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absynthe--minded · 4 years

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If Supernatural Can Get Fifteen Seasons, The Silmarillion Can Get Fifteen Seasons: An Overview

I’m going to be going into much more detail in individual season-specific posts, but for the moment, here is the extremely condensed look at what each of these seasons would entail plotwise. I’ve included a cut for length; I hope this translates to mobile well. I’ve followed chronology more or less as closely as I can, adding additional time in places where I thought it made sense or moving events closer together for thematic resonance, and I’ve included Russingon because I’m me and of course I did.

The idea is that this is a 2D animated series rated TV-MA (comparable to R for feature films in the US, or any of HBO’s shows) with fifteen seasons, 26 hourlong episodes each.

Season 1: Valinor, and the unrest between the houses of the Noldor, interwoven with stories about the beginning of the universe/the Great Journey from Cuiviénen/etc. Establishes our core Valinorean cast, and hints at Thingol being a presence later. Main storyline involves Finwëan Family Drama, with bonus Melkor Fucking Shit Up. We meet Maglor's secret wife Aeriel, Curufin's known wife Annamírë + his son Celebrimbor, and become aware of Fingon and Maedhros's love affair. The Sword Incident and Fëanor's banishment to Formenos are featured. The audience knows Melkor is plotting something but doesn't know what. Series finale is the Darkening of Valinor - like, the last thing the audience sees before the series ends is the elves' festival in Tirion and then everything goes dark. Roll credits.

Season 2: Cold open on Maedhros and Maglor and Celegorm finding Finwë's body + realizing the Silmarils are gone. Flashback to Melkor's plans, and we see the Darkening from his perspective. He flees across the ocean and Ungoliant vanishes. Cover the drama between Fingolfin and Fëanor over the crown, Lalwen and Findis and Finarfin rallying around their brother, etc. Maedhros and Fingon marry. Fëanor convinces nearly all of of his loyalists to leave specifically to avenge his personal losses, Fingolfin has a larger amount of people who want to go East to fight Morgoth. Set up a conflict between Fingolfin and Fëanor here - Fingolfin does actually want to defend the elves still living in Arda proper and the soon-to-come Men from Morgoth's influence, while Fëanor is raving about how I Will Not Be Replaced. (This is not strictly canonical, but it is a good contrast of their leadership styles, and it widens the gap between them/adds another reason why Fëanor would perceive Fingolfin as a threat.) Kinslaying at Alqualondë, Finarfin and his people noping out, Fëanor seeming to forgive/make nice with Fingolfin after his people joined in the fight for the ships. He offers to sail East first, with the justification that if there is danger there he'll be the first to encounter it. Maedhros is reluctantly parted from Fingon. Maglor reveals to Amrod that he was married, and his wife died in the battle. They arrive at Losgar, empty out the boats, and make camp for the night. Amrod goes back onboard the ship to sleep. Maedhros wakes up early, finds his father awake, and asks if he can take the boats back West to pick up Fingon et al. Fëanor loses his shit and starts rousing everyone for the shipburning. Maedhros asks him not to, and reveals his marriage, and Fëanor's response is to throw the first torch. Amrod dies, and none of his brothers can get to him. Fingolfin's host sees the flames from across the ocean, and turn towards the north and the Ice. End season.

Season 3: The host moves inland to Mithrim and begins to set up camp. They've met some Sindar by now, and they carry word back to Doriath that Finwë's son and grandchildren have come back to Arda. Thingol tells Lúthien, who is just past her majority into adulthood, a part of his life story that she hasn't heard yet: that Finwë was his best friend, and that he'd been on his way to see Finwë when he was sidetracked by Melian. He decides to let Fëanor and his host stay in Mithrim in memory of that friendship. Dagor-nin-Giliath happens, Fëanor dies at the end of the second episode. Episode 3 deals with Maedhros being hastily crowned, and receiving word from Morgoth that he'll parlay for a Silmaril, and him riding out despite his brothers' suspicions. He's taken captive, end episode. Episode 4 is after a 58-solar-year timeskip, revealing the fate of Fingolfin's host on the Ice. We open on a dream of Elenwë drowning by Turgon; he wakes to reassure himself that Idril is all right and then everyone continues on. The whole episode is taken up by the Ice and the Battle of the Lammoth, ending with Argon's death and the rising of the Sun. Next episode starts with the elves but cuts over to humanity, newly awakened in Hildórien - this is a hint of what’s to come. Fingolfin's host challenges Morgoth and goes unanswered, and then return to Mithrim and settle on the opposite side of the lake from the Fëanorians, who are doing SUBSTANTIALLY better bc they stole a lot from their fellow Noldor and they also don't treat the land they're living on like Thingol's, vs Fingolfin who refuses to do anything except the bare minimum his people need to survive until they get Permission. Basically the rest of this season is some of the events of Blessed Hands, with Maedhros's rescue and recovery and ensuing family drama. Five solar years pass, and the season ends with him and Fingon riding up to the outskirts of the Fëanorian encampment.

Season 4: Season opens with Maedhros being reunited with his brothers and opening formal negotiations for an apology to Fingolfin. Thingol opens formal negotiations with Maedhros and Fingolfin, but neither one reveal to him why they've come to Beleriand/the circumstances surrounding their departure. Fingolfin wants to speak to Thingol personally, and Maedhros defers to him. Permission is granted for the Noldor to settle in the north of Beleriand. A council meeting is held to settle the matter of the High Kingship; Fingolfin is elected and Maedhros votes for him, angering his brothers. He offers to take up residence in the northeastern mountains near Angband, and Fingolfin grants him and his House lordship of that region. The Fëanorian host begins to depart, but postpones their journey for the Mereth Aderthad. Beleg, Daeron, Mablung, and a few other Sindarin elves attend the feast. Orodreth meets his future wife. Last half of the season covers 40 years - Turgon and Finrod have their visions, the Noldor begin to construct multiple settlements, and attack Morgoth with renewed strength. Season ends with the triumph of the Dagor Aglareb and the departure of Turgon from Nevrast with his host.

Season 5: Season opens in Doriath, with Galadriel having taken up residence there. Brief summation of the beginning of the Siege of Angband. Angrod pisses off Thingol and causes the Ban on Quenya, and news of this is carried to Himring, Nargothrond, and Gondolin, giving us a sense of their status/construction. Caranthir meets the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains and strikes up a friendship/partnership with them. Fingon visits Himring once it's finished. Gondolin and Nargothrond are completed. Orcs attack Hithlum by coming up the Lammoth but are turned back. Maedhros, Caranthir, Maglor, and Celegorm go to Barad Eithel for the bicentennial of the Mereth Aderthad. Tension here is primarily political/slice-of-life - it's peaceful, even if it's a watchful peace, and it seems like Morgoth is pretty effectively held at bay. The only exception is Aredhel, who grows dissatisfied with Gondolin and finally leaves after a massive fight with Turgon about everything from his family loyalty to his politics to his taste in clothing. Young Glaurung is turned back easily by Fingon and a few other soldiers. Season ends with Finrod getting separated from the sons of Fëanor while on a hunt and encountering Men in the woods, changing everything.

Season 6: Speedrun Part Two! This is the Season of Men and Politics, covering 145 years. We see the Edain choose to integrate into Noldorin society, with all the lumps and bumps this causes, and how they respond to the elves around them. Bëor, Marach, Haldad, Haleth, Haldar, Malach, Zimrahin, Hador, Adanel, Bereg, Amlach, and Andreth all become important characters. The Green-elves can't stand Men bc they're insufferable vegans, the Sindar are isolationist and suspicious save for a few of their Marchwardens/soldiers, and the Noldor are eager to make new friends. Focus is given to the tensions between the different Edainic groups and philosophies, and how different Houses and clans interact with elves and dwarves. There's not a lot of certainty that the decision to stay was the right one, and different voices have different opinions. All this tension culminates in two things: the council meeting that ends with Bereg leaving Beleriand along with a thousand followers, and the Haladin being trapped behind the Gelion-Ascar Stockade and saved by Caranthir and his forces before going to Brethil. The resolution of this season-long arc is the Edain essentially deciding that if they're going to stay, they'll stay on their own terms, and each House decides what that means. Andreth and Aegnor meet and fall in love. The Athrabeth gets an entire episode. Elvish character drama that isn't about interacting with Men is kept to a minimum except for Aredhel's arc - this is the season where she loses her guards, gets stuck in Nan Elmoth, and encounters Eöl. He's dark and creepy and mysterious and she's at once afraid of him and kind of enamored by his difference from everything she's known, but he quickly turns awful. Huor, Morwen, Rían, Emeldir, Barahir, and Húrin are introduced. Maeglin is born, and grows up, and he and Aredhel escape Nan Elmoth and make a run for Gondolin with Eöl following. The Bragollach and Aredhel's death make up the season finale.

Season 7: Season opens with Fingon's coronation, Maedhros crashing said coronation, baby Gil-galad being sent to Fingon to be his ward and then sent away to Círdan on the coast, and the revelation that Sauron has taken Tol Sirion and Dorthonion has fallen. Flashbacks to various parts of the Bragollach: Celegorm, Curufin, and Celebrimbor saving Orodreth from Sauron's forces and fleeing to Nargothrond/Emeldir fleeing over the mountains to Brethil with the Bëorian civilians while Barahir and Beren and what's left of the fighters remain/Huor and Húrin being taken to Gondolin. Maedhros begins plans for Revenge, Fingon starts leveling austerity measures against the nobility to finance refugee relief, Gondolin mourns Aredhel and doesn't know what to do with Maeglin, and Nargothrond adjusts to having C&C around. Barahir tells Beren about Finrod's oath to always help their family. Sauron tricks Gorlim and slaughters everyone but Beren, who tries and fails to defend Dorthonion and finally flees south and gets lost in the woods of Neldoreth. He meets Lúthien, falls in love with her, and runs afoul of Thingol, who decides to use him to cause infighting in Finwë's descendants. Quest for the Silmaril, with all that entails, meanwhile Fingon struggles with High Kingship and Maedhros makes alliances with the Easterlings and the Dwarves of Belegost. Plenty of time is given to Beren and Lúthien and the Hunt for Carcharoth, with the season finale being their marriage after they return to life.

Season 8: Season opens with Huor and Húrin leaving Gondolin and returning home just in time for battle plans to really start ramping up. If everyone's attacking Angband, no one's attacking Doriath, and if Morgoth is defeated, maybe two Silmarils are really all we need, or so we hope. This is an entire season dedicated to loose ends - Thingol's refusal to join the Union, Orodreth assuming lordship of Nargothrond, Gondolin drama, etc. Morwen and Húrin marry and have Túrin and Urwen. Huor and Rían court and fall in love and marry, and Rían gets pregnant. Beren and Lúthien sneak away from Ossiriand with an infant Dior to visit Beren's family and are present for the wedding. There are little skirmishes, and some suspicions of treachery among the Easterlings that get shut down both by Bór's steadfastness and Fingon insisting that everyone's allied here and due complete respect. A plague hits Estolad, with Urwen dying, and Húrin trying to convince Morwen to send Túrin to Doriath since he's now blood kindred to the King. Morwen refuses, and discovers she's pregnant again as Húrin marches off to war. The Nirnaeth is a three-part season finale, with Tuor's birth juxtaposed against Huor's death.

Season 9: The Children of Húrin/Fall of Gondolin Extravaganza, Part One. Túrin is sent away to Doriath, grows up there, spends time on the marches, falls in love with Beleg and marries him in elvish fashion, and then finally snaps because he can't deal with Menegroth's racist bullshit anymore. Tuor, raised by elves, is finally captured and enslaved. Saeros dies. Túrin leaves Doriath to become an outlaw. Tuor survives as a thrall for years. Morwen and Nienor flee to Doriath, Gwindor escapes Angband and makes his way south towards Nargothrond, Beleg is killed by Túrin, and Tuor finally escapes thralldom. Tuor arrives at Nevrast and Túrin arrives at Nargothrond in the same episode. Ulmo appears to Tuor, and Túrin discovers from Gwindor that Húrin and his entire line have been cursed by Morgoth. Contrast Túrin's desire for action now with Tuor's somewhat careless wandering. Tuor meets Voronwë and they make for Gondolin. Glaurung attacks Nargothrond, and it falls. Túrin escapes into the wilderness and crosses paths with his cousin. Nienor loses her memory and is found by the men of Brethil in the same episode that Tuor comes to Gondolin. End season.

