#but maybe at some point ill come back and add a little epilogue of sorts with that trick prompt

[youngpettyqueen]

Trick AND treat! 😁 You can do two separate ones or combine them. And let Hawkeye take care of and fuss over Charles.

I tried so hard to come up with something for trick but my brain is not braining today. to make up for it, I added 250 words to a very fluffy, very silly idea because this hit me IMMEDIATELY upon getting this ask and it took everything in me to not write this while I was at work. maybe at some point I can come back with an idea for trick?? but I didnt want this to sit in my inbox forgotten so I hope you can forgive me only doing treat, at least for now

The first snow of the year comes, perhaps luckily, when they have children visiting. 

Charles woke that morning to the delighted shrieks and giggles of children, unmistakable in pitch and volume. The sound was so sweet he couldn’t be irritated at being woken up early, not that he’d ever admit that. He made sure to grouse thoroughly about the hour to his tentmates, knowing they’d rib him to lighten up before moving on, but would never let him live a moment of softness down. 

He’s taking a moment, now, to watch. It’s after breakfast, he has a shift to get to, but he knows that post-OP is quiet and can afford for him to be a couple minutes late. The children are running around, bundled in their mismatched winter jackets and too-big boots, donated surplus hats rolled up extra to stay out of their eyes. Some of them are sporting distinctly fashionable scarves, while others form snowballs in distinctly homemade mittens. They make angels in the snow, they make snowballs and throw them at each other, a few of the older ones are demonstrating how to make snowmen. 

They play. They laugh. They smile with missing teeth and genuine joy in their eyes. For a moment, just a moment, they’re children the way children should be. Charles is happy to sacrifice a quiet morning if it means-

A snowball hits the back of his head with a freezing, wet splat. 

Charles goes entirely rigid, snow sliding down the back of his coat and melting in his hair. A roar of laughter goes up from behind him, and he immediately knows just who that laugh belongs to. He whips around to fix Hawkeye with a glare, only to falter as his eyes skip right over where Hawkeye is doubled over wheezing and land on the young boy falling backwards into the snow, laughing and pointing. 

And, well. Who can blame him, if his irritation is snuffed out faster than a candle? Who could possibly be angry at the sight of a child laughing so hard he can’t stay on his feet?

Hawkeye straightens up, hands over his stomach, still laughing that goose honk laugh of his. And maybe, just maybe, somewhere deep down Charles can’t stay annoyed when he sees Hawkeye laughing right from his belly. Because that’s a rare sight these days, and maybe it makes the snow soaking into his shirt a bit less cold.

Of course, he can’t admit to that. Ever. So, he finishes his turn, schools his expression to raise a judgmental brow. “Ah, Pierce,” He greets, “I see you’ve found yourself a playmate. If only they’d take you with them when they leave. You’d blend right in.” He barbs, all huff and no bite. 

Hawkeye snickers, wiping at his eyes, “Sorry, Charles, but I couldn’t resist,” He offers as a weak apology as he hunkers down to help the boy back up to his feet, “Somebody’s gotta teach the kids the sacred way of the snowball fight, and somebody’s gotta be the target! Thank you for your service.” He grins, straightening himself back up.

The boy points at him again. “Gotcha good!” He declares, with a big smile that barely has front teeth.

Charles nods good-naturedly. “That you did, my fine young fellow,” He tells the boy. Looking back at Hawkeye, he suggests, “Perhaps your teachings might benefit from a second demonstration? Say, some return fire?” He stoops down to scoop up some snow in both hands, clapping it all together and starting to form a compact ball.

Hawkeye laughs incredulously at the sight. “Oh, he has some fight in him!” He crows, “What, did you have snowball fighting lessons? A private tutor in snowball form?” He jeers. 

Charles keeps his face carefully neutral as he forms the snowball in his hands. “Your confidence will be your doom,” He warns, straightening himself up, “Any last words?” 

Hawkeye settle into a smug grin, raising a challenging brow at him. “Bring it.” He dares. 

Charles allows himself a smile. He supposes it is fair for Hawkeye to assume he’s never so much as made a snowball, never mind participated in a snowball fight. It would be an activity most would likely assume he views as beneath him. 

They would be forgetting, however, that Charles is an older brother. And wealth and status mattered not, in matters where Honoria Winchester and her insatiable need to peg him in the head with a snowball were concerned. 

Hawkeye doesn’t see the snowball coming until it hits him square between the eyes and takes him off his feet. 

