us, y-you’re very lucky to be with him.”
“Oh, no, no,” you laugh, wishing Loki would hurry up. “No, we’re not together, I just work with him.”
“Still.” She smiles, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “I can’t thank you enough.”
You’re quite sure what to say to that. Of course, she has no clue who she’s really dealing with, and for a split second, you nearly forget, too.
No murderous sociopath would be handing a freshly-healed little kid a lollipop, right?
He certainly looks the part, smiling and ruffling a hand through the kid’s hair, standing there in his lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck, lifting the little boy off the table to run back to his mother.
“Get him something to eat,” he tells her with a smile, a fake, phony little smile, and you can’t help but stare when he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of bills. “Here. He needs food and rest, as do you, and if anything else seems off, you know where to find me.”
By the time Loki has escorted them back down to the lobby, you’re left alone in the exam room, trying to make sense of what just happened and trying to decide what on earth to do with this information.
That was…helpful.
That was unlike Loki, that’s for sure.
When he eventually returns to the room, you’re still sitting there, waiting.
“Did you want a candy, too?”
You don’t respond, staring as he trudges around the room, prepping it for the next patient. 
“I assume you haven’t forgiven me.” He casts a quick glance over to you, getting nothing in return. “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t forgive something that went into my mind to play games, either.”
“You didn’t do anything to me,” you remind him stiffly. “I still remember everything I saw. Someone hurt you, you have scars to prove it, and I still know that.”
“You compromised my cover.”
Shaking your head, you can’t help but laugh. “I didn’t compromise you, you blew your own cover. You’re weak, aren’t you?”
“What does that matter to you?”
“I’m trying to understand what’s going on, because as far as I can tell, you’re not who you’re pretending to be. Can’t you just explain what happened to Thor? He’s your brother, I’m sure he—”
“I am not hiding from your little heroes,” Loki snaps, slamming the cabinet he was rifling through shut. “They are the least of my concerns, and I’d much appreciate if you would leave them out of our interactions completely.”
You give a small huff of annoyance, crossing your arms with a pointed glare. “I don’t believe it, sorry. If you were really some crazy serial killer, you wouldn’t have just helped that lady and her kid.”
“Maybe,” Loki/Laing sneers, “I was luring them into my trap. Maybe that’s what I’m doing to you, hm? You certainly can’t seem to get enough of me.”
“No, I think you’re scared of something.”
“I think it’s time for you to leave,” Laing smiles back, holding the door open with a sweep of his arm.
“You’re running from something, you’re hiding from something,” you continue, a small smile of your own playing at your lips. “Aren’t you?”
Backed into the hallway but trying to stay one step ahead of him, you stare at him expectantly as he furrows his brow, no doubt annoyed beyond belief that you keep pressing the subject.
Maybe he was about to answer you, but now you’ll never know—one of your guards comes running to your side.
“You’re supposed to tell us when you’re coming in early,” he huffs, hastily pushing back the visor on his helmet. “I can’t read your mind, okay? You’ve gotta work with me here.”
Loki straightens up, an unamused glaze passing over his visage.
“Sorry,” you tell your guard, eyes never leaving Laing’s. “I sure wish I didn’t have to be escorted everywhere, thanks to some emotionally constipated god.”
He quirks an eyebrow. “Maybe it’s for the best.”
“Maybe he should go to therapy,” you reply smoothly. “Let someone help him for once, tell someone the truth.”
“Maybe you should stay away from him,” Laing growls—your guard, Marcus, steps a little closer as Laing advances towards you, voice dropping. “Maybe he’s unstable, and maybe he has a target on his back that could level your planet, and maybe he’s nothing more than a monster that needs to be disposed of before anything worse happens.”
You blink.
That came out of nowhere.
Laing sighs, slipping back into his office. “Stay with your, ah, guards. Don’t ask anymore questions.”
“You can’t tell me—mmf!”
Laing just smiles, and you catch a glimpse of Loki in his sad eyes as you involuntarily spin on your heel and hurry away, leaving Marcus scrambling to catch up.
This isn’t the first time that he’s had to watch you walk away; it’s a sight all too familiar to him.
Even from the distance now between the two of you, he catches a glimpse of the taser hanging from your belt, the gun strapped to your guards back, the one in his hands, and when you reach the elevator, unable to stop walking, two more guards join the group.
Good, he reminds himself, good, good.
You glare back at him in the doorway, mouth stopped and feet moving by Loki’s hand, and a wave of relief crashes over him.
You look annoyed.
Disgusted with him.
Angry.
―   ―   ―   ―
“Tell me a bit about your father.”
“Which one?”
Loki rolls over on the crisp, white bed, a grin on his gaunt face. 
“Whichever you feel more connected to,” the therapist replies. 
A pen clicks and clicks again, and Loki sighs.
“He’s a horrid man. He hates me, I hate him. It’s simple enough, doctor, he never loved me.”
Thor points at the screen. “I believed that.”
I might, too, you decide.
“Do you blame your father for some things that have gone wrong in your life?”
“Yes.”
It’s a quick, short answer that needed no thought.
“Can you elaborate?”
Loki crosses his ankles, stretching to lay his hands behind his head with a content little hum. “Well, if he had paid more attention to me, I wouldn’t have attacked this poor town, that’s for certain.”
The therapist seems stunned by the sudden confession.
“Wasn’t it obvious?” Loki continues, eyes fluttering closed. “I did this for him. I want him to see that I am the worthy son, I can conquer worlds and be a greater king than he, and he will hold nothing in his heart but respect for who I am.”
“I believed that one, too,” Thor says again. “That one made sense, but only if I assumed the worst.”
“Do you think anything from these sessions is true? Anything that his clone said?” Mind spinning, you stop the video player and remove the hard drive, unsure if watching Loki’s therapy tapes had helped in any way or not.
Currently, the scales are tipping towards not.
“It is unlikely,” Thor sighs. “My brother is a skilled liar, he twists your words and manipulates the truth to bend to his will…most of the time, you never know if you are even truly speaking to him, or just another illusion. Just as this now shows us”
“Do you believe any of that?” 
“I want to,” he answers truthfully. “It is simple. It makes it easier to take him back to the Allfather for punishment, if we could only find the serpent.”
“I don’t,” you mumble under your breath, then stop, unsure if you should really let those words actually leave your mouth. 
Thor gives you a sideways glance and you curse yourself for saying anything.
“Do you find him attractive?”
You drop the hard drive to the floor with a loud clatter. 
“What?! No! No,” you laugh, quickly stooping to pick it back up. “Of course not, why would you say that?”
“You seem to have faith in him,” Thor carefully replies, still eyeing you suspiciously. “Or at least an acute interest. Why do you want to help him?”
“I’m…” you pause, needing to think for a moment.
To an extent, you suppose he’s right - you want to have faith in him. You made a judgement call when you first met him and tried to kill him, only to accidentally find yourself tangled further in his webbed plan than you’d care to be. 
Some days, Loki makes you think you made the wrong judgement, that maybe it wasn’t him, that maybe he’s suffering in a different way than most assume, that maybe he’s more than he lets on.
That maybe he’s been forced into playing the villain in his brother’s story. 
“Curious,” you finally answer. “I’m curious. He’s weird, a-and gods are still kinda new to our world, so…I’m curious if he’s really who he lets on to be.”
Thor nods, brow furrowed and deep in thought. 
“Though it’s pretty tough to find anything out about him when he’s missing,” you quickly add, remembering that you really shouldn’t have as much access to the god as you do.
“I understand.” Thor gives you a small smile, a mild comfort. “Be wary of him, won’t you? I fear he uses people to his advantage, mistakes their kindness for strategy.”  
A flood of memories to support that cloud your mind, and the rest of your walk back to your office finishes in silence.
You are curious. There’s something off about this Loki character. Just from the small bits of him you’ve seen, the way he pushes you away, the clear evidence he keeps hiding, something about him screams out to anyone who will listen.
Screaming for help, you’re nearly certain.
“He is dangerous,” Thor says once you’ve reached your office again. “He is powerful. And I fear we’ve hurt him past the point of repair.”
“I doubt it,” you smile, giving the god a reassuring squeeze on the arm. “He’ll come back. He’s your family, right?”
Thor just smiles, wishes you a good day, and walks away.
―   ―   ―   ―
fuel the writer?
feel free to send me ideas!!
~ masterlist link in my bio ~
loki tags: @bluediamond007 @himitoshi @drakesfiance @destiel1597 @dangertoozmanykids101 @archy3001 @jcalpha1 @yzssie @skullvieplu @forthesnakeofdragons @skulliebythesea @wegingerangelica @storiesfrommirkwood @agarwaeneth @adaliamalfoy @laurfangirl424 @paradisaicsam @fitzsimmons-is-forever @ladylokimischief @katelinwrites @tarynkauai @polaristrange @loavesofmeat @canadian-ravenpuff-multishipper @lou-makes-me-strong @holyn0vak @chocolatealmondmillk @swtnrholland @kenzieam @jessiejunebug  @catticas @the-republic-and-face-of-texas @doralupin01 @whitewitchdown @atomiccharmer @falconfeather23435 @babygirlicecream @avengrcs @vethrvolnir2 @bookgirlunicorn @wabisabigrl @myhealingstar @khaleesi-marvel @ei77777 @spacecrumbs @scarlettghost13 @rocks-are-pretty-odd @confessionsofastrugglingteen @easilydistractedwriter @arttasticgreatnessoftheawesome77 @fluffyllamaswearinghats @milktearose @lcyouinhell @h0tshotholland @dontmesswithmemundane @southsidesarcasticwriter @helnik-s @lilith-akemi @fire-in-her-veinz @unlikelysamwinchesteronahunt @mischievousbellerina @kcd15 @mellowgirl01 @lokislilcaribbeanprincess @allthingzhiddleston @scorpionchild81 @lokixme @blue-automne @galaxycharmed @devilbat @kangaroobunny @end-up-well @planetariumx @sarcsep @mrfandomtastic @amaru163 @im-way-too-many-fandoms @caswinchester2000 @kybaeza @wester-than-west @vintagesunshinebitch @adefectivedetective @poetic-nikolai @moonduhsted @kerri-masson @iamverity @innaminitus @spnbarnes @narcissxblack @woohoney @anxiousamandapanda @padmeisgay @authordreaming13 @lokisironthrone @theunknowinglys @highfuncti0ningfangirl @epicfallenismine @stubby-toe-589331 @fandomnerdsarecool @retrofantasyland @arch-venus25 @forever-trapped-in-my-dreams @littleredstarfish @marshyrebelcloud @okie–loki @atterodominatus @stfxlou @pandacookieowo @tonakings @shinisenko @tinchentitri @nildespirandum @thefallenbibliophilequote @vodka-and-some-sass @highfunctioningfangirl19 @sadwaywardkid @lokioneshot @brooksaza @wild-honey-piy @ellaenchanted91 @lwwy19 
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sendmyresignation · 3 years
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You Got Blood On Your Money
Question: how do you make honest art? Is this not the eternal conflict as a creator- how to stay genuine to yourself and your art without tripping into the pitfalls that lay within fame or money or popular culture? Every creator must grapple with the fight between being seen and being sold. But very few artists struggle with this quite as visibly as My Chemical Romance has. From the inception of this band, which has always been more art project than musical endeavor, its members have tried desperately to convey a bone-deep sincerity fundamental to their work. From their very first song, the band proclaims itself as a savior to a generation that had been stripped of their will in the face of unimaginable horror. At the same time, there exists within their music a commitment to storytelling, a desire to fill the empty space in rock music with narrative and macabre and emotion that had been absent. Both of these elements manifest themselves into a band that very seriously considered it their mission to save people’s lives, as well as to create deeply meaningful art. But how do you save as many people as possible without being corrupted by the spotlight? And how do maintain genuine storytelling as you get further and further from the basement shows you got your started in?
