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#its not the most balanced team but literally none of these people were willing to budge on race or class
fmarpgaugreedling · 6 years
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Ed: gnomish wizard
Al: technically a gnomish wizard, but currently a gnomish wizard soul trapped in a suit of armor. Still Ed’s brother.
Roy: human sorcerer, specializing in fire and destructive magic
Riza: half-elf ranger
Greed: was a tiefling rogue, until his character died
Ling: elven monk, who now has to share a character with Greed
Hughes: the DM who had a very helpful self-insert, and killed off that same self-insert in a very traumatic way, laughing at the other’s pain
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bumblesimagines · 3 years
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Part 2
Request: Yes or No
For anyone confused, (Y/N) was around 17 when he fought the Avengers and was taken in and now he's 18-19. Lowkey a filler to develop/show (Y/N)'s relationship with Laura and Clint
~
You stared up at the large wooden house, a soft breeze blowing by that made you tugged down the sleeves of the sweater you were wearing. Clint turned off the engine of his motorcycle, looking up at you. You furrowed your brows and turned towards him, glancing at the darkening sky.
"What is this place?" You asked, watching him curiously Clint stood beside him, gazing fondly at the house. He looked at you with a gentle smile.
"My home."
"Home?"
"Yep, home. The only other people who know about this place are Fury and Natasha." Clint revealed, making your brows raise. You looked back at the house. It was homey for sure. Far from the city with nature surrounding it. A perfect place to raise a family and live a quiet life. You bit your bottom lip, gently wrapping your arms around yourself. 
"So, why’d you bring me here?" You asked. If it was such a big secret that not even Tony or Steve knew about it, why would he share it with you? You weren’t even part of the team. You were just a child that they had to take in. Clint placed a gentle hand on your back.
"You need some fresh air and a break from the shit back at the tower. Come meet my wife and kids." Clint said, walking towards the house. You slowly followed, still unsure about the whole thing. You didn’t know why Clint trusted you so much. Not even a couple weeks back, you had attempted killing him and the Avengers. You had heard Tony mention Clint having a habit of taking in strays so you assumed you were just another person Clint wanted to help. The aroma of food filled your senses, making you let out a soft hum. Clint had heard it, chuckling as he stepped into his home. You followed, noticing the pictures on the walls and scattered drawings. 
"Laura, I’m home!" Clint called out into the house, following the light from the kitchen. You noticed some legos laying around, looking up as a woman approached Clint and greeted him with a kiss.
"How was work?" She asked softly, smiling. You could see two kids looking at you curiously from the table. Clint smiled back at his wife, gently stroking her long hair. 
"It was fine, honey. I brought a guest." Clint motioned towards you. Laura looked at you, humming softly. Her smile widened as she faced you.
"You must be (Y/N). Welcome to the Barton Farm." Laura giggled softly, placing a hand on her belly. Your gaze dropped down, noticing her barely visible bump. Laura followed your gaze, chuckling softly.
"We’re- Well, more like Natasha is hoping for a little girl." Laura smiled, glancing at Clint when he placed a gentle hand on her bump. She looked back at (Y/N), motioning to the table. 
"Come join us."
You walked with Laura to the greenhouse, glancing over at Tony and Steve as they talked.
"How was your first mission?" Laura asked, smiling widely as she gazed at you curiously. You were supposed to go on a mission when your training was complete but nevertheless, it had been quite exciting. You smiled, looking forward.
"It was.. Good. It didn't go as planned, obviously, but there wasn't much of a plan to begin with. Clint's definitely holding a grudge against the runner." You chuckled, opening the door to the greenhouse and stepping inside. Some new flowers had been added.
"I don't blame him." Laura said, giggling as she pulled up a chair. She sat down, letting out a sigh of relief. Laura rested her hands on her belly, watching you with a gentle gaze.
"The girl.. The girl made Hulk lose his shit and made the others see stuff." You told her, picking up a pot with a venus flytrap inside. You gently ran your finger over the plant, watching it open.
"Did she get to you?"
"No, I.. I stopped her before she could do anything to me. Natasha seemed pretty shaken up by what she saw." You looked back at her, frowning softly. You had never seen Natasha look so broken inside. Whatever she had seen, it had definitely triggered some bad memories. You wondered what Wanda would've made you see. The orphanage? The fight with the Avengers?
"Clint mentioned you had to work on your people skills." Laura recalled, laughing softly as she tilted her head. "What's that about?"
"I might've choked.. A few people."
"Might've?" Laura repeated, raising her brows. You placed the pot down, letting out a soft sigh as you stared down at the venus flytrap.
"What's on your mind, sweetheart?" Laura asked softly, noticing the change. You gently pushed the pot back into its spot beside the other plants, shrugging lightly.
"Not that long ago, I was in their spot. Wanda and Pietro.. Two young metas trying to survive. With my powers, I could have seriously injured someone and-"
"But you didn't, did you? We're all standing on this plot of land, living and breathing." Laura stood up from the chair, holding onto it as she regained her balance. She walked towards you, placing a gentle hand on your shoulder.
"You were a frightened kid on survival mode. You were doing whatever you could to protect yourself." Laura said, gaze softening.
"Obviously, I could never hurt Thor or Hulk but... I almost crushed and suffocated everyone else. Tony had to work on his suit, Natasha and Clint had bruises for days.. Steve did that weird staring thing like a fucking camera whenever I was in the room." You reached forward, running a finger over the leaf of a plant and watching it grow.
"Look at yourself." Laura motioned to the plants. "You have full control of your powers. You know your limits. You're.. Mother Nature's son! Like, almost literally her son."
"I'm your son." You muttered, keeping your gaze on the plants. Laura stayed quiet, almost frozen in place. She slowly smiled, nodding as she blinked away tears.
"Yeah.. Yeah, you are. You're my son. You're a Barton." Laura said softly, sniffling softly. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
"I'm gonna go see if Stark is willing to check out the tractor. Holler if you need anything." Laura said, turning around. She left the greenhouse, walking back towards the house. You thought about her words, knowing what she said was true but things could've gone differently if you had been in full control of your powers during the confrontation with the Avengers. Clint had still offered you support despite it all.
You brought your knees close to your chest, hearing the sounds of the Avengers grunting and talking on the floor below. The overgrown vines in the abandoned building wrapped around the corner you were in, providing cover.
"Hey, kid? You up here?"
"Barton, what the hell are-"
"Shut up, Tony." You furrowed your brows, hearing sluggish footsteps on the floor you were at.
"This isn't the greatest hiding spot, kid." The voice, 'Clint', had gotten closer. He was most likely standing infront of you, the vines being the only thing keeping you from seeing him.
"Look, I know you're scared. I know the orphanage probably wasn't great either, but we can help you. I can help you. You can trust me." Clint assured softly. You swallowed, reaching out and touching the vines. They parted, letting you peer up at Clint. He offered a tired smile, extending his hand to you.
"You just made Laura the happiest woman alive." You turned towards Clint, chuckling softly. Clint pushed himself off the doorway, stepping inside.
"Must be nice to finally feel happy for once." You replied, grinning.
"Oh, trust me, you should've seen her face when I proposed." Clint chuckled, looking over the greenhouse. He hummed.
"Maybe I should get into gardening." He muttered, arms crossing as he looked over the different flowers. You watched him.
"You'll be busy with missions."
"I don't plan on sticking around for long, if I'm honest. I want to retire and be with my kids more. The hero life isn't forever for some people. Keep that in mind, (N/N)."
"You're gonna leave the team?" You asked, frowning. You knew Clint had been thinking about it. Especially with a third kid on the way that would come at any moment.
"I got lucky but.. The thought of leaving Laura alone with three young kids, a barely legal adult, and a big plot of land.." Clint sighed, shaking his head as he gently tapped his finger against the table.
"I don't want to be an absent father and miss out on big achievements. I owe it to Laura and you guys." Clint explained softly. You understood. None of the other Avengers were parents yet. Clint dying meant fatherless kids and a widow. He had a lot more to lose.
"I'll always be here if you need advice or more training. I just won't be on the field with you." Clint placed his hands on your shoulders, giving them a gentle squeeze before he leaned in and gave you a hug. You hugged him back, eyes shutting. You weren't sure how you'd be on the field without Clint there to support you. Being beside him brought you comfort and reassurance.
"You'll be an amazing Avenger, (Y/N). I know it." Clint whispered, leaning back and smiling softly.
"Will you be my number 1 fan?" You asked with a grin.
"I'm afraid the top three spots are already taken but I'll happily be your fourth biggest fan." Clint laughed softly, turning his head when Laura called for him and you.
"Come on, let's see what the boss wants." He said playfully, turning around and walking out. You followed, noticing Nick Fury standing on the porch. He gave you a nod before entering the house.
"What's he doing here?" You asked, looking at Clint. Clint shrugged, letting out a deep sigh as you walked up the steps.
"We're about to find out."
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kaibutsushidousha · 3 years
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If the v3 cast were Masters, which Servants would they summon who has the highest compatibility with them ?