Season 10: CoH/TFOG, Part Two. Túrin goes home and finds his mother and sister gone and makes a mess of things but manages to escape. Tuor tries to tell Turgon to leave and can't convince him, and decides to remain in Gondolin. Tuor and Idril/Túrin and Nienor/Dior and Nimloth meet and fall in love, with this arc culminating in them all marrying in the same episode with the last scene cutting between the three ceremonies. Glaurung returns. Túrin kills him, Nienor gets her memory back, they die. Eluréd and Elurín born. Wanderings of Húrin, including the curse on Gondolin for not letting him in. The Nauglamir comes to Doriath, and with it the first echoes of doom. Season ends with Húrin and Morwen reuniting and their deaths.

Season 11: TFOG Part Three. Thingol gets nerfed by dwarves. Mablung dies. Battle of the Thousand Caves, Battle of Sarn Gebir, where Beren takes the Silmaril back from the dwarves and sends it to Doriath again. Melian departs for Valinor. Dior crowned King of Doriath. Elwing born. The Fëanorians attack Doriath in the Second Kinslaying but Elwing escapes with the Silmaril and makes it to the Havens of Sirion. Maeglin caught by Morgoth and tortured. Maedhros learns Elwing has the Silmaril but forswears the Oath. The actual Fall of Gondolin is a six-part season finale.

Season 12: Season opens with Maedhros futilely sending letters to Elwing pleading for her to relinquish the Silmaril. She refuses, being in her mid-teens now. Most of this season, the Fëanorians are a distant threat; the majority of the story is Eärendil and Elwing falling in love and assuming leadership of the Havens. Gil-galad becomes High King of the Noldor. Círdan starts advocating for asking for help from the West. Celebrimbor escaped Nargothrond's fall and is living as a civilian in Sirion. Idril and Tuor sail for Valinor, their fates unknown. Years pass. Eärendil and Elwing marry, and Eärendil resolves to try to go for help once more. An absolutely kickass ship gets built. Elrond and Elros are born. Eärendil sails West. The Fëanorians are unable to stave off the Oath any longer and attack the Havens, destroying everything. Elwing, convinced her sons are already murdered and having flashbacks to the disappearance of her brothers, jumps from the cliff with the Silmaril and flies for Eärendil's ship. Elrond and Elros are 'adopted' by Maedhros and Maglor. Season ends with a new star appearing in the sky, and Maedhros and Maglor recognizing it as a Silmaril and wondering what that means.

Season 13: Season opens with Gil-galad and Círdan and what Mannish and Dwarvish refugees they've encountered beginning to consider trying to fight back against Morgoth again, as he's been attacking their last remaining refuges. It's been seven years since Sirion was sacked, and no one's seen Elrond and Elros since their disappearance. A pair of twenty-year-old-by-human-standards twins who look neither elven nor human show up on Gil-galad's doorstep, and Círdan recognizes them as the missing boys. They won't talk about their childhood at all, but they say they're here to help in whatever way they can. Hostilities escalate quickly. Halfway through the season the Vanyar and several reembodied Noldor and Teleri arrive in Beleriand, led by Ingwion and Eönwë and Finarfin. The War of Wrath begins.

Season 14: Just. An entire season of the War of Wrath. It's decades of war there's a lot of shit to do here. The biggest thing is that Elros meets Men for the first time and feels like he's come home, starting at the bottom of their ranks and rising through them meritocracy-style. He meets a woman named Elwen who's essentially a pirate and falls in love with her.

Season 15: The first half of the season is the last bit of the WoW, ending with Eärendil killing Ancalagon and breaking open Thangorodrim. Sauron escapes, Morgoth is cast into the Void. Elrond and Elros make their Choice. Celebrían is born, with her naming witnessed by all the reembodied Arafinwëans. The elves who wish to return to Valinor do so, with some - Gil-galad and Galadriel and Celebrimbor, namely - electing to stay. The Valar reward the Men involved in the war with Númenor, though not all of them choose to go. Those that do elect Elros as their King after the Valar have departed. Loose ends are tied up, the beginnings of Middle-Earth are established, and the series ends on a shot of the setting sun from the point of view of Elros's palace.

More specific examinations of each season are coming. But this is a basic idea of what I’m looking for, this would be my Ultimate Dream Adaptation. I could probably cut it down to eight seasons? Probably. But then I’d lose that precious pacing.

#yes I'm well aware fifteen seasons is BONKERS #but if DBZ can run for always So Can We Damn It #the seriesmarillion

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brycelahelas · 4 years

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take care

rating: mature

book: open heart

summary: God. God. It was a bad idea going here. You want nothing more than to head to the bathroom and crawl out the window and just fucking run wherever the hell your legs take you. You want to run until the ache in your legs makes you forget all of your memories tainted with Rafael, until your lungs constrict to the point that you forget what it felt like to have Rafael’s lips on yours.

Maybe Landry had it right. Maybe emotions do hold us back. And maybe that’s your fatal flaw: you feel and care and love too much to the point that it bites you in the ass. It always did, in the end.

word count: 8000+

notes: THIS TOOK SO LONG FOR NO REASON....literally took me four weeks to complete bc i cannot finish anything in a timely manner. but i hope you all enjoy this 8k+ piece. i love to see interaction so pls reblog and like if you enjoyed! and let me know what you think of it! you can also read this on ao3 here.

dedicated to my lover my wife my shawty my life miss jade... happy birthday!!!

tagging: @zadiechoi @zigtheeortega @senatorraines @bigtoughswordboy (if you would like to be added to the list let me know!)

Of all the emotions you could be feeling right now, you find that, at the core of it all, you feel nothing.

This feeling isn’t indifference. Because if it were, you wouldn’t have this ache reverberating all over your body. And although you have a heightened sense of the blood coursing through your veins, of your heart pulsating against your chest, you bite your tongue, shake Sora’s hand, and say nothing when she kisses Rafael goodbye.

When she leaves, you look him in the eyes, sharply inhaling as you struggle to say, “You two are cute together.”

“You think so?” he answers, careful with his words as he eyes Bryce warily. When Bryce gets the message and leaves to greet Ethan, Rafael looks at you once again, eyes almost apologetic. You’re suddenly aware of the distance between you two and the tension that has settled in the air. As he moves closer towards you, you instinctively step forward, but upon realizing what you’re doing, you move back, away from the arms that you know so well, away from the man who once loved you.

He notices this and frowns, only slightly. “Listen,” he starts, voice so low you could mistake it for silence. “About us...I want you to know I still—”

You raise your hand, cutting him off. With your eyes squeezed shut, you take slow breaths and hope that the tears would go away if you didn’t look at him anymore. “Don’t worry, Raf,” you say softly, defeat resound in your voice. “You don’t owe me an explanation. I get it. She’s your childhood sweetheart.”

Just as you turn away from him to go into the hospital, you hear him say, tone just above a whisper, “...Okay.”

The defeat in his voice sounds exactly as it did in yours.

“Are you okay?”

You’ve never heard Esme sound so panicked. As you snap out of your daze, you find that you’ve been standing next to a patient, hands shaking as you hold a needle next to a protruding vein. Thankfully, the patient’s eyes are squeezed shut, looking away in hopes that you would insert their IV quickly.

You insert it in one fluid movement, leaving the plastic tube in and pulling the needle out. Once you let the nurses take over, you grab your clipboard and walk out of the room with Esme trailing close behind you.

“How long was I just standing there?” you finally say once you both enter the elevator and you press the button for the ICU. The silence is palpable, as it usually is with Esme, but her eyes betray a sense of concern.

“Too long,” she answers. “Look, really, are you okay? You’ve been out of it all day.”

“I’m fine,” you say, although visibly the opposite. Esme, being Esme, doesn’t push further.

Silent devastation.

Nothing comes close to accurately describing how you feel about this Rafael situation, but that’s what you settle on. There are no painkillers strong enough to dull the ache in your heart, no way of relieving you from the reality that Rafael isn’t yours anymore. But you live with it, day by day, and it’s apparently starting to show.

After shift change, Bryce bumps into you in the atrium and announces that it’s a Donahue’s night. “My treat,” he tells you, smiling wide as he wraps an arm around your shoulders. “You need it. And you can’t say no because it’s doctor’s orders.”

That elicits a small chuckle from you. “And if I do end up saying no?”

“Then you’ll have to sign an AMA form. But, as you know, it’s not recommended to go against medical advice.”

“Well, I guess I have no choice,” you tell him, grinning softly. “To Donahue’s it is.”

He flashes you that thousand kilowatt smile again and steers you out of Edenbrook and into Donahue’s.

On Fridays, Reggie always makes sure to decorate Donahue’s in a specific theme. Tonight is Samba Night, according to the flyer by the door. Mainly Edenbrook employees crowd Donahue’s, but the vibe is jovial as always, with more five dollar margaritas scattered around the place than usual. You spot your friends in their usual booth, joined by a few of the interns, and they wave you over excitedly.

“Over here!” Sienna calls out as she spots you and Bryce at the entrance. She’s sidled up next to Danny but makes space for you to sit next to her.

As you settle into your seat, all your friends suddenly blast you with questions about your day. How was your shift? Did you have any codes? Did you hear about the rapid response in ICU? Did you hear about the code grey in ED? It’s a dizzying array of questions, and something feels off about it, as if they’re saying so many things at once to startle you. You don’t realize what it is they’re doing until you follow Sienna’s line of sight.

When Rafael walks in with his arm around Sora’s waist, you fall incredibly still. Beside you, Jackie scoffs.

“What is he thinking bringing her here? God, I’m gonna need another shot.”

“I’m right there with you,” you say, suddenly feeling a heaviness in your chest. You turn sharply towards Bryce. “Bryce? Your treat, right?”

Bryce looks at you worriedly but stands right away. “On it,” he says and heads towards the bar.

God. God. It was a bad idea going here. You want nothing more than to head to the bathroom and crawl out the window and just fucking run wherever the hell your legs take you. You want to run until the ache in your legs makes you forget all of your memories tainted with Rafael, until your lungs constrict to the point that you forget what it felt like to have Rafael’s lips on yours.

Either way, you couldn’t bring yourself to care anymore. Rafael made his choice, and it wasn't you. Fucking deal with it. Huffing, you grab Elijah’s margarita (much to his dismay) and down it all in a few sips. You needed all the alcohol you can get in your system in order to survive the inevitable interaction between you and Sora and Rafael. Dr. Yoeun, Elijah’s intern, watches with wide eyes as you slam the completely empty glass on the table.

It’s Sora who spots you first. Eyes bright and lips pulled into a smile, she basically drags Rafael to your table in order to greet you. You feel yourself tense up as the both of them get to your table, but you feel a hand slip into yours and squeeze. It’s a presence that feels reassuring and familiar. As you look down and realize it’s Sienna’s hand, you can’t help but smile at the interaction and squeeze her hand back.

“Hey! Long time no see!” Sora says, diving into your arms and wrapping you in a tight hug. With your free hand, you give her a soft pat on the back, and she pulls away, grinning. “This is such a nice bar! I’ve never been here before.”

Rafael pipes up from next to her, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. “I just got off a shift and wanted to show her Donahue’s. Hope that’s okay.”

“Come on, Raf, you know we don’t own Donahue’s!” Elijah jokes. His tone offsets the tension at the table, which helps Rafael ease up a bit. “You’re welcome here anytime. You don’t need our permission.”

Rafael nods, looking away from the table. “Well,” he finally says, exhaling a bated breath, “I hope you guys have a good one.” Sora quickly waves goodbye, and the two head off to another part of the bar, most likely in an effort to avoid you.

When Bryce returns to the table with the drinks, you immediately down your whole shot. And another. Then another. It’s probably a good thing that you’re off tomorrow because tonight you’re just going to drink to your heart’s content and cease to think.

The thing is, you can’t bring yourself to hate Sora. She always leaves nice comments on your Instagram posts, and she always makes it a point to greet you whenever you run into each other at Donahue’s. There isn’t anything to hate besides the fact that she’s your ex’s new girlfriend. (Or is it old girlfriend? New-old girlfriend? Rekindled flame?)

Well, whatever she is to Rafael, she’s nice to you. And she’s wonderful to him, which is all you can ask for, really. No matter how desperately you want to hate her, you can’t. She’s given you no reason to.

There you go again. Feeling and caring and loving too much. It really will be the death of you.

