#also i would like to say over the few months ive been gone i am now obsessed with thomastair

[no-droids]

Another Rough Day

gif credit @chrishemsworht

Part Twenty of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 13.7K

Warnings: Angst, violence, canon-typical blood and gore, language, hurt/comfort

A/N: i wanna thank yall for sticking around during my hermit era, in the time ive been gone i am now officially a junior at a university majoring in aerospace and it’s a fuckin nightmare and i hate everything and god help us all literally kill me and I will be posting INCREDIBLY slowly because of that (I’m talkin weeks or months in between updates yall, im sorry I can’t dedicate more time to this but I am going to finish this fic within the next handful of chapters idk maybe 5 or 6 so you shouldn’t have to wait too too long).  As a heads up there will be hard angst as we enter the final arc, there will be hurt and it’ll get dark but everything is gonna turn out alright so thanks for sticking with me and continuing to stick with me. im sorry if you dont like it or your expectations were subverted or if this isn’t what you’d hoped it would be after following and waiting around for so long but this was planned a long time ago and it took me a good year or two to recognize that I started writing this fic for me and now I’m going to end it writing for me and I hope yall can respect that

ALSO I asked my best BEST FRIEND in the entire world @cptnbvcks to collaborate with me for this after we both took a very long break from creating and she drew some GORGEOUS artwork for this chapter so it will be posted at the end, everyone please go follow her and say hello

ps brittany girl you’re a fuckin menace i had to use my own two ears and listen to ethan literally say the words “the mandalorian cums, hard” what the fuck was that im actually suing

anyways chapter below the cut lets get serious yall

---

You take two of them down before they even realize they’re being attacked.

Your aim is as swift and steady as if Din were behind your shoulder right now, calmly pointing out which stationary tree to hit next in rapid succession.  You’re positioned perfectly at the bottom of the ramp to take full advantage of the ambush, the only thing running through your mind is strategy and the constant calculating of angles and ricochets.  The other three troopers are trapped inside the open Crest and you’re right next to a large boulder that you can step behind for cover, but it proves unnecessary as the rumors were apparently true.

They’re… awful.

Not a single blaster is even fired in your direction—you think you see maybe one panicked red shot bounce around in the hull, but that’s it.  The troopers fumble for their guns and trip over each other at the unexpected attack—a few scream like children through the modulators, but you’re temporarily deaf to anything besides the screech of your weapon hitting its target and the crumpling of armored bodies.

Later on, if someone were to ask you to describe exactly what happened—who died first, who ran for cover, who cried out for help—you don’t think you’d be able to.  You don’t even really feel like a person right now.  The entire thing is cold, robotic survival instinct, pure ruthlessness rising in your soul for the first time in your life.  It feels sick.  Wrong in your bones.  Born from preemptive defense in fear of your life, but that doesn’t mean you stop.  Not until all of them stop moving.

You empty the entire fucking canister for a handful of stormtroopers, firing plasma and char marks across every square inch of the pristine hull even after the last one drops.  Your heart is beating too fast, your finger keeps pulling the trigger multiple times even after the blaster clicks uselessly, completely empty and beeping a warning that it must’ve begun emitting ages ago.  Being out of ammo scares you—you suddenly feel vulnerable, even though the very far away logical part of your mind reminds you that they have to all be dead at this point and no physical threat was ever able to graze you.

Regardless, you quickly spin behind the boulder and grab another canister from your belt, giving it a spare check for leaks while the empty one slides and drops to the rocky ground.  It’s the first time you’ve ever had to reload this weapon instead of just pointing and shooting, but the mechanics are relatively simple and your brain makes up for your lack of coherent thoughts with lightning fast perception.  What's difficult is that your hands are starting to shake now that you’re not aiming, you’re not breathing correctly because you’re not really breathing at all.  You can’t tell the difference between the adrenaline-fueled dissociative silence that muffles everything around you or if it really is just that quiet now.  No more clatter of armor, no modulated voices or terrified screams.  No blasters, no footsteps along the ramp, no birds singing.

You quickly pause to lift your elbow and check the enormous eyes blinking up at you, tiny claws still holding tight to the fabric of your tunic and completely unharmed, and then you force yourself to move.  The blaster is held out in front of you while you walk forward and your finger rests on the trigger, begging to be pulled again.  It’s suspenseful and terrifying in a different way than before—now it’s less about psyching yourself up for confrontation and more about the fact that any sudden movement could mean your very swift end.

Silence.  Silence.  You’re numb and raw at the same time, walking up the ramp as your eyes fly everywhere, not even registering the blood or gore, just searching for movement.  You don’t know if you feel like a predator or prey, you’re that much more brutal and inhuman because of how fucking terrified you are.  You count four stormtroopers in the hull laying crumpled and still on the metal floor, but the one in the far corner only has blood on his shoulder.  You quickly swing the blaster around to remedy that, but then—

“P-Please don’t kill me!”

His words remind you of something.  Reality, maybe.  A world outside yourself and the kid’s survival, the living beings behind the bloody armor your enemies wear.

It’s a miracle your finger stays hovering over the trigger, and you watch him throw the blaster at your feet with a clang and scramble to show you his empty hands.  “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—I’m not loyal to the Empire, I don’t want to be here, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die—”

Behind the mask, your expression furrows.  Stormtroopers are loyal to the bitter end, what is he saying?  They embrace their expendiality, it’s the only thing that makes them any sort of a real threat.  Kuiil told you horror stories about them during your childhood, the cloning facilities and the propaganda they’re force fed since infancy.  It’s nearly impossible to find one who hasn’t been raised from birth to serve the Empire, no matter how crumbled and trace its remaining authority may be.

No, this is a trap, it has to be.  Your expression twists with dread after hearing him speak, readjusting your aim with the blaster and preparing yourself for the years of nightmares that’ll follow—but then he cries out, “Wait!” and then removes his helmet with trembling hands.

You pause, staring down at him in shock.

It’s him, you recognize him immediately.  It’s the same face from a hologram puck you bore into your memory, spent multiple days staring at so you’d be able to spot him under any disguise or circumstances.  Oshua Ryler.  Your quarry, the fifth puck, the one Din was out Maker knows where searching for before this entire mess happened.  A stormtrooper?  His puck said nothing about the Empire, this doesn’t make any sense.  What is he doing here?  Stormtroopers don’t have pucks, they don’t have bounties or relatives or loved ones searching for them.  They’re brainwashed, replaceable, faceless soldiers in suits of armor and they don’t even have names.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begs again, staring at you with wide eyes even as he cowers.  “I have a family, I-I just want to go home, please—”

“Shut up.”  You can’t think straight with him crying like that and you’re wasting so much time just standing here trying to process when your brain had to literally shut itself down to even do the things you’ve already done.  You have to kill him and escape, you have to—you can’t trust this complication, not with the tiny claws currently digging into your back and reminding you of your purpose, but it was so much easier when he had on a helmet.  You hate looking at his face.  It’s going to haunt your dreams now, just like the man you stabbed on Corellia.

“Please don’t kill me—please don’t kill me,” he screws his eyes up and breathes over and over instead, and your stomach wrenches with disgust.  His posture and expression are so fucking pitiful, you can barely keep your eyes on him through the overwhelming nausea and aversion that climbs up your throat.  He’s with the Empire, and they’re looking for the baby.  You know what needs to be done.  Pull the trigger, just one small movement from you and it’ll be all over.  It would be the easiest thing in the world, it would be so easy.

But then instead, you ask, “Why are you a stormtrooper?”

“I’m n-not—I hate the Empire—”

“The Empire is ashes.”  You don’t know if you’re yelling or whispering with how much blood is roaring through your ears.  “They hold no power anymore.  Why are you with them?”

“Because the one thing they have left is money!”  The quarry shrills the words at you, ghostly pale to the point of turning green.  “Th-They buy troopers now—they opened up a whole new market for the smugglers, there’s a base nearby that’s used for training and…”  He stares wide eyed at you and gulps.  “C-Conditioning.”

Your brain is already going a trillion lightyears an hour and it doesn’t have the capacity to empathize or understand anything beyond the child’s survival and the relevant details right now.  “Were they expecting the baby?”

“W-What?”  He squeaks up at you.

“Was the bounty put out on you a trap set by the Empire?”  You ask him, lifting your free arm just enough to flash him the tiny child clinging to your side.  “He said they’re coming after the baby, so tell me if this was planned from the beginning.”

“Who is ‘he’?”  The stormtrooper asks, furrowing his eyebrows and looking around.  “What are you talki—”

“Tell me if the bounty on you was a trap to take this baby!”  You roar, your blaster shaking as you aim it down at him.  Your mind is acutely focused on the tiny claws hanging onto your tunic, the continued safety of the kid and the life or death situation facing him that you were given absolutely no information about.  “Now—”

“If it was I didn’t know!”  He quickly cries out, pleading with you and clamping his eyes shut in terror under the barrel sight.  “I don’t know anything about a b-baby, or a bounty!  They just put blasters in our hands and told us to search for a ship and to bring back anyone we find alive, I swear!”

You’re silent for a moment, biting your lip under the mask and caught halfway between discerning and stalling.  You could still kill him.  You should still kill him, time is ticking down and more troopers could be heading this way any second.

Shit.  “Who put the bounty out on you?”  You ask sharply.  It might not be a completely fair question, but he can’t exactly blame you for not feeling completely fair right now.

“I—I don’t know,” he gasps, clutching his bleeding shoulder.  “Could’ve been anyone—my mother, Cyra, o-or my dad, Obediah, or Thia, or Benja, or S—”

“Thia,” you interrupt his rambling, catching the slurred word and repeating it back to him.

“Yes!”  Oshua jerks his head up, tears and hope immediately filling his eyes at the sound of her name, “Yes, Thiadura Celi Ryler, that’s my sister!”

Maker, if he’s lying, then he’s fucking brilliant at it.  You look towards the cockpit of the ship, biting your lip under the mask.  Get to Nevarro, tell Karga and he’ll… something.  Din was cut off before he finished.  Help?  Know what to do?  You’re lost, but you have a clear directive and the precious seconds are sliding by.  The controls are right up there, two steps to the ladder and less than a minute until you’re rising into the atmosphere.

But then you think back to the terror in Din’s voice.  The blistering panic that made him speak faster and with more urgency than you’ve ever heard from him.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.

You look back at the quarry.  “How many of you are there?”

“At the base?  Around three hundred,” he immediately spills.  “Half of us are in the hole right now getting brainwashed, they do it in shifts, but they can be mobilized in a few hours.  There were a lot of bodies outside when we were ordered to split off, maybe a third of our squadron, but the rest were still shooting at whatever was—”

“So around a hundred left,”  You finish breathlessly, almost wanting him to speak faster and cut to the chase so you can calculate quicker.  “How many were dispatched on the search?”

“Uh, there were eight groups of five sent in each major direction,” he informs you, still trembling on the ground.  “Told us not to come back until we covered the entire sector.”

Of which, four you’ve already taken care of.  In other circumstances, you’d be nauseated at the thought, but right now, it’s just another number to subtract, just more panicked math in Din’s frightening absence.  That leaves at least sixty troopers left wherever the base is, minimum, and likely a couple more hours before they’ve combed the sector.  If this wasn’t a preconceived trap purposefully set for the kid, then that means reinforcements haven’t arrived yet but likely will soon.  And if this is a base meant for training and conditioning, then that also means there’s a chance not all of them will be loyal yet.

You make the decision immediately.

“Okay,” you announce, clicking the blaster’s safety switch and holstering it, sounding lightyears more certain than you feel.  “Then you’re going to help me carry out a rescue mission, and I’ll take you back to your sister.”

“You…”  He looks uncertain, blinking at your blaster and slowly lowering his hands.  “You want to rescue the men?”

Ideally?  Sure.  Realistically?  You don’t say anything in response.  Instead, you kick his regulation firearm at your feet further away from the quarry just in case your judgment is flawed, and then turn around and grab one of the bodies behind you.

Your adrenaline is still blaring so fast that you only just barely note the severity of what you’ve just done and what you’re continuing to do.  The corpses aren’t real to you right now, they’re inanimate things that you need out of your ship before you can close the doors to it.  They are, however, heavy as fuck, but the only other adult here has a wound in his arm from the gun on your hip.  Regardless, you have experience with lifting dead weight without a big, strong, capable man to do it for you.

“Help me out here, kid,” you mutter over your shoulder, and in response, you feel his claws dig in and climb up just a little bit until he can peek out in front of you.  Thankfully, the burden is suddenly lifted and you can quickly slide the dead troopers down the ramp with ease.  It takes hardly any time at all—you just yank and haul and release and all four of them tumble the rest of the way all by themselves.

When you stand back up, Oshua hasn’t moved and he’s looking at you with a pale, queasy expression.  Glancing down, you see that your white robe is now stained with streaks and patches of rusty blood.  Instead of swallowing back bile at the sight and bolting to the shower to scrub off every last remaining trace, you breeze past it, noting nothing more than a change of color.  Dirtying your white, pristine clothing with the consequences of protecting this baby—you’d rather have blood-soaked fabric with an unharmed kid clinging to you than any other combination of those things.

“Can you make it up to the cockpit?”  You ask the quarry, kicking his rifle off the ship before closing the ramp and then gesturing up the ladder.  Your voice is calm and steady but your hands are beginning to shake again.  “I need as much information as possible about the base.”  You know that’s where Din is, judging from the wall of blaster screeches that drowned him out through the comm.  Logically, you know you could be headed right into a trap, and every instinct inside you wants to find safety, but… you just cannot imagine flying the ship away from this planet without Din onboard.  It isn’t fucking happening, you’ve made your choice.

Without waiting for a response, you climb the ladder and plop down in the pilot’s seat of the Crest.  While Oshua finds some way to clamber up the steps behind you in bulky stormtrooper armor with one good arm, you hold the kid closer on your lap and begin flight checking.  Din will be fucking furious, but the scolding you’ll be sure to get is the least of your worries right now.  Following his instructions and going back to Nevarro is just making shit infinitely more dangerous for him, turning what could be a potential rescue mission into an undeniable suicide mission.  Even if Karga somehow decides to send a few guild members along to infiltrate the base, it’ll be a war you want to avoid.

Besides.  What did you always tell him about running away from him, even when he instructs you to?

It’s just… not really your thing.

---

They’re everywhere.

They crawl like flies out of the base, and for every single body that falls, three more spill from the open doors.  Rapid fire plasma beams launch from the end of Din’s blaster, melting white armor with every twitch of his gloved finger.  Their aim is terrible, as is to be expected, but the sheer number of them more than makes up for it, as is by design.

Din’s heart pounds with exertion, his breath comes in ragged huffs through the modulator as his helmet identifies and isolates which body is closest to him, which body he needs to bring down next.  His blaster is so hot it nearly burns his hand, even through the thick gloves he wears.  When he runs out of ammo, he holsters the pistol and swings his rifle from around his shoulder, spinning to catch a handful of troopers behind him in the obliterating blast.

He’s not thinking much.  He can’t think, even though your safety and that of his son is currently dangling by a thread.  If he focuses on that, he’ll be dead before he can even picture your faces.  He just reacts, he maims and kills without a single thought in his mind.  Blood splatters, screams and sirens blare as he becomes surrounded by more and more troopers.  Din can hear the sound of plasma colliding and ricocheting off his armor; every single one of them is a potential injury he could currently have but might not even be able to feel right now.

His helmet starts beeping rapidly and he turns just enough to see, highlighted in bright red on the screen, two enormous artillery turrets slowly rising up out of the roof of the imperial base.  He feels a fierce flash of anger burn in his chest, it’s like a lightning strike to his veins.

Din needs to go.

And yet… if he was another man.  If he wasn’t a father, or a husband, if he had no family and no attachments like the creed declared he should, he would go.  With just a twitch of his fingers, he could be launching into the sky and retreating as far away from this battlefield as he could reasonably get.  He’s never been the type to run from a threat, but this isn’t just a threat.  Dozens of troopers are gaining on him, they’re trampling their own dead to get within range.  Plasma pings off his shoulder, another one hits his back as they flank from behind.  He can feel the heat through the sizzling beskar, he can see them surrounding him on all sides, and the propulsion trigger for his jetpack is right there under his wrist.

