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bing-bang-bingo · 4 years

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- 4x3: c. 40:00 Cas comforts Dean after Mary makes a deal w/ Azazel

- 4x7: 15:50 Dean stops Sam from shooting Cas, then Sam mentions that he’s “heard a lot about him”

- 4x7: 39:00 Cas tells Dean he prayed he’d save the town, then he tells him about his doubts and Deans future troubles

- 4x10 & ???: Dean calls “last night on Earth” his best line. He uses this line on Cas

- 4x10: 27:15 “Castiel has this weakness. He likes you.”

- 4x10: 32:50 Cas looking jealous and sad when Dean kisses Anna

- 4x16: 7:30 Cas tells Dean he got in trouble for showing emotion and getting to close to Dean. 8:20 “I would give anything not to have you do this”

- 4x16: 39:00 Cas warns Dean to be careful while Dean is in the hospital, they discuss the first seal and saving Dean from hell

- 4x18: 31:30 Cas tells Dean how to save Sam from Lilith even though he’s not allowed to interfere

- 4x20: 38:00 Deans face when Cas tells him he “learned his lesson when he was in heaven”

- 4x22: 30:40 Cas considers rebelling for Dean. 33:00 He does. 35:20 He fights multiple Archangels for Dean

- 5x1: 5:45 Dean denies Cas’ death 8:25 “I learned that from my friend Cas you son of a bitch”

- 5x1: 31:00 Cas saves Sam and Dean from Zach

- 5x3: 6:10 Cas-“I need your help because your the only one who will help me”

- 5x3: 10:20 Dean fixes Cas’ tie and jacket

- 5x4: 38:50 “Don’t Ever Change”

- 5x8: 38:20 Dean makes Gabriel bring Cas back, then makes sure he’s okay

- 5x13: ?:?? Cas won’t let Dean meet with Anna because it’s not safe

- 5x17: 30:30 Cas and Dean discuss what it’s like to have a deadbeat dad

- 5x18: 25:15 Cas kicks Deans ass for trying to sacrifice himself

- 5x21: 3:50 Cas and Dean bickering like and old married couple then Cas gives Dean a heartfelt apology.

- 6x17: 18:55 “No you’re confusing me with the other angel, the one in the dirty trench coat who is in love with you.”

- 6x17: 38:00 Sam: “So you killed 50,000 people for us?” Cas: *looks at Dean*

- 6x19: 25:20 Bobby reassures Cas that they’ll be back soon, Cas acts like a worried and disappointed wife.

- 6x19: 36:25 Cas yelling “Dean!” when Eve bites him

- 6x19: 40:00 Dean is the only one who doesn’t think Cas is working with Crowley (he’s wrong but it’s sweet)

- 6x20: 4:50 Dean v v worried, “But Cas you’ll call right? If you get into real trouble?”

- 6:30 Crowley implies that Cas is distracted by Dean and tells him he reeks of the Impala.

- 7:20 Cas says that Dean taught him how to care and what to care about. Then Cas saves Sam (for Dean)

- 13:15 Cas says that the worst part of working with Crowley (basically his sworn natural enemy) is that it hurt Dean and that he hated lying to him.

- 25:20 Cas refuses to ask Dean for help because he has “sacrificed too much” even though it means Cas could die.

- 26:00 Crowley tells Cas he has a way for everyone to get a happy ending “with all possible entendres intended” while Cas stares longingly at Dean.

- 33:00 Dean is close to tears when he learns that Cas is working with Crowley, Cas says he did it to protect Dean.

- 35:25 “Dammit Cas we can fix this!” “Dean it’s not broken!” He then tells the boys to run from the demon cloud and Dean gives him the saddest look in the world before being forced to leave him behind.

- 38:00 Cas watches Dean sleep. “I’m doing this for you Dean. I’m doing this because of you!”

- 6x21: 22:40 “I do everything you ask. I always come when you call and I am your friend. Still despite your lack of faith in me and now your threats I’ve just saved you yet again. Has anyone but your closest kin ever done more for you?”

- 6x22: Dean to Cas- “Don’t make me lose you, too.”

- 7x2: 5:35 Dean nearly cries on screen when he thinks Cas is dead

- 7x17: Cas says “I remember ~you~” as soon as he regains his memories.

- 7x17: Cas ask why Dean didn’t tell him all the horrible things Cas did. Parallels the conversation Karen and Dean had about telling Bobby she remembered him killing her and her telling Dean that he had never been on love before.

- 7x21: The face Dean makes when he sees Cas again plus the prolonged eye contact when Cas says Deans name.

- 7x21: Hester telling Dean that when Cas first saved him from Hell he was lost- parallels- Lucifer/Jess saying she was dead the moment she met Sam.

- 7x23: 8:50 “Go ask him. He was your boyfriend first.” Meg to Dean about Cas

- 7x23: 32:45 “I’m sorry but I’d rather have you, cursed or not.”

- 7x23: 36:50 Cas steps in to protect Dean despite spending the whole season avoiding fighting and saying he won’t fight.

- 8x2: 25:00 Cas ran away to keep the Leviathans away from Dean. Dean refuses to leave purgatory without Cas.

- 8x7: 20:30 Deans reaction to seeing Cas all cleaned up.

- 8x7: Dean convinced himself that it was his fault Cas was still in purgatory because he’s a sweet idiot boy who hates himself

- 8x7: 35:00 The whole Dean and Cas conversation about purgatory and Cas doing stuff that puts him in danger.

- 8x8: 12:30 Cas just casually going through Deans stuff and Dean not saying anything.

- 8x8: 13:00 Cas offering to watch over Dean while he slept

- 8x8: 15:15 Dean talks to Cas about feelings and heaven even though Dean hates talking about feelings.

- 8x17: Cas fights Naomi’s mind control for Dean

- 8x23: 22:50 Dean and Cas sadly discuss Cas closing the doors of heaven and say goodbye

- 9x1: Dean prays to Cas and tells him he isn’t mad about the angels falling.

- 9x1: Cas’ first instinct is to explain himself to Dean then to come help him.

- 9x1: Dean begs Cas to “for once, look out for yourself.”

- 9x3: 36:45 Dean to Cas after Cas came back from the dead “Don’t you ever do that again!”

- 9x6: Literally just Dean trying desperately the whole episode to hang out with Cas

- 9x10: 26:00 Dean and Cas talk about how Cas is doing and Dean offers him a rare sincere apology. Plus the “I prefer the term ‘trusting’. Less dumb, less ass.” dialogue

- 9x18: Cas’ little smile when Dean makes a joke about Honor Bars and Cas is just so happy to hear his voice.

- 9x18: Metatron’s illusion of Gabriel calls Cas Dean’s boy-toy

- 9x18: Cas can tell something is wrong with Dean, then Cas yells at Dean about getting the Mark of Cain

- 9x22: Cas chooses Dean over all of Heaven once again

- 9x22: The Cas and Dean conversation about the three of them being enough when an army wasn’t and Cas giving up an army all for Dean

- 9x23: “I’m blaming you for taking Cas’ grace.”

- 10x1: 5:00 Cas about Dean- “I miss him.”

- 10x2: 9:00 Cas’ reaction to learning that Dean is a demon

- 10x3: The conversation between Dean and Cas at the end of the episode. “You look terrible” “You on the other hand, your looking good.”

- 10x5: Deans reaction to Cas and Dean actors hugging and holding hands

- 10x5: “Put as much sub into that text as you possibly can.” *looks directly at fake Cas*

- 10x9: 15:00 Cas tells Dean he’s a good role model. Then asks him if he’s okay and when Dean lies and says he is he pushes it further. Dean makes Cas promise to kill him if he goes Dark

- 10x22: Dean and Cas fight and parallel Cain and his Wife.

- 10x23: Dean sees Cas’ bloody face in the mirror

- 11x1: Cas being more worried about Dean than himself even though Cas is under a spell that will kill him.

- 11x2: Dean calling Cas and stressing out when he doesn’t answer

- 11x3: Dean trying to coax Cas out of the attack dog spell, refusing to fight back when Cas was attacking, freaking out when Cas took a minute to wake up, refusing to let Cas heal him (because he “had it coming”), and refusing to let Cas apologize (because “there’s nothing to apologize for”).

- 11x10: “Dean, I came as soon as you called.” Also: “Stick your tongue out.” Dean-*does*

- 11x11: Dean realizing that something is wrong with Cas (while he is possessed by Lucifer)

- 11x11: Mildred says that Dean is pining for someone else(probably meant to be a reference to Amara, but she told him this after he had seen Cas for the first time in a few days.)

- 11x14: The sadness on Deans face when he realizes Cas is Lucifer and then his determination to save Cas

- 11x15: Dean getting kinda dark when he talks about what he’s willing to do to save Cas and he prioritizes saving Cas over bearing Amara.

- 11x17: Dean once again prioritizing saving Cas over saving the world. Sam reassuring Dean that they’ll save Cas (even though Dean didn’t say anything about what was upsetting him)

- 11x17: The camera zooming in on Dean after Michelle says that there is no normal after losing the man you love.

- 11x18: Dean refuses to put Lucifer in the cage or let him fight Amara while using Cas as his vessel.

- 11x18: The difference in the way Dean looks at Lucifer vs at Cas

- 11x18: Dean about Cas: “Lets go find that idiot and bring him home.”

- 11x19: Dean has been looking for leads non stop for a week since Amara took Cas

- 11x21: Amara uses Cas’s heart to find Dean, then shows Dean images of Cas beaten and bloodied to convince him to turn against Chuck

- 11x23: Dean’s face when he realizes Cas is back and Lucifer is gone.

- 11x23: Dean tells Cas he isn’t stupid and that he always helps

- 11x23: Cas: “Dean are you okay? How do you feel?”

- 11x23: Cas hugging Dean super tight before he goes off to die. Dean entrusting his life’s purpose (look after Sam) then thanking him for everything.

- 12x1: Cas seeing that Dean is alive and hugging him while his voice breaks.

- 12x1: Cas taking the job Dean have him very seriously

- 12x2: Dean adorably venting to Cas about his mommy-issues

- 12x3: Dean- “Morning sunshine want some coffee.” Cas- “No thank you.”

- 12x7: “Well at least I don’t look like a lumberjack.” They are such husbands

- 12x7: “Engaged in what Cas? killing you?”

- 12x8: Cas being so worried about what happened to Sam and DEAN that Kelly escaped.

- 12x9: Mary-“You left them!” Cas- *voice breaking* “Dean told me to go!” Also, just Cas looking so hard for them.

- 12x9: Cas blaming himself for Sam and Dean being taken

- 12x9 Cas knowing how long the boys have been gone down to the hour.

- 12x9: Cas’s voice and eyes when he hears Dean’s voice on the phone.

- 12x9: Cas killing Billie because “You mean too much to me” and “The world needs as many Winchesters as it can get.”

- 12x10: Poor Sam having to deal with Cas and Dean while they fight like an old married couple.

- 12x10: Dean immediately telling Ishim to go to hell when he insults Cas

- 12x10: Sam telling Dean to go to Cas when Dean thought Cas was in trouble

- 12x10: Cas immediately believing Dean about Ishim even though they’re mad at each other. Dean about to let Ishim kill him to save Cas.

- 12x10: Ishim comparing Dean and Cas’s relationship to Ishims relationship with his human lover, then saying he was going to cut Cas’s human weakness

- 12x11: “And Cas is my best friend.”

- 12x12: Dean about Cas- “My shy but devastatingly handsome friend here...”

- 12x12: Dean stressing out and voice breaking as he tries to comfort poisoned Cas

- 12x12: LITERALLY TOLD DEAN THAT HE LOVED HIM WHILE CAS WAS DYING

- 12x12: *looking at Dean* “I love you.” Then adds “I love all of you”

- 12x12: Cas- “Run.” Dean- “Cas, no.”

- 12x12: The look Dean gives Cas when he won’t stop staring at him after he’s healed.

- 12x14: Dean says some very harsh stuff to Mary after finding out the reason they Cas almost died at the lake house was because Mary was working for the British Men of Letters

- 12x15: Dean could tell something was up with Cas after talking to him for less than a minute, over the phone.

- 12x18: Sam trying to make Dean feel better about not hearing from Cas.

- 12x19: Dean literally always acting like a scorned wife when Cas comes back after long periods of time

- 12x19: Dean made Cas a mixtape

- 12x19: Cas- “I ~needed~ to came back here with a win for you.”

- 12x19: Cas- *gesturing between Dean and himself* “You mean... we?” Dean- “Yes, dumbass, we.”

- 12x23: Dean screaming for Cas when he attacks Lucifer and trying to chase after him forcing Sam to drag Dean back through the rift. A direct parallel to Dean pulling Sam away from Jess and the fire in Pilot

- 12x23: Dean kneeling next to Cas’s dead body looking up at the sky completely devastated.

- 13x1: Dean couldn’t bring himself to say dead when referring to Cas

- 13x1: Dean PRAYED to GOD to bring Cas back

- 13x1: “We just lost ~everything~. And now you’re gonna bring ~him~ back.”

- 13x1: Dean personally wrapping Cas’s body and giving him a hunters funeral.

- 13x1: The look of complete devastation on Dean’s face when he burns Cas’s body.

- 13x3: Dean refusing to help save Jack because he blames him for manipulating Cas and getting him killed.

- 13x4: The Empty to Cas: “I know what you love, what you fear. There is nothing for you back there.” He loves Dean and Cas fears that Dean doesn’t love him back.

- 13x5: Sam being worried about Dean who has given up all hope since Cas died.

- 13x5: Dean being so distressed thinking Cas is gone forever that he tries to kill himself

- 13x5: Dean seeing Cas alive again and they both have tears in their eyes.

- 13x6: Dean hugging Cas and saying he’s been gone for “too damn long”

- 13x6: Dean being immediately happier and nicer to everyone once Cas is back

- 13x6: Cas saying “Yes. Yes, he does” (in response to Jack saying Dean really likes cowboys) with the tone of an exhausted spouse.

- 13x6: “I told you, he’s an angry sleeper. Like a bear.”

- 13x6: Dean made Cas watch Tombstone with him.

- 13x6: Dean and Cas dresses like cowboy husbands.

- 13x6: Cas saying “I’m your huckleberry” to Dean in a deep accent and Dean looking away.

- 13x6: Their undercover names are Russel and Kilmer

- 13x14: The whole scene where Cas and Dean fight Gog/Magog and act like an old married couple.

- 13x14: The angry, dark look Cas gives Donatello when he tries to kill Dean

- 13x16: “Dean has him by the thigh!” Cas, jealously: “He ~what~?”

- 13x16: “and that includes the Cartwright twins.” Cas, again jealously: “what did you do with the Cartwright twins?”

- 13x19: Cas angrily confronting Naomi about forcing him to kill a bunch of Dean clones.

- 13x21: Cas secretly sliding Dean more pizza when Mary and Sam left the room.

- 13x21: Cas having to hold Dean back from going after Sam. Dean would have beat the shit out of anyone else who tried to stop him.

- 13x23: Cas trying to stop Dean from giving himself to Michael even if it meant losing Sam AND Jack

- 13x23: Cas sitting alone in the bum jet with tears in his eyes after Dean left

- 14x1: Demon: “How is it you lost Dean. I thought you two were joined at the... everything.”

- 14x1: Dean trying to save Cas from Lucifer then vs Cas trying to save Dean from Michael now

- 14x3: The look that Dean and Cas give each other when Dean comes home.

- 14x9: Cas almost being happy seeing Dean happy. And then having to force himself to not be happy so he doesn’t die.

- 14x12: Cas being phased at Dean for wanting to put himself in the box with Michael forever

- 14x14: Cas is the only Dean will let talk to him about Michael and be honest about how Dean feels

- 14x14: “No, it’s on us.”

- 14x14: Cas’s voice breaking when he talks about the possibility of Dean dying one day.

- 14x18: The pure self loathing in Cas’s eyes when he feels like he failed Dean by not telling him about Jack’s soul.

- 15x2: “You asked ‘what about all of this is real?’ We are.” THE MOST ROMANTIC LINE EVER. (Plus later Eileen and Sam have the same conversation but they get to kiss because homophobia)

- 15x9- 20:00 Dean said that they lost everyone they cared about, then added Cas specifically. Then he says “I had to bury him” not “we”

- 15x9- 23:00 Dean cries when he can’t find Cas. Then he prays to him and apologizes for letting him go. He falls to his knees praying to him and fully crying

- 15x12: “I created the world.” *shows Destiel*

- 15x15: This time when Dean sees Cas leaving the bunker, he stops him. (In reference to Cas saying “you didn’t stop me” when Dean got mad at him for leaving)

- 15x16: This is the the only version of Cas that rebelled for Dean. This universe is literally being saved repeatedly because of Cas’s love for Dean

- 15x18: CAS CONFESSES HIS LOVE TO DEAN then goes to mega hell for being gay

Anyway, Cas loves Dean and Dean LOVES HIM BACK, OKAY?!?!? Feel free to add more

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a-small-batch-of-dragons · 4 years

Text

Snap Part 1

Read on Ao3 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Inspired in part by the lovely @random-snippets‘s post here

Warnings: roman angst and everything that goes with it. self-esteem issues, self-hatred, insecurity. sympathetic everyone

Pairings: roceit, platonic DLAMPR

Word Count: 5540

Most things in life are flexible to some degree. You can push and pull and bend them in certain ways and, to some extent, they will comply with you. There are some things that you can bend and bend and bend. Creativity is one of these things. Creativity, imagination, dreams...they can be shaped and changed into whatever you want.

Bend...and bend...and bend...until they snap.

Janus enjoys teasing.

He finds that it often reveals true intentions much better than simply taking someone at their word. Plus, the range of reactions he gets is endlessly amusing.

Patton will stutter and stammer adorably, or he’ll put on his Dad Voice™ and attempt to scold. Logan, depending on what sort of mood he’s in, will sass him back or give him a death glare. Virgil definitely isn’t the type to snipe back, keeping up with Janus blow for blow. Remus is…Remus.

But Roman…Roman is different.

Roman used to be the most fun to tease, puffing himself up in a fit of righteous princely indignation to defend himself, going red in the face only to be set off again moments later. Janus could spend hours just tilting his head this way and that as Roman muttered himself in and out of circles and paradoxes and contradictions. It used to be quite an effective way to shut the prince up, letting him stew in his own thoughts.

It’s still an effective way to silence Roman, but it’s changed.

It started after the wedding.

Roman had shut himself away in his room, much to the chagrin of the others. They expected a temper tantrum, they expected sulking. Logan and Patton were constantly on standby for the minute Thomas would start being affected by it.

They didn’t expect Roman to emerge a few days later and quietly ask to talk to each of them.

He apologized.

A proper apology; for mocking his name, for calling him evil, for dismissing him out of hand. Janus can only guess by the looks of pleasant confusion mirrored on the other Sides’s faces that they received similar apologies.

Janus hadn’t been surprised when Roman extended a nervous offer of having him and Remus come around to their side of the Mindscape more often, saying that they had…valuable insights to offer. He hadn’t been surprised to see Roman extend the olive branch to Remus, only for Remus to promptly snatch it up and hug his brother so tightly Janus winced in sympathy for Roman’s ribs.

Patton, as was to be expected, was overjoyed, throwing his arms around the princely side in what could only be described as euphoria. Logan had been surprised, saying he hadn’t expected Roman’s surprising amount of maturity regarding the issue, including the way Roman had promised to listen to him more often. Virgil had shrugged, saying it was about time Roman started doing that anyway.

He hadn’t thought anything of it, not really. And it had been pleasant, being listened to. Not being treated like a villain.

He should’ve known it wasn’t going to be only a few days for Roman to completely change his black-and-white view of the world.

Roman listened more, that was true, but he didn’t talk as much either. He stood quietly, occasionally asking softly for clarification.

“…L-Logan?”

Logan pauses mid-sentence, glancing over at Roman. Roman sits there, twisting his fingers together.

“Yes?”

“Can you…slow down a little bit?”

Logan blinks. He’d been talking about recent discoveries made in the field of quantum physics, just getting to the part about how SUSY particles could reconcile the different interpretations of the expansions of the universe. Roman had been the only one who volunteered to listen, and he half-expected Roman to dismiss the topic entirely or say he had some important thing to go to. He had not been expecting this.

Roman did not seem to interpret his silence in this way.

“It’s just,” he stammers frantically, “it’s not that I’m not interested, I am, I can assure you, I’m just…I’m having trouble keeping up with you.”

He balls his hands up tightly in his lap, staring at Logan with a frantic sense of urgency.

“It’s okay if you can’t or you don’t want to, y-you’re not boring me, I promise, and I don’t want you to stop, but can you please try and talk a little slower? I don’t…I don’t want to miss anything,” he trails off.

“It’s…it’s quite alright, Roman,” Logan says carefully, “I’m happy to slow down.”

Roman’s face breaks into a relieved smile. “Okay, thank you, I don’t know what’s going on with me today.” He taps the side of his head with a self-deprecating smile. “Not all here, it seems. Sorry, Specs.”

“You needn’t apologize, you haven’t done anything wrong.” Logan adjusts his glasses. “I would be more than happy to slow down. Are you quite sure I’m not boring you?”

“Absolutely not.”

Logan smiles. “…good.”

“C-can I say what I’ve gotten so far,” Roman asks hesitantly, “and then you can correct me where I’m wrong and then jump back in when we get there?”

“Of course.”

Roman had Remus share almost as many ideas as he did, but he didn’t share his own as much either.

“Roman? Do you have anything to add?”

Roman shakes his head, a small smile on his lips as he watches Remus bounce excitedly on the balls of his feet.

“I believe we have a solid idea,” he says, gently elbowing Remus, “and there is nothing I can do to improve it.”

“You know, Ro-Bro,” Remus says, shoving Roman back, “you’ve gotten so much less boring.”

Roman chuckles lightly, picking himself up off the wall. “I’m glad you’re happy.”

“Oh, I am!” Remus claps his hands. “But are you sure we can’t build in the part about—“

“We are not unearthing a roadkill corpse, Remus.”

Roman didn’t puff up when he was teased anymore, but he didn’t defend himself in any other way as much either.

“Could you be more extra,” Virgil sighs, nudging Roman, “really, Princey?”

Roman pauses, before slowly lowering his hands. “I am, aren’t I?”

Virgil’s eyes widen. “Guys! Guys, I got Roman to admit that he’s extra!”

“You did what?” Remus vaults over the couch. “You did it!”

“That is in fact a marvelous breakthrough,” Logan says, drinking his coffee, “especially for Roman.”

“Good to see you’re finally developing some self-awareness, kiddo,” Patton says with a wink, patting Roman on the shoulder.

Janus smirks, shifting in his chair. “Yes, because Roman’s observational skills have always been at the forefront.”

“Alright, alright,” Roman says finally, waving his hand, “I’m extra, I get it.”

It took far too long for them to realize that just because Roman’s behavior had changed, it didn’t mean he wasn’t still struggling with the ramifications of it. It took them far too long to realize that Roman still clung to the ideas of heroes and villains, the roles had just shifted. It took them far too long to realize that the ego, still hiding its black and blue skin, was still living in fear, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It took Janus far too long to realize he wasn’t doing his job.

“Oh, come now, I’m only teasing.”

“And that’s supposed to make everything better, is it?”

Janus pauses, the sharpness in Roman’s voice killing the follow-up in his throat. His eyes don’t widen at how Roman looks at him. For the first time in a long time, Roman’s gaze is filled with fire as he stares at Janus. It gives him pause for a moment. Just a moment. Then his smirk is back.

Good. You were starting to get boring.

“You realize that saying you’re teasing doesn’t make it hurt any less, right?”

“Oh, sweetie, there’s really no need to get so worked up—“

“Don’t pretend that your intention has not been to make me uncomfortable.”

“Then why’re you letting it get to you so?”

“…so if Remus tries to knock me out with his morningstar, I shouldn’t get hurt because it’s his intention to hurt me?”

Janus blinks. This is absolutely the direction he thought Roman was going to go. “That’s not quite the same thing.”

“So I shouldn’t prioritize emotional and mental pain the same way as physical pain?”

“…I didn’t say that—“

“Oh, I’m sorry, is it frustrating to have your words taken out of context and applied in ways you obviously didn’t mean? Wow, I wonder what that feels like.”

Janus’s surprise is hidden quickly as Roman takes a deep breath in. He expects Roman to bite back, to push, to hurl acid-laced insults at him. Given how Roman has been taking most of…this lying down as of late, he expects it, even if he would be a little...disappointed. In some way, he doesn’t deserve it.

That’s exactly what happens.

“…I understand that you care and you help in your own way. And I’m grateful for it, really, I am. You…you make people look at themselves—really look and you make me think and it’s great but it’s exhausting.”

Roman buries his face in his hands, pressing his fingertips hard to his eyes. It doesn’t hurt to see him so…tired.

“I can’t—I can’t do this all the time. I can’t do this most of the time. You know that. As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if that were the point.”

“…I do have a point.”

“You always have a point. That’s the problem. You are nothing but points, there’s nothing to you but—“

Roman stops, taking a deep breath and pressing his forehead with a fist.

“No, sorry, that’s…that’s not true. The version of you that you choose to present to me and to the others most of the time is nothing but points. There is no softness. No give. Not an ounce. It’s always a fight. I have to…double and triple check every single thing that comes out of your mouth, and I’m not…I…”

Another deep breath. Something softens.

“I respect you. I admire you. I like you. But I don’t know what you want from me.”

Janus isn’t shocked.

Not just at the fact that Roman is expressing all of this out loud, not just at what Roman is saying, but how the bitter taste slowly filling his mouth isn’t coming from any of it.

Roman isn’t lying. Not about this.

What happened in those days when you shut yourself away?

It takes him a moment to realize Roman is waiting for an answer.

“I don’t want you hurt.”

Roman huffs. No malice behind it, just exhaustion. “You enjoy putting me in situations that actively make me uncomfortable and you have enjoyed hurting me in the past. Try again.”

There’s a moment of silence. Then Roman sighs.

“Look, I don’t think I’m in the right space for this conversation and the last thing I want to do is mess this up any more than I already have, can we…can we do this later?”

He nods slowly, even though it takes him back to hear Roman ask for something. It doesn’t sting a little to know he isn’t the one that’s made it easier for him to do so.

“Thank you, I—you...you know I care about you, right?”

Not many things can take him by surprise, not many things can make him more surprised than this conversation already has, but this…this earnest confession, this does. He nods.

“Good.”

They don’t speak for days. They don’t even see each other for days. Then Roman has an episode.