#mash #fic bitching #shorts #charles winchester #hawkeye pierce #otp: and their sons #this came to me so easily and I was gonna do a connected one for trick #but ive been trying to do that for. 2 hours. and nothing is clicking #so I hope its ok that I added some more onto this one instead! #it was a lot of fun to write #love me some silly Charles #but maybe at some point ill come back and add a little epilogue of sorts with that trick prompt #who knows with my muse. certainly not me #thanks for the request! #I hope even if not everything you asked for its still good #sorry about my fickle muse im usually all over the hurt/comfort but its just not clicking rn :/

[cntrspll]

this is a love letter to my own fic

hi hello hey, this is an essay about my own fic and the feelings i have about it. fic can be found here.

i am going to try so hard to keep this organized but i don’t know how well that will work soooo let’s go!

on the fic overall:

i just... like magnus. i think he is a fan fave for a reason, but i think there’s a lot of missing discussion of his post-canon situation and the development thereafter. when i finished listening to balance for the first time (in february-ish this year, i think?), i remember being super frustrated with where parts of the fandom had landed their focus. this isn’t an uncommon fandom thing, and i totally get where it comes from. some characters are just super relatable and a lot of fun to write about and have like absolute piles of stuff to unpack, so it’s totally fair that some characters get more focus than others, but where i felt that some of my faves got a lot of fandom focus, others... didn’t.

so this fic was in part an attempt to rectify that, because i wasn’t finding the unpacking of magnus and his emotional / mental state that i wanted. that being said, there are a couple fics that i did draw a little bit of inspiration from, the biggest probably being patterns of migration by goodnicepeople. the depiction of magnus as this big strong dude who also has these quiet vulnerabilities that he doesn’t like admitting to people is like, in part just really accurate to canon, but also something that i really wanted to see explored more, and i didn’t find a whole lot of other fics that fit that, so in part i just wanted to set out to put a little more into that.

also, like, i work in food service, and we are in a pandemic, and i moved in the middle of this year and i started hrt this year and have been dealing with the fallout of coming out and just kind of everything, and this fic was a really good way of just like, distracting myself from everything and sitting down for a little every day and thinking about something else and not so much about everything that was happening around me. so there is a good part of this fic that is just like, me coping with everything and trying to reorient myself a little. and it worked pretty well for that!

on process:

ok first things first, this was never meant to be 133k long. when i first sat down to write this, it was going to be a handful of snapshots set across [undetermined amount of time here] of magnus dealing with isolation and insomnia, and it was only meant to be like, maybe a 20k oneshot? that obviously did not happen. i think my original estimate once i accepted that this was gonna be multichaptered was like 60-70k, but then the chapters started getting longer with each one i finished, and then i wanted to add in an interlude, and then i decided i needed an epilogue, and here we are.

i’ll talk about this in other sections too, but as i wrote, i just kept finding more and more things that i wanted to talk about. i was also in the process of relistening to balance i was writing, and i kept running into little things that happened over the course of the show that i was like... oh shit! and that would inspire another scene or an interaction i wanted to write or something i wanted to focus more on, and the whole thing just kept getting more and more and bigger and bigger.

i’ve said it like 50 thousand times now, but i have never written anything this long before. i tried really hard to be regimented about the way i did it, because from the beginning i knew this was going to be an emotional journey for me to write, but i knew that if i let it slide for a week or so then i would never finish it. so to get through it, i wrote almost every day for a minimum of an hour. the process that i’ve found works best for me when i’m writing is using word sprints, putting on some music, and then forcing myself to tune out of social media and everything else for 25 minutes. i try to do between 750-1k words in that time period, then the site gives you a five minute break, during which i usually check twitter or fact check if i need to, and then i go back in and do another sprint. this works really well for me because i wasn’t trying to hit a specific word goal in any given day, just like... trying to sit down and write. i also tried not to guilt myself too much if i missed a day, or if i only did one sprint instead of two, or anything like that, and that’s kind of what helped me get through the whole monster without instantly dropping it as soon as i had another idea.

on mental health and recovery:

so one of my big personal pet peeves in fiction is the idea that trauma recovery is like, a one time single event deal. like, someone has this big horrible thing happen to them or they have some pressing mental health issue and then someone else walks in and they have one conversation and bam, everything is fine. i was exposed to a lot of [fan]fiction when i was younger that kind of supported this kind of narrative, and i get that there is a certain sort of wish fulfillment thing to that, but it also sucks, being an adult and having Problems(TM) and knowing that it absolutely does not work like that.