These are questions that permeate their music at every turn, something that haunted each album and made itself known in each new project. And while there are many ways to dissect this particular struggle in their discography, nowhere is it more apparent than in the dispute between Thank You For the Venom and its reimagined successor- Tomorrow’s Money. These songs are noticeably similar in their structure as well as lyricism and imagery but instead of the latter building off of the other, they are inverses of each other. And they speak to My Chem’s long battle with becoming a legendary band in the midst of also attempting to keep their identities as artists and outsiders. And in analyzing their differences, it becomes reflective of the band’s main career-long conflict between the commodification of their art and the need to create something larger than themselves. And the question remains, were they successful?
Before we answer that, let's talk about Thank You for the Venom. To begin, it's important to note that Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge is an interesting part of My Chemical Romance’s discography because ultimately, it is unconcerned with legacy, but instead is centered on the immediacy of loss and the reactionary pursuit of revenge. In a record overwhelmed with death and grief, there is very little mention of the afterlife for either the living or the dead- characters are murdered but there is very little textual violence. Characters come back to life but there is minimal discussion of how they died or where exactly they were in death. However, that does not mean Revenge is not devoid of mythologizing- it just happens to be about immediate intention rather than a long-term commitment. It is because of this reckless drive forward almost to spite the odds that allows for Venom to exist as the band's declaration- it is their call to arms. Specifically, the track is a pronouncement of My Chemical Romance as renegades fighting against the fake, safe bands writing hits for money instead of survival or purpose: they “won’t front the scene” if you paid them, after all, but are instead running from their enemies. And not only are they an oppositional force, but they are pariahs, targets- something you can try to kill but will fail at. More specifically, in “If this is what you want the fire at will” there is an element of martyrdom, the idea that they are not just a necessary part of the very structure of society but also there is the implication that killing them is to concede to their influence and a necessary part of their lifecycle. Once you get big enough to become a target, you inevitably will be shot down- that is the final step of a great and honest band’s success. This also feeds into the album's wider ideas surrounding revenge as a concept as the greatest revenge is finding success in the aspects of yourself and, by extension, the things you create that other people thought were worthless (I don't think it's a coincidence so much of this album is steeped in comic book imagery and art and mixing punk and metal and theater when those are things the band would get shit on for enjoying). At the same time, this theme exists as the foundation necessary to create an anthem of survival- revenge is the fuel that keeps the protagonist, as well as the band, in motion. Look at the specifics of their thesis- “Just the way the doctor made me” and “You’ll never make me leave” are both reconciliations with the self in spite of the prevailing narrative against them. That connects to the way this song is a statement of a savior and a martyr twofold- “Give me all your hopeless hearts and make me ill” as a representation of the band taking on the pain of others to keep them both alive. All told, in Venom there is perseverance in the face of a large, unimaginable adversary. It is a threat directed at your enemies. It’s living as free and ugly and completely yourself as you can until they shoot you down in a hail of bullets. And then even that end is itself a victory.
Here, at its core, Venom is really the singular instance in the entire album where the band reconciles with an image. And the image the band creates for themselves is as outcasts in opposition to the "scene" and as a revenge plot, proving to their audience the value of authenticity and survival and rubbing it in the faces of those who doubted them. These themes about what My Chemical Romance is and what their goals are is something they wrestle with for the rest of their career- how do you say lives, reach an audience, and remain a fighting force against the societal norm when you exceed your mission and become part of the fabric of popular culture? But that is for later, at this moment, Revenge imagines no future. Only this desperate battlecry.
By contrast, Tomorrow’s Money is dealing with the aftermath. Functioning as a cynical reimagining of Venom, the song is structurally, thematically, and even lyrically reminiscent of Venom to an uncanny degree. First and foremost, the songs are structured the same- a slow build-up into a whispered intro, a multi-part chorus, the exact same chorus-verse layout, and a strikingly similar solo. Looking at the two Toro solos more closely, they both feature more building up as well as tremolos, triples, darker tones, and what sounds like a slide progression just ripping through both of them. Tomorrow’s Money is mimicking Venom pretty clearly here- either as a direct reference or because Venom is so reminiscent of the condensed MCR sound that they’re ripping off to make their point. And looking deeper at the themes present in Money specifically, just like Revenge, there is a clear lack of legacy- “we got no heroes ‘cause our heroes are dead” calling back to the very real disillusionment of Disenchanted that’s placed specifically in a song about becoming part of the machine, being heroes themselves, to nod to the fact that the very mission of the band is dead as well.
Simply put, Money tackles similar issues as Venom about fame and audience and creating art while using much of the same language and metaphors to completely invert the claims found in the “original”. To start with, both songs use the verbage “bleeding” to associate with a kind of suffering for your art that was an aspect of their previous band ideology. Namely, it’s the idea that the audience makes the band ill through the “hopeless hearts” as much as the “poison” does. The “what’s life like bleeding on the floor” of Venom is paired with “you’ll never make me leave” is a statement of defiance and survival against the odds while still bearing the burden of other’s pain. Money, on the other hand, explicitly says they “stopped bleeding three years ago” as a rejection of this leftover martyrdom prevalent in Revenge especially.  But it also refers to their newfound luxury of comfort, they have a way to stitch themselves together that they didn’t have before. These implications transition directly into the ideas surrounding health, vitality and living- specifically surrounding both doctors and infection. Speaking of the former, Money has an interesting lines in “If we crash this time, we’ve got machines to keep us alive” and "me and my surgeons and my street-walking friends" because they speak to both becoming a part of the “industry” by mentioning mechanization but also specifically evokes the living dead. In the MCR canon, the idea of the undead (both vampires and zombies) are antagonistic forces that represent the outside world, specifically fake people or the music industry. And zombies, in general, are already rife with allegorical connections to consumerism, like how Dawn of the Dead, a known mcr influence, is directly about materialistic culture. Vampires, subconsciously or not, are often representatives of exuberant wealth as well as beauty and desire. They’re also blood-suckers and leeches that someone in this narrative has fallen in love with, as if colluding with the enemy and allowing them to literally drain them and their life force. Thus, in describing themselves as essentially undead (when they crash, they’re revived) as well as directly collaborating with the undead, they are connecting themselves to the very forces they’ve been fighting. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of this association is how they specifically relate it to survival, the only way of staying alive is to accept them, to allow themselves to be hooked up to the machines that make them undead in the first place. Almost as if you make it far enough not to tear yourself apart, you’ll eventually assimilate into and become part of the industry. 
This idea of unavoidable assimilation is compounded with the multiple references to viruses- “You're loaded up with the fame. You’re dressed up like a virus” then being reemphasised with “We’re gonna give it for free. Hook up the veins to the antibodies, got it with the disease, we’re gonna give it to you”. Both these lines condemn fame but also implicates themselves as part of the contagion that is celebritidom at the same time it depicts this process as unavoidable. Not only that, they’re the ones spreading it at the same time they condemn it. This duality, possibly even exaggerated hypocrisy is buried deep into the foundation of Money. Even the ending line, as angry and inflammatory as it is- still names them as complicit as the "I’ll see you in hell" implies that they're going to hell too. Looking even deeper, there are multiple references to the dilution of their message:  “Choke down the words with no meaning” and “The words get lost when we all look the same'' both representing meaninglessness in the lyrics while “the microphone’s got a tapwire” is reminiscent of wiretapping or even the surveillance company Tapewire, suggesting their words are under scrutiny, they are being monitored and that could be one of the reasons for meaningless words. All of these lyrics reference, with subtly or, in the case of the last one, very obviously about the sellibility and how rigid the label of “emo” is and how they couldn't escape it - they may not have gotten paid to front the scene, but they sure did inadvertently lead a cause. And being put in that position was clearly very stifling, striping them of their artistry. Even looking at the response to Black Parade, it's clear that popular culture at large did not appreciate the record for its genuine message but for the moment in time it represented or the aesthetics it called back too. In many ways it was taken at face value- “words with no meaning” or just another dark, death obsessed emo record. What Tomorrow's money is is a rejection of the glorification of suffering and nativity of Venom in the face of becoming pop culture icons but it's also, in a way, reconciling with a perception of failure and loss of creative control that will haunt My Chem for the rest of their years.
Ultimately Tomorrow's Money is representative of the band's response to the gradual shift of My Chemical Romance, as an entity, away from martyrs to an accepted part of the music industry and culture. How do you reconcile with that? In this moment, in a post-Black Parade era, they try taking everything down with them- becoming a whistle blower to their truth. But perhaps most importantly, this conflict lays the foundation for Danger Days as both critique of industry’s commodification of art, as well as the reutilization of the obsession with legacy and death in their next project -no longer can they let the machines revive them, they have to get out of the city, yell incendiary graffiti at the top of their lungs, and explode in brilliant colors. It was time to return to calls to arms. It was time to return to the power of not just of death but of living on long after it, the album the act of becoming folk heroes for a new generation. And while the bright lights didn't last forever, by scrapping Conventional Weapons and starting over in the name of artistic integrity they truly created a legacy of material unrivaled in its sincerity, reach, and cultural significance. 
As we know, the story didn’t end there. The final chapter used to be closed, and ending with "I choose defeat I walk away and leave this place the same today" as the conclusion of their career. This was not the explosion Gerard wrote about, not the doomsday device but a quiet goodbye, a silent curtain call. It's another round of disillusionment finally fully-realized. And yet, the Reunion seems to be a direct contradiction to their farewell- in some way they did come back because they were needed, because their absence was a gaping hole in music at large which suggests they did change things, that they do have a noticeable effect on the world they inhabit. Looking at A Summoning for even a moment, the picture illustrated to the viewer is that they are an otherworldly power. That they are an entity that you plead for the return of, the hero and the savior on clear display. And regardless of how you feel about the postponement, you can never talk away that fact- some force bodily brought them back in their narrative, that it was human interference that started the resurrection. And that it was primarily through art, especially that video, that they declared their forced-to-be unfulfilled intentions. I've always liked to believe that we've cycled back around, that the cynicism of Conventional Weapons and then later Fake Your Death has had its moment but now it's time to return to that world of rebellion in this era of the desert- the reinhabiting of reckless living and creation. Again, we must ask: what does it mean to make art for the masses? I don’t think we’ll ever truly find the right answer, but I think My Chemical Romance have always tried their best to solve the equation.
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Revenged And Triple Threat endings together? I’ve tried drawing and writing it before but never looks right.. how do you think it’d be?
this made me really think hard to answer since i’m not particularly a writer and these endings have very different lead-up’s to them, that being said:
so obviously Henry and Charles meet in ItA, they don’t really know each other, then Henry betrays the government to become leader of the Toppats so the relationship never progresses. fast forward to him and Ellie imprisoned in the wall - again they obviously see each other but Henry never betrays her and then escapes by calling the Toppats where he is then betrayed so Henry and Ellie are neutral towards each other.
going a bit AU from here - somehow the government finds out pardoned criminals are being kept at the wall and (assuming Ellie had been previously pardoned for whatever she did/maybe she was innocent all along) get them freed where Ellie is then offered a job with the government which she takes. her and Charles end up working together and make a good team.
Henry awakens as a cyborg whatever and is looking for revenge, in this ending he would take more time planning what to do (instead of just flying off like a dumbass) and so a little while later, instead of going back to the airship, he decides to go straight for the rocket (at the same time the government is sending a mission there). the group of Charles and Ellie with the government meet Henry during either an infiltration or just a straight up attack on the rocket (up to you, i can’t decide whether either party would prefer stealth over action) and though Charles recognises him and knows he turned on the government previously he sees that they are both aiming for the destruction of the Toppats and Henry, Ellie and Charles team up managing to take hold of the rocket and arrest everyone.
so yeah that’s pretty much all I have - I think the best part of this would be post-ending where the 3 would get to know each other better and probably continue to work for the government. sorry if this is terribly incoherent or has typos, i have a really awful headache
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fallenangelofsalt · 4 years
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CatBurglarsAU
Ellie joins the Tophats earlier, Henry doesn’t steal a diamond and Charles is now a criminal. Also cats. And a cat cafe. And a cat-themed criminal organisation. Also Triple Threat Poly.