Akamatsu and Amakusa
Amami and Nursery Rhyme
Iruma and Caligula
Ouma and Nightingale
Ki-bo and Kotarou
Gonta and Bedivere
Saihara and Arjuna
Shirogane and Gilgamesh (Caster)
Shinguuji and Medusa
Chabashira and Xuanzang
Toujou and Queen of Sheba
Harukawa and Jason
Hoshi and Dantes
Momota and Mandricardo
Yumeno and Nagiko
Angie and Douman
Explanations under the cut in case you're confused, because you probably are.
First off, Twitter people might be wondering why so many choices are different from what I chose for this thread. Obvious consideration for who is normally summonable aside, the main thing I kept in mind here is that compatibility summon comes in two flavors. Pattern A is a hero similar in nature to Master (Sakura and Medusa, Ryuunosuke and Gilles, etc), and Pattern B is the hero the Master needs for the personal struggles of their character arc (Pepe and Ash, Erice and Voyager, Elsa and Arash, Jinako and Karna, etc). Pattern B is always more interesting than Pattern A, so that's what I'm using for all my choices. Now let me go over them one by one.
1. I say things will be different from the thread and immediately break the promise with Akamatsu. Akamatsu relied a lot on Saihara's brain to build her plan, but their relationship was never one of mutual trust because she knew Saihara would agree to her harsher and more definitive methods. The hero Akamatsu needs is someone both competent and like-minded. Someone who shares her earnest will to save everyone and willingness to use more extreme methods for it. Amakusa is the Servant for her.
2. For Amami, I'll go with Nursery Rhyme. Much like Raikou got Nursery in the Heian Singularity's Imperial Grail War as the emotional crutch daughter figure she needed, Amami gets an emotional crutch little sister figure to help him reunite with the twelve he lost. This pair would be interesting because it'd subvert Nursery's usual MO of simply forcing others to reconnect with their inner child. The whole reason why he lost 12 sisters is that his passion for seafaring and exploration distracts him from what he's supposed to do. Her role as the villain of the Santa Nightingale event shows she can be harsh when children are being neglected, so Nursery would be the force pulling Amami back on track, but she'd have to balance that with allowing him to enjoy himself to preserve his childish love for adventure. He'd be a tough and delicate case for our Hero of Children.
3. The hero Iruma needs is... anyone who tolerates her, really. My first thought was Karna, but he's about finding value where no one else does, and Iruma has her share of undeniable value, so I think he isn't the best choice. Their pair would be a watered-down version of Jinako's pair anyways. Fate/ actually quite scarce of Servants defined by being all-tolerant because that's a trait they push more on Fujimaru, but two examples that come to mind are Romulus, the man who loved all of Rome (read: human civilization) in both its sins and achievements; and Caligula, the man who went crazy trying to do the same. Romulus is too OP to help Iruma tone down her ego, so I'll go with Caligula.
4. Ouma is a hard case. He needs someone he can absolutely trust and finding one of those is a huge challenge. The only ones Ouma has expressed full trust to were Gonta, because he was unquestionably good and weak-willed enough to never stray away from Ouma's instruction without asking first; and chapter 5 Momota, who was in circumstances so complicated that he wouldn't dare to throw away the chance Ouma's script offered. Ouma is the kind of paranoid control freak who would intentionally go for a Berserker because even the ones who speak are single-minded in a way that makes them easy to plan around. The alternative would be someone so like-minded in methods and standards that he'd probably hate them but still trust as someone who thinks the same way he would, but only BB fits that bill and she's not normally summonable. With that card off the table, the only options Ouma has left are Berserker he can trust to never kill anyone ever, and the only Zerk valuing life this much is Nightingale. BB's fellow nurse, amusingly enough.
5. Ki-bo would be offended with Alaya if he summoned a robot or homunculus just because he's a robot. And he also wishes for a partner that will treat him as an equal without denying what makes him different as a robot. In short, he needs a human Servant that is used to have normal relationships with robots. But Chen Gong or Red Hare because they're too evil, nor Orion because he's too crude. That leaves us with robot Danzou's human son, Fuuma Kotarou.
6. Gonta's wish is to become a true gentleman his human family can acknowledge, and for that, he needs the example of someone who is both well-mannered and of noble heart. Bedivere is an easy choice.
7. As I mentioned a few times before around 2017~18, I strongly think the best thing about Saihara is his interactions with Hoshi. Saihara is a guy feeling eternally guilty because he made one "good guy" murderer pay for his crime and he tries to make up for it by forcefully validating Hoshi's mass-murdering of the mafia. Then in Fate/, we have Arjuna, an all-around excellent man who adamantly believes himself to be evil because he did one dishonorable thing once. Saihara is the stubborn validating Master Arjuna needs to make him understand that he is not the monster he believes himself to be.
8. The first thing about Shirogane is that she really doesn't like reality, especially when it concerns herself. She can't muster any interest in the boring, plain girl she is or the boring, plain world she lives in, so she makes a hobby and a job out of becoming someone else, a larger-than-life figure in a fictional world. She loves all Danganronpa characters but expresses greater adoration towards Junko and Kamukura, the most unreal the series has produced. Enter Gilgamesh, the Hero King with the comically large ego and literally all Noble Phantasm to satiate Tsumugi's craving for a break from reality. That said, Gilgamesh has the recurring hobby of playing therapist to a Master disconnected from their own self and is the franchise's greatest symbol of the willing departure from the Age of Gods into the Age of Man. As much as he fits her tastes on a surface level, he's the guy who transitioned the flashy world of fantasy she dreams of into the plain world she hates, and he'll use most of his free time to the same on a personal level for her. The Caster version is being specifically picked because Archer has childish beef with modernity, and Caster is intentionally making his arsenal more limited and unimpressive, which is self-demonstrative of the points he wants to make to Shirogane.
9. One of his Free Time Events has him explaining why Medusa is his favorite myth, and I definitely can't claim to know this shit better than him. Deep emotional attachment to a story can net you a compatibility summon, as Kiara is there to show, and Shinguuji gets bonus points from how TM Medusa became a monster out of living her life for her sisters rather than for herself.
10. Cute and righteous female Buddhist mentor figure who does martial arts. What else could Chabashira ask for?
11. Toujou takes self-worth from serving big important people with utmost perfection, so she needs her Servant to be a king or similarly important leader. But she also needs it to be a support Caster so can properly invert the Master-Servant relationship and personally fight the enemy Servant for her king. The only characters in the middle of the Venn diagram of kings and support Casters are Medea and Sheba, and Medea wants nothing do with the royalty life anymore, so Sheba it is.
12. The role of the hero Harukawa needs is already properly fulfilled by Momota in the story, so I'll go with Jason because he shares all of Momota's strenghts and flaws. He's someone who'll force her to be part of a team, relentlessly encourage her break out of her shell, and have a shitty personality she can never fully respect, making the relationship balanced. And things would go even smoother with Jason because his summon comes with Atalante, who is someone Harukawa can easily relate to.
13. Hoshi needs someone who would assure him of his choices and make him comfortably reconnect with his past like he did with Saihara in his Free Time Events. As practically the face of the Avenger Class, Dantes defines himself as an ally and guardian to the ones who were wronged and lashed out in less than virtuous ways, so he's a perfect fit.
14. Momota is too aware of himself as the protagonist of his own story to want a hero. He would instead want a loyal sidekick or a like-minded rival. Voyager is a good sidekick option due to his fit with Momota's wish for greater adventure further beyond, and is a Servant Momota mentions in his Free Time Events, so there's the emotional connectional to his story there. For a rival, a big name adventurer like Drake or Odysseus could work, and so could a wandering warrior like Musashi. But there's one option that fits both roles: Mandricardo. Rica has the adventurer experience necessary to eventually compete with Momota, but also Saihara's level of self-esteem, allow him to start on the sidekick role until Momota pulls him out of it and shapes him into a proper rival.
15. Like with Harukawa, the role of hero Yumeno needs is already fulfilled by Chabashira in canon, so we know what she needs is someone with high energy and a deep understanding of emotions. And Fate/'s biggest connesieur of human emotion is none other than our Kiyohara no Nagiko.
16. Angie is a complicated case because she doesn't react well to being disobeyed. My first idea for someone with a functioning partnership with her is a knight, but knights generally work on the premise that their king is selfless and righteous, which Angie isn't. There are people like Lan Ling, Liangyu, the ninjas, Mori or Okita, who submit their lives to anyone's authority, but for that same reason, they wouldn't help Angie improve. What she really needs is someone good at feigning humility, like Limbo. He wouldn't have good intentions for her Master, but by manipulating situations out of her control without letting her feel like her divine words are being challenged, he can force some level of change on her mindset. It's better than nothing.