The others are away, helping Thomas. Roman is alone. He rides the attack to its end but he’s still trying to recover. This one was bad. He needs to get up, he needs to eat, he needs to drink, he needs to but he knows if he stresses out too much about this, he’s just going to send himself into another attack. He’s trying to breathe but it’s hard. It’s so hard.

Janus wasn’t even looking for him. And yet there he is, sprawled on the floor, hunched over, hands trembling as he struggles to breathe. For a moment he worries at how much he can feel that Roman’s afraid. Afraid of Janus. Janus…he hasn’t exactly shown him his…full capabilities.

And, in his defense, really, Roman is so clever, so sweet, so open that he can’t help but play with him, test him, poke at his comfort zone just enough to see him squirm. And Roman is lovely, truly, he is. And yes, part of him was thrilled when Roman finally snapped at him, but he’s right. Janus is…he has not been good to him.

Time to change that.

He approaches slowly, crouching, and offering a hand. The suspicious look that he gets doesn’t hurt his chest. He does blame him. But Roman trusts, he trusts too easily sometimes and this wouldn’t be the first time Janus has ever taken advantage of it. He tries to convey that he won’t break it when Roman takes his hand. He tries not to think about how much of this is Roman going along with it if only to prevent himself from being hurt.

He leads Roman to one of the common spaces on the Dark Sides’ hallway. It’s almost never used anymore, not since the barrier between Light and Dark started breaking down. He looks at Roman to see such an unsure expression that he can’t help the soft noise when he guides him to sit on the couch.

Janus keeps Roman in the corner of his vision as he carefully shrugs off his cloak. He considers draping it over Roman’s shoulders but decides that might be a bit too much. Too much for right now, even as his mouth starts to taste bitter.

What does he want? Roman can’t stop thinking it. He’s three seconds away from another attack, what’s happening, what’s going on, I don’t know what to do—

A gentle hand cups his chin and he distantly thanks whatever higher power there may be that Janus’s gloves aren’t a bad texture. But then he has to make eye contact and oh it’s the worst. He doesn’t know what’s keeping this fragile peace. He knows Janus will see through any mask he tries to put on right now.

But not wearing a mask…he’s not sure he remembers how to do that.

He tries.

I’m trying, I’m trying so hard, can’t you see? Can’t you see that if you just tell me, I’ll be good? Whatever you want, I can do it, I promise, I’ll be good, I can be good, but I can’t do it if I don’t know what you want and if you tell me I’ll do it, just tell me what you want me to do, I can’t figure it out, I want to be good, but I don’t—I can’t—what do you want?

Janus sees. He sees all of it and it doesn’t break his heart.

He lets Roman go, the ache getting worse when he immediately shuts his eyes. He crouches, waiting.

When Roman opens his eyes again, he tries to offer. What do you want? Let me help, if you want?

Too much, perhaps. So he tries smaller.

Roman’s unsure when he offers his hand again. He…Janus doesn’t like being touched. But would he really be offering if he wasn’t okay with it?

Janus smiles when Roman reaches a trembling hand out. Slowly, carefully, he takes it in two of his, playing with it gently. Running his fingers over the back, tracing the knuckles. Roman’s hand is so much more...worn than the others. There are calluses, scars, so many stories that Janus can’t help exploring, smiling a little when the light touch makes Roman twitch. Even here, Roman’s scared of doing something wrong. His fingers tremble, try and move to match the shapes he makes.

Keeping Roman’s hand in his, Janus stands, tugging in a gentle ask for Roman to come with him. Roman stands up too fast and a second pair of arms shoots out to steady him. He looks so small…smaller still when Janus sits them down on another couch, between his legs.

Stay with me, Roman.

Playing with his hand again gets his attention, the second pair of arms holding Roman close. He waits. Waits to gently tug that hand a little closer. Roman shuffles. His phone tumbles out of his pocket and Janus catches it with his third pair of arms, setting it carefully on the table.

He lays back, all six arms accounted for. Waits.

Is something you want?

Roman looks so apprehensive, reaching out with his other hand. He folds Roman in gently, letting him move at his own pace, easing his weight down on top of Janus like they’re afraid of hurting him. As soon as he’s all the way down, still propping himself up to keep the weight off of Janus, Janus embraces Roman tightly, smiling a little at the way he instantly goes limp, exhaling sharply. Part of him takes a little selfish pleasure at having Roman in his arms; he’s so warm, he’s just the right weight, he fits so perfectly. But he’s still so tense, poor thing…

Just as he did with his hand, he explores gently. He lightly traces up and down Roman’s sides, wiggles his fingers as he runs them along Roman’s spine. Smirks a little when he feels Roman’s muscles tense and shift as he squirms under the gentle attention. Sweet little thing is ticklish too, hmm?

Like Roman, he doesn’t want to risk breaking this moment with too much noise, but he has to really fight the urge to coo and fuss when he starts scratching his hands through Roman’s hair. Roman whines for him, completely involuntarily, and it’s so small and tired and hopeful and adorable that he can’t help seeing if he can make him do it again. He can.

They have no idea how long they lie there but an alarm on Roman’s phone breaks the silence. Janus barely glances at the label—‘stop and get back to work’—as he shuts it off. He laments its intrusive presence as Roman startles horribly, scrambling up. And he can’t help himself, he catches him.

Roman should get back. He should do so many things but Janus is being so kind and he’s not too warm and Roman has no idea how he’ll react and what if they never get this chance again and he’s holding him so gently and the way he’s looking at him…

Is this something you want?

Janus lets out a soft oof when Roman throws himself at him, wrapping his arms around him so tightly he’s sure it hurts. But it’s the thing he wanted and the thing Roman wants and it’s perfect.

He clings to Roman just as tightly until his own arms ache from it. Still, he holds on, until Roman slumps, burying his warm face into his scales without hesitation. Roman’s breathing stutters, he’s still so scared...so Janus softens, gentles his grip, goes back to the soothing touches from before. Tries to lull Roman back into that half-doze they were in before. It takes a long time, much longer than he’d like. Roman keeps jerking himself awake, his fists clenching and unclenching, unsure where to put his head, where to put his arms.

He breaks finally when his fingers hit a sensitive spot on Roman’s back and Roman gasps, Janus instinctively holding Roman closer and smoothing the hair away from his ear.

“Shh…shh…” One pair of his arms come up to hold Roman’s hands. “Shh… shh…”

I want you to calm down, Roman, that’s all I want right now. Shh…

It takes several minutes of careful shushing to get Roman to relax, several more before his breathing evens out and he dozes, right there in his arms.

They still need to talk. Roman’s carrying so much grief with him that, now that he’s looking, he can see the strain. Roman is so tired, he can feel it. And he desperately wants to know what happened to turn Roman into this frightened creature, constantly bracing for a blow, so confused in the face of any affection. But for now…

He’s self-preservation, protection when protection is needed most. Of course he can be caring.

He leaves Roman in Patton’s care, giving them the space they need to make sure he doesn’t push. Not now, perhaps not ever. He receives a gentle thank-you when they happen to pass in the corridor. And it’s…good. There’s a sweet aftertaste in his mouth when he talks for a few days.

A few days later, his mouth tastes horribly bitter again and he knows it’s time. He appears to see Roman sitting ramrod straight, staring at the wall.

“…well, you certainly look as calm as can be.”

“Oh. Hi, Janus.”

“Hello. What seems to be troubling you?”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry. I’m alright.”

The lie tastes sour. “May I join you?”

Roman nods.

“Thank you.”

“Did you need something?”

“Are you…in a proper enough headspace to have that conversation?”

“…yes. Yeah, I think so.”

He can’t quite taste another lie. This is probably what Virgil means when he says it’s important to trust people about their own boundaries.

“I have a proposition for you. I would like you to hear me out before commenting.”

“Of course.”

“…you lie quite often.” Roman nods. “You are not of the opinion that lying is inherently wrong.”

Roman shakes his head nervously.

“You use lying as a defense mechanism to protect yourself, don’t you?”

A new wave of bitterness.

“…do not be afraid,” he says quietly, “it’s quite common.”

Roman’s brow furrows a little.

“Your first response to any question that causes a heightened emotional response is usually a lie,” he explains, “because your instinct to protect yourself kicks in and forces you to say what you think the asker wants to hear.”

Roman’s mouth tightens.

“It also coincides with the need to make yourself as small as possible. If you…do not require many things, or if you do not actively contribute to things that require any extra effort, odds are you will not be hurt.” Janus tilts his head. “I believe Virgil calls it ‘being low maintenance.’”

Roman huffs a laugh and looks away.

“Does that sound about right?”

“…mhm.”

Janus fiddles with the cuffs of his jacket almost absentmindedly. Roman has developed a…particular style of dishonesty that intrigues him.

Roman is very open about vulnerable topics; speaking freely and without hesitation about how he feels about his looks, his mannerisms, his sexuality, pretty much every aspect of themselves that the Sides can think to ask about. But that’s not the same as actually being vulnerable. It’s hiding behind too much honesty, taking advantage of the fact that others don’t tend to talk about those types of topics in that much detail to let them mistake it for actual vulnerability. But it’s not. It’s just a different type of hiding.

It’s not a lie. Not even a lie of omission. Which means it’s harder for Janus to detect. Even harder for the others. So it’s easier for them to believe Roman is more honest than they are. Which let him get away with lying, let him get away with sacrificing his own needs, let him get away with hurting himself.

The pitch is the easiest part, Janus decides. Definitely.

“Virgil and I have an arrangement of sorts,” he opens with finally. “Logan helped us figure it out. If…one of us receives an answer they believe is untruthful, a second chance is offered.”

“A…what?”

“If I ask Virgil a question, or if Virgil asks me a question, and we don’t believe the answer we receive to be true, we say: ‘second chance.’ Then we have another chance to answer. There are never any consequences for lying, or choosing to take the second chance.”

“…so…”

“So if I were to ask you what’s troubling you—“

“It’s fine,” Roman says quickly, “really, it is.”

Janus gives him a small, sad smile. No, no it isn’t, but this will serve as a good point.

“Second chance?”

Roman’s mask slips. It’s a good mask. Right up there with Patton, and Logan, if he’s being evaluative. Perhaps even up there with his own. But it’s cracking.

“You know it’s unwise to try and lie to me, dear,” he pushes.

Ah. Too much. Fear swells up behind Roman’s eyes and he stammers.

“…I…”

“If you do not wish to tell me,” he soothes, “I will not force you too.”

“Then I would rather not say,” Roman says carefully, each word laid down for Janus’s inspection.

“And there are no consequences.”

The wave of pure relief that washes over Roman is enough to make Janus smile properly. There’s a horrible moment where he looks like he doesn’t believe it, he’s waiting for the punchline, but then it doesn’t come and Roman just slumps, a massive weight rolling off his shoulders. Janus can’t help but watch the corner of his mouth tick up higher and higher as he realizes it’s okay.

“Well, judging by that expression,” he says, “this certainly will be awful for you.”

Another thing about Roman is that for some reason, probably tied to his connection to the Imagination, is that he has this…field around him. Janus is sure Logan’s not interested in it at all and they haven’t spend hours upon hours talking about it. But he can feel the wave of care and love and relief that hits him, making his heart ache pleasantly in his chest.

It’s gone far too quickly and Janus isn’t saddened by it, his brow furrowing when Roman fidgets with his hands, obviously trying to work up the nerve to ask something.

“…why…when you said this was common,” he says eventually, “what did you mean?”

Ah. This won’t be difficult at all.

“The…sophistication of your coping mechanism indicates that it has been developed over a long period of time,” he starts.

“…okay?”

“Not uncommon in victims of abuse.”

“What…what are you talking about,” Roman stammers, obviously trying to laugh it off, “I—I haven’t been abused.”

Oh.

Oh, that’s…oh, Roman…

“We have ridiculed you for expressing vulnerability,” Janus murmurs, “we have ignored you when you express deep feelings. Sometimes, when you attempt to speak about them, we tell you that your feelings are not worthy of your reaction, or we are indifferent.”

Janus shifts, letting his regret bleed into his voice as he continues.

“We have manipulated you to get what we want. We have used shame to make you feel bad.” Janus clenches his fists in his lap. “We have led you to believe things are your fault when they aren’t. We have pushed you to question your sanity.”

There’s an awful silence.

“We’ve been gaslighting you, Roman,” Janus murmurs, “and worse. Tell me, what does that sound like to you?”

Any semblance of relief from earlier vanishes, replaced by denial, worry, panic, and so much anxiety for a moment Janus worries Virgil’s going to be summoned.

Then his mouth fills with an acrid taste, coating his tongue so much it almost chokes him.

“…I’m sure you know that I’m summoned by continuous lying.” Why I appeared in the first place.

Poor Roman barely hears him enough to nod.

“I know what the lies are when I hear them.”

Another nod.

“Which means,” he murmurs, reaching out and gently touching Roman’s temple with two fingers, “…I can hear these.”

Roman freezes.

“There. That.” Janus’s eyes widen. “Oh, oh no, sweetie, I’m not here to be cruel to you.”

Roman doesn’t hear him.

“Breathe, honey, come on…in for four, hold for seven, out for eight.”

Roman’s not breathing at all. Janus leans forward to try and help when Roman’s mouth opens, his voice sharp and determined.

“When people lie,” he says, “does it hurt you?”

“What?”

“Does it hurt you?”

He knows what Roman’s asking and he adores it, of course he does. He adores that Roman’s so worried about hurting him, not himself, Janus, that he’s willing to punish himself by forcing away a defense mechanism that he’s had for years because it might be hurting Janus. He loves it.

“…no. Not a direct correlation,” he says, “no. More often than not, I can tell or sense what the truth would be and…that is not often pleasant. But no, Roman, you are not physically injuring me when you lie.”

“And what about when you’re telling the truth?”

“…sweetie, stop. You’re going to hurt yourself far more that you’re going to hurt me.”

Roman’s face pinches as he looks away, so determined that it looks completely painless. It doesn’t hurt.

“Would you like a hug?”

“N-no, no, I’m fine.” Roman’s hands don’t shake. He doesn’t hunch around himself protectively.

“Second chance?”

“…please?”

“Come here.”

He’s warm, but not warm enough. His aura is relieved, but not relieved enough. He’s still, but not still enough.

The bitter taste in Janus’ mouth isn’t horrendously painful.

“No, sweetie, you’re not being inconvenient.”

You have hidden this so well, so well we never realized how much this hurts you.

“I’m not angry with you for trying to protect yourself.”

I will be the first to admit that I have…not acquitted myself well from the things I have done to you, please let me try now.

“You’re not hurting me.”

Don’t deny yourself comfort, especially when you need it so badly.

“And no, sweetie, I don’t hate being touched as much you think I do.” Janus does find it easy to cry, he does get overwhelmed easily. And yet the lies he can hear right now threaten to make tears spill over. “…must you be so cruel to yourself?”

“…sorry?”

Ah, yes, apologies. That’s a conversation for another time. Janus sighs, running a hand through Roman’s hair. “At any rate, it’s not like you’re nice and warm and much better suited than the others.”

Finally, the bitterness recedes, just a little. Janus swallows, washing away the last vestiges on his tongue, cuddling Roman closer. He looks down, seeing his mouth open and close. Laying a finger gently against his lips, he shushes Roman as he tries to speak.

“Hush, you don’t have to say anything, sweetie. I understand.”

“Okay,” Roman huffs, “I will say the whole…mind-reading thing is not ideal.”

Fair enough. “I am only paying attention right now because you seem to be having some difficulty speaking,” he murmurs, chucking him gently under his chin, “I will not be all the time.”

“Okay.”

“Or you could simply…not lie to yourself.”

“Unrealistic.”

It makes him laugh a little. “Something to work on, no?”

Roman nods, gently head-butting Janus’ hand. He smiles, cupping Roman’s chin, idly tapping his fingers. The smile grows when Roman closes his eyes, tipping his head back so Janus can scritch lightly.

“Perhaps it will help you with these,” Janus murmurs, lightly stroking his fingers over the shadowy bruises just below Roman’s collar, “hmm?”

“…Thomas, huh?”

Janus raises an eyebrow when Thomas summons him. “Well, this is entirely expected.”

“I need your help.”

“Then this can’t be serious at all.”

“It’s about Roman.”

Janus pinches off the rest of his sarcasm. “Tell me.”

“I, uh, I made a…discovery,” Thomas says, “about…things.”

“How remarkably descriptive.”

“You know the phrase ‘bruised ego?’”

Janus stiffens at Thomas’s words. “…I am familiar.”

“…turns out it’s a lot more literal than I thought.”

Oh.

Oh, no.

It’s Janus’s job to protect the ego.

What…what has he done?

“He doesn’t care for you at all, sweetie.”

Roman opens his eyes, peering up at him with poorly disguised hope.

“Neither, for that matter,” he continues, running a thumb over Roman’s jaw, “do the others. Virgil, for one, despises you for being able to make him feel so wonderfully safe.

“Patton thinks the absolute worst of you—“ he pats Roman’s cheek— “and the care that you give so freely to others.

“Remus, well, he of course doesn’t value you at all,” he drawls as he tucks a loose piece of hair behind Roman’s ear, “let alone your willingness to touch and interact with him as he’s so used to that.

“And Logan would definitely prefer it if you were to never be so clever and considerate ever again,” he finishes, stroking his thumb across his forehead.

“I don’t think,” Roman murmurs, “that I’ve ever been so glad to be pretty fluent in sarcasm.”

“Yes, your sarcasm is absolutely awful.”

“Yes, I know, I love you too.”

He expects a familiar bitterness to wash over his tongue. It doesn’t.

Oh.

“You don’t have to say it,” Roman mumbles, almost about to doze off in his arms, “you don’t have to say anything. It’s just…it’s there if you want it.”

“I definitely won’t take it,” he says as he presses their foreheads together, “and you definitely can’t fall asleep right here.”

There needs to be another conversation. He needs to know what happened after the wedding. He needs to know how, or perhaps more accurately, why Roman changed in the span of only a few days. He needs to know how Roman got so good at pretending.

He tries not to think about how much worse he’s made it.

…he also would like to know exactly what Roman meant when he said he loved him.

#sanders sides #fic #dragonbabbles #roman angst #roman sanders #roman sanders angst #janus sanders #deceit sanders #sympathetic deceit #logan sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #remus sanders #roceit #rociet

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goldenkamuyhunting · 3 years

Note

Do you have an issue with Noda's way of depicting Wilk's moral as gray like the fandom? Espacially with the reveal of the land deed that may ensure a future for Asirpa and the Ainu but wasn't part of his original plan

Hum...

I don't really know what the fandom is thinking in regard to Wilk so I can't really comment on it.

It's also worth to remember that Wilk discovered about the existance of the land deed only a short time before Tsurumi caused an argument between him and the other Ainu rebels that ended up with them killing each other.

Prior to that moment Wilk had no idea the land deed existed and therefore he couldn't include it in his original plan.

It's also worth to ponder if that land deed could be included in Wilk's plan after Wilk learnt of its existance. I mean, at first the land deed is presented as a cool thing.

That land deed exists by 50 years. The Russian warship Kalevala incident whcih signed the end of the tractatives with the Russians is dated 1867.

Hijikata says the deed was signed while he was in the battle of Futamataguchi which took place on the fourth week of May 1869. The Republic of Ezo is disestablished on the 27th of June, 1869 and Enomoto has then the Meiji government accepted the contract.

We know the Ainu gave them half of the gold and retrieved the contract but now we should ask ourselves an important question: why no Ainu used the land deed to claim the land?

When Kimuspu shows it to Wilk we're in 1902, it means that the land deed remained hidden for 33 years despite Kimuspu being still alive and knowing of his existance.

If the problem was the gold, they could have said they spended it all on the land deed and use it. Yet they hid it along with the gold.

Kimuspu says everyone was killed by the Wen Kamuy.

Notice Kimuspu's expression when Wilk and the others see the land deed. It's creepy. We tend to consider the gold as the Wen Kamuy but the land deed was bought with the Wen Kamuy so it can be that it too is a Wen Kamuy.

The land deed is inconvenient for the Meiji government. In order not to honour it, they might have secretly killed Kimuspu's companions and forced him to live in hiding. So Kimuspu didn't try to use it or to have other Ainu use it and that's also why Wilk and the other Ainu didn't grab it and immediately tried to put it to use.

It's possible Ogata himself was sent there to retrieve the land deed as discreetly as possible or make sure no one were to find it, which is why he was fine with killing Wilk.

Of course things might change if Asirpa manages to put together a force that can oppose to the Meiji government. I mean, if Hijikata conqueers Hokkaido, the land deed can be negotiated with him and not with the Meiji government... or Hijikata can use it to give his claims of Hokkaido some legal ground.

in short the land deed couldn't figure in Wilk's previous plans because he had no idea it existed... but he could have ended up figuring in his final scheme as he might have hoped Asirpa, joining forces with Hijikata, would manage to put the land deed to good use.

But land deed put aside, I've no problems with Wilk having a gray morality, this makes him the same as everyone else in the cast, as well as human.

Humans tend to have a grey morality, pure white knights or pure black knights are more a thing of fairy tales.

It's narratively good that Wilk is a character with grey morality, it makes him real.

Of course the downside is that Wilk is no more a perfect idealistic hero.... or a cruel terrorist... but I think most of the fandom knew this already.

Wilk is mostly a man of his time and culture, with a vein of idealism mixed with a machiavellian and utilitaristic approach.

His idea that wolf culture is beautiful because he believes the wolves had killed a wolf because he had no place in their pack as he was sick, and that being a logical creature who cut away any excess kindness and has a functional efficency clearly tell us Wilk is not someone who's defending minorities because he believes everyone has a right to live and be protected.

Wilk's mindsetting is no better than the one of Japan and Russia who would decide minorities have no place in their country and sacrifice them.

He sets on protecting minorities not for some noble feeling but because he BELONGS to a minority and doesn't want to be judged the dischargeable spare.

In fact, when he decides to switch to Hokkaido he easily discharges the minorities on Karafuto even if he knew demanding from them to transfer in Hokkaido might be harmful for them.

In his group of three Wilk is the lest idealistic and the more prone to sacrifice others for his own goal.

Even Tsurumi realized with is the more cold blooded of the group, comparing him to Okubo.

HTo Wilk's credit there's to say Wilk is also willing to sacrifice himself for his goal, we saw it when he took a personal risk to deliver the bomb when attempting the emperor's murder or when he skinned himself to hide.

Wilk is not the sort of man who solely sacrifices others for his goal, he also has no problems sacrificing himself.

But Wilk lacked Kiro's flexibility (Kiro originally was all for prioritizing the Karafuto minorities and, after trying to make a family in Hokkaido he decided to raise all the minorities to equal level) or Sofia's compassion (she has nothing on Hokkaido except the families and the dreams of Wilk and Kiro and to honour them she's willing to fight for Hokkaido as well).

I think a good part of Wilk's mistakes/problems steems exactly from his lack of flexibility from his determination in carrying on his idea, believing his idea is the best.

He's intelligent and probably this caused others to rely on him a lot and helped him to accomplish many things, giving him the feeling he isn't prone to be wrong, but this ended up on coming back to bite him.

He makes an enemy out of Kiroranke, when he could have tried to face him, reason things with him and smooth them over.

He thinks he can keep the Hokkaido Ainu partisans unite and working under him while not being fully honest with them (he doesn't tell them he's a Russian partisan who originally came there to get the Hokkaido Ainu gold for the Russian minorities) only because now he has wholeheartedly embraced their cause, with the result only a couple of words from Tsurumi cause the whole group to explode and people to start killing each other.

He assumes Asirpa will just blindly embrace his goals and methods and become the Ainu leader... and the Ainu will accept her, without realizing Asirpa is her own person and might not be interested in all this (though this was a mistake typical of his time period) and that for Hokkaido Ainu it was really difficult to accept a woman as a leader, never mention one so young.

And so on.

Wilk makes mistakes in good faith, he means well for the people he loves but ends up hurting them, he's human like each of us.

He lives in a world where his rights are stepped over and people often has no other way to be heard than taking up in arms because he doesn't have the options we have nowadays and can't vote for a new president or pacifically protest to have his right acknowledged so most of his choices wouldn't be right for our time period so of course we aren't meant to take his same choices but we should still look at him as a man of his world and time.

A man who wasn't perfect, but a man like us anyway, and that's this what makes Noda a great storyteller, that all his grey characters are ultimately like us, humans.

At least those are my two cents about this.

Thank you for your ask!

#Wilk #Asirpa #Kiroranke #Sofia #Ask #Mesira #Sukuta #Irenka #Ratci #Oskeporo #Enomoto Takeaki #Okubo Toshimichi #Kido Takayoshi #Saigou Takamori

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ninjakasuga · 3 years

Text

Sonally Celebration Week! Year Three, Day Six: Rescue

Sonally Celebration Week, Year Three, Day Six: Rescue

Day six, and admittedly the toughest piece to write since well, action scenes require more finesse than a domestic/slice of life story. The journey continues, and since my main focus mostly centers on Sonic and Sally’s post Robotnik/Eggman war peace time lives, I like to flex different events when the prompts give way to good inspiration. When one has to do with rescuing, well, let’s just say, if you’re dumb enough to harm someone’s children, woe comes to you in waves.

Day Six: Rescue.

It was supposed to have been a nice, pleasant day. Go to Spagonia with your big bro and his wife, enjoy flying in a fancy transport ship. While Sonic and Sally do the diplomatic thing, Sonia and Manic would watch J.C. and Kathy as they got to enjoy the city. See the sights, enjoy some ice cream and crepes from the city vendors, and just have a good old time! However, it wasn’t to last, the day was ruined when the sound of their ‘secret tail’ security guards crying out after being, well truthfully Sonia didn’t get to hear what exactly happened to their bodyguards (she hoped they were alive). All she heard was some muffled noise; some people screaming, and suddenly a van rolled up, and people in masks and jumpsuits grabbed and knocked them all out.

After coming too, she woke up to a bag over her head, only to have it torn off, and bright lights flashing in her face. A camera was aimed at them as some jerkoff using a voice-modulating helmet to obscure his identity was making some long list of demands and basically laid out they were collateral if those demands were not met. She tried to make everything out, but she was still groggy from waking up from whatever they used to knock her out. Manic was no better when she asked him if he gleaned anything she missed, sadly he was as groggy as she had been. She knew better than to ask the kids, clearly the six-year-olds were ‘terrified’ and wanted nothing more than to go home and jump into their parents arms.