WARNINGS: mentions of near-death experiences, amputation,(mildly implied) poverty, violence, a bunch of illegal things typical of the Henry Stickmin Series, framing, etc.
Ellie joined the Tophats during Terrance’s reign(wich lasts a lot longer than in canon), and was his Right Hand Lady for a while before being framed of stealing one of his possessions.
She gets trown overboard without a trial and gets rescued by Charles, who had been ordered to follow the airship. She still reaches the ground, just managed to survive. She had to go cyborg though. Yeah the scientist of the Revenged route exists here.
The problem is that Galeforce gets switched with Dmitri, and Dmitri doesn’t want Ellie to live, so Charles needs to go criminal to save her life. In secret. Dmitri doesn’t know shit about how Charles is using his position in the government to wipe out any traces of Ellie from the radar.
But yeah, now Charles doesn’t have as much faith in the government as before, and is keeping Ellie safe while she recovers. Ellie is also very ready to blast the Tophats into oblivion.
Meanwhile,
Henry is trying to find a job when he hears about the diamond, and while he is tempted for a minute, he decides to try to stay in the legal side now. He manages to get a job for a while and decides to try to save money so he can start his own business.
Then Ellie tries to steal while still recovering.
She steals a rich dude’s wallet but her movement is still sloopy because of the prostetics so he notices. When she’s running away she bumps into Henry, who helps her escape.
They end up talking and becoming friends, Ellie even shares the money she stole. They meet up a lot after that, and eventually Charles gets dragged into it. 
And then they start to plan heists together, and then Henry manages to open his own cat cafe, and then they end up starting their own organisation called the Cat Burglars. Each has their own codename:
Charles= Lion
Ellie= Jaguar
Henry= Noir
Their organisation’s symbol is a cat’s eye. Secret identities. The Cat Burglars are currently low on members, but it’ll grow. 
The cafe is their base, but they don’t do much illegal stuff, mostly just ruinning the Tophat’s plans either by dropping in and helping the police/government or stealing the thing first. They also leak incriminating information about corrupt public figures.
They’re all badasses.
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henystinkman · 3 years
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I really like your AUs! But I can't find anything that summarizes them. Could you summarize each one for us? (Also, does Ghost Henry haunt Reg/Right or is he just chillin?)
thank you! I’ll do my best to summarize them all real quick
Ask Ellry is the au @ask-ellry is based on, basically during the triple threat route Ellry managed to beat Kabbitz and take down the toppat clan without unfusing, though they’re now stuck. Soon as I get back into the groove of things some more crazy things are gonna go down :eyes: Reginald Reborn happens after infiltrating the airship, Henry manages to catch reg and nearly kills him but RHM intervenes at the last second and Kills Henry instead. Reg ends up getting cybernetics, though his mental health suffers quite a bit.
Revenged survivors happens after the Revenged ending but Henry and Reg both survive and are taken into military custody so they can be tried for the crimes of the toppat clan. 
Supportive Reg happens after the rapidly promoted executive ending in ITA, but instead of plotting against Henry, Reginald takes him under his wing and helps him lead the clan.
Protag au is where Everything is a game and Henry is stuck reliving all the endings over and over and over again, slowly other characters become aware of the timelines as well and they start plotting a way to escape.
Henry Hoard is basically just taking all the henrys from this previous aus and putting them together, I’ve been thinking of doing more with this but it probably wouldn’t have too much plot and would be mainly character stuff
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lastoneout · 4 years
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Comfort Food
Fandom: Persona 5
Rating: PG
Summary: 
Akechi has a food blog, Futaba thinks that's hilarious, Akira is a good friend, and Sojiro needs a drink.
Notes:
This was supposed to just be me projecting my issues on to Akechi because he's my emotional support bastard boi but somehow it turned into nearly 2500 words of tooth-rotting slice of life fluff. Whoops.
A03
Goro learned the hard way that hiding things from Futaba was impossible.
To be fair it wasn’t like he was trying to hide his food blog, he mentioned it in passing a few times and he knew that most of his followers were his fans, but he never really expected any of the Thieves to actually read it, let alone read it out loud, in front of him...while laughing at it.
“What are you, a high school girl?” Futaba said with a snicker after she finished reading his latest post aloud, “I’ve seen little girl’s diaries with more class.”
“Oh my god.” Akira choked out from beside Futaba behind Leblanc’s bar, desperately trying to muffle his laughs as Goro floundered.
He knew he shouldn’t care. The Thieves always poked fun at each other. ‘It’s what friends do,’ Akira had said. If anything he figured he should be grateful that Futaba considered him enough of a friend to playfully mock his hobby. But Goro was never good at regulating his inner emotions, and so as much as he tried to not let it get to him, it did.
Truthfully, he never meant to get into food. For the longest time, he considered it a pointless expense. In the various foster homes that he was tossed between food was almost a luxury. And to someone who often wondered where his next meal would come from it was hard to justify the cost of a fancy dinner when the same money could get him a month's worth of instant ramen and convenience store bento lunches.
But when he got into high school and wormed his way into the police force he suddenly was financially stable enough to justify luxury spending. Nijima-san was kind enough to pull some strings to get the agency to act as a guarantor so he could move out of the foster home and into a small apartment, and after he paid his bills and rent he was left staring at the remaining sum in his bank app, trying to wrap his head around how that money was his, and he could do whatever he wanted with it.
He tried to keep a level head and decided to go to a nearby department store to pick up things to furnish his new home, but on the way there he passed a diner and was stopped dead by the incredible smells drifting out the door. His stomach growled, and he found himself trying to remember the last time he had eaten something that hadn’t come wrapped in plastic and styrofoam.
His stomach growled again, and before he had time to think about it, knowing that if he did he would decide against it, he hurried into the restaurant. He was seated quickly, and despite feeling weirdly giddy and anxious he smiled at the kind waitress who took his order. The simple latte and plate of pancakes were probably the most delicious things he had ever tasted, and he couldn’t help how his eyes watered after the first bite, the food filling some empty part of himself he hadn’t even known existed.
Looking back on that day he’s grateful that he wasn’t famous yet, as no one cared to pay attention to the skinny teenager in the booth by the wall trying not to get tears in his dinner.
After that, he ate out at least once a week. He spent little on necessities, picking up most of the things he needed at the ¥100 store and buying used clothes, saving every extra bit that didn’t go into bills for food. Eventually, he started looking up new places to eat, and after finding a few food blogs he decided on a whim to start his own. It didn’t take off until after his big break, but he didn’t mind. The simple pictures and reviews he posted weren’t really for anyone else, and on days when he felt empty and angry, he would scroll back through them and feel a little bit better. Almost happy at the little niche he had carved out for himself.
Shortly after that Akechi’s entire life quickly became a delicate web of lies. He was a double, even triple agent, under so many layers of falsehoods even he struggled to keep it straight sometimes. If anyone ever bothered to break him down to his bare parts there really wasn’t much he actually did for himself. Every single facet of his life and personality had been carefully crafted to ensure he would be able to get the revenge he so desperately craved. He hardly ever did anything just for himself. Every interest he shared in interviews or mentioned around his ‘friends’ was for show, not something he honestly cared all that much about. It was annoying sometimes, having to pretend to care for things he felt apathetic towards, but it was necessary.
But food? Food stayed safe. It helped his Detective Prince facade once he got popular, after all the only thing teenage girls seemed to like more than cute boys was trendy food. And cute boys who love trendy food? That’s a check that writes itself. It made him look soft, approachable, and normal. So he indulged. Actually enjoying sharing the one part of himself that wasn’t fake.
Maybe that’s why Futaba’s mockery stung so much. He wouldn’t care if people made fun of his fake interests, but when it was the real him? It hurt.
He tried to laugh it off, blushing and begging her to stop. He insisted it’s just for his fans, he’s not really that immature or girly, it’s just for show! But each plea seemed to only make the situation worse, so he gave up and silently begged for her to get bored soon, his face an unnatural shade of red.
Akira, ever perceptive, seemed to notice something change in his demeanor, and without a second thought, the teen reached forward and plucked Futaba's phone right out of her hands.
"Hey!" She shouted, grabbing for it.
"Alright, alright, that's enough." He chided, holding the phone just out of Futaba's reach, "We all have our hobbies. But since we're in a sharing mood how about I tell Akechi-kun all about your Featherman shipping blog?"
A chill came over the room. "You wouldn't dare."
"Oh, I would." He turned to Goro with a devilish smirk, "See she loves the red and blue rangers together-"
"Akira I'll end you!" Futaba yelled, diving forward and attempting to tackle him. Akira, however, was taller, and easily deflected her blows.
"She was telling me about this doujinshi she read the other day-"
"I'll spread rumors about you on websites you've never even heard of!"
"It was so romantic-"
"I'll leak your bank info on the dark web!”
"It's by her favorite author too, she buys everything they release-"
"I'll destroy you with malware, you won't be able to BREATHE near a circuit board without getting a virus!"
"Tell me, Akechi-kun, do you know what smut is?"
"AKIRA!!!" Futaba shrieked, and it was quickly followed by the sound of clanging pots and Sojiro swearing loudly from the kitchen.
“Would you two cut it out?” He shouted, poking his head around the corner.
“Sorry Boss, just giving Futaba a lesson on being a good friend,” Akira replied with an apologetic smile.
“Well next time can you do it outside? You’re lucky I don’t have any customers in here right now.”
“You never have any customers...” Futaba mumbled.
“I heard that. And Futaba, I thought I asked you to tie up your hair when you’re behind the counter.”
“On it...” She grumbled, pulling her hair back into a lazy bun with the scrunchie on her wrist.
“We’ll keep the noise and health code violations to a minimum, Boss,” Akira said, shooting a lazy salute Sojiro’s way. The older man eyed them for another second before sighing and mumbling something about herding cats as he turned back to the curry.
With the situation defused, Akira and Futaba stared at each other, having a silent yet very animated conversation, but eventually, Akira seemed to win and Futaba sighed heavily, "Okay, okay,” She turned to Goro and gave him a bow, “I'm sorry for making fun of your blog Akechi-kun."
Goro hardly knew what to make of the display, let alone her apology, but it made him feel a bit better, so he relaxed and gave her a genuine smile, “It’s alright, Futaba-chan, I forgive you.”
“Can I have my phone back now, please?”
“You may,” Akira replied amicably, handing the hostage technology back to Futaba.
She smiled triumphantly before another dark look crossed her face. She eyed Goro, suspiciously, before blushing and tapping her fingers together “A-and Akechi-kun...you won’t tell anyone else about the...shipping thing, right?”
“To be honest...I’m not sure I fully understand what you were talking about,” He replied, “But your secret is safe with me.”
“I’m so proud of both of you,” Akira said with a fake teary-eyed sniff, “My two little introverts, making friends.”
Goro and Futaba broke out in protests, but a quick glare from Sojiro shut them both up.
“Wow, you’ve really got that ‘disappointed dad’ look down, Sojiro.” Akira quipped.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than raise hell in my cafe?”
“As much as it breaks my heart, yes.” Akira said, untying his apron and heading around the counter, “I’ve got a date with a pile of dirty dishes in Shinjuku.”
“You’re not taking Morgana?” Futaba asked as he grabbed his bag and jacket.
“Nah, he hates The Crossroads, says the alcohol smell makes his nose itch. When he wakes up from his nap just let him know where I went.”
“Roger that.”
“Thanks,” He said, “See you guys later! Oh, and try not to get into too much trouble while I’m away.”
Futaba rolled her eyes dramatically, and Goro, still feeling a bit lost, simply shrugged.