You don’t see Rafael for a few months after that. At this point, it isn’t him avoiding you; it’s just that your jobs don’t make you cross paths, as is expected. Whatever Rafael-sized ache you had in your heart is gone. It’s just the thought of what could have been that bothers you occasionally.

And you do think of him, occasionally. It’s hard not to. You’re always wondering how he’s doing—if he’s eating enough, if he’s sleeping well, if he’s staying safe. Rafael’s always been such a selfless person, someone who lives by the philosophy that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. That worries you. For someone who is always taking care of other people, he doesn’t take quite good care of himself, and one day that’s going to bite him in the ass.

Well, in any case, it’s out of your hands now. At least, that’s what you tell yourself. You have your own patients to deal with and a grizzled senior resident to report to.

A low, menacing voice snaps you out of your thoughts. “You.”

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. When you turn around, you see Zaid beckoning you towards him. “Emergency Department. Now.”

As you fall into step with Zaid, rushing towards the Emergency Department, you ask, “What’s the situation down there? Do we have to run triage?”

“Not necessarily,” he answers. “It’s just high census there right now. Lots of virus scares, among other things. The ED physicians are getting overwhelmed so they enlisted our help.”

You nod silently. You were never too fond of the Emergency Department as an intern. Too much panic and frenzy down there with not enough space to think. You worked better on floors like the ICU or Medical Surgical, where you can take time to actually speak to the patients and work on a diagnosis. At the very least, the ED presented a challenge to you that could potentially be useful in building your diagnostician skills.

When you step through the doors of the ED, you see what Zaid means about high census. All the rooms, including the overflow beds, are filled with people, and every room presents a different case. While you definitely wanted to start in the rooms whose patients likely had an infectious disease, your eyes are drawn to an overflow patient who is wearing a very familiar paramedic uniform. As you draw closer to the patient, your walk quickly turns into a sprint when your suspicions about who it is are confirmed.

“Rafael, what happened?” you ask him, panicked. He’s clutching his side, face grimacing in pain. When you inspect him closer, you see that blood has seeped into his blue uniform.

A nurse approaches the two of you with the suture cart and stops right beside you. “The patient got stabbed during a call, but it’s only a surface wound. No pulmonary or great vessel trauma. A suture is needed though.”

The second she finishes, a call light goes off in ED Room 1, and you notice that she eyes it with a sigh. “ED Room 1 is your patient?” you ask her.

“Yes,” she answers. “Sweet old lady. She’s needed water for the past five minutes, but I haven’t been able to get her because of the craziness going on.”

“Go,” you tell her, waving her off. “I’ll take care of this suture for you.”

The nurse thanks you and walks off, leaving you and Rafael alone. After gathering your supplies for the suture, you sit next to him, aseptically clean the area, and get to work. Neither of you say anything until you rub numbing cream around the stab wound. It’s then that he lets out a hiss.

“You need to stop getting yourself into these situations, Raf,” you murmur softly as you finish the preparations for the suture. When you move to change your gloves, you hear a soft, restrained laugh coming from him.

“You, of all people, should know that I can’t do that,” he mumbles, shutting his eyes as you proceed to prepare the needle. “It’s my job to protect people—to rescue people. I’ll keep getting into these situations if it means I save someone’s life.”

“And if it costs your own?”

He answers without hesitation. “Then so be it.”

“We’re stitching in three...two...one...” You enter the needle into his skin, but he doesn’t react due to the numbing cream effectively desensitizing the area. As you stitch his wound together, you say, “Well, for now, let’s make sure you keep yourself safe, okay? You can’t exactly help people if your body is banged up like this.”

He laughs, this time a bit louder, that sound of familiarity returning to his voice. “It sounds like someone’s worried about me.”

Without missing a beat, you answer softly, “You know I am. I always am.”

It’s the first time you’re really seeing him in months, and he is beautiful. His hair has grown a little longer now, with curly brown wisps covering the nape of his neck. But besides that, he looks the exact same. When your eyes meet, it’s difficult for you to look away, but you find that it’s the same for him

“How...how have you been?” he asks you, snapping out of a daze. He gets up with significant effort but manages to sit upright to look at you properly. “It’s been a few months.”

“Yeah,” you tell him. “You know I’m always busy. No new stories to tell.”

He smiles that goddamn smile that made you fall for him all those months ago. It’s just as soft as you remember. But as you admire him, that small voice in your head just repeats over and over that he didn’t choose you, he chose Sora, and suddenly you’re the first look away.

As you put away the items you used to stitch Rafael up, your mouth seems to run faster than your brain, and you blurt out, “How’s Sora?”

Rafael looks confused. And rightfully so. You don’t even know why you asked that question when you weren’t prepared to hear the answer.

“She’s fine,” he answers, mindlessly. “At least, last time I saw her she was.”

“...last time you saw her?”

“Yeah. We’ve been broken up for a while now.”

“Broken up,” you echo. The words sound so bittersweet in your mouth. “What happened?”

He looks you straight in the eyes, thoughtfully regarding you for a second. “A certain doctor was always on my mind,” he answers nonchalantly. “And it wasn’t fair for Sora to stay in a relationship with me if I obviously liked someone else.”

Wait. “Wait. Hold on. What?” you sputter, watching him as he attempts to stand up.

“Huh, good job on these stitches,” he says, admiring your handiwork. “They’ll heal up nicely.”

“Rafael,” you say exasperatedly, but he holds his hand up to silence you.

“Considering the amount of patients you have, it might not be the best time to have this conversation,” he answers you, a mischievous grin on his face. “Let’s expand on this during dinner tonight.”

Dinner? With him? Tonight? Holy fuck, everything is moving so fast that you’re overwhelmed. Before he leaves, he pauses next to your shell shocked body and leans in, placing a soft kiss on your cheek. “It’s great to see you again.”

And he leaves. Just like that. As you watch him walk out of the Emergency Department and link up with his other paramedic buddies, you stand still in the spot he left you, trying to figure out what the hell just happened. In your periphery, Zaid’s shrill whistle alerts you to his presence, and he marches his way towards you in his usual Zaid way—overzealously angry.

“What the hell are you doing just standing there? Get that suture cart out of the way and get in ED 5!”

It isn’t until Zaid basically bulldozes you into a patient’s room that you remember you still have a job to do. As he grits his teeth at you, he grunts, “Why are you so smiley all of a sudden?”

You don’t answer, instead logging into the computer to pull up the patient’s chart. As Zaid sighs heavily and gets on with his initial assessment of the patient, you see your reflection in the screen and find that you can’t bite back your smile, no matter how hard you try.

Whenever you’re tangled in Rafael’s arms, you wrap your hand around his curls and just memorize. You memorize the way he feels so that there’s never a chance you’ll forget. The way his hair feels under your fingertips, the musky notes of his scent, the corded muscles on his back—everything, anything, you touch and feel and memorize.

After all, you lost him once, and once was enough for you to learn your lesson. Now, every time Rafael finds himself in your arms, you take in his warmth, his curls, his lips, his eyes, his touch. Clinging onto him as if he’ll go away one day, as if he’ll disappear despite his promises of forever.

Forever isn’t guaranteed. You’re a doctor. You know this. In all your years working in the hospital, from the very first time you set foot in one as a high school volunteer, you’ve seen enough death and destruction and despair to know that life is finite. But you’ll believe Rafael anyway, foolishly. A more rational person would question this way of thinking because it’s stupid, perhaps even irresponsible, for you to hold Rafael’s promises to such high standards.

But your mother once told you that if two people were meant to be, the universe will let it happen. And the universe, for all your faults and flaws, gave you a second chance with Rafael. While you’d like to believe that he is your forever, you definitely aren’t going to take your chances. For now, you memorize and memorize.

Rinse and repeat.

Since the moment you two got back together, officially, Rafael has made it a habit to bring you to the street market near his neighborhood at least once a week.

He says it’s a tradition at this point. The amount of times you beg him to bring you back to your favorite taco place, just so you can buy yourself your favorite carne asada taco as a treat, almost warrants the street market becoming a tradition for you two. Not that you’re complaining about it at all. Any excuse to get your hands on a soft, doughy flour tortilla filled to the brim with carne asada and cebolla y cilantro makes you a happy camper.

Today is no different. After rounding the market to see what each vendor has, you two decide on what to get: unsurprisingly, three carne asada tacos for you, and two chicken tamales for him. He likes the way this vendor makes their masa, and you like the way they make their salsa verde. So, not so secretly, you stash four sauce containers of it while he orders, just so you have enough to completely douse your tacos and his tamales.

“Maybe you should get a fifth cup,” Rafael says, voice oozing with faux concern. “I’m sure Delia didn’t notice you taking her entire stash of salsa verde.”

You give him a pointed look. “If Delia didn’t want me to take her entire stash, maybe she shouldn’t have made it so good? Checkmate, Aveiro.”

“Touché,” he says as you two take a seat at one of the empty tables near the tamale stand. Taking the lid off the container, you excitedly drench your tacos in salsa verde, the green sheen of it reflecting against the fluorescent lights above you. Nothing in the world is more mouthwatering than these tacos. Doesn’t matter if you see them every week. You’d eat them every day if you could, and you just know you won’t get sick of them. Rafael’s eyes crinkle as he laughs, and he coats his own food with the salsa. “God, you really love Delia’s salsa, huh?”

“More than anything,” you answer quickly. “Even you. I’m sorry, babe.”

“Guess we’ll have to ask Delia to cater our wedding, huh?”

“Oh my god, can we really?” you ask, taking a bite out of your food. “Man! Have her work with Oscar from the taco stand because these two together are just perfection. Absolute perfection. I don’t care if the people who come to our wedding hate tacos. They’re going to eat tacos. Period.”

Rafael looks at you thoughtfully, with so much affection in his eyes that you can feel butterflies in your stomach. It almost makes you stop eating. Almost. But your food tastes too good, and you’re too hungry to stop, and it doesn’t matter how he looks at you. You’re digging in.

By the time you finish with your first taco, he still hasn’t touched his food. You quirk your eyebrow and ask him, “Why are you just staring at me? Not hungry?”

“What if we got married? For real?”

He asks it so suddenly that you’re caught incredibly off guard. You make a choked sound, almost spilling the salsa verde all over your clothes.

“W...what?” you ask him, embarrassed at the way you reacted, wiping away the sliver of salsa drooling from your mouth. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to get married. In fact, you’ve thought about this very much, to the point where it was almost obsessive. It’s just that you don’t understand how you stuffing a taco in your mouth brought up a genuine conversation about marriage and what that meant for your futures.

“We’re coming up on two years now. We’ve been through a lot of things, tough things, that we’ve survived through together, and we’ve been living together for a while. Marriage is the next logical step, I think.” He licks his lips, looking down as if he’s nervous to continue. “I know how you feel about marriage—how it's an institution that perpetuates gender roles and how couples don’t need to be married to show that they’re committed to each other. But I’d like to marry you, very much. I truly do.”

“Oh, Raf,” you say, but he immediately cuts you off, sounding panicked.

“And I don’t mean to bring this all up to you so fast. My words sound so garbled because I’m so nervous. I don’t even know why. Just know that I don’t expect an answer immediately and that you don’t have to take my last name. Your last name is on the medical degree that you earned, and I don’t want you to think about changing it for me. We can even take your last name. Or hyphenate. I don’t care. As long as I can marry you and be with you for the rest of my life.”

You’re quiet for a while, taking in everything that he’s said. The man really is wordy when he’s nervous, and he looks like he’s sweating bullets. As you take his hand, you notice how clammy he is, and he looks at you expectantly.

“I can’t imagine marrying anyone but you, Rafael,” you answer, genuinely. The words sound so right coming out from your mouth, and that’s how you know it’s true. Rafael’s always been the one for you. You’ve known ever since the day you met him. Doesn’t matter the speed bumps along the way. All that matters is that you’re here now, together, finally deciding what the future holds for the two of you.

You expect him to look relieved. Instead, he looks exasperated. “God, it took you that long to say that? Can’t you feel how nervous I am?”

You grin and squeeze his hand tightly. “I can. And I’m enjoying it.”

He shakes your hand off his and finally stuffs a forkful of tamale into his mouth. “You’re a riot,” he says, low and steady, shaking his head. Although he tries not to smile, it spills out anyway.

A low hum reverberates in your throat. “A riot that you want to spend the rest of your life with.”

“If you keep that up, I’ll uninvite Delia and Oscar to the wedding.”

“Please don’t. If you do that, they might not give me the recipes for their salsa and tacos!”