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citadelspires · 3 years
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P1 - Given how great you're track record's been for doing hypothetical interactions of Amphibia kids with the Duck kids and Owl House kids, let's try doing the Duck kids meeting the Owl House kids and who they'd like the best. I'll exclude Violet for this for the sake of evenening things out 5 to 5. I'd assume Luz would get along best with Dewey (both jump into adventure), King with Louie (could see em teaming up for a scheme), Willow with Huey (eh, more leftover interaction but can work)
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Screenshot of second half of the ask provided. Text: P2 Gus with Webby (would totally ask each other lots of questions about their species), and Amity with Lena (both got abusive figures they stood up to and would totally talk about their crushes on Luz and Webby LOL). Would love to see you take on Duck kids and Owl House kids interactions.
First of all I’m very pleased to hear you find my track record on these posts good, they’ve been really fun to write and it makes me really happy people like them! Second I am so sorry it’s taken so long to get to this ask, it’s a really in depth one and it took a long time to write, I hope you’ll find it was worth the wait!
Aight! Oh and one last thing real quick before I get into it. I hope you wouldn’t mind me adding Violet back in, partially due to the fact I love her, but mostly because there’s actually another owl house character I think works significantly better with Louie than anyone else and I really want the chance to talk about that. Saving that one for last hehe. This’ll be another long one, writing below the cut.
Luz and Webby So I do like a lot of the possible interactions brought up by your suggested grouping but my mind went in a few different directions. I’ll start with Luz, who would fit in best with another excitable adventuring partner, as pointed out, but I think the best fit for her in that regard would actually be Webby. While Dewey would no doubt get along great with Luz, there’s a special element to the potential relationship between Luz and Webby that really elevates the potential of their friendship to another level, that being: they both want to eat a hamburger.
An aspect of Webby I wish the later seasons of the show got into a little more, but is definitely something I would consider a core part of her character, is the fact that she got held up in the mansion her whole childhood, with no opportunities to interact with the world around her, have all the adventures she wanted, and most importantly to just be seen as the kid she wanted to be. And while Luz was technically able to go out into the world, the place she found wasn’t one that was willing to see her, or give her any of the chances she longed for. Both Webby and Luz fully understand that feeling of being trapped in your own life, of finally getting the chance to break out and just doing your best to make the most of it. I think there’s a lot the two could gain from spending some time together.
(Also, to borrow the bit about gushing about their crushes but from the other end, these two would totally get sidetracked talking about their respective crushes and also trying to play wingman for each other. It’s a massive comic disaster in both cases, but somehow both Lena and Amity manage to find it endearing).
Amity and Violet Okay wait lemme explain. While the two of them don’t have a whole lot in common at first glance, I think they would genuinely get along extremely well. While a lot of Amity’s focus on school came at the force of her parents, you cannot honestly expect me to believe that girl isn’t a studious nerd on her own anyway. Heck even outside the realm of studies she throws her full dedication into literally every single thing she does. Remind you of anyone? Beyond just being extremely intelligent Violet is clever and ready for anything. She takes everything in stride and always has a plan, she can go from “we were sleeping over and you said everybody get on the plane, so we got on the plane” to “I brought an axe” in a minute flat.
I like to think the two of them would have a mutual respect for each other based on their respective intellects upon first meeting, but as they become closer friends they find they can move from more serious respect to a casual enjoyment of each other. I would go as far as to say that both of these characters really value dependability in a friend, and that they each provide a lot of that. To wrap back around to the stuff about intelligence I think Violet could provide a lot of insight to Amity as far as showing her that pursuing studies and academic heights of her own volition can be something that she can just do because she wants to, and that’s no excuse for unhealthy parental relationships. Getting along so well with someone like Violet only to see that her parents are actually really loving and supportive, that would be really eye-opening for Amity I think. For Violet’s part she could get a lot of help from Amity as far as her pursuit of the secrets of magic goes. I suspect Amity would be much more interested in the study of her magic than Violet would be able to get Lena to tolerate lol.
Bonus Round: Amity would absolutely be a senior junior woodchuck and she would love it you cannot convince me otherwise. She starts quoting the JWGB around the owl house kids and they all look at her like she’s crazy.
Lena and Willow I feel like this one might seem a little out there at first but trust me on this one. Initially Lena doesn’t think too much of Willow, being as close as she is to Webby she knows liking flowers and cute things doesn’t mean Willow is automatically to be taken lightly but she feels like she’s got a good read on her that she generally prefers to avoid trouble and turns down opportunities for violence, which isn’t really Lena’s deal. Over time Lena figures she was right about her first impressions as Willow doesn’t seem to take many opportunities to expose some hidden power, even when Lena knows the people around her kinda deserve it.
She learns to adjust her opinion when she finally does get the chance to see Willow in action and realizes that girl is more powerful than any of the other kids she’s met in the boiling aisles bar none(yes this is my genuine opinion of willow if you don’t think she could kick your ass you’re wrong). It’s at that moment where she starts to pay more attention to Willow and notices a lot more of the strength she puts into all the little things, how much she cares for everyone and everything, and it does a great deal to show Lena that maybe having super strong magic powers isn’t mutually exclusive with being kind and gentle. And maybe gentle isn’t her thing but still, it’s nice to know.
For Willow’s part she’s just happy to make more friends. Especially if the opportunity arises, as I like to think it would, when they’re close enough friends, that Lena would start to hint around asking questions about how Willow remains so casual and nice with the ability to do so much damage, and Willow takes the chance to help Lena figure out her magic a bit more, and learn how to better appreciate it as an aspect of herself she doesn’t have to be scared of. (I mean come on Lena never really learned how to do any of it except barely kind of from Magica of all people she could really  use something like that).
Huey and Gus Now there are some certain things about Gus that would drive Huey absolutely nuts. His lack of primary and reliable sources for any of his information being a big one, but at the end of the day I think he’d enjoy Gus’ desire to learn in the first place. Gus would probably be a little dubious about Huey’s “sources” and “citations” but if it helped him get more info on the human realm he’d certainly go for it in the end. In that way the two balance each other out pretty well. Gus is studious and intelligent but he’s a little off the wall, he’s got a big creative streak, and he’s really excitable. Huey is really really good at facts and analysis but he lacks the strength in imagination that Gus has. Huey is able to take all the grandiose concepts Gus is able to think up and help make them actually happen. Gus has that specific brand of an adventurers soul matched up with the fact he’s not actually the type to get into danger and fights, meaning he’s able to drag Huey out of his comfort zone a little and help him reach new heights with his mind that his struggles with creativity prevent him from reaching, while managing to not make him feel like he’s actually in danger. I actually believe the two of them together could get some really incredible stuff done.
What I’m saying is that with Huey’s help Gus could absolutely complete his tunnels under Hexside.
Dewey and King Now this, this is the pair who would go incredibly well together, at the detriment of literally everyone around them. If there is one person King “I Will Rule Everything” Clawthorne should not be exposed to its Dewey Duck. Within minutes of meeting each other the two of them would immediately have so many bad ideas. Between Dewey’s insistence on being the best and most daring adventurer while putting his name on everything and going down in history & King’s trying to rule everything and everyone, the attempts to raise the stakes would be constant and the two would spend literal hours endlessly trying to one-up each other. All in one day they search for legendary treasure, discover an entirely new civilization, try to take over said civilization, create a new species just to name it after themselves, and build statues of themselves in the middle of Bonesbourough. And that’s all before lunch.
Louie Here it is. The one I waited till the very end for out of sheer excitement. I even kept the second name out of the heading thing. That’s how secretive I’m trying to be about this. See, there’s one character in the owl house that works so well with Louie it’s practically canon. Their interactions have so much potential, they each bring so much to the table, I just couldn’t Not talk about it. And yeah, I know this ask was specifically asking about the owl house and ducktales kids, but I just couldn’t resist talking about the relationship between Louie and Eda.
A con artist from another world who was so successful she became nationally famous? There’s no way Louie would pass up an opportunity like that. For his part I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already managed to set up another underworld identity in the boiling aisles, or at the very least that Eda could totally have been to the ducktales realm and heard of his one there.
Either way I’m convinced the two of them would start planning a heist as soon as they figure out who each other are. Eda is a little prideful and wants to show this kid he can’t out-con her, but Louie knows what he’s doing just as much. Honestly with the two of them combined Eda wouldn’t have to worry about losing her stand for a long time. Over the course of their planning and seeing Louie in action Eda begrudgingly gains some respect for the  kid, and while Louie was definitely just using her as a learning/profit opportunity at first, he’s pretty susceptible to getting attached.
For Louie, it’s the fact that she actually respects him for being good at what he does. Even back with his family who all love and care about him and all that he still feels like most of them don’t really get what he does or see what’s special about him, so having someone who made a whole life of it be even a little proud of him feels really nice.
And of course, at the end of their heist when they finally have the money in hand, and Eda just casually hands over his half, he stares at her like she’s crazy.
“You’re just.. Giving it to me?!”
“Well, yeah. That was the deal wasn’t it kid? I mean if you really want I definitely have a few ideas for it.”
“No! Uh, no, thanks, I’ll keep it. It’s just that you really remind me of someone, I guess I was expecting something else.”