“Akira, text me when you get there! You know I don’t like you going to that part of town so late.” Sojiro called, and Goro had to suppress a smirk. Akira had faced down far worse threats than the red light district at night. But it must be nice, he figured, to have someone worry about you.
“Got it!” Akira replied, the bell jingling as the door closed behind him.
Futaba seemed to deflate in his absence, looking anxious. She had explained once that Akira was something called a ‘key item’ that gave her ‘a plus ten confidence boost’, and he assumed that just meant she was shy when he wasn’t around. Goro turned back to his discarded coffee, grimacing a bit when a sip revealed it to be lukewarm.
“Uh, I can make you another cup...it’s my fault that one went cold anyway.” She said, clearly trying to make things up to him, “Sojiro’s been teaching me. It probably won’t be as good as his though. I’m still totally stuck on tutorial mode.”
“Oh, um, that would be lovely.” He replied, “Thank you.”
She started the process, carefully measuring grounds as the kettle heated, “You know, you should write about Leblanc on your blog. You like the food here, right?”
“I-”
“Absolutely not.” Sojiro interrupted, joining Futaba behind the bar to supervise the brewing.
“But Sojirooo! Akechi-kun is popular, you might actually get some business for once!”
“I don’t want that kind of business. Sorry Akechi-kun, but hundreds of fangirls in here every day ordering fancy drinks and asking when their beloved Detective Prince is coming back? I can feel my blood pressure skyrocketing just thinking about it.” He replied with a chuckle, “A man my age can only handle so many loud teenagers at once, and Akira’s band of hooligans already pushes the limit.”
“Don’t worry, Saku...uh, sorry, Boss. I understand.” Goro clarified, “There have actually been several cases of popular food writers unwittingly causing small restaurants to close due to their articles increasing interest to an unmanageable level. I wouldn’t dream of doing that to Leblanc.”
“Glad we’re on the same page then.”
Futaba finished making the coffee, grinning when Sojiro complimented her technique. She eagerly pushed a fresh cup to him, practically vibrating while she watched him take a sip. It was true that it wasn’t as amazing as her father’s, but it was still good and had its own charm.
“You did well.” He said, and he couldn’t help chuckle when she broke out in a wide smile, a warm feeling blossoming in his chest at the sight.
“Yes! I leveled up! Plus five coffee making exp!”
“We’ll make a barista of you yet.” Sojiro said fondly, “Now, it’s getting late. Akechi-kun, do you have dinner plans? I’ve got enough curry back here to feed an army, you’re welcome to stay.”
“I wouldn’t want to impose...”
“Just say yes.” Futaba whispered to him with a smirk, “Sojiro put all of his stat points into feeding wayward teens.”
“Then...yes, I’d be honored.” Akechi said, too confused to be offended by being called ‘wayward’.
“The honor is ours,” Futaba replied solemnly, giving an overly formal bow before breaking out laughing.
Sojiro wasted no time serving up three plates of curry, chatting idly with Futaba as she went to flip the open sign to closed. The two of them managed to herd Goro into a booth just as Morgana trotted downstairs, asking about Akira and demanding food. Futaba poked the poor not-cat a few times while Sojiro retrieved Morgana’s food bowl and popped open a fresh can of cat food.
“Sorry,” Sojiro said, pulling up a chair and making room on the table for Morgana’s dish, “He throws a tantrum if he doesn’t get to eat with us.”
“I do not!” Morgana shouted indignantly, “I’m just too civilized to eat on the floor.”
“Chatty cat,” Sojiro replied, giving Morgana a few chin scritches.
“Morgana is family,” Futaba said sagely, “And a family that eats together, stays together.”
‘...Family, huh...’ Goro thought to himself.
“What’s up Akechi-kun?” Futaba asked, and he blushed lightly as he realized he was staring off into space.
“Oh, I’m sorry, it’s nothing,” He deflected, “The food looks delicious, Boss. Thank you.”
“Thank you for the food!” Futaba yelled before digging into her plate, and the rest of them quickly followed suit.
As the four of them shared the meal, Goro felt the warm feeling from before grow and spread through his chest. Futaba was using her fork to flick small bits of meat at Morgana despite Sojiro’s half-hearted complaints, cheering as Morgana somehow managed to catch every single one. The smell of curry and coffee and cat food mingled in the air with laughter and shouts, giving the whole room a feeling not unlike a comforting hug.
Goro allowed himself a small smile, sure that the only reason he felt so happy was the food.
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dramioneasks · 4 years
Note
hey! wondering if you could rec a dark fic that isn't depressing? and with little to no trigger warnings? :)
Karma - pop off valve - T, one-shot - Four months after opening his apothecary, Draco Malfoy was beginning to think he’d made a mistake. No one wanted to buy potions from a couple of ex-Death Eaters and a crazy old Seer.
Bloody Wonders - Misdemeanor1331 - E, 8 chapters - Falsely convicted of a triple homicide, Draco Malfoy swears vengeance on all responsible for his imprisonment. After escaping Azkaban, his first target is his advocate, Hermione Granger. Alone and lonely, her budding career destroyed by a concocted scandal, Hermione has equal cause for retribution. Moreover, she has the means to achieve it. Together, the pair will reap the justice that has eluded them for thirty years. The “Sweeney Todd” remix no one asked for, but I am all-too-happy to deliver.
Between the Devil and Draco Malfoy by QueenOfSmokeAndMirrors - M, 13 chapters - Seventeen is a dangerous age. Hermione Granger, arrogant and precocious and bored of her mundane life, thinks she can handle a deal with the devil. But Draco Malfoy - the devil’s own son - plans on dragging her down to Hell with him. Dramione AU with demons.
Shattered Trust - Betrayal By: cleotheo - M, 10 chapters - A mindless threat from Voldemort during a fight with Harry leads the Order down a dark path which will shatter lives, ruin friendships and tear families apart. Among those most affected by their rash actions are Harry’s best friend, Hermione Granger and her secret boyfriend, Draco Malfoy. Part one of a four part story.
Lady of the Lake By: Colubrina - T, 50 chapters - Hermione and Draco team up after the war to overthrow the Order and take over wizarding Britain. Romance is, of course, inevitable. “I don’t even especially mind belonging to you most of the time,” he closes his eyes and just breathes for a bit, savoring not being in pain. Finally he adds, “Just… try to take better care of your toys.” Dark-ish dramoine.
The Green Girl By: Colubrina - T, 22 chapters - Hermione is sorted into Slytherin; how will things play out differently when the brains of the Golden Trio has different friends? AU. Darkish Dramione. COMPLETE.
Desperate Measures by cleotheo - M, 37 chapters - When the war against Voldemort drags on, what lengths will Hermione go to, to be with the man she loves? DM/HG.
The Dark Lady Rises By: cleotheo - T, 22 chapters - When Voldemort returns to full strength at the end of the Triwizard Tournament things are about to change for the wizarding world. Especially for his daughter Hermione, who takes her place at his side as The Dark Lady. Dark Hermione! First part in The Dark Lady trilogy.
Goddess of Vengeance By: cleotheo - M, 50 chapters - When Hermione Granger discovers she’s really the daughter of The Dark Lord and that The Order of the Phoenix were behind her kidnapping as a baby and her parent’s murders, she sets out to gain revenge against everyone who had wronged her. Dark Hermione!
- Lisa
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ascottywrites · 4 years
Text
Best...Friends?
That Bad Friend Scott McCall tag really gets to me sometimes because even though the fandom kind of pushes it to an extreme, even before the whole Donovan and Theo business I can see how much of a suck-ass friend Scott could be. Like I don’t mean that friends should be up in each-others assholes during every given moment of the day but it is a horrible feeling to be cast aside like so much trash or easily forgotten and in cannon that happened more often than it should have for two people who call one another ‘family’. 
And I know, extenuating circumstances, storytelling, ‘poor story telling’...yada yada, but I’m also a petty ass and sometimes I need to consume the distortion in the fandom to thrive. 
**Also, lets be honest, sometimes the fanfiction is truer to the characters portrayed than the actual cannon. ijs 
This whole post is also known as “I’m a petty asshole who lives in the south so doesn’t get enough opportunities to actually be a petty asshole.” 
Anyway! On with the list! : 
Steter: 
On Edge by Bunnywest (Complete: 8/8| 23,707) 
“What do you mean, Stiles is missing?” Peter demands, scowling at the phone. "Missing, Hale! Can you help find him or not?" The sheriff's voice cracks, and Peter can tell he's out of his mind with worry. Peter doesn't blame him.
In which Stiles gets bitten by a rogue alpha and bolts into the preserve, terrified and out of control. Peter's the one best qualified to find him, because Stiles is Peter's mate. Peter maybe hasn't quite gotten around to telling him that part yet, but Stiles is his, and he's damned if he's going to lose him to some feral alpha. He's going to find his boy, bring him home, and as for the rest? Well, Peter has a plan. It's Peter. He always has a plan.
pack of two by ScarSacrifices (one-shot| 1,735) 
“You’ll be alright. No one can hurt you now,” Peter breathed out clutched the sobbing boy to his chest. Peter took a shaky breath and smoothed his hand down the boy’s hair making low shushing sounds as he did so. “Just listen to my heartbeat sweetheart, I’m here. You’re not alone,” he clutched him tighter, “not anymore.”
A Blowtorch? Really? by MysticMusic (Complete: 2/2| 4,757) 
“He’s homicidal,” she sputtered.
“No, Allison. The witches are homicidal. He’s smart,” Stiles hissed, “and if you took your narcissistic head out of your ass for five minutes, you’d see something called self-preservation instincts. Seriously what the hell is wrong with you? A blowtorch? Really? How fucking stupid are you?”
Or, Stiles defends Peter when Allison attacks him with a blowtorch like a lunatic.
I'm Only Heard During the Silence Between My Screams by Irukashi_Narukib (wip: 42/?| 52,721) 
Stiles thinks no one is listening, so he just... stops talking. It's just like that asshole Peter to refuse to take the hint.
Infinite Space by DiscontentedWinter (Complete: 13/13| 32,124) 
Stiles needs Peter's expertise to help stop the latest threat to Beacon Hills. And, as the pack falls apart around him, he might even need Peter for more than that.
Black Fire by Green (one-shot| 10,934) 
Deaton is all about the balance of the universe, about order. Stiles's new magic - gifted to him from the Nogitsune - is the complete opposite of that. Deaton calls Stiles's magic "dark" and seeks to imprison him in Eichen where he's no threat to the balance. Peter and Stiles go on the run - but they can't run forever.
The Only Sound by Elpie (Horribibble) (one-shot| 4,407) 
Stiles becomes acutely aware of the weight and vibration of his voice in his throat. He knows what volume feels like, and understands the intricacies of modulating it through context clues. If his voice shakes at first, no one seems to notice much.
Except Peter.
What It Takes To Not Be Broken by Whispering_Sumire (one-shot| 17,410) 
He's pretty sure Death is nipping at his heels at this point.
But he has to stay awake, has to keep Gerard away from Erica and Boyd, the two Betas still tied up with mountain ash and electricity on the other side of the room, and it looks like they're trying to scream through their duct-tape, still, but he can't hear it, not anymore.
The terrible, all-consuming, staticky silence had over taken him after about the third time Gerard's lackey- Ben, he thinks his name was- had stuck a military grade taser to his ear, a low enough voltage not to cause brain damage, he'd said, because the point of this was for him to talk.
[Or: The one where Stiles is kidnapped and tortured by Gerard, and his injuries lead to a complete loss of hearing, among other things.]
Sterek: 
Something With a T by Futureworldruler (wip: 10/?| 22,723)  
It started when Derek showed up at his house with a car full of plants.