“Somehow, I doubt they were going to do that anyways,” he answers, finishing the last of his tamale. “Now let’s hurry up so I can buy you the cream puffs you like.”

As you watch Rafael dig into his second tamale, you think back on the things he mentioned about your opinions on marriage. Marriage was something you didn’t believe in, partly due to your gender studies professor in undergrad and partly due to your parents’ failed marriage. People just get married too young, too fast, and divorce is an ugly, expensive thing. As much as you wanted to believe that true love exists, you couldn’t bear to relive through the hell that was your parents’ relationship, which is why you’ve always abstained from the thought of contractually binding yourself to another person. Images of your parents fighting—the passive aggressiveness, the bad mouthing of the other in hopes that you’d take their side—flit in your mind, a constant reminder that keeps you away from readily admitting that marriage was for you. But you are not your parents. And you will not make the same mistakes they did.

You’re glad your parents got divorced. Separately, they’re wonderful people, but they just didn’t fit. And maybe that’s the key to it all. People are like puzzles: their nooks and crannies have to fit just right in order for you to see the whole picture. So maybe that’s why your parents never worked out. Instead of falling in love with the whole person, they fell in love with fragments, only loving the parts they chose to see. To love a person, you must love them whole. And that’s what’s so different about your relationship with Rafael.

As someone who keeps herself guarded due to the trauma of parental divorce, the idea of soulmates didn’t particularly strike you as reality, but perhaps you’re beginning to think that they are real. Because as you sit here across from Rafael, you finally feel as if you’ve found yours.

The birds are chirping today.

It’s pleasant. Especially since you don’t have an alarm blaring into your left ear every thirty minutes. As you roll over, you sling your arm over a sleeping figure, who snuggles closer to you at the first sense of your touch.

“Mmm...five more minutes...” Rafael’s voice is low and scratchy in the morning. It reminds you of how sandpaper feels. You fling your leg over him, and now your whole body is cuddling him. Kind of like a sloth.

“No one’s asking you to get out of bed, silly,” you murmur, giving him a soft kiss at the top of his head.

“Good,” he says, craning his neck upwards to return a kiss to your lips. “Don’t wanna get up. This weighted blanket you bought was a good investment.”

“If it keeps you in bed with me, then I’d say it’s a pretty good investment too.”

He chuckles at that, opening his eyes a peek. His eyes are just so brown that it makes your heart ache. They’re so beautiful, especially in the sunlight, and it’s so surprising that he doesn’t think they’re anything special. As you push the bits of his bangs covering his eyes, you two stare at each other for a moment and share a knowing smile.

You think it’s fair to say that you’ve never truly known love until now.

“You gotta stop buying things that’ll keep me in bed, babe,” he grumbles, closing his eyes for a moment. “I won’t be able to get up for work.”

“Here’s an idea, then,” you begin, closing your eyes too. You listen to his breathing, so soft to the point of silence, and wrap your arms around him more tightly than before. “You and I both call in sick today. We stay in bed. Maybe even kiss a little.”

“Tempting,” he says, a smile dancing on his lips. “But as much as I’d like to kiss you all day, I gotta pay for my half of rent.”

“Alright, alright.” You throw the weighted blanket off you but leave his side intact. “You stay in bed for now, and because I love you so much, I’m going to cook you breakfast.”

Once you slide off the bed and put on your fuzzy slippers, you trudge towards the kitchen in a sleep-deprived haze. But before you can reach the door, you hear Rafael say, “Wait.”

You turn around to find him sitting up on the bed, body leaning languidly as he eyes you. “You know that I love you, right? And that I don’t know what the hell I did to deserve someone like you?”

Bemused, you lean against the doorway with a smirk on your face. “And this is suddenly coming up because?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. I know that I tell you I love you every day, but today feels different. Might be a special day for us.”

“You sound like my Co-Star app,” you tell him. He laughs at that and waves you off, pulling your weighted blanket over his head. As you make your way into the kitchen, you look at your phone.

5:49 am.

Today will be a special day. You just know it.

“What’s going on?” Sienna asks, frantic.

As Zaid and Ines lead a group towards the Emergency Department, you feel a chill going through your spine. There’s no reason to have this many residents working in the ED, unless—

“We’re running triage,” Zaid says, more solemnly than you’ve ever heard him in your life. “Huge fire downtown. It’s chaos in the ED, and we need all hands on deck.”

“Why are they coming here?” asks Jackie. “Mass Kenmore is a Level I Trauma Center. Are there really that many patients that they had to bring some to Edenbrook?”

“I’m afraid so,” Ines answers her, voice trembling a bit too much for comfort. “According to reports, the fire spread so quickly that it was almost impossible to get people out.”

That does not sound good. At all. As Zaid and Ines rattle on about the specifics of the situation, you can’t help but worry about Rafael. Your mind always wanders to him, instinctively. There’s no doubt in your mind that he’s on scene, helping as many people as he can, because he’s always been one to go above and beyond for people in situations like these, even if that meant endangering himself. Rafael won’t let you change that, won’t let you stop him from doing his job, and so you don’t. All you can do right now is hope that he’s safe wherever the hell he is.

The second you fly through the doors of the Emergency Department, a breath gets caught in your throat. Zaid wasn’t kidding when he was saying ED was in a state of chaos. You’ve never seen so many burn patients in your life. As you start giving out tags, you worry that the endless flurry of patients will never end but worry more that the flurry will end with people you know.

Walking into ED 13, you find that your patient is conscious but barely. His oxygen saturation is dangerously low, and the nurses have already put him on oxygen to stabilize his vitals. You take note of his wheezing and the red tinge on his skin. Must have been a terrible, terrible fire for all of this to happen to so many people. You can’t count how many patients you’ve seen today that look like the one right in front of you.

To your relief, he starts perking up the second he sees you. As you approach him, you see a few second-degree burns you didn’t notice before and make a mental note to chart that the second you get a chance to. “Mr. Huston, I’m your doctor for this afternoon. How are you feeling right now?”

“Honestly, I’ve been better.” The man can still joke, but a violent wave of coughs soon takes over him. “Have...have you seen my wife? I been...askin’ around, but...none of the nurses...”

“Take it easy, Jamal,” you caution him. “Breathe in and out of that mask for me, will you?”

He listens. Now, with more oxygen in his system, he takes the mask off and continues. “My wife was in the building when the fire started. Went there to visit her...then one thing led to another...and...”

“Fire broke out?”

Mr. Huston wheezes as he nods.

“Did you breathe in a ton of smoke while you were in the building?”

“Not as much as other people thanks to this nice young paramedic that pulled me out.”

You try to bite back a smile as Mr. Huston tells the story of the nice young paramedic’s heroics. Of course, Rafael’s out there doing his thing, rescuing people from burning buildings, performing CPR on victims without pulses, and being an all-around good fucking human being. From what Mr. Huston tells you, Rafael is doing things that are way above his pay grade, but you didn’t expect any less. He’s always been so selfless.

“Mr. Huston, where did this paramedic go after he pulled you out from the building?”

“I thought he came with me...did he not?”

Huh. You swore you haven’t seen Rafael around. As giant as Edenbrook’s Emergency Department was, you would have seen him at least once, considering that you’ve been rounding the entire unit like crazy. He must have been in and out of the ED to go back to the building site, or he was in the bathroom taking a break.

Either way, you don’t think anything of it. If anything, Mr. Huston’s story is a confirmation that Rafael is safe and alive, and in a day as crazy as today, that’s all you need. As you finish your assessment of Mr. Huston, you move over to the nurse’s station, logging into a computer to chart Mr. Huston’s signs and symptoms.

A bell chimes to notify all ED staff that the next wave of ambulances are arriving in T minus one minute. The paramedics arrive earlier than that, quickly surging through the ambulance bay doors, transporting patients to the very little overflow beds the ED has. One of the paramedics in particular catches your eye, and a look of recognition flashes over his face. It then quickly turns into a look of sympathy.

When you look closer, you realize that it’s Rafael’s partner, Max. He’s got several second-degree burns all over his arms, and his typically freshly-pressed uniform looks disheveled and charred.

That chills that runs down your spine? It returns. Stronger, this time. But you don’t understand why.

It isn’t until you look down onto the gurney he’s pushing that you realize what it is he’s so sympathetic about.

“Raf?”

You hear yourself scream but don’t remember commanding your body to do so. Somehow, your body drags itself from your spot at the nurse’s station, and you try to get to him before several nurses stop you. “Doctor, doctor,” one of the nurses says, eyes flashing in panic, “you need to calm down. We can’t help him if you can’t calm down.”

Despite her pleas, you rip past everyone trying to hold you back, lashing out at them to stay away.

You rush towards him, fat tears beginning to roll down your cheeks in waves. “Raf? Raf, can you hear me?” As you get to his side, you immediately begin to assess, your heart beating so heavily that you feel as if it’s going to explode.

You listen to his breathing, and it’s labored, as if he’s struggling to fill his lungs. His eyes, the very same ones you were just admiring this morning, are dull and lifeless. His skin is crackled, like a burning log, dark flakes peeling off with the slightest puff of air.

All you can do is freeze.

Time slows down when the world feels like it’s ending. This you know because right here, right now, as you stand beside the unconscious body of the love of your life, the world truly seems like it’s about to end.

You can’t even touch his fucking face. You can’t touch his hands, his arms, or even his waist because everything seems so fragile. His mouth is agape, and in it, you can see how dry his tongue is and how soot from the fire has dried on his lips. You can’t bear to look at him, not like this, in this condition. So, as you grip the railing of the gurney, your knuckles paling at the sheer force of it, your eyes flash towards his partner.

You can’t even see Max clearly because your tears blind your sight. This is just so pathetic.

“What happened?” you ask quietly. When he doesn’t answer, you ask louder. “What happened?”

“He...he went inside the building,” Max says, on the verge of tears. “After he pulled out the man in ED 13, we heard a woman yelling for help deep inside. She barely got out before the ceiling collapsed on him.” A beat passes before the tears start flowing down his cheeks, and his voice starts to crack. “I...I promise, I told him not to go, I told him—”

“Doesn’t matter what you told him, he was never going to listen,” you cut him off, bitterly wallowing in the fact that Rafael was too selfless for his own good.

Your own tears have streaked your face a dozen times over, and you can taste nothing but salt. It’s difficult to look down at the body lying on the gurney in front of you. All the parts of Rafael that made him Rafael were dimmed, if not gone completely. There were no more silly grins that you always saw even when you weren’t doing anything inherently funny, no more warm, strong arms to fall into when you found yourself crying over the littlest things, and no more big brown eyes to admire in the morning. As you look down at those brown eyes, hoping to see them once more, you find that, rather than seeing them glazed over, they’re transfixed directly on you.

“Raf, oh my god,” you wail, getting as close to him as you possibly can. His mouth, as dry as it is, twitches into a smile, and he reaches out to cup your chin in his palm.

“My love,” he answers, voice so weak that you can mistake it for silence.

“Raf, what did you do?” you sob.

“What I had to do,” is all he rasps out.

“You’re hurt,” you say, voice quivering. “You’re hurt, and you have so many burns...we...we need to order skin grafts...your lungs are damaged due to smoke inhalation...I just...I can’t do this, Raf, I can’t do this without you.”

More tears stream down your face, all the way to his hands. Although you want to believe otherwise, the damage to his body is severe, and you know he’s not going to make it. Somewhere in his eyes, you can sense that he knows too.

“Let me hold your hand,” he says, after a moment of silence between you both. He grasps your hand tightly, as tightly as he can, and shuts his eyes. Between labored breaths, he manages to say, “You are my forever.”

This is his goodbye. There are no grand exits for Rafael Aveiro. Just simple ones. And of all the things he could have said, he chose to remind you that he will be with you for as long as you live.

At the end of the day, that was the best thing about Raf. He died as he lived—feeling and caring and loving too much. And you’ll take that with you, into forever.

“You’re mine too, Raf,” you answer back, bringing his hand to your cheek.

He smiles one last time. As minutes pass, his grip lessens and his chest stops rising. When a nurse silently walks up next to you, you continue to hold his hand tightly, silent tears rolling down your face.

In all your years working in the hospital, you’ve seen enough death and destruction and despair to know that life is finite, but the finality of life has never felt so painful as it does right now. As you exhale a shaky breath, you open your eyes and say the words you wish you never had to say about someone you loved so much.

“Time of death: 2:34 pm.”