Din holds his ground and continues firing, he plants his feet firmly to the dirt with only one thought in his mind.

Run, sweet girl.  Run.

---

You type in commands to scan for Din’s signal, quickly locating it through the Crest’s computer onboard.  Not far from here, three minutes or less.  The ship rumbles to life beneath you, slowly lifting off the rocky ground and rotating in place as it hovers.  It’s not on autopilot but you feel like you are, you can barely feel your hands as they move the yoke forward and the Crest takes off in the direction of Din’s blinking frequency.

“Tell me about defenses,” you instruct Oshua, restlessly bouncing your leg while the baby coos.

“Two plasma turrets on top of the base,” the quarry quickly answers.  “There’s usually guards stationed around the perimeter, but everyone who’s capable will be outside right now.”

Your mouth twists downwards under the mask.  Blasters don’t scare you much from this high up, but Din’s armor doesn’t cover every inch of his body, he’s not completely invincible.  Doubt churns in your stomach, but you have to stay focused on one task at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed.  The turrets, then.  “Are they automatic?”

“Manual,” he corrects with a shake of his head.

“Radar?”

“Old.  Only engages above fifty meters.”

You eye your altitude and dip the Crest considerably, beginning to weave through the rocky canyons and dodging crumbling cliffs while you travel.  “What about ships?”

“None,” Oshua says, “except for a passenger shuttle used for transport.  TIEs are flown in the Vesta sector, this base is remote and used for basic training only.”

“Anything else?”  You ask, stomach twisting with the knowledge that barely four questions is all you’ve got.  You’re planning to drop into an imperial base to save the man you love and you can’t think of a single other question?  

The quarry shrugs, and your heart slams, does somersaults in your chest at the mere notion that you could fucking die here.  Today, in two minutes or less, you could die here.  The child in your lap looking over the ship’s front panel with a quiet determination in his eyes could die here.  Din could already be dead—that signal broadcasts his location to this computer regardless of whether he’s still breathing or not.  He could already be gone and you’d be flying the baby right into a trap without knowing any differently.

Whelp, you think while taking a deep breath, some strangely calm existential acceptance beginning to flood your soul.  If he isn’t dead, he will be soon if you don’t make it to him on time.

You immediately lift your wrist and speak into the communicator.  “Mando?”  You have no idea if he can hear you, but you need to try anyway.  Your voice is still firm, there’s a strength to it you don’t feel in your chest, but it certainly sounds convincing.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Try to figure something else out.”

That’s it.  That’s it, improvise until you don’t have to.  Even if you’re lacking confidence, you can at least scrounge up some conviction.  Your arms gain feeling again while you veer the Crest through the stony terrain, the familiar reverberations under your feet begin to fill your body with a powerful sense of purpose.  Your breaths begin to come steady, every falling rock you see through the transparisteel feels like it drops in slow motion, allowing you to evade them easily.  It would normally be stupidly dangerous to fly this low with so many unexpected obstacles and hazards narrowly missing the ship, but considering what you’re flying into, a few boulders seems comical.

“Where’s your helmet?”  Oshua asks out of nowhere, and for a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.

But then it strikes you all at once what he’s attempting to imply, and the sheer lunacy of the thought is enough to make you laugh while you clutch the controls.  “I’m not a Mandalorian.”

“You wear the armor of one,” he points out… rather fairly, you have to admit.  “You cover your face like one.  You have a blaster that fires Philithiorium, a rare and expensive gas native to Mandalore’s stratosphere, and you’re a bounty hunter—”

“I’m not a Mandalorian.”  Your words are short and cutting, you have a daunting task to focus on and don’t feel like having small talk right now.  “I’m not a bounty hunter, either.”

But then again, Karga made you a member of the Guild, didn’t he?  He handed you Oshua’s puck and said this one is for you to find, and you are technically part of a Mandalorian clan.  All of this seems like it happened without your knowledge.  You may be marrying a Mandalorian, you may wear his armor and mother his child and shoot a blaster with his signet branded into it, but war isn’t in your blood.  This robe was a costume when you first made it, this armor was a relic that was restored as a hobby.  In a sense, it still feels that way.  The mask covering your face lended itself to a temporary surge of bravery earlier, but beyond that, the only thing that’s keeping you moving forward now is your family.  The man you love that may or may not be alive right now, the baby holding tight to your leg while the ship sways and weaves through the stony landscape.

Your eyes quickly flick down to the child in your lap, both of his three fingered hands clutching onto the stained fabric of your knee without moving a single inch.  He’d know, you tell yourself.  If his father is gone, he’d already know somehow.  Din is still alive, and he’s counting on you.

---

There’s too many for Din to handle.

They swarmed him, overpowered his endless artillery with massive numbers and there’s nothing he can do anymore.  The backs of his knees are kicked from behind and he slams down to the ground with a clatter, his sizzling hot blasters are ripped from him, and Din folds his hands calmly behind his back even as one of the stormtroopers barks out, “Binders,” to another one, who disappears quickly in response.  In the meantime, a few of them apparently decide to just attempt holding his arms in place, and their measly combined grip is almost enough to make him roll his eyes under the helmet.  These imperial soldiers are even more pitiful than they usually are, but his silent resolve to stall to ensure your escape is enough to keep him stationary and compliant for the time being.

Eventually, a few voices call out from beyond the crowd and there’s some movement from the back.  Dozens of troopers with their blasters all pointed at him begin to shuffle to make way, careful to keep their barrels aimed at him while a path slowly forms.  The crowd of white parts and a stormtrooper with a singular red pauldron on his right shoulder saunters confidently towards Din as he kneels on the ground.

An officer, he assumes.  Conveniently missing from the firefight, the scanner inside his helmet would’ve caught the change in color and Din would’ve made sure to kill him first.

“Well now, what do we have here?”  Comes his thin metallic voice through the tinny filter.  The officer studies him curiously for a few moments, before slowly looking down by his feet, reaching out one cheap, plastic covered foot to gently nudge the body of a dead trooper on the ground with a sigh.  “What a shame.”

Coward, he thinks, his lip curling with disgust under the helmet.

“This is an imperial training base,” he turns his attention back to Din to inform him when he doesn’t immediately respond, rather stupidly he might add.  “How were you able to find us?”

Silence.  The grip on hands held behind his back is even looser now.  He just tilts his chin up slightly in defiance, the scanner inside his helmet locating each weapon strapped to the man’s body and highlighting it red.  Small text boxes blink into existence under each one with a manufacturer and classification—a BlasTech E-11 rifle, a Merr-Sonn thermal detonator, a Kolvo vibroblade—and Din is severely unimpressed with the quality.  The detonator is the only weapon that even catches his eye, and that’s only because the chamber inside that houses the explosive baradium has a release mechanism that’s completely dead.  Useless, then.  Good to know.

After a long moment of quiet tension where Din refuses to speak and the officer continues to confidently scrutinize him, in some strange sort of silent battle of egos that only one seems to have a genuine interest in, another stormtrooper makes his way to the front, shoving past his fellow soldiers to address the superior in charge.

“Commander, we’ve sent out an alert for an intruder,” he tells him, slightly out of breath from running through the crowd in the lightweight armor.  Din wants to roll his eyes, but what he says next makes him snap to immediate attention.  “The fleet informed us that Moff Gideon is currently on route.”

Gideon.  The last time someone spoke that name, it was a quarry on Coruscant and you just barely managed to stop Din from suffocating the bastard for even saying it aloud before freezing him in carbonite.  It would’ve meant half the return on a hunt that lasted nearly a month but he saw red and his hand was crushing his windpipe before he realized what happened.  But he’s dead, Din thinks with a clenched jaw and fists tightening behind his back, he watched that TIE fighter explode and slam into the ground, crushing the man inside it.  The wreck was unsurvivable, he can’t be alive.

“For what?  This Mandalorian?”  The trooper in charge scoffs in response, and Din remains completely mute.

“Yes, sir,” the other one confirms.  “Orders were to capture him, alive.”

“Hm.”  The officer turns his attention back to him, less analyzing and more musing while he tilts his head.  “I see,” he eventually says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, before strolling slightly closer as Din stays completely still on his knees.  “He must want the beskar.  I’m sure it’s worth more than this entire battalion combined.”

All of a sudden, a gloved hand carelessly catches the rim of his helmet and tugs, and Din’s movement is explosive.  He launches off the ground, arms easily slipping from the pathetic grip they were being held in and his fist colliding with the side of the officer’s flimsy white helmet, the plastic making a deafening crack against his face.

Multiple hands immediately rush forward to grab him and yank him back down again while the commanding trooper stumbles backwards in shock, and Din amicably drops to his knees and folds his hands behind his back once more like nothing happened at all.

“Binders!”  A trooper behind him roars loudly once more, and a few men surrounding him begin trotting away this time.

The officer in red stands a few feet away from him now, grabbing his helmet and twisting it back to its proper position on his head where it was skewed.  There’s a shattered hole near his jaw where the material splintered and busted like the cheap piece of banthashit it is, and while he might normally feel pleased with himself for being able to see his skin peeking through, it just fills him with more righteous fury.  It’s such a punchable jaw.

After a few awkward moments of silence, the other one clears his throat and continues.  “He… has inquired about the location and status of a child that should be accompanying him.”

Din inhales deeply through his nose and grinds his teeth.  He wants to snap their necks one by one for even just mentioning his son, but there are just too many, more than even his whistling birds can neutralize.  Still, he gave you as much of a head start as physically possible.  You should be rising into the atmosphere right now, making the jump into hyperspace towards safety.  Karga will know what to do—he’ll protect his family, separate you and the boy so the threat is evenly dispersed instead of collected all in one place, and arm dozens of trained hunters to keep watch over you both individually.  It’s the best Din can do, and it’s the only thing keeping his knees planted on the ground and his body completely motionless while they continue speaking.

“We are combing the sector for a ship with as many men as we can afford to lose,” the trooper in red says, but his voice filter is shattered and now sounds like a puny little droid with a broken voice box, “but our numbers are unimpressive.  Assistance may be required.”

It’s too late, Din thinks, mouth twitching under the beskar with a satisfied smirk.  They’re wasting their time, looking for a ghost.  You’re both long gone by now.  They’ve got no idea you even exist—

“He also spoke of a girl.”

And then he feels his heart stop in his chest.  Every single cell in his body turns to fire, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t move a muscle in response.  His sweet girl, the one so far removed from the nightmare of the Empire that she made best friends with the orphans of it.  How the fuck did he know?  He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone gathering information about you, how did he know?

But then Din thinks back, remembering your makeshift bed on the floor, your panicked eyes and heaving chest as the quarry taunted him with a sick little smile.  Who’s this, Mando?  She’s just darling, isn’t she?  Does Gideon know your crew has a lovely new addition?

“A girl?”

The trooper nods.  “Moff Gideon insisted that if the Mandalorian did not have a child with him, then a girl would likely be protecting him instead.”

He’s going to kill them, Din decides.  Every single one of these imperial pigs, every single soldier standing right now is a dead fucking man.  The blood pumping through his body suddenly turns to acid, deadly black hate poisoning his soul.  His heartbeat morphs into a war drum, the armor strapped to his limbs is the barrel of a gun.  He’s going to fucking kill them and leave an imperial base full of bodies to greet his old nemesis upon his return, and he’s going to enjoy every single second of it.

Except, then—

“Mando?”  The sweetest voice in existence suddenly crackles through the earpiece under his helmet.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Figure something else out.”

And, as Din kneels there in surrender, surrounded by a crowd of enemies he thought he destroyed long ago, all the anger—all the fury and defiance and murder surging through his veins—suddenly morphs to fear.

The emotion is so foreign and old to him, it feels like a face he barely recognizes and a name he can’t remember.  He’s panicked before.  He’s been in situations where a threat has made him blind with rage, he knows what it’s like to look death straight in the eyes and say that he’s busy and to come back another time.  This is different.  This is ice cold that freezes over beskar.

He can’t speak out loud to warn you—he can’t move his hands to press the button on the back of his helmet and allow him to talk without detection.  There’s plasma turrets on the roof of the base, he can see them right now.  The helmet’s scanners say they’re manned and engaged, and though he is outside and this is how you retrieved him before whenever he needed a quick escape, he has fifty fucking imperial blasters trained on him and you know absolutely nothing about this threat.  You’re flying right into a war zone and if either you or his son dies, he won’t ever be able to forgive himself.

Behind the helmet, his eyes fly to each and every trooper, wondering which blaster will be the one to do it.  Which weapon is going to be the one he can’t block in time when you descend, the one that’ll kill him right in front of you.  Which turret will be the one to obliterate the Crest with you and his son inside of it.

“Maker, where are those fucking binders—” he hears someone behind him snarl, but the white noise of pure terror roaring through his ears drowns them out.  His chest starts heaving against his will, sheer panic begins to blur his vision.  For the first time in his life, his armor feels too heavy, his lungs feel like one of these boulders are sitting on them instead of beskar.

All too soon, his helmet starts making a familiar sound that signals quietly in his ear, alerting him of an incoming ship, and the only thing he can physically do is count down the seconds to prepare himself for what is to come.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

Like lightning, Din breaks the grip of multiple troopers and surges up, tackling the officer in red to the ground.  There’s a clatter as they both slam into the rocky floor, but in the ensuing scuffle, he easily snatches the thermal detonator from his side holster and holds it up for everyone to see, before pressing the red button on the front and hearing it begin to beep rapidly.

---

You’re right on time.

The Crest rises up through the rocky cliffs surrounding the base and you spot the turrets you were warned about.  Weapons controls are already engaged and you’re too low to be detected by radar—you fire once, twice, and blast both of them to smithereens from behind before they can even rotate around to target you.

Alarms start wailing but the guns are destroyed.  It’s not comforting, though; blasters won’t touch you up here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fire at Din on the ground.  Your eyes dart across the sea of white, looking for a flash of silver anywhere, and then you spot him instantly in the chaos.

For some reason, the troopers in his vicinity all seem to be bolting away from him.  Their rifles are down, clutched in their hands while they nearly fall over each other to run away as fast as possible, and your heart soars when you spot his jetpack firing up.  Din launches into the sky while another trooper is revealed underneath him, seeming to juggle something in his hands and then throw it into the crowd of retreating soldiers, but the sight of the man you love rising into the air while a flurry of blaster shots from the far edges of the imperial structure follow him gives you the confidence to immediately turn the guns down towards the horde of troopers.

“Which ones are in charge?”  You ask Oshua breathlessly, who leans forward and points out the transparisteel.

“Red pauldrons—” he barely has time to say it before you aim and fire at one of the troopers wearing red that was closest to Din, the plasma beam launching from the Crest so powerful and devastating that it outright obliterates the surface he’s laying on.  Pieces of shattered armor fly and a smoking crater of rubble is all that’s left behind, but your mind is whirling and you’re already onto someone else wearing red at the edges of the complex, and then two more near the doors, and then another—

To their credit, you think the sixty or so soldiers in training seem to figure out that you’re not aiming into the enormous collection of them.  If you were, the damage would be catastrophic and spraying everywhere, but you’re precise and meticulous with your shots, and the only ones who are loyal enough to the cause to hold still and raise their blasters at the incoming threat tend to be the ones you need to mow down anyways.  The rest of them scatter in all directions, scrambling over each other to escape and then disappearing into the distant boulders surrounding the base—but you notice that not a single one of them runs back inside the safety of its open doors.

The hull dips with the weight of Din dropping in, and relief floods your soul even as you continue raining hell down on the superiors in charge.  Any flash of color you see is a target, your eyes lose focus of everything, your vision blurs and turns monochrome as you just search for red.

“Lift up!”  You hear Din’s voice roar from the hull.  You can hear his rifle unloading through the open door.  “Now!  We have to go now!”

You press the button to shut the hull door with Din inside and punch it, rising so fast that the shove of gravity makes it difficult to keep your head up.  Through the sudden surge of downward force, you just barely manage to raise your incredibly heavy arm to push the button that pressurizes the Crest and ignites the launch boosters, preparing the vessel for space travel.  Outside the transparisteel, the gray sky begins darkening as the atmosphere eventually disappears.  The ship’s engines roar, burning so much fuel at once that you’re actually accelerating through the climb, you’re boosting through the gradual ease of gravity as the planet’s curvature and glow becomes softer and softer below you.