Or Derek gets help, moves in with the Stilinskis, and slowly builds a new life for himself
Alpha, Mage, Pack by Foxfire2018 (wip: 36?/| 401,116)   
Set at the end of Season 2. Stiles was kidnapped and tortured for hours. Yet no one came for him. Hurt and cast out of the pack by people he thought cared for him, what is he to do? He finds himself accompanied by someone he never expected and someone he is eternally grateful for. Derek feels betrayed and foolish for what he allowed to happen. Out of anger and hurt he forced a valuable member he really started to care for out of his pack. With the pack scattered and people hurt, what will come of them? Will they bond together again in time for the next big bad?
User Error by Poison_Love_Words (wip: 10/?| 37,767) 
Given enough coffee and a few flirty texts from Mr.Bookish, Stiles could rule the world from his basement office at Triple S. That is until the day his best friend stabs him in the back for a pretty face and the (false) promise of fame and fortune.
Based on the Prompt: Omega Stiles is the real brain behind the up and coming tech company but Scott the public “face” starts to believe his own press and falls in with his new girlfriends bigoted family. He lets them talk him into kicking Stiles out of the company. And then Stiles gets revenge by going to work for the Hales.
I'll Bare My Back (If You Hold The Whip) by Kinkubus (wip: 5/?| 16,435) 
After the fiasco with the Nogistune, which Allison barely survived, Stiles is pushed to the fringes of the pack. Alienated from his previous friends and abandoned by the Sheriff who can't deal with his broken son, Stiles slips further and further into a pit of despair. That is until he finds someone even more desperate than he is, and together they forge a bond that will revitalise both their lives and the lives of Scott's crumbling pack.
So this is my first fic and it's unbeta'd so any mistakes, please feel free to correct me. That being said, I have not paid attention to canon at all in this story. Allison lives. Gerard is dead, and so is Victoria but the Alpha pack hasn't arrived yet and to be honest the timeline is shot to pieces. Therefore please suspend your disbelief. This is primarily a story about Stiles fighting through all the odds to adopt the entire pack and cuddle them to death, whilst also feeding them healthy food because yes I know you've got werewolf metabolisms Peter but good eating habits are still important ok!
Choose! by Skeleton_Wolf (one-shot| 1,437) 
Scott made him pick between his best friend and the pack that treats him like family. Is he really his best friend if he makes him pick? Can Stiles choose?
Thunderstorms & Polish Lullabies by Whispering_Sumire (one-shot| 10,057) 
Boyd is there, hovering over his claws, Isaac looks devastated, Jennifer looks bewildered and concerned and horrified, Kali looks smug, the twins are carefully keeping their faces blank but they're playing along, and- Gods, he's really going to be forced to do this, isn't he? Pack, his Pack, the make-shift family he'd all but accidentally gathered is going to die by his hand, and even if it's forced, it'll still be his fault, for wanting them, for needing them, for biting them.
Loving them.
He wants to close his eyes but he owes Boyd more than that.
And then, abruptly, in this saturated technicolor still-picture moment of chaos and violence- the eye of the storm- the door to the loft crashes open. With the water and the metal and the force of it, the sound is almost guttural, and far too loud- even Kali seems startled.
[Or, the one where Stiles time-travels just in time to save Boyd and Derek from the Alphas, and manages to heal everyone, including himself, just a little in the process.]
The One You Choose by Livinginfictions (Complete: 7/7| 13,440)  
Stiles hadn’t seen Scott in over a week, except for glances he caught during school hours.
Not Too Late to Learn by bubblessunshinedelight (wip: 20/?| 30,596)  
After 14 years Stiles realizes Scott doesn't really know him.
or Scott finds out Derek and Stiles are dating and is a dick about it...for a while.
You Belong with Me by halcyon1993 (Complete: 4/4| 19,656) 
Derek is tired of watching Stiles get treated like crap by his so-called friends. When both the Hale Pack and the McCall Pack end up in the same nightclub, Derek decides it's finally time to convince Stiles that he'd be better off with him as his Alpha.
That thin line between right or wrong by orphan_account (Complete: 7/7| 15,718) 
An AU based on the Donovan-storyline from Season 5A. After Stiles is attacked at the library and accidentally kills Donovan, he’s in shock, panics and runs. Hurt, confused, ridden with guilt and depressed, he wonders how it ever came to this point where nothing will ever feel right again. So, he decides to call the one man who knows won’t judge him. But will Derek arrive on time to save Stiles’ life?
This story basically alternates from most of Season 5, ignoring the rest of the series. Since I hated what they did with Stiles’ character after Donovan’s attack, I decided to change it all. This story is completely written from Stiles’ POV.
A Heavy Price by Estellestafford (one-shot| 4,202) 
Every Emissary wants to work for the Hale Pack, Stiles just wanted to be Scott's but then Allison happened to get some magic so that was out the window and now he finds himself in office with some hot guy offering to make him an Emissary in exchange for fulfilling his desires.
Go Away, Scott by HelloWhyTheFuckAmIHere (Complete: 45/45| 66,227) 
After the incident at the warehouse, Stiles is fed up with Scott. He finds himself drawn into Derek’s pack and in the process, drawn to Derek himself.
With the Alpha Pack closing in, Derek needs to learn how to trust his pack and those around him. And who better to help him than Stiles?
A Healing Silence by HelloWhyTheFuckAmIHere (Complete: 28/28| 36,329) 
Stiles is slowly pushed out of the pack following his fight with Scott about Donovan's death. After receiving a phone number from an old friend, Stiles is surprised to find that it belongs to the one person who may be able to bring him back to himself.
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The End: Part One
Pairing: Dean x Reader
Word Count: 2,197
Warnings: typical supernatural violence, language, angst, blood, you know the usual
Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Supernatural. All credit goes to their respective owners. Any and all comments on these are appreciated. I really want to hear what you guys think about this one!
Feedback is the glue that holds my writing together.
Tags at the bottom
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Getting Dean to admit to his feelings has been one of the many failures of your life. Ever since Sam left, he has been an emotional wreck. All he wanted to do was go on back-to-back hunts because it gave his mind to think about something other than his brother. It was a god way to release pent-up energy so Dean took the easy way out instead of talking about it like an adult.
The only thing you can do is be there for Dean when he finally realizes he’s been acting like a child and wants his brother back. Grabbing your overly-stretched leggings, you pulled them over your legs before snatching one of Dean’s shirts before he could notice it gone. Slipping the material over your head, your whole body began to relax at the scent of your boyfriend.
“It’s really quiet in here,” you muttered as Dean got settled onto the bed. Before he could respond, his phone blared the annoying ringtone you thought you changed a week ago.
“You brought this on,” he chuckled as he answered it before putting it on speakerphone. “Hello?”
“I found a way to kill Lucifer,” Castiel said on the other line.
“Castiel, are you using a cell phone?” you grinned as you took your spot next to Dean on the bed.
“Yes. The Colt as in the gun.”
“We're talking about the Colt, right? I mean, as in the Colt?” Dean asked as if he hadn’t heard what Castiel said.
“We are.”
“Well, that doesn't make any sense. I mean, why would the demons keep a gun around that kills demons?”
“What? What? Did—I didn't—I didn't get that,” the angel stuttered when a car whizzed right by him on the street.
“This is kind of funny. I mean, we’re talking to a messenger of God on a cellphone,” you laughed.
“This isn't funny, Y/N. The voice says I'm almost out of minutes.”
“Okay, alright. Look, if the demons have the Colt, they would have melted it down by now,” you sighed.
“Well, I hear differently. If it's true and if you two are still set on the insane task of killing the devil, this is how we do it.”
“Okay. Where do we start?” Dean wondered.
“Where are you now?”
“Kansas City,” Dean leaned across your body to grab the room key that sat on the bedside table, “Century Hotel, room 113.”
“I'll be there immediately.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no, come on, Castiel,” you groaned loudly. “Dean just drove sixteen hours straight and we’re human, we have stuff to do.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Eat and sleep. Just give us four hours, okay? I’m sure there are things you want to do in that span of time. Just pop in at dawn.”
“Yes. I'll just—” Dean hung up on the angel which you frowned at.
“Did you just cut him off?”
“Yeah I did because we need our sleep,” Dean declared as he got comfortable. As soon as you two closed your eyes, his phone rang once more. He groaned as he snatched it from the bedside table before answering it.
“Damn it, Cas, I need to sleep!” Dean yelled. He paused and grew silent before putting it on speakerphone for both of you to hear. “Sam? It's quarter past four.”
“This is important,” the younger brother said. Opening your eyes, you sat up to pay attention since it’s been awhile since you talked to his brother.
“Sam, what’s going on?” you asked.
“It’s Lucifer. I’m his vessel like you’re Amara’s and Dean is Michael’s.”
“Lucifer's wearing you to the prom?” Dean scoffed.
“That's what he said.”
“Just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in, huh, Sammy?”
“So, that's it? That's your response?”
“What are you looking for?”
“I don't know. A—a little panic? Maybe?”
“I guess I'm a little numb to the earth-shattering revelations at this point.”
“What are we gonna do about it?
“What do you want to do about it?” you asked quietly as you stared at Dean.
“I want back in, for starters. I am sick of being a puppet to these sons of bitches. I'm gonna hunt him down.”
“Oh, so, we're back to revenge, then, are we? Yeah, 'cause that worked out so well last time,” Dean scoffed.
“Not revenge. Redemption.”
“So, what, you're just gonna walk back in and we're gonna be the triple threat again?”
“Look, Dean, I can do this. I can. I'm gonna prove it to you.”
“Come on, Dean. He’s your brother,” you sighed.
“Look, Sam—it doesn't matter—whatever we do. I mean, it turns out that you and me, we're the, uh, the fire and the oil of the Armageddon. You know, on that basis alone, we should just pick a hemisphere. Stay away from each other for good.”
“Dean, it does not have to be like this. We can fight it.”
“Yeah, you're right. We can. But not together. We're not stronger when we're together, Sam. I think we're weaker. Because whatever we have between us—love, family, whatever it is—they are always gonna use it against us. And you know that. Yeah, we're better off apart. We got a better chance of dodging Lucifer and Michael and this whole damn thing, if we just go our own ways.”
“Dean think about this,” you said.
“Dean, don’t do this,” Sam begged at the same time as you.
“Bye, Sam,” he said before hanging up.
“You are unbelievable,” you sighed as you laid back down.
“It’s for the better.”
“The only thing this is going to do is push you two away. After all you’ve—we’ve—been through…” you trailed off before closing your eyes to get a head start on that sleep you mentioned to Castiel.
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“Ow, what the fuck?” you gasped awake. 
Looking down at the bed, you noticed the mattress was gone completely so that the only thing left was the springs. The room was much worse than when you left it the night before. The nightstand clock is smashed to pieces, furniture is toppled over, and the room looked like it went through a tornado.
“Dean wake up!” you exclaimed as you slapped his chest.
“Ow! What…?” he asked as he opened his eyes. 
After his brain processed the same thing you saw, you both got up and opened the curtain to see the city outside in worse shape than this room. Graffiti everywhere, cars broken and abandoned, and trash littered the streets. It was like the day you went to the town that had demons but it wasn’t really demons but War or the time when the Croatoan virus spread a few years ago in another town.
“What the hell happened?” you breathed out.
“Come on, let’s check it out,” Dean said as he grabbed his stuff and headed out the door.
“How did we sleep through this?” you asked as you followed.
“I don’t think we’re in Kansas City anymore,” he muttered as you two explored the broken town. A few yards from the hotel room, you heard glass shattering come from one of the alley’s nearby.
“What was that?” you asked as you took the lead. 
Dean trailed behind you as your eyes went blue for protective reasons. If there was something evil going on in this town, you needed to be prepared for it. Upon entering the alley, you saw a little girl clutching a teddy bear as she hunches over on the ground. This is the first sign of life you spotted, and instead of scaring her, you decided to turn your eyes back to their normal color before approaching her.
“Little girl? Are you okay? Are you hurt?” you asked softly. 
The little girl didn’t say anything but rocked on her heels. The no talking thing was really starting to creep you out. Looking back at Dean, you could see the hesitation in his eyes.