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garnetmantle · 3 years
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Title: After Omega, Star Trek TOS
by: green rose
@sicktember
Prompt #4 Headache
Notes: The TOS episode "Omega Glory" is literally one long recipe for a headache for Kirk. Spock was caught in the nimbus of a phaser set to kill in this episode.
>
Numbly, Jim tried to orient himself among the crush and chaos that was the excited Yangs. Spock. He was trying to keep an eye on Spock, who had admitted to being weak, which probably meant he was barely keeping his feet under him through some feat of Vulcan endurance. Jim’s vision was swimming a bit in the torch-flashing darkness, and he was so damn tired, but he eventually homed in on the red-shirted security guards, and found McCoy, very unhappy, at Spock’s side.
The doctor was not supporting Spock, but he clearly wanted to be. Spock stood at-ease, clearly rebuffing any such attempt. So McCoy was scanning the crowd, and when his eyes hit Jim he lunged forward and grabbed his arm, dragging him forward to stand the appropriate distance from Spock for a beam up. The sudden jerk brought the taste of bile up behind Jim’s teeth. Bones was glaring hard enough that it made Jim a little more dizzy to try to meet his eyes, so he stopped trying to and looked at Spock. Whose at-ease was wavering in its own wind.
“I suppose we can beam up now?” McCoy demanded.
Unperturbed, Spock spoke into his communicator in a steady but very quiet voice, “Three to beam up, Mr. Scott.”
Jim was moving the second the transporter let go, and caught Spock, who went at the knees the moment the transporter beam released him. Kirk had him before his body could hit the ground -- he’d known the usually-inconsequential disorientation of the transporter was going to get Spock, he’d just been able to tell. McCoy was swearing, and his scanner was humming.
So Jim had him under the elbows, crushed against his side, and he only had a moment to dislike how limp Spock had gone before the awful realization hit him that his own balance and coordination was not sufficient to maintain the two of them until the waiting medical team swimming into focus in the too-bright lights of the room could climb on the platform.
Kirk clenched his teeth and swallowed. He had been up for two straight days and nights, but he was not going to drop Spock, and he was not going to throw up in the middle of the transporter room. He was trying to get the nausea forced back enough to tell the corpsmen to hurry up and get Spock when McCoy took Spock’s other side and more than half his weight, and gestured his subordinates forward.
They relieved Jim of the Vulcan’s weight, which he needed, and of the contact, which left a gnawing worry behind it, and put Spock on the anti-grav stretcher they had waiting. One of them handed McCoy a small med-kit which he instantly opened. He read off the hypos, and administered them directly to his patient.
Clearly McCoy had called ahead. Why had Spock waited that long for him to beam up?
It was a little worrying that Spock had let himself be handled by strange corpsmen -- these were new crew, on board less than a month -- and put on the stretcher without complaint, silent and pale and submitting to McCoy’s attentions with none of their usual argument. Jim blew out a slow breath and closed his eyes, then breathed in a deep one as he raised his head and eventually reopened them. Reset. He trusted Bones, and Bones had said authoritatively that Spock would live. There was a lot left to do with—
“Doctor,” Spock had rallied enough to come up on his elbows and look at Kirk, his gaze assessing. He interrupted the doctor in a quiet but very firm voice. Definitely coherent. “You are aware that the Captain has had several trauma-induced periods of unconsciousness during this mission, but you are unaware of the most severe. To my certain knowledge, he has been unconscious due to two severe traumatic blows for a cumulative nine hours and eighteen minutes since our beam down.”
Spock wasn’t announcing it to the room, just to McCoy, but it was bad enough because Bones stopped dead and raised his head. “Captain, you are required in Sickbay in twenty minutes.”
A biting reply wanted to come out – he was too tired to be bossed about by his CMO exercising his prerogatives – but Jim made himself stop. The truth was, his head was a pulsing raw pain he’d been able to manage only by lifting above it – literally dissociating from his own body a bit to cope. He had blood coming out of one ear, his vision was getting worse, and as his adrenaline dropped he was starting to get his own crosswind himself. He was stubborn, and he had a thousand things to do, but he wasn’t stupid.
“Yes, Doctor.”
McCoy, following the stretcher out, stopped to double-blink at him, then looked him over again. “Do you need transport?”
“No, Doctor.” The guards and Scotty and the transporter chief were all listening to them, now, so Jim walked to the door. Oh, yeah. He was getting his own wind and McCoy noticed, of course, caught Jim’s arm to balance the wavering, and started to demand Kirk come with him right then.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes, on one condition,” Jim said quietly as he followed McCoy out into the hall. “I know you have some kind of anti-emetic in there, you always do when you’re treating Spock for anything serious. Give me.”
“Yeah?” McCoy asked, trying to catch his eyes, no doubt to evaluate his pupils, but Kirk wasn’t having it. Not quite yet. The doctor's voice was on the gentle side, though, which was immediately soothing, and he opened his med-kit. ”Migraine?”
Jim wished he could say yes, but it wasn’t a good day for blatant lies. “No. Spock’s right. I got my bell rung twice, hard-“
“As opposed to the half-dozen times it was lightly rung?” the doctor asked sharply. “I’m not blind, you know-“
Speaking slowly, Jim continued, “But I’ll be all right for a few more minutes, and then you can do whatever you want.”
“You’re just afraid you’ll get sick all over the Bridge? I’d bet on the turbolift, that upward and lateral motion at once—“
Kirk felt sweat on his upper lip, and he swallowed, hard. McCoy looked a bit abashed and gave him the shot in the arm, and within a few seconds Jim’s stomach had returned to the normal position. He coughed a little and swallowed, then tried out a smile. “You’d be amazed how much that helps. I –“
“Will be in Sickbay in twenty minutes, Captain,” McCoy growled, snapped his med-kit closed and took off after his patient. Instinct urged Kirk to go after them, but duty sent him in the other direction.
>
It was like water dripping away. Onto him. Away from him. A little more impairment. A little less adrenaline. Jim Kirk put one foot in front of the other, and he smiled when he needed to, and he was able to think well enough to handle what had to be handled and know when something had to be put off for a more coherent day. The lights got brighter, though. Drip. And blurrier. Drip. And god it hurt to focus his eyes. Drip. He prepared a bare bones report for the Admiralty, because that couldn’t wait, and every sound got louder. Drip, drip. The world got foggier, and his energy to navigate through it was lessened.
He finally turned, then waited as the Bridge kept turning for a moment before settling down before his eyes. “Mr. Sulu. You have the conn,” he said, and headed for the turbolift. His crosswind was getting more stormfront than gentle breeze – he knew he was swaying on his feet, didn’t that count for something? “If I’m needed you can reach me in Sickbay. Mr. Spock is also in Sickbay. Unless he is needed to keep the galaxy or the ship from blowing up, please forget you can reach him there.”
“Aye, Captain,” came from several people, but then quietly, from Uhura alone, “Could one of us escort you to Sickbay, sir?”
Kirk forced himself to stop swaying, forced a smile to his lips. “No, but thank you, Lieutenant.”
The drop of the turbolift had him laying back against the wall, and his hands over his eyes were trying to push the pain back away. Water dripping everywhere, he was in a rainstorm and it was washing away the world and his energy and his ability to control himself. His head had reached the white-out level, the pain hitting places his consciousness wasn't willing to go with it. One last thing, though.
He walked into Sickbay to see Dr. M’Benga arguing with Dr. McCoy, gentle to his irritation. “You’ve been up for two days, Leonard. Either go to your quarters or go sleep in your office, but you are not fit for regular duty right now.” They’d both worked under worse conditions for crisis duty.
“Just give me a few more minutes, Geoff. I’m not being stubborn. I want a shower and my bed, but—there he is!” He turned from his fellow doctor to glare at Kirk.
“Twenty minutes does not mean forty-five, Captain, sir.”
Kirk made one of his ‘yeah, yeah, whatever’ dismissive gestures and closed his eyes in a brief headshake. “How is Spock?”
McCoy frowned at him as he moved toward him with a scanner in one hand and a tricorder in the other. “In a healing trance. He’ll be fine in a few days, Jim. We were able to treat the radiation poisoning and the rest he can handle himself.”
Jim’s head went down with a huff of a sigh, but he batted at McCoy’s arm when the doctor raised it with the scanner, and McCoy started to growl at him, but Jim made his little dismissive-gesture-closed-eyes-headshake thing he did again. He spoke very evenly. “No. Bones. I think I... could use that… transport now.”
He didn’t go at the knees, he just dropped, and it was all McCoy and a lunging M’Benga could do to keep his limp body from bouncing off the floor.
He got a bed beside Spock's for three days. McCoy's blood pressure was not very appreciative of their stay.
End
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imagineaworlds · 3 years
Text
Rules & Roses
“lauren”
Written By: @desperately-bisexual​
Request: None.
Warnings: Cursing. Mild smut (18+).
Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Non-binary!Reader x Emily Prentiss (poly triad)
Word Count: 3507
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Tossing and turning all night, I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Aaron and the kiss we shared. It was cliche to refer to it as electrical and perfect… but the longer I laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling, the harder it became to think of literally any other way to describe it. I forgot that people kissed like that. I forgot that there could be a passion that was stronger than sexual anticipation. That kiss was a reminder that there were people out there who were just as desperate to find someone to love, just like I was. Aaron kissed me back with even more passion than I gave in. His arms constricted around me. His fingers dug into me. His breath was hot on my nose as he breathed between kisses. His lips were so soft and relaxed. When our chests were pressed together and he was leaning over me, I could feel his heart beating in his chest. Every time mine skipped a beat, so did his. And then there was the way he smiled at me afterwards… When we realized what had happened, we stayed close, holding each other, staring at each other, and then we started laughing simultaneously. Since it happened so fast and fervently, we were only starting to realize what we did after the fact.
He tucked my hair behind my ear so that he could see my entire face. “I lied. I’m not sorry.”
I laughed. “Me, neither.”
We ended the night by getting back into his car, driving to my place, and he walked me up to my door. There was a moment when I thought that he would ask to come in. I wondered if I was wrong. Did he just want to get into my pants? It was a consideration I had all the way up to the door and as I was unlocking it, until I turned to see that he wasn’t trying to make another move on me. I searched his eyes to see if he was hiding it so that I would make the first move. Nothing. It was going to be really hard going out with a profiler. But… I was okay with that.
“I’ll see you bright and early in the morning, then,” I said.
Aaron nodded. “Bright and early.”
I fiddled with my keys. “Goodnight.”
He leaned up on his toes so that he was face to face with me since he was on a lower step than I was, and he kissed me again, this time a medium passion between his first, unsure kiss and our last, desperate make out. He slowly parted from me, his lips sticking to mine because of the lipstick until he was back on his heels. “Goodnight.” He smiled at me again.
And then I tossed and turned all night. I thought about kissing him again. At points, I regretted not inviting him inside, but I liked that we didn’t need to race to the bed for no reason. Most people fucked me, then left in the morning. Not Aaron Hotchner, though. To be fair, I wasn’t sure if I was the first person he had gone out with since his wife, Haley, or not. I never asked. That seemed like the one line I shouldn’t cross, so I didn’t. At least, not yet. I would eventually if it came up naturally. If that were the case, however, I wasn’t surprised that his kisses were light and hesitant, and he wasn’t immediately trying to get into my pants. If I was the first person he had asked out since Haley, he probably didn’t want to rush things. When Lauren left, it took me a long time to finally go out with someone again, and it took me even longer to fuck someone else. In some weird way, dating and fucking after her almost felt like cheating on her. Men and women would hover over me, and yet, sometimes, all I could see was her. Now that Aaron had come around, I hadn’t even heard her voice echoing at the back of my mind. There was a chance that wasn’t the case with Haley’s voice in his head, though. I was willing to wait. I was actually happy to wait because that made this… whatever this was… more special.
When the sun finally started to rise, I rolled out of bed so that I could get ready and head to the park in order to be on time to see him again. I was exhausted. Despite my excitement to meet up with him, I was regretting not falling asleep, and I was sure that my body was going to be angry with me after running on no rest. Great. I just had to push all of that to the back of my mind in order to focus on driving to the park, finding a spot for my car, then heading to the trail head. He was already there. Stretching his leg by bending it behind him and holding his ankle, wobbling as he tried to maintain his balance, I snuck up on him when he was least expecting it.
“How did you sleep?” I whispered into his ear.
He dropped his leg and stumbled forward. As he caught his balance and realized that it was just me, he laughed. “I didn’t really sleep,” he admitted, still trying to bite back a smile. He switched which leg he was stretching. “How about you?”
I shook my head. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“How come?”
I squinted because he knew exactly why. I didn’t ask him why he didn’t sleep because I knew why— and as a profiler, he should have known immediately why I didn’t get a wink of sleep. “You ready to get your ass beat?”
“Oh, is this a rematch from yesterday?”
“Obviously.”
“What are the stakes?” he asked while stretching his arms now, his biceps flexing in his tight blue shirt.
I swallowed hard. “I win, we go out again tonight.”
“And if I win?”
“Whatever you want.”
Still biting his lip, this time while staring at my lips, he said, “I get another kiss.”
“Just one?” I teased.
“We’ll start there.”
“You’re on.”
He took a page out of my book this time. After my cheating yesterday by getting a head start, he figured that he’d play the same wicked game. If I wasn’t sure before that he knew yesterday that I had purposefully let him win, I was definitely sure now because he knew that if I really wanted that second date bad enough, I would give him a run for his money. Now, while he probably wanted to take me on a second date, too, he wanted that kiss first. He could still ask me out again after our kiss. That was if he would win. The second he started dashing down the path, I caught on and started racing on my toes, just trying to keep up with him for the time being. Eventually, he would get tired. At one point or another, sprinting as fast as he was would just wear him out; and when that would happen, I would take the lead. So, I played the waiting game. I was following just on his heels, using his body as protection against all of the other people on the path. Then, just as I expected, when we started arriving at the roses, getting close to the top of the U-turn where one of us would claim victory, Aaron started to slow down. I smirked and started running faster.
“No—” he let out, trying to move faster. We were both laughing. “Fuck,” he cursed under his breath. A sudden image washed over me of him hovering above me, his hands braced on either side of my head, his lips next to my ear as he groaned that very curse word when driving into me. Before I knew it, I was slowing down. The thought of him pinning my hands and nibbling at my neck had me a little distracted. “Oh, so close,” he teased as he tapped the bench at the top of the U-turn. He noticed my mental distance. “What is it?”
I shook off the fantasy. “I just can’t believe I lost. I thought I had it.”
“You were way behind me!”
“Yeah, but slow and steady wins the race.”
“Not this time.”
I rolled my eyes. “You were distracting.”
“You know what else is distracting?” he asked while stepping towards me. I raised a curious brow, even though I knew exactly where this was going. He reached out to cup my face between his palms. As I tilted my head up, he leaned down and made the first move to kiss me. I didn’t hesitate to kiss him back, though. Both of us were still panting and somewhat sweaty, but a deal was a deal. He parted slightly from me because we were already short of breath. “By the way, it’s probably a good thing I won because my team’s eyeing a case in Oklahoma. There’s a chance I might be called there today, so I might not be here tomorrow.”
I pouted. We knew that this was a possibility, of course. When I first started learning about his job, he told me that he traveled a lot and without warning, which meant that our daily runs were never a guarantee; but now that things were progressing into something a little more than daily runs, I was finding that I was disappointed by this news. I didn’t want him to leave me. That was probably a selfish thing to think about someone who had only taken me on one date, but still… I really didn’t want him to leave. Especially when things were getting good for me— for us— and I wanted to spend more time with him. My pouting was plain to him. It didn’t take a profiler to know what I was thinking.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized genuinely.
I shook my head. “You can’t keep breaking your own apology rule. And, I know you can’t control which cases you guys take on. It’s okay.”
His thumb caressed my cheek. “How about, if it looks like I’ll still be here tonight, I take you out for dinner again.”
“But I lost the race.”
“I know. Still.”
“And if you’re not here?”
“I’ll make it up to you later.”
My mind wandered again to thoughts of his thumb that was on my cheek moving its way down to my clit, then slowly rubbing figure eights on the sensitive nub until I was falling apart. I could wait around for that. So, I gave in. After nodding an agreement, I pulled him in for another kiss. I could get so used to this with him.
When I arrived at work, I tried diving straight into everything I had to do in order to distract myself from the fantasies I was having of Aaron. All it took was one night… one date for me to change my mind about taking things slow with him. Now, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I wanted to run my fingers down his abs or claw into his back as he fucked me so hard I would scream his name. That was only one of many ideas racing through my head. Every time I thought I could just focus on my work, something about him popped into my mind. It didn’t help that he had kissed me roughly while panting earlier. He could have been panting over me as he snapped his hips back and forth. He could have been panting while I took his entire length in my mouth. Fuck— My phone on my desk buzzed with a notification. I sighed as I lost my train of thought with my work, sitting upright so that I could turn my phone over and look at what was so important that I had to be disturbed. As my phone lit up, I smiled.
From Aaron Hotchner: Hey. Wanna grab lunch with me today?
I hesitated for a moment as I stared at the screen of my phone, the text seemingly staring back at me. After our run this morning, I thought that we wouldn’t be seeing each other for awhile. It was possible that he really was going to be sent on a case soon, so in order to see me one last time, he was rushing to have lunch with me. We had only just gone on our first date last night, though. Granted, we made out on the sidewalk for anyone to see, so we weren’t exactly taking things slow in the conventional way. However, I didn’t see this coming. Not that I was opposed to it, though, of course. I liked the idea of spending every second I could with him. If he wasn’t busy with work or a case, I was more than happy to have lunch with him. So, I responded.
To Aaron Hotchner: I’d love to.
From Aaron Hotchner: I’m finishing up some work here. There’s a nice Italian restaurant around the corner. If you meet me here, I could walk you over.
To Aaron Hotchner: Meet you where?