Hell, the sixteen year old herself wanted to hug her parents just as badly. After that song and dance with the camera, all four were dragged to this cell of sorts, and left there with a guard detail. Whatever they wanted, they seemed to be serious, or at least wanted to come off that way. Her keen eye noticed some of their guards seemed unsettled. Like they were not keen they had kidnapped children. Maybe she, or Manic could use that? A little of the ol’ duo-charm to-.

“Auntie Sonia?” The small, childish voice snapped the older hedgehog out of her thoughts. Instantly her head snapped to the small child resting in her lap.

Forcing a calm smile, Sonia gently petted Kathleen’s soft auburn hair, which had blue tips at the end. Many thought it was dyed, but it was merely something that seemed to happen to both children, who inherited their Mother’s auburn tresses. Yet at the tips, bits of blue would form over time. No doubt the stubbornness of her big brother’s genes at work. Just hand to mingle with Sally’s.

“What’s up kiddo?” She asked her niece as she continued to stroke her head, and did her best to seem calm and collected. She and Manic were the adults here, they needed to be strong for these precious babies.

Green eyes look up, then over to the cell door, then back to Sonia’s own. “I wanna go home.” A simple request, but what child wouldn’t want to go home with this kind of situation abound? “Why do these guys wanna be mean to Mommy and Daddy?”

Another voice spoke up, the disdain high and snark on full. “Cuz they’re- and I quote.” Manic Hedgehog interjected, keeping his voice calm, and then upping the volume as he aimed his words at their guard. “A BUNCHA COWARDS WHO RESORT TO KIDNAPPING KIDS!!” He shouted with full malice at their captors, which made both children recoil, and his sister wince.

“Manic!” Hissed Sonia as she reached out and yanked at his ear. “Stop it! You’re just making it harder for J.C. and Kathy!” She growled at her brother, her eyes going to the door to their cell and sure enough their masked guard had turned to regard them. Thankfully he just turned away and went back to guarding.

“Well these bozos need to know what kind of d*ckless, wussies they are!” Retorted Manic, the green-dyed-furred hedgehog with a growl in his voice. Usually Manic was chill, and easy-going with a touch of mischief. He was running red right now, his niece, nephew and sister being put in danger can do that to someone. “Plus they’re f*cking idiots!”

“Manic, language!” Sonia chastised further as she covered his mouth with a hand. “Not that I disagree with you, but is antagonizing our captors the wisest idea?!”

Removing her hand from his mouth, Manic let out a dismissive snort. Yet his gaze softened some as he saw the kids were looking antsy again. “Maybe not, but seriously what kind of idiots kidnaps the Prince and Princess of a Kingdom? I mean, you want a war? Plus think of their parents, heroes of the war against the Big Robo and Big Eggy! I mean that’s a recipe for doom more than my Taco Tuesday Blowout Cookout.” The food wasn’t the issue, so much as the aftermath, but worth it in Manic’s eyes.

A small rumbling was heard and J.C. blushed as eyes rested on him. “...I’m hungry, and Uncle Manic makes great tacos.” He managed a smile, despite clearly still being scared.”

“Heheh, once we get out I’ll make us all some.” Manic promised as he lovingly scratched the back of his nephew’s ears. He did the same for Kathleen, not wanting her to feel left out. “Also, sorry about the yelling and language, I’m just pis-er-pointedly angry at the bad guys.”

“We’re ‘not’ the bad guys.” Their guard finally spoke, snorting loudly. The way he seemed to clutch his weapon and his covered tail (they seemed intent to make it hard to guess their species) twitch and move, hinted at his anger at such an accusation.

Despite having just chastised Manic for antagonizing their captors; Sonia found herself unable to not engage them. “Not from where we’re standing. Uncouth as my brother put it, he called it right. Nobody who kidnaps children are the good guys.”

“We’re not going to harm you, we’re just sending a message.” His steadfast tone, carried a firmness of whatever convictions he carried about their unknown ‘cause’.

“What sort of message? We’re kidnapping your kids, so we invite you to come kick our butts? Seriously, what else do you expect?” Sonia inquired, keeping her tone polite, hoping perhaps this guard might spill some kernel of information they could use. Then a thought occurred to her. “What happened to the bodyguards watching us? I heard them cry out, did you capture them too or did you kill them?”

“We shot them, but we didn’t shoot to kill.” The guard callously responded. “They should live.”

“Do you know that for a fact? Even a crippling gunshot can lead to death if they bleed out before they get help or the injury causes the right amount of trauma. I heard multiple muffled sounds… If they got shot multiple times that increases the chances they didn’t make it.” The magenta-dyed hedgehog stated with cold, medical fact. “They also had families, so nice job dipwad, you possibly widowed and orphaned two families.” It was petty, but seeing his body language shift and just slightly shake before firming back up gave Sonia a sense of satisfaction. “You could have used stun-blasters.”

The guard hissed back his reply, but she could tell he was trying to justify his words to himself. “You can’t silence stun-blasters.”

Rolling his eyes, Manic decided to chime in. “So you bozos prioritized not making noise, over making your little power grab as bloodless as possible.”

“If they die, our leaders will make it right, all of this has a purpose! It’s to make things better-!”

It wasn’t Sonia or Manic that cut the man off, but J.C.’s small but clearly angry voice. “So making Mr. Hunigan and Mrs. Fletcher dead is alright when you say so?” The boy’s fists clenched tightly. “They were nice people, and we know their kids, they’re our friends… you took their Dad n’ Mom from them you-you, j-jerk!”

“Gee, even the six year old can see it clear as day.” Sonia icily sneered at their captor, scooting closer she slid both her arms around her family and kept them close.

“Mommy, sh-she and Daddy are gonna find us.” Kathleen managed to speak up, wiping her eyes, like her brother managed the most fearsome glare she could. “They’ll find us and kick your butts! They’re heroes, they always save the day!”

Turning, the guard’s helmet, visor and cloth covering their mouth obscured whatever Mobian species they were. “Your parents are part of the problem! If not for the Acorn Kingdom’s meddling along with the other outsider nations, we wouldn’t need to do this!”

“Only meanies justify their actions by blaming others!” Humphed the young princess as she turned her head away, as if to utterly disregard her captor. Oh Sonia and Manic’s heart swelled.

“I gotta agree with Kathy here, sounds like blame-gaming here-.” Manic mused, only to be cut off by their clearly irate captor.

“If they hadn’t meddled with the trade tariffs making exporting goods harder, not to mention their invasive meddling with our affiliate cities-!”

A lightbulb went off in Sonia’s head. “Wait, wait, time out!” She put her hands together in the referee gesture to hopefully get a word in. “You guys are blaming them for the trade issues and the Acorn Kingdom’s presence in your sister cities? Um, dude, hoo boy, you are probably being played by whoever your leaders are.”

“Bite your tongue-!” “Okay you know what, screw that, and kids I’m sorry but-.” After giving her niece and nephew an apologetic look, she quickly sent her captor a fiery glare. “First off, F*CK you! Second, the Kingdom sent delegations to those cities BY REQUEST! The mayors asked for aid in looking into some oddities with exports from Spagonia going in and out because they realized something was hinky with the weird laws and micro-managing coming out of Spagonia’s Trade & Commerce Ministry. Any of your Minister’s calling the investigations meddling or preludes to occupation are trying to play the dodge game moron! Second of all, the tariff problem? I shouldn’t say this, but I love talking shop with my sis-in-law, and boy a lot of the issues stem from how they were set up, like someone ‘wanted’ the tariffs to cause issues and sow discord. It’s a big political set-up but my big-brained Sis likes big-brained chess and she’s onto some corruption from within Spagonia’s Trade & Commerce Ministry.”

She watched as the guard looked uneasy, and his compatriot to the far way seemed to be listening in as well and had lowered his weapon some. “That, that can’t be possible.”

Footsteps could be heard as another similarly dressed guard walked into view of the first one. “Ignore them comrade, they’re trying to unnerve you.” “What if it’s true our leaders are lying to us? Given who some of them are-.” “Shut your mouth before you give anything away!” The other, more burly guard hissed as he raised a gloved hand, poised to smack his comrade if he didn’t do as he said. With his associate cowed, he turned to the cell and pointed his weapon. “Shut your mouths or I might just have to shut it for you.”

Manic moved in front of his sister, nephew and niece, arms out. “Touch them buddy, and you and I are gonna tussle!”

“Uncle Manny don’t!” “D-don’t get hurt!” “Manny…” Sonia held the children close, but tried to soothe her brother. “Don’t, they’re clearly too deluded to listen.”

“You will see it is you who is delusional!” The burly captor spoke, with a zeal of a true-believer. “Once it’s clear your Queen and your treacherous nation are outed as the villains they are, things will become bet-.”

Suddenly the entire room rumbled, and the sound of muffled shouts, and fighting could be heard in the other room. All their captors turned toward the metal door just out of view of Sonia, Manic and the children. Suddenly the door flies off its hinges, slamming into the far guard who cried out in pain and terror as they are taken out. A familiar ‘rev up’ sound is heard and then a blue blur slams into the burly captor sending him flying. As the sounds of fists fly, another far off captor raises their weapon, only for the sound of jets to get clouder and a familiar southern drawl is heard shouting. “TAKE A NAP YA’ CREEP!” A blaster bolt is heard firing off screen. Soon a blue energy blast hits the captor, causing them to drop their weapon as the stun-bolt freezes their whole body. As another guard attempts to fight, the flying Rabbot zooms him and body-tackles the would-be-attacker, a loud, thick ‘crunch’ of metal hitting flesh is heard. Clearly a one-hit-KO.

The original guard readies their weapon, trying to pick a target, clearly panicking. “Ho-hold or I’ll shoot!”

*KER-SLICE!!*

Their weapon is cleaved in two, falling from their hands, and in the next half-second, the tip of the weapon responsible is held at their throat. This man finds himself looking into the very, angry blue eyes of the Queen of the Acorn Kingdom herself, Sally Acorn. Wielding an ornate sword with the crest of her family on the hilt, and ornate lines etched into the blade. For a second the guard swore the weapon’s blade glowed for a moment, but whatever the case, it was clear the Sword of Acorns (reforged and imbued with Sally’s residue Super energy) was capable of cutting quite nicely.

Her voice was ever commanding, calm and serene, yet deadly and potent. She was clearly angry, but using said anger as a laser-focused weapon instead of being consumed by it. For now.

“You will let my babies and my younger siblings out of that cell. Now, no questions. If you so much as dare do anything but I ask, you will regret it. Do not force me to spill blood before my children, because you WILL live to regret it.” She vowed.

“N’ she ain’t the only one you need ta’ worry about.” Uttered Bunnie Rabbot, as she got up from pummeling her foe into unconsciousness. She flexed both of her cybernetic arms which transformed into blaster mode on the right, and nasty energy axe on the left. “You further threaten my God-Children or Manny and Sonia’s well-being. I might just forget I’m a Southern Lady.” While plain and frank, there was a menace in her eyes mirroring Sally’s, and the hum of her weapons furthered showed she was not playing games.

A small ‘boom’ and a flash of blue from across the room, and the guard found Sonic the Hedgehog on the other side of him, arms crossed, and foot tapping rapidly. “Door, open, my kids and siblings safely in arms, now!’ He didn’t bother making threats, he didn’t need to.

The guard simply let out a pathetic sound, wet himself and passed out onto the floor.

Without a word, Sonic dug at their belt, found the key and quickly as he could unlocked the cell door, and threw it open. All anger, and intimidation left his face (as well as Sally and Bunnie who put away their weapons) as the look of a worried parent and brother overcame all else. “Are you four okay?! Did they hurt you any-?!” “DADDY, MOMMY!!” Instantly Kathleen, and J.C. dashed into the arms of their Father, with their Mother soon joining in the hug, checking them over.

“Oh my babies!” Sally clutched her family tightly, kissing the children all over their faces and tops of their heads, as she checked them for injuries. “It’s okay now, Daddy and Mommy are here, oh God I’m so sorry this happened, that we weren’t there to stop you from being taken.” She babbled, as the kept-in-check emotions burst from the dam she erected to focus on the rescue.

“We’re sorry, we’re sorry…” Sonic murmured, his heart still racing even with all his joy held firmly in his arms. Lifting his gaze, tear-stained he looked to his siblings worriedly. “How’re you two holding up? They didn’t hurt any of you did they?”

“Nah, they just… dragged us around at most.” Manic shrugged, but was clearly relieved this whole thing was over. As he stood he found his legs shaking, and leaned against his equally leg-shakey sister. “All that said, glad you guys found us so soon.” Moving closer, Bunnie shifted her arms, what was metal now, began to flash with energy and seemingly disassemble back to flesh and blood. The wonders of bio-nanite tech. Once her arms were organic again she pulled the two hedgehog siblings into a hug. “Sorry we didn’t get here sooner sugah, but we had to basically strong-arm some of the Spagonia government to give us the okay to act. Though once Sally n’ Sonic scared these bozos' supposed leaders into talkin’ they squealed like- well sumthin I can’t say within earshot of kiddos.”

Sonia let herself chuckle, relief and a sense of security flooding her being as she leaned into the hug. “So, lemme guess, the Trade Minister and his flunkies were the culprits?”

“Yeah, I mean we were gonna confront em’ with the evidence Nicole uncovered, but you all bein’ taken kinda forced our hands.” Bunnie further explained as she scratched the back of their ears soothingly. “U-Uncle Manny and Auntie Sonia, looked after us, we’re okay…” J.C. managed to speak once his throat wasn’t sore from crying (this time from happiness).

“Hmm-hmm, they’re the best as always!” Kathleen agreed, sniffling and wiping her eyes as she remained cocooned by her parents and brother.

Smiling, Sonic reached over and managed to give each of his younger siblings an affectionate arm-punch. “Somehow I knew they’d have it under control.” Well more hoped, but he didn’t want to devalue his sibling’s efforts. No if anything he wanted them to ride the pride of keeping themselves and the kids safe.

“Lucky for us, as Sonia called it, these guys were morons. Dangerous ones, but morons.” The green-furred hedgehog blew out a breath, and then he recalled something. “Um, ah, how’re Agent Fletcher and Hunigan?”

“Alive.” Sally replied, still nuzzling her children, still unwilling to let them go. Her own heartbeat was finally starting to calm down and the adrenaline high was crashing. “They were hurt badly, but both are tenacious and they got help just in time. They might have to retire from active duty early but we’ll be sure they’ll be looked after, their families too.”

“Oh thank goodness!” The two teens, and the younger children exclaimed, as joy at the news eased their hearts from the dread they felt prior.

Footsteps could be heard approaching, but the boot clomps’ were familiar. So no one tensed or got ready for another fight. Especially once Captain of the Royal Guard, Antoine D’Coolette emerged, wiping his sword blade clean with a cloth before sheathing it into its scabbard. “My Queen, ze fools have been disarmed, and rounded up. As you requested, we managed to take them all alive, if injured.” After a beat, he contemplated making a joke about some being ‘literally’ disarmed, but with the children there, he decided against it. “How are ze young ones?” He asked, decorum giving way to concerned God-Father, and as a fellow parent.

“Thankfully unhurt Sugah-Twan.” His wife replied, flashing a smile his way. “Where’s Tangle n’ Whisper?”

“Helping out Tails to ensure we didn’t miss anyone and secure the location.” Informed Antoine as he walked over, making sure all were fine, if to soothe his own fretful nature. They also will wish to zee’ that our rescuee’s are le’fine.”

Sniffing away the last of her tears, Kathleen looked up at her Mother. “Uncle Tails came too? I thought he was testing his new plane in the South Seas?”

“Once he heard the news, he jetted over as fast as he could and offered to help.” replied Sonic with a wide smirk of pride and relief for his ‘not-so-little’ bro. “Family sticks together, and well you guys are as much family as his own. Which by the way, I’m sure Tails will wanna set up a face-chat so Mina can see you’re all fine.”

“She is very fond of her biggest fans.” Chuckled Sally, who internally still found it ‘very’ weird, that Tails and Mina Mongoose hooked up. Their age gap wasn’t too bad, and clearly whatever happened to bring about their dating didn’t occur until Tais was eighteen/nineteen-ish. Then again he clearly had a thing for older women, at least his choices after Fiona Fox were an improved taste. As long as Mina was good to Tails, that was all she cared about, and they did seem like a good couple. Still weird but that was on her.

“Can we leave now?” J.C. asked softly looking up at both his parents hopefully.

“You got it son, we’ll juice n’ jam out of here and get you guys some food and tucked in for the night.”

“Can we have a sleepover in the hotel suite? Like all of us with blankets on the floor and pillows nests?” Asked Kathleen with big, hopefully eyes. A look her brother mirrored and nodded to her suggestion.

“Yeah, can we have a sleepover?!” Manic echoed, doing his best impersonation of the look.

“I don’t see why not, if everyone else is on board.” “Wouldn’t be hard for us all to fit in, big ol’ space, and like you could ask us to stay away after today.” Bunnie voiced her opinion with a warm smile at the children. Giving them assurance she was on board.

“Like the saying goes, the more the merrier.” Antoine stated to voice his blessing. “Plus I’m sure Bunnie and my own angels would love the idea as they too were worried about you four. As was your Nanny Miss Cream.” The coyote gently ruffled the hair of the two youngsters, his mind drifting to his children two years their senior. Yes, if they had been through this, he’d gladly acquiesce any whimsy they wanted within reason, and a sleepover to help soothe their nerves? A piece of cake.

Kathleen’s face fell as childish concern flooded her mind. “Oh no, that’s right, we were supposed to meet Jacque, Belle and Miss Cream after lunch…” “Hey they know we didn’t stand 'em’ up by choice.” Manic interjected as he flashed a smile and reached over to ruffle his niece’s cheek tufts.

“Let’s blow this pop stand, I want a hot bath, lots of bubbles and all the cheese cake…” Sonia muttered, feeling her own adrenaline rush and the weight of the whole ordeal finally sapping her energy.

“I hear that, let’s go home everyone.

#boundforfreedom #Sally Acorn #Sonic the Hedgehog #Sonic Archie-Comics Pre-SGW #fanfic #rescue #Sonally #Sonsal #Sonally celebration

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xxgoblin-dumplingxx · 3 years

Text

Mission of Mercy: Thirty-Two

Bucky opened your car door and bowed slightly, teasing, “We’re gonna be late to the ball, Cinderella.”

You quirked an eyebrow but took the hand up he offered to get into the truck, “What ball?”

“You’ll see,” he said, grinning. He hoped that you liked what he had planned. He really did.

‘Bucky,” you say, biting your lip.

“I promise, doll,” he said quietly, stepping up and kissing you softly, taking to opportunity to buckle your seat belt. “No cemeteries. Just all the tricks this old dog can remember.”

“Just your old tricks?” you ask, smiling a little.

“Maybe some new ones,” he said winking, kissing you again. He hopped down and shut the door carefully taking a deep breath as he walked around the truck. It was going to be a bit of a drive but… As soon as he saw the place, he knew there was no better place to take you. He hadn’t even known places like this existed but… he could see you there. And he wanted to take you there. Somewhere you could feel… free. Without the constant bombsat of feelings and needs and wants tugging your attention this way and that. You’d described it to him once like being a teacher in a classroom full of really rowdy kids. Everyone needs or wants something but some people’s needs and wants are more urgent. Kid A broke his pencil but kid B has just stapled his homework to his forehead somehow. So how would you prioritize them? It’s a constant triage, trying to decide what to ignore and what to act on.

To Bucky it just sounded like a maddening tangle. And even just thinking about it for too long made his head ache and his eyes water. It gave him a new appreciation for your need for silence.

When you claimed his hand, Bucky laced his fingers through yours and skimmed a kiss across your knuckles. “Where are we going?” you ask quietly, staring out the window absently. You’re thinking, he knows. Wandering down little rabbit holes in your head.

“You and I,” he said, “Are going to go spend the night somewhere… Fun.”

“That was a suspicious pause,” you say suspiciously.

Bucky grinned and glanced at you, hesitant to take his eyes off the road too long. “Well. I know it’ll be fun for me,” he teased, “Spoiling you within an inch of your life and making you deal with the fact that I love you for a solid 36 hours.”

“Buck-”

“Nope,” he teased, kissing your knuckles again, “I promise. It’s just going to be you and me and as many of your favorite things as I could cram into an overnight trip.”

“I didn’t pack a bag.”

“I packed it,” he said grinning, “I didn’t want to give you time to talk me out of it.”

You give him a look over the tops of your sunglasses and he mock scowls at you, “Listen, whipper snapper,” he scolds. “You’re going to have a good time… I hope. I just wanted you to get out of the tower for a while. You’ve been tired, baby. Tired and sad and I know you’ve not been eating because your stomach is always in knots. Stuff’s been hard. And you deserve a break. And I miss my girl.”

He squeezes your hand and smiles, “Just… relax? Let me do this. I haven’t gotten to do this kind of stuff for anyone before. At least not without us having to sign the hotel register pretending to be married.” He gives you a suggestive look and you can’t help it, you giggle.

“Who’d I have to kill in a past life to get this lucky, huh?”

Bucky grinned so broadly his molars gleamed, “Well. I killed Hitler so-”

“You can’t remember that Sam and I had lunch plans but you remember that?”

“One time,” he protests but shuts his mouth with a soft snap when you giggle. It was good hearing that sound. It had been a little too scarce in the past couple of weeks.

________

He turned down the road, thankful that he’d had to learn to read maps and memorize directions. Sure. The address wasn’t significant to you, but. He wanted you to be surprised. And he was enjoying deflecting your attempts to get information. You were excited. You sparkled with optimism and curiosity. You weren’t just going through the motions for him and he knew it. He could feel it.

“Bucky, what-”

He paused at the top of the drive and let you just take it in for a moment. It was a cottage, covered in ivy with a wrought iron fence. And magnolia trees shed petals that drifted lazily on the breeze. Willow trees bent like gnarled old women providing pools of shade. And beyond that, in the yard there was a hot tub and a fire pit. He looked at you and grinned. You looked stunned.

“How?”

“Google,” he said, kissing the hand he was holding. “And some money.”

“Bucky-”

“Before you start fussing at me about it being too much, just know. This is where we’re staying… but it isn’t it.”

“It’s so much,” you murmur. You aren’t sure what to say. Or how to act. After a lifetime of Birthdays that were mostly crying over photo albums and maybe some cake and a couple presents this… This is a lot.

“I know,” he murmurs, “But- I’ve got a lot of birthdays to make up for… and a shit load of back pay burning a hole in my pocket.”

“But-” You can feel the backs of your eyes sting and he tilts your chin up gently.

“No pressure,” he reminds, wiping tears away and kissing the tip of your nose. “It’s just going to be us, hanging out here.”

“Okay,” you murmur.

“Good girl,” he says softly, stealing a kiss and jumping out of the truck to open your door.

“It’s so pretty,” you breathe, leaning against him as he walks you up the cobblestone path.

Bucky doesn’t answer but he kisses your head as he walks you inside. It is intensely satisfying to see you so stunned. And he’s more than a little proud of himself for pulling this off and keeping the secret from you to pull it off.

He follows you from room to room watching you be in something close to awe at the four-poster bed, the hot tub, and the champagne.

“You thought of everything didn’t you?” you ask, standing on your toes to kiss his cheek as he opened a bottle of champagne.

“I might have snooped just a little,” he admitted, “And Nat helped me fill in some blanks.”

“What’d you snoop in?” you ask, more curious than angry.

“Your phone when you were asleep,” he said grinning, “And I asked Sam if you’d ever told him any ideal date kind of things… He told me to ask Nat. But I tried Sam first because he’s known you longer.”

You nod and take the glass of champagne he offered you and plucked a chocolate-covered strawberry off the waiting plate. “Sneaky,” you scold.

“Oh, baby. You don’t even know.” He chuckled and leaned down to kiss you, savoring the sweetness on your lips.

“What-”

He held up a finger and pressed it to your lips, “Before you have time to work up a good worry, can I give you a present?”

“I-”

“Good,” and before you have time to think he steals a kiss and disappears through a door. You can hear him, talking softly and the rustle of cardboard and tissue. It was curious. New. Bucky didn’t usually talk to himself… It was a bad habit for someone who needed to be stealthy.

You take a seat and take a nervous sip of your champagne taking a deep breath. You know Bucky means well. He crafted all of this just for you. To make sure you had a good day. But you can’t stop the gnawing feeling in your stomach. It was alien territory.

“Doll?” Bucky said, holding a box.

And you smile, snapping back to this instant like a rubber band.

Bucky smiles a little. You look good in your sundress, lounging on the plush sofa and sipping a drink. It makes him feel warm all over. He wants this life for you. To come home from work and see you waiting for him. And he crosses the floor, putting the box in your lap.

“I know I probably should have asked first but,” he stole a soft kiss as he knelt at your feet, “I saw this and… It was perfect.”

He watches you tilt your head and nudges you, “Open it,” he coaxes, “I’m not gonna tell you!”

You tug the ribbon on the box carefully and Bucky holds his breath. He really hopes this was the right choice.

And the moment you set the lid aside and make a noise. The softest little noise. Not quite a coo and not quite a gasp, his heart does a backflip as you take the Aussie Shepherd puppy out of the box.

This time when you start to cry, he doesn’t have to wonder if it’s a good thing or a bad thing as you snuggle the ball of fluff that Bucky had fallen in love with the second she attacked his shoelaces.