“You know the not-talking thing is kind of creepy, right?” you said to the little girl. 
She raises her head and finally looks at you, but blood drips out of her mouth and her eyes were bloodshot as if she were sick. She shrieks before attacking you with a shard of glass, effectively cutting your arm.
“Y/N!” Dean yelled as he went to aid you in the fight. 
A wave of magic bubbled out of your hands and slammed into the girl’s chest which caused her to go flying away from you. Looking down at your wound, you focused on healing it while Dean noticed something scribbled on the wall.
“Y/N, look,” he muttered. 
Looking to where he was pointing, the word “CROATOAN” was graffitied on the wall.
“Shit,” you mumbled as several people came rushing out of the nearby stores once they heard the commotion. All of them looked to be infected and since you couldn’t get the virus, all you needed to worry about it protecting Dean. “Come on! Run!”
Dean took your hand as you two raced out of the area. The infected people snarled as they began chasing you two. Trash were only served as obstacles, and the only reason you weren’t using your magic is because you had a pretty safe distance between you two and the infected people. Your lungs burned as you panted, but you couldn’t stop. The virus may not be able to affect you, but they can sure bite and kill you if they got their hands on you.
“Shit, come on,” Dean urged once he found the path was blocked by a chain-link fence. 
As soon as you reached the fence, people in tanks and several soldiers appeared out of nowhere with huge guns. They began shooting at the infected people, and in order to protect yourself and Dean, you chanted a quick mutter in Latin before stopping to catch your breath.
“What are you doing? Come on!” Dean urged.
“Don’t worry, they can’t see us. I cloaked us. We’re safe, okay?”
“What the hell is going on here?” he asked as he watched the solider shoot and kill the infected group which just kept getting bigger and bigger.
“I don’t know. We have to keep moving. One of these cars are bound to work,” you declared as you stealthily made your way to a safe alleyway that was away from all the action. 
Seeing there was a perfectly good car on the other side of the fence, you approached the chain-link fence as your hands turned a bright blue. Placing your hands on the metal, it began to melt from your touch. Once the hole was big enough, you ceased all contact before walking through the hole.
“That will never not be cool,” Dean commented on your abilities.
“Dean, look,” you said as you pointed out a sign that was hanging off the fence by a thread. The sign read: “Croatoan virus. Hot zone. No entry by order of acting regional command. August 1, 2014. Kansas City”.
“2014?” you asked in disbelief.
“That’s not possible.”
“Yeah because that’s five years in the future. You think the Angels did this?”
“Probably. We’re not any use here so we need to try and find a way out of here,” he said before hotwiring the car. 
It took some time to figure it out, but Dean got the car up and running in no time. Dean kept things on the down low until he reached the interstate where he picked up the pace. There is no cell phone service and the radio is all static which is to be expected.
“That’s never a good sign,” Dean sighed.
“’Croatoan pandemic reaches Australia’,” Zachariah said from the back seat. Jumping ten feet out of your own body, you glared at the angel who reads from a newspaper.
“I thought I smelled your stink on this Back to the Future shit,” you glared.
“’President Palin defends bombing of Houston’. Certainly, a buyer's market in real estate. Let's see what's happening in sports. That's right—no more sports. Congress revoked the right to group assembly. What's left of Congress, that is. Hardly a quorum, if you ask me.”
“How did you find us?”
“Afraid we had to tap some unorthodox resources of late—human informants. We've been making inspirational visits to the fringier Christian groups. They've been given your image, told to keep an eye out.”
“You’re spying on us?” you scoff, not expecting an answer.
“Great, you have had your jollies. Now send us back, you son of a bitch,” Dean growled.
“Oh, you'll get back—all in good time. We want you to marinate a bit.”
“Marinate?”
“Three days, Dean and Y/N. Three days to see where this course of action takes you.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” you asked.
“It means that your boyfriend and his brother’s choices have consequences. This is what happens to the world if you continue to say "no" to Michael. Have a little look-see,” he grinned before disappearing from sight.
“Fuck. The only person I know who will know what to do is my dad. We have to go there,” you suggested.
“Already on it,” Dean said as he sped down the road.
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ckret2 · 5 years
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Prompt, eh? Hmm, perhaps try a monologue from a character's perspective as they come to the horrible realization that are falling deeper and deeper in love. Bonus points if it starts over something as simple as thinking the individual has a cute sneeze.
So my first thought was “oh Ghidorah” but then I was like “but I’ve basically already done that with Ghidorah in the form of arguing with themselves about Rodan, what other character that we both know could I do that with” and then I was like “oh Gigan?”
And then I was like “well obviously he’s gotta have somebody to be monologuing to” and then it uh turned into a whole fic with a plot arc and a cliffhanger instead of a simple monologue, and also took me like seven hours to write instead of thirty minutes.
I haven’t proofed it because it’s 5 a.m.! Enjoy!!!
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The Fissures Between Flesh and Metal
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“The first time I saw them,” Gigan said, turned to take in both the bartender and the robot on the stool next to him, “they’d just stolen a million credit job out from under me.”
The bartender rapped the sharp tip of one tentacle against the bar disapprovingly, and the robot let out a low whistle.
“Yeah,” Gigan said. “I was ready to kill them on the spot. The apocalyptic mercenary market’s already crowded enough—there’s practically more people running around who can destroy planets than there are people who actually want a planet destroyed, you know? I’ll put up with professional rivalry, fine, but I’m not gonna take this from some edgy new guys in town who don’t have enough respect for their fellow professionals not to horn in on someone else’s job. Gimme another hit?”
The robot obligingly picked up the battery that it and Gigan had been sharing and quickly pressed the terminals to the side of Gigan’s metal beak. Electricity jolted straight into his brain. He tipped his head back, letting the rush wash through his circuits, his thoughts popping and static flashing in his optical band.
As the power boost sizzled out and he came back down, for a moment he saw a blurry golden shape with three heads and enormous wings. Then his vision cleared and it was gone.
Gigan shook his head. “But as I’m standing in a freshly-leveled village on this planet that shoulda been my job, watching these jerks who undercut me walk strut around and trying to decide the best angle to attack them from, one of them bends over and licks up this smear made out of one of the locals. The other two screw up their faces in disgust, the one that licked it is scraping his tongue off on a rock, the middle one’s biting his horn in revenge—and then the head on the other side takes a taste too, and they do it all over again.” He threw back his head, squawking in laughter. The bartender rattled a couple of tentacles in amusement. The robot just shook its head.
“Anyway,” Gigan went on, “I figured then either they were too damn stupid to realize they’d stolen someone’s job—heck, maybe they were just wild animals that had been dropped off to make a mess—or, they were the most fun guys I’d ever seen. So I let ‘em live.”
“Did you talk to them?” the robot asked. It wasn’t looking at Gigan anymore; its optic was off. A dozen different open tabs in glowing squares and rectangles floated in front of the bot, projected from the computer plugged into its wrist. The robot groped around blindly for the battery and took another hit; the floating screens sizzled and wavered.
Gigan waited for the static to die down before he replied. “Nah, not then. Had no idea what language to start with. I figured if they really were mercs and not someone’s pet planet squashers, I’d eventually run into them again somewhere like this.”
“This” being the bar around them: an illicit pop-up stop clinging precariously to the surface of an asteroid under a makeshift canopy tent, with a smattering of round tables and stools screwed directly into the asteroid’s surface and a bar made out of a row of coolers. Places like this were a dime a dozen in this arm of the galaxy, appearing in a matter of hours and disappearing just as fast, lasting anywhere from a week to five years. All you needed to make one was a force field to keep out nearby asteroids and to keep in enough air to prevent customers’ heads from popping—but providing gravity and breathable air was the customers’ responsibility. The bartender wore goggles and an air filter that snaked around her head to an air tank strapped between three larger tentacles; Gigan had enough internal air storage and a good enough filter in his throat that he’d be fine for hours as long as he didn’t get in a fight. He kept his tail and one leg curled beneath his seat to keep himself from floating off it.
Bars like this were the best place to find odd jobs and the odd guys to do them: hired killers, hackers, thugs, dealers in contraband of all kind. Gigan couldn’t count how many bars like this he and the triple threat had hung out in—either because they’d run into each other there between jobs, or because they’d come together.
“We crossed paths a lotta times over the next, uh…” he waved a scythe vaguely, “dunno. Few centuries, I guess? It’s hard to keep track of standard galactic time when you spend all your time bouncing between different planets with different year lengths. Sometimes we got hired by two different employers to hit the same world—I usually, y'know, got hired as muscle to extort a ransom, but the only jobs they ever did were full mass extinctions. I got to see them in action—wow. They’re a moving force of nature. On the right planets—wet ones, mainly—they create storms hundreds of miles across just by flying.” To the bartender, he said, “You’re from an aquatic world, right? You look like it.”
Rapping on the makeshift bar top with the tips of half a dozen tentacles, the bartender said, “My ancestral world? Mostly aquatic. About four fifths of the planet, I’m told.”
“Yeah, they’d tear your planet to shreds.“  He didn’t have enough appendages to speak the bartender’s percussive language properly—like the robot, he was speaking it by synthesizing the right raps and taps through his speaker—but he added a scrape with one scythe on the bar top to underscore the sentiment.
She shrugged.
"Fought them a few times, too,” Gigan said. “They’re vicious in close combat. It's kill or be killed, no in between. I’d usually have to cut and run, heh, just take the financial hit, cuz there’s no beating them without getting damaged so bad the victory isn’t worth it. They’re probably the best warriors I’ve ever met, but the worst mercenaries to share a market with.”
He thought his tone was admiring, but the robot said, “I thought you got along with each other?”
“We did,” Gigan insisted, and immediately corrected himself, “We do. It just took a while to get properly introduced to each other, you know? Every time I met them, they were in the middle of a job—and they had that whole... intense, mysterious, aloof loner schtick going on. For the longest time, I didn’t even know whether they could talk.” He hooked one of his wrist spurs through the handle of his drink, took a sip through the straw—hated straws, but a lid with a straw was the cheapest way to keep a drink from floating out of a mug and bars like this were nothing if not cheap—and grimaced. Either his drink had gone off in the past five minutes or that battery was messing with his taste buds. Probably the latter. "When we finally met each other properly, it was in—you know that cruddy little strip of solar systems that ended up under no one’s jurisdiction after the 'Rog turf war? Buncha little lawless hellholes?“
The bartender said, "My ancestral home world was in that strip.”
“Sucks,” Gigan said. “Hope it wasn’t one of the ones the 'Rogs asked me to clear out. Anyway, I crossed paths with them in one of the space port cities near the edge of the contested territory. They’d gotten in a bar fight. And lost.”
They’d been thrown across the bar onto their back, legs kicking uselessly in the air, hissing and spitting in the worst Suneri that Gigan had ever heard. Someone had been mad at them because they’d finished the job they’d been hired for even after they'd been told the world had paid the ransom their employer had demanded; they were mad that they’d been ordered to stop when they’d said from the start that wasn’t how they worked. They were twice the height of anyone else in the bar besides Gigan; but they were fighting completely naked—weaponless and defenseless—and consequently got their tails handed to them.
He’d learned a little bit more about them by then. Over past few centuries, he’d asked around about a three-headed, golden, scaled, winged warrior that spat lightning. He'd eventually stumbled on some sparse info about the prize weapons of a conquering empire in some far-flung corner of the galaxy, a race rather like the local Garogas. Their three-headed warriors were some sort of genetically engineered killing machines.
So was Gigan.
The warriors he’d seen were very, very far from their home.
So was Gigan.
Over time, he'd found enough info on the empire to download its dominant species’ language, so when he’d crossed paths with the warriors again and confirmed that they could, in fact, speak—
“I offered to buy them drinks.” In their home world’s language. “And they kicked me in the chest.” He laughed.