As soon as the blackness of space begins to fill the windows, the slight subsiding of force allows you to plug in the coordinates for Nevarro with less difficulty, but you’re still moving, still rising, still escaping.  You can’t find it within yourself to slow down, but then something catches your attention.

Claws suddenly dig sharp into your thigh, sharp enough to sting and cause you to wince, and you look down to see that the kid has gone incredibly tense.  Deadly tense.  Your heart is still pounding even though you’re away from danger, you’ve got Din in the hull, everyone is safe, and yet—

It flickers into existence all at once.  One second it’s just space, just the endless depths of nothingness spread out for light years in front of you, and within the blink of an eye it’s suddenly there.

A star destroyer.

Your body freezes in horrified awe, having never seen a ship so fucking big in your entire life.  It looks like a massive satellite, the size of an enormous asteroid instantly appearing in your vision and dwarfing the vastness of space around it.  All the stars you used to dream about are suddenly blotted out within a fraction of a second, terror so immense seizes your soul that you stop thinking.  You stop calculating, you stop being yourself for a split second that lasts an entire lifetime.

Before you can move a single muscle, the computer beeps quickly and lurches the Crest into hyperspace.

---

The stars streak across the transparisteel like so many times before.  Utter silence nearly deafens you with how abrupt it is after so much noise, but the peace it used to bring does nothing to quell your fear.  Everything is the same as it always was, same bursts of light as you hurdle faster than it towards Nevarro, same quiet, same rumbling hum of the ship.  But now, everything has changed.

You hear the quarry next to you suddenly inhale and exhale loudly, and it shocks you a little bit, reminds you that there’s a person next to you and another is on your lap.  Other people exist outside of the vision of death that just flickered out of existence just as quickly as it appeared.  They’re breathing, Oshua is shakily unbuckling his seatbelt, life is continuing on in the quiet cockpit but you can’t seem to move like he is.  You can’t seem to breathe like he is.  It’s only when the baby slowly maneuvers himself around on your thigh and blinks up at you, placing a tiny hand on your stomach that you finally feel air enter your lungs.

After a moment, you reach down and click open your seatbelt with trembling fingers, scooping the kid up in your arms and slowly attempting to stand.  Everything feels wobbly and dreamlike, you have to brace yourself on the headrest to prevent yourself from falling back into the chair again.

“That was…” Ryler mutters, his voice sounding foggy and distant, “uh.  A close one.”

You look over at him, recognizing that he’s speaking but not quite able to understand the words right now.  Red catches in your vision, and you blink down at the way he’s clutching his left shoulder, the smear of blood darkening the white armor he’s wearing.  You blink a few more times at the sight of it, and though it feels like you normally would be sickened at the wound, somehow shocked out of your state of shock, it does nothing to you.  When you look back up at his face, his expression seems strangely grateful, even when it’s screwed up in what you know must be excruciating pain.    You did that, a quiet voice whispers in your mind, even though the rest of it seems incredibly blank.

Instead of responding, you stumble a few steps over to the ladder, spinning around and hesitating for a moment.  You’re severely lacking in coherent thought, but one thing seems to break through.  You’re not sure if you have enough coordination to do this safely right now.  However, when there’s movement in your peripheral and you look to see Oshua gently offering his right arm to you, seeming to understand you’d like to use both hands for this, you snap back to your senses just the slightest bit and hug the baby tighter to your chest.  Carefully, you begin making the slow climb down the ladder with the kid, still trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline.  Your limbs feel extra heavy, but eventually the floor meets your feet.

Din is standing there when you slowly turn around, armor gleaming and still as a statue, but he has his back to you.  His helmet is tilted down at the ground, and when you follow his gaze, you’re met with the sight of the bloodstains of dragged bodies that leave dark red streaks all the way up the ramp.

You feel something this time.  It’s… cold.  A burning, searing cold that creeps into your skin.  Like your heart decides to pump nitrogen through your chest instead of warm blood.  You did that.

There’s a sudden urge inside of you to speak, to address him and inform him of your presence, tell him everything is okay, everything worked out, but you can’t find it in yourself to say a single word.  You can’t find a single word to say.  The kid twists as best he can in your clutch, his ears drag against your chest to greet his father, but for some reason, there’s still a strange sense of fear in your bones.  It’s enough to wake you up slightly, it’s enough to tell you it’s not over yet.  There’s a terror in your heart that hasn’t left since he first called over the comm and begged you to run, a crippling dread that you thought climaxed after seeing that star destroyer appear, but it’s somehow only increased after laying eyes on him like this.

You watch as his helmet turns, slowly meeting the pauldron on his shoulder, and for some reason, you feel yourself harden.  Your feet brace against the metal floor like this is another threat you have to face, you let its unyielding metallic strength transfer up through the souls of your boots to your heart in your chest.

But the second you hear cheap white armor clatter as the quarry steps down the ladder behind you, Din bursts into movement.  He suddenly spins and storms up to you in one single step while catching your holstered blaster on your hip.  It’s out and aimed in the blink of an eye, and it’s a miracle you remember how to speak before he remembers how to kill.

“Mando—” you warn, just in time for the quarry to land on the floor of the hull and turn around to reveal his face.

Din holds there for a second, his helmet locked on Oshua’s features.  His gloved fingers twitch wildly on the trigger of your gun held over your shoulder, like he has to remind himself multiple times not to.  You hear Oshua’s armor clack while he likely raises one good arm in surrender, but then Din’s helmet moves a fraction of a millimeter to your face and holds there.  He just stares down at you, and the air feels heavy, your body feels heavy, the feather light child in your arms feels heavy.

Slowly, he lowers his arm, lets it fall while he continues looking at you from behind the visor.  You look back at him, unblinking, unfeeling, and there’s a few seconds that last an utter eternity where nobody moves.  Nobody speaks, nothing happens, but then a soft coo comes from your arms before you can finally break eye contact, knowing there are still some things that need to be done.

You eventually turn around and lift your chin to address Oshua.

“You have to go into carbonite,” you inform him quietly.  Your voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from outside of yourself.  “We’re taking you to Nevarro, and then you’ll be transported to your home planet. When they unfreeze you, your sister will be there to collect you.”

He looks uncertain, one hand still raised while the other hangs uselessly at his side, and you don’t blame him.

But you also don’t feel like saying anymore, not unless he decides he doesn’t want to go in willingly.  Normally you might’ve tried to empathize, offer him further reassurance beyond just a couple short sentences, but you don’t.  Speaking feels difficult, thinking feels difficult.  You’re still in survival mode, not active but reactive.  There’s also no reason for you to lie to him about this, and you can see him glance at Din standing silently behind you, who hasn’t moved a muscle.

He eventually nods and you walk him over to the chamber without another word, watch him turn to face you as he backs into the opening while you reach up towards the control panel.

But then there’s a moment.  One where you hesitate slightly, one where your vision flashes back to the sight of those bloodstains on the floor, and that burning cold fills you again, so cold it feels completely numb.

“I’m… sorry,” you whisper quietly to him, though your voice sounds so empty.  There’s so much emotion that should be there but isn’t, so much regret and pain that should break through but can’t.  “I’m sorry I… killed your friends.”

Later, you’ll think about how you felt absolutely nothing saying it.  Your heart doesn’t constrict with remorse at the mere words leaving your mouth, guilt doesn’t flood into your soul, pain doesn’t wrack through your bones.  You could’ve been saying anything at all and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

He blinks at you, flicking his eyes between yours for a second or two, but then you press the proper button and watch the gas quickly freeze him where he stands.  He’ll be conscious the entire time, but Karga will send him to the correct location and you have no doubt that this elemental purgatory is leagues better than where he just escaped from.  It’s a benefit being the last quarry to be retrieved—he’ll only have to spend a few days trapped in here before being reunited with his family.

When that’s done and Oshua is a complete statue in front of you, bulky white armor now colored a dull metallic gray and frozen in time, you will yourself to finally turn around to face the enormous mountain of a presence behind you.  The baby gently reaches out for him, but Din doesn’t move from where he’s stood.  Your blaster is still clutched tightly in his hand, and he isn’t looking at you.

Slowly, you walk over and stop directly in front of him in the middle of the hull, blinking at him while the helmet subtly moves to lock onto your face.  The kid begins wiggling in your arms, making soft impatient noises while you both stand in complete silence across from each other.

After a few moments, you hear him flick your blaster’s safety on by his side and then toss it carelessly to the ground.  It skids along the floor, light enough to be mostly quiet.  Gloves reach out as he carefully takes the kid from you and settles him in the crook of one arm, and then he looks you up and down, still not saying anything.

Your eyes follow his movement, watching his arm slowly reaching out to you, and you think he’s going to cup your jaw, or brush your hair back.  Give you some sort of physical reassurance since he hasn’t spoken a single word of it.

Instead, Din suddenly grabs the armor clinging to your chest and starts ripping it off you with one hand.  It clangs to the floor so loudly in the silence of hyperspace, the kid’s ears twitch and flutter with each shattering bang.  You hold still while he does it, you barely respond except the unavoidable movement your body experiences as the pauldron is yanked from your shoulder and thrown against the ground.  The ammo belt is tugged over your head and hurled away, the thigh braces are snatched from your legs and they clang to the floor, and the pearly, opalescent fabric revealed underneath is stained in dead man’s blood, rusty and in such great quantities that it shows up as brown instead of red.

“Are you hurt?”

He sounds… dead.  So monotonic that you can’t possibly gauge his emotional state.  He doesn’t move.   His fists don’t clench, he says every single word like it means the same exact thing as the last.  If nothing at all was a person who could speak, they’d use his tone of voice.

“No,” you eventually whisper.

The helmet nods once, and then he spins around and walks away without anything else.  Without saying anything, without touching you, or double checking you for injuries in case you were lying.  You stand utterly still while Din climbs the ladder with the kid cradled in one arm, and you don’t even flinch when the door to the cockpit slides shut behind him.  You have no idea how long you stand there in the splitting silence afterwards, numb and unmoving.

You feel… nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

The hard defenses you strapped to yourself today to reconcile the things you had to do are still high and strong, guarding your soul even if he stripped away your physical armor.  Self preservation is still animating your body, and your facial expression barely changes.  Your first thought, as soon as you remember that you can have one, is that there are things that still need to be done.  Tasks to complete.

Alone, you shower the lingering traces of blood off your body, the normally clear and refreshing water running a sickly, toxic brown.  Alone, your stomach rolls and suddenly decides to empty itself of the very little that was in it as the scalding drops rain down over you—mostly liquid and bile that easily rinses down the drain.  The water is too warm, it beats down on you like blazing hot sand pelting your skin in the desert.  You feel like you did those first few months with Din, where the silence was suffocating, where you’d only interact with the baby if he was on a hunt or if you could tell he didn’t know how to calm him when he was fussy.  If you were in hyperspace, you usually spent time by yourself in the hull while he lived in the cockpit, and if he decided he needed to be in the hull for whatever reason, then you’d trade places with him.  It was… isolating.  Lonely by yourself.  The quiet used to haunt you before it became your cherished friend, but now it’s a betrayer, a ghost that whispers memories and nightmares in your ears.

When you finally finish rinsing the blood from your skin and get dressed, you see the sheets that used to make up your bed now have fried holes in them from your charred plasma marks, the inside of the hull is covered in them and the trails of dried blood where you dragged the bodies down the ramp.  Your armor is still strewn about the hull, the kid’s hovering shield lays dead in the corner.  Everything you meticulously cleaned and organized and collected and created, now the scene of a bloodbath.  One committed by your hand, your blaster still laying uselessly on the floor forever linked to this atrocity.

You spare a glance towards the ladder, but you don’t want to come face to face with Din yet.  You already knew he’d be furious, but… you had hoped that he’d at least…

What?  At least what?  Comfort you?  Coddle you after you deliberately ignored his instructions?  What exactly, in the past year or so of learning Din’s inner workings and intricacies, would ever give you the impression that he’d come give you a big hug after you purposefully defied him?  You flew the kid directly into an imperial base after being told to protect him, you ignored every order he gave to you in the moments he thought would be his last, and though you did it to save his life, you have a feeling that Din has never valued his life even a fraction of what you do.

The misery stabs at your soul, but your mind is finally beginning to process things logically.  He’s alive, the kid is alive, the quarry is secure, and you’re all onboard the safety of this ship hurtling through hyperspace where nobody, not even the Empire, can touch you.  You weighed the consequences before making your decision, you did what you had to do.  If he wants to be mad, then he can fucking well be mad and you’ll find some way to comfort yourself.  At least he’s here being mad, at least he’s alive and safe and breathing and mad, and your rare act of disobedience is to thank for that.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize it’s probably easier than it should be to reconcile the punishment.  Right now, you welcome the exclusion, the negativity and sorrow beating itself into your soul.  Four innocent people died today on this ship, gunned down under your blaster while they panicked and ran for cover.  You keep hearing their screams.

So you start to clean up the hull, needing another task to focus your thoughts on.  You work to erase every inch of the evidence of your deeds, make it disappear like the pool of blood Din once cleaned up while you were sleeping and never acknowledged again.  You only allow the bloodstains to fuck with your head for a single moment, and then you swallow back the nausea until you’re a blank slate again and sink to your knees with a rag in your hand.  After that, your vision stops focusing and it just becomes red contrasting against gunmetal gray, and you work tirelessly to get rid of all remaining traces of it.

Then you start on the blaster marks, you need them gone.  After a few informed attempts at mixing cleaning chemicals, you find one concoction that allows you to wipe them away like they’re nothing more than dirt that got tracked in.  The Crest’s oxygen recycling system works overdrive to constantly purify the air so you don’t get high or pass out, but your nose still stings.  It’s fine, it’s sterile, it burns a bit but it smells sharp and metallic and keeps you hyper focused on the task at hand.

After that’s done, you pick up the charred blankets and ball them up to throw into the trash vent.  You don’t feel anything as you do it.  You don’t think about how long it took you to collect these over months and months of being stuck on this ship, how comfortable they were when everything else was industrial and rigid, how many nights you spent with Din curled up in their softness while he breathed easy and warm.  Sheets are just luxuries, they can afford to be lost.

Next, you gather your armor and wipe it down with the rag, put it away along with your blaster.  The stained robe goes in the trash, along with the sheets and the blood soaked cloth you used to clean everything.  They’re all ruined, you’ll never be able to make them right again.

The hull is sparkling clean when you decide to take another shower.  Nothing on you is dirty except your hands, but you feel filthy.  Wrong, cold, numb, cold, stained, cold.

After scrubbing your skin raw under the water and changing clothes again, since you don’t really know what to do with yourself anymore, you slowly climb the ladder to the cockpit, keeping perfectly silent.  When you reach the upper platform and come face to face with the closed door, you can just barely hear Din’s whispered voice speaking quietly to the baby beyond it.

You raise your hand for a moment, hovering your knuckles over the metal, but then it eventually falls.  Instead, you look over and spot the corner, the same corner Din bunched himself into when he snapped at you for even suggesting going on a hunt with him, blew up at you for the mere notion of something happening like what happened today.  You back yourself into it in defeat and slowly sink down on the floor, resting your head against the metal and hugging your knees to your chest since you don’t have a tiny baby to take their place.

You can’t sleep.  You don’t even try, it’s pointless.  The concept feels foreign the longer you sit here by yourself.  You don’t hear Din or the baby anymore, but you feel… so fucking awful that it’s fitting that you don’t knock or go looking.  You don’t want to hold that sweet child with hands that were covered in blood just a few hours ago.  You killed more people than you can count on your fingers today, and of the ones who had done nothing wrong…  They screamed like younglings, ducked for cover and were able to fire off one single useless shot in the mayhem before you closed their eyes forever and left their bodies to rot in armor that wasn’t ever their choice to wear.

You didn’t know they were kidnapped and smuggled and forced into that situation.  You couldn’t have known, but that isn’t the point.  In this case, knowing doesn’t make one bit of difference.