so when i set out to write a fic about trauma and mental illness and recovery, i felt kind of a responsibility to not fall into that trap and write it like, okay and then magnus and taako talk about it and taako’s like hey dude you’re depressed but it’s okay and then magnus doesn’t have nightmares anymore. also, because this is taz and the canon of like, historical accuracy is complete bullshit, i can put therapists and psychiatry and psychiatric medications in my fic and no one can tell me i’m wrong and it doesn’t exist. elevators exist, so i can make ssris and anti anxiety pills exist.

but also, magnus as a character is not going to jump into that right away. it is canon fact that he doesn’t like accepting or asking for help with stuff like this, and yes there are a couple big moments where he does, but like i bring up a couple times in the fic, mental health struggles are a big jump from like, a physical fight using swords and axes and shit. and this i think is really accurate to a lot of people’s struggles with mental illness, just taking that first step and admitting that you don’t feel okay, and that you need someone’s help to deal with it. that’s super super scary even to admit to like, your closest friends.

so that’s why magnus kind of shies away a number of times from some of the conversations that people try to start with him about mental health. taako and carey and lucretia and pretty much everyone else approach him at some point about opening up about this stuff, but he pulls away because admitting that kind of vulnerability to someone else is super scary, even if you’ve maybe admitted it to yourself already.

i also wanted to make sure that at the end of the fic, he wasn’t magically better. this is something else that i think people kind of forget, like... trauma and the problems that it causes don’t go away just because of therapy and medication. those things help, they help you reform the ways you think about yourself and about the world, but they don’t change the struggles you’ve been through or the sometimes biological problems that are causing whatever issue you’re having. and i remember reading a lot of fic when i was a kid where someone would be depressed, and then they’d fall in love and get magic dick or something and then they’d never be sad again, which... isn’t great.

but at the same time, i didn’t want it to end on this note like, oh everything is still bad even though he worked so hard to open up and get help, because that sucks, too. so it was really important to me that the fic end on a hopeful note, like, magnus isn’t cured. he still has bad days and bad weeks and sometimes he is just as low as he was before, but he also has like, normal days, which is something that i think you kind of forget can even exist when you’re depressed, or when you’re dealing with any mental illness. but like, i really wanted it to be obvious that things did get better and even if he’s still coping with it and it’s not going away, he’s okay. he’s gonna be all right.

on an unreliable narrator:

this kind of plays into some of the mental health stuff, but one thing that i love about taz that i really wanted to play into with this fic is the idea of limited perspective. griffin does some really cool fucking things with this, specifically in relation to the ipre and the big reveal in the last lunar interlude, with the idea of like... a character can only know the things that they know. like, magnus knows that there is a picture of him depicted as a red robe, and barry knows that they’re all red robes, and taako knows that they found the umbra staff next to a red robed skeleton and that the umbrella spelled out lup at one point, but none of them necessarily know all the things that the other person knew, and none of them know all the things that lucretia knows or that fisher knows or junior knows, etc etc.

unfortunately, just because the pace of the story picks up so much in that last lunar interlude, there isn’t a whole lot of space to explore that like, disconnect between all these facts that they each have as individuals. and given the perspective of mental health and the way that plays into your perceptions of yourself and your perceptions of other people’s perceptions, i really wanted to delve into like… magnus’s misunderstandings.

this is not a strictly straightforward unreliable narrator situation, but i did bring in some elements of that. i really wanted to explore the disconnect between how magnus sees and how everyone else sees him and his issues. there are also a couple moments where he flat out completely misinterprets their intentions, which unfortunately i didn’t delve into as much as i wanted to so they ended up mostly being fun easter eggs for, uh… me? i guess?

one of those moments is the scene in ch 4 where barry and magnus are sitting in the kitchen and barry starts to ask magnus something. magnus assumes it’s going to be about his mental health, and that this is barry stepping up as representative for everyone else to talk to him about it, but it’s really meant to be a precursor to their conversation in ch 6 where they talk about barry and lup and marriage and proposals.

magnus gets a little perspective on this later, i think in ch 7(?) where he’s thinking about how maybe their lives don’t completely revolve around him and he’s missing some of their perspective. but like, they all have their own shit going on, and they all love him and they’re worried about him, but also, barry is thinking about lup. lup is thinking about taako. taako is thinking about lucretia. lucretia is thinking about davenport, and davenport is thinking about his own issues, and so on and so on and they’re not all just like… waiting to pounce on magnus the second he shows weakness.

a lot of that plays into the hypervigilance of ptsd, too. magnus is very aware of any perceived threat, and he sometimes treats the people around him as threats, when all they’re doing in reality is thinking like, man i wish he didn’t live out here by himself all the time.