It was his fault. He should’ve known that anyone who’d flown that far to get away from their masters wouldn’t wanna hear a stranger speaking their masters’ language. Would Gigan have?
“And this is when you started making friends?” the bartender asked dubiously.
“Sure! It was the first time they didn’t try to kill me,” Gigan said. “And they did let me buy them that drink. They were flat broke. Get this—this is why I kept running into them everywhere—they were snapping up half the jobs on the market because they were doing them for free.”
The robot made a painful-sounding buzz low in its abdomen that Gigan took for a laugh.
“Yeah! Yeah. Remember what I said about that edgy loner schtick of theirs?” He drummed emphatically on the bar top. “They just wanted to watch worlds burn. No money. No rewards. They didn’t turn down anyone stupid enough to hire them, but they don’t take any orders, either. Get what you pay for, huh?”
“What is their name?” the robot asked.
Gigan’s good cheer immediately disappeared. “They don’t have one,” he said sharply.
“Of course they do.”
“No, they said they don’t. They weren’t given one. They wanna be nameless, I’ll respect that.”
“I am in the Xiliens’ military personnel database.”
Gigan leaned over, trying to see the screens from the robot’s angle. “Yeah? You’ve got a connection to their empire from here?”
“A really slow one,” the robot shot back, “patched into the network via a Xilien spy two star systems away who is connected to the home world with the worst ansible I have ever had the displeasure of interfacing with, so I would like to spend as little time doing unnecessary searches as possible. It looks like they have got hundreds of files on three-headed monsters like your buddies. Once I have cracked the security encryption on them, I do not want to open them one by one.”
For a moment, Gigan was silent. Then he said, “They said their home world didn’t name them—it numbered them.”
“Sympathies,” the robot said. “I have still got a bar code on my ass with my factory serial number. Do you know theirs?”
“He said they’re Zero.” He felt like a traitor. They'd only trusted him with that information because they'd believed him when he swore that he'd never call them by their homeworld's label—and certainly that he'd never tell anyone else.
The robot froze momentarily, processing that. “Easy to remember.” One of the screens changed as the robot started searching.
“Just one 'he’ now?” the bartender asked. “You were talking about all three together earlier.”
“Yeah, uh, he as in—as in the one on the left,” Gigan said. He didn't think of the information as coming from them, but from him—the one who'd persuaded the other two to share it, the one who'd leaned in to whisper it to him in the dark while the other two watched for eavesdroppers. “You’ve got lefty, righty, and front-and-center. Totally different people. Lefty’s… probably my favorite. I like them all about the same, but he—makes himself easiest to like, you know? Great sense of humor—the murderous kind—the kind of guy that can find anything entertaining. From explosions to head wounds. That’s rare.”
Although sometimes Gigan had gotten the impression that, on some level, lefty was forcing himself to feel entertained. The more Gigan got to know him, to see under the aloof façade they all put on, the more he got the sense that lefty had this... desperate fragility about him, like he was crumbling apart and looking for something to latch onto—a weird taste or a unique view or a good fight—something to hold him together.
All three of them gave off that impression, truth be told, just in different ways. Righty looked for stability in his other two heads, ever turned inward, to the point he was all but oblivious to life outside of them. Front-and-center held himself together through sheer force of will, and held back anything from getting close enough to touch him and break him apart.
They were all three so very brittle. They had fissures deep in their body and minds, fissures traced along the paths of the invisible scars where they’d been stitched together into a three-headed monster. And whenever Gigan glimpsed that brittleness—whenever they withdrew into themselves at a question about their past, whenever they tried to pretend they weren’t nervous around employers who paraded about mind-controlled thralls, whenever they hesitated in front of a door that said “No Pets” like they didn’t think they qualified as people instead of animals—he felt the fissures between his flesh and his metal, too.
He didn’t like to talk about his fissures. But they liked to talk about theirs even less, so it all worked out neatly—except that, sometimes, he wished he could talk to them about how he kept his from cracking open, in hopes that it could help them too. He hated their brittleness. He hated how it hurt them.
“But they’re all fun,” he said. “Fighting them especially, once you get them to a place where they’re trying to beat you instead of kill you. They don’t mind losing a few body parts, even—they just regrow them. I even saw them regrow front-and-center’s whole head, once. I didn’t take him off, just saw it happen. Fighting alongside them, though—sometimes we'd get hired for jobs together—watching the way they can work a hurricane, wow…” To think that they didn’t think they were people. Had they never heard themselves sing before? Had they never seen the way they danced through clouds and lightning? Had they never noticed how they effortlessly conducted both rain and minds alike like they were symphonies? Didn’t they know that they were maestros in the sky? Their sheer visionary genius, their unsurpassed grace, the beauty of golden scales gyrating through the cloudless eye of a storm…
“Hit me again,” he asked the robot, and he wasn’t sure whether it was in hopes of pushing the images out of his RAM or in hopes of summoning up another hallucinatory vision of them. The robot flicked on its optic long enough to pick up the battery and lean over.
When Gigan came back down, the robot said, “I am not finding any monsters named Zero. Have you got another name?”
“No—what do you mean 'named’? They don’t have names besides numbers, do they?”
“They do. The Xiliens gave them all code names. They are things like 'Death’ and 'Hyper’ and 'Kaiser.’”
Gigan shouldn’t have been surprised that they’d lied about their name, after everything else. But he was. And it hurt. “Well—keep looking. You’ve got the picture I sent you, right?”
“I will have to look through every file individually to find a visual match.”
“I’m paying you for your time, aren’t I? Come on.”
The robot made an irritated buzzing noise, but snapped, “Fine.”
“Why do you have to track them down anyway?” the bartender asked. “If you’re so close.”
Gigan shrugged. “They went and disappeared on me ages ago. I’m just trying to figure out where they went. I figured their home world might be looking for their lost planet-flatteners, so…” Although they’d never said so, he’d always got the sense that they were terrified of their home world—and terrified that they were being followed. Not the vague paranoia that any escaped weapon felt, but like they knew.
“So why’d they take off? You have a fight?”
“No. We didn’t. In fact, the last time we spoke was—was the opposite of a fight.”
The last time they spoke, Gigan had asked them to come with him. For good. He thought they should market themselves as a package apocalyptic deal, let Gigan handle finessing the employers and victims while the triple threat handled the razing. Give the three of them the opportunity to experience the cushy things you can only get when you’re getting paid for your jobs—fine dining, luxury hotels, resort planets—because they deserved those things all the time, not just when they happened to cross paths with Gigan between jobs. Take them to symphonies and operas—he heard them singing, constantly, any time things were still and they thought no one was listening, in languages he’d never learned. Travel the galaxy together. Get as far away from their pasts as they could.
They said they’d think about it.
He’d never seen them again.
He snatched up his drink and irritably stirred the straw, trying to suck up the last drops floating around inside. He slammed the mug back down. "Just trying to see if they tripped and fell in a black hole or something,“ he muttered. "Get me another. Less blood this time, it tastes funky.” The bartender took back the empty mug and opened one of the coolers.
The robot turned on its optic. “I think we have a match,” it said. Gigan immediately leaned over, squinting at the screens. Something in him sparked and simmered when he saw the photo. That was them—far younger, with a near-feral bloodthirst in their eyes that he’d only ever seen when they were fighting for their lives.
“The Xiliens have a database of AWOL monsters where they document their efforts to track them down. It was a lot faster to go through than all the files,” the robot said. “You were right—they are numbered, and they were assigned zero. I believe your friends were the prototype for the others.” It pointed at small text at the top of their file, Monster #0, and then dragged its finger down to the far larger text underneath: KING. “That is their name.”
Gigan wondered why they would rather claim they’d been named “Zero” than “King.” They deserved to be called King. “Well? What’s it say? Do they know where they are?”
The robot pulled up a map of the galaxy. It showed a cone stretching away from their general neighborhood—like the maps that came from trying to predict the path of a hurricane crossing an ocean. It curved counterclockwise in an arc, a little more than half the galaxy’s radius out from the supermassive black hole. The path was thousands of lightyears long and, at its widest point, hundreds across.
“They found faint psychic traces of King’s interstellar path almost a hundred thousand years ago heading roughly along that arc, assuming they continued on the same trajectory,” the robot said. “But that is the most recent data the Xiliens have.”
“It’ll do,” Gigan said. At least it was a starting point. Even if they’d long moved on, Gigan might be able to pick up the trail again if he knew where they’d been. “What are these 'psychic traces’ the Xiliens are tracking? Any way I can track that too?”
“I can look it up, but it will cost you more.”
“Yeah yeah yeah. That’s fine.”
“Hold on,” the bartender said, setting down Gigan’s new drink. “A hundred thousand years ago? You’re looking for someone who disappeared a hundred thousand years ago?”
Gigan winced. “Technically, no. It was—longer than that, actually.”
“How long ago?”
Gigan opened his mouth. And stuck the straw in it so he wouldn’t have to answer.
The bartender tapped out disapproval on the bar top. “They could be anywhere in the galaxy by now.”
“Yeah, if they had any idea how to hitch rides,” Gigan said. “They fly everywhere. With their own wings. They spend long flights inside these things.” He stamped a hooked foot on the asteroid. “And I don’t mean a ship disguised to look like an asteroid, they travel in rocks!”
“This is gross,” the robot said. “Organic brains are gross. But here. I got the unique psychic frequency that the Xiliens are using to track King and blueprints to a machine to do it with. I do not know if they are good blueprints. I refuse to think about brains any more than that.”
“It’ll do. Beam it over.”
The robot mentally transferred over its exorbitant invoice. The instant Gigan transferred payment, it followed up with the files. “Pleasure,” it said, unplugging from its computer and beginning to pack up. It pointed at the battery. “Do you want more?”
“Keep the rest. Consider it a tip.”
“Nice.” It carefully wrapped the battery in a napkin and stowed it with the computer.
Gigan sucked down the rest of his drink, pulled some physical cash out of a compartment in his calf, and slapped it down on the bar.
The bartender put a tentacle over the money and carefully slid it to the edge of the bar so it wouldn't float away. Several taps dragging out into wry scrapes, she said, "Must be a more impressive lay than they look like.“
If Gigan hadn’t already finished his drink, he would have choked. "We never—! I mean—we're—colleagues. Colleague-friend-…mercenaries.” He shifted the leg he had anchored around the bar stool uncomfortably. “Does it... seem like something else?”
Several tentacles rippled in a shrug. “I don’t know anything about your species,” she said. “But in most, no one spends that kind of money, obsesses that amount of time, and crosses that amount of space unless it's for an offspring, a hive mind hub, a nearly-extinct food source, or a mate of some kind.”
Gigan turned that over. In his head, he called up the photo in the file that the robot had sent him. They were so young, so furious, so bestial—so much more broken than they had been even when Gigan knew them. It was a damn pity that the Xiliens kept visual instead of audial files. He wondered if they had sang back then, too.
“Honestly?” he said. “I don’t know much about my species, either.”
His flesh felt icy and his metal felt numb during the few seconds after exiting the bar’s force field as he crossed the asteroid to where he’d parked his junk heap of a ship. He was warm again by the time he’d powered it up and gotten off the rock. He turned toward the nearest proper spaceport that accommodated people of his size and profession. He had a very long search ahead of him, and he had no idea when he was next going to cross paths with a proper spacefaring planet. He had to stock up on supplies.
He needed to buy a ship that wasn’t falling apart, too. Something built for deep space exploration.
Careful not to cut it, he peeled the one picture he had of the triple threat off of his windshield and stowed it in his calf compartment, to transfer to his new ship later.
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If you wanna read my other KOTM fics, link’s in the source below. It’s mostly Rodorah, but this fic is canon to that verse.
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sebeth · 5 years
Text
Young Justice: A Bat Family And The House Of Al Ghul
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Warning, Spoilers Ahead…
 Seriously, turn away if you aren’t up to date with Young Justice: Outsiders – particularly episode 6.