And then he sent me an address. Curious, I clicked it and waited for the Maps app on my phone to open. My jaw dropped suddenly when I realized where it was that he wanted me to meet him. Quantico. Like, as in… the FBI’s Quantico… I wasn’t too sure about that.
To Aaron Hotchner: How do I even get in there?
From Aaron Hotchner: Follow the map :)
So, he was a jokester when he wanted to be. Well, ha. ha. Seriously, though, how was I supposed to just waltz into the fucking FBI’s headquarters? Wasn’t that, like… Not allowed? America was weird. I couldn’t imagine just popping in at Interpol or Scotland Yard just to meet up with a guy who would immediately have me turn around so that we could go somewhere else for lunch. Couldn’t I just meet him at the restaurant? It felt weird to show up at his work randomly. What his friends think of me? I knew that he was the boss of his unit, so, technically, I wouldn’t be meeting his friends, I would be meeting his co-workers/employees. That wasn’t as weird. I was probably just thinking about this too hard, as usual. When it came to Aaron Hotchner, he made me double guess myself all the time— not in a bad way. He just… I didn’t want to fuck up with him. Knowing myself, I knew that if I didn’t put great consideration into every little detail when it came to him, I would fuck up and lose him entirely.
To Aaron Hotchner: Funny. How do I get in?
From Aaron Hotchner: Security will have your name.
Was I really going to do this? Yeah. I was. So, I texted Aaron back to tell him that I’d be there in about fifteen minutes. As for having to actually find the building and the office, that was going to take a little longer, but he didn’t need to know that. By giving him the fifteen minute heads up, it gave me some extra time to wander aimlessly while trying to find my way around his office.
The BAU— The Behavioral Analysis Unit. Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Christopher Hotchner was the Unit Chief for the BAU. When I had arrived at Quantico, I pulled up to a security checkpoint outside of the parking lot. When I gave them my name, they handed me a visitor’s parking pass, told me where to go, then opened up the gate. Inside, there was more security that I had to go through, this time emptying out all of my pockets before walking through an X-ray machine, then being pat down by a female security guard. It was a lot. They asked me why I was there while they were looking at my I.D. just to confirm who I was and why I was really there. If my answers didn’t match up with what Aaron had told them… Well, I wasn’t exactly sure what would happen to me. When I told them that I was there to see Aaron Hotchner, they told me that I was headed to see Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner, Unit Chief for the BAU, on the sixth floor of the building, using the third elevator on the right.
When I reached the sixth floor, the elevator doors opening in front of me, I saw just how busy it was. Agents were hurrying around everywhere. Some were carrying case files, others were carrying stacks and stacks of papers, and others were carrying nothing but a cup of coffee. Still, it looked like they had a purpose. No one seemed as clueless as I was, which meant that I stuck out like a sore thumb, and there was nothing I could do about it. The first brave step out of the elevator had to be taken on my own, unlike last night when Aaron held my hand through it. There were glass doors straight ahead with the BAU’s symbol and name on it. I figured my best bet was there. If that wasn’t the case, I was going to look really fucking stupid. Wonderful.
As I pushed through the glass doors, I saw a series of glass cubicles set up in the middle of the room, surrounded by a balcony that had two offices overlooking the cubicles, and on the opposite side of those offices was a boardroom and a breakroom. Everyone sitting at their desks in the cubicles turned to look at me. I was a stranger that had just come into their office in one of the most protected buildings in the country; yet, no one knew who I was. An unfamiliar face meant danger. The way I had been hesitant towards Aaron initially because of stranger danger was now being thrown back in my face by the group of agents staring at me, trying to deduce who I was and why I was there.
I approached a petite, blonde woman who was standing around. “Excuse me. I’m looking for Aaron—”
That was when I heard one of the doors of the left office on the balcony open up urgently. I glanced over to see him poking his head out and smiling at me. “Hey,” Aaron welcomed me from the doorway, “I’ll be down in a minute.”
I nodded and politely waved to let him know that it wasn’t a big deal. I could wait. Now that everyone around me knew that they had a little time to interrogate me before their boss would show up to protect me, everyone jumped to their feet and moved to surround me. I smiled at them.
The boy with long, curly hair was the first one to actually ask me a question. It started simple with, “What’s your name?” To which, I answered.
The older man with a goatee asked, “How long have you known Hotch?” I cocked a brow because I didn’t understand. “Aaron,” he clarified.
“Oh,” I giggled nervously. “Just a few weeks.”
“How do you know each other?” the blonde woman asked.
I turned to her. “We jog together every morning.”
“Just jogging?” the older man asked. The blonde hit his arm to warn him against asking impolite things like that. I laughed at him. “I only meant—”
“Everyone knows what you meant, Rossi,” the bald man over my right shoulder teased through a laugh.
“Y/N?” I heard her voice behind me.
I cocked a brow at the wall across from me, trying to decide if it was really her that I heard or if it was someone else. There was no way it was her. I must have been seeing things again, even though I thought all of that was behind me since meeting Aaron. But I could have sworn… The way my name was said was the same way she used to say it. Angelic, light, full of love and life. I loved it when she said my name because it was almost like it belonged to her— like she was the only one in the whole, wide world who was allowed to say it like that. I would recognize her voice anywhere. I would recognize the way she said my name anywhere. Then again, there were times where I swore it was her, like I swore Aaron’s friend Emily was her. Maybe if I just turned around—
As I spun on my heels to greet who had said my name, I stumbled. I was nearly knocked off my feet when I saw her. If it weren’t for the fact that all of Aaron’s friends were watching me, I was pretty sure I would have toppled over then and there; passing out entirely because one glimpse at her sent me back thirteen years. “Lauren?”
---------
criminal minds family: @peggy1999​ @gorgeousdarkangel​ @alex--awesome--22​ @oceaneblu​ @brithedemonspawn​ @absolutemarveltrash​ @bshelley322​  @rousethemouse​
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greenroseunderglass · 3 years
Text
After Omega : Fanfic - Star Trek TOS (Gen)
@sicktember
Prompt #4 Headache
by: greenroseunderglass (1st post to tumblr, I know I'm messing up every way possible.)
Notes: The TOS episode "Omega Glory" is literally one long recipe for a headache for Kirk. Spock was caught in the nimbus of a phaser set to kill in this episode.
Numbly, Jim tried to orient himself among the crush and chaos that was the excited Yangs. Spock. He was trying to keep an eye on Spock, who had admitted to being weak, which probably meant he was barely keeping his feet under him through some feat of Vulcan endurance. Jim’s vision was swimming a bit in the torch-flashing darkness, and he was so damn tired, but he eventually homed in on the red-shirted security guards, and found McCoy, very unhappy, at Spock’s side.
The doctor was not supporting Spock, but he clearly wanted to be. Spock stood at-ease, clearly rebuffing any such attempt. So McCoy was scanning the crowd, and when his eyes hit Jim he lunged forward and grabbed his arm, dragging him forward to stand the appropriate distance from Spock for a beam up. The sudden jerk brought the taste of bile up behind Jim’s teeth. Bones was glaring hard enough that it made Jim a little more dizzy to try to meet his eyes, so he stopped trying to and looked at Spock. Whose at-ease was wavering in its own wind.
“I suppose we can beam up now?” McCoy demanded.
Unperturbed, Spock spoke into his communicator in a steady but very quiet voice, “Three to beam up, Mr. Scott.”
Jim was moving the second the transporter let go, and caught Spock, who went at the knees the moment the transporter beam released him. Kirk had him before his body could hit the ground -- he’d known the usually-inconsequential disorientation of the transporter was going to get Spock, he’d just been able to tell. McCoy was swearing, and his scanner was humming.
So Jim had him under the elbows, crushed against his side, and he only had a moment to dislike how limp Spock had gone before the awful realization hit him that his own balance and coordination was not sufficient to maintain the two of them until the waiting medical team swimming into focus in the too-bright lights of the room could climb on the platform.
Kirk clenched his teeth and swallowed. He had been up for two straight days and nights, but he was not going to drop Spock, and he was not going to throw up in the middle of the transporter room. He was trying to get the nausea forced back enough to tell the corpsmen to hurry up and get Spock when McCoy took Spock’s other side and more than half his weight, and gestured his subordinates forward.
They relieved Jim of the Vulcan’s weight, which he needed, and of the contact, which left a gnawing worry behind it, and put Spock on the anti-grav stretcher they had waiting. One of them handed McCoy a small med-kit which he instantly opened. He read off the hypos, and administered them directly to his patient.
Clearly McCoy had called ahead. Why had Spock waited that long for him to beam up?
It was a little worrying that Spock had let himself be handled by strange corpsmen -- these were new crew, on board less than a month -- and put on the stretcher without complaint, silent and pale and submitting to McCoy’s attentions with none of their usual argument. Jim blew out a slow breath and closed his eyes, then breathed in a deep one as he raised his head and eventually reopened them. Reset. He trusted Bones, and Bones had said authoritatively that Spock would live. There was a lot left to do with—
“Doctor,” Spock had rallied enough to come up on his elbows and look at Kirk, his gaze assessing. He interrupted the doctor in a quiet but very firm voice. Definitely coherent. “You are aware that the Captain has had several trauma-induced periods of unconsciousness during this mission, but you are unaware of the most severe. To my certain knowledge, he has been unconscious due to two severe traumatic blows for a cumulative nine hours and eighteen minutes since our beam down.”