#Bucky x reader #fluff #Soft!bucky #hurt/comfort

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todorokiprotectionsquad · 4 years

Note

Hi I don’t follow the BNHA manga anymore but can you please explain the news on Dabi is Touya?

ahh sure! to be honest i haven’t read the manga since ch 190 but i caught up just for this ^^ i actually just finished ch 290 this morning lmao. i’m sure you’ve seen thousands of posts on the chapter by now, but i’ll post my reply anyway since i alr started typing it. so bnha 290.. spoilers under the cut!

so if you don’t already know, the league has teamed up with the meta liberation army, which is a large organization that’s been around since the birth of quirks who prioritize liberation / free usage of quirks as a basic human right. the joint efforts of the league + liberation army = the paranormal liberation front. and now that organization and heroes from all around are going at it at jaku city.

shigaraki has woken up with all for one’s power transplanted in him by the doctor and he and deku + endeavor + a bunch of other pros are fighting in the center of the city. shigaraki has been fighting against these pros solo so he calls for all for one’s previous servant who now serves him: gigantomachia. machia is carrying the remaining league members on his back, dabi being one of them.

dabi spots endeavor and shouto and is elated. this is the opportunity he’s been waiting for all his life. meanwhile, his identity reveal and exposé on his life with enji as a father are being broadcast on live national television. unfortunately, rei is watching this too.

i saw a post about this, but i think it’s interesting how calm and collected dabi is on screen versus how almost maniacal is in person when confronting enji and shouto. i’m so sad about rei. she was so close to being released..

anyway, there’s a few more attack panels until gigantomachia appears with dabi riding on his back. dabi spots shouto, which seems to be a bonus. enji calls out to dabi, to which dabi responds by pouring a bottle of hair dye remover over his head and says:

- c h i l l s -

enji and shouto are shocked to say the least. as far as shouto goes, i’m not surprised he doesn’t recognize touya, he was so young when his big brother left home; there was so much trauma surrounding that period of his life that i’m sure a lot of details have been forgotten / repressed. when talking about enji, however, i gotta say i agree with dabi. i’m surprised he doesn’t recognize touya, if not before the reveal then at least after. i mean, burns, scars, and staples aside, dabi has always had the todoroki eyes. i guess it just proves how much enji really did look at his children as a tools to achieve his dreams, rather than people. disgusting. neither of them are in the right.

the chapter continues, dabi admits to killing over 30 people on broadcast, then proceeds to explain why. dabi’s broadcast is voiced over as the manga panels show various scenes of destruction from the jaku city fight so far.

dabi explains that endeavor was unable to surpass all might and that due to that, he forced rei to marry him in order to create touya. after realizing touya was a failed creation, he was tossed aside and rejected. up until this point, what dabi is saying is true. although not unbiased, these are the facts. it’s the next line where dabi goes into the grey, morality wise.

“these murderous flames of mine are endeavor’s.”

it’s almost funny, how dabi contradicts himself in this sentence alone. think about it; these murderous flames of mine are endeavor’s.” this is the main difference between the mindsets of dabi versus shouto. dabi is still blaming their father for his actions instead of being accountable for his choices while shouto has chosen to accept the flames as his power and recognizes that he can control what he does with them. it’s interesting how dabi is rebelling against enji while simultaneously blaming enji’s past is to blame for his own actions.

the voice over ends, and we’re taking back to dabi dancing around having a blast. he’s still talking to enji and shouto, telling them how he’d cry to natsuo after training every night. sidenote, but it’s cute how touya still calls natsuo “natsu,” even now. he goes on to explain how he’d been thinking of how to best get his revenge, even mentions that he thought about killing enji’s perfect creation, shouto. but then, enji was announced number one, and that threw a wrench in his plan. dabi voices enji’s thought process of as long as i face the future, i can be better!! to which dabi answers (himself):

all in all, this reveal was executed wonderfully. it was well worth the wait. we were able to gather clues little by little as the manga went by, so the reveal itself was all the more satisfying. i love this because i don’t even have the slightest idea what is going to happen next. i certainly don’t want dabi to bite the dust, but seeing as he admitted to his crimes on tv, i can’t see how a future for him living on would be any better. at the same time, no 1 hero endeavor killing his oldest son on live tv isn’t a great headline. i’m curious if hori will continue this confrontation in the next chapter or if we’ll pan back to other areas of the fight.

anyways, thanks for the ask! sorry it took a while for me to answer. i felt like it wasn’t fair for me to reply without even being caught up myself. hope this makes things a little easier to wrap your head around! it was a wild one for sure lol

#phew long time no meta #bnha spoilers #long post #dabi #todoroki touya #bnha 290 #liv answers

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aefedges · 3 years

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The king whose cause may rise or fall with White Harbor

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junnie133 · 3 years

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manly.

Soooo apparently this is a series now. Again, it contains heavy spoilers from the recent manga chapters. Now is the turn of Kirishima, and I’m really sorry for making him so sad ;---; Bakugou Angst ahead as well. Also aviable on AO3!

Heroes cry too, Ashido. | manly. (you’re here!)

Man the angst.

{+}{+}{+}

Crying is a manly thing to do.

Crying means you care, it means you’re hurting, it means you’re happy too. You can cry for a lot of reasons, and Kirishima knows it is a manly thing to do, it’s healthy even, to cry from time to time when the situation demands it. Hell, crying was a way to say you’re alive when you’re born, a way to demonstrate you’re being sincere, it’s natural and completely normal.

But is it, really?

Eijiro knows crying is manly, as manly as standing up between a criminal and an innocent civilian, as manly as protecting the ones you love, as returning the favor to those who took care of you and helped you grow.

Mourn for the people he won’t see ever again was manly, and if so, why didn't he feel manly at all?

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be, Shitty Hair?”

Eijiro smiled slightly at Bakugou’s usual harsh words. It felt like a forced gesture because it was. He just couldn’t find the strength to smile so freely when his best friend was in a hospital bed after almost dying, much less when his voice was so weak. Bakugou used to be always loud, exploding things, sometimes trying to explode Eijiro, mostly because he knew he won’t be doing any damage to him thanks to his quirk. Nowadays the only thing he did was sleep, insult him in whispers, and…

“...hey, how’s Deku…?”

It was always the same. They chatted for a while, Eijiro talking about their friends even if Bakugou pretended to be uninterested by the topic (he wasn’t), taking lunch, Katsuki complaining about his company without really meaning it, and… this. Eijiro wasn’t sure if his friend wanted to be as updated about Midoriya’s status as he could be or if he simply… didn’t remember about all the other times he asked before. He was too afraid to ask.

“He…” he contemplated lying, saying that Midoriya was healthy and strong again, but the hard gaze Katsuki gave him every time he asked never left any room for lies. He sighed heavily. “He still doesn’t wake up yet.”

The heavy silence that follows after that made him leave once, creating a stupid excuse to get away from the oppressing feeling of Katsuki’s bottled-up distress. He never had done that again, after spending all the following night feeling the guilt destroy him from inside. Instead, he now lets him be, to think whatever crosses his mind for a moment before trying to distract him with some stupid anecdote of how Kaminari caused another blackout back at the dorms or something.

But for some reason, today he kept going with the Midoriya topic.

“His mom was here, too,” he added. Bakugou suddenly went very still. “She wanted to see you, but you were asleep,” he said. “She told me… she was very grateful to you, for protecting Midoriya.”

Miss Midoriya said a lot of other things too, like she wished none of them both had become heroes, and mentioned a Hisashi guy. She seemed angry with the man, but that expression disappeared as soon as Eijiro asked her if she was alright. He stopped remembering their brief meeting as he heard Katsuki sniffle in front of him.

He immediately got up, hovering over his friend to see what was wrong, and was struck by an image he never thought he would ever see.

“I did nothing…!” he sobbed, his eyes filled with tears, baring his fangs like a wild beast but also pouting like a child at the same time. His brows were drawn upwards in distress, as he tried to clean his wet cheeks with the hand he could move. “All I did was…! I just- I just pushed him away…!”

“D-Don’t say that bro…” he lamely tried to comfort him.

He wasn’t sure what happened exactly, but Todoroki tried to summarize their battle against Shigaraki before. He told them about Aizawa-sensei, about his father, and about Midoriya’s new quirks. He told them about how Izuku prioritized their sensei’s wellbeing over anything else, and how he almost gets killed for that. He told them how Bakugou moved before anyone else, and how he saved Midoriya’s life by pushing him away from the enemy attack, risking his own.

Kirishima wanted to cry. He wanted to collapse right there over his friend and fall asleep like all the past nights of that month. He wanted a dreamless sleep without the memories of Midnight-sensei’s corpse lying in front of him and Mina, wishing to forget the memories of the first time the league attacked them, of faceless villains ready to kill them without a second thought. He sometimes dreaded to sleep, fearing to hear Midoriya’s scream of Katsuki’s nickname all over the forest of their training camp, only to find he wasn’t around anymore.

He laid down, covering Bakugou’s body with his torso in a horizontal position, clutching the sheets under him as Katsuki clutched his clothes in exchange.

“What if he never wakes up now?!”

“Don’t say that bro, don’t say that…” he repeated, burying his face on his friend’s stomach, being careful with his bandages.

Bakugou kept crying, inconsolable until some time after, he cried himself to sleep. Eijiro whipped his tears off his face, and automatically, without thinking anymore, he did the same with Katsuki. He cleaned his face with a cloth, avoiding to wake him up, and leaving it on the sink without care when he finished, then the door opened, letting Mr. Bakugou get in.

He had a sad smile on his face. Katsuki didn’t look a lot like him, almost anything at all to be honest, but for a minute Kirishima could imagine his friend with that gentle expression on his own features, maybe in a time when they all healed and Midoriya was well and awake, taking notes of some freshmen’s quirks on their next year at UA.

Mr. Bakugou patted his shoulder in a friendly manner, and with a low voice said. “Thanks for taking care of him.”

Eijiro nodded, biting his lower lip. He wanted to cry again.

Lately, crying was all he could do.

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maritimeericandersen · 3 years

Text

We’re Gunna Need A Bigger Boat: Shark Week, Part IV

Henry, Rose, and Eric go to find the creature that attacked someone in the lake with a different method than usual for this sort of thing.

Things don’t go to plan.

TW: Violence, blood, slashing, biting, drowning

@charmed-henry @thehuntress-rose @brucewhite @gabriella-marino

ERIC

Eric had figured it might have been a bit suspect if the three of them were to meet up in the dorms and walk over to the lake together. Especially equipped with weapons— and Eric’s very pungent cooler of meat and fish. He got out there about an hour earlier than the agreed upon time to dig out the spot where he had hidden the net he had scounged up, having to make a few modifications to ensure it was big enough for this thing. (Whatever this thing really was.) It had taken him a few goes to make something that would hold but after he’d gotten the first knot down it had been like riding a bike. The muscle memory from all those boat rides and hunting trips taking over.

So far the lake had been quiet, the only signs of movement had been the lapping of the water against the shore and the wind sweeping through the tree branches. (Beside the badger that had scared the bejesus out of him when it had come clambering out of the woods only to take off when he’d shined his light toward it.) It might have been reassuring had this not been his first hunt in what felt like ages. Instead it left him unsettled. Like whatever it was had run off everything else that frequented the lake.

He had dragged the net out and settled behind the equipment shed, resting up against the wall as he sat and waited. His eyes had closed before he knew it as the late hour caught up with him. The sound of footsteps, soft as they were, roused him. He stood and rounded the shed, not really thinking it would be anyone else but Henry or Rose.

The dark made it hard to make out the figure but he still called out to them, arm waving. “Oi! Over here!”

HENRY

Henry had also headed out from the dorms early, though not as early as Eric. He had been gathering weapons all week, his sword and some knives and some other hunting supplies at the advice of some guys at the Hunted Deer, and they were all quite heavy. That had slowed him down a bit. Henry was relieved to see that Eric had already arrived, though, because as much as Henry trusted Eric, he had been a little bit worried about Eric falling asleep or something. But that didn’t seem to be the case.

“Shh! Not so loud!” Henry stage-whispered, struggling to cross the sand with all the weapons. Maybe he should have left with Rose, at least to have help carrying things.

He assessed the setup. Net, cooler full of bait, Eric looking a little sleepy but ready to go. It was almost like old times again. He set down the crossbow and the set of knives. “Rose should be here soon. I didn’t really get a chance to tell her everything about you, so we’re gonna have to go over that real quick, but she knows about the lake attack. So once we get our story straight, we should be good to go. Remember, she’s not my girlfr--”

Henry cut himself off quickly when he saw the familiar outline of Rose approaching in the distance and waved. “Oi, Rose!”

ROSE

She didn’t think she was late, but was still the last to arrive it seemed. She prepared in different ways than the two boys had. The huntress assumed they’d go all in on weapons and nets and bait, so she brought some other items in her bag. Rose rolled her eyes as Henry waved her over and called out. So much for covert. They needed the cover of night, but could yell across the beach just fine. Strolling in with her energy drink in hand, she looked to both of the boys. The one she didn’t recognize looked young, “So you’re Eric? I’m Rose.”

She looked this new character up and down. Henry had only mentioned that he knew about the lake monster situation and he could help. Rose wasn’t sure how, but the net and smelly cooler was assuring. She knew if she needed to know this guy’s deal, they’d tell her. If it wasn’t necessary to the job, she wouldn’t ask. There was an unspoken understanding in organizations like her’s; it’s all need to know. If Henry vouched for this Eric boy, she could trust him. “Oh, and I brought liquid energy. I figured Henry would be so Type A that he’d bring enough supplies for the whole town to trap this thing so I brought night ops essentials.” She swung her backpack around and opened it to show the goods.

ERIC

Eric didn’t really have any expectations of Rose. He never had expectations from most people since he didn’t have the mind to think that far ahead. Wasn’t to say he hadn’t been curious to meet her— an American who hunted. And a girl at that.

He smiled, giving a nod of his head as she said his name, glancing at Henry to gauge if this reaction was a positive or a negative since he knew her better. Eric leaned forward over the space to stick out his hand but Rose had already turned her attention away to pull her bag around so Eric just closed his fingers into an awkward thumbs up and retreated. “Brilliant. Wouldn’t have even thought of that. Thank you.”

After a moment he clapped his hands together. “Alright then! Yeah, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Rose. Erm— bit of a disclosure here to make sure we’re all on the same page. Technically, to the Order, I’m dead. So if you could just not tell anyone you saw me here or know I’m alive that’d be great. Really appreciate that. And we’re also not trying to kill this thing unless completely necessary. Capturing and containing it should be our first priority.” He let out a breath, lips buzzing. His hands fell to rest on his hips as he looked between the two of them, brows raised. “Anything else?”

HENRY

Well, that was one way to put it. It got the message across, at least, anyway. Henry had been a bit worried about how Rose would respond to that. Out of everyone in the Order, she wasn’t the most loyal to Tom or John (Henry was pretty sure) but she still had a pretty close relationship with Phil. And while Henry trusted Phil and thought the world of him, he also worried about how Phil would react if he found out about this. It would reflect badly on Henry.

“Yes, that’s very important-- very long story, but basically, Eric and I trained together, but he’s figuring some things out right now, and it will sort of get in the way of the mission if it comes out that he’s around. But we need his help for this mission so… yeah. Sorry I didn’t mention before. It’s sort of a need-to-know basis thing.”

There was something else that bothered Henry. What was Eric doing, trying to contain the creature like an animal-lover releasing a fly into the backyard rather than swatting it? What were they going to do, keep it as a pet?

He glanced at Eric. “As for the plan... if the creature puts up a fight we can use self-defense. I’m just saying. We have to prioritize our own lives. I don’t want anyone getting hurt unnecessarily.”

ROSE

Rose’s face fell when Eric explained his drastic measures to leave the Order. She was talking to a ghost; and yet, instead of a chill she felt jealous. Was that all it took? In order to disappear, you had to die. She looked to Henry next. How did he keep this a secret? He was in on this? For some reason, there was a cord inside of her that tied her to the boy even tighter now. He’d kept this secret for a friend for some time. She could trust him blindly. He’d proven it over and over now. She looked back to Eric, eyeing her expectantly.

“Okay. I’m in.” She exhaled, “I won’t tell anyone, but why can’t we kill it? That thing tried to eat Candace and I’m sure it won’t hesitate to take a bite out of any of us! And even if we can catch it, what the hell do we do with it? We don’t even know what it is. I say we kill it and end it all tonight.”

ERIC

Honestly, Eric hadn’t been expecting such little resistance on the whole I’m dead but not bit but he was expecting the push back on not going for the kill. Before the wreck, he would have thought the same thing. It was much easier, anyway. And, they were right. It had hurt someone. It would have probably done a lot more damage than it had if they hadn’t been there to save the girl— to save their friend.

But this Eric was not the same as the one from before. He had lived a life here without ties to the Order just to see what it was like with magic around every corner. Eric had met a load of Magicks, was on a volleyball team with ‘em, checked out their groceries, borrowed one’s pencil during lecture. Hell, he had met a werewolf (twice over) and not gotten killed or bitten either time. It taught him that they weren’t so monstrous as the Order had made them out to be. Yes, magic could be dangerous, but so could Mundus, and they didn’t go around hunting them.

“Look, I get it. I do. You know I do— “ Eric gestured to Henry but still, he shook his head. “But you’re right. We don’t know. We don’t know what it is or why it did what it did. I want the chance to find out. I mean, don’t you? After all this time of learning about how these things are monsters, don’t you want to know why? The Order never told us, they just gave us the weapons and pointed a finger and I think that’s because they never stopped to ask.”

He let out a breath, glancing between Henry and Rose. “My family’s been hunting things like this for generations but I’m only alive now because of one. So— I’m not asking you to risk your lives, if it tries to kill you, defend yourself. But if it doesn’t, if it’s caught and we can contain this, all I’m asking for is a conversation.”

HENRY

So this was worse than Henry had thought. Swynlake had gotten to Eric, even more so than it had gotten to Henry. He wondered if he had failed Eric by not pushing him hard enough. Henry had been so worried about losing his friend, about pushing him away, that he had let him lose all sense of what he had been taught. Maybe it wouldn’t be as easy as Henry had thought to bring him back into the Order.

Henry wanted to hate this godforsaken town so badly, with its quirky magic that lured people into a false sense of security. And then it quite literally bit back. But Henry could see how Eric had been drawn in… Henry had, after all, fallen in love with a Magick. A completely harmless one, of course. But still. How could he hate a place that had given him so much?

It was far too complicated to think about now. One thing was for certain, though: Henry had to keep Eric and Rose safe, and make sure nobody got hurt. Or worse.

Maybe Tom and Phil had been right. Maybe Henry should have left this to the experts.

But this was his plan and he was going to have to stick to it, so Henry just nodded, though his expression betrayed a slight annoyance, a hint of concern. “That’s… noble, mate, but I’m just warning you, I don’t think this thing’s gonna want a conversation. It’s not a pretty one like you might be used to. It’s more beast than human, I’m telling you,” Henry said seriously. “I won’t go for a kill right away, but I’m not going to let anyone risk their life for this thing’s safety. Can we agree on that, at least?”

ROSE:

His words struck a chord in her. Eric was right. The Huntsclan was the same in the way that they gave orders and they were followed. No questions asked and no compassion for the creatures was allowed. It disarmed her in a way that she had been before. She didn’t know what had caused Eric to see the humanity in monsters, but she had also seen it first hand. Once upon a time she’d been in love with one, however those days were long gone.

Rose held his gaze for a second longer than she meant to. She had decided to trust Eric, but showing that kind of weakness to him was a far off impossibility. The huntress kept unusually quiet as she mulled over their options and her feelings about it all.

She was in a weird middle ground. One boy was fully dedicated to the cause, and one was already free of it. And what was she?

Rose shrugged noncommittally, “Fine, you can have a chat with it if you want. I don’t know how much you’ll get out of it, Henry’s right. But I’m with you.” She put a hand on Henry’s shoulder and shared a look. We should let him have this, a silent conversation took place.

ERIC

Henry’s answer had been about what he had been expecting— supportive of Eric but in the end not willing to bend what the Order had taught them.

It was Rose he was worried about. He didn’t know her or her fighting style. She didn’t know him, either, and yet here Eric was asking two big things of her upon their first meeting. The air in his lungs began to burn as he held it in there, waiting for her response, not wanting to so much as breathe in fear that one wrong move would persuade her against him. Her answer knocked it out of him, his slack jawed shock turning into delighted surprise.

“Brilliant! You won’t regret this!” He stepped forward to put one hand on Rose’s shoulder and the other on Henry’s unoccupied one to complete the trifecta, not realizing he was intruding on their moment. Eric grinned at the two of them and clapped their shoulders before moving to look out at the lake. “Now that we’ve got that put away, here’s the plan! You see those boats?”

He pointed to a pair of small wooden dinghies, one with an outboard motor attached to the back. “We can attach the net between ‘em to take out on the water. With the chum we can lure it out and I’ll lead it back to the net, where you two’ll be waiting. Once we’ve got it in the net we can bring it on land and— see how it goes from there.” Eric turned to look back at them, hands formed into two thumbs up. “Sound good?”

HENRY

Henry still thought Eric’s idea was silly, honestly, but he could at least respect the intention behind not wanting just to kill something on sight. Still, Henry was going to reserve the right to attack the minute the creature threatened Eric or Rose. He was not letting any other friends get hurt in front of him. Absolutely not.

He frowned back at Rose, but understood that they weren’t going to get anywhere if they stood around arguing. That was soon interrupted, though, by Eric, and for a moment, Henry thought they looked like a team. Just like old times in the Order, maybe even kind of like Tom and John and Phil.

“Sounds like we’ve got a plan. Thanks, Eric,” Henry said, his tone still just a bit grim. He looked between the two of them. “Why don’t the two of you take one boat and I’ll take the other?” Henry wanted to be in the same boat as both of them, just in case something happened, but he didn’t want to leave either Rose or Eric on their own. At least Rose would keep Eric on task and Eric would be able to draw on his aquatic creature expertise. Still, Henry didn’t like this idea of splitting up. It seemed to be the only way, though.

ROSE:

Rose wouldn’t pretend to know anything about aquatic magicks to these two. It was her own hubris making her act so assured when Phil and Tom had talked to them about the situation. She nodded along with Eric’s plan, but she still felt the same hesitation Henry did. Maybe it was the air of camaraderie; Rose felt like she should be a teamplayer and listen to the boy with the plan. The benefit of the doubt was surely earned.

“Alright, into the boats we go?” Rose wasn’t sure about splitting up, but logistically they needed the two boats for this to work. And the huntress had a few questions for the ‘dead’ Prince that Henry might not understand.

ERIC

He stuck out his lower lip and shrugged, not really thinking it mattered who was in what boat since his plan would be eventually getting into the water anyway so, either way, everyone was going to be on their own at some point.

“Sure, yeah. Get your things, I’ll get the net attached.” Eric smiled, rounding the shed to go drag the big net down toward the dock where the dinghies were tied up. It took him a while to get the net fastened to each of them as he wanted to make sure the knots were secure, but eventually he stood, wiping his hands dry on his shirt. “In we go. I’ll untie you from the dock.”

He pulled the first boat closer for Henry, keeping one foot on the dock and the other in the boat to keep it stabilized while he got in before untying it from the cleat, and giving an extra push. He did the same for Rose, only following in next to her with the cooler before pushing off from the dock. “And Henry, mate, if you see anything just say so! Sound going from air to water doesn’t carry that well so you probably won’t spook ‘em! You’ve not got to shout or anything just—” He waved off the rest of what he was going to say. “You’ve got it.”

HENRY

Henry gave a quick, serious nod in acknowledgement and laid his weapons down in the boat before he started paddling.

It was strange to have Rose here. Even though Henry and Eric’s missions had been Order-adjacent (or, rather, Henry’s subtle attempts to try and get Eric to see how rewarding Order missions could be) he had still felt like he was living a double life. He trusted Rose to keep Eric’s secret, but up until now, it had always been Henry and Eric on these missions. Bringing Rose in brought a new dynamic to things.

“I don’t see anything yet, do we want to search the middle of the lake or head for the river?” Henry asked, glancing at Eric and Rose’s boat. Eric probably smelled like fish after handling all that seafood-- did that make the other boat more of a target? No, he couldn’t start getting himself worked up. “The thing’s got to be out here somewhere.”

ROSE

Rose stepped into the tiny boat and had to balance herself from the slight wobble of it. It had been a long while since she’d been on a small dinghy like this one, but she kept her agility and her wits about her. The water was calm, so it didn’t shift too much under her boot. It was almost enchanting, watching the water. It wasn’t nearly as beautiful as the ocean on the last night of Spring Break, but still, the water did in fact have a siren call no matter the size. If only their weren’t some killer beast lurking underneath the placid surface. After she sat down and Eric and Henry had their exchange, she called out, “I dunno. Damn thing could be anywhere now. I say we go out a bit further and then let it come to us.”

She leaned in towards Eric, now that they had drifted a ways away from Henry. And with a lowered voice said, “How did you do it? Fake your death, I mean… and why?” Her brows knit together in genuine concern and curiosity. “I won’t tell,” she interjected herself, not wanting to sound untrustworthy. “I just, well, dying is about the only way you can get out of these kinds of things. Do you -- do you want back in?”

ERIC

He rolled his eyes at Henry and Rose. This was always how it went with people who hadn’t frequently hunted on water. On land it was different, everyone was on even ground for the most part and it was easier to see the signs of the prey. Footprints could be left in the mud, a broken branch clipped as they hurried passed. Water washed all that away. The earth was forgiving for the most part, leaving those that fell against it alone. Water didn’t care. Humans had crawled their way out of it for a reason. Moving to somewhere kinder.

“Just got to be patient. If it’s here, it’ll show.” But he complied, helping to row the boat out to the middle of the lake where they could idle for the time being. As they worked their way across every so often Eric would reach into the cooler and toss out a piece of chum into the water.

His eyebrows lifted as he looked up at Rose, her questions catching him off guard. Not that he minded. He just didn’t think she would care as they had only just met and all.

“Erm— well it wasn’t exactly something I had planned. I was on a mission for the Order. We were tracking something that had been taking out fishing boats and a storm hit. It took the boat, we all had to abandon ship. Next thing I know I’m waking up, bloody freezing, on a beach watching a pair of flukes disappear into the water.” He paused then shook his head, looking down as he put the lid back on the cooler.

“So, I wondered, if we were wrong about mermaids, what else could we be wrong about? I had the payphone in my hand to call home but I— I dunno. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go back to them until I knew the whole truth. It’s why I came here.” Eric gestured, turning to look around them, the lights of Swynlake far off into the distance. “I don’t know if I’ll ever really go back. That’s why I want to talk to this thing. I need to know if what we’ve been doing, acting as judge, jury, and executioner, has been right or if we’ve just been going by the words of a bunch of scared people clinging to a world that doesn’t exist anymore until we turn into them and the cycle repeats.”

GABRIELLA

It seemed that Gabriella Marino had a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time these days.

Or, really, the past few years of her life. Tonight was no exception.

The call to the water had been playing in the back of her mind over the passing days, only growing stronger the longer she resisted it. All her life she had been able to ignore it with ease, happy with her feet rather than her tail. It was only after spending to much time in the ocean that she had really accepted how much it was apart of her rather than something to be hid away. Now, being away from it for so long, felt like she was taking three steps backwards after only just having taken that first step forward.

She figured tonight would have been a safe bet. Some time had passed since the attack and it was in the dead of the night. Who would be out on the lake this late? So off she went, making her way through the town to reach the bank, where she found not one but two boats out on the water. They were a ways away, the figures within them unrecognizable in the dark.

What the hell? What were they even doing out there? And why did they have to be here tonight of all nights?