You have been warned…
  The current Young Justice season has shown the following members of the Bat-Family:
Batman (Bruce Wayne)
Nightwing (Dick Grayson)
Oracle (Barbara Gordon)
Robin (Tim Drake)
Spoiler (Stephanie Brown)
Batwoman (Kate Kane)
Jason Todd
Damian Wayne
 The House of Al Ghul has the following representation:
Ra’s Al Ghul
Talia
Sensei
Damian Wayne
 “Rescue Op”, the latest episode of Young Justice: Outsiders, dropped a few bombshells on the Wayne Family and the League of Shadows. Now is a perfect time for a recap and speculation post.
 Batman: Has grown tired of the limitations imposed on the Justice League by the United Nations and Lex Luthor in particular. Bruce resigned from the League and formed Batman Inc. Green Arrow, Batwoman, Katana, Hardware, and Plastic Man have also resigned from the League and joined Batman Inc. Robin, Spoiler, and Arrowette resigned from Young Justice in support of their mentors.
We haven’t seen Batman since the mass resignation so we are unaware of his future plans.
Batwoman: Has made one brief non-speaking appearance. I’m assuming Kate’s origin is similar to her comic book version. She should re-appear when Batman returns on the scene.
Nightwing: Left Young Justice at the end of season two. The death of Wally West, his best friend, laid a heavy burden on his shoulders. We have no idea what Dick has been up to during the two-year time gap between season two and three. The use of hypnos in an early episode hints as adventures with Spyral, a spy organization.
The season opened with Dick breaking up meta-human trafficking rings.  He’s in a relationship with Barbara Gordon.  It appears Dick will/has formed the Outsiders as of the latest episode – Brion and Halo stated they’d work best “outside” the Young Justice team.
Oracle: Has been paralyzed for less than a year. The prequel comic had Babs active as Batgirl in year six. We aren’t aware of the circumstances of her paralysis but it’s most likely due to the Joker. The only question is if we will receive a “Killing Joke” flashback or if it’s only referenced in a comment. Babs is strictly working with Nightwing at this point but will she organize the Birds of Prey in the future? I would love to see Huntress and Lady Blackhawk in the YJ-verse!
Dick and Babs were both aware of Bruce’s “Batman Inc” plan but are not actively participating in it.
Robin: We’re not sure when Tim became Robin. I’ve always felt it was shortly before season two started due to the anxious protectiveness Dick had of Tim in the first episode. Tim should be around 16-17 years old in the current season. He resigned along with Batman in the first episode. Tim’s romance with Wonder Girl is on the rocks due to the resignation.
Spoiler (Stephanie Brown) – Like Kate, she has only been featured in a non-speaking role. Steph was part of the mass resignation of episode one. I’m assuming Steph’s origin is true to her comic book roots: daughter of Cluemaster, adopts the Spoiler identity to foil his crimes. A significant difference is her early adoption into the Bat family. Trust me, Steph wouldn’t have been able to join the team without Batman’s approval. Steph’s resignation suggests she has a much smoother relationship with Bruce in the YJ-verse. Another difference – Steph isn’t romantically involved with Tim. Is Cassie doomed to be the “Ariana” of Tim and Steph’s future romance? Or will Tim and Steph simply be BFFs?
Finally, Jason Todd!
Jason was seen briefly in season two as a memorial hologram. He had died sometime during years two and four of Young Justice.  We’re not sure of the exact time or circumstances.
I would set Jason’s death in year four. Dick would be approximately 17 years old during the fourth year of the team. Dick, traditionally, is around 17 to 19 years old when he breaks off from Bruce and forms the Nightwing identity. Jason would have a brief tenure as Robin and a member of Young Justice before his death- allowing a very new to the role Tim to join the team in year 5.
We’ve never been told the circumstances of Jason’s death. It’s a safe bet the Joker was involved in some way.
Let’s recap the various versions:
Post-Crisis: Jason searches to find his birth mother. Sheila Haywood, said birth mother, betrays Jason to the Joker. The Joker beats Jason with a crowbar and leaves him to die in an exploding warehouse.
New 52: Very similar to the Post-Crisis death.
Under The Red Hood movie: Similar to the traditional death minus the mom.
Batman: Arkham Knight: The Joker kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured Jason for many months. Joker appeared to murder Jason in a video, causing Bruce to stop searching for him.
Now let’s discuss the various resurrections…
Post-Crisis: Superboy Prime punched the walls of reality causing alterations of the timeline. One alteration was Jason’s resurrection. A massively brain-damaged and physically injured Jason awoke in his coffin. He dug himself out of his grave and wandered the streets of Gotham in a semi-catonic state. Talia discovers Jason and brings him to the League of Assassins. Jason has muscle memory but no intellectual capabilities. In other words, Jason can fight but not communicate. After months of no progress, Ra’s orders Jason to be sent to a home. Ra’s orders Jason will be taken care of out of respect for the Detective. A desperate Talia throws Jason into the Lazarus Pit. Jason emerges with full mental capabilities but an insane amount of rage. Talia furthers Jason’s training but also amps Jason’s rage – she sends him like an exploding bomb into Gotham. Prime targets: Bruce, the Joker, and Tim. Jason and Talia have a brief, icky, sexual relationship.
New 52: No Superboy involved – Talia straight up throws Jason into the Lazaurs Pit. She still serves as Jason’s mentor but no sex was involved.  Jason’s return as the Red Hood and his roaring rampage of revenge happened before the New 52 began. We never receive the full details of Jason’s revenge but Jason comments about his rough treatment of Tim and Roy jokes about a “duffel bag of severed heads” so we’ll assume it was similar to the ‘Under The Red Hood” arc.
Under The Red Hood movie: Ra’s resurrects Jason due to his guilt over unleashing the Joker. Jason’s death was never intended and Ra’s resurrected him to make amends. Unfortunately, Ra’s couldn’t contain Jason’s rage and banished him from the stronghold.
Batman: Arkham Knight: Never died but still full of rage and bitterness due to Batman’s “abandonment” of him.
Jason is seen briefly in “Rescue Op”. He’s masked and wearing a red hood. He fights Nightwing. After Dick’s team leaves, he mutters “Grayson”.
Ra’s comments: “Oh, your memory is finally returning. Excellent.”
Let’s speculate:
We can safely assume Jason died at the hands of the Joker. It’s a universal constant. I feel it was a true death as the “faked” death of Arkham Knight doesn’t work well in universe with a Superman and a Martian Manhunter. If Batman didn’t have Jason’s actual corpse in his arms, he would have called in his entire Justice League team to find his son. And if he didn’t, Dick would have.
More questions: Was Dick in space when Jason died? Did Dick and Jason work together in Young Justice? Did the brothers have a better bond in the Young Justice universe or was it the more typical “overshadowed by Dick’s greatness” combined with Dick’s bitterness over being replaced route?
As for Jason’s resurrection…
We can rule out Superboy Prime and timeline alterations.
The Lazarus Pit is the obvious solution. However, Jason is very much in his post-grave but pre-Lazarus dip state.  Has Jason been immersed in the Pit? If not, what caused his resurrection?
If Jason has been immersed in the Pit, why such a half-assed job? And where’s the rage?
The Young Justice comic book had Robin (Dick) accidentally drop Ra’s – causing the man to fall to his death. Talia and Ubu threw Ra’s into the pit and he emerged fully intact with no memory loss.
If Jason still has memory loss after the Lazarus pit – is it due to the massive head trauma caused by the Joker’s crowbar?  But, again, Ra’s had died in the Young Justice-verse and been resurrected in prime condition. Talia and Ubu had to travel back to the Lazarus Pit – meaning Ra’s was dead for hours – that would also cause brain damage and he came back in perfect health.
My theory is an outside force caused Jason’s resurrection. Talia discovered Jason wondering the streets and brought him back to the League’s stronghold.
It would explain Jason’s current state. I have no idea what the “outside force” would be though.
Jason has been healing and training with the League but has not been immersed in the Pit.
Ra’s al Ghul stated in “Recue Op” that he is no longer the head of the League of Shadows or a member of the Light.
A power struggle occurred and Ra’s lost.  Ra’s only has his own family – Talia, Damian, and Sensei – along with a few loyal operatives on the island. Who has assumed control of the League of Shadows?
I listed a few suspects when I covered “Rescue Op” – Cheshire and Lady Shiva. I even theorized over the introduction of Cassandra Cain. I completely forgot the most obvious suspect – Nyssa al Ghul.
Nyssa is the older sister of Talia. Nyssa lost most of her family in concentration camps during World War II – mainly because of Ra’s outright refusal to help her.
“Batman: Death and the Maidens” is Nyssa’s origin and revenge against Ra’s. She murders Ra’s al Ghul and Talia and assumes control of the League.
The trio of Nyssa, Lady Shiva, and Cheshire would be a terrifying triple threat. And if Shiva has coerced Cassandra to help? Very bad times ahead for Ra’s and Talia.
Let’s talk Talia. She only has a brief appearance in the cartoon but received a two-issue spotlight in the comic book series.
Talia is a more multi-faceted and likable character in the Young Justice-verse than she is in the mainstream DC universe.
Talia wants Bruce to love her but realizes he doesn’t/can’t – at least not the way she wants him to. She’s frustrated that her father doesn’t understand or accept this. She wants someone to see her as something other than Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter or Batman’s lover. Talia is very tired of the endless conflict between Batman and her father.
I believe Talia discovered the resurrected Jason. She brought Jason home with her so he could heal. Talia has been patiently waiting for Jason’s full recovery. In the comics, Talia didn’t push Jason into the Pit until Ra’s threatened to send Jason away. Clearly, this isn’t a worry in the YJ-verse so Talia would have no reason to immerse Jason in the Pit and risk the resulting insanity/rage.
Initially, Talia rescued Jason in the comics so Bruce would be grateful to her. Cartoon-verse Talia likely has a similar motivation.
What would cause Talia to throw Jason into the Pit – restoring his full mental capacity even at the risk of rage and insanity?
Two words: Damian Wayne.
Talia was holding baby Damian in her arms during the episode. Why introduce both Jason and Damian together unless their storylines intertwine?
I feel Ra’s successors in the League are going to pursue the remaining Al Ghuls. The League, by its various nature, is a bloodthirsty affair – predecessors aren’t allowed to live out their lives in peace. And Ra’s isn’t a “chilling on the beach” type of guy.
Damian is a newborn and I’m assuming he was conceived the old-fashioned way. None of this Talia drugged Bruce or stole his genetic material stuff. It wouldn’t be true to the Young Justice version of Talia.
Talia has a newborn and a price on all the Al-Ghul heads. Talia realizes Damian needs to be with his father for his own safety. Talia is unable – or unwilling – to leave Ra’s side. It’s possible an ambush goes very badly. A desperate Talia throws Jason into the Lazarus Pit. She orders the now fully restored Jason to bring Damian to Bruce.
Jason may not even engage in a “roaring rampage of revenge” against Bruce. Mainstream-Talia’s manipulations helped cause Jason’s revenge (“You remain unavenged”). Talia has no reason to amp Jason’s revenge in the YJ-verse – she needs Jason to get Damian and himself to Gotham asap.
Jason’s rage may not even kick in until after he hands Damian over – it could be days or weeks later when Jason discovers the Joker is still alive. Enter the Red Hood.
If Jason does go all revenge-driven Red Hood, I am going to be seriously annoyed if he focuses his anger on Dick and not Tim.
Bad enough Dick stole the founding of Young Justice and the Kon friendship from Tim, if he takes the “replacement feud” I’m going to have a fit.
Dick is the original Bat-Family thief – first Barbara has multiple accomplishments stolen from her history in order to make her Dick’s “true love”, and then Dick steals the founding of Young Justice and Superboy from Tim!
I love you, Dick, but stop stealing your sibling’s stuff. They are allowed to have accomplishments and storylines without you hogging the action!
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