Rafael’s grandmother asked you to speak at the funeral. It was a difficult speech to prepare, considering the circumstances. While you wish nothing more than to send Rafael a proper goodbye, you were in no state to prepare any arrangements of any kind. Just typing “good afternoon” on the Word document brought you to tears.

But you did it anyways. If not for Rafael’s grandmother, for Rafael himself. He, of all people, deserved it.

When you stand up on the podium, you scan the crowd to see familiar faces. Everyone you know is there, including Chief Banerji and Dr. Ramsey. You’re even surprised to see that Sora is in attendance, sitting all the way in the back row with misty eyes and a sympathetic smile on her face.

Clearing your throat, you start to speak. “Good afternoon, family and friends. I want to start off this speech by saying Rafael would not have wanted us to mourn him. That is why I wrote this speech as a celebration of life because we should celebrate the life of someone as beautiful as Rafael Aveiro.

“The first time I met Raf was when we were both on call. He had just saved someone, which is always the way we met up during the first year of our relationship. When I asked him if he really went into a burning inferno to save someone, he answered, matter-of-factly: ‘Well yeah...wouldn’t you?’ And that interaction tells you everything you really need to know about Raf. He cared so much about others, even if it put him in danger. He loved his job, he loved his patients, and he loved pushing himself beyond the boundaries of his job description.

“I think that’s what drew us so closely together, what bound us together for life. Healthcare is a field where you’re fully devoted to strangers, where you’re constantly pushing yourself to be better so you can treat your patients to the best of your ability. And Rafael was so damn good at it, so damn good at his job. He loved people. He loved others. At the expense of himself. But I’ll never fault him for that. Raf’s sacrifice meant that someone else’s family member got to live, and at the end of the day, that’s what he lived for.

“The woman he saved that day was the wife of one of my patients. The two got separated in the fire, and Raf made sure that she would be able to get out and see to live another day. He was so selfless, so worthy of a long, fulfilling life. And while it’ll never get easier to refer to him as the past, I hope he knows that he will always be a big part of my future, wherever it’ll take me. Take care, Rafael, and may you rest in peace.”

As you finish your speech with a shaky breath, an applause erupts from the audience. Rafael’s grandmother is the most visibly shaken by your speech, and when you take your seat, she grabs your hand and squeezes it tightly, not letting go until the end of the service.

The service itself was a long and arduous process. You looked away at certain parts, hoping that Rafael’s grandmother didn’t see just how much you were sobbing. After all, it’s never easy to see the cremated remains of the love of your life. Looking away doesn’t make you forget that he’s gone, but it saved you from seeing another reminder of your reality.

Afterwards, once everyone gives their condolences, his grandmother comes up to you again. She looks at you, sad and mournful, and that’s all it takes for you to burst into tears. Bringing her hand up to wipe your tears away, she hushes you gently and takes you into her arms.

“You know he loved you, right?” she asks you, softly. All you do is nod because you can’t seem to croak any words out. “He loved you so much. I’ve never seen that boy so head over heels for a girl. Even asked me for our family ring so he can ask you to marry him.”

You pull back, surprised. “He did?”

“He did,” grandmother says, nodding to confirm. “He even went to the jeweler to resize it for you, just so it’ll fit on your finger when he proposed.” She steps back to appraise you with a sorrowful smile on her lips. “I wouldn’t have given it to him just for any girl, you know. The universe wanted you two together. I just knew.”

You nod, smiling through the tears. You know it did. Just not in this timeline.

Sure enough, when you finally have the strength to look through his drawers, you find that there’s an engagement ring nestled inside a small box deep within his underwear drawer. It’s beautiful—all jade-colored with gold details. And just as his grandmother said to you, it was a perfect fit.

More often than not, you think back on that day. You think of things you could have done better. Maybe if you got him on fluids, maybe if you ordered a skin graft as soon as you saw him, maybe if you just convinced him to stay home that day, he would still be alive.

But some things are just out of your control. Even if you got him to stay home, he would have hopped in the car the second he heard about the emergency. Even if you ordered a skin graft on time, there was too much surface area on his body to cover. Even if you had gotten him on fluids, he was already at the point of no return by the time you got to his body.

Too many things going wrong, too little time.

Medicine is all quantifiable data and qualitative research. As powerful as that is, it couldn’t go against death, and it couldn’t go against fate. There is nothing that is humanly designed that can go against the universe.

While that may seem terrible, it is what it is. Life is cruel. It is selfish and impatient. It takes as it gives, and it is unremorseful.

But life is also beautiful. It still gave you Rafael. It gave you his warmth in the morning and in the night, his soft kisses, and his comforting hugs. It gave you his empathy for others, his love for Caribbean food, and his dedication to his patients. It gave you a chance at knowing what true love feels like, despite believing your entire life that you’ll never find it.

Life may be fleeting, but that’s why you’ll decide to live it day by day. Because that's what Rafael would have wanted.

And you wouldn’t want to live life any other way.

#rafael aveiro #rafael aveiro x mc #rafael aveiro x reader #open heart #playchoices #choices #my writing #fic: take care

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ziracona · 4 years

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I know you mentioned that Bill wasn't included in ILM because you didn't know much about his personality. Out of curiosity though, if you had included him in the fic, how would you have integrated his history of being in the middle of a zombie apocalypse that couldn't have happened for the other characters? Or like, what approach would you have gone with?

Oh this is kind of a tough one! I don’t know Bill well, because I haven’t played Left 4 Dead, but that actually wasn’t why he isn’t in the fic. I stopped including survivors after Jane Romero, because DbD updates so much that I hit a point it was either add more characters but know you won’t have time to develop them and give them the character arcs they deserve because you’re nearing the end, or stop adding people, and it’s always better to whole-ass less then half-ass more—especially with characters that are awesome and really deserve some due diligence. While Bill is actually one of the earliest survivors released for DbD (he was...siiixth or something? Like right after Ace? Or Nea?), that’s only for PC. On PS4 and Xbox, he wasn’t added until much later, and I play DbD on PS4. So, for me as a player, Bill wasn’t actually released until after Ash was. When I started writing, I was kind of vaguely aware he existed on PC? But I had 0 personal experience with him, and so I went with my own/console experience when it came to writing.

As for what I’d have done, that’s a dang good question, and I’m not entirely sure— I’d definitely have thought about it longer if I had included him, but I’ll give you what I think I would have done? Obviously, Bill’s not from the world the rest of the survivors are. While almost any of the stories can coexist with minimal changes (NOES 2010, Halloween, Stranger Things, even Ash are more or less fairly easily compatible), zombie apocalypse—couple things I know they’re bound to notice, ya know? Still, I stand by multiverse being both unnecessary and not the best decision for the story I want to tell, so what I think I’d have done is this: (under the cut bc it’s gonna be long af--get ready for some quantum theory lol)

Okay, so the Entity canonically can operate outside of natural time. Meaning it can take survivors from earlier or later, and isn’t on the same space-time fixed relationship the world is. Now, time travel is tricky. Or anything with a complex portrayal of time. But there are three basic setups for time travel potential that actually make sense. They are as follows:

Anything that will happen, has happened (or the Artemis Fowl timetheory). This one is pretty straightforward. Sure, you can travel through time, but the universe you live in right now where you are choosing to go back is the result of the past you caused. The change you’re causing is past-tense already, and the only real agency you have is in causing the circumstances leading up to where you already are. This still allows for some fancy manuvering (for example: want to save a friend’s life? No problem. You can’t remove the motivation to go back, so you in the past still have to believe they die, but so long as you didn’t like, hold their severed head—if it’s a situation like say, you saw them blow up, you can save that person—you just have to make sure your past self still sees them “die” in the explosion and thus chooses, as you did/are, to go back.) This is my personal least favorite theory of space-time, but it’s a solid one.

The second is the The Future is not Set (or the Back to the Future timetheory). This one says time is flexible. You can go back and kill your father before you’re born, and the future will change. How ripple effects happen are varried—for example in strict timeline variations of this theory such as those in Frequency or Back to the Future, if you cause yourself not to be born, time will catch up with you, and while the impact you left on the world remains, you, as you no longer are born, will vanish from existence as the time stream corrects itself. However, more lenient time streams such as the versions in Continuum or Futurama exist as well, where even if your effects on the world prevent you from being born, the version of you currently alive continues to exist as an anomaly. This is by far, in my opinion, the most enjoyable solid timetheory.

And last (unless you count Time Travel is Impossible as a solid theory which I guess technically you can??), theory three (or the Doctor Who timetheory). This theory portrays time as possible to change and allowing for alternatives to be taken, but not in all places and ways. It presents very hard limits on what can change, and offers a much more inflexible time continuum than theory 2, as well as much higher consequences for causing alterations. Rather than direct cause-effect consequences, like vanishing because you caused yourself not to be born, usually the result of tampering and causing a change of large size is that you will create time paradoxes, which the time stream itself desperately will try to destroy/fix, usually horribly and with massive and brutal force. Things like Life is Strange fall into this theory as well, with Dr. Who being on the lenient end of this spectrum and LIS the strict. It offers the technicality of a changeable future, but none of the true and almost wild freedom offered by variations of theory 2. Basically, any large scale or personal change you cause will rip holes in the universe, and either you will give in to fate and re-allow the loved one you saved to die, or you push on through and accept massive time-space damage and casualties for the choice. I’ve got mixed feelings on this one myself, as I’ve seen it handled super well and made a thing that can be fun, but it also is the theory that pisses me off the most when written poorly haha.

Anyway, massive time theory talk over, in Dead by Daylight, the Entity can traverse time canonically. In ILM, the survivors only talk briefly, after meeting Jane, about theories for how that works, but here is what I would say if ILM had included Bill. To preface, there are two timelines that each follow the same set of basic rules, but have a little freedom in how they effect each other (not so much in how they effect themselves): the Survivor’s world/reality timeline, and the Entity’s pocket dimension timeline. Neither timeline can contradict itself and create paradoxes within its own space. So. Bill is from the same universe as anyone else. At one point, the early 2000s followed the narrative of Left 4 Dead, and the Entity grabbed Bill where & when he “dies” in canon. Only, some time after grabbing Bill, the Entity took another person which (completely unintentionally on the Entity’s part) triggered a massive Buttery Effect on the world, and greatly altered reality, causing not only the Left 4 Dead apocalypse to no longer occur, but causing Bill himself to never be born. Bill however was already outside of the world and in the Entity’s pocket dimension at the time, and thus was not there to be “erased” and exists as an anomaly. While he is paradoxical in his own world, he does not at all contradict the Entity’s established timeline—he adheres to it. While the memory of survivors is effected and updated by changes made in reality by the Entity, because there is no version of “Bill” in the world anymore, he did not have his memories altered (there was no “Bill” for the timestream to update at all, as he is entirely an anomaly now, so it would have no reason to try). The world they exist in has a time continuum that operates off a variation somewhere between theory 3 and theory 2 (the future is not set, but also there are fix points—however, these almost exclusively exist in regard to one’s own past. The big rule is that personally making the act of altering your own past intentionally by nature also alters your motivations for acting in the first place, and thus negates the possibility of you doing so. While you can change other people’s pasts, or accidentally effect your own, you physically cannot change your own intentionally, because you’d create either a paradox or a time loop, and it would rip you apart).