Gabriella bent down, walking along the edge of the lake until she had a better line of sight. She watched, confused, as one of the people closed the lid on a white box. With a handle on the top. Was that...a cooler? Seriously? Where they just here to get drunk or something? Hoping that they were at the end of their bender, she decided to wait and see if they would leave soon so that her trip out here hadn’t been a waste.

BRUCE

Bruce couldn’t take it any longer.

After the run-in with the fox-fae, he thought he was done. At least for another month. At least until he could find some way to stop himself from this horrible monthly habit that he just couldn’t get away from. But the hunger returned, not quite satisfied, aching deep in his bones and pulling him toward the water. Not the same as the ocean, but close enough.

At least it was the middle of the night this time. Maybe if Bruce swam out to the deepest part of the lake, as far away from humans as possible, when the other merpeople would hopefully still stay away, he could avoid hurting anyone. It had never worked before, but Bruce had to justify himself somehow. As long as he could avoid blood…

The good news was that Bruce did not smell blood. The bad news, however, was that Bruce smelled something just as pungent: an entire cooler full of fresh bait, right in the middle of the lake, leading a trail to two boats full of unsuspecting uni students.

Suddenly, Bruce only had one thought on his mind, and it was food. It was rare to find so much of it, or to find it so fresh, just sitting there waiting for him. That thought propelled him forward and he rocketed toward the boat, launching himself out of the water and at the man bending over the cooler. His teeth clamped down hard on the man’s leg, drawing blood. All Bruce could think about was his hunger.

ERIC

The stillness was disrupted when something moved. He caught it out of the corner of his eye, a figure moving along the shore, but as soon as he went to see what it was the shadows had taken ownership of them again.

Eric’s brows furrowed together and he stood, trying to get a better angle. Something moving in the water was one thing, but someone spying on them from the shore was a whole other beast that they couldn’t be bothered with right now. He continued to stare at the spot— waiting to see if the person or animal would move again.

When they didn’t he shrugged, reaching back over for the cooler. “Sorry, I thought I saw—”

The water jumping out of the lake cut him off.

The creature bit into him and Eric didn’t scream— not at first. His leg was taken out from under him by the force at which the thing had breached the surface, his head slamming against the side of the boat. The small thing rocked violently, the extra weight throwing it to the side almost to the point of tipping but Eric falling evened it back out on the other side, the wood crashing back down into the water with him. It takes him a few tries to get his vision to work properly so he can see just what the hell was happening.

He could feel the blood, warmer than the sun heated lake water, start to ooze against his skin, into the fabric of his trousers. Could feel the teeth in the meat of his leg, his whole body simultaneously trying to crumble around the point of pain like a leaf caught aflame and yet it wanted to escape, spreading back out thin against the floor of the dinghy.

ROSE

Rose listened to his explanation with an open mind. Her own prejudices were tested since coming here, so she could see how Eric felt about it all. She had dated a werewolf (for a scheme, albeit, but she did fall for him anyway) and Eric was saved by a mermaid. For a brief moment, she wished she could be shipwrecked and gone with the wind. The moment was fleeting, but recurring. Rose had yearned for this before. But this life was all she knew. She was comfortable in that.

Before she could voice her response, she didn’t even know what it would be, the boat rocked. It rocked violently and water poured in, soaking her legs. In a matter of milliseconds, Rose thought they were going under and then they were righted. Only, they had a guest now. The creature she’d fought off once before was merely inches in front of her again. Thrashing and hanging out of the boat.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” she chanted like a life saving mantra while standing up to get a better angle. Feet far apart to distribute her weight, she grabbed the closest thing to her. An oar, discarded in the commotion of it all. Rose lunged for it swiftly and smacked the creature with whatever force she could muster.

“Fuck, the net! Henry, the net!”

HENRY

It all happened so fast. When Eric noticed something moving in the water, Henry froze, but he didn’t have time to relax again before Eric was almost ripped off the boat and dragged beneath the surface.

“NO!” Henry cried hoarsely, reaching for his sword (it was a good thing he had it this time). He had already mourned Eric once. He was not going to lose him again. In the Order, not in the Order, it didn’t matter, Eric was Henry’s oldest friend. And regardless of Eric’s feeling on the matter, Henry was out for blood. “GET AWAY FROM HIM!” He swung the sword wildly but only grazed the creature’s shoulder, drawing blood. He tossed the net to Rose. She could try to capture this thing if she wanted to. But Henry was aiming to kill.

He raised the sword again, aiming to stab from behind, when he heard more splashing in the distance. Henry hesitated-- if there was another one coming, he wanted to be prepared-- then raised the sword higher and prepared to swing it downward.

GABRIELLA

She froze in her spot, like prey caught in a predator’s path, when one of the figures stood. It felt like they were looking right at her and she knew, if she moved even an inch, she was going to get caught. Her heart picked up speed as she thought maybe they already had spotted her and were yelling, she just couldn’t hear them.

The next few seconds felt like whiplash as she watched on.

The person settled back down. Gabriella relaxed so much she fell back on her ass against the ground below.

Something came crashing into the boat from out of the lake, the boat’s movements aggressive. Gabriella shot up to her feet.

What did she do? Go fetch help from the town? Or would it be too late? Did she try to help them herself? Was it worth the risk, now that she had only barely settled into this town?

All of this overthinking was swept to the side as the glint of metal reflected. Gabriella ran forward until her legs were no longer needed, her tail easily replacing them as it slapped down against the water to boost her forward. The closer she got, the familiar figure of a tail came into view amongst all the chaos. It wasn’t like anything she had ever seen, even in her time spent in the open waters of the sea, but she could recognize a likeness. And if this merperson was like her, in any capacity, then they were going to need help.

She got closer to the surface, around the other side of the second boat. Her eyes widened as she saw the blade of a sword, a sword??, rising into the air. Gabriella swam upward until she could grab hold of the side of the boat, bushing down harsly to boost herself up and grab hold of the wielder’s shirt tails to pull him back, keeping the swing from hitting its target.

BRUCE (tw lots of blood descriptions)

First, the oar smacked against the side of his head, knocking Bruce off-balance and causing him to falter. He released the leg briefly and had just lunged forward to sink his teeth in again when the sword slashed his shoulder and Bruce cried out in pain, a low-pitched groan. He could smell his own blood now, and feel the warm trickle down his shoulder. Hunger still rumbled beneath Bruce’s skin, but it was getting harder to fight.

His teeth scraped the man’s leg as he struggled to hold onto the side of the boat. Bruce was sure he was done for when, suddenly, the figure behind him stopped. Bruce’s head whipped around to see a pale pink tail in the moonlight, and… oh no. Was that a familiar face?

Gabriella?

Bruce had to get out of here. He had taken so much care to avoid revealing who he really was to Gabriella and the entire Whosits and Whatsits staff, and now all of that was in jeopardy. Would Gabriella recognize him? He couldn’t stick around to find out.

Leaving a trail of blood in the water behind, Bruce swam toward the far end of the lake and transformed back into his human form before collapsing on the beach. He could still taste blood on his teeth, and the gash remained on his shoulder, a searing pain. If anyone showed up, Bruce was sure he would look incredibly suspicious. But he didn’t have the energy to go hide. Not yet.

HENRY

Henry swung the sword down, but was pulled off-balance when someone grabbed the back of his shirt. He stumbled, trying not to fall out of the boat. He had been right. Another one. This was worse than Henry had thought. The mercreatures were multiplying.

With some effort, Henry managed to wriggle out of the grip of the creature and turned to see not a shark staring back at him, but a girl. He immediately recognized her, brown eyes and round face, the new girl at Pride U. Gabriella, Henry thought her name was? His eyes traveled behind her to see a long, pale pink tail. How had Henry never suspected?

It didn’t matter. She was trying to drown Henry just like that other creature, and Henry was not going to let anyone else endanger his or his friend’s lives.

“You!” Henry shouted. He raised his sword again, trying to ignore the fact that this was one of his peers. She was a dangerous sea creature, and she had tried to kill him, and Henry had to protect the rest of the town. It was for everyone’s good. “You’ll pay for this!” He lunged forward, rocking the boat slightly.

GABRIELLA

She watched, breathing hard from both the physical strain and the utter relief of seeing the other merperson taking off back into the water. At least they knew when to cut their losses. Gabriella had been about to mirror them and disappear but when the other merperson moved, a new scene was found.

With the girl in the other boat, there was a boy lying in the floor of it. He looked...hurt? Her heart sank into her stomach to create a terrible, painful, pit there. The merperson...they had attacked someone? ...again?

And she had just helped them get away.

She didn’t have time to process everything, to think about the guilt that now made her sick or if this had been some kind of gross misunderstanding she had come across and only made that much worse, the boy closest to her was turning around. Gabriella lifted her eyes to meet his. She knew him. Henry Charming. Vanellope had once warned her that he was someone to stay away from.

Gabriella shook her head, eyes darting to the other boat, trying to communicate that she hadn’t known. She thought-!

As he lunged forward she ducked under the water, the ends of her tail lifting up behind to get her as far away from the range of the blade as she could get.

ERIC (TW: alludes to drowning)

His fingers dug into the lip of the dinghy, hands shaking from the vice-like grip he had on the wood. He could feel bits of it coming off underneath his fingernails but he didn’t care. Eric had seen this happen before. Had watched as someone got dragged below the surface of the water— and he knew he couldn’t let that happen to himself. Not again. With his wound and this thing’s seeming lack of care for his life, there was no way he would come back. All he could do was hold on and trust that Henry and Rose could get it off him before it decided to pull him along with it.

A shout built up in Eric’s throat when he saw Henry’s arm pull back, sword hoisted into the air, even though he knew it would be in vain. As it turned it out, he wouldn’t have to. At first all he could see was Henry stumble back and Eric thought— he didn’t know what he thought, he could barely think at all, but maybe the wobbly boat had made Henry lose his footing.

It didn’t matter anyway. The creature using him for a midnight snack leapt back into the water, leaving the boat to sway heavily in its wake.

Eric sat up then, gritting his teeth as he reached out to his leg. Trembling fingers pressed down on the wound to test and he hissed. And oh god, it hurt. The pain clogged every sense, sight, sound, breathing. It almost distracted him enough to not notice that Henry had started yelling again. The creature was probably circling back around for him, and Eric leaned forward against the side of the boat to— again, he didn’t know. The only thing in his head was help Henry.

Then he saw it.

The flukes, water droplets falling from them as they rose and smashed back down. And then they were gone. That was them. That was her. Just like he remembered because it had been a memory not just a waterlogged hallucination of an explanation that made sense as to why he was still alive.

“He— Hen—” he tried to get out, his breath coming in but not enough. Finally he swallowed everything down and his voice came out in a desperate, pathetic, plea. (And not just for the mermaid, or for himself, but for his friend who was about to kill someone.) “Henry! Henry, no! Please!”

Eric tried to lift himself up, using his good leg and one hand on the side of the boat. But that hand was slippery with blood and the side of the dinghy soaked with water. He put too much weight forward, trying to keep it off his leg, and his palm didn’t catch on the surface like it was supposed to. His body twisted and this white hot snap blinded him for a moment before he went plunging over the side, head first.

His eyes blurred, whole head blurred. He felt like ink swirling in the water— drifting and aimless and slowly diluting. Like the blood he left behind as he sunk lower and lower.

ROSE

Rose caught the net but so many things were happening at once. Henry swung at the creature, causing it to retreat. But then another one appeared? This one shimmered in typical mermaid fashion, unlike the creature they were hunting. There were two of them? Was this creature a mermaid too?

Eric screamed out, startling her more than this already precarious situation was. It wasn’t a cry of pain, but fear. Henry… no… please! Was he— trying to stop him? She could understand wanting to talk to the monsters to see what made them tick, she was a psychology major. But begging for their lives once they’ve tried to end yours is too much empathy for her to comprehend.

He leaned dangerously close to the edge. Rose couldn’t tell if the monster was still circling. She whipped her head around, keeping an eye out on the water. When she turned back, that teetering balance Eric had found ended. She tried to grab whatever she could find purchase on as he plummeted into the black water. “Eric!”

HENRY

“Eric!”

Maybe Eric meant it as a plea for Henry to stop attacking, but Henry only heard a cry for help. Terror seized Henry and he dropped to his knees, gripping the side of the boat and leaning dangerously close to the water. Phil’s warning about Charles Norrington flashed into Henry’s mind. What if this was it?

No. It couldn’t be. Henry would have to find a way. He wanted to jump in and save Eric, but the mermaid was still lurking. What if she tried to kill Henry, too? Rose would be left all alone. He would just have to finish the mermaid off first.

Henry stabbed at the water at random with his sword, fueled by rage and fear. Order training had taught him to stay calm in moments like this, to hold in his emotions and focus on the task at hand, but Henry couldn’t. Eric was his oldest friend. Practically his brother. Henry would not lose him again. “You’ll pay for this!” he threatened, his frustration growing as the mermaid managed to avoid his jabs. “Rose! Help me finish this! Or distract her! Something!”

GABRIELLA

She couldn’t hear all the yelling going on but she had certainly felt the splash, even under water. Gabriella turned to look back at the scene she had just fled, wondering if that other merperson had decided to make their return.

There was a shadowy figure in the distance, sinking in a line that led back to where the surface was fixing itself back over from being breached. The outlines of the two boats were still there. A large part of her still wanted to swim away. What if that Charming kid had jumped in and if she decided to get close again, she would just get shish-kabobbed!

But she had been in this position once before. Had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and watched a boat succumb to the sea. Above had been a violent crash of waves but below the water was still calm and from there she had waited to see what would happen. She had gotten a front row seat in watching as a boy jumped from one of the lifeboats the crew had taken to in order to help someone, only to get left behind. That display of selflessness had moved her forward to catch him before the ocean could truly take him for her own. She had swam him back to the nearest beach she could find, but as soon as he showed signs of life she had high tailed it out of there.

Gabriella, against her better judgement, swam closer to see...a boy, drowning, blood colouring the water in stripes above him. Something slashed at the water from the boats and Gabriella had a moment’s hesitation. Was it fair to the rest of the merfolk living in this town to let him live? These three had probably come out here to kill their kind, judging by the freaking sword on hand. But was it fair to let this one die? He had been a victim, too, hadn’t he?

And would she be able to live with herself if she just let him, when she knew she could do something? The answer was the same as it had been in the frigid water from so long ago. She swam down after him, wrapping her arms around his middle, and hauled him upward, intending on returning him to the boats. But that stupid sword was going in and out of the water.

Instead Gabriella swam them further away, back toward the shore. They broke the surface just out of range of the boats but she continued to carry him, making sure his head was above water as it rested on her shoulder. When they reached the portion where the lake was shallow enough for him to not take on any more water, but still deep enough that she could make an easy escape back to safety, she allowed him to lay back. Gabriella startled when she saw it, a gasp escaping her, hand coming up to cover her mouth.

It was him. The same boy. Same dark curls. Same pale face.

She panicked now, something opening up inside her chest like a black hole. Her hand shook as she brought it underneath his nose to feel if he was still breathing.

ERIC

As soon as he’d hit the water he had tried to get back to the surface. His feet tried to kick but his bloody (no pun intended) leg couldn’t handle the movement, making him convulse and lose more distance between water and air as pain shot up his side. He hadn’t had time beforehand to gather air into his lungs, having not prepared for this, and he had already been struggling to breath properly in the boat. His brain began to panic against his body’s base need— caught between thinking it best to just breathe and knowing that would only kill it faster.

In the end, instinct won out. Eric tried to inhale.

He didn’t register anything else except the always present pain and a distant feeling of moving until he was being laid down on his back. Instead he rolled over onto his side, coughing up the water and allowing air to rush in to take its rightful place. Eric braced himself with a palm against the ground, unsure of how he’d managed to get there. Then he remembered with startling clarity, Henry, Rose, the monster—

A feeling brushed against his skin, that odd sort of sense people had when they felt like they were being watched or like they weren’t alone. Slowly, Eric turned his head to find a mermaid looking down at him. His eyes followed the shape of her body to the pink tail that sat behind her. He pushed on his hand, extending his arm until he was sat up, breathing in short bursts through his clenched teeth as his leg protested doing anything. Blood was still leaking from the wounds, the warmth of it a contrast to the air hitting his wet skin.

Eric couldn’t really do anything but stare at her for a long moment. He felt like he had seen her face before, probably one of the many wandering around town. What an odd thing to think. All this time he had been searching for her and she had been there, right under his nose.

Christ, he needed to say something.

Something caught his eye, off in the distance over her shoulder. Refocusing he found the two dinghies. Henry and Rose.

“Fucking hell.” Eric glanced back at the mermaid and immediately brought a hand up to cover his mouth. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have said that. Erm— my friends, are they alright?”

ROSE:

“What am I supposed to do? Jump in?” She said, with her arms out in annoyance.

He was crazy if he thought she was going to get in the water after what just happened. Rose knew she needed to act fast though. Eric wouldn’t be able to swim with that leg. So she bent down as low as she could go and swished the net around in the water, hoping to catch something entirely different than they’d come here for. Her arms plunged as deep into the water as the boat would let them without tipping over. Something shimmery glinted around the boats and caught her attention. That wasn’t Eric. It was a true mermaid, unlike whatever creature they were hunting. It could also be a mermaid of some sort… but she’d need to do more research.

“Henry, stop! You could hit Eric,” Rose held up a hand. She knew he wouldn’t stop on behalf of the mermaid in the water. But with her face barely inches from the surface, she saw it. The girl grabbed Eric hesitantly and pulled him away from Henry’s ineffective, yet sharp sword. “We need to get to shore,” she said, standing. “Eric is gonna be okay, Hen.”

HENRY

For a moment, Henry had no idea what was happening. Eric was deep under the water, the mermaid was getting away, and Henry was stabbing randomly at the water, as though it would do something, anything. He was just about to jump in himself, try to fight off this mermaid in her own territory (it was a terrible idea but better than standing idly by) when he saw movement under the water. Gabriella had grabbed Eric, she was pulling him away, surely to drown him…

Or…

Could it be? Was she actually saving his life? Eric had said a mermaid had saved his life once before.

Still, one could never be too sure. Mermaids were tricky creatures. Henry was not leaving Eric alone with her, not when she could change her mind at any moment and drag him back into the water (or perhaps that was her whole plan from the start. Henry wouldn’t rule it out).

So he grabbed an oar and started paddling toward the shore, a look of grim determination on his face. “We don’t know that,” he said, rowing as fast as he could. “Why would a mermaid save a man’s life? Out of kindness? These are ruthless creatures, Rose, we have to make sure--” The shoreline started to approach and Henry changed his focus. “You! Get away from him!” Henry shouted. He jumped out of the boat into knee-deep water and splashed over to Gabriella and Eric. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

GABRIELLA

Odd how when the boy finally seemed to suck in air, it felt like Gabriella could breathe again, too. The relief was almost as painful as the pressure that had been expanding in her chest because it left a hollowed out place for the questions of, now what? What would he do to her? And what was she supposed to do now? He was okay, still bleeding and turning the water red around them, but alive for now.

When he stared at her she could only do the same in return, stuck in place with her own curiosity about him. Gabriella couldn’t help the fluch that rose from her chest, up her neck, and into her cheeks when his eyes moved down to her tail. No one but other merfolk, and very few outside her family, had ever seen it. Which was different because they knew what to expect, they didn’t stare like it was some kind of anomaly. But, well, if she transformed back to her legs she figured that would be way more embarrassing!

She watched his mouth move but shook her head when it seemed like he was asking her a question, his expression curious and eyes focused in on her. Gabriella pointed to her ears, hoping that would get the point across that she couldn’t hear him.

She went to motion to his leg, a request for his permission to help, but suddenly the movement of the water changed. The consistent waves were disrupted and she whipped her head around to see the other Mundus approaching. Instinct took over and she made a move to flee.

ERIC

His eyes narrowed as he watched the mermaid’s movements. She shook her head and panic welled up inside him, thinking that was her answer. Rose and Henry were still out there in danger and what the hell was he doing? Sitting around like a lemon. Eric attempted to get up but his leg wouldn’t let him, the nerves fraying when he so much as moved. A disgruntled sound was forced from his throat and his hands went to stabilize it, keep it from getting jostled anymore than it already had. Then he looked up and the mermaid was pointing to her ears, again shaking her head.

“What’s wrong? What is it?” He shook his head at her, the movement slower as his brain tried to process what she was trying to tell him on top of everything else that was going on. What the hell did that even—? “Oh.”

Right. Well didn’t he feel like the biggest idiot.

“Sorry, I didn’t know—” Then, realizing that meant shit all to her, Eric shook his head and tried to think of how to communicate without making a bigger fool of himself than he’d already done. Just as he was trying to make out what she meant by pointing to his leg he looked up to watch Henry and Rose approach, too. The mermaid moved, as if trying to make a break for it, and Eric couldn’t blame her but he couldn’t let her leave. He’d already lost her once, he wasn’t going to, again.

So he reached out, another noise emerging through gritted teeth as he dove forward to wrap a hand around her wrist. He shook his head, pleading with his eyes at her to just stay put. To trust him. Hoping it would be enough he let her go and looked toward Henry and Rose.

“Henry, mate, I’m fine! See? All in one piece!” Eric motioned to himself, choosing to ignore his leg for argument’s sake. “It’s her! It’s her, the one I told you about, it’s her.”

ROSE:

Henry didn’t leave much room to argue. So she didn’t. Instead she followed after him with an equal speed and intensity. Even if she didn’t think the mermaid was going to hurt Eric, he was still in danger of bleeding out on the beach.

When they finally made it to the shore, she saw how close she was to Eric. And he didn’t seem to be scared. Henry jumped out first, but Rose followed right behind. Trudging through the dangerous waters once again. She needed to stop him before he hurt someone who was innocent. “Henry, wait!”

She knew her partner was impulsive and that his friend had just been attacked but she was not his attacker. They could at least afford her the courtesy of leaving her be seeing as she saved him. Maybe the huntress was getting soft. Rose had to raise her feet up to get more speed in the water to catch up. “Henry!” she called out, grabbing his shoulder as he closed in on the ‘threat.’

The girl didn’t look like much. Just a girl, frankly, she looked familiar. And quiet. And sweet. And then it all hit her with Eric’s words. It’s her. The mermaid he had just told her about. The one who saved him then and who was saving him now. “She saved him. You can’t hurt her.”

HENRY

It took Henry a moment. The look on Eric’s face. Rose’s hand on his shoulder. He softened, looked from Gabriella to Eric and back to Rose, and then the weight of it hit him. This was the mermaid who had saved Eric’s life. The one he and Eric had been searching for.

The reason Eric was still alive. Twice, now.

“Oh,” Henry said softly, the fire and fear and anger gone from his eyes now. He couldn’t believe he had been so rash. To think that Gabriella was trying to kill Eric when she was really saving his life-- and sure, maybe it was better to be safe than sorry, but if Eric hadn’t stopped him, Henry shuddered to think what he probably would have done.

He fell to his knees next to Eric and looked into Gabriella’s eyes. “Thank you,” he said seriously. “I’m sorry I-- I just assumed-- but anyway, you’re the reason Eric’s still here, and… well, I don’t know what we could ever do to repay you.” He probably should have paused the dramatics to attend to the massive wound Eric now had, but he was fixated on this. “I don’t understand, though, why? Doesn’t your… your kind normally try to kill us?”

GABRIELLA

Gabriella had every intention of jumping back into the water, already thinking about how she could haul ass out of this town. She didn’t know where she would go, maybe just return to the ocean and hope that her family was still alive in Avalor. She knew it would be a cowardly thing to do, to leave the Princesses here despite having said she would help their cause in getting their country back, and to not say goodbye to the Triton’s, who had been so kind to her, or Finn, or Bruce, or anyone.

But the boy stopped her, his hand around her wrist. She fought to get away, stopping only when she looked up at his face. His eyes were bright and so earnest that he didn’t have to say anything for her to understand what he wanted. She stayed, heart in her throat, and watched as the other two approached.

After a short, albeit very terrifying!, moment it seemed like the other two said something to make the Charming guy settle down. She straightened as he approached, chin lifting a little in the hopes it would hide the fear that was making her stomach turn into knots.

Gabriella held his gaze, glancing to his mouth when he started speaking. She didn’t know what he was saying but he no longer looked like the monster she had seen in the boat. Just another boy, who had probably been as scared as she had been.

And as much as she wanted to extend this moment, to find a way to communicate with them properly so they could get whatever had happened sorted out, there was no time. Gabriella, unknowing of the question asked of her, which was probably for the best now that Charming was within slapping range, pointed to the boy’s leg. It was still bleeding. They needed to get him help.

ERIC

He nodded a little, both agreeing with Rose and trying to encourage Henry to snap out of that all too familiar place. Eric had no doubt in his mind that Henry wouldn’t hurt her and remained relaxed as he approached, knowing the worst of it was over so long as the mermaid made no move to antagonize. (His heart was thumping painfully in his chest, but he assumed this was just the nerves of nearly biting it again and adrenaline wearing off in his system.)

Then Henry started to say stuff and Eric went to stop him, to explain what she just had to him— but he couldn’t when he heard the sound of Henry’s voice against the apology. He shut his mouth, wincing a little from second hand embarrassment but not wanting to interrupt. (His breathing was coming in rapid and shallow. Eric thought he was still trying to catch his breath from having nearly lost it all together.) A hand came up to move the hair that was sticking uncomfortably to his forehead. His eyes cut to the mermaid to assess her reaction, as if willing her to come out with it and put an end to the suffering before it got too far. But she looked— well, she looked kind of like she understood, even if she couldn’t hear him.

Only when Henry asked his last question did he move to intervene. “Sorry, uh, she doesn’t know what you’re saying. I think she’s deaf.” Eric reached forward to clap Henry’s shoulder. (His hand was shaking, the usual weight behind his touch lacking.) “But that was great. Remember that for later when you can write it down for her, yeah?”

He smiled (his face had paled considerably, but he couldn’t see that) and turned to look at the mermaid as she motioned. His vision blurred and he blinked, thinking it was water dripping into his eyes. Ah. Right. His leg.

“It’s not that bad.” He shook his head, waving a hand at her in dismissal of any concern. The movement was sluggish and clumsy. “I’ll be— I’ll be fine. Just need to—” Eric shut his eyes tightly as dark spots danced at the edge of his vision, head going a bit fuzzy. “—sleep it off. Take ibuprofen or something.”

ROSE:

Rose untensed every muscle in her body when Henry softened. She wasn’t prepared to fight him over someone she didn’t even know. Though, she was sure Eric’s endorsement would be enough.

It had to be.