Spock wasn’t announcing it to the room, just to McCoy, but it was bad enough because Bones stopped dead and raised his head. “Captain, you are required in Sickbay in twenty minutes.”
A biting reply wanted to come out – he was too tired to be bossed about by his CMO exercising his prerogatives – but Jim made himself stop. The truth was, his head was a pulsing raw pain he’d been able to manage only by lifting above it – literally dissociating from his own body a bit to cope. He had blood coming out of one ear, his vision was getting worse, and as his adrenaline dropped he was starting to get his own crosswind himself. He was stubborn, and he had a thousand things to do, but he wasn’t stupid.
“Yes, Doctor.”
McCoy, following the stretcher out, stopped to double-blink at him, then looked him over again. “Do you need transport?”
“No, Doctor.” The guards and Scotty and the transporter chief were all listening to them, now, so Jim walked to the door. Oh, yeah. He was getting his own wind and McCoy noticed, of course, caught Jim’s arm to balance the wavering, and started to demand Kirk come with him right then.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes, on one condition,” Jim said quietly as he followed McCoy out into the hall. “I know you have some kind of anti-emetic in there, you always do when you’re treating Spock for anything serious. Give me.”
“Yeah?” McCoy asked, trying to catch his eyes, no doubt to evaluate his pupils, but Kirk wasn’t having it. Not quite yet. The doctor's voice was on the gentle side, though, which was immediately soothing, and he opened his med-kit. ”Migraine?”
Jim wished he could say yes, but it wasn’t a good day for blatant lies. “No. Spock’s right. I got my bell rung twice, hard-“
“As opposed to the half-dozen times it was lightly rung?” the doctor asked sharply. “I’m not blind, you know-“
Speaking slowly, Jim continued, “But I’ll be all right for a few more minutes, and then you can do whatever you want.”
“You’re just afraid you’ll get sick all over the Bridge? I’d bet on the turbolift, that upward and lateral motion at once—“
Kirk felt sweat on his upper lip, and he swallowed, hard. McCoy looked a bit abashed and gave him the shot in the arm, and within a few seconds Jim’s stomach had returned to the normal position. He coughed a little and swallowed, then tried out a smile. “You’d be amazed how much that helps. I –“
“Will be in Sickbay in twenty minutes, Captain,” McCoy growled, snapped his med-kit closed and took off after his patient. Instinct urged Kirk to go after them, but duty sent him in the other direction.
>
It was like water dripping away. Onto him. Away from him. A little more impairment. A little less adrenaline. Jim Kirk put one foot in front of the other, and he smiled when he needed to, and he was able to think well enough to handle what had to be handled and know when something had to be put off for a more coherent day. The lights got brighter, though. Drip. And blurrier. Drip. And god it hurt to focus his eyes. Drip. He prepared a bare bones report for the Admiralty, because that couldn’t wait, and every sound got louder. Drip, drip. The world got foggier, and his energy to navigate through it was lessened.
He finally turned, then waited as the Bridge kept turning for a moment before settling down before his eyes. “Mr. Sulu. You have the conn,” he said, and headed for the turbolift. His crosswind was getting more stormfront than gentle breeze – he knew he was swaying on his feet, didn’t that count for something? “If I’m needed you can reach me in Sickbay. Mr. Spock is also in Sickbay. Unless he is needed to keep the galaxy or the ship from blowing up, please forget you can reach him there.”
“Aye, Captain,” came from several people, but then quietly, from Uhura alone, “Could one of us escort you to Sickbay, sir?”
Kirk forced himself to stop swaying, forced a smile to his lips. “No, but thank you, Lieutenant.”
The drop of the turbolift had him laying back against the wall, and his hands over his eyes were trying to push the pain back away. Water dripping everywhere, he was in a rainstorm and it was washing away the world and his energy and his ability to control himself. His head had reached the white-out level, the pain hitting places his consciousness wasn't willing to go with it. One last thing, though.
He walked into Sickbay to see Dr. M’Benga arguing with Dr. McCoy, gentle to his irritation. “You’ve been up for two days, Leonard. Either go to your quarters or go sleep in your office, but you are not fit for regular duty right now.” They’d both worked under worse conditions for crisis duty.
“Just give me a few more minutes, Geoff. I’m not being stubborn. I want a shower and my bed, but—there he is!” He turned from his fellow doctor to glare at Kirk.
“Twenty minutes does not mean forty-five, Captain, sir.”
Kirk made one of his ‘yeah, yeah, whatever’ dismissive gestures and closed his eyes in a brief headshake. “How is Spock?”
McCoy frowned at him as he moved toward him with a scanner in one hand and a tricorder in the other. “In a healing trance. He’ll be fine in a few days, Jim. We were able to treat the radiation poisoning and the rest he can handle himself.”
Jim’s head went down with a huff of a sigh, but he batted at McCoy’s arm when the doctor raised it with the scanner, and McCoy started to growl at him, but Jim made his little dismissive-gesture-closed-eyes-headshake thing he did again. He spoke very evenly. “No. Bones. I think I could use that… transport now.”
He didn’t go at the knees, he just dropped, and it was all McCoy and a lunging M’Benga could do to keep his limp body from bouncing off the floor.
He got a bed beside Spock's for three days. McCoy's blood pressure was not very appreciative of their stay.
End
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phantoms-lair · 4 years
Text
MSA Secret Santa
@accidental-child
Arthur sighed, leaning against the steering wheel of the van. The bus was a little late, but that wasn’t unexpected. Not out here at any rate.
There was a small selfish part of himself that wished he hadn’t picked up the phone that day. It was selfish - and ridiculous. The call had been at the garage, he needed to answer those calls!
It had been some great Aunt, or far removed cousin. He wasn’t quite sure how they were related. Apparently her son was originally going to spend summer break with one of his friends, but their trip had been cut short. The problem was said parents and their daughter had already made other arrangements and wanted to know if the aforementioned son could stay with Lance.
The problem was, Lance wasn’t there and wouldn’t be for a while. He was off on a road trip with some of his old buddies from his days when he absolutely positively was not a wrestler. It was a well overdue vacation and Arthur wasn’t going to call him back from it.
But something stopped him from just turning her down. It wasn’t her, but… it was the idea that their current plans ‘couldn’t be altered’. Lance had planned his trip to originally be last year, but he’d dropped everything after Arthur had turned up in a hospital without an arm. Also that they were reaching out to family that wasn’t that close at all made Arthur wonder if the closer relatives had also had plans that couldn’t be altered. It stank too much of no one wanting this kid, and damned if he was going to add to that
So here he was, waiting for a cousin he’d never met who’d be spending a month with him. He didn’t think it would matter so much if he wasn’t the age he was - 18. Younger would have been easier to slip into a child-guardian relationship and older meant this wouldn’t have been an issue in the first place. But 18 was an age of feeling you were coming into your own authority, and much more likely to take onus with someone a mere five years older than you being in charge.
The bus pulled up and Arthur braced himself. Two figures got off the bus, his cousin and...a dog? A rather large dog at that. Something else Aunt Wendy had forgot to mention. Hopefully it was good with other dogs and hamsters.
Pushing his misgivings aside, Arthur left the van with a big welcoming smile. No need to borrow trouble till it was here. “Hi, you must be Norville, right?”
The teen winced. “Like, call me Shaggy please. I hate Norville.” 
“Done and done.” Arthur agreed readily. “The name Norville is thus dead and shall never be spoken from mine lips again.”
“Ri’m Scooby Doo.”
Another talking dog, huh. “Just to make certain, you’re not actually an ancient kitsune with an evil Japanese tree after you?”
“Like, not that we know of?” Shaggy looked confused. So did Scooby so Arthur let it slide. 
“Okay, let’s get some food, and we can figure out stuff out.” Apparently he said the right word, because his cousin and dog perked up a lot. “Let me help you with your bags.” “Is your arm metal?” Shaggy asked, surprised.
“Sure is, made it myself.” Arthur wiggled his fingers at him, inwardly bracing himself. “That’s cool.” Shaggy said earnestly, picking up his other suitcase.
No ‘How did that happen?’ or ‘That must be so terrible’? Okay, thus far Arthur was counting this as a win.
~
“So,” Arthur started as they slid into a booth at Pepper Paradiso, “Let’s go over your options.”
“Options?” Shaggy asked, surprised.
“Yeah, you have two main options, and we can tweak them as need be. The first is what I told your Mom. You come to stay with me and my boyfriend and girlfriend. We’ve set up a spare room for you, and Scooby I guess, sorry no one told us he was coming.” “If you’d prefer not to deal with three people being kinda mushy, or just want more privacy  I’d give you a key to Lance’s place. You could stay in my old room and basically have the house to yourself. I’d still be checking in everyday and making sure you had food and stuff, but other than that, you’d be on your own.” 