Dwight is more or less correct when he hypothesizes that they might have all remembered a world with Jane Romero still in it until an hour ago. However, all of ILM itself is that version of time/reality (ie the “last” or “final” version, as it were/the version that came into being when Jane was taken). Her loss butterfly affect updated people, and so they remember her being missing. While the Entity could hypothetically someday accidentally do things that make it so survivors aren’t born in the external reality, it cannot do so intentionally or accidentally-on-purpose, because it is bound by the rules of its own personal history/timeline, and it can neither intentionally nor accidentally do a damn thing to prevent what has transpired inside itself from happening. Similarly, since the survivors are established as existing inside it, even if they were erased at birth, they would still exit it intact in November of 2019 with all their memories. The Entity thus has no real way to hurt them even in revenge, unless it is willing to risk taking them again from a later point in time. Most small decisions do not have buttery effects that are very large at all, and in general time attempts to smooth out with the least possible changes. What happened to Bill was a one in a billion fortunate/unfortunate chance thing, and was such an unlikely thing to happen in the first place, the chances of a thing like it happening again are astronomically small, and almost completely certainly would not to occur. In some ways it would be nice for him though, because he could escape back to a peaceful reality where many people he lost are still happy & living. While they don’t remember him, people would still have the echos of their past inside them (feelings of deja vu, memories in dreams, attachment and familiarity with people you never “met”) and he could reconnect with them if he wanted and live happily with old Left 4 Dead crew and his new survivor family. : )

#ask #anonymous #writing #In Living Memory #In Living Memory (fic)#dead by daylight #for the record I'd spend /way/ more time fleshing out a time-space theory before /actually/ writing it in a story #but this seemed like a pretty solid take for an 'along these lines' answer

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maydaymadier · 4 years

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Fannar Playlist Breakdown

idk, I’m procrastinating so I’m gonna explain all the songs on the Fannar playlist

Immigrant Song, Led Zeppelin basically my inspirations are showing here, Fannar’s original concept was ‘Well the MCU writers can do whatever the fuck they want with Loki so so can I’ so I pulled this one from the Thor: Ragnarok soundtrack, on a lesser note “We come from the land of the ice and snow/From the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow/The hammer of the gods/W'ell drive our ships to new lands/To fight the horde, and sing and cry/Valhalla, I am coming!” and he’s literally from a place called The Frozen North

Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen The only family member whose opinion matters to Fannar anymore is his mom. There’s also just the general level of dramatic thinking that happens when grievously injured and believing you’re about to die. “Mama, ooh,/Didn't mean to make you cry,/If I'm not back again this time tomorrow,” is probably about what he was thinking when he was

Bleeding Out, Imagine Dragons bleeding out at the bottom of an abyss, back mangled and painfully aware that he was about to die, a Fannar backstory jam, this one lines up with when Fannar made his warlock pact with Auril

Monster, Lady Gaga He just vibes with this one, I think Fannar would fucking love this song

Judas, Lady Gaga Once again, I just think he vibes with this one, he just vibes with it

Fox on the Run, Sweet OH MAN, this works on multiple counts. Fannar starts off the campaign as a ‘fox on the run’ bc he’s like, a trickster running away, avoiding home, ALSO “I - don't wanna know your name/'Cause you don't look the same/The way you did before/Okay - you think you got a pretty face/But the rest of you is out of place/You looked alright before” works super well bc Fannar literally grew up with a different face, and he lost it bc of backstory so this would be a random person from The Frozen North talking about him.

Surrender, Cheap Trick I don’t know, I think I just got Fannar vibes from it? A family with a really weird, vaguely dysfunctional dynamic? The parents have weird pasts and that’s reflected in the kids? Yeah, that checks out.

Dead and Gone, The Black Keys Early in his pact Fannar, still presumed dead by anyone who’d previously known him, and at his patron’s beck and call “So long/Why you waiting so long?/After every single word is said/I'm feeling dead and gone”

Sinister Kid, The Black Keys Fannar, especially early on, was wildly, blatantly self-destructive, not even trying to hide it. “A sinister kid is a kid who/Runs to meet his maker/A drop dead sprint from the day he's born/Straight into his maker's arms/And that's me, that's me/The boy with the broken halo/That's me, that's me/The devil won't let me be”

The Kids From Yesterday, My Chemical Romance idk, I don’t remember why I originally added this one. But it’s probably just some Fannar-reflecting-on-his-past from time to time

Sleep, My Chemical Romance Admittedly, Fannar’s done some pretty shitty things, but he’s a lot harder on himself than anyone else is, “Undeserving of your sympathy 'Cause there ain't no way that I'm sorry for what I did” so it’s easier to just own it and revel in the idea that he’s a bad person who isn’t sorry than admit to anything.

Once Upon a December, Liz Callaway (Anastasia) BACKSTORY JAM!!!!!! This is like,,,,baby Fannar, his present self is so detached from who he was as a small child that that whole part of his life doesn’t really feel real. He knows it happened, but it’s such a 180 he can’t properly wrap his head around it.

One Way Or Another, Blondie Early on in the campaign he was being tracked down by someone, who later turned out to be his Nana Frostyears (his childhood governess, i guess i’ll call her a governess), tracking him down to bring him home to save the kingdom

Unknown Brother, The Black Keys This is more from his brother Orvar’s perspective, Orvar trying to wrap his head around what happened to his baby brother Fannar as an outsider looking in. “Though I never met you/And we spoke not a word/I'll never forget you/Through stories that I have heard/For you unknown brother/My baby's mother's pained/Because your soul is in heaven/But your memory remains”

Death By Glamour, Toby Fox The ranger (Isorropia) and the druid/DM1 (Thrain) were talking about Fannar amongst themselves and decided that it fit him and I was inclined to agree.

Don’t Stop Me Now, Queen Fannar, a few years post-backstory, come into himself, still an impulsive bastard but he’s having fun now.

Dinner & Diatribes, Hozier Look, I’m sorry but a lot of songs are gonna be on here bc they’re horny and this is one of them. This could be Fannar’s pov, it could be an attractive stranger interested in Fannar’s pov, it could go either way. “Honey, this club here is stuck up/Dinner and diatribes/I knew it from the first look of/The look of mischief in your eyes”

Movement, Hozier yet another Horny Song, but this time a little more, awed by the other person bc when Fannar decides he wants to sleep with someone he goes big or goes home and sets his sights on impressive people......like a dragon “I still watch you when you're groovin'/As if through water from the bottom of a pool/You're movin' without movin'/And when you move, I'm moved”

Blame It On The Girls, MIKA OH BOY this pretty aptly sums up Fannar’s attitude and attitudes abt various family members, this song is just, a perfect summary of Fannar, though I guess it’s more someone describing him as opposed to Fannar saying it himself “Blame it on the girls who know what to do/Blame it on the boys who keep hitting on you/Blame it on your mother for the things she said/Blame it on your father but you know he's dead”

Burning Pile, Mother Mother sometimes Fannar’s bullshit, baggage, and mistakes catch up with him and the easiest thing to do is to torch it. why would he ever actually deal with it fully? “All my troubles on a burning pile/All lit up and I start to smile/If I, catch fire then I change my aim/Throw my troubles at the world again”

cherubim, serpentwithfeet ANOTHER horny song but this is specifically abt someone! There’s a character that I have Fannar paired off with in my canon-compliant writing, Renault, the War King of Ragnas. Who, well, Fannar started off as a consort but then it turned out that he really liked him, and he felt the same way and it’s probably the best romantic relationship of Fannar’s life so he feels a certain level of devotion to Renault. “Boy, every time I worship you/My mouth is filled with honey/Boy, as I build your throne/I feel myself growing”

Savior, St. Vincent [lord farquaad pointing meme] horny, Fannar is more than willing to fill sexual roles for people, fulfill what other people think of him because that’s easier than having his own concrete identity, though he knows it has its limits “You dress me up in a nurse's outfit/It rides and sticks to my thighs and my hips...... Honey, I can't be your savior/Love you to the grave and farther/Honey, I am not your martyr”

Moment’s Silence (Common Tongue), Hozier [lord farquaad pointing meme but deep fried] HORNY Look, Fannar knows what he’s about, and also maybe sometimes he can be horny in an emotional way that makes him a little bit sappy abt the present events “Be thankful some know it lovingly/There the reason comes in the common tongue of your loving me”

Low Lays the Devil, The Veils okay, I originally put this on here bc I think it was a recommended song on a different playlist and i wanted to save it and so i saved it to Fannar’s playlist bc it fit that one best. Overall, just a general allusion to Fannar’s fiendish heritage as a tiefling I suppose and also how he generally likes to hype people up to by proxy hype himself up “High as the heavenly sea/Low lays the devil in me...Come lay your head on my lap/And let your hair fall back/You've got to live with yourself”

Save A Horse (Ride a Cowboy), Big & Rich Okay, I added this jokingly bc I managed to convince myself that Fannar would fucking love this song, absolutely jam out to it while he’s fucking wasted. Also, maybe his type is ‘Cowboy’ and that’s hella valid of him.

Horns, Bryce Fox He’s a tiefling! A tiefling with very prominent horns! He’s gotta learn to take pride in that shit and learn how to think of them as attractive

It’s Hard to Be Humble, Mac Davis Look, Fannar knows how to hype himself up and strut and preen like the peacock he is, being humble is not a part of his persona

Little Lion Man, Mumford & Sons hahahahaha, scratch through Fannar’s exterior deep enough and you’ll easily find someone who was put through a fucking meat grinder and had his identity crumbled into a million jagged bits. He maybe could have been a great wizard, and insightful advisor to his brother when he became king, but instead he was broken and choked on the poison poured into his mind “Tremble for yourself, my man,/You know that you have seen this all before/Tremble little lion man,/You'll never settle any of your scores/Your grace is wasted in your face,/Your boldness stands alone among the wreck/Now learn from your mother or else spend your days biting your own neck”

You’re My Best Friend, Queen I needed a song for Fannar and Isorropia. Isorropia is his best friend (and tbh he considers her to be like a sister, though he doesn’t really expect her to feel the same way) and he feels very strongly about her. He would kill a man for Rope.

Everybody Wants To Rule the World, Tears For Fears A pretty central even in Fannar’s backstory was his trying to take the throne of his home kingdom and he generally cares about being in control of himself and his situation, having no control over what’s happening to him is not a good time

I Don’t Know What We’re Talking About, Ninja Sex Party Okay, there’s a running thing where whenever we’re in a bathhouse or something I’ll just shout out “Fannar disassociates in the bath” which started off as a joke but then I realized Fannar doesn’t like being alone with his thoughts or his body. He didn’t grow up with this tiefling body and as much as he can claim to be comfortable with himself, he can’t always manage to put his money where his mouth is. There was one notable time where Fannar was completely checked out in the baths in this inn in Vulcanica and the party managed to chase a guy down into an alley and fight him, all while Fannar stayed sat in the bath. (See also, this is why Fannar is such a promiscuous character, he’s trying to assert confidence in his body by being overtly sexual)

Catch Me Now I’m Falling, The Kinks Ya boi fell. He notably fell into a massive fucking abyss and it would have killed him had he not made his pact with Auril

Emperor’s New Clothes, Panic! at the Disco Big Fannar vibes, he’s big and dramatic and as someone who grew up among nobility and hated it he knows how to clock fake people who clothe themselves in pretension and importance. Also lowkey speaks to his ambitions to become an archfey himself someday “Sycophants on velvet sofas/Lavish mansions, vintage wine/I am so much more than royal/Snatch your chain and mace your eyes/If it feels good, tastes good/It must be mine/Heroes always get remembered/But you know legends never die”

Don’t Threaten Me With A Good Time, Panic! at the Disco What can I say besides Fannar is a party animal

Somebody To Love, Queen HE’S JUST A BIG DUMB GAY WHO MASKS HIS EMOTIONS BUT DEEP DOWN WOULD REALLY LIKE TO JUST GENUINELY BE LOVED, HE’S GOT PLATONIC LOVE IN THE FORM OF HIS INTER-PARTY FRIENDSHIPS BUT HEY HE’D LIKE SOME ROMANCE TOO PLEASE AND THANKS (SHOUTOUT TO RENAULT)

Viva La Vida, Coldplay More backstory allusion stuff, he was a big dumbass who wanted to rule but his reputation crumbled around him and all of those ambitions became untenable.

#my post #tal plays dnd #fannar #readmore #long post

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moresassythanclassy · 5 years

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Thoughts on Gendrya, Season 8

I just have feelings, soo many feelings about Gendry and Arya from this season, that I had to write them down. I never really write out my thoughts on characters in general (bc I’m lazy but also have a hard time saying exactly what I mean) but I’d like to give it a go and see if you guys agree or have some other thoughts.

First of all, I love the way they basically pick up the relationship where it left off years ago with the banter and I’m really glad that that part has stayed consistent. Like most everyone else, though, I felt there was a palpable difference in the way Gendry treated her in ep1 of s8 than when they interacted before. When they were younger, Arya, of course, was just a girl and he treated her the way a young man should: he joked around with her, protected her, and took her thoughts and feelings into consideration even when he knew she was sometimes wrong. He loved her in a way that, to me, is difficult to define. On one hand, he did feel that responsibility a brother feels over his younger sibling, so I do see how this comparison is made. However, I think he was still aware that, as they both grew older and she became a woman, his feelings could one day begin to change (assuming that they were still together). Yet he’s also painfully aware that he could never be on the same level as her, because she would always be a highborn and he a lowborn. Therefore, he remains guarded and even chooses to stay behind with the brotherhood because he knows no one else would ever accept him as her “family.”