“We need to get him to the hospital, she’s right. Right now. And I know that this isn’t what any of us want, believe me, I don’t want it either… but we need to tell the other guys.” Rose looked at Gabriella hesitantly when she said this. Surely she could read lips. She couldn’t risk giving out names of other hunters to a mermaid, no matter how much they pissed her off. “Eric could have died, hell, we all could have died! It’s bigger than just us now, Hen,” she stepped up beside the boys and lended a hand to Eric.

Looking at the injured one of the trio, “I’m sorry, Eric, but this creature isn’t the kind that can be reasoned with.” Rose was solemn but stern in her delivery. No matter how good some of these monsters pretended to be, at the end of the day they were still monsters. She wouldn’t forget that again.

“Now come on, you need to get help and she--” she sent a pointed look to Gabriella, “needs to get out of here. We can keep her secret, but we can’t protect her.”

HENRY

Henry was snapped out of his poetic moment by the realization that Eric was losing blood. Quickly. He nodded at Gabriella and Rose, then turned his attention to Eric. You weren’t supposed to let injured people lose consciousness. The Order had prepared him for something like this.

He only barely heard what Rose said as he started to get to work. “Right. Sorry. Gabriella, thank you for your help--” It occurred to Henry that he wasn’t sure she could hear him. Blast. Henry didn’t know sign language-- well, he knew a little, being friends with Devyn-- Henry at least knew the sign for ‘thank you’. He signed it quickly and then switched gears, realizing the urgency of the situation.

He looked around for some kind of makeshift bandage, but of course, any supplies were back in the boat. On a splitsecond impulse, Henry pulled his t-shirt off and started wrapping it around Eric’s leg. “Mate. Stay with us. The last thing you want to do is go to sleep, just… keep talking, alright? You’re okay, but we need to--”

That made Henry realize what Rose had just said. He froze, his stomach sinking. Tell Phil? And Tom and John? It was… probably the right thing to do, but after that talk with them a few weeks ago, it was the last thing Henry wanted to do. “Wait, I’m sorry, Rose, did you say we need to tell the other guys?” A wave of anxiety hit him. “Maybe we can just-- everyone’s fine. Eric’s going to be fine.” He shook his head and went back to wrapping Eric’s leg.

GABRIELLA

Gabriella shot the boy, perhaps she would start referring to him as ‘Tonto’ it seemed fitting, when he shook his head. Seriously? Did he have some kind of death wish?

To say she was surprised to see Charming using sign to express gratitude would have been an understatement. It always made her feel some type of way to see someone sign, no matter how little their vocab knowledge, but to get it from the guy who had only just been trying to stick her through with a sword? Couldn’t really put a name to that feeling.

She glanced back and forth between him and the blonde girl as they seemed to talk to one another. This was one of those frustrating moments being deaf, surrounded by hearing people who couldn’t properly talk to her and in a situation where there was no time to do anything else but leave her out of the know. She didn’t know what they were discussing but time was running out for Tonto, her anxiety building up enough for her to turn back to Charming and start to get his attention again. Only then he went to take his shirt off, and, yeah Gabriella was completely lost as to what the-

Oh. She blinked as she watched him apply it to Tonto’s leg. He was helping.

Gabriella wanted to go with them but first she needed to get back to her clothes. She was already embarrassed enough having shown not one, not two!, but three Mundus her tail. There was still some dignity to be left. Only, how did she communicate this?

Tentatively she reached forward for Tonto’s hand. It was too cold, just like it had been the first time. And, like the first time, he was going to be okay. She squeezed his palm and hoped he would understand what she meant when she looked at him. I’ll be back. Then her eyes moved to Charming with a bit of a harder stare and grabbed his hand, too. She put Tonto’s into his and let go. I’m trusting you with him.

With a curt nod to the girl she pulled herself back into the lake and swam off, tail splashing down on the surface.

ERIC

“What’d you mean?” Eric’s face scrunched up at Rose. “It stopped trying to kill me, didn’t it? That’s— that must count for something.”

It was a very odd feeling, the one that was taking residence inside him now. The adrenaline was leaving and something else was coming in to take its place. He felt pissed but without the warmth of the alcohol— he’d just lost all functionality. Eric Andersen really never thought about what he said before it came out of his mouth but now that filter was completely gone. His brain was too busy working on keeping its systems running to pay full attention to all that.

He squinted when Henry took off his shirt and then snorted, his head lulling back heavily. There was an attempt at a low whistle but when that didn’t work he said, “Wa-heey! Oi’, come— come on mate, why’ve you got to show me up?”

Eric turned to Rose, tapping at her to get her attention like he was a school boy all over again, wanting to tell her a funny story about Henry he’d just remembered because, hey, they were all friends now, right? Only he couldn’t get it out in time before Henry moved his leg and Eric let out a startled yell. A hand shot out to punch down against the water to meet the lake floor.

“Fucking hell! Yes! Alright! I’m talking! Happy, are you? Bleeding christ—” He cut himself off when Henry did, eyebrows jumping up. Mirroring the mermaid, his eyes bounced between the two hunters, confused. “Other guys? What other guys—?”

Then the mermaid reached forward to take his hand. Her touch was warm. Such an odd thing. Fish were usually cold, he had always expected mermaids to feel the same way. The look she gave him seemed to be some kind of promise, one he was too out of it to really process before she’d replaced her hand for Henry’s. But the warmth was dragging something else into him, up from his chest, all the exhaustion, all the cold. Feeling Rose and Henry’s touch were such contrasts to the burn beneath his fingernails, the cuts on his face, his leg— the cold, and underneath all of it. Exhaustion that had soaked the blood from his veins and left him light-headed and half dead.

Once again, he watched the mermaid swim away, but this time, he knew she was real. He gripped Henry’s hand and brought the other one up to wrap his fingers around Rose’s arm.

And, this time, he hadn’t been left alone.

#we’re gunna need a bigger boat: shark week part iv #charmedhenry #thehuntress rose #brucewhite #gabriella marino #tw: violence #tw: drowning #tw: blood #tw: slashing #tw: biting

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evien-stark · 4 years

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✧I Need You✧ Chapter 84

Eventually realizing that Coulson ignoring your calls meant he was too busy to get back to you, you had to resort to other methods of finding a SHIELD employed therapist to snatch up. ...assuming there was one. But there had to be. Or you hoped there was, otherwise all this time delaying waiting for Coulson had just been a waste. Fury was out, of course. Preferring not to speak to Nick unless absolutely necessary. That was the way your relationship with him worked best. You were sure he’d agree. You were also sure he wouldn’t totally approve of you trying to steal someone under his employ.

It was one of the first afternoons in April that you found Nat and Clint sitting at the Avenger’s Mess-hall kitchen table, eating sandwiches, talking and laughing amongst themselves, that you decided it was time to stop waiting and time to start making moves. And, you also decided, in the effort of not wasting any more time…

“Hey, does SHIELD have therapists?” Asked as you pulled up a chair. Getting right to the point.

They both looked at each other and then back at you. Nat arched her brow. “I don’t know if we’d call them therapists by… regular standards. What we have are more… field evaluation mediators.”

Tipping your head, “Meaning?”

Clint slung an arm over the back of his chair. “Meaning they’re the people in between you and going back to work, once you get off a particularly…” Hanging on the end of the word as he thought.

Nat helped, “Messy mission. You know. Lots of people put in the ground. That sort of thing. After that, before your next mission, you have to sit down with one of those people to evaluate your mental state.”

“They’re the worst.” Clearly Clint was not a fan. “Why do you want to know, anyway?”

“I’m trying to get a therapist for the Avengers.” And at that, Nat and Clint shared a side-eye with one another before making an effort not to burst out into laughter. But there was laughter. “I’m serious!” Feeling frustrated. And perhaps embarrassed. “I don’t think I can just get someone off the street for the shit we’ve been through- even if you guys don’t like the idea- I would like one. And I think some of us would benefit from having someone qualified to talk to, too.” Taking one for the team, practicing what you were trying to preach. So on and so forth. Hoping if you came out and just said it, everyone else would feel more confident about it.

Clint took a bite of his sandwich, shaking his head. Mouth half full, “You mean Tony. Right?”

“I mean all of us.” Immediately not okay with the idea of them piling on him. Sure… even he had said it himself a while back. He was a piping hot mess. But so was everyone else. You were sure of it. “Aliens came to New York. I don’t know about you guys, but that’s not normal. And I’d like to start trying to unpack all of it.”

“What’s there to unpack?” Clint seemed hard pressed to give in to this idea.

“Something beyond our understanding tried to take over earth. And there’s probably more where that came from. There were- I don’t fucking know- armored space whales and tech I’ve never seen before- and we killed like- a lot of them without thinking about it- and I’d like to talk to someone about it.” It all sort of just came out of you, as you assumed it might.

“You’re talking right now. Don’t you feel better already?” Clint, grinning at you.

Nat put a hand on his arm, silencing him. Perhaps sensing his humor wasn’t going to help the situation. “I think I know someone. You want me to set up a meeting?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

----

Deja, the therapist’s name was. “Vu, I assume.” Tony had said the night previous, while the two of you lingered around the edge’s of sleep, wrapped in each other’s arms. Making jokes to ease his own discomfort. He’d promised he’d see a therapist. Now you had one- provided everything went okay. So… he had to go.

“Linit, actually.” You’d corrected him, and tried to soothe him. You guessed it was normal to be nervous. You were sort of nervous too. But this was good… right?

Of course you’d prepared just about a mountain of paperwork for her to get through, and secured her her own private office- just in case this was a permanent thing. Maybe it would be. Maybe it wouldn’t. But before you could even get down to making sure she was a good fit, she had just about a hundred NDAs to sign. Because maybe this was foolish. Maybe superheroes were just meant to suffer.

Because trusting a stranger to listen to all their problems, all their secrets… that was foolish, wasn’t it? What if she decided an NDA and whatever salary you were going to pay her wasn’t enough? What if she went to the press? Wrote a book? Exposed every little thing you or any of the other Avengers told her in confidence? How could you be so sure that she wouldn’t? Even if she was legally not allowed to do that… had that stopped people before?

But Nat had recommended her- and wasn’t this the reason you’d went with a SHIELD employee? To assuage these fears? So with all that in mind- and all the paperwork signed in triplicate…

You tried to ignore everyone else hovering about nervously as you sat down in her office- door open. This wasn’t a session. It was more an introduction. You just weren’t in the right state of mind to make a good impression, unfortunately. Where you perhaps should have handled this with more care, your Stark Industries business sense was driving your motion. Your thoughts.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet- and signing all those papers. Let me just start off by asking what you hope to get out of this?” Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. You were not welcoming her into your proverbial home. You were probably going to scare her away. But, at the same time, she wasn’t the last resort. And maybe she wasn’t a good fit. You couldn’t let yourself just get comfortable yet.

She seemed to take it in stride, smiling. “The same thing as you, hopefully. But let me be frank, and just between us… I’m happy to get picked up from SHIELD. I went there thinking I was going to make a difference. But signing off on soldiers’ mental states just so they can go back out into the field… that’s not why I wanted to become a psychologist.”

Was she being too open? Divulging too much to lull you into a false sense of security? Saying exactly what you wanted to hear so that you’d give in and tell her all your secrets?

Or perhaps you were being too paranoid. And perhaps she was just trying to be frank, honest, and open about her desires. What had led her here, to you. Genuinely happy for a turn of events. ....hard to say which was the truth. Or was it?

Maybe this was the perfect time to utilize a little sense. So you focused in on her. Just a little. Was she being honest? ...sure seemed like it… sure… felt like it… but maybe this, too, was an act. After all, even if Tony had obliterated your files with SHIELD, surely they had rebuilt them by now. Had them hidden on some secret server. Maybe she knew all about you, and knew just what to do to try and fool you-

“You seem hesitant.” Said after a lengthy pause of your own. Too in your head. “I understand the process of finding the right person for a position this… delicate must be challenging.”

“Delicate is putting it mildly. I’m sure you’ve seen the news, and considering your employer, you know who you’d potentially be dealing with. Let me just ask, do you think you could help them?” Them including you of course, but that didn’t need to be said right now. Just trying to be the intermediary for your team. You wanted the best for them…

“That’s a loaded question. I could smile at you and say yes, sign more paperwork and take a check. Come in every week and listen and try my best- but it isn’t that simple. And… I suspect you understand that. Every person is going to approach my services differently. Let’s start here- what do you want out of therapy?”

What you wanted? -or, simpler put, what was the point of this? Why, everyone else aside, were you trying to hire someone to help you? What kind of help did you want? What did you want to accomplish?

Fanning your hands out over your pants, you realized you were fidgeting. Just a little. Was it your anxiety you wanted to work on? Your jumbled thoughts? Your… “I need someone to help me process all of this. I… need help unpacking all of it. My life wasn’t like this, even just six years ago. And I need help… adjusting.” Everything had happened in so short a time. Tony had gotten kidnapped. Tony had come back. You’d fallen helplessly in love. People kept trying to kill one or the both of you. The world had changed. There were superheroes and aliens and gods.

How was a person supposed to deal with all of that?

Deja went quiet for a moment a little too long- long enough to make you uncomfortable, in your vulnerability. She put her hands together. Her smile was delicate. “Therapy isn’t a one-and-done. I can sit here. And I can listen. And I can try to help you put things in order, to prioritize, to make sense. But part of the work is on you, too. Do you think you’re ready?”

Ready? Ready for what? To make changes? To unpack? Unload? Try and make sense of it all? “I’ll get less ready to more I keep putting it off- and- I want to emphasize. This isn’t just about me.”

“I understand that. But you can’t force them to sit here and try and help themselves any more than I can. If they want to sit down, I’ll focus on them when they’re ready. But while I’m speaking to you, I want to get a sense of what we can accomplish together.”

“Are you scared of any of them?” You had no idea why that had come out of you so suddenly. Maybe in an attempt to cover up your own insecurities while she was reading you so openly and trying to get you to commit to plans. You were dodging her.

Such a good sign that you needed help, right?

“Are you?” She looked over you, casting a serious glance over the rim of her glasses.

“No.” But you worked with them. Knew them intimately. Loved them. They were part of your family now.

“Then why ask me?” Calling you out.

“This job will no doubt be tougher than the ones you did for SHIELD, regardless of if you liked those ones or not. I’m just… trying to get a sense of things.” Sort of lying, but sort of not.

“I’m not afraid of a challenge. ...Banner makes me a little nervous. If you want my honesty. But clearly he has a handle on… everything. I think I’ll be fine.” Her blunt honesty made you feel a little better, somehow. “And, listen… I’m no stranger to my clients being distrustful. I think it tends to go hand in hand with the locales. But this can’t work unless you do trust me, and decide you can be open with me. I’m willing to come as long as it takes until you get there. As long as you think you will. Eventually.”

You understood what she was saying. Trying to impart that she didn’t want this to be a waste of her time any more than you wanted to waste yours. Were you willing to put in the work? Were you willing to let your guard down? Were you willing to be open and honest? ...that was the whole point of this, right? What were you looking for therapists for the Avengers in the first place, if not for all that? But maybe it had been easier just trying to do the scouting and not… thinking about what it all actually meant, had it ever come together.

“What I know is…” You took a deep breath. Deciding… deciding it was time, now, to start trying. “I haven’t been doing well. I’m not a complete mess, I can go about my life. I can work. I can get things done. But a few months ago, I was having meltdowns of slightly epic proportions. I can’t continue to live like that.” Not just for you, but for the consequences it unearthed for the innocent people around you. “And I just have the feeling that my life is going to get harder, the longer we- ...the longer the Avengers are a thing.”

Her eyes drifted low, seemingly in thought. Her hands folded together again, and she sat back. “Do you envision a time when the Avengers aren’t a thing?”

“I don’t know. It seems impossible right now. Like we might be doing this forever. Because threats don’t just disappear.”

“Do you want to do it forever?”

The question stopped you cold. You’d been thinking about this, a little frantically and disjointedly, a few separate times. Was this your life forever now? Was there a future outside of this? What about you and Tony? What sort of future could you have as a couple if crazy world-ending shit was happening all the time? Or kidnappings and attempted murder?

“No.”

The answer hurt you. Surprised you, too. But it was honest.

“Not forever.”

“But you don’t think you can stop?”

Your anxiety spiked, a cold tightness in your chest. Flight response pushed at the corners of your brain. You didn’t want to be with the Avengers forever. That was out there now. Out there in the world. “Hey- this seems like a session- I think we’d better finish up your paperwork and get you on payroll- make it official.” You were on your feet. Knowing how obvious this all was, to someone like her. Hell. Anyone. You weren’t being terribly secretive right now.

“Is this official?” She let you get away with it anyway, smiling up your way.

“I think we can move forward. We can’t tell if it’s not a good fit until we work with each other a little more- and- them too- don’t forget.”

“I’m not forgetting.” She stood, offering her hand out. “It’s been a pleasure. When can I look forward to sitting down with you again?”

You gave her hand a firm shake. “How about next week. Monday work for you?”

Her laugh surprised you. “Technically I work for you now, once I sign my name on a few more dotted-lines. What’s best for your schedule?”

“Monday evening.” That was a lie. Nothing was ever going to be good for your schedule. But you’d push things around to make an attempt at making this a regular thing. You had to. For your own sake. “I’ll try to push a few of the others your way, too.”

“Not too hard. I don’t want them to reject the idea of this outright. It won’t help anyone.”

Nodding, “Understood. I’ll send Pepper in here to help you get set up. You like the office?”

“It’s very nice. Thank you.”

“Good.”

Great. Wonderful. Fantastic.

----

Because everyone seemed to be avoiding you, for no reason at all, you and Tony opted for a quiet dinner at the penthouse. While you’d ordered in, you still unboxed everything and plated it. Dinner was eaten in the living room in front of a TV neither of you was really listening to. In fact, Tony had been talking about something. Research in the lab- suits- you were listening. Honest. But… it wasn’t all sticking. You were still thinking about what Deja had said. More importantly, what you had said. And after dinner was over, you followed him into the kitchen. Leaning your elbows onto the counter in a slow slide, you put your chin in your upturned palms, watching him as he washed the dishes. Just as he got to drying the last plate, you couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“Do you think we’ll be part of the Avengers forever?”

He lowered the plate, looking up for a moment, then grinned lightly, shaking his head. “You spoke to her like what- twenty minutes? She that good?”

“I think I like her.” Honestly you weren’t actually sure yet. But she seemed honest. And nice. And willing to work hard. And try and help. What more could you ask for? “But… it wasn’t really a session.”

“Yet here you are after not listening to anything I said this evening, thinking about our future with the superfriends.”

“I listened.” Protesting. But you sensed he didn’t believe you. ...he was right. “I just… what’s the point we’re working towards? Are we going to be on-call for the rest of our lives? Or are we… are we going to reach a point where we don’t have to worry anymore?”

He set the plate down in the drying rack, slinging the dish towel over his shoulder. Going to you as you stood and then sat back atop the counter, his hands cradled your hips. “If you’re looking to me for guidance on this… I don’t have any right now. I’ve been thinking about this, too. And I don’t know.” You appreciated his honesty, even if it was blunt and put an unease in your heart. You would rather that than him lying. “Do I want to live in a world where eventually we finish and get to go home? Of course I do. ...do we live in that world?”

Your eyes left his. Feeling almost guilty. Because it seemed obvious. How could you? How could evil ever just be gone from the world? Not even the small threats that didn’t concern a team like the Avengers. But the bigger ones. How could you believe they’d just one day be gone forever?

You couldn’t. “No.” Feeling a forlorn sense of sorrow over this realization.

Reaching one hand up, he tipped your chin, angling your eyes back towards his. “I love you.” Despite the grimness of the situation, this, as always, got a small smile out of you. Made you feel better. “Do we live in that world right now? No. I don’t think so. But that doesn’t mean we won’t ever.”

“That’s pretty optimistic, for you.” Sliding your hands up his chest, you beckoned him closer. Eventually wrapping your arms around him, resting your head on his shoulder.

He gave you a squeeze, his head laying atop yours. “Realism is more my thing. You’re saying it’s not realistic to think we could achieve a… balance?”

“I don’t know.” Mumbling into his shirt. “I hope so.”

“I can work with hope.”

#Tony Stark #Tony Stark x Reader #INY Chapter Eighty Four

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i-heart-danchou · 5 years

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I’ll Carry You

So this is from last year’s Eruri week prompts, “Carrying” I hope you like it! _______ The first time Erwin carried Levi was just after their first excursion beyond the walls. Isabel and Farlan were dead, their glazed over eyes still fresh in Levi’s mind… he needed a distraction, a connection, a warm pulse under his lips. In Erwin Levi had found a reason to keep fighting, and he kept close to him as they re-entered the walls. Levi didn’t give a shit that no one else in the Survey Corps trusted him, didn’t give a shit that Shadis loathed him, he kept his eyes on Erwin’s back and found that kept him steady. He followed Erwin back to his office, saying nothing, wondering just when blondie would start to say something— apologize, maybe— about what had happened to his friends beyond the wall. “Levi—“ Erwin started, but Levi didn't want to fucking hear it. He slammed Erwin against the door and started to kiss him. Levi kept his eyes open, and felt a measure of satisfaction when the hesitation, fear, and confusion on Erwin’s face melted into something like excitement, arousal, and dominance.

Erwin kissed him back, hoisted him up so they could kiss easier, and Levi wrapped his legs around Erwin’s waist. Levi bit down on the pale flesh of Erwin’s neck, nipped up towards his ear. “Farlan thought you were straight.” He muttered, his deft hands making short work of Erwin’s button down shirt.

Erwin’s smile was wry. “Mm. Not exactly.” He said simply, walking them briskly to the comfortable couch that sat opposite his desk.

He didn’t make a comment about how light Levi was, nor how small he was, didn’t try and bring up his dead friends, didn’t say anything to take them out of this moment. He started kissing down Levi’s chest, was being tender and gentle with him and it made Levi feel sick.

“Just fucking get on with it.” He growled, pulling Erwin up by the collar so they could kiss once more. Levi’s kisses were desperate and deep, peppered with sharp nips and bites to Erwin’s lips, his neck, his ear lobe.

Erwin took his time, though, and slowly made Levi come apart beneath him. Erwin cupped Levi’s face with his hand, the poorly healed cut that Levi had given him palpable on his cheek. It must have hurt... probably still did hurt, actually. Levi grasped his wrist and brought Erwin’s palm to his lips, the thin red line just barely, barely healing.

Thank you.

** Levi didn’t really like being carried, especially. It made him feel vulnerable, and that was a position he didn’t like to put himself in. Erwin respected that in a way his previous lovers really hadn’t, and Levi was grateful for it. As time went on though, he allowed himself to be more vulnerable in front of the commander. He leaned on him, and Erwin leaned back… they kept each other standing, they carried each other’s burdens. “You know.” Levi started one night, pouring each of them a glass of brandy from Erwin’s secret office stash. “If you ever get incapacitated beyond the walls, you’ll probably be too big for me to rescue.” He cast his eyes up casually, like he didn’t want to see Erwin’s reaction to that statement. Erwin just chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “I suppose you might be right.” He mused. “My horse must be the strongest in the legion, eh? Worst case scenario you might be able to load me into one of the carts.” “Assuming anyone could even get you off the ground. You’re, what, 200 pounds of dead weight? I mean, you’re a valuable asset but no one wants to throw their back out, Erwin.” Levi was trying his hardest not to smirk, but whenever he and Erwin got into these banter battles he found it quite difficult. Erwin’s laugh was deep and silky, the corners of his eyes crinkled and Levi felt immeasurably pleased. “Well we can’t have that, can we? I suppose when the time comes you can leave me behind to fertilize the grass.” They clinked their glasses together and left it at that. ** “It's the commander!” Someone, Levi didn't know fucking who it was, barked out, “We need some help!” His goddamned ankle had still been acting up, he hadn’t been cleared for a mission yet, and fucking fuck fuck fuck Erwin had fucking promised it’d be okay. He scrambled through the crowd and spotted his commander, white as a sheet, breathing shallow and rapid, absent most of his fucking arm. Levi’s eyes went wide, his eyebrows lifted, and he took a moment to collect himself. “Erwin.” He breathed, kneeling down beside him in the medical cart. “What did you do?” Levi should have been there. Should have been on the mission, been at Erwin’s side like he always was. Levi was Erwin’s fucking right hand— and now… His right hand was gone. Levi tried to imagine what had happened, pictured himself ripping Erwin’s arm out of the titan’s mouth and getting him the fuck back home. Erwin was lighter now, he supposed. He might have been able to carry him. When he heard the full events though, he couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Stubborn fucking bastard, down probably 20% of his blood, minus a limb, still together enough to complete the mission single handedly (heh), ride his own fucking horse home, and not collapse until everyone else was home safe. People often wondered if Erwin Smith was even human. Levi watched him in bed as he recovered, watched the white cotton of his bandage darken as a trickle of blood seeped through it. He watched his chest rise and fall, he watched the sweat drip down his forehead while the agony consumed his sleep. He was human. Erwin Smith was human. Levi allowed himself to rest his head against Erwin’s chest, taking comfort in hearing his heart beating through his slumber. “Don’t worry, Erwin. I’ll keep things running while you’re here. Just… get better, okay?” Erwin couldn’t hear him, but Levi closed the door quietly when he left anyway. Erwin had always, always carried his burdens alone. Levi wanted to make it easier for him, if he could. ** “Don’t you fucking touch him.” Levi hissed, the blood more or less evaporated from his skin. Eren jumped back, his eyes wide, his brow furrowed. “Sorry— I-I didn’t mean to—“ He’d had his hand on Erwin’s shoulder, and Levi found it repulsive that the boy could even look at his commander. “It doesn’t matter.” Levi let out a long breath through his mouth and shut his eyes. “No one touches him.” The horses were all but dead, their equipment and carts destroyed. The sun was rising hot over Shingashina, and it was becoming obvious that the last survivors of the Survey Corps would not be able to bring any of their dead comrades home. But they couldn’t fucking leave him here, right? Not Erwin, not after everything he’d done, everything he’d lost. Levi’s mind was working hard, trying to figure out a way to… maybe if Eren transformed again they could— “Levi.” Hanji said eventually— coolly, tentatively, keeping Levi at arm’s length. “I’m sorry. We have to prioritize the injured. We regroup, go to the basement, then we get back to Sina and figure out what to do next.” Levi could hear the subtext in her voice— Erwin is dead because of you. Erwin trusted you to make the right choice, and you killed him. How can humanity go on without him? He wasn’t sorry, he wasn’t going to explain. No one would fucking understand it anyway. Levi’s eyes were harsh and cold, and Eren wilted under his gaze. The boy moved away under the guise of checking on Armin, but he knew he wasn’t welcome in this space. “I’m not leaving him here.” Levi hissed once they were alone. “I can’t leave him here to rot.” Hanji sighed and Levi noticed how tired she looked. “…we have some time.” She said eventually. “You can look for somewhere more suitable.” The houses in Shingashina were largely damaged or deteriorating. Levi picked one that had an overgrown garden at the front of it, attracted by the flowers which had somehow managed to grow here in the absence of humanity. It seemed like it had been a pleasant home, once, and had a nice roomy attic with a window. Levi hated the darkness, he hated dank spaces. He didn’t want Erwin to rest somewhere without sunlight. It was easy to close his mind off when he was cleaning, and he wanted the room to be spotless. Five years worth of dust and grime came away easily under his fingertips, and the light from that cloudless sky bathed the neat little space. Levi picked some flowers too, and put them in an empty bottle he’d found downstairs. He… just wanted it to be nice for him, that’s all. The practicalities of moving Erwin’s body were another matter entirely. Levi was adamant that no one else would touch him, especially not… people who had begged for Erwin’s death not two hours before. The commander was a large man, an imposing one, and he easily had 60 pounds on Levi. The captain was strong, of course, but… he didn’t want it to be undignified. He didn’t want Erwin’s head flopping around, he didn’t want to fucking drop him. So he strapped his commander to his back, grasping onto his strong left arm to keep him steady. Erwin’s head rested on Levi’s shoulder, and it made him sick to feel how cold it was. Levi had to ignore the sticky chill that seeped through Erwin’s wounds onto Levi’s uniform, the focused on keeping Erwin in place while his gear did most of the work. ‘I’ve got you.’ He thought to himself. ‘I won’t let you fall.’ He was careful as he gently rested Erwin on the bed, and he chanced a look at Erwin’s face. He looked peaceful, at least. “Erwin…” He said aloud, feeling foolish for speaking to a dead person. “I… I’ll keep my promise, I’ll kill that fucking hairy bastard. And I’ll come back for you, okay?” His throat felt tight and he pulled Erwin’s cloak over his face. This was the last time he’d ever see Erwin again, probably. The last time before his face rotted away, before his body was just bones. When the dust was settled, when the future was more certain, Levi would return to this place. Without words, without ceremony, he would carry Erwin one last time.