on a more meta note, i also have a tendency to make every character i write just like, a super good judge of character. i don’t think magnus is that, and i really wanted to lean into that. magnus does not read intention super well, even when that intention is genuinely good.

on the ipre and their relationships:

so i… really don’t write gen fic a lot. even when i do, it is almost always tinged with a little bit of background shipping, and there is some of that in this, but whereas in most fandoms i end up being a multishipper, for some reason with taz i’ve ended up pretty much only caring about the canon ships (sorry…). that being said, the platonic relationships in taz (and especially in balance) are some of the most compelling and important fictional relationships that i’ve ever encountered. like, they are just really well fucking done.

this being the magnus love letter that it is, i really wanted to focus on magnus’s distinct relationships with every member of the ipre crew. i don’t know how obvious this is in the actual narrative, but with the exception of the interlude and the epilogue, the story is broken down into one chapter for each member of the starblaster crew (in order, magnus, taako, merle, davenport, barry, lucretia, lup). i did this specifically because it was really important to me that i dive into all of them and their particular issues. i didn’t quite get the deep dive with merle or davenport that i would’ve liked to, but hopefully in the future i’ll get more time to explore that.

anyway, in case it isn’t obvious, lup is probably my favorite fictional character literally ever in any media created by anyone in the history of time. i say this only because a lot of this fic was set up to build to the conversation between her and magnus in ch 8 out on the mountain where he finally opens up for the first time. there are some really incredible unexplored parallels and relationships in taz (unexplored mainly because like, where would it even fit in canon), and while some of them are super self indulgent (ie, lup and mags, barry and mags), i really really really wanted to dig into those a little more. things like the conversation where taako is talking about everyone brushing over his trauma to rush to forgive lucretia, or lucretia talking about trying to learn to love writing again and recognize happy moments, davenport almost admitting that he’s not completely sure about stepping back into the family in his former role… i could write an entire fic on any of these, really.

but ultimately, this being a magnus fic, i tried to filter those conversations through a perspective of two things: first, how does this affect magnus and his mental health journey, and second, what can magnus do to help this. those scenes where magnus is trying to help someone with something and they’re like, backhandedly helping him are some of my favorite interactions in the fic.

the other thing i really really really wanted to explore that i never see enough of in fic is magnus and carey’s relationship. carey is canonically magnus’s best friend, and yet in fic i feel like she gets pushed to the side a little in favor of the starblaster crew. which i get, they’ve got a hundred and ten years of shared trauma, but also, travis flat out states that carey is magnus’s best friend, so… i mean, there is also a little bit of self indulgence here, because i am also a man who is exclusively best friends with lesbians, but you know.

that being said, i really wanted to emphasize that relationship in particular, which is why carey doesn’t have her own dedicated chapter and instead kind of slides in and out of each one and slowly helps magnus along the way. her personality i also feel is like, the exact kind of thing that magnus needs to push him into accepting / asking for help and moving towards recovery.

on real life parallels:

ok, i swear to god i did not intend to make this a holiday fic posted during the holidays. i started writing this in june, and again, it was only meant to be like 20k and not necessarily entirely set during candlenights. that kind of happened, anyway? candlenights just seemed like the best vessel to get all these characters whose post-canon situations i wanted to explore into the same room, and i finished the first draft around mid october and i wanted to give myself plenty of time for editing, so it honestly just ended up coincidentally aligning with the holidays. go figure.

that being said, isolation ended up featuring pretty heavily in this fic. that i think is to be expected to a certain degree given the nature of mental health and recovery and blah blah blah, but i probably unintentionally ended up leaning into it a little more because like… this year. and the holidays tend to be a time that a lot of us feel really isolated, and this year especially, but one of the big things for me this year is that like, all of my friends live out of state. the closest one to me is still a good 2-3 hour plane ride, which i am absolutely not risking. i had like a hundred plans to go see people and do things this year, and those obviously got cancelled.

probably the biggest one of those things was seeing a friend who i have kind of started a new years tradition of seeing, but we ended up calling that off out of safety considerations, of course. and it sucks! it’s not fun! i also moved out this year and i have my own place and in june i was really hoping that things would be okay by now and i could have all my friends come in from out of town for new years and that didn’t happen. and i wasn’t intending for this fic to be a kind of wish fulfillment of like, here’s my new place post-[saving the universe / coming out and becoming a real person], let me show my found family around my hometown and let’s make new holiday traditions together now that we’re no longer [fighting the apocalypse / literal children] and everything will be fun and happy and good, but that is kind of what happened anyway. [insert joke here that goes like “do you project your real world problems and mental health issues onto fictional characters or are you normal?”]