You also can’t face Din yet, not like this.  You don’t want him to see you cowering, shattered with guilt over the decisions you made under pressure.  How will you ever get him to forgive you for not listening to him when you can’t even forgive yourself for the result of your choices?  Din is a hardened man who grew up in blasterfire and bloodshed, just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s going to magically become someone he isn’t.  You’re here letting guilt sink sharp claws into your chest over four dead men when he had a good fifty or more corpses scattered on the battlefield around him.  You decided to wear that armor, you decided to fly into an imperial base with the kid on your lap, and this is now your penance.  You’ll accept it with your back straight and your chin held high.

Figuratively, of course.  Physically, you’re smaller than you’ve ever been.  Crumpled up into a ball, taking up as little space as possible, curling up as tight as you can like an animal protecting all your vulnerable parts during a brutal attack.

So, since he isn’t here to comfort you himself, you just try to think about what he would tell you.  A long time ago, what would he tell you?

Din would tell you… that you killed someone.  Multiple people, this time.  He’d also tell you that it doesn’t matter what he tells you, what you could have reasonably foreseen or what you should have done.  The end result won’t change.  You own this now.  You’ll carry their deaths with you.

You take a few deep breaths, self-soothing with the undeniable truth that would be murmured matter of factly from his quiet voice.  He wouldn’t argue with you.  He wouldn’t deny the decisions you made or the consequences of them.  It happened, and at the end of the day, you either learn how to handle that, or you don’t.

And, for the four you did shoot, you were responsible for freeing ten times that amount.  You’re responsible for reuniting Oshua Ryler with his family, even if your place in yours is momentarily shunned.  You’d rather be out here alone than in there with the kid, wondering where his dad is or if he’s even still alive.  You rescued Din and now he gets to be here to shut this door on you, hold his son, and whisper calm reassurances to him.  If you listen really hard and imagine, you can pretend they’re for you, too.

That’s it.  Focus on them both, alive and well together.  Focus on the bodies wearing white armor that were moving, the ones that were bolting away from the imperial training base as fast as they could, free from the torture of imprisonment and conditioning.

Finally, you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness.  It’s not a testament to your exhaustion, but rather just how long you’ve been left to sit here by yourself.  Hours, maybe.  Time is strange in hyperspace.

You dream of a faceless man ringing bells.

---

When you wake up, a small baby has been placed in your arms, and you’re being dragged into a strong, secure beskar hold on the floor.

“Din,” you suddenly lift your head as soon as you’re conscious and nearly bonk it into solid metal, apologies rising in your throat before you even remember where you are.  You did what needed to be done to keep your family alive and together and you’d do it a thousand times again if necessary, but that doesn’t mean you won’t apologize anyways.  After the deeds you’ve committed today, regret feels as natural on your lips as speaking your own name.  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know you’re mad at me but I—”

“Shh,” he whispers, running his gloves through your hair.  He’s still wearing his helmet, he hasn’t taken anything off yet.  “Don’t say anything.  Just… stay here, stay right here with me.”

“I tried to save you,” you croak, tears instantly flooding your eyes.  You did save him.  You saved him and the baby and yourself but you’re so physically and emotionally exhausted that all you can recall is your intent.  “I tried.  Wasn’t gonna leave you there by yourself.  I tried to be brave, like you—y-you wouldn’t have left without me.”

His arms tighten around you, cradling you in such a strong embrace that you burrow into him, you find a place for your head on the hard metal strapped to him and bury yourself there, wishing that you had shovels of dirt being piled on you to justify the death you still feel staining your soul.  Your heart is starting to pound now that you’re remembering, your body is starting to shake with tremors of shock now that you’re aware of your own skin again.

“I was so sc-scared, Din, I didn’t—didn’t know what was happening,” you lament through watery eyes, gasping it out in hopes that it’ll relieve the slightest bit of the gut wrenching guilt just mercilessly crushing you.  It caught you before you could protect yourself against it, that armor you built around yourself isn’t on when you first wake up.  “I-I didn’t want to kill them, but they were already on the ship and y-you said—you said they were coming after the kid s-so I had to, I had to—”

“Stop,” Din whispers, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him.

“I-I cleaned up the blood,” you turn your face against the cold beskar to let all the positives you listed for yourself before scrape across your throat.  They don’t sound comforting anymore, they just sound like excuses.  “It’s gone, it’s like it never happened, everything is okay now, I got the quarry, I protected the baby, I saved a bunch of people, you’re both safe—”

“Stop,” he chokes out.  The modulator cuts off before you can hear his next breath, but you feel it shudder under your body.  “St-Stop it, please.”

Your eyes clench shut so tightly you feel like the streaking stars outside are behind them, tears drop down against his pauldron and you press your face tighter to it like it’s a wound, like the pressure will somehow ease the bleeding.

“Listen to me,” he says very quietly, and you instantly brace yourself.  The walls you just let down shoot right back up, your body physically tightens in preparation for another pain, another trauma, another scar you’ll carry, and you stop shaking.  You stop breathing, even when his hand comes up to ease your face away from his armor.

“You,” he whispers, holding your chin so you’re staring right at him, and your eyes flick fearfully in between his behind the visor, “are a sweet girl.”  Din’s leather thumb brushes along your skin, dragging over the tears below your puffy eyes.  “Not,” his voice catches, “a Mandalorian.”

Your heart goes cold.  Again, everything turns numb.  It doesn’t matter that you already said this yourself out loud earlier today.  It doesn’t matter that you acknowledged this fact, verbally insisted it more than once to hammer home the truth and felt some sense of comfort in it.  For some reason, hearing the words from his mouth is a fucking knife to your chest.

“I taught you how to fight, how to shoot a blaster,” he murmurs, thumb catching every single tear that continues to fall as he speaks.  “I taught you everything I know, everything that’s been taught to me.  I taught you how to defend yourself, how to protect yourself when you’re in danger.  I gave you your blaster, I gave you my armor, I gave you everything I could give you to keep you safe.  And when I thought you were ready, I let you loose on Sanctuary II.  Do you know why I did that?”  The helmet tips forward the slightest bit at the question, probing deep into the most shattered part of your heart.  “After all those months of fighting, and shooting, and training, do you know why I told you to run?”

You blink silently at him, a shaky breath quaking through you, and your expression wants to crumple under the reprimand.  You’re so fragile right now, taking hit after hit after hit to the softest parts inside you, and you want to just give up.  Let the guilt and remorse take you, let it wash you away.  But then, instead…

There’s a flicker of something inside you.  Something strong, endlessly strong, and it makes you want to revolt against what he’s saying.  It replaces the hurt and fear and desperation for comfort with a strange sense of insurgence, like it did earlier when you were hiding behind a boulder, cowering and trembling and not wanting to die.  You’re filled with a quiet urge to defend yourself in the face of this, stand up for yourself and refuse to be beaten down any longer.

“Because you needed to know how to escape danger,” he answers himself when you don’t.  “You needed to know how to disappear, how to outsmart any pursuer and find safety, even the trained ones.  Especially the trained ones.  Anything else was meant to be your last resort.  Not your choice.  Not something you chose.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” you admit to him quietly, voice shaky and tears still coming even as you try to speak up for yourself.  The regret you carry has nothing to do with this, and you decide right now that you won’t feel bad for saving him.  Your hurt comes from the meaningless things, the ones without any need whatsoever, not the necessary ones, and you tried.  You repeated his words to yourself over and over again, told yourself to run, told yourself to get to Nevarro, and it wasn’t going to happen.  “I couldn’t do it.  It wasn’t a choice.”

“It was,” he tells you.  He says it softly, whispers it like it’s the gentlest thing in the world, but the power and inherent distance of the armor strapped to his body finds its way into the words.  “And it was the wrong one.”

“What was I supposed to do?”  You ask, just a hint of that rebellion swimming to the surface now, rising out of the waves of self doubt, the one that feels like a spine growing in your back, an energy coursing through your veins that makes your heart start to beat faster.  Din’s hand slowly drops from your cheek but you don’t care.  “Was I supposed to run away and just let you die?”

“Yes.”  It’s quick and blunt and completely emotionless.  Delivered like a punch to the vulnerable parts of yourself he taught you how to protect, and the utter silence following this single word is comparable to the physical pain you learned to defend against.  It jabs hard against everything good and sweet and tender inside of you, and you’re left speechless even as he continues impassively.  “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”

It takes a second, but then that unfamiliar feeling suddenly surges up, breaches with the power of an entire ocean.  Your voices may be nothing more than whispers in the dark, you may be clinging to each other, holding each other with the softest, gentlest love in your hearts, but the strength of your conviction on this would rip metal apart.

“No.”  The word holds the might of your entire being, and it stands alone and defiant in the face of everything you fear, everything that threatens you, him, and this child.  Never.  You’ll die before that happens.  “I love you, and there’s nothing in this galaxy that would ever make me do that.  Not fear, not danger, not the Empire, nothing.  Not even you.”

Din stares at you.  His visor reflects your hardened expression back to you, the force in your soul and the purpose in your eyes, and you don’t even realize the gravity of what you just said because like your love for him, gravity is a constant.  It’s a fundamental truth cemented into the rules that govern your actions and it stays true no matter where you are, no matter what terror you face, or how scared you become.  You have him, you have this little boy in your arms, and if that’s all you have, then you have everything.

After an eternity of this, of feeling his eyes pierce deep into you from behind the helmet while you refuse to wither under his stare, you watch him slowly turn and look down, landing on the sleepy child tucked between you both.  He holds there for a long time, before finally whispering, so quiet that the modulator barely picks it up, “It was the wrong choice.”

You stay quiet.  It happened.  What’s done is done, you can’t change the past.  He can scold and reprimand you about this as much as he wants, but you did the right thing and that decision is the only reason he’s even here to be able to do so.  This exhausted child was reunited with his father because of your choices, and this exhausted father was reunited with his child.  You won’t argue anymore, but it’s a certitude that lives deep in your heart now, builds a home there right alongside the both of them.  Din eventually looks up, his eyes find yours again behind the visor, and his hand rises once more to gently cup your jaw.

“I… thought I’d enjoy seeing you in my armor,” Din finally whispers.  It’s not what you expected, but his voice sounds… weak.  Broken.  “You wore mine once before, and it was…”  He brushes his thumb along your cheek, and then his head shakes slightly, pushing the thought away.  “It wasn’t real.  It didn’t fit.  It dwarfed you, it made you look out of place, it made everything soft and innocent about you stand out.  I liked it because it wasn’t real.”

“Was it… really that bad?”  You whisper back, partially to ease the tension just slightly but quickly breaking eye contact with him when you realize it doesn’t land correctly, it just sounds self conscious and sad.  You try to find that conviction again, that strength and assurance that propped you up so sturdily before, but…  Not a Mandalorian, he’d said.  Of course not.  Of course not.

“It wasn’t the armor.”  Din gently tugs up on your face so that you look at him again.  “It was you covered in blood.  It was you purposefully putting yourself in danger.  You killed multiple armed soldiers of the Empire, you dragged their bodies off the ship.  And then you flew into an imperial base, where you killed the officers, too.  You…”  He shakes his head slowly at you while speaking, and although you can’t see his face, you don’t need to in order to hear the horror in his voice.   “You… collected a quarry… in the middle of a massacre, sweet girl.”

Not a Mandalorian.

“You don’t chase down bounties,” he tells you.  “You don’t fly into war zones.  You don’t kill imperials, you don’t collect quarries, you don’t sacrifice yourself, or our son, to save me.  You said you tried to be brave… like me.”  His fingers tighten against your cheek, he dips his helmet to make sure you understand.  “I’ll never ask you to be brave.  I’ll ask you to survive.”

“I’m… sorry,” you finally whisper, and his arm drops from your cheek to join the other in wrapping around you and holding tight.  They hug you and squeeze, encasing you and the baby in a beskar shield and staying there for a long time.  Long enough for you to tuck your head back into its proper place under his helmet, long enough to start to feel okay with the silence again.  It brutalized you the last time you were surrounded by it, it made you feel alone and desolate and barren inside.  You greet it warily now, settling into it for an unknown amount of time until it’s forgiven once more.

After a while, Din quietly breaks it.

“How many?”  He murmurs to you.  You already know exactly what he’s asking, there's no more clarification necessary on his behalf.

You slowly close your eyes and think back to the smoldering craters, the blood soaked ramp, the fear in Oshua Ryler’s eyes as he begged you not to kill him.

“That didn’t deserve it?”  You ask, clenching your eyes tighter at the memory.  “Four.”

And maybe, maybe six or eight months ago, you would’ve begged for some guidance on how to reconcile that.  Hell, maybe a few hours ago, you could’ve used his arms around you exactly like this, his low voice repeating the same things he’s already told you before, over and over again, if only for some semblance of stability when everything feels turbulent and uncertain.  You’ll never be able to change it, though.  This belongs to you now.

This time, all Din says is, “I’m sorry, too.”

And that covers everything.

The silence envelops you both again, but… there’s something else.  Something that still sits deep in your worries, an image that isn’t a scar of what’s happened but a dread of what’s to come.  You need to tell him.  You don’t feel like saying it, you don’t want to speak it aloud for fear of bringing it into existence, but you need to tell him.

“Din?”  You breathe out, and he makes a soft noise in his throat while cuddling you on the floor.  “I saw…,” you whisper, every word sitting tight and reluctant in your throat.  “Right when we made the jump, I was looking through the window and I-I saw…”

“A star destroyer.”  He says it like… like it’s the worst thing in the world and also completely expected at the same time.  He says it like he already knew, yet can’t even imagine.  You lean every bit of your weight against him since you can’t hold him in return, squish him as best you can against the small corner and curl up even tighter in his arms for comfort.

He takes a deep breath, a shuddery sound you don’t think you’ve ever heard him make before.  It holds untold anxiety, unsaid conflict, uncertain action, an unknown path forward.

“I don’t know what to do,” Din eventually whispers to himself, to you, to the baby in your arms.  His voice is barely a breath through the modulator, his fingers digging into your skin with how many emotions he’s repressing.  “What do I do?”

He sounds so distressed that you automatically feel your soul find the floor—instantly, you become steady and calm and you locate all that rationality that kept you going today.  All your worries still twist deep down, all the guilt and the turmoil wrestles with your soft, easy nature until you can only find bits and pieces of it in the most vulnerable places inside you, but if he’s struggling this terribly, then the least you can do is offer some good, true, unwavering faith in times of uncertainty.  You’re in hyperspace, everything worked out, and it’s going to stay that way for right now.  If he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet, then you trust him enough to wait for him.

“It’ll be okay,” you tell him with a newfound confidence and purpose, carefully easing the baby into one arm so that the other can find its way to the other side of his helmet and pull him closer.  Din tucks his head and allows you to brush your lips against the metal, whisper the words soft and steady to him.  “We’ll figure it out together.”

---

@cptnbvcks thank you so much for the incredible art!

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #mando x reader #mando x you #reader insert #fanfic #star wars #rough day #no-droids

[mariatesstruther]

I honestly don't get why Maria was so anti-Joel oh he's a horrible person he's done horrible things he can't be around us, but accepted Tommy fully to the point he's the father of her child when both did the same things, ran with the same people and all of that.