#erwin smith #levi #levi ackerman #eruri #eruri fic #my stuff #oh boy

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magic-and-moonlit-wings · 5 years

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Chapter 31: Scrambling

Becoming The Mask

Only about two thirds of the Janus Order's Acadia branch made it to the meeting Stricklander called. His message said that, although the matter was urgent, they should prioritize maintaining their human covers. If slipping out to the meeting would draw undue attention, they were to wait and receive the briefing through other channels.

It was still more agents than they usually had on the base at any one time.

They met in the orientation room. The Changelings picked out seats, wondering in whispers what was so important, some of them grumbling about late-night meetings when they had to get up early the next morning. It would be Monday in half an hour.

Instead of a video, Stricklander stood before them in person. He wasn't wearing a mask. He rarely did. Masks were encouraged but not technically obligatory. Everyone already knew who he was.

"It's been an eventful weekend. Early on Saturday, Killahead Bridge was rebuilt. Bular attempted to retrieve the Amulet of Daylight to reopen the portal and free Gunmar's forces from the Darklands."

There were gasps and hisses of shock. They – the Janus Order should've been told about Killahead's completion in advance, shouldn't they? There were supposed to be announcements. There was supposed to be a warning. Some Changelings had humans they wanted to stash out of the way for the initial invasion. This sounded like they might have to do a rush job.

"Unfortunately, Bular's impatience proved his undoing. He is dead, presumably slain by the Trollhunter."

Stricklander whipped a tarp off a mound of rubble on a wide wooden dolly beside him.

"This is what could be gathered of his remains. He was in a sewer maintenance tunnel near the museum. The museum itself has been raided. Killahead Bridge is lost to us."

That was an unusually fatalistic attitude for Stricklander to take. This must have truly devastated him.

"Do we –?" That was Bernie Sturges, local head of the Alchemy, Chemistry, and Toxicology Department. Bernie gulped and tried again. "Do we know who the current Trollhunter is?"

"That knowledge died with Bular," said Stricklander solemnly. "The goblins who witnessed the battle were not able to report anything useful to that end. We have old intelligence that Kanjigar's son, Draal," there was a beat as several people looked at Nomura, perched perfectly still in the second row, "expected to succeed his father as Trollhunter, but we are currently unable to confirm whether this held true."

Near the back of the audience, Otto suppressed a growl. He could not give in to his own feelings. He had to read the room around him.

Otto could accuse Jim Lake, here and now; Lake who hadn't shown, Lake who was conveniently not on hand to be exposed carrying the Amulet; and Otto would be dismissed as irrational with grief.

Otto could insist on publicly questioning the goblins on what they heard and smelled and saw; the goblins whose idea of important information only occasionally overlapped with anyone else's, the goblins who could barely tell Otto what happened when he already knew most of it, the surface goblins who spoke a different dialect than the Darklands goblins and so most Changelings could barely understand them; and all he was likely to get coherently out of them was their vow to avenge Bular.

Knowledge of the Trollhunter's identity died with Bular. That message was clear. If Otto didn't tread carefully, Stricklander would arrange for him to be 'tragically slain by the Trollhunter' as well.

Arcadia Oaks was clearly Stricklander's territory. None of the other Changelings were questioning his version of events – or, if they were, they had the sense to keep those questions inside their heads.

This was where the Janus Order's cultish nature worked against itself. They were trained to be suspicious of everyone except for their superiors.

"In light of these events," Stricklander continued, "every Changeling with nonessential duties on this base is to go into deep cover. Immerse yourselves in your human lives. We don't know if the Trollhunter knows about us or if they think Bular was operating alone. I don't want any Changeling to be caught and killed, and I especially don't want an enemy to be led right to our base."

He allowed himself an artfully strained chuckle. Otto almost couldn't tell that the strain was the faked part.

"I would have emailed this information rather than calling you all here, if I felt I could trust the encryptions. Having also lost our best means to dispose of bodies, this would also be the worst possible time to draw attention from human espionage groups."

Otto followed Bernie to the wing affectionately dubbed 'the Potions Lab' after they were dismissed.

"Odd, isn't it," Otto commented, "that Stricklander gathered the body himself."

"Maybe they were close," said Bernie noncommittally, rather than suggesting – to Otto, of all Changelings, widely known as the goblins' favourite – that goblins might have done the work. "Neither of them would have advertised that."

Wrong. Stricklander would have lorded that over everyone if it were true. Bular would have let him get away with it, if it were true.

Bernie puttered around their lab, stabilizing and recording the experiments in progress. Otto looked but did not touch. He had no desire to lose a hand.

Even if the brews wouldn't do that, Bernie well might. They had asked once – well, she had, the gender-fluid Changeling was going by 'Bernadette' at the time – she had asked whether a polymorph could regenerate severed limbs. So far as Otto knew, this was not the case, but he had no interest in testing it personally "to create a more scientifically viable sample size".

Then there was the time Bernard had been pestering Otto for tissue samples to see if he could induce shapeshifting by prodding the tissue with a gaggletack before the cells died.

"It works on blood and cheek scrapings, but not hair or nails, probably because those parts are technically dead, even when the hair's plucked out with the follicle, but that's all with regular Changelings, see, and polymorphism introduces huge variables and I want to see what happens."

Changelings didn't know enough about their own anatomy for Bernie to feel confident performing surgery to take samples from internal organs, so at least Otto hadn't had to fend off requests of that nature.

Otto would have preferred to approach someone else first, but Bernie had been the only one to ask any questions when Stricklander told them Bular was dead, which suggested they might also be the most open to questioning their leader.

"I will be questioning the goblins on what they saw," said Otto, realizing he was being ignored.

"We don't have any truth potions or memory aids on site," said Bernie. "Never did confirm the truth potion was even real. It might just lower inhibitions and reduce capacity for complex thought. Which is the last thing a goblin swarm needs." They cleared their throat. "They're impulsive."

"Bular has defeated many Trollhunters. I wonder if the new one thought to poison their weapon. If so, I will need your help identifying the toxin."

"… Can you get me access to his remains? If we're not making him into Grave Sand, I won't have an excuse to examine him. We should rope Stephan in. I mean, crematoriums don't do autopsies, but he works with morticians."

Otto didn't know who Stephan was, but nodded anyway. His network was beginning.

Barbara woke up with her glasses askew. She must have forgotten to take them off before bed. She sat up and removed them, wiping the smudges with a handful of her bedsheet. She looked reflexively towards her bedside table.

No breakfast.

Right. Jim wasn't home.

She dressed and went downstairs. Even she couldn't ruin a bowl of cereal.

Unless she let the milk spoil, she realized, when her first bite was sour. She'd have to tell Jim to – she would have to go grocery shopping.

There was also an apple pie in the fridge. It wasn't the most nutritious choice, but a slice of pie was healthier than skipping breakfast entirely.

It was easier at work. Barbara was good at compartmentalizing (most of the time) and work meant she didn't have to think about – home. (Jim.) (Jay-Jay.) (How she hadn't brought a lunch and by the end of the day was running on bad coffee and a bag of vending machine chips.)

She would adjust. She would. It was just hard right now because it was a fresh change.

Jim skipped lunch.

"Claire doesn't want to see me right now," he told Toby. "I'm going to hide out in Mr Strickler's office."

"He won't wonder about that?"

"I … I need to talk to him about some stuff. I …" Jim looked around and leaned in closer to Toby and dropped his voice, not quite to a whisper. "I know I'm hundreds of years older than her, but I do think of Mom as … well, my mom. Mr S is a teacher, so he knows how to talk to kids who're fighting with their parents. Nana's great and all but I, I need to, to talk to a grow-up human who's more outside the situation."

"Didn't you say he also has a crush on Dr L?"

Jim's eyes widened and his breathing got shallower. If they weren't in public Toby might have hugged him – Jim liked an anchor when he got upset. He settled for patting Jim's shoulder.

"Well, all the more reason to tell him, right? So he knows now's not a good time to talk to her."

He was trying to cover something up again. Toby gritted his teeth and let Jim bail on him.

"Jim's not coming," he told Darci and Claire and Mary. "He's hiding in Strickler's office. I'm like, ninety percent sure Strickler's a Changeling, but Jim says he can't tell me who is or isn't."

Mary nodded and got up. "I'll go snoop."

"Wha–?"

"I got this."

"She's good," Darci agreed, waving goodbye.

Claire took Mary's sandwich and started cutting the quarters into narrow, bite-sized strips. Toby recognized that trick – the 'sneak food into class' sandwich. Pop one in when the teacher isn't looking, and push it into your cheek like a hamster if you got called on before swallowing.

"Not Enrique's a jerk," said Claire, softly and viciously. "He was crying, like, all night, and when Mom had me take a turn checking on him, he asked me to go out and get him a burger! I locked my door and windows before bed. I'm thinking about getting one of those knobs where the lock has an actual key so I can be sure he stays out of my room when I'm not home. This morning he tried to butter me up, offering to help me learn trollish, and I wrote down what he said to double-check with Blinky but I'm positive it's all swears. Some of it sounds familiar from when random trolls start yelling at each other."

"That actually sounds kind of useful," said Toby.

"Sure, if your teacher's not insisting, 'this is how you say hello and this is how you say I'm sorry and this is how you say please don't kill me'."

Mary leaned against the bank of lockers by Strickler's office door. She totally wasn't eavesdropping. She had her phone out and was sweeping through her old photos to decide if any should be deleted. It wasn't anyone's fault if she just happened to overhear what was said on the other side of the door.

The school walls weren't thick enough for soundproofing. She strained her ears anyway.

"Otto will probably make trouble. I've intimidated him enough he shouldn't openly expose you as long as he doesn't actually have you on hand as evidence, but I'm sure he's plotting against us."

"What if … I know you won't like this, but what if we snuck a Heartstone piece into his office?"

"You believe Otto can be bribed." Mr S sounded amused. He was probably twirling his pen.

"I mean more that it, ah, wouldn't hurt to plant some evidence implicating he might've really been in cahoots with us the whole time."

"… That point is worth considering. Do you think you can get another piece?"

"Probably," said Jim decisively.

"… You took more than one."

"… Yes, sir."

"Toby's right. Stickler's a Changeling, and I think he might be Jim's boss. They were also talking about somebody named 'Otto' who might make trouble."

"Should we tell …" Darci wracked her brains. Which of the trolls wouldn't get Jim in trouble? "Blinky, maybe?"

Mary, rushing through her late lunch, only shrugged.

"Did he say anything about Enrique?" asked Claire.

"No. But they might've before I got there."

"Or Jim didn't mention him because he didn't want Not Enrique to get in trouble," Toby suggested. He finished off his slice of apple pie. "Or to protect us. He said last night … well, you guys remember."

Toby had texted them about how Jim was supposed to kill anyone who learned his secret. Darci couldn't believe Toby could hear something like that and still chow down on food he knew Jim had made. Killing someone in the middle of a high school cafeteria wasn't exactly subtle, but there were time-delayed poisons and poisons that looked like normal food poisoning or allergic reactions, right?

"So …" Darci hated being the one to say it, but they couldn't save Enrique if they were dead. "Maybe we shouldn't tell anyone in Trollmarket about Not Enrique yet."

Claire looked like she was about to explode.

"The way Blinky talked about it when they thought we might be Changelings," said Darci, "it sounds like they … aren't exactly popular. Jim's their magically destined hero and he can't even be publically found a Changeling."

There were some metaphors in that situation that Darci did not like.

"I feel like we should at least talk to Jim, and maybe get Not Enrique more on our side, before talking to Blinky and AAARRRGGHH about this."

Barbara came home to a dark, empty house. She saw a light on in Toby's window across the street.

As she locked the door, she wondered at herself for not having the locks changed. She'd done that after James had left, in a fit of temper, and had only regretted it a few times before she no longer wanted him to come back.

Jim was right across the street. He had his key. He could come home at any time.

Maybe it was some kind of subconscious test of whether he'd actually respect her boundaries? Barbara didn't think she was that devious.

There was a chain on the door. She slid that into place.

Barbara curled up on the couch and hugged a pillow. She'd have to do something about dinner eventually.

Without distraction, she couldn't get the image out of her mind of Jay-Jay in that mirror, with the goblin fussing over him.

She cuddled the pillow more like a baby. She'd ended up in the neonatal ward today – a pregnant woman in a side-on car collision delivered early, thankfully mother and child and the other driver would all live and there had been no other passengers to worry about – and realized how out of practice she actually was with newborns.

If she got Jay-Jay back, what would she do? A blood test should prove he was hers, but how was she going to explain a baby? Would she have to leave town for a year and come back with a child, or fake a pregnancy and a delayed birth to cover why he was three months old already?

If she were a man it would be a little easier to cover up; just say he was conceived during a brief relationship and the mother had surrendered custody and didn't want to be involved.

Barbara could pretend she'd found Jay-Jay abandoned and wanted to keep him, if not for potential blood tests seeking his 'real family' that would expose her as a liar, and the bureaucratic hoops of fostering and adoption. That plan might've been feasible a hundred years ago, but not in the modern world.

She hadn't planned on having another child. She'd barely been around for Jim's childhood, and Jim, Jim was secretly an adult the whole time, and not even human with a human's social needs – how could she raise an actual human baby all by herself?

On some level, Barbara was grateful Jim had nicknamed Jay-Jay. It made it easier to mentally distinguish between them.

Even if she did keep catching herself thinking of both of them as her sons.

It had only been a few days, and Stephan Jorgensen-Warner already felt superfluous in Arcadia now that Bular was gone.

His human cover worked in a crematorium. His main duty to the Janus Order was sneaking bodies out before they were to be burned – cool and stiff, filled with formaldehyde, but still human flesh – so Bular's cravings wouldn't drive him to hunt constantly and draw attention.

Bular had still hunted and still drawn attention. Nomura had complained extensively about the museum guards getting eaten. But Stephan's efforts curbed it to within a manageable level. Stricklander always said so.

Then Otto Scaarbach the Polymorph and Bernie Sturges the Alchemist recruited Stephan, specifically Stephan, for a project, and for a moment he felt purposeful again.

Until he learned what they wanted him to do.

"I can't autopsy a rock."

He spoke with a level of disrespect he would never have dared in Bular's presence if Bular could hear him. He wasn't worried. Even if Bular was a ghost, he'd be spending his afterlife finally seeing his father again, not checking up on his own corpse.

"First, I don't know how to do autopsies. My medical training is basic first aid, how to set a bone, and what to do for burns. Second, he's in pieces. We'd have to rebuild him to get any idea of what the kill strike might have been. And that's assuming it was something that leaves a mark."

He'd seen trolls die in the sun before. It always made him grateful to be a Changeling.

"You can help us rebuild him," said Bernard. He was Bernard today.

Bernie introduced themselves to everyone they spoke to every day so others would know how to refer to them. At least around the base. Changelings switched physical species regularly; changing gender identity wasn't a big deal for most of them. The ones who did have a problem, Bernie either beat in the sparring ring or non-fatally poisoned after the first offense. There were not many second offenders.

"He's. A. Pile. Of. Rocks," said Stephan, gesturing at what had been the last Gumm-Gumm to roam the surface. "I wouldn't know what's what unless we start from the outside and work in, and even then, who knows."

"Otto can model."

"Wait, what?"

"And if he ever collapses, we'll have to start all over again, unless you plan to explain to the Underlord why you superglued his son's remains together."

"So, just to be absolutely sure I understand this, let's go over it again. You snuck into your house … to do chores."

"Yes."

"… Nope. Still not getting it."

"You literally just described what I did."

"Because it's ridiculous, Jim! It's, like, reverse hooliganry! You snuck into your house to do chores."

"I won't get caught."

"That is so not the main point of concern."

"Look, after James Senior left us," Toby had noticed Jim never referred to the man as his father, even before Toby knew Jim was, arguably, adopted, "Mom and I promised to take care of each other. She's all alone now and I worry."

Jim patted Toby's shoulder and forced a grin.

"It's okay, it's all subtle stuff. Replacing old bulbs, checking in with Draal, putting leftovers in the fridge, sweeping, dusting –"

"You're leaving food? How is she not going to notice that?"

"Because it looks like takeout. Chicken salad, fried fish, stuff you might pick up at a nice but not expensive restaurant. I bought some Styrofoam containers to put it in and I plate up the main and sides together and everything. She'll think she just bought it for herself and forgot about it."

"… Okay, new concern. You do know making someone doubt their own memories is a feature of gaslighting, right?"

Toby was relieved that Jim looked ashamed.

"Yeah. We're trained for that."

"They don't teach you to talk but they teach you to gaslight people?"

"We're taught to talk!" said Jim defensively. "Just, not right away. We're briefed on what we need to listen for when we're due to be assigned a Familiar. It would be a waste of resources to train Changelings who might not live long enough to serve in the field."

Talking to Jim about his past made Toby's heart and brain hurt. He shouldn't have brought it up right now. He wanted to argue Jim's points but it was probably more important to keep addressing the part where Jim was gaslighting his mother.

"Jimbo, if Dr L can't remember buying the food, is she really likely to eat it?"

"Inertia should take care of that. She's used to coming home to food already there. The takeout format is just in case she's awake enough to question it."

"Jimbo. That is. Literally. The problem here." Toby tried for another angle. "She's not sure she can trust you right now, right? And you're not giving her a choice about whether to trust you enough to eat your cooking."

"But she won't eat if I don't cook for her," said Jim, like he was being logical and Toby was the one acting irrational and stubborn. "Do you want her to starve?"

That was another gaslighting trick. Toby had been doing research. He wondered if Jim was doing it on purpose right now, or just imitating what the Changeling had been taught was normal and acceptable behaviour.

"She's a grown woman. She can feed herself. And she's at the hospital literally every day. If she passes out from low-blood sugar or something, she'll be getting the best treatment in five seconds flat."

"Not if it happens at home. Or in the car. If she's lightheaded from hunger, her judgement will be compromised and she won't notice she shouldn't drive and if she passes out at the wheel, she and a bunch of other people could die."

Toby pulled his blanket off his bed and wrapped it around Jim. Jim clung to it. Toby wasn't sure if hugging him would be a good or bad move right now.

"I promised."

Jim's voice was small. They might be getting to the heart of the matter now.

"I've broken so many promises lately. Keeping trolls a secret. Keeping Changelings a secret. Freeing Gunmar. Keeping you out of this. Keeping Mom out of this. I'm supposed to take care of people. It's what I'm good at. It's what I'm for. And I promised Mom I'd never leave her by choice."

Toby was in way over his head. He decided hugging Jim couldn't make it worse.

"But if she's not choosing to trust you … I mean, your choice isn't the only one that's important there." Toby had an idea. "Jim … I want you to promise me you won't go back there unless Dr L invites you. Or it's an emergency like the house is on fire or something. And no fair setting the house on fire to get back in."

Jim gave a watery laugh into Toby's shoulder. "Arson feels like it would defeat the purpose."

"Do you promise?"

If promises really were important to Jim, which seemed like a weird trait in a secret agent but Jim had already admitted he'd been compromised, then Toby had him.

"… One more visit. Tonight. To tell Draal what's going on. After that …" Jim's sigh was as shaky as his laughter. "I promise, Tobes."

It had been a week, Barbara realized.

A week since her world had turned upside down. Or gotten more layers; that might be a more apt metaphor.

A week since she'd discovered trolls and Changelings and a secret war and a spy in her home.

A week since she'd seen Jim.

Also, a week since she'd seen Zelda, who may or may not attend krav maga today.

Barbara had more questions now. She'd had a week to think, and now she wanted, needed, answers that only a Changeling could give her.

But she could not bring herself to face the Changeling she'd thought of as a friend, or the one she still thought of as her son.

But, she remembered slowly – it was hard to think of him that way when she hadn't seen his troll form – she did know one other Changeling who was still at the 'acquaintance' stage.

It took a while to find the number. She hadn't programmed it into her phone and the note had gotten buried in her purse.

"Doctor Lake," he greeted, in an elegantly neutral voice. Doctor Lake, not Barbara – back to formalities, it seemed.

"Hello, Mr Strickler. Um …" How to begin? "How much has Jim told you?"

"That he is currently living with the Domzalskis. I presume you knew as much and are not calling to inquire on his whereabouts."

"No, I – that I knew. I just … I need to talk to someone," she admitted. "Someone who knows about trolls and knows I know about trolls and isn't hiding in an underground city I can't get to."

"… I believe my schedule allows for an early lunch."

Previous Chapter (The kids find out Jim and Not Enrique are Changelings

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forthesapphicsonly · 6 years

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Being Peter Parker's twin and have the same powers as he (part 1)

So I watched Spiderman Homecoming yesterday again and I got this idea in my head. I'm already working on part two, which involves Infinity War (which I watched right away so my inspiration would not die).

You're Peter Parker's sister.

Not just any sister, but his twin sister.

And you have the same powers.

Peter won them first, of course.

And he probably should not have taken the spider that bit him home, so he would spare you the same fate.

But Peter, curious as he is, could not help himself and had to carry the spider so he could study it at home. What was your surprise when you came in and came across a little glass box with the little spider in your room?

"Pety!" You shouted, taking the box in hand and scanning the little spider. "Really, what are you up to now?" You murmured as you opened the small box. "There you are, be free" you watched the spider crawl through your fingers and stop in the palm of your hand.

You brought your face closer. You had already studied a little arachnology was a big one and that definitely did not look like a normal spider, it did not look like any species you knew.

"Oh!" You waved as the little traitor bit into you, instinctively stepping on it as it fell to the floor.

"Damn" with low curses, you shook hands. For a small spider, its bite hurt.

"Ang!" Peter appeared in the bedroom door, looking like he had run a marathon. He looked at your hand, then the glass box on the floor, back to your hand.

"No no no no .. did you let her go?" he looked exasperated, looking around.

"I stepped on her" you whispered, embarrassed.

You were going to let her go, and then you killed her. What a horrible person you were.

"She bit me, I acted by reflex" you showed the hand, where the mark of the bite began to stand out in red.

"What? You too? "Peter looked even more agitated as he paced the room, hands running through his hair, talking to himself.

"Pety!" You tried to get their attention. "What do you mean, too? She bit you? And why do you decide to bring her home?" You kept asking the questions while Peter continued to ramble by himself, leaving you more confused. "Peter!" You shouted and Peter stopped, wide-eyed for you.

"OK. I don't know what this bite will do to you, so I'd better tell you soon.." your heart missed a beat.

"WHAT? SHE WAS POISONOUS?"

And that was basically the story of how (as of 24 hours) you also had spider powers. Sense of spider? Argh, you could not tell.

I'm sorry to say that maybe you were going to develop eight extra legs or pair of eyes was not the thing that annoyed you more, but the fact that Peter did not tell you that before.

Your twin brother suddenly gains power and does not tell you anything?

This is completely wrong.

But unlike Peter, you were more sensible.

Since your parents left you at Aunt May and Uncle Ben's house and never came back, you chose to be the 'mature' between the two.

Peter was naive and scared and you swore you would protect him. Even from himself.

So Peter suddenly has powers and wants to go around saving the world and knocking down bad guys was your worst nightmare.

You were going crazy

Peter had powers

You had powers

Peter wanted to make a hero

You just got a scholarship at a school in Canada

There was a lot going on.

But you needed that scholarship.

Peter had his spot in Midtown high school (and only one of you could be there), so you struggled to get that bag. It was important to your future.

"Pety" you sat with your brother in the fire exit of the room. "I have to go." Pety was silent. He only had you and May and now you were going too. Just now that you had discovered the powers!

He had been imagining the incredible things they could do together

He didn't want you to be but he could not be selfish either. You gave up the Midtown spot so he could come in. He owed it to you.

"I know." Peter opened a small, but sad smile. "I know you're going to raze there" Peter muttered, tearing a little smile from you.

"Not as much as you" you joked back.

Like Peter, you had your genius too. But while Peter was a total nerd in science and in every area of exact, your genius was more in language and computation. Where one stood out the other failed. And so they were perfect together. Like Yin and Yang.

"Peter, I want you to promise not to do anything stupid." Peter blinked for a moment.

"But Ang ..." he stuttered, ready to fight back.

"No, Pety, you can't go around making a hero. You're just ... you're just a kid, okay? It's dangerous. I'll be away, I will not be able to protect you, I ... " you caught, your emotions high and confused.