but yeah, magnus’s mental health struggles did kind of accidentally become a little bit of a pandemic / quarantine life parallel. i did not mean for that to happen, but it did help me tease out a little bit of what it is that i feel like i’m missing and what i want in the future when things are better, and i hope it helped some other people figure that stuff out too, maybe?

and in conclusion:

i said this a little bit in the final notes in the fic, but i am so so so grateful and emotional over the comments i’ve gotten from some of you. i’ve said it already, but this was such an emotional rollercoaster for me to write. i put a decent amount of my own mental health issues into the stuff i wrote into magnus, and it was genuinely therapeutic and like… super helpful and important. it was also a big struggle, and there were some scenes i came out of feeling incredibly drained and like i needed to not write for a week.

so that being said, those of you who have commented things about how this fic helped you deal with your own emotional turmoil or helped put something in perspective for you, i am genuinely so happy to hear that i’ve impacted you in that way like, at all. that is so incredible to me, and not necessarily what i set out to do, but it means so much to hear someone say that and also to know that someone felt comfortable sharing that with a stranger on the internet. thank you so so so much.

again, this fic means so much to me. the fact that it’s impacted even a handful of people in that way is absolutely amazing. some of the things you guys have said have had me seriously choked up. i am so glad that anyone even took the time to read all 133k of this, let alone that it affected people like that.

i don’t know if i’ll be writing more about magnus in this universe. i would love to! but i’m also super happy with where i’ve left his story. i have plans to explore the calen thing in the future, but only kind of tangentially in a side mention and not fully, so who knows? there is more though, a lot with taako and kravitz and lup and barry and hopefully one day i will find the motivation somewhere in me to flesh out everyone else’s situations a little more, too. who knows!

anyway, i just want to say thanks again to everyone for reading, and even more so if you are reading this dumb essay. you’re super cool.

#txt #fic talk

[firebirdsdaughter]

Random Writing Tidbit This is Bad…

… New discovery. If you try to edit a ‘read more’ post on mobile? Tumblr erases the whole post.

Okay. Let’s try this again. I still blame this on @thornstone8773 for giving me the idea.

This partially heavily based on a scene from Killjoys. Yes, I am still thinking about Killjoys.

This is set in the ‘human Jin raised by HumaGear Horobi’ AU, and deals w/ after the end, so I kinda inserted general, hazy epilogues for everyone:

In this version, Thouser was the big bad, so after they took him down, Yua took over ZAIA. Fuwa started working w/ Aruto as part of Hiden’s security (partially bc of a comment I saw about him becoming Aruto’s bodyguard and it stuck). Aruto keeps running Hiden Intelligence. Jin and Horobi kinda help him out/are both in rehab/are under his supervision. The promise Horobi mentions later in this essentially boils down to ‘stop trying to cause human extinction/killing humans = BAD.’

You know, the usual.

This comes across as pretty sad… Kinda. Maybe it is.

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For a while after, things were difficult.

He found himself answering the same questions over and over, weathering the same suspicious stares. He didn’t like how people looked at Horobi—like he was was a bomb that they expected to go off at any moment. Aruto had to remind him often that the transition was as hard for everyone else as it was for them. Trust was hard to relearn, for both sides.

For his part, Horobi made an effort. He was generally indifferent to his infamy, already long accustomed to suspicion and coldness from humans—but for his adopted son’s sake, he made deliberate attempts to assuage their fears and fit in. Even when it was clear to anyone who knew he’d rather be in the company of Fuwa—one of the few to whom he felt he had nothing to prove—he’d put on a face to try and keep others at ease. He even tried to smile a  few times, though that rarely went over well.

As time went on, however, people stopped staring so much. Months fell away, turning into years. Memory didn’t exactly fade, but altered. There was less fear and more marvel. But that wasn’t the only things that changed.

People who didn’t recognise them would ask if Horobi was his brother, starting at some point in his thirties. Horobi had never paid much mind to such questions to begin with, so Jin often found himself recounting the explanation multiple times, while Horobi hovered like a ghost at his elbow. Out of all of them, Horobi and Izu remained the same; timeless while the humans around them steadily altered. Aruto had to politely force Fuwa, the eldest of them, to retire from his new position as Hiden’s security head when it was clear the demands were too much for him—even after that, though, Fuwa stayed close, watching the Hiden CEO like an unofficial bodyguard. Yaiba was up and about even longer, rustling around ZAIA’s offices like a queen, not slowing down at all. She laughed and said it was because women lived longer—Fuwa shot back that it was because it was her.