I mean I love the character, but that confuses the hell out of me. Why's Tommy accepted but Joel damned?

okay, so… this response took me like half hour to write. my wrists hurt, my jaw is clenched, my brain is hot. i love u anon thank u very much for this chance to vent about just why my girl maria has been so misunderstood. let’s go

i personally think this is where many people fundamentally misunderstand maria’s perception of joel. she’s not cautious of him primarily because of tommy or anything tommy has said, in my personal opinion—she’s cautious of him for and because of ellie

ive said this on my blog a few times and i think so have @steeb-stn and @clickergossip (and maybe @liveandletcry23 and @bumblepony i have a shit memory so tagging just in case) so im gonna tag them to credit their words and ideas about maria as well, but the FIRST time maria sees joel, he’s with this rando twelve year old girl who he is seemingly so protective over that she cant even be sniffed by dogs who are just trying to detect infection, which would be good for ANYBODY. that’s his first strike for untrustworthyness, because why the fuck wouldn’t he let this girl be tested???—we know why, of course, but maria doesnt. shes working on the very limited info about joel/ellie’s relationship that she has from just her own observations, and i think we need to remember that as we go through analyzing why she moves how she moves

shes knows from tommy at this point is that joel had a daughter, but it is definitely not this little girl. so why the fuck are they so close. what have they gone through. are they okay. is ellie okay. is their relationship safe for her??? THAT’s what she’s thinking about, in my opinion, while shes staring joel down at that dinner table. she’s reasonbly suspicious, and i can’t blame her for it.

i had to cut this it’s literally maybe my longest post ever so. heres the cut

ALSO, it’s not like she’s a straight up bitch to joel like some of y’all seem to make it out to be??? she never says or implies that “they can’t be around” or anything like that. she offers them clothes and food and supplies. she sets them up in a house. before dinner, she gives them a personal tour (which, to be fair, she did because she was probably trying to keep an eye on them and figure out more about whether or not ellie is safe, but who wouldnt???? i know tess would! and yall would love her for it!). tommy literally says to joel before they leave that there will always be a place for him and ellie in jackson—you cannot tell me you believe he said so without already have maria’s green light for joel and ellie to stay

ALSO, i wanna consider some other things that i haven’t seen many ppl talk about. on that walk she takes with tommy and joel and ellie, she makes it sound like tommy has been with them for at least years AND she maintains the confidence to say that residents in jackson stay off the radio—i could totally be wrong, but it seems to me from the look tommy and joel share right after that it’s obvious tommy has been talking to joel BEHIND MARIA’S BACK???? did no one else catch that??? am i misinterpreting big time??? id assume because theyre married and from the way tommy talks about jackson that he’s been in jackson for at least 3 years maybe, and we know that he only stopped radioing joel a couple months before the show’s main plotline starts, so timeline wise there had to be some overlap of tommy still radioing joel from/around jackson. idk if anyone of my mutuals has thoughts on this but i personally think it’s important to point out, because it establishes that maria likely doesn’t know or think tommy and joel kept in contact, at least not as recently as up to some months ago. she knows that tommy and joel are close, but at the same time, she doesn’t think tommy really knows or talks to joel anymore, either. so how is she supposed to extend him any trust as tommy’s brother????? how and why would she give this man any benefit of the doubt???? it wouldn’t make any sense. she’s more practical and discerning than she is naive and kind, and y’all can think what y’al want about that but i love her for it. it’s very necessary for a woman like her to be the way she is

okay, so back to your question. back to why joel is “damned” and tommy is “accepted.” let’s talk about joel for a sec

y’all like to babygirl and idolize the absolute fuck out of this man

we know that not only was he a smuggler, but he killed and tricked and took advantage of people, shamelessly and brutally. we know that tommy did so too. maria knows that tommy has done the same things. maria also knows that tommy left that life because he couldnt do it anymore, and joel continued because he could

point blank period!!!!! yall can argue with me all u want but tommy left that murder life and joel did not. im not saying this makes either brother good or bad or better than the other, i love joel sm and i think both of them have an undisputed capability to do unspeakable things in order to survive. but tommy got to a point where he hit a limit, whereas joel doesn’t seem to have one. this is at least my personal interpretation of their conversations in the game and the show

tommy DID join the fireflies, which we all know now is not any fucking better than whatever the fuck joel was doing—the difference is the reasoning, though, and considering tlou is all about reasoning and the why, we need to consider the reasoning behind tommy’s decision: he wanted to do something better, something good, something he thought had a purpose. we all know now that the fireflies are bullshit, their purpose is bullshit, and they’re willingness to kill a child for the sake of the “cure” is it’s own entire paradox of bullshit. but they were a rebel organization fighting fedra, who fucking suck, and probably had somewhat of a better reputation back when tommy was interested in joining—or maybe they didn’t, to be fair, i don’t know! the point is, tommy went to them seeking some sort of better purpose, some type of redeption; in joel’s own fucking words, “tommy’s what we used to call a joiner. had dreams of becoming a hero... wants to save the world.”

tommy is idealistic. he’s romantic. he’s optimistic, almost to the point of being fucking naive. thats why he enlisted in the army, thats why he enlisted in the fireflies—he wanted to feel good about himself and the world he was living in. he needed it to have some light at the end of the tunnel for all the bullshit to make sense. and yeah, he was wrong both times in joining up. we know that, joel knew that while it was happening, and tommy knows that in retrospect, too. i think jackson is the first place he really found true, real purpose—not the kind that is propagandized to you and goes up in smoke, but the kind that is well and truly earned. that’s why he is so loyal to jackson and to maria—they finally gave him was he desperately spent his life searching for

and im just saying, from maria’s perspective, she’s someone who lives for purpose. she lives for jackson and for it’s people and for it’s future, and she has to maintain some sense of idealism in the face of all that fucking ugliness to be able to mentally live im and run a place like jackson, to believe that it’ll work. i think that idealism she has, she sees reflected in tommy’s desperation to be a better person who’s fighting for a better life. she sees that need for redemption and goodness in him, that need for things to be fucking worth it, and hears she hears it in his story. she gets to relate to him with this in a way she doesnt GET TO RELATE with joel YET (we STILL HAVE TIME PEOPLE. WE HOLDIN OUT STRONG FOR THE JOEL AND MARIA BEST FRIEND AGENDA)

but to continue, THEN maria spends YEARS with tommy, getting to know him, getting to know his guilt. just like tess with joel, she’s sees the worst and the best of him and gets to fall in love with all of it. so of course there’s gonna be a bit of a bias and a blindspot, towards him—just like any of are other characters have weak spots for the people THEY fucking love

so that’s i guess why i think tommy is “accepted” by her, i guess, and there’s honestly way more them and their romance that i could make a whole separate post about but i’ll leave it there for now. back to joel and why he’s “damned,” which i don’t think he is

again, from what maria knows, he made an active CHOICE to stay in the lifestyle of smuggling and murdering and QZ bullshit, even after tommy chose to leave—and idk what y’all imagine joel and tess to be doing in those many years on their own, but it’s not fuckin picking flowers, for me. they’re dangerous, dangerous people—more dangerous that fedra, and more dangerous than the fireflies, if we’re being fucking real about it. and we LOVE tess and joel for this, or at least i do

but jackson is not a place where people get by with smuggling or backstreet deals or threats. it’s not supposed to be that place. we all LOVE jackson in fics and hcs and aus because it’s literally a place where joel and ellie finally get to breathe and not worry about their safety/survival first. and you know who keeps jackson that way????? MARIA. AND HE BEING FUCKING PICKING ABOUT WHO JACKSON LETS THE FUCK INSIDE

so yall just expect her to by YIPPY SKIPPY when joel, THE JOEL THE SUPER SMUGGLER MURDER COWBOY, strolls into town????? WITHOUT TESS, WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE MORE PERSONABLE AND REASONABLE ONE???? what????? she’d be crazy not to at least try to be a little intimidating, to make it clear to joel that he will not get away with any of that qz bullshit here. she’d be naive not to, and maria is anything but naive

and i know most people don’t like her for that “a bad reputation doesn’t mean you’re bad” “not always, at least” line, but i actually think it really fits so well in establishing that she’s not afraid of joel, not afraid of challenging him or making him own up to things he’s done. it’s just so so cool to me, i just can’t hate her for that????? she’s establishing with him that she knows what tommy knows about his time in the QZ, and she’s letting him know if that joel shows up here in jackson, there will be fucking problems for him. which i think is a completely fair warning????

so let’s continue. let’s talk about The Scene, the one with her and ellie, the one with the “tommy was following joel” line. ONE thing i’d like to point out about this scene—MARIA IS THE ONE TO TELL ELLIE ABOUT SARAH, NOT JOEL. AND THAT IS A BIG BIG BIG REASON FOR WHY SHE WARNS ELLIE NOT TO TRUST JOEL COMPLETELY

we know what joel and ellie have gone through, at this point, but maria has barely any idea. she sees that ellie has this fierce protectiveness and lots of secrets when it comes to her and joel, which like—can we all be fucking objective here for a second. this can SO easily and SO reasonably be interpreted as something sketchy going on between joel and ellie that maria should be concerned about.

(slight tw about older men-younger woman relationships bc im gonna be personal for a sec, its quick) we don’t know maria’s past or what she has seen or been through, but personally as someone who has been in a situation where an older man has taken advantage of my naivety in the past, i am now extremely hyper vigilant when it comes to young girls around older men in my personal life today. ellie and joel’s situation and how it looks would raise MJAOR red flags for me personally, if i was in maria’s position. that’s just a personal perspective have that really affects the way i view this scene (end tw)

and so maria finds out that joel has kept the fact that HE HAD A WHOLE ASS DAUGHTER from ellie?????? WOULD THAT NOT BE SUS AT ALL TO YALL???? i mean we know why joel doesn’t tell ellie, as gameplayers and watchers of the show, but again. maria is operating on the info she has right in front of her, which is that joel has been omitting maybe the biggest fact of his life from this young girl who is willing to defend and trust him with her entire life, even after she finds out she’s being lied to. this is alarming

so at this point, she’s questioning joel’s intentions with ellie, and in my opinion, it’s not at all unreasonable for her to do so. she then continues to press, because the red flags are flying and she wants ellie to be crystal clear on the kind of man she’s traveling with (“there are CLEARLY things you don’t know about joel” — “so then you understand my concerns”)

AND THEN ELLIE. BLESSED SMART AMAZING ELLIE COMES IN WITH THE DEFENSE—“and tommy did it too, are you worried about him?”—which like, i love this line. i love this moment. i think because i go so hard for maria a lot of y’all think i’m blind to when ellie is making points, but i 100% cheered her on when i first watched this scene, like i’m sure y’all did—because it’s true! it’s fair! if maria is going to judge joel for those things, she needs to extend the same judgement to tommy

the thing is, it’s still fucking true that, as i said earlier, tommy left that life. both the smuggling, and the fireflies—he chose to stop, while joel didn’t—he was smuggling literally up until the day him and tess found ellie, so. there’s that. she continues to judge joel and not tommy because she knows for sure that tommy has changed. she doesn’t know joel enough yet to see that he has changed, too

so then, the dreaded line: “tommy was following joel.” let’s talk about it.

i don’t love this line either, tbh! i think it’s a weak defense on maria’s part, and a weak line on the tlou hbo writers part—probably my least favorite line of maria’s overall. but i do get why she says it, and i kind of think i get the purpose??? i think????

it reminds me a lot of joel’s line, earlier, about tommy being a “joiner,” and i think it’s funny that, as opposite as joel and maria like to think they both are to each other, the way they describe tommy is pretty much the same. tommy is a “joiner” to joel and a “follower” to maria, and in all respects they both love and hate him for it. idk where i’m going with that exactly, just something interesting to think about in terms of the joel and maria best friend agenda

but i also think this line get’s taken out of context a lot, because the full line is “tommy was following joel, the way you are now.” maria says this line to lead into her main point, the really fucking important line in this scene: “be careful who you put your faith in. the only ones who can betray us, are the one’s we trust.”

WHICH IS TRUE. IT IS THE POINT. AND WHEN JOEL LIES TO ELLIE, HIDES SOMETHING FROM HER YET AGAIN at the end of the season/game, IT BECOMES A THEMATIC CLIMAX POINT THAT CONNECTS BOTH OF THE GAMES

maria is not saying this to “damn” joel—and i personally don’t think she is “damning” joel in the way you imply here, as there’s definitely potential for them to develop a relationship in s2 once she has more information about the truth of how he thinks of ellie. i think she’s warning ellie not to trust joel, because she doesn’t trust joel, at the end of the fucking day—and that’s about it. she trusts tommy in a way that she can’t quite trust joel yet, and why would she, at this point? it would make no sense for her to

so y’all can blame her and hate her for her distrust all you guys want (btw not necessarily talking to you, anon, ive just gotten some very nasty asks about maria from others so im talking to them rn!!!!!!!), but i’m sorry—you can’t tell me that it doesn’t at least make sense. she’s MARIA. she’s MADE OF SENSE

#WHEW #DO MY THUMBS HURT #i cant even be bothered to tag this fr #maria miller #asked and answered #joel and maria best friend agenda #tommy miller #joel miller #tess servopoulos

[nicoline1998enilocin]

Off Limits IV | The one where they're caught

PAIRING | Steve Rogers x Female!Reader

WORD COUNT | 1.9K

SUMMARY | The two of you have been keeping a low profile while dating because you really didn't want Tony to find out. When you think everyone is gone for a mission, you get a little bit reckless and it gets steamy in the living room. That is until someone walks in, and you get caught.

WARNING(S) | This is your official trigger warning. Do not proceed if any of these topics upset you. Implied shower sex, make-out sessions, cock warming, nipple play.

Likes and reblogs will be very much appreciated 💜

Main Masterlist | Steve Rogers Masterlist | Series masterlist | Part III | Part V

The past few months with Steve have been nothing short of amazing, apart from the sneaking around you both have to do. The night of your first time with Steve, he asked you to be his girlfriend, and you happily accepted. You're only demand was that you wanted to keep it a secret for now. ''As long as I am with you, I don't mind keeping it a secret,'' he said. There have been some stolen kisses when no one was looking, or some extra cuddles during movie nights, but nothing that would get the two of you caught. Until now.

Bucky knows his best friend through and through, so when he started acting a little different around you, he got suspicious. It wasn't enough for him to directly worry, but it was noticeable to him. It all started on the night of Tony's party when he saw the two of you dancing together, a lot closer than friends usually would, but then again, he was frozen and brainwashed for 70 years, so what did he know about modern times, right? But ever since that night, he was happier, his mood often lighting up when you walked into the same room where he was. He also noticed that you were called up to his office more than the rest of you were, and he couldn't figure out why. So he decided to bring it up to Steve on their morning run.

''So, how is Y/N?'' Bucky asked casually, not trying to show his suspicion too much. ''She's good, settling in well in her role,'' Steve said, and he wondered where this was suddenly coming from. ''I bet she is,'' Bucky muttered, but Steve chose to ignore it, although something didn't feel right at this moment. ''The two of you seem to be getting pretty close,'' he said then, and Steve agreed. ''We're really good friends, that's all. We enjoy hanging out together and we have a lot of fun when we're preparing for missions,'' he said while shrugging his shoulders. Bucky chose to not pry any further, it didn't feel right to do it so he would just leave it at that. The rest of the run they spent catching up about missions and life in general.

When Steve comes back from his run, he finds you laying on your stomach in bed, wearing only a pair of lacy panties and reading your book. ''Hm, I don't mind seeing this every time I come home from my runs, love,'' he says and he's practically drooling over you. Steve's room is soundproofed so when he lands a smack on your ass and you shriek out, neither of you is worried about the others hearing it. ''Babe, warn a girl next time! Now I couldn't enjoy it as much,'' you said with a little pout and Steve couldn't help himself. He rolled you over and laid on top of you, softly kissing you and brushing one of his hands over your nipples. ''Want to take a shower together? That way I can make it up to you a few times…'' he said with a mischievous grin and you couldn't say no.

1.5 hours and a combined total of 5 orgasms later, both of you were laying spent on the bed, still recovering from the mind-blowing shower you just shared. ''I should surprise you like that more often if that's how I make up for it,'' Steve said with a chuckle. ''I think so too,'' you said and you brushed his cheek with your thumb before planting soft kisses where your thumb just was. ''I think everyone will be gone on a mission in a few days except for us, maybe we could venture out of the bedroom a little bit for once,'' you say, and judged by the shocked look on Steve's face he doesn't think it's a good idea. ''I don't mean we should have sex in every room all day long, but I wouldn't mind having a good make-out session in the living room or something,'' you say and Steve turns red at the idea. He still isn't used to you talking about things like that so openly.

''I wouldn't mind that, but how about we have one right now?'' he offers, and you agree. ''We can spice this one up a little bit if you want though,'' you tell him and Steve can immediately tell you have something on your mind by the look on your face. ''I've noticed you're already hard for me again, and I wouldn't mind keeping it warm for you during our make-out session,'' you offer, but he isn't sure what you're getting at. ''I could cockwarm you if you're up for it. You'd slide it in while we make out, and if one thing leads to another, all you would have to do is move your hips and I could cum for you again,'' you tell him, your eyes blown with lust. Steve agrees and you wrap your hand around his cock first and pump a few times to get him ready before straddling him and sliding slowly down until he's bottomed out. ''Oh fuck, love, feels so good,'' he moans and you kiss him.