You were this mess since the bite, it was as if all the senses were super sensitive and tall.

"You're my age!" Peter protested. "You're my sister, Ang. Not Mom and Dad. I know how to take care of myself! "Peter got up and entered the room.

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath, before opening them and watching the sky for a few minutes.

"Just make some sense and think twice before you do anything, okay?" You knew he hear. Improved hearing and everything.

Turns out Peter did not take your advice.

Eight months after your move to Canada, you've heard of such a Spider-Man on the internet.

It took all your self-control not to scream in the middle of the street when you watched the video on youtube for the first time.

You filled Peter's mailbox that night. And Peter, prioritizing his own life, was smart to ignore all your calls and messages.

"I'LL KILL THIS PIPSQUEAK!"

You had no way out. Your brother was fighting crime in Queens and you were stuck in Canada until your spring break. Great.

You didn't blame him. Really.

You understood. You were brothers.

You had an unbreakable bond. You were so alike, but so different.

You would not lie, it would be hypocritical of you to say that you did not think or imagine or even acted against the crime at times.

If you had the power to do something, you could not just stand there and do nothing.

But it was your brother you were talking about. Your little brother (ok, you're only 5 minutes older, but still ...)

"Er, hey Ang ..." Peter mumbled on the other side of the video call.

The bastard had the decency to look guilty.

He could not ignore you forever.

As much as Peter wanted to avoid your anger, he never spent more than two days without talking to you. It was for text messages, video calls, calls.

Been for a week. A week without hearing your voice, without hearing from you.

That was consuming him, so he took the courage to finally call you.

You folded your arms over your chest. You were finally alone, your roommate had gone out to some party, so you could talk without the need for codes (yes, you had your own code).

"I should have told Aunt May" was the one answered instead.

Peter's eyes widened and even from another continent, you could tell that his heart would come out of his mouth.

"No no no no, you can't!" Peter pointed a finger at you. "You can't, you'd be giving yourself too"

You raised an eyebrow.

"It's not me who comes out dressed up as a neighborhood hero" you argued and Peter was stuttering with his own words.

"No Ang, really. You can't. I finally found my vocation. I finally found a utility. People need me. They need the spider man"

"And I need my brother. Live"

Peter shut up, you two quiet minutes.

At last, you sighed and rubbed at your temples, feeling the headache that was about to come.

"Okay, if you're going to do this, you need to tell me everything. Okay? You don't have to hide it from me. Banking the hero is not just kicking the ass of bad guys, comes with a load together and I don't want you to go through this alone. We used to tell each other everything. I need it to be that way again. "

And for all your fears and insecurities, Peter's smile on the other side of the canvas warmed your heart a little and gave you a little hope. One that maybe things were not going to turn out that bad.

"YES!" Peter jumped on the other side, jumping and celebrating. You laughed, rolling your eyes affectionately.

Peter finally had someone to talk to and tell and it was not anyone. But his person.

He could explode with happiness.

"Hang on. Are these webs? "Peter questioned when he saw you use your web launcher to reach for your water bottle.

You smiled.

"Yeah, we have a lot to talk about"

Now that you and Peter had no more secrets, the conversations between the two of you became more and more interesting.

"Wait, did you meet Tony Stark?"

"How did you manage to make your webs so semitransparent? Mine still needed a little more elasticity"

His fight against the avengers called Civil War (you would never understand this choice of title.This fight was anything but civil)

"You fought the avengers in Germany?"

"Technically, they were half of them. I stole the shield of Captain America"

When he won a real suit...

"YOU HAVE A REAL SUIT"

"Hey, I had a real suit, that's just improved"

"Puffs"

"You're just jealous because Mr.Stark made me a suit and you do not have one"

"I have a suit and it's less flashy than yours"

"WHAT? SHOW ME!"

But nothing had prepared you for Peter's fight against the Vulture. Not even a fight against the avengers (you who knew that even the team of the greatest heroes on earth were separated, they would never really hurt Peter). But Vulture, a vulture tried to kill him.

You felt sick.

"Hey, I'm fine. I swear. My wounds have healed. Look!" Peter was lifting his shirt, showing the still bruised back, which probably looked worse for a few days. Despite their new agreement to tell the truth, Peter avoided this subject for a few days, he did not want to worry you.

It did not work very well.

"Peter, are you sure you should continue with this?"

"I'm fine, I promise. I'm better at it too. Mr.Stark even offered me a seat as an effective member of the avengers." your heart was beating faster and faster with the news. "But I refused!" Peter hurried to explain. "I'm fine, but I'm not ready for this now, don't worry. I'll stay with the neighborhood for now and if the world needs Spider-Man, I'll be there. "Peter stopped talking when he noticed that you did not say anything.

You seemed to be on the verge of a panic attack.

"Ang! Breathe! Look at me, it's going to be okay. I need you to breathe"

You returned to queens a week later.

I'm already writing the second part. Do not worry it will not be long :D

#peter parker #spiderman #spider-man: homecoming #peter parker x reader #peter parker x sister reader #twin reader #spider reader #marvel x reader #may parker #the twins parker #I'm already writing the second part

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therenegaderadio · 7 years

Photo

RENEGADE RADIO PRESENTS: – A MEETING AT THE STATION

Admin: Just after sunset at the Killjoys' gas station hideout. An odd group of rebels sit in the main room, gathered around a worn wooden coffee table. In the middle of the old, green couch, sits Garrett Uley, around him others have squeezed into the cushions, into the surrounding armchairs, or have sat on chairs brought in from the kitchen. Some are standing behind the others, preferring to stay out of the conversation and listen. Garrett clears his throat.

Garrett: "I'd say welcome–" Garrett drew a breath, the grave expression on his face growing even darker as he thought about how to phrase his words. "But this isn't an occasion that fits with something like that. We all know why we're here. Some of you know each other, some of you don't, but Killjoy territory is neutral territory, so everyone better behave. With us are a couple of civilians, and I'll let one of them begin. Luka – what've you find out about the location?"

Luka: Luka cleared his throat, peering up from his phone with mild surprise, as if he hadn't been expected to be 'called upon.' "Oh... yeah! Alright." He pushed himself off the wall, shoving his phone in his pocket. "I've sent an image over to Garrett with the general location. It's in an abandoned subway and since it's so far down, I couldn't get an exact exact location. But it's been narrowed down to within a mile, so it shouldn't take long if we have the people. It's in the Northern part of the city. I got a few confirmations of abnormal amounts of assfucks- I mean Government activity. Ta-da."

Luka: "Oh yeah. Silas got us a vehicle. Aaaaaand some things for the handcuffs. Nifty little gadgets." With that, Luka took his place back against the wall, his face illuminated by his phone screen once more.

Trayson: Trayson planted his feet up on an empty chair beside him, arm rested on the back of his own as he let out a long yawn. "Right so, when we goin' in with guns a'blazin? Plan? Entrances? We got a map of the facility? We splittin' up or do I have to whip more of ya fuckers into shape?" He noticed a few familiar faces around the room, winking at some pretty thing he couldn't remember if he'd seen before.

Remi: Back against the wall, Remi stood with his arms crossed and his brows furrowed, Silas at his side. He didn't have anything to contribute to the meeting, and so remained in silence, watching, listening. He wasn't a fighter, and planned to stay with Sy for the duration of the rescue – but if he was coming, he was coming prepared.

Birdie: "I texted this guy, Maxwell Billings, big Government PR fucker with a shitload of money. He knows Bambi and Harlee. Said he'll give as much as we need for weapons and shit," Birdie said. "Plus, I got access to Queenie's guns but she'll be fuckin' pissed if any of you fuck 'em up, so I can't go givin' 'em all away."

Garrett: "We'll be going in with a lot of guns," Garrett nodded, "and we'll need as many people on them as possible. It shouldn't take us too long to find the location, but we'll have to move fast. Explosives on the entrance, and then… guns blazin'. This place can't be big, but there's bound to be alarms, security. Luka will disable those he can, but our top priority is to get out with the prisoners as soon as we can and bring them to the rendezvous point."

Yara: "Who will take point?" Yara spoke up from a seat towards the back, her voice soft but clear.

Trayson: "Damn straight we got a lotta guuuuns," Trayson exclaimed in sing-song, humming to himself while donning a wicked grin. Then he leaned toward Birdie, trying to peer at what she had, "What'd she give ya? I wanna see..."

Garrett: "I will." Garrett glanced at the girl, then at the girl with the guns, then at Trayson, then at Arin. "And anyone else who volunteers."

Trayson: "I'm blowin' up the entrance."

Birdie: "A bunch of 'em are bound to be hurt. What're we doin' if they can't make it to the rendezvous point on their own two feet?" Birdie glanced over at Trayson. "Not for you. I don't need her to kill me 'cause I let you near her shit."

Arin: Arin, beside Birdie, nodded at Garrett, but didn't say a word.

Trayson: Trayson clicked his tongue at Birdie, scrunching his nose up, "Fiiiine. Only cause all of that is kinda hot. I got my own guns."

Luka: Luka glanced up from his phone, pausing on Remi, then Arin, noting who he recognized and who he didn't, "I can get more weapons if we need it, but my time is really better served elsewhere."

Luka: "Oh yeah, Kid. Remember Kid? He's a doc now. There's that too. He said he'd help with drugs and I don't know... maybe care?"

Garrett: "We'll have to carry them to one of the vehicles." Garrett fixed his eyes on Birdie again. "Those who can't take the route on feet will be prioritized for the places." He nodded at Luka. "If this Kid is qualified, he can wait there, ready to assist if anyone needs immediate patching up."

Luka: "Yeeeeah, I don't know how he'd do with a gun anyway. I can help carry people out if need be," Luka shrugged, keeping all of his attention on his phone now, even when he spoke.

Trayson: "So who the fuck here can actually do some damage beside our little corner?" Tray twirled a finger toward Birdie and the blonde guy next to her. He looked pissed off enough and Birdie hadn't told him to fuck off. "Oh, and Sir Garrett! Of course."

Julian: "I'll join the front." Julian stepped forward, closer to the ring of light that spilled from the lamp suspended above the coffee table. "Do we have drivers?"

Birdie: "I heard they're doin' some shit with their memories, too. Don't know if all of 'em will be willin' to come with us," Birdie said, glancing at Luka, and then Remi. She swatted Trayson's finger away. "Your little toy's gonna forget all about you, be serious."

Luka: Luka spoke up upon hearing Birdie, "I'm cool with driving. And yeah, I heard that too, from that Max guy Birdie's talkin' about."

Garrett: "Worst case scenario…" Garrett sighed. "We'll have to force them to. Most important thing is getting 'em somewhere safe. We can deal with the rest when that's done."

Luka: "I asked Kid for some sedatives, if need be. I'll make sure he brings it in a form easy enough to force people to take if we need to. Some of 'em," he looked at Garrett, smirking, "Can be carried by some of us stronger folks."

Birdie: "I've only got my bike but I bet we can Billings to give us some transportation for those of us who'll drive but don't have cars."

Silas: Silas grumbled from his spot next to Remi, less than pleased that he actually had something worth contributed, and that needed to be. "I got vehicles."

Trayson: "I'm being serious. I make amazing explosives." He turned to Arin, grinning wide as he held a hand out, "Hi. I'm Trayson. I recognize you now. Lost Boy king. Cute."

Birdie: "Queenie hates you enough, Trayson. Shut the fuck up before your mouth gets sewn shut."

Trayson: "I don't know why that would matter... I'm making friends."

Arin: "Shut up." Arin didn't even bother fixing his eyes on the brunet, instead keeping them on the center of the group, paying attention to the more important conversation.

Trayson: "Ugh. What are they related? They have the same fuckin' manners, that's for sure." He turned around in his seat, directing his attention back at Garrett

Birdie: "Alright, quiet boy over there's got cars. I got the guns covered. Luka's bringin' the med kid. What else do we need?"

Luka: "I'm trying to find out how many bodies are in there beforehand. At least a guess. That way we're more prepared. Should take another... maybe six hours?"

Garrett: "An insider." Garrett paused, drawing a breath. "The Killjoys have a connection in the Government's ranks. As long as it doesn't risk his position, he could help. I'll contact him myself."

Birdie: "Your list only Government or prisoners, too? We should know how many we're tryin' to save before we go in there so we don't accidentally forget one."

Luka: "I sent the list out already. I'm working on Government." Luka held his phone up briefly to show Corbin something, then had it pulled back in close within seconds.

Garrett: "We have a list of prisoners. Anyone want me to read it?"

Trayson: Trayson sighed loudly, picking up one of his guns to begin calibrating. "I mean we know they're taken, can't we just get a number, take attendance or some shit and get on with it?"

Birdie: "As long as we all know who we're goin' in there for, I don't think we need all the names." Birdie paused. She lowered her voice. "Do we have a list of the ones they've killed already?"

Birdie: Birdie hit Trayson's arm. "Shut. The fuck. Up."

Garrett: "The number, Trayson," Garrett shot the other Killjoy a glance. "Is twenty-two."

Trayson: "What? It's not an awful idea."

Trayson: "Names boggle shit down."

Trayson: "Thanks buddy!" He waved at Garrett.

Luka: "Oh... right. Dead list. I have one of those."

Birdie: "Please, share with the fuckin' class."

Luka: Luka frowned at Birdie, rolling his eyes before swiping his finger across his screen, "There's four dead."

Birdie: "Gangs?"

Luka: Luka frowned further as he examined the list, "Two Lost Boys, one Crybaby, one Doll." Then he listed off the names, clearly discontented by the Crybaby name.

Corbin: Corbin, biting the inside of his lip, listened to the list of the dead with an expression set in stone. His heart skipped a beat at the name of the Crybaby. It wasn't anyone he had known well, but it cut deep all the same. Glancing at Arin, he saw muscles working in the blond Lost Boy leader's jaw as he clenched his teeth, looking… furious.

Birdie: Birdie held in her sigh of relief. Bambi was alive. She turned to face Arin, clapping a hand on his shoulder before quickly dropping it to her side.

Trayson: Trayson glanced back at Arin and Bridie, pursing his lips, "Hmmm... don't worry. I promise to make sure one's alive for you to kill personally for your loss." He flashed a smile, then went back to his gun.

Arin: "Don't." Arin warned Birdie, relieved when her touch was no more than a tap on his shoulder. His blood was boiling inside of him, and he was itching to set off already, a semi-automatic in each hand – but it wouldn't yield anything but his death. His stormy eyes touched the brunet Killjoy's for a millisecond before moving away.

Birdie: Birdie nodded, a sign of a quick apology to Arin. "So. How much more time do we need before we go in there?"

Luka: Luka followed Corbin's gaze, noticing how angry Arin looked, and noting that he was glad he didn't see that side to him the other day at his parlor. "I can get the security shut off within a matter of minutes. I can keep things down for... maybe thirteen minutes at best? Then it'll reboot and I'd have to begin again, but they'll be alerted if it continuously cycles power."

Garrett: Garrett nodded at Luka, picking up the trail where he left off. "In addition to the six hour prep time for Luka, to find the Agents in there, I'm willing to bet another couple hours to get everything ready to make our move. I think we should go in at curfew tomorrow night."

Birdie: "Meet at the rendezvous point?"

Garrett: "10 PM sharp."

Silas: "Send me how many vehicles you need and where you need them dropped off. I can drive if y'need another."

Corbin: "I'll drive as well," Corbin added, looking from Silas to Garrett.

Garrett: "Great." Garrett stood, clapping his hands together once. "Get some rest, guys. Big day tomorrow."

#event: the black site #event #misc: chatzy #pink skull presents

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pherryt · 7 years

Note

Soooo anyway im a total angst hound and ur like one of the best writers in this fandom?? So I have s prompt if ur willing:: DCJ ABO where Dean (Omega) gets assaulted and his Alpha mates jimmy and Cas take care of him in the aftermath ... pretty please? 😘😘

Oh my goodness – I don’t know how to take that?I mean that’s…that’s just really awesome of you to say! I know I’m not the bestout there, but that was really, really nice to hear right now! Thank you so much!

Okay, so this is long. (over 2000 words - i’ve noticed a pattern. Anything DCJ and anything different world building wise like ABO and the prompt always manages to get LONGER)

Also, it was kinda hard, subject wise. So for both reasons, I’mgonna put the majority of this behind a cut – okay? I hope you like it :D

_____

“Dean’slate,” Jimmy said, biting his nails.

“Dean’salways late,” Cas replied. “You know how he gets when he starts talking aboutmovies, comic books or cars.” Castiel tried to ignore his brother and continuedto write. Well, tried to anyway. Jimmy was right. Dean was late.But he didn’t want to be one of those stereotypical, over protective Alphas.

Besides,Jimmy was doing quite enough of that for both of them. And Deancould take care of himself. It would do nobody good for Castiel to become anoverly panicked Alpha. Someone was going to have to remain calm and levelheadedenough to run interference between Jimmy and Dean.

Theirswasn’t the typical mating and if their biology hadn’t backed them up 100percent – mating bites just didn’t work if you weren’t compatible or if youwere already ‘taken’. If it hadn’t worked, and the people around them hadn’tjust blinked and shook their head in confusion - but otherwise leaving themalone about their ‘unusual’ relationship – the trio would have had a lot moreissues then they already had.

Andreally, who needed more of those?

Becauseas much as they loved each other, you had two Alpha’s and an Omega sharing thesame space, the same affections. It tended to create friction, occasionally. Theirplace was small, and with three men trying to out Alpha the other – well, itmade the place feel even smaller sometimes when the dominance games were playedout.

Ittook time, but they eventually found their rhythm, and each of them had an areaof the apartment which was unequivocably theirdomain. With that compromise in place, peace, for the most part, ruled. Despitethe stubborn tendencies of all three of them, or the insecurities Dean hadabout being an Omega.

TheNovak’s blamed his father for that.

Jimmy’shead perked up, derailing Cas’ train of thought, when he heard the roar of theImpala. The sound of it drifting up through the open window, even up threestories. It was a powerful car and Dean was proud of it. As he should be.

Casshook his head with a smile, finally looking up from his notebook, “I told youDean was fine.”

“Yeah,yeah,” Jimmy waved off his brother and darted into the kitchen where he’d kepttheir dinner warming. He dished out the steaming food to each of their plates,expecting to hear the door opening and the scuff of Dean’s work boots anysecond now.

Heplaced all the pots and pans and serving dishes back and took his seat at thetable, his brother joining him with a smile. Tonight was special. And they’djust been waiting for Dean to come home. It was most of the reason why Jimmyhad been so anxious about Dean being late. He glanced at the clock and hissmile wavered. He looked towards the door and then back at his brother.

“Doesn’ttake that long to get to the third floor,” Jimmy said in confusion.

“Maybethe elevator broke again?” Cas, ever calm, suggested.

Theyboth turned to face the door expectantly.

Deanknew he should have gone straight to the hospital. But as soon as he’dmanaged to limp away from his…his attackers, all he could think of was thecomforting arms of his mates.

Butnow that he was here…he swallowed, a wave of dizziness washing over him as hestared out of the Impala’s front windshield and up to the window of theirapartment on the 3rdfloor, the light flooding out, warm andinviting.

Nowthat he was home, he was too ashamed to go inside, to admit how fucking weak he’dbeen. His breathing hitched, and he lifted a shaking, bleeding hand to coverhis mouth, though it didn’t stop the wrenching sobs or the tears that floweddown his face.

Dean’shead was killing him, his eyes were burning and now he couldn’t fucking breath. And that was only the tip of theiceberg. He looked and felt like a complete and utter wreck. He was bleedingfrom who knew how many wounds, he was sure some of his ribs were broken - possiblyhis left hand too, it sure as hell hurt enough - and he was afraid to put anyweight on his ankle again.

Deanhad literally collapsed into the Impala when he’d reached her and he just wasn’tsure he could make it another two feet.

Evenif he could stop crying long enough to find the courage to try.

Hewas a fucking mess and he knew it. And after what had happened…he just felt sodirty. He’d managed to get away – he still wasn’t sure how – before it could goany further but the intent had been clear. He felt sick.

Andif he felt this way, would Cas and Jimmy ever want him anywhere near them everagain?

Hewas stuck. Hurt and in pain – all he wanted was his mates. But with his shameand the fear curdling through him, Dean was afraid to reach out to them.

No,they loved him. He had to try.

Deanreached for the door and pushed at it weakly, groaning at the pain that shot upthrough his arm as he tried, the door refusing to budge. He dropped against itinstead, feeling dizzy again.

Wait.His phone. Did he still have it or had it fallen out of his pocket when…

Deanswallowed against another sob and bit his trembling lip to hold back more ashis hands awkwardly patted down his clothes, practically shreds. Finally, hecame up with his phone. But when he brought it to his face, he saw the screenwas cracked. He wanted to scream and toss the phone, but he didn’t have theenergy left for that.

Instead,he just let the phone slip out of his hand, let his lip slip out of his teethand sniffled, letting his heavy, burdened eyes close.

Thedoor creaked and shifted open slightly, a hand reaching in to grab at hisshoulder. Dean whimpered at the pain that shot through him.

“Dean!”the hand eased up but stayed in place so the door could be opened fully withoutworry of Dean falling out.

“Cas?”Dean tried to open his eyes. Instead, he winced and groaned, barely holdingback a scream as hands pulled him out of the car and jostled his ribs.

“Fuck,what happened?” Jimmy asked, panic, concern and anger in his voice.

Deanwinced and whimpered again, trying to shrink away. He hadn’t wanted them to seehim like this. What would they say?

“Jimmy,get the doors,” Cas ordered, appearing calm as usual, but Jimmy heard thetightness that denoted worry. A worry that Dean was too out of it to hear,though he was usually so attuned to the twins it could be scary.

Jimmyran ahead as Cas instructed and propped open the doors, running back to checkif his brother needed any help picking Dean up. Dean may have been bigger thanboth of them, but neither Cas nor Jimmy were weaklings. And right now, that wasa damn good thing.

Carefullypicking Dean up bridal style, Cas tucked Dean’s nose into his neck, hoping tosooth the roiling emotions that rolled off their mate in waves. “I’ve got him,Jimmy. I think you better get upstairs and get ready.”

Nodding,Jimmy darted up the stairs ahead of Cas, making sure every door was proppedopen that he could. There wasn’t much he could do about the elevator, though.

Heheaded straight for the excessively large first aid kit he kept in the bathroomand hauled it into the bedroom, yanking the blankets right off the bed. Once Dean’swounds were dealt with, they’d need the blankets to wrap him up in and neitherCas nor Jimmy were going to want to leave him long enough to search for cleanones.

Openingthe kit, he ran through his head what he’d seen – what was obvious and what wasmost likely and started prioritizing accordingly.

He’djust finished getting ready when Cas made it to the bedroom, gently laying Deandown. Dean didn’t want to let go. Now that he had his mates, now that he’d hadCas’s soothing scent in his nose, he clutched at Cas’s shirt, afraid to be leftbehind.

Casshot a heartbroken look at his brother. “What do I do?”

“Ineed your help, but we need to keep him calm even more. So, get up there andsupport him – just, hold him and don’t let him thrash. I think he has brokenbones.”

Castielwas never more grateful that his brother was an EMT than that night. He helped wherehe could, removing the clothing he could reach, holding bandages and continuingto sooth Dean who kept zoning in and out. Occasionally sobbing, sometimesflinching and crying out in pain.

Butas they uncovered more and more injuries that made clear what had happened,they also heard their mate apologizing, could smell the shame on him as hebegged them not to leave him.

“No!No, no, no, Dean,” Cas protested, his voice cracking, “No, oh god – we’re notleaving you! We’d never leave you! Don’teven think it - we’re not mad at you. We’re here for you. Always. We love you. Thiswasn’t your fault – you have nothing to be ashamed of!”

Castielfelt tears welling up in his own eyes and a glance at Jimmy proved his brotherwasn’t doing much better. He was biting his lip to keep himself in control,something he’d learned from Dean and usually made Cas laugh.

Nottonight.

Jimmyfinally wrapped the last bandage and promptly shoved everything off the end ofthe bed, wasting no time in dragging a blanket up with him, helping Cas layDean out properly and tucking the blanket around their mate gently andcarefully.

Stillholding on to Cas, Dean reached for Jimmy, needing both of them now more thanever before. “Don’t leave me,” Dean whispered again, burying his face in Jimmy’sneck. He tried to turn, to twist and cried out at the sharp pain.

“Shhh…it’sokay, we got ya. Don’t move, okay? Please, Dean?” Jimmy whispered. Between them,the twins managed to maneuver Dean so he was curled up in his blanket, snugbetween his mates so he could soak in their love. Jimmy’s hands curled in Dean’shair, holding him close, threading his finger soothingly through the usuallystyled locks.

Cascuddled up close behind him but afraid to touch Dean, afraid that his touchwould bring only more pain to the man he loved. He settled for being pressed lightlyagainst Dean’s back, dropping a kiss on his head and nestling in close there,breathing in Dean’s scent, trying to stay close enough that Dean could stillget his as well.

Itshould have helped, but Dean wasn’t really any calmer than before, though thetone of it had shifted. Worried, pleading…convinced his Alphas were going toleave him because he’d failed to fend off a group of Alpha’s who’d believedmight made right.

A fuckinggroup! Castiel and Jimmy had to restraintheir growls, because of course ithadn’t been just one or two. Dean was more than capable of handling himselfunder those circumstances. But instead, he’d had the worst of all luck, foughtback and failed. Dean didn’t accept failures and it must only be contributingto his current sense of worthlessness, made worse by the ever-taunting memoryof John Winchester and his disdain for all things Omega.

Noteven the fact that Dean eventually did getaway under his own power, kept things from getting worse, did anything toalleviate the shame and fear that twisted in their noses.

Notfor the first time did the Novak twins wish they could have a go at Dean’sfather.

Instead,they could only do their best to assure their mate. Surrounding him with lovingscents, touches and words.

Eventuallythe sobs died down.

Eventually,Dean’s scent smoothed out. The shame and worry, fear and self-loathing fadingaway. Not gone, but smaller now, which was a start.

Eventually,his breathing evened out as well, allowing him to rest in the arms of hisloving mates.

Theentire time, the twins whispered words of love and assurance, rubbed gently athis back and shoulders, played fingers through his hair, cuddled him as closeas they dared and took turns in scenting him and being scented.

Thedamage was done, but together they’d heal.

#dcj #assault #abo #alpha!cas #alpha!jimmy #omega!dean #hurt/comfort #angst #with hopeful ending #this was freaking hard #and a bit emotional #Anonymous

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