Horobi said nothing about the expanding differences in their appearances, merely retuning his hyper awareness of his adoptive son to look for new things, always already offering help before Jin would even know he needed it. He even offered to carry Jin a few times, like he had was Jin was small, but Jin put a stop to that in his early fifties. Horobi was strong enough, but it didn’t seem right anymore. Around then, he also stopped giving proper answers when people misinterpreted their relationship.

When he was in his sixties, he slipped on the sidewalk, and though some passersby rushed forward to help, it was, as always, Horobi who caught him instantly, gently pulling him back up.

“Such a dutiful son!” A woman nearby had exclaimed.

Horobi ignored her, but Jin couldn’t resist glancing over and giving her a small smile. “Yes.” He said, “I am.” Her eyes had bugged out. Later, Horobi hadn’t understood why it was funny—but Horobi never understood why anything was funny.

As he got even older, there was an unspoken tension in the air. For the first time, they were both confronting something neither had considered before; being separated. Horobi, he knew, wouldn’t say anything, still so afraid of accidentally pressuring Jin into something, constantly doubting himself. That meant it fell upon Jin to broker the conversation, something he made plans to do.

Until he started getting sick, and their balance shattered.

The doctors the others dragged him to concluded it was some sort of delayed response to exposure to radiation. Something that had been building in his body all those years at Daybreak that was finally breaking free as he got older and weaker. He considered trying to hide it from Horobi, until Izu looked him in the eye and informed him that if she had noticed, there was no way Horobi hadn’t.

He was quickly confined to a hospital—moving hurt, and he was tired all the. Horobi was, s always, never far away, and the others came to visit often. Yaiba had finally retired—partially, Fuwa would always add with a chuckle until she smacked him with something. Aruto was starting to ease out of his duties as CEO, needing to lean more and more on Izu just to get around. Jin didn’t know what Aruto was planning to do—but he knew the idea he had had, even before the illness set in, and he knew Aruto still had the power to make it happen.

“… It’s possible.” The Hiden CEO admittedly, slowly. “My father…” Aruto trailed off there, and Jin waited patiently for him to find his voice again. Aruto didn’t really talk about his father—at least, not to anyone other than Izu or Fuwa—and it was better not to push him. “… It’s possible.” He finally continued, sighing slightly. “And we’ve made even more advancements in the field. But…” He looked sideways at Jin then. “Are you sure? It’s not exactly something you can take back.” Speaking was effort, but Jin carefully met Aruto’s eyes and nodded. Aruto studied him, then sighed again. “Alright. But there’s someone who wants to talk to you first.” The Hiden CEO shifted his seat to reveal the doorway.

Horobi was standing by Izu’s shoulder, looking distraught, for him.

Jin looked back at Aruto accusingly, dragging his voice out to demand, “You told Horobi?”

A small smile flitted across Aruto’s face. “Well, see, I need parental permission on the form…” He stopped when he saw Jin’s incredulous look. “… You should have told him.” Turning his head, Aruto signalled Izu, who came over and helped him up. “I’ll let you two discuss this,” He told them, “Call me if there’s a decision.” Then he and his secretary made their way out, with his arm around her shoulders, slipping past Horobi and out the door.

For a long time, silence filled the room. Then, slowly, Horobi crossed the floor, sitting beside his bed, and taking Jin’s nearest hand in both of his.

“You don’t have to do this for me.” Horobi’s hands were actually warm on his, unlike the usual room temperature, the HumaGear putting conscious effort into trying to make him as comfortable as possible. “I will stay by your side until the very end, hold your hand when you pass on.” The hold on his hand tightened, though the pressure was, as always, carefully measured so as not to hurt him. “I will remember my promise—I will watch over them, guard them. Justice will be done, cities built, and a future made in your name.” One of the perfectly temperature-controlled hands moved to tenderly touch his cheek. “You are my son. I will be your legacy, and you will not be forgotten.”

He looked back into the HumaGear’s eternally weary eyes. It was hard to remember his younger days, when Horobi had been so hard to read, all blank and ominous. Now detecting the sorrow in those eyes was as natural as breathing—perhaps even more so, by this point. There was also something else there, hiding just behind the thick curtains of forlorn affection; guilt. The like of which he had seen before. “But…?” He prompted softly, voice even hoarser than usual.

Horobi’s gaze faltered, flicking downward.

A laugh bubbled from him, one that even almost sounded like his old childish giggles, just a little more breathless. Even as tired as he was, his lips pulled into a smile. Slowly, he freed one arm from the blankets, reaching over to cup Horobi’s face and gently lift it back up to meet his eyes again. “… But if I leave…” He whispered, running his thumb across the HumaGear’s cheek, “… Horobi will be lonely again.”