Shaggy seemed to think a moment. “You have a boyfriend and a girlfriend? You can do that?” “Yes.” Arthur answered simply.
“Okay, like if it’s all the same, man, I’d rather stay with you. I don’t think me or Scoob want to be alone.”
Arthur tried not to take it as a warning sign. True, most teens would jump at the first chance to be on their own, but that was hardly universal. There was a small feeling that something was wrong, not just parental negligence. What, he didn’t know. And truthfully it could be nothing. Arthur had a tendency to jump to worst case scenarios (catastrophizing, his therapist had called it), so for now he’d wait and see.
“So is this the mysterious cousin?” Mrs Chef Pepper came over, winking .
“Yeah, this is Shaggy. Shaggy, this is one half of the best cooking team in Tempo, and honestly Texas.”
“Flatterer. My name’s Carmella Pepper. My husband’s running the kitchen, so I have the front end today. I assume the usual, Arthur?” “With no Cayenne additions, please.”
“She’s banned from the kitchen after the last hot sauce-strawberry shake.” Carmella assured him. “What about you, Shaggy?”
Shaggy looked at the menu. “Like, could Scoob and I each get a ‘Vivi Special’ “ he pointed to the menu.
She raised an eyebrow. With the exception of its namesake, the Vivi Special was usually ordered to be shared by a family. She’d never seen an order of two of them. “Do you want the plate of spicy chorizo or pancake poppers?” Scooby and Shaggy looked at each other. “One of each please. And, like separate checks? Mom set up an account for me for food and stuff.” Arthur tried to hide his relief. One extra mouth he could feed. Two more Vivi appetites would have strained his budget beyond feasibility.
~ “Lewis, Vivi— we’re home!” Arthur called, letting himself and his two guests in.
“Welcome home, Arty.” Lewis greeted, pulling his boyfriend in for a kiss. “So this must be Nor-”
“The name is not to be spoken. It has been cast into the abyss and replaced with Shaggy.” Arthur said with a completely straight face. “It has become one with the void.” Lewis rolled his eyes. “Sorry for the melodramatic one, I’m Lewis. Lewis Pepper.”
Shaggy shook his hand while Arthur sputtered over Lewis calling him melodramatic. “Pepper, like the people who run the restaurant?” “My parents.” Lewis explained.
“Wow, like they’re great cooks, man. It’s the first place me and Scooby found that we could be full off one thing on the menu.” “If you can call the ‘Vivi Special’ one thing.” Arthur quipped.
“Someone call me?” Vivi slid into the front room, literally, her socks holding no traction on the hardwood floor, causing her to crash into Lewis. “Arthur’s cousin Shaggy is a fan of your addition to my parents menu.” Lewis said.
“Ooooo Did you get the version with the spicy chorizo or pancake poppers?”
“Like, Scoob and I got one of each. I really liked Aztec Chocolate sauce on the sweet chili!”
“I know! And the smoked gouda filled jalapeño poppers!” 
“Arthur, I think our girlfriend just adopted your cousin.” Lewis commented.
~
Vivi stretched as she got home from her morning shift at the Tome Tomb. Arthur was having a full day at Kingsmen’s, so she figured she’d check in on Shaggy and Scooby before getting in some serious cuddle time with Lewis.
She found them in the living room, Shaggy was looking at a book. Not reading it, but staring at the cover, while Scooby leaned against him comfortingly. “Everything okay boys?” She asked softly.
Shaggy took a moment to answer. “Do you believe in this stuff? Magic and monsters?” “As a matter of fact I do.” She tried to keep the humor out of her voice. Shaggy had no idea he was spending the remainder of his summer with a ghost and a kitsune. “Do you?”
Shaggy didn’t answer. “Doesn’t it scare you?” he asked.
“The supernatural? Not really. Or at least, not more than anything else.” She sat down next to him. “There’s good and bad magic, just like there’s good and bad technology. Some beings are friendly, some just want to be left alone, and some are truly evil, just like people. You always, always, have to be careful. But I’d rather know, you know?” Shaggy shook his head. “Like, I think I’d rather not.” He looked at the book again. “Like, have you ever heard of something called the Chest of Demons?”
“Not off the top of my head, why?”
Shaggy shook his head. “Nothing, like what’s for lunch?” Vivi accepted the topic change, but didn’t forget what she’d heard. This merited some digging into.
~
Arthur felt dead on his feet (though not quite as much as Lewis, ha!) as he got home that evening.  Working in the garage was one thing, but running it was quite another. He couldn’t wait for Lance to get back.
It was Vivi who greeted him at the door, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing him. Arthur melted into the embrace, the warmth he felt in his heart giving him back the strength spent on budget balancing and unruly customers.
But as he felt himself relax, he realized she wasn’t easing up. Something was wrong. “What is it, Vi?”
“Your cousin.” She answered, her head still buried in the crook of Arthur’s neck. “He was looking at my books and mentioned something called the Chest of Demons. I hadn’t heard of it, so I sent out some feelers.”
“Bad?” Arthur guessed, as if the name didn’t give that away.
“Not just the chest itself. I still don’t know what it is, because one of the few things I did manage to learn is it’s protected by near total secrecy. It’s not something he could have just randomly heard of.”
Arthur’s mouth set into a grim frown. He could think of a few reasons, but none of them were good.
“And this isn’t some random client messing with something he shouldn’t, he’s your cousin and I like him, but this is serious.”
“I’ll talk to him.” Arthur promised. 
“No!” Vivi squeezed him tighter. “I don’t want to think he’s up to anything bad, but-” Honestly with how Shaggy had reacted to ‘Magic and Monsters’ she doubted it, but she couldn’t be sure and she wasn’t willing to put any of her boys in the path of danger.
Arthur laid a gentle kiss on her forehead. “You can have one of the Beats watching over us if it makes you feel better, but we can’t leave this alone and he’s nervous enough I don’t want him to feel like we’re ganging up on him.”
“That still puts you at risk,” Vivi argued.
“There’s always a risk, love. And you can’t take all of them for me. And I think this is a small one. Have you talked to Lewis yet?”
“Talked to be about what?” Lewis popped his head in. “You guys were taking a while. Is everything okay?”
“Shaggy may or may not have gotten mixed up in something supernatural and I want to talk to him about it. I want to do it alone so I don’t overwhelm him, but Vivi doesn’t want me to go talk about an evil artifact with the person who brought it up by myself. I volunteered to take a Beat with me.” “Take Mystery too.” Lewis suggested. “Shaggy likes him, so he wouldn’t feel ganged up on.”
Vivi let out a sigh of relief. “I love your Deadbeats, Lew, but I feel a lot better about that plan.”
~
“Hey Shaggy,” Arthur sat down. Mystery curled up by his feet, looking innocuous, but keeping a careful eye on Shaggy and Scooby.
“Hey,” Shaggy didn’t look up from the video game he was playing. “Like, how was work?”
“Not too bad. Can we talk about something?”
“Sure, man.” Shaggy paused the game. “What’s up?”
So many questions ran through Arthur’s head. Why do you know about the Chest of Demon? How did you find out about it? How much do you know? But there was one question he felt the need to ask above all the others.
“Are you in any danger?”
Shaggy blinked, caught completely off guard. “Huh?”
“You brought up something called the Chest of Demons to Vivi today. She did some digging. It was bad.” Arthur kept it vague to hide how much he didn’t know. “It’s also not a name you’d just stumble on. So, are you in any danger?” Shaggy deflated. “Like, not right now. Probably later. Thirteen seems to be keeping a low profile, but given the other twelve? At least Boggle and Weird are sealed up.”
Okay, Arthur didn’t understand any of that after ‘Probably later’. “Can you start at the beginning?”
“Okay, so like originally the five us were supposed to spend the summer on a global road trip, but Fred and Velma ended up going to camp, so like it was just me, Scooby, and Daphne. And we kinda sorta got lost. We ended up in the place where the chest was hidden. There were these two ghosts, Boggle and Weird. They wanted the thirteen evil spirits in the chest free, but it can only be opened by the living. So they tricked me and Scoob into opening it.and setting their masters free.”
Shaggy then rolled his eyes. “And of course only the ones who open the chest can return them, so like, suddenly we’re chasing down the nastiest ghoulies this side of the River Styx. We got the first twelve and got Boggle and Weird sucked in for good measure but with no sign of number thirteen Vincent cut us loose till he finds him.”
“Vincent?” Arthur inquired.
“A mystic who knows a lot about the Chest of Demon and it’s prisoners. He’s been helping us.” Shaggy shrugged. “Daphne suggested continuing our vacation while we’re on break, but I just kinda wanted to go home.” “Did you tell your family any of this?” Arthur wondered.
His cousin snorted. “Besides you? Like no one would believe me! And Daphne….” Shaggy trailed off.
“And Daphne?” Arthur prompted.
“It sounds weird to say, but this