The kisses start slow and soft, but soon both your hands are wandering a little bit, and the kiss is deepened. Steve licks your bottom lip and when you open, he softly sucks your bottom lip into his mouth, letting it go with a soft pop. This makes you smile and you do the same to him, but you also nibble softly on his, getting a soft moan out of him right away. ''Feel so good inside me, Captain,'' you whisper against his mouth and when you say it, his hips buck up out of reflex, getting a louder moan from you. You reattach your lips to his again and you both deepen the kiss immediately, sucking on each other's tongues one by one, taking your time to explore each other's mouths. After a while, Steve can't take it any longer and softly starts lifting his hips, and it doesn't take long for either of you to have another orgasm. ''That was amazing, love, I think we should do that more often,'' Steve said with a smirk on his face, and you agree.

~ 2 weeks later ~

You and Steve have been preparing for the mission the rest of the Avengers will be going on, the two of you weren't needed for this one so you took full advantage of it. Steve usually woke you up with either his tongue or his cock and now the both of you gladly spent the entire mornings in bed together. At some point, you remembered the moment you asked Steve about maybe moving your escapades out of the bedroom, and you brought it up again. ''Babe, remember when we talked about maybe having a make-out session out of the bedroom for once? I think today would be the perfect moment, everyone's gone on the mission and they won't be back for a few days, so we can just let go for once,'' you say and Steve agrees with it. ''Just the making out, or also the cock warming?'' he says with a bit of mischief in his voice. ''STEVE!'' you exclaim and smack him against his arm playfully, there are boundaries to this after all.

You're both dressed in loungewear so you can be nice and comfortable on the couch in the living room, and Steve picks you up by putting his hands under your thighs and lifting you. Out of reflex you wrap your legs around his waist, and your arms around his neck, so you can be carried like a koala bear. He walks you to the door and instead of opening it, he pushes you against it and kisses you deeply, he honestly couldn't wait. When you pull away to breathe, you tell him you didn't even make it to the living room yet. ''It's gonna be a long road if we stop every time,'' you said with a giggle, and with a fake defeated look, he opened the door and carried you to the living room. When you reached the couch, you unhooked your legs behind his back and he sat down, you straddling his lap and thighs now.

Steve looked at you and admired your beauty for a little bit, whispering sweet nothings to you which made you blush like a tomato. When he figured you'd be red enough in your face, neck, and chest, he softly attached his lips to yours, slowly and tenderly kissing you without a single worry in his mind. Your worries and thoughts also melted away the second he placed his lips on yours, and your hands started wandering over his body. Down his arms, over his waist, and up his chest until they found their place on his neck again. Steve also let his hands explore your body, softly brushing his fingers over your back, up to your shoulders, and down your arms, before slowly moving under your shirt to feel the naked skin under there. His hands moved up to your nipples, and as soon as he pinched them softly you gasped, giving him the perfect opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth while he kept softly pinching and rubbing your nipples, making them nice and hard.

''You like that, baby? You like it when I play with your nipples here?'' he asks you and you softly moan in response. Just when he was about to mention how hard he was because of you, the two of you heard a gasp and Steve immediately let go of your nipples. ''Good friends, my ass,'' Bucky says when he walks into the living room. He was on his way to the kitchen to get some water for his throat, he wasn't feeling well so he stayed home from the mission. You quickly try to move from Steve's lap but he keeps you there, not wanting to show the erection he got from your make-out session. You were both showing the same deep red color on your cheeks from being caught and you couldn't look Bucky in the eyes right now, so you hid your face in Steve's neck.

''I'm happy for the both of you, don't get me wrong, but I can't get over the fact that you lied to me, Steve. You could have told me the two of you are together, and I would have kept it a secret,'' Bucky said, still shocked at what he saw. He was just going to the kitchen but he wasn't sure if anyone was awake so he tried not to make any noise, and he succeeded because they hadn't heard him due to his assassin-like walking. ''I'm sorry Buck, but we hoped to keep it a secret for a while longer, we're enjoying the fact that it's just something between us - and now you know of course,'' Steve explained, and Bucky understood what it felt like. ''I get it, but you do need to be more careful in that case, you never know when someone might sneak up on you,'' he said with a smirk before going back to his bedroom. ''I'm happy for the two of you though, you are perfect for each other,'' he said and he left. You and Steve looked at each other and burst out in laughter, your make-out session long forgotten now.

#steve rogers #steve rogers x female reader #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers x y/n #steve rogers x reader #captain america

[mugiwara--ya]

heyyy hi a little life/med update !!

ive been super super busy these past couple weeks w a ton of socialization etc and ngl i think i burned myself out lol last night after we got back home from a con (and the bar stop after it) i had a massive shutdown that lasted hours and im still reeling from it, but ANYWAYS!! med update med update wooo

so! on top of the lifesaving bupropion ive been taking all year & the eszopiclone for sleep i finally !! got put on something for my ocd, lets give it up for fluoxetine to join my beautiful, beautiful cocktail, mwah 💖💝💗💕💞💓

i know it supposedly takes a few weeks to fully Work but im already feeling a MASSIVE difference right off the bat, like yesterday i was at the mall and i ✨ touched the escalator's handrail ✨ i was literally so excited i kept looking at my hand going yoooooo im DOING it im making it HAPPEN like even my friends congratulated me on it kdsfjhakjg it felt silly but massive at the same time lol and of course i still immediately disinfected my hands but the important thing is that I Did It

and idk its like!!! i knew it was BAD like especially these past few months its been just. VIOLENTLY out of control but god the absolute relief ive been feeling is making me feel like i was still grossly underestimating it, it had completely taken over my life. right now its like, i encounter any random trigger and i brace myself for the anxiety spiral to come and then it DOESN'T and its so ??? like i still have The Thought but then i just go "ok" and dismiss it like an annoying notification and thats IT, while the last time i was on therapy i literally described my ocd as having hundreds of those cymbal-banging monkey toys of different sizes just sitting there in my brain Waiting and every single time i got triggered one of them would start losing its absolute shit - for example if im at the supermarket, on top of the everything about existing as an autistic person at the supermarket, thered be like a dozen of them constantly going ALERT ALERT CONTAMINATION CONTAMINATION EEK EEK DANGER DANGER BANG BANG BANG- and now the monkeys r GONE. get turned into mostly-dismissable phone notifs, idiots !!!!!!!!!

the only monkey im willingly keeping!!!!! is the low poly 3d model of monkey d. luffy constantly rotating in my brain <3 kfngskjdfs

also like i still do like, say, my cleaning rituals when i get back home, but idk i just. i feel Normal about it?? like calmly wiping my phone bc phones r Gross and not bc i literally see a green film of Germs And Various Pathogens enveloping it lol. anddd i havent been attacked by violent intrusive thoughts in a minute !! lets see if it stays that way. im generally super sensitive to medications too so im on low doses of everything and i wanna keep it like that lol so heres to hoping it keeps goin like this so i dont have to up my dose 8)

uhh thats about it ! having a bit of Personal Issues tm at the moment tho but im so relieved abt my ocd i kinda have the bandwidth to deal with them lol. i prolly jus need some sleep quiet and to not be perceived by anyone for a solid week.

in other lighter and unrelated news my queue is completely empty rn so it'll be just a liiiittle quiet around here for a bit but ! yeah. also i just watched the latest op anime episode and urhgrhghrghrgh it was so good hhh <3333 so yah if you read this whole thing i am giving you a little kiss on the forehead, mwah, hope you have a great week !!

#a lie. this turned into a long ass post lmfao #tw ocd #sol.txt

[bonesandthebees]

Weird question and also no pressure to answer this at all!! But uhh i was wondering if like u and firesnap and all those ppl youve gone to lovejoy gigs were like irls or like... hm how do i phrase this

Ig what I'm trying to say is, how did you meetup safely with someone you met online?

Because I have someone I trust with my life, like I've literally given them . Probably too much information about me shfngkfk but the thought of meeting up with them, while i absolutely want to. So so badly. It's also... really scary now that im thinking about seriously?

Ive actually met up w someone online before and we did it super safely but that was bc they were already visiting close to where i lived so their plans didnt Rely on that. But this would be me flying to where they live, solely to meetup with them. And that thought is terrifying and . Yeah sorry if this is a weird ask shfkf i just thought that since youve (possibly?) done it before that it might be a good place to ask. But if this is like weird or too heavy or anything then uh dont answer!! Shfkgk help im so awkward at this and am maybe regretting this but im also literally not sure who else to ask so 😭😭

But also i recognize that ur literally just here for fic n stuff so i dont wanna put any pressure on u!!

Im so sorry if this made you uncomfy, pls just delete this from ur inbox if it did FHFJFK

this is a really good question, I don't mind answering it at all! I'd say when you're meeting up with an online friend irl, you have to consider specific details to figure out the safest way to go about it

firstly, if you're a minor you need to be extra cautious. this isn't to say you turn 18 and you're magically safe now, but as a minor you are much more likely to be targeted by creeps wanting to meet up with you irl.

when I've met internet friends irl, I've done it in a few different ways. by far the dumbest and riskiest way I ever met a friend that turned out fine but I look back at and cringe on was when I was 19 and I straight up just drove to a friend's house (she was 27 at the time for reference) when I found out she lived an hour away from me. I'd never met her in person before but we'd been talking for several months and I'd seen pictures of her, but just straight up going to a stranger's house was really stupid on my end. I sent the address to my mom before I left along with my friend's name and number so I took some precautions, but still that was very risky. it turned out totally fine and she's still a really close friend of mine to this day, but yeah uhh don't do that unless you're REALLY confident in whoever you're meeting up with

as for my more recent meetups, I met roxy eli and meri for the first time last year when we all agreed to go to twitchcon san diego together (though actually I'd met meri a month before bc they happened to be visiting a city close to me for a few days, so I drove over and picked them up at their airbnb and we got dinner it was very fun). for me I was the least at risk with twitchcon because I'm from southern california, so if things got weird I literally could've just driven home. it was more risky on roxy, eli, and meri's ends because they all had to fly out for the trip. it helped though that we were all staying at an airbnb instead of someone's house. we'd all seen plenty of pictures of each other at that point, and we were all in our 20s so I think that's why we all felt more comfortable with it as well, but no matter what meeting up with people you meet online carries a level of risk to it

firesnap was one of the least risky meetups I've done lol. she had an extra ticket to see lovejoy in NY, I already had been planning a trip to new york to visit a childhood friend of mine who lived there, so we just met up while I was over there. I stayed at my friend's place, firesnap had her own hotel, and we just met up at the lovejoy venue and hung out in the queue all day. that was easy because I had my own place I was staying at, firesnap her own place she was staying, we weren't relying on each other for any of that so if something had been weird we both would've been able to dip. so I was far less cautious with that one and didn't even see a picture of firesnap until literally the day before we met up

overall, I think if you want to fly out solely to meet a friend, you need to take a few steps to make sure you're safe. first off, see if you can do a video call with them at one point to confirm that your friend is really who they say they are. get their real name, phone number, and address and give it to someone you know so if things go wrong someone knows where you are. and when you fly out, make sure you have a backup plan to get out if things get weird. see if you have any family or friends you've already met in person that live nearby who can get you if things aren't feeling right, and if not, find a hotel near where your friend lives and make sure you have enough money to stay at it in case of an emergency. and if your phone has a tracking ability on it (like find my iphone) make sure someone you know has access to that. keep your irls updated on where you are and what you're doing, and if you're really paranoid, establish a safeword that you can text family or friends back home to let them know something has gone wrong and you need help.

I hope that helps! just take precautions and always make sure you have a way to get out if you need. communicate with people you know back home and have a plan in place with them so they can help you get out if you need. but I'm sure you'll have a good time. I've had a great time meeting up with online friends so I'm hoping you have the same luck!

#ask #anon #advice

[a-court-of-moonlight-and-ire]

auggggggh ive been wanting to make this post for an eternity but i havent been able to because I keep trying to explain myself WELL guess what. Im giving up, heres the song Wenn ich tanzen will from Elisabeth: das Musical with english translations, does it not make you think of what if Feysand was interesting

If you dont wanna watch the whole thing for some reason, I'd like to highlight this part

Fly!

I'll fly alone!

I alone want to accompany you through night and storm

I don't want to be accompanied anymore

Not even by you — I won't let myself be led

You're free only through me

Only through me

Only for me

For me!

For you shall make the way for me

I'm going my own way now

I've seperated myself from you — Leave me alone!

You've fallen in love with me

Because there's no freedom without me

And no one can understand you except for me!

Oh and also this part (theyre kinda singing over each other at this point)

I'm strong enough on my own!

You were only strong as long as you still thought that you were weak

I'm not calling for you!

You will call for me!

I'm not seeking you out!

You will seek me out!

I'm beginning to love my life!

Soon you will hate it!

Okay, I actually lied at the start of this post, I am gonna try to explain myself. My ideal not-boring version of Feysand that I think of when I listen to this song is like. Okay so, the structure of the story is fundamentally the same (except it takes place over a wayyyy longer timespan) with Feyre initially just kinda going about her new life as a traumatized fae and Rhysand coming to pick her up once a month, which ends up helping her because the SC manorhouse is kind of just covered in a bunch of depressing ooze rn (figuratively) and she cant really leave and Rhysand is basically giving her an excuse to hang out in a place without ooze, so its easier for her to have a good time. Rhysand is kinda awkward around her initially because hes basically like "ohhhhhh shit oh fuck, the woman that I tortured UTM as a fucked up way of coping with what Amarantha was doing to is my soulmate!!" because i really hate the fact that Rhysand apparently already knew about her and dreamt about her before she was even fae, it shouldve snapped in place for both of them during that little scene at the end of ACOTAR but Feyre has no concept of how a mating bond is supposed to feel like so shes just kinda like "huh, that felt kinda weird. anyway"

(this inexplicably got very long. like, 6 more paragraphs long. so much for me not explaining myself)

So yeah, Rhysand is hardcore struggling trying to figure out how to win her over despite all of the torture, but fortunately for him all she wants is to be left alone, so he does that, no putting her in unecessary danger and no asking insane favors of her even though theyve only been hanging out for like two weeks. Idrk how, but at some point they would start to get closer, this all happens very slowly, its a true slow-burn. And then one day Tamlin is like "I cant stand it, I need to find a way to break this bargain" so he collects a bunch of guys and he tells Feyre that theyre gonna go out and travel through all of Prythian and maybe even beyond in order to find a way to do it and itll probably take them atleast a few months. And then when Feyre says she wants to come along because this is about her after all, hes like "no, its dangerous and also, if Im gone then the Spring Court is gonna needs its Lady" and then he puts the shield around the manor because yeah, Im keeping Tamlin shitty in this one, sorry. This is about me trying to make Feysand good but trying to figure that out with Tamlin being in-character is too complicated for me rn so Im just gonna stick to the character assassination (thats something SJM probably also said while writing ACOMAF)

So yeah, like in canon, Mor gets her outta there and then Feyre starts permanently staying the night court except shes not going out on political errands because of the war with Hybern because honestly, this whole war plot is so stupid and it feels so unecessary like cmon Sarah girlie, I can tell youre not actually interested in writing politics, just stick to the romance and the healing journey. Anyway, during her stay she inadvertantly starts spending more time with Rhysand and realizing that he suffered too and that hes only human or fae or something like that, which helps her deal with her UTM trauma because she kinda thought of him as the embodiment of all her new trauma, so seeing that hes really not that and that hes just a person that she can make peace with helps her

Rhys is falling head over heels for Feyre because she just reminds him SO much of Cassian while Feyre is kinda conflicted but starting to develop some affection for him, and again, this happens over the course of many many months instead of just two. And after all that time, Feyre is starting feel pretty good and she doesnt really wanna go back to the spring court if shes totally honest with herself and then oops, Tamlin's back! He finds her and hes super worried like "oh my cauldron, feyre, my servants told me he just kidnapped you and they couldnt find a way to free you!! but Im here now and Im taking you back home dont worry" and Feyre feels guilty and shes basically like "yeahhhhh this was totally necessary, I definitely wanna go back... home, its just that he exploited this loophole in the bargain so had to stay here. Totally against my will, oh no it was so bad" and Tamlin tells her not to worry, theyve found a way to break they just need to get back to the spring court so they do that

At the Spring Court, Feyre gets to thinking. She thinks shes basically completely defeated her trauma by hanging out with Rhysand and shes like "well, my trauma was pretty much the main thing that made mine and Tamlins relationship not work, so now that my trauma is gone its gonna be all smooth sailing from here" and she just willfully ignores the fact that his way of coping with his UTM trauma was suffocating her and making it impossible to deal with her own issues and when she pointed it out to him he had a panic attack about it. Also, at this point it kinda hits her that shes been spending all this time with Tamlins enemy and feeling this affection for him that she hasnt really felt for Tamlin ever since theyve been back from UTM and their relationship started getting really bad, so now she feels very guilty and wants to rush into a marriage with him after all. Also, maybe by this point shes revovered enough to take a step back and start focusing on her surroundings again instead of just herself, and she realises that the people of the Spring Court would really need this kind of big celebration after this long time of turmoil and suffering, so maybe that plays into her decision to marry Tamlin as well idk

Meanwhile, Rhysand is back at the night court absolutely CONVINCED that Feyre is gonna come back to him even without the bargain or atleast send him a message or something, because of the mating bond and because by this point he thinks that Feyre loves him back, she just hasnt said it because Tamlin interrupted them or whatever. Yknow, because Feyre stopped throwing shoes at him and started to tolerate his presence somewhat, which are obviously the surefire signs that someone is in love with you. But anyway, Feyre never does get back to him because shes busy with her wedding and also trying very hard not think about either Rhysand or Tamlin too much so she doesnt simply run out into the forest to avoid dealing with all this bullshit

So yeah, Rhysand finds out about Feyre marrying Tamlin and he gets very upset and so he winnows to the Spring Court on the day of the wedding. Feyre has just been dressed up in this gorgeous pastel pink and green pantssuit (thats very important for the story) and now Ianthe is leaving her alone for a bit before the grand wedding ceremony. At this point Rhysand comes in and they have a confrontation thats basically just the song except in dialogue-form, remember when this post was about a song I really like, yeah me neither. During this confrontation I really want Rhysand to bring up the mating bond and kinda throw it in her face and I want Feyre to basically respond "oh, so now the guy who always preached about giving me choices and not letting others decide for me is gonna get on my case for not doing what some god wants from me, gtfo" and thats basically how it ends. Then the next book is the book where Feyre hay to make the choice between Tamlin and Rhysand because its a romance series at the end of the day, so even though I would like the last book to just be Feyre ending up single and going on her own adventures, I recognize that thats not a great ending for a romance series so

I wanna end this off by saying that I was trying to only focus on the romance for this because its easier, if I were to write my ideal acotar sequel it would look different than this even if I used the original acomaf as a base. So yeah, thats it hope you enjoyed my 7am ramblings, I have been awake for three hours already writing this

#miscellaneous acotar thoughts #acotar rewrite #anti acomaf #Youtube

[mageofminge]

where i've been the past few months

just wanna say sorry i haven't been posting as much, for the past few months i've basically been dealing with at least 2 separate health conditions at a time and no matter how much i try i can never seem to get well again. its honestly just been taking a massive toll on my mental health and i haven't been able to do much other than get by on a daily basis.

i'm also just rlly angry rn bc i was always healthy before but my body's just been completely worn out from both studying and uni stress, as well as living in halls so grim people would regularly get food poisoning from the kitchens and not being able to afford to eat out. i just hate the people that made the kitchen grim by not knowing basic food hygiene, then refused to listen when i tried to explain that hey, you can't put raw meat on top of other people's vegetables, even if it is in packaging because, crazy idea, that packaging can in fact break causing raw meat juice to spill all over the veggies.

there's also the element of religion stuff in the sense that, there was this rlly holy day in my religion, but bc of the rest of my family not being particularly religious or almost wanting me to not be religious so they can hate on me, i didn't know it was the holy day until afterwards. and i uh. did something that was. a massive no-no. on the literal holiest day. in my religion. and then that combined with. all the health issues only happening after that. basically my brain is always now blaming me for causing those health issues by being reckless and doing a big nono. rather than double checking online bc i had heard it was the following day and so assumed that night was safe. and again this is completely illogical but because the timing lines up so well it keeps popping back in my head that i wouldn't be so sickly if i had observed that holy day properly.

oh and also finally i've been struggling with the public healthcare system a lot bc everyone ive seen has either refused fully comprehensive testing or just refused to test me at all (i assume to save money). only to waste more money by playing guesswork and prescribing me antibiotics i don't need (the antibiotic in question being FLUCLOXACILLIN for STAPH, which has A HIGH RATE OF ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE, caused by using them when not needed). oh and again waste money by me having to constantly come in for follow ups and follow ups because the one stool test they decided to run came back negative so why are you still ill.

and also throughout this whole illness my family has been pretty horrible. whenever i need to do smth bc im ill they always act like im a spoilt brat who's being a massive pain. as though them being mildly inconvenienced by my illness is a grave sin. like one time i got rlly bad food poisoning and had to throw up multiple times over the span of an hour. and then also had diarrhea that was so severe it was like i was shitting literal water. this was on holiday at like 3-4am. and then at like 8 after i had gone back to sleep for the time and woken up my family were all yelling at me telling me to be considerate and not be so loud at 3-4am. knowing. i had just. vomitted and shat my guts out. from food poisoning.

and with all that combined being ill just generally sucks. like the only person who actually is considerate and takes care of me is my bf. who ive tried to stay with as much as possible but its incredibly difficult bc my parents also randomly decide to have severe abandonment issues and act like im leaving a gaping hole in their lives every time im not at home. but then treat me like they strongly dislike me and im a massive inconvenience when i am home.

so yeah basically these past few months have just been me cosplaying as a sickly victorian child asking to be taken out to the garden one last time before the consumption sets in.

#anyways its terrifying how much someone changes up #when you get ill #im glad at least my bf is nice about it #illness #food poisioning #jean's vents #flucloxacillin #antibiotic resistance

[madisonrooney]

oh shit its been like. a week and a half and i havent told yall my dove story maybe i should do that

so i went to the cameron boyce foundation gala again. thats where i saw her last summer too, not sure if i ever mentioned that then lol. knew she would be there but only wanted to talk to her if it felt right given the circumstances. following my much more talkative friends lead who knew a lot of the people there to some degree (not unlike my fan relationship with many of them but a bit closer than i am to some), we talked to a number of people so im like ok if were talking to everyone else we gotta talk to her.

almost thought we lost her as things wound down but we spotted her and walked over and my heart rate continued to increase every step i got closer to her.

didnt really know what to say but i wanted to re-establish who i was, given how much time has gone by since we used to regularly interact plus i was wearing a mask, so i just said what ive said before in similar situations which was “its been a long time!” and she said “yah i havent seen you in a while!” and im like oh god she does remember me oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god

we take a pic together and then i finally give her my short little speech that basically sums up my last 3 years worth of thoughts and worries. some off yall may remember me posting during quarantine how terrified i was that our relationship would basically die since we couldnt interact in person and im too anxious to be on stan twitter or anything like that. so i said “i know we havent interacted much over the past few years bc of that little pandemic lol but i hope you know im still supporting you in everything you do” and she like.....put her hand on my arm and thanked me hhhhhhh

then i added “obvs ive been supporting you from the beginning but even moreso as youve been an advocate for the queer community of which im also a part” and she thanked me again. THEN I SAID HAPPY PRIDE MONTH AND SHE SAID IT BACK LIKE. OKAY. (my coworker said those were basically our wedding vows and i have to agree)

she apologized that she was having a bit of a nervous breakdown, i guess in regard to her short responses (which i really thought nothing of). like first of all so was i and second of all ofc i dont blame her given the circumstances

at some point she said “thank you for supporting cameron” which just. warmed my heart so so much.

gave her a quick hug and as she walked away i said “we love you!” and she said “i love you guys!” and blew us kisses. whew.

so. yah. i basically got to tell her what id been harboring inside me for like 3 years and got three PLUS years of weight off of my shoulders. its kinda hard to believe but i really healed so much in that moment and im just. so so grateful.

to still be able to have these interactions with her, even if not as long and not as often as they were years ago, now that shes blown up so much is not something i take for granted in the least. i really needed this and im so so glad i got it.

one of the first things that popped in my head afterwards (besides the intense desire to cry which i had to fight due to still being in public) was “man. i would do anything for her.” so i guess let that be your take away

[userholland]

long rant abt past few months. (pls don't reblog)

tw: e/ting disorder, d/pression, s/cide, racial issues, d/ath + grief

lately, i think on my blog i've been having a crisis with myself. i think it sounds dramatic but also i think that it has been a battle of taking it lightly and saying this is the internet and its just random people or oh wow, people are actually triggering me to starve and kill myself and maybe i should restart or quit.

i have never spoken about this but i have struggled with eating for more than a decade and i have had depression/anxiety since i was ten years old. i lost all of my grandparents during the pandemic and had to move back home in order to help and support my family in this time of grief and sadness. i already thought about ending my life numerous times and covid made that harder too. but, i didn't think that the weight of anonymous people telling me to k*ll myself would make me go back into this dark cloud of me and that i have to put on this face and act a certain way on the internet in order to be respect.

i have gone through periods of depression and starving myself as more of a punishment on myself than others. i dont think that i deserve to... be on a platform if all i focus on are the criticizes of my opinion or my writing. i question how i can be perfect and well-liked, and will i be able to do that and starving myself and ending my life seemed like an option because maybe if i somehow ended my life, then no one would have to care? sort of how i thought about it over the past few months. and it was over people i've never met.

i emphasize so much that this isnt a pity post. im not asking you to take my side in my opinion bc i had some major but effective events in my life and im not asking for anyone's (especially anons) pity but just want anyone to sort of understand that i am a human behind my screen and so are all the other people getting this unnecessary hate about something that doesn't involve any of us.

at first, i thought that it would die down and i mean at the end of the day (and to this day still as a tom fan), i dont really care about tom and zendaya's relationship being real. i mainly care that tom is happy, healthy and okay in general and not working himself ragged because he feels like he's not doing enough. thats my main purpose as a blog and omy posts have changed over the past few years.

but, i dont think its fair that because i dont hold as much of a candle or liking to zendaya as i used to that i get comments about how "ill never be her" which also compare my size to hers, how im ugly, how that makes me racist/anti-black and that ill never be at her level when those were never my intentions to begin with. i dont want to be zendaya nor be like her and ive never said i wanted to. i know that i am myself and who i am doesn't matter to her and who she is doesn't matter to me. but using tom as that main reasoning and saying that because he finds her attractive that it automatically makes me unattractive is an unfair and crazy statement.

i think she's a beautiful person, but i never changed that opinion (aka calling her ugly or stick thin) because i "didn't like their relationship". i just have seen enough on insider celebrity couples over the years and how they use PR to their advantage. it's not an uncommon idea in hollywood where your one goal is to maintain fame.

i did like her for a period of time, but she's not my fav anymore and when i said that, suddenly it's like i hated her and i wanted her to burn. i just don't like her anymore, and that's okay, but respect my mutuals that do like her and her content / her and tom's relationship (in a healthy way and not an obsessive way).

ik i made a long post as well differentiating racism from hating zendaya and obviously, some stans were very upset by it by thinking it was a hate speech within itself. i didn't state my own opinion, but facts and articles while also trying to get the point across of privacy. dating or not, it's always been about their privacy and keeping them safe and that's still what i want for both of them.

i mean, the backlash was intense. looking back, i regret speaking on it because it wasn't fully my place to speak on racist issues of a black person, but i was mainly trying to point out how saying you don't like someone isnt always the result of racism. but i never meant to make it seem i was cancelling out racism as a reason. some people can be incredibly racist / use micro-aggressions, but i know deep down that's not every single person's intentions. especially not because of a ship. i did a lot of research before posting this by looking up articles and watching other youtubers rants as well. i apologize to anyone who took thought that was my intent or that i was trying to have this huge savior complex.

people went as far as making fun of my hobbies, music, race and what i like, just taking any little thing about me. especially people who i thought were my mutuals then who went behind my back and talked shit about me without even telling me first about their opinion privately. then once i did @ them, one of my mutuals messaged me instantly and begged me to take the post down calling them out.... it was all about saving her over saving our friendship. then they went and blocked me. it felt like betrayal from left field.

is it fair or me to analyze a possibly staged picture? yes, because its up to anyone's opinions and we all obviously have different ones. but at the end of the day, i hope that tom and zendaya both feel safe and not actually overexposed and uncomfortable. god forbid there was ever a leak of addresses, phone numbers and even places they go to. all i'll say is, give them space, but have whatever opinion you want on them. it's fine.

im not hoping this post stops the anon hate either. ive gotten better at ignoring it since i realize its from this anonymous person who doesnt know me, follow me or care about me. they just care about my opinion and that opinion only which is just so weird to me. i mean, even people say im a white girl and that makes me worse, when i put that i am korean in my bio / on mycarrd.co as well. i think it says more about them than it does me.

at the end of the day, im here to write and talk to my mutuals over whatever we want. whether it's tom, marvel, spider-man, or dogs and cats. i just stay here when i know i have support from my friends and i can be myself and know that ill always be able to talk to them when problems arise like these.

i hope anyone who is struggling or going through a tough time that anon hate is so small, and that you will conquer the other problems around you bc they are priorities of your life and not the internet. if you ever need to talk, feel free to message me or ask for my discord. i really want my blog to remain a safe space and nothing something full of hate so, i really hope that if any anon who has sent me hate reads this and maybe just backs off a bit. just because i dont agree with you doesnt mean i hate you and your opinions, but we can both just look the other way and go on with our lives. its just that easy

#also i dont want anyone to feel like they need to read this. just a vent post but wanted to clear what was on my shoulders #days like this always trigger me and make me want to hide #this is sort of how i feel about this whole thing in general and i never wanted to put it on one anon #liz talk.txt

[angga-arsika-blog]

fuck this Gemini label

it's hard to compile all the things happen in previous day to day life. it was so many thing that i felt, make me overwhelmed but mostly excited and overjoy, tough i may seem sleepless for everyone who see me day to day and all my close friends where ever they are and cant say who they are because all of them who still contact me till these days are my close friends.

but everytime we were hang out they alwayas ask me about my love life. sometimes at first it was inconvenient to some extent, but as per time goes by, i just realised how much they try to grab and support me and checking on me if i was doin fine. it was hard to cover that i am fine, but they keep asking me, and for that reasons i just dont know how to tell them more.

i have so many things to think about, not about past nor future. just now, today, present. . but one thing that i cant do is selfishly to keep you always near to me, though i am extremely gratefull of your presence to my day to day basis. this writing should written few months ago, but i just think this have to be written naturally, without sentiement on series of event that happen at that time at that momment. have to somehow was passing with uncertain outcomes. and i just felt that you are looking good with new environment and moving on, eventough your feeling aint my ownership to declare.

if you still read this tumblr, hope you know that i am gratefull and feeling sad at the same time that i cant give you what was hoping for. up till now, when we still hang out and asking for the days. eventough you seems okay and cheerfull as what you are. i hope you dont regret to be near me for the past year or couple years yo had spent on me. i was gratefull that you were there, keeping me on your eyes. it was the best thing that i ever felt, thus i cant just erase it and will constantly remains in my memories. And for that also i cant hide my sadness that i cant provide what you want. make me overtghing about wheter you okay or not. but please keep it to your self that i try cheerish my loved ones, and you are one of them. i love and do care for you, in my way.

to a person who aged like me, you have to know ive been in some experience that makes me grow. insticntly, i just think my experience will not match with our way of thingking and how we gonna act eachother. arrogantly, i might say you have to gain need experience so we are not failed in the end. cus once again your presence matter to me, and not losing you at first place. i know you would not agree, cause i have other leo whose did things like you. and for some reasons i also have to maintain my behaviour just to prevent our friendship last long, cause you know that people said i easily get liked, as a gemini.

more that this, i hope you also know that this writting is also for someone else, which i dont think you know her well, because you know my mind always all over the places. and hoping you know that i might looks not good as per what you might think.

it is more that unethical behaviour that i did sometimes, which to some extent it was dangerous to play. maybe i just adore her, but in her annoying words i keep my eyes on her, tough i know it is serious illegal acts and thinking. i know been years and she is started her newlife, but i keep to constantly still visit and talk or share reels whic i can defense we are good as a goodfriend, but sometimes i just feel it could be a problem someday if one of us or both of us carried away. i hope im wrong, i wish this feeling will be gone. but you know, i had some experiences that shows that possibilty could happen. BUT, ThankGod, it was sometimes just thoughts in the air. hoping, for the most to my self, that i can control my own desire and mind. i think its gonna be okay.

still remmember her skin when we handshake, her tears, her laugh like the common girls while it is special to me, her songs, the time we were facing akward office moment together, and her flower which she gave to me because somehow i tried to flirt with her. but fuck, why is it so hard to make her eyes on me. i cant write it down for more, because as much i reveal it, the more i get carried away with those emostion. i need to control it, but i wish this just as it is. fuck i want to be lucky as her partner.

damn! :'D

[mineofilms]

Reviews of Thor: Love & Thunder, Jurassic World: Dominion & Top Gun: Maverick

Over the weekend of 9/23/2022 I saw Thor: Love and Thunder… Andrzej Żuławski’s “POSSESSION” (1981)… You can see a review of that film all by itself. Link provided at the bottom. I had also previously seen Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World: Dominion a few months back. This will be a mini review of each.

SPOILERS AHEAD…

Thor: Love and Thunder is so bad it might be worse than Black Widow as Captain of the worst Marvel movies to come out during Phase IV and possibly EVER... There really isn't anything good about this. The pacing and tone are all WRONG. The jokes, which seemed frequent don't fit and are not even funny. The cameos do not make any real sense and are just there for nostalgic humor purposes.

All the humor from Thor III: Ragnarok and Avengers: End Game that seemed to work in those movies for Thor does not work here and just make the film look cheesier than it already does. Love & Thunder is like a miss mash of deleted scenes/outtakes from other Thor movies that didn't fit in those movies, surrounded by a very basically written cookie-cutter villain and story. Christian Bale, however, was amazing though and I feel like his negative outlook on the film during the pressers is because he believed this would be a serious story, characterization, and it simply was not. He is a serious actor and if you tell him we are gonna make a serious movie and you ended up lying to him, it is no surprise he was negative about the quality of the movie when it was making the marketing rounds.

The romantic connection between Thor and Jane is gone. It is there in plot and we see it on the screen, but it has no chemistry to it. It looks forced and is badly written. The whole movie was poorly written… This was the shortest Thor film of the 4 released and I am glad. If this would have been 2 plus hours I would have shut this piece of garbage off. I almost shut it off my Disney plus because it was “that bad…”

The only thing that even made me smile at all were the screaming goats. That is about it for Thor: Love and Thunder. I feel bad for the people that paid money to see this in theaters and are a fan of the character. The acting is fine; but feels like parodies of their well-established characters.  I thought this would have been a no brainer as far as it being good or not but it is so bad I do not know if we will see another Thor film and not sure if I want to. Even the Guardians of the Galaxy stuff in this was done poorly… Of the 4 Thor films the original and Ragnarok are great and Love & Thunder and Dark World are pretty bad.

Dark World isn’t terrible on the same level of Love & Thunder. It really is technically bad. The writing, tone, direction, choices, humor and the special effects. A lot of the effects look like poor green screen and/or just digital backgrounds, even when there are other key characters in the shot. Film Students, take notice to this stuff…

I didn't care for the latest Jurassic World flick either, Jurassic World: Dominion. It has some good stuff in it, but like the last one, they really didn't execute this well. It isn’t terrible just this one and the last one were not very good, but they were not terrible either. The first Jurassic World was excellent. How they fell so far, so fast just makes my eyes roll.

The cartoon villain, who is already a billionaire, wants to control all the world’s food supply so that he may charge whatever he wants for said food? Um, he is already a billionaire right? Yeah, I can totally identify with that villain’s motivations here. (sarcasm)… This villain is written badly even if it were a Bond villain or a Marvel super villain… I watched Tobe Hooper’s “Invaders from Mars” over the weekend too and I have more positive things to say about that flop than I do Jurassic World: Dominion…

Last on the list is Top Gun: Maverick and that was done right. I am sure there are gonna be haters out there, but I feel like they got the nostalgia right and didn't overly bathe in it as a main focal point of the movie. Which is what seems to be popular in these attempts at recapturing nostalgia. They do go back and do some of the normal nostalgia stuff, but it doesn’t linger, nor does it absorb the entire movie, like say, “Ghostbusters: After Life” did. Where the entire movie revolves around the first “Ghostbusters,” movie with full nods to the original that look great, but miss their mark. They did this with Jurassic World: Dominion with “these attempts at recapturing nostalgia.”

Maverick is its own story. So much so that the only thing I thought that was bad was the love interest aspect of the story. Jennifer Connelly’s character makes absolutely no sense as to why she is there and why she is important to Maverick. That was done poorly and I am sort of tired of these big properties/franchises that do things within the plot, off-screen and either force us to purchase extra properties like; novels, comics, video games, YouTube Easter egg videos, just to get caught up on the story…

To me, Maverick has a really bad love story/drama prequel out there that takes place after Top Gun and Before Maverick, aka Top Gun 1.5, that no one has ever seen, yet, seems to transitioned into Top Gun: Maverick like we all didn't miss a beat, which we did. To me, it doesn't ruin the whole movie, but it is a major distraction and/or miss-step of trying to tell the story here. We really didn't need her, her character in this movie and it hurts the plot.

Jennifer Connelly’s performance is fine. She is always pretty good except for 1985s Dario Argento’s Creepers/Phenomena, depending on which version of the film you find. Granted she was only a child then working with a foreign horror genre filmmaker. Those types of movies are made differently so her being overly bad in it I will chalk up to age and working with a foreign director.

I Give Maverick a solid A-. It would get an A+ but the love story element doesn’t fit. I give Thor: Love & Thunder a D+ and Jurassic Park: Dominion a C. These were 3 huge movies and it is very sad that only one of them ended up being actually good in my eyes, while the other 2 probably will never been seen and/or heard from again just like Amber Heard’s career…

The other 2 films I mentioned here; Andrzej Żuławski’s “POSSESSION” (1981) and Tobe Hooper’s “Invaders from Mars” (1986) are totally worth seeing if you can find them. Why get reminded of nostalgia when you can see its original form for yourself. For my review of Possession, click the link… Andrzej Żuławski’s “Possession” (1981)…

 Reviews of Thor: Love & Thunder,  Jurassic World: Dominion &  Top Gun: Maverick by David-Angelo Mineo 9/26/2022 1,198 Words

[atypicalwtrmln]

gonna do a tour of my older-ish paintings no one asked for :D

painting is one of those little things i do to take my mind of things that stress me out by giving me something else to stress me out! /j

i dont do canvas paintings, realistic paintings, or anything like that (props to you if you do because i could never), what i do is use household items (90% cardboard) to do 3d/layered art! i am completely self taught and have been painting this way for probably just over a year

i feel like its worth mentioning that i dont think there is a single painting ive ever done ever that has gone exactly how i wanted it to, i am definitely far from a professional its just a fun little thing i like to do and am proud of sometimes

also it should be noted that every single painter is automatically super awesome and cool unless they're a bad person

im done rambling now lets go

warning that these are all gonna have terrible lighting because i really dont feel like doing anything fancy

my enderman painting is probably the oldest thing i have still displayed. i clearly wasn't being very ambitious with this one lol. i actually highly recommend starting out painting with pixel art because its really simple and all you need to do is basically make a grid and make yourself your own paint by number. i used badly placed scotch tape and it bled through quite a bit

some more minecraft paintings ft. the enderman. i'm pretty sure i did the totem before the zombie pigman and you can kind of tell because of how messy it is. i guess i was just really lazy that day and didnt feel like using tape, but it actually looks pretty cool from afar. the zombie pigman took way longer to do than i thought it would because with the tape i was using, i had to wait for all like twelve colors to each dry individually. those three were all made in *i want to say may* of last year, and the mushroom i made a few months ago just when i was bored and didnt want to do anything super ambitious.

last painting with just one layer, look at me go! /lh i swear this is one of the last minecraft ones, stay with me. im not actually super proud of this one haha, the colors are all off and i didnt use tape but i keep it for two reasons. one: i have nothing else to put there. two: cutting it out took ages. its kind of hard to display since its such a weird shape but its growing on me so i dont think ill be taking it down soon.

last minecraft thing woooooo. this is actually a painting of my minecraft skin's face. im pretty sure i actually made this *after* the paintings im about to show later but shhhhh i want all the minecraft stuff to be together. the top layer is actually what the outer layer is on my skin (which in my opinion is a nice touch). dont even ask why i cut out the eyes, i really wish i didnt do that lol i guess i just thought itd be funny to be able to put it up to my face. i thinkkkk i made this in either december or january.

before we visit my pride and joy, heres what i like to call my painting baseball cards. these are just some small paintings i made in two nights over christmas break. fun fact: originally the background for both were purple, but that was really ugly so i went over it in black. i really should make some more lemon demon paintings considering all the will wood things i have, but we'll see. definitely not my favorite of my paintings lol but i could never get rid of them.

MY PRIDE AND JOY!!!! my sun is right up there with my tomcat disposables painting for my favorites ive ever made. my sun and moon took around 10 hours to do each, and god was it worth it. i put my blood sweat and tears into them and sundrop turned out great. moon's right cheek is wonky and it bothers me every time i see it but i still love them. they were so so fun to make and i could gush about them for hours. the little things that you cant really see because of my lighting make me so proud of them. i definitely took some creative liberties here and there, especially with the colors and the little details, but im glad i did and i wouldn't have them any other way (except that i would move moon's right cheek down a little bit because its physically painful for me/j). these two were 100% the start of a new era of my art style with the layers like how it is in the game. i might make a whole other post just talking about them. but yeah, four days of hyperfocus well spent.

thats it, if you read through this whole thing ily mwah. i find people talking about making their art super interesting, i might ask to do this more and not wait for an answer :)

ily little gay people in my phone have a great day happy pride month

#i have a lot of things to say about painting so what better place than tumblr because im sure my irls are really tired of me by now LMAO #kinda nervous to post this ngl but hey its fun for me to talk about something im passionate about :))

[angstysebfan]

The Past Can Break You - 7

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

AU: Avengers

Summary: You and Bucky have been dating for aa few years. As far as you’re concerned he is the one. But what happens when a blast from the actual past shows up?

A/N: Ive seen a lot stories of Bucky getting his first love from the 40′s back. And I’ve always wondered... what would happen if he was dating someone already? Reader is from this time. Not proofread.

Warning:

--

Dot lays on her bed, hands under her head, staring at the ceiling, wondering. It’s been a week since you ran away from Bucky. Bucky has been locked away in his room ever sense, and hasn’t come to see her yet. I mean I get he had feelings for you, but enough is enough. Bucky has to know that you were not the one he was meant to be with. The fact that she managed to find him nearly a century later is fate. Surely Bucky knows that.

Suddenly there is a knock on her door, bringing Dot out of her thoughts. She opens and sees Bucky standing there, looking tired. 

“Oh Jamie, what is wrong?” Dot asks innocently enough.

Bucky looks at her with sad eyes, “Y/N left me. She didn’t tell me why, but she left me. I-I feel so foolish. I thought she loved me,” he said as tears came to his eyes.

Dot pulls him into a tight hug. And of course because he cannot see her face, she smirks in victory. After some time Bucky pulls back. Dot grabs his flesh hand and pulls him into her room and toward her bed.

“I’m so sorry this happened Jamie. When did she leave?” Dot asked.

“Last week,” Bucky said looking away. “I have been trying to find her, but she has made it nearly impossible. Should have known not to trust one of the best spies in the world.” Bucky says.

Dot furrows her brows, “She is a spy? I thought you were all were Avengers.”

Bucky looked at her, “The Avengers are made up of all different people with different skills and powers to fight the evil in this world. Y/N was kidnapped as a child and turned into a spy. Natasha helped her escape and now she is... or was... an Avenger. She always felt we were her family, so I must have done something if she was willing to leave. I just wish I knew what,” Bucky said.

“Jamie, I know you love her, but obviously she didn’t love you as much as you thought. You need to stop thinking about what you could have possibly done wrong and move on. Now I want to hear more about the different skills and powers you were talking about with the Avengers. I mean I have lived here for several months and know nothing about this,” Dot says.

Bucky looks at her with a mix of shock and annoyance, but shakes his head, “Uh, well you know Steve has the super soldier serum, Tony is a genius and has made suits that can do anything, Natasha is also a spy from the Red Room, Clint is a spy and the best shot I’ve ever seen, Sam can fly and was in the military, Wanda has powers and can read minds, Vision is a robot from the same source that Wanda got her powers from, and Thor is a god from another planet,” Bucky said quickly.

Dot paled a little, especially hearing Wanda can read minds. She looked at Bucky, “And... and you?” she asks quietly.

It took a lot to not smirk at the scared expression on her face, but Bucky leaned in, “Me? Well, I was taken by Hydra, given a similar serum like Steve, and was brainwashed to become the greatest assassin in the world. they would freeze me until they needed me and I would kill anyone they wanted, and any witnesses. Unfortunately that included Tony’s parents, but he and I have made up so to speak,” Bucky says.

He watches Dot pale more as she suddenly looks frighten of the man on her bed, “How... how could you not tell me that before? We spent so much time together and you.. you never mentioned any of this,” Dot said.

Bucky looked at her and tried to seem sincere, “Does it matter? I mean as you said maybe this is fate, the two of us being here, in this time, together. I mean I do miss Y/N, but maybe this is a sign that I need to stop fighting the feelings I have... for you,” Bucky said.

“Jamie... I-,” Dot hesitates.

“Surely you still love me like you said you do, now knowing my past,” Bucky says.

Dot swallowed and put on a brave face, “Y-Yes Jamie. I-I still love you,” She says.

--

You wait in the conference room, knee shaking under the table as Steve and Nat sit in front of you.

“Y/N, you have to calm down,” Nat says.

“I’m trying but this is taking too long. What if it doesn’t work. What if--”

You are cut off by the door opening and Bucky walking in. You both stop and stare at each other. Your heart beats quickly in your chest as your stare into his blue eyes. He stares right back into your Y/E/C eyes.

“So? Did it work?” Nat asked, snapping you both out of your staring contest. Bucky looked at Nat, and then back at you before he smirked.

“She is terrified, but is going to pretend she can handle being with me. This should be easy,” he says.

You smile and look at Nat you nods, “Good, step 1 complete. The bitch knows who she is dealing with. Now Barnes, I need you to seduce her. Make her think that you are interested. We need this to go on for a bit before she snaps, which she will. Or I’ll snap her like a twig,” Natasha says.

Nat continues to talk about the beat down she wants to give Dot, while you and Bucky go back to staring at each other. Bucky walks around the table to stand in front of you, “She thinks you are still gone,” he says softly.

You nod, “Good. She needs to think she won.”

“Can we talk, alone? Tonight? Maybe on the roof?” Bucky asks.

You take a deep breath and look down at your hands, “I... sure, Buck. Once Dot has gone to sleep. You belong to her now,” you say.

Bucky steps closer, “I know you know the truth, but please know that everything that I am doing now is to make her pay for hurting you. If I belong to anyone, it’s you, baby,” he says before kissing your forehead and leaving the room.

You take a shuddering breath as tears come to your eyes. You know Bucky is innocent, but all you can hear are the words his voice said to her. Bucky still doesn’t know what happened, but you know he will ask you relentlessly until you tell him.

You have to keep your eye on the prize. Dot needed to pay for what she has done. But when it’s over, will you be able to get over everything and still be with Bucky? Will this plan drive you further apart?

--

Chapter 6 / Chapter 8

So what do you think the overall plan is? Will the reader be able to ignore the fact that Bucky needs to seduce Dot, while she is still in pain about everything? Feedback is appreciated.

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