Horobi still couldn’t weep—but Jin knew for certain he heard his adoptive father’s breathing hitch.

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… Or, maybe it isn’t.

At least, that ending is supposed to be kinda hopeful. Kinda.

Hopefully it’s also at least kinda clear what Jin’s idea is. I may have made it rather obvious. ^^;

#Random Writing Tidbit #Kamen Rider Zero-One #Evil Scorpion Dad is Best Dad #my precious evil cutie falcon son #my precious evil stoic scorpion dad #my precious angry wolf dad #I actually do gotta go I'm not lying #TAKE TWO #Binary Retro Rider

[finiarels]

The Beat of Her Heart - PART 2

End of the year’s holiday special. The story consists of 5 parts + 1 epilogue.

Update every Wednesday and Sunday

Main Pairing: Shiraishi Mai X Wakatsuki Yumi

[read on JPH!P]

Wakatsuki Yumi. She hadn’t even met her until last year, yet she was already familiar with the name for four years. From the time Fukagawa Mai helped her to disclose a classified hospital record, that name has claimed a permanent place in her brain. It wasn’t that hard for the latter to get her hands on the records considering the Fukagawa ownership of the hospital. Back then, just like how Shiraishi was, Fukagawa also believed that maybe knowing the names will help her to move on as losing her best friend was also giving her a difficult time. Well, those names might really give Fukagawa a sense of closure, however, knowing the names didn’t work out that well for Shiraishi. Most of the times, Shiraishi Mai ponders upon how ironic a fate is. How she was betrothed to another girl from she was young, not knowing what the future holds for the girl. How she would be the reason for the girl’s death a decade after that. Some of her peers which also has been promised to another person since they were young are not even in love but somehow- they are still in a lasting relationship up until this point. Yet she- who had fallen head over heels with her fiancé lost her completely. Isn’t that unfair? Scratch that. There are some parts of Sakurai Reika left in this world. Among the many pieces the girl so generously donated, the most important one is left in Wakatsuki Yumi. Shiraishi looks up only to meet Wakatsuki’s face, her eyes are unreadable behind the snow google, her hand held out to Shiraishi as an offer to help. Shiraishi grasp the hand with both of hers, letting the smaller girl pull her up. As she stands up, she leaned as close as possible to the helper. That is her purpose, her goal for the day, to hear the heartbeat of her past lover. To her dismay, Wakatsuki took a step back even though her fingers holding Shiraishi’s arm gently to make sure she doesn’t fall down again. “Thanks,” Shiraishi said, purposely lifting her google so the other girl could recognise her. “S- Shiraishi-san? It’s me- Wakatsuki Yumi,” the girl lifts her snow google as well. “I never thought I will see you here.” Shiraishi raised her gloved hand to her mouth as if she’s not expecting to see the other girl as well, “What a surprise! It’s really nice to see you. Well, my friend is the owner of the Hashimoto ski-resort and she invites me to come over for a couple of nights. How about you?” “My family has a lodge just right below the resort so I am staying there. I’m basically alone though, my sister will come to join me the day after tomorrow, but the rest of my family is basically busy. You are welcome to visit.” “I would love to,” Shiraishi excitedly took the offer, grasping the girl’s hand with hers. “For you to come alone for a ski trip, you must really like the snow, don’t you?” “Ah- that might be because I used to be too ill to play this kind of sports. But ever since I have gotten much better I tried a lot of things that I couldn’t do before, including the snowboard.” Shiraishi smiled a little, seeing Wakatsuki happily talked about something have that effect on her. She’s glad that the donation lands on someone who deserves it. “How about ski? Do you know anything about this?” “Well, I did take a ski lesson so I could give you a view pointer. The way you’re standing now it’s already perfect, just make sure to keep your legs from spreading apart when you’re sliding down and watch your speed. I think the main reason you fell is that you were too fast.” “I admit I was really enjoying the speed rush before,” Shiraishi laughed, somehow that earned a dazed look from Wakatsuki. Shiraishi tilted her head a bit, “Wakatsuki-san?” “Yes, uh- sorry, I was just out of it. By the way, no need to be so polite, calling me with the family name makes me feel like you are talking to my father instead of me.” “Yumi-san then? Or would Yumi-chan works better?” “E-either way is good,” she replied, looking bashful out of the sudden. “Well, I will call you Yumi-chan, then. You also don’t need to use my family name to call me, just so we are even.” Wakatsuki smiled, “Okay, Mai-chan, shall we finish the remaining of this track now? I will help you up if you ever fall again.” Shiraishi was stunned, she didn’t realise that it’s been a long time since someone called her