Arya, on the other hand, always knew she felt differently for Gendry than she ever did for her brothers, or for anyone else. Like most of us (including Joe) have said, Gendry awakened certain feelings she’d never before felt both physically and emotionally. She was enamored by so many things about him, particularly when he treated her as an equal (even when her own father didn’t do so), that she found herself falling in love. Yes, she was still immature and couldn’t have known exactly what it all meant, but she felt it nonetheless.

Now, as they reunite for the first time, they’re several years older and in completely new stages of life. Arya, in particular, is now the woman Gendry knew she would become someday; however, he’s still taken aback by how different his feelings already are only seconds after seeing her again. His mind is reeling and he has no idea what to say, except he knows he’s always been honest with her, so he stutters out, “You look...good.” When she responds in kind, he has to look away and then walks back over to his work station to escape the new tension he feels. He’s in completely unfamiliar territory and isn’t prepared for how hard his attraction for her hits him, so he reverts back to what he did in the past—he teases her and calls her “m’lady.”

Arya, now, has gone through so much that she’s changed in more ways than he could imagine. Although still stubborn, she doesn’t exactly wear her heart on her sleeve like she did with him before. At first, it seems like she is trying to be as distant from him as she possibly can. When she talks to him she even sounds almost...bored? Or tired? Of course she wasn’t either of those things, but I believe that was her way of trying to be able to brush off this interaction later and labeling it as no big deal, because she’s not that person anymore (at least that’s what she tells herself). I think she’s also afraid that he may not be the same person he used to be, either. And that his memories of being with her were not nearly as important to him as they were to her. Clearly, Gendry was able to dissolve that fear fairly quickly when he teases her in the same way he used to. She can’t help but smile and laugh a little at the fond memories, which helps her to feel a little more comfortable. Still, she’s a different person now, and although she jokes back with him, her responses still seem somewhat calculated. She’s definitely happy to see him, but in no way is she going to open up to him and allow herself to feel the same way she did when she was younger.

Despite having a sex scene later on in the episode, their first interaction in ep2 was my favorite interaction they’ve had in s8 thus far. To me, Arya is still trying to be guarded and calculated with every interaction she has with Gendry. She finds him in the forge and watches him until he looks up and starts talking to her. Clearly, she knows she’s still attracted to him physically and likes what she sees (the emotional part, though, she still refuses touch). At this point in her life she’s become so good at pushing down her vulnerability that she may even think that that part of her no longer exists. While she does come to the forge because she wants her weapon, she equally wants to impress Gendry by showing him how far she’s come since she was just a girl. And while I wouldn’t call her actions manipulative because the underlying emotions she feels for him are definitely still there, she’s made it clear by this point that she’s attracted to him as she now hopes he is to her.

Gendry is more prepared this time to see her because he’s now had time to process that he is, in fact, attracted to her and has feelings that go beyond what he felt for her before. He senses her watching him and looks up with confidence. He knows what she’s about to ask for and is prepared to tell her that, no, her weapon isn’t ready yet, and shouldn’t she feel safer by going down into the crypts when the white walkers come? He’s clearly given this some thought and this is his attempt at keeping her safe. I believe that he’s far more desperate to keep her alive than he expresses, simply because he knows that if he told her how concerned he truly was she would probably stand on the front lines in pure defiance. But even though he’s scared, he knows he can’t and won’t try to control her. At this point, too, he still doesn’t know how skilled with weapons she really is, and what exactly she’s gone through. He tries to casually tell her that making more knives are more important than making her weapon, and suggests that she should stay in the crypts where it is safer. The white walkers, he says, are like death, like nothing she’s ever seen before. When she responds the way she does though, with such confidence and incredible precision when throwing the knives, he’s blown away and knows he has no choice but to make the weapon she asked for.

Finally, the sex scene... this scene is where I have the most conflicting thoughts. Yes, I wanted this to happen eventually, and yes, I was thrilled that there was finally an official acknowledgement of the fact that their relationship has, in fact, turned romantic. What I’m conflicted about is how I was hoping it would happen, and, more specifically, how I wanted Arya to feel when it happened. Deep down, she knows she’s still in love with him, yet she can’t allow herself to acknowledge it to neither him nor herself. She wants to be able to express her love for him but the only way she can accept doing so is by convincing herself that she only wants this because she’s never slept with anyone before, and she wants to know what it’s like before she dies.

Gendry, on the other hand, knows how he feels and has accepted it to the best extent that he can. This doesn’t mean he’s actually going to tell her how he feels, but he’s at least content in knowing that he now understands why things are so different between them. This is why he’s so awkward and hesitant to answer when she asks him to tell her about the other women he’d been with before. Because to him, how many women he’d been with is no longer important. He most likely even has some anxiety when thinking about sex due to the experience he had with Melisandre. He’s surprised and hesitant when Arya kisses him because, although he does love her and would’ve wanted this to happen someday, this wasn’t how he’d pictured it happening. He knows she has a point, though, when she says they’re probably going to die tomorrow, and quickly decides to give in. He loves her, and, like Arya, he wants to be able to show it at least once before they die.

Then, at the end of the episode when the camera pans back to the two lying together, Gendry is sleeping contently (or however content he can be on a pile of burlap sacks with impending doom at their door). Arya, however, still lies awake, concern evident on her face. To me, this is really her “oh shit” moment, when she realizes she’s bitten off more than she can chew and all of the feelings she’s been holding in are suddenly flooding to the surface. Suddenly, she’s not okay, and she can’t just get him out of her system like she thought she could. She’s afraid now not for herself but for him. She’s finally hit with the fact that he’s probably going to die, and that terrifies her to no end. She loves him, and she has to figure out a way to try and keep him safe.

Tl;dr: they’re both idiots in love and I just want them to be okay.

If you actually made it to the end of this I applaud you and thank you for reading. Please let me know your thoughts about any of this or anything you’re thinking about on the show in general. Thanks again!

#game of thrones #gendrya #arya stark #gendry #gendry baratheon #maisie williams #joe dempsie #season 8

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firebirdsdaughter · 4 years

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Okay…

… No one wants my opinion on the Izu situation, but I’m tired as all hell and looking to ramble, and I want to get this off my chest.

I’ve seen a number of takes on what happened floating around. Some people see it as the same as at the start, when they’d just ‘reset’ the HumaGear who had been hacked (Nigiro and Mamoru spring to mind), some people are furious and think this new Izu is a whole new being Aruto is trying to force old Izu onto and think it’s out of character for him, there’s a lot of ‘she’s not the same’…

For me? Well… I said I had salt, but I also said it’s not what most people are thinking/might expect.

My reaction can be broken down into two things, and both, I admit, are pretty harsh:

This isn’t out of character for Aruto at all.

I don’t see anything different between ‘this’ Izu and the ‘old’ Izu.

Now, I haven’t been quiet about my opinions about Aruto, but, like other things in the series, he started well, he had potential, there was def something in there, Fumiya did the best he could, bless him. But as the show went on, it became harder and harder for me to like Aruto. Oh, he had a few good moments, the potential he’d started w/ was still there, in many ways, but… Eventually, I just stopped waiting.

From what I saw, Aruto was never into HumaGear establishing their own identities, he just wanted them to be how he wanted them to be. That line from the Frozen song—‘it’ll be just like it was, except for we’ll be best friends.’ He never really seemed to want ‘freedom’ or ‘equality’ for them, just wanted them to be ‘happy’ where they were. I’ve never been comfortable w/ that ‘dream’ ever since he blows up Jin for being a confused, frightened child soldier and then he and Izu stand around all pleased about pre-singularity HumaGear ‘smiling’ together w/ humans… Aka, dutifully serving humans w/ smiles painted on their faces. For the entire show, his sympathies and his definition of ‘good’ HumaGear where ones that lived to work, lived to serve humans w/out complaints or wanting anything for themselves. As long as their dreams were convenient for humans, they were a-okay. He also ended up veering into implying he knew exactly what HumaGear dreams were. He thought Izu was the pinnacle of good HumaGear bc she was adoring and devoted, revolved around him. His alleged urging her to choose for herself fell flat bc there was never anything for her to choose between (that scene was weird from all angles bc since when did Jin care about Izu and we never did bring up that time she rubbed his father’s defeat in his face and he stabbed her). He says they have to ask G-Pen what he wants, but then won’t let Jin talk to him bc he’s ‘a human’s partner!’ He seems relieved when G-Pen wants to draw. And like I said, eventually, he seems to have just decided he knows that HumaGear dreams will be to have warm fuzzies doing their jobs to serve humans. He yells at Horobi about how he was made to serve humans, only later bringing up the fact that he can have an identity outside the Ark. He can’t seem to fathom the fact that HumaGear could be upset at humans outside of ‘evil hacking.’ (I was groaning so loud when he was like ‘there’s no reason for us to fight anymore’ at the rebelling HumaGear, bc I’m sorry, isn’t that their decision? Seems like they think there is still a reason). He never seems bothered or concerned about the fact that HumaGear have no rights, can’t be in control of their own fates. He’s a-okay that they can’t be in positions of power and live completely at the whims of humans. Apparently, never even tried to give Izu a back up and taught her to be fine w/ not having one bc it ‘benefitted’ humans. To him, HumaGear existed to happily do their jobs, to serve humans, that was all they should live for… Even though a fully self aware being could never truly live the life HumaGear are made to live. He waxed about seeing HumaGear as people, but would only revive them when there was a request for them, didn’t tell Delmo she didn’t need to ‘prove’ anything to be allowed to live. He assumes Horobi will instantly magically see things his way despite everything Horobi has been through, when things get complicated, he spends more time running around and trying to make the other HumaGear go back to being the ‘good little servers’ he thinks they should be, devaluing their feelings by claiming there’s no reason to fight (again, that’s their decision), rather than actually going and trying to talk to Horobi. Then the show spends ages painting him like a tragic victim and making excuses for him, when Horobi is literally a traumatised and abused AI and Aruto immediately jumped at the chance to grab the fucking Ark Key. I know grief was involved, by why the fuck did Izu still not have a backup, why did he let her go in there along in the first place, why is he more tragic than the brainwashed and mentally conditioned child soldier AI who literally had never learned how to handle emotions and had been conditioned his whole life to resist them and to respond violently. But no, Aruto’s the only tragic one, not the mind rape and abuse victim that everyone pointed guns at instead of recognising what happened to him and trying to rehabilitate him (and then literally doing that to a ‘good’ HumaGear the next fucking day, wtf). Admittedly, I more blame Gai, the Ark, and Yua and Fuwa, the first two for being responsible for everything in the first place, and the second two for being the ones to escalate the situation and triggering Horobi in the first place. And then he just… Lets Horobi blame himself for everything at the end. This after originally specifically saying that Gai was responsible. Like… All that would have need was something like ‘it’s more complicated than that.’ Bc yeah, Horobi’s done some stuff, but he’s mentally unwell and they were all manipulated. This isn’t cut and dry. Recognise that.

Ultimately, I am incredibly frustrated by Aruto bc there was stuff that could have interested me about the character, but it ended up being outweighed by the negative stuff. Of course he’d just try to ‘remake’ Izu, HumaGear aren’t people to him, they exist to benefit humans. Izu exists to be his adoring cheerleader.

And… Well, that brings me to the second thing. When I heard the ‘he’ll try to make her the real Izu’… My immediate reaction was ‘how’s that hard?’ Literally, Izu’s character ultimately ended up being worshiping Aruto. All he’d have to do is program her to serve and support him again, and tada. Which is exactly what happened. Horobi has been dumped w/ all this mental trauma and guilt, and… Aruto doesn’t seem to have suffered at all. She gazes adoringly at him, she’s all cutesy, she interrupts his jokes… Sure, maybe she lost some memory, but… Ultimately, none of those memories changed her at all, so it’s not a big loss. I don’t see what’s so ‘different’ about her that’s making everyone so upset. It doesn’t feel like anything was lost. I really think they should have just had her data be in the 02 or some shit bc her not having a backup was bull in the first place, her ‘death’ was also bull bc she could easily have dodged even after Horobi fired, and pretending that Aruto ‘lost’ something that he should blame Horobi for is also bull. Izu didn’t have a personality outside of ‘adores Aruto’ (I see you, sexy leg lamp anon, I’ll get there eventually, I promise). W/ the added fact that she chose to not get out of the way and to be hit, and that she was apparently a-okay w/ no backup bc it allegedly benefited humans… It’s all just very frustrating. Also bc, like Aruto, there were a lot of places they could have gone w/ her, she could have been a great set up for ‘HumaGear can choose to work w/ humans.’ But Izu never had anything to choose from, she remained blindly adoring of Aruto and humanity. Her conversation w/ Horobi could have been good, if not for an underlying tone of ‘she’s right, he’s wrong.’ Izu should have to recognise that there is negative aspects of humanity and the good things don’t make it all okay. Horobi shouldn’t have to come all the way around to agree w/ her, it should be recognised that humanity have capacity for both, HumaGear should be allowed the capacity for both and have it not be treated like they’re going ‘berserk’ or have it be assumed there’s an ‘evil AI’ hacking them. Anger and even hatred are natural feelings—benevolence should be respected, appreciated, recognised, but not constantly expected.

Basically, Izu didn’t feel like a person. She had no identity or character outside of adoring Aruto, or any strong relationships outside of him (for ex, she really could have benefited from a relationship w/ Fuwa (slight favouritism at work, sure), where he does something like teach her to punch or something), and revolved completely around him, just like she was programmed to be. Funny how Will was depicted as ‘evil’ for wanting to know how humans would benefit HumaGear, but Izu and Wazu are ‘good’ bc they’re a-okay not having any of the safety measures available to their kind bc it will allegedly ‘benefit’ humans, and bc all they live for is pleasing their owners. Wazu didn’t even save Izu just bc he cared about her and didn’t want his younger sister to die, it was ‘you can support Aruto.’ I’m sorry, what? I just… Don’t see what was lost here.

So… To try and wrap this up bc I’ve been complaining for too long: Aruto never cared about HumaGear having their own identities or them being their own people, he just wanted them to be exactly the same as before, expected the only thing they needed in life to be making humans happy, and I cannot find the difference between these two Izus.

And I am so fucking frustrated.

#Firebird Salt #Firebird Negativity #Firebird Opinions #Aruto Negativity #Izu Negativity #there's so much more that I can't articulate at the moment #I just…#it's so frustrating that at most the 'way humans benefit HumaGear' turned out to be #'they made us/HumaGear are just happy to make humans happy'#like… I think we needed to see a dream from a HumaGear that didn't necessarily fall in w/ Aruto's expectations/assumptions #a HumaGear who wants to make their own decisions #own a company or something like that #and address that see how Aruto handles it #'humans taught us to have dreams' is bull as long as all those dreams are 'to serve humans'#basically #I'm so frustrated bc the potential was there and it just…#down the drain

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oc-festivities · 6 years

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Character solidifying for S ?

i’m love them!

1-7 can’t be answered bc they have amnesia and I don’t even know the answers to those questions.

8. How does your character feel about religion?

they follow the stranger! it’s a little annoying that the stranger chooses when to stay or go and when to visit, but besides that, they really look up to him.

9. What about political beliefs?

They’re definitely against the New Initiative, as they helped run an underground information ring against it. I know why M/Leader and I/Compassion hate the New Initiative, but I don’t know about S yet. But currently, they don’t see the people of Jashtall as bad, just the government.

10. Is your character street-smart, book-smart, intelligent, intellectual, slow-witted?

book-smart definitely. they’re very intelligent and intellectual

11. How do they see themselves: as smart, as intelligent, uneducated?

oh, they see themselves as very intelligent as well, and it’s straining for them to have to explain things to Mies and others who may not understand as much as they do.

12. How does their education and intelligence – or lack thereof - reflect in their speech pattern, vocabulary, and pronunciations?

I keep trying to throw in large words into their speech, but I don’t know many big words myself ;;;;;;;;;;

13-15 n/a :(

16. What does your character do for a living? How do they see their profession? What do they like about it? Dislike?

They used to be a librarian, but now they wander around as a part of Mies, doing odd jobs and errands. I don’t think they had any qualms against being a librarian, except that it would get lonely from time to time, and they’re neutral about adventuring. They like seeing the world, and everything it has to offer, but they hate that they have to be so social and that there’s not much down time.

17. Did they travel? Where? Why? When?

Before Mies, they were a real homebody, which the stranger tried to counteract. Some of the stranger’s tasks required for S to go around and distribute the information they collected, or act on it in some other way. I don’t know any specific locations, but I’d assume it’s just around Jashtall.

After Mies was created, they wander around with them, so far it’s just been to Kajjitan, and Ashtal mainly.

18. What did they find abroad, and what did they remember?

The only thing I know is that they worked with I/Compassion and her bakery for a time, but that’s all.

In regards to their current travels, they found friendship, new information, and some of their lost memories.

19. What were your character’s deepest disillusions? In life? What are they now?

I imagine it was when they first discovered that there are some people who are happy to live in ignorance. They spend so much of their time learning for the sake of knowing, somebody casually saying “ignorance is bliss” would probably make them faint. It still really bothers them, but after they started working with the stranger they learned that there’s some things you have to let go.

20. What were the most deeply impressive political or social, national or international, events that they experienced?

The war, and the rise of the New Initiative. They were on the outskirts of both as far as I know though.

21. What are your character’s manners like? What is their type of hero? Whom do they hate?

They come off as a little awkward because of the years spent prioritizing ideas over people. Their hero is 100% Arai: knowledgeable, kind, generous, immensely bright, and driven. They hate people who are okay with not knowing. Especially in regards to the New Initiative, not knowing is dangerous.

22. Who are their friends? Lovers? ‘Type’ or ‘ideal’ partner?

Well there’s…. Whatever weird relationship they’re in with Ko. As for friends, they don’t have any outside of I/Compassion and E/Enthusiasm, and even then, E’s relationship with them is strained. They love curiosity, and admire skill. I imagine them to be more English/Humanities aligned, so an ideal partner would be someone who is just as curious and just as knowledgeable about a subject S doesn’t know as well, so their relationship would just be a bunch of excitedly sharing information of their passions back and forth.

23. What do they want from a partner? What do they think and feel of sex?

Stability, openness to new ideas and experiences, feeling comfortable around them. I think they like sex, but in their current form, they would never even think about it.

24. What social groups and activities does your character attend? What role do they like to play? What role do they actually play, usually?

For I/Compassion’s bakery, they acted as an information gatherer. Within Mies, they act as the one who fixes and does the technical part of the golems. In the party, they help gather information through their god.

25. What are their hobbies and interests?

They really enjoy reading, but they also like tinkering with the golems. They really enjoyed trying to solve Arai’s code though. Maybe they have a future in cryptography?

26. What does your character’s home look like? Personal taste? Clothing? Hair? Appearance?

It’s very snowy in Jashtall, and they lived closer to the capital, so they’re used to living in a small city most likely. As with most other Jashtallans, they like the monochromatic color scheme with high collars and cloaks. Their hair reaches to their shoulders and its kinda wavy, which makes it looked more unbrushed than it usually is. After they made their deal with the stranger and turned into a tiefling, they started adopting a “darker” sense of fashion, thus, the fanged earring.

27. How do they relate to their appearance? How do they wear their clothing? Style? Quality?

They like it okay. They have to bind to get their ideal look, and sometimes the size of their lips will get to them, but otherwise they’re okay with their appearance. One of the lucky things about living in Jashtall is that it’s always cold, so they can wear lots and lots of layers. As far as quality goes, there’s probably not a lot of holes in their outfits, but they’re not exactly made of silk either. I imagine good quality clothes with typical fabric that might be found nearby. Their typical outfit is probably a undershirt of some kind, a long sleeved shirt, a sweater, a jacket, and oftentimes a cloak. Typically they wear normal shoes (I imagine something like oxfords), but if the situation calls for it, they’ll begrudgingly wear boots.

29. What is your character’s weaknesses? Hubris? Pride? Controlling?

For the longest time, they were secluded, never really going anywhere other than their library and their home. Because of that, they aren’t really sociable, and M/Leader or E/Enthusiasm usually end up starting conversations for S. They will also occasionally get extremely focused on a task, and will become so wrapped up in it, that they will forget to eat or sleep. This isn’t as much of a problem now that they have Mies, but there are still some times they will unwittingly ignore their health in pursuit of a goal.

30. Are they holding on to something in the past? Can he or she forgive?

In truth, they’re worried about what they might find. There’s so many things that could have gone wrong in their past and there’s hardly any way they can fix it now, so they prefer to move on and stay focused on the here and now. As for forgiving, they can, but they would be a little wary about trusting that person in the future.

32. How does your character react to stress situations? Defensively? Aggressively? Evasively?

In a lot of social situations, they prefer to run away. Mies has made this easier, as somebody else almost always takes the reins, but before if something happened, they would just try to end the interaction as soon as possible and get to somewhere they felt safe. In physical situations however, I imagine they get the same hyperfocus they do with work, where nothing matters but the achievement of their goal, whatever that may be. And if someone is in the way of them achieving their goal, they are to be ignored or thrown aside.

33. Do they drink? Take drugs? What about their health?

I can see them drinking, but I don’t think they’ve ever been offered drugs. They’re not sick, but they’re not exactly healthy either. They live a very sedentary lifestyle with frequently skipped meals and probably not enough sleep.

34. Does your character feel self-righteous? Revengeful? Contemptuous?

If any of these, probably revengeful. They hate what the New Initiative did to Jashtall and Arai, and they want to make them pay for using his inventions for evil.

35. Do they always rationalize errors? How do they accept disasters and failures?

They would be a little aggravated, but failures are just things they need to think more about, or try harder at.

36. Do they like to suffer? Like to see other people suffering?

No, and no

37. How is your character’s imagination? Daydreaming a lot? Worried most of the time? Living in memories?

They’re very prone to daydreaming. Either that, or trying to predict what will happen. They don’t have a lot of memories, so there’s not much to live in, but every once in awhile, they’ll revisit certain moments.

38. Are they basically negative when facing new things? Suspicious? Hostile? Scared? Enthusiastic?

Enthusiastic, definitely.

39. What do they like to ridicule? What do they find stupid?Stupid people. They understand that there’s some people who were not given the opportunity to learn, and they hold no malice towards them, but they can’t stand it when people don’t know anything but think that they do.

40. How is their sense of humor? Do they have one?

They’re not really a joke-teller, but they don’t mind hearing jokes.

41. Is your character aware of who they are? Strengths? Weaknesses? Idiosyncrasies? Capable of self-irony?

They’re aware of their strengths and weaknesses, but they’re definitely capable of self-irony. As for idiosyncrasies, there’s some that they’re aware of, and some they’re not aware of.

42. What does your character want most? What do they need really badly, compulsively? What are they willing to do, to sacrifice, to obtain?

They want to be free from Mies. I don’t think they’d sacrifice any people, but I think they would give up any material possession to return to a singular body.

43. Does your character have any secrets? If so, are they holding them back?

Just the wraith thing, and they’re honestly cool with just letting Ko know about that.

44. How badly do they want to obtain their life objectives? How do they pursue them?

Typically if a life objective just involved them, they would put a lot of effort into it. But now that they’re part of a group, they realize you have to account for others, and so they push their own objectives back so that they can have some order they complete tasks.

45. Is your character pragmatic? Think first? Responsible? All action? A visionary? Passionate? Quixotic?

yes / yes / varies / no / I wouldn’t say so / yes / no

46. Is your character tall? Short? What about size? Weight? Posture? How do they feel about their physical body?

Mies is tall with average weight, posture, etc.I don’t think much of their life before because I don’t want to overstep what might have been planned, but I would say they’re on the shorter side for humans, a little underweight, with bad posture. I don’t think they mind any of the things listed above.

47. Do they want to project an image of a younger, older, more important person? Does they want to be visible or invisible?

They would like to appear more important, but they don’t feel that the age they project matters, as long as it’s somewhat close to their actual age. They think that they would like to be visible, but in reality they would like to be invisible.

48. How are your character’s gestures? Vigorous? Weak? Controlled? Compulsive? Energetic? Sluggish?

It depends on their mood. Typically they’re not too energetic, so probably lazy, half-movements. When they’re excited, they start tapping their fingers or moving their hands a lot more than usual.

49. What about voice? Pitch? Strength? Tempo and rhythm of speech? Pronunciation? Accent?

Medium pitch, medium strength, typically slow rhythm unless excited, average pronunciation. Idk if accents exist in this world.

50. What are the prevailing facial expressions? Sour? Cheerful? Dominating?

Typically it’s just a blank, bored expression, but if they’re focusing on something, they’ll furrow their brows, and if they’re interested in something, they’ll raise their eyebrows and widen their eyes and they’ll have a little smile.

#thank you!#s #mies #dnd #romanarcadia #answered

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