like that. Her friends call her ‘Maiyan’ and her parents always ditch any kind of honorific to call her. She hadn’t noticed it before but Sakurai Reika was the only one who calls her like that. Hearing those words coming out from another mouth that is not hers with a voice that is completely different is bittersweet. She thought of asking the girl to call her something else instead, but somehow, she likes the sounds of Wakatsuki saying that. “Let’s go,” Shiraishi said, snapping out of her train of thought and averted her focus to the ski track ahead of them. About a few meters from where they had started to slide down the slope side by side, Shiraishi felt a bit of pain, she might have splintered her foot a little when she slipped. However, that should be fine, since Wakatsuki is moving in a decent and harmless speed. “Is your foot okay?” She somehow guessed correctly. “It’s fine. We are not going at full speed anyway,” Shiraishi assured her. Wakatsuki nodded, “I sort of fell in a similar way last year. My foot was splintered badly, but that might be because of the ski lesson’s cheap ski boots.” Shiraishi laughed, imagining the non-flexible boots that most of the ski rental offers, “I can imagine.” The two girls move in silence for a moment. Calculating her next move, Shiraishi stole a quick glance at the girl beside her, contemplating whether she should try to achieve her main objective or not. Noticing a bit of a curve ahead of them, she realised that her second chance is coming. She closes her eyes and let her footing shambles, making sure that she lands in the most comfortable way as she does so, letting out a little yelp when she finally hit the ground. Wakatsuki stopped, holding out a hand to help her stand up just like how she did it before. However, this time instead of letting the girl pull her up, Shiraishi pulled down the girl that’s holding her. Furthermore, when the girl loses a little bit of her balance, Shiraishi’s foot plays their part to purposely tripped the girl down. Just like that, Wakatsuki Yumi fell right on top of her. Shiraishi lay still, trying to make out the beat of the girl’s heart, however, their thick jackets prevent that. Sighing, she realised that this petty trick won’t do. Shiraishi turns her head, her eyes meeting Wakatsuki that is looking at her with her eyes widened, totally wasn’t expecting the sudden turn of event. Shiraishi smiled sheepishly, “I’m sorry.” It took Wakatsuki a couple of seconds to pull herself together and rolled off Shiraishi’s body, expression unreadable, “don’t mind it.” This time, Shiraishi helped herself up instead of waiting for the girl, thinking that she had done enough to trouble her by falling. In response, Wakatsuki watches in silence as she readied herself back, only giving her a small nod before continuing the rest of their track. Shiraishi could feel the girl’s eyes checking up on her every now and then as if to make sure that she didn’t hurt herself even more by that second fall. They already did more than half of the track and Shiraishi realised if she still wants to have a chat with the girl furthermore she might need to say something soon.  She remembered requesting a dinner to Hashimoto and took her chance, “Yumi-chan, would you like to join me for dinner tonight? My treat. Consider it my way to pay you back for your help.” Wakatsuki’s movement slowed down, “no need to trouble yourself.” “It’s totally fine, I insist.” Wakatsuki looks at her for a moment, before averting her gaze back to the track. There’s something that bugs her mind for a while and she thinks that this is the right time to find out the truth, “Mai-chan, when you slipped right in front of me. Was it truly an accident?” “What are you talking about? Y-you saw it happened,” Shiraishi tried to defend herself. “From the time where we talked in our first meeting, a lot of people have warned me about you. I decided to brush it off, thinking that there is no way that nice girl who is willing to listen to my boring story instead meeting the other more important people in the gala would do that to me,” Wakatsuki sighed. “Still, I feel the need to make myself clear. Maybe you don’t care about your reputation for sleeping around with different person each night, but I do care. So, if the actual reason for that dinner is so that you can add me to your long list of ‘girl I’ve slept with’. I’m sorry but I can’t and I won’t.” That wasn’t the first time she had been turned down by someone, she had gotten that response a lot especially since her name isn’t exactly untarnished when it comes to love affairs. Somehow, she had built a wall to protect her from hurting from rejection, reminding herself that there are plenty other fishes in the sea. However, this time, for the first time in years, Shiraishi Mai felt like her heart was crushed. “I was a fool to think that you would treat me differently because of the heart that’s beating in you. Well, it was still nice to hang out with you. Have a good day, Yumi-chan.” ~ To Be Continued ~

#TBOYH #holiday sp #nogizaka46 fanfiction #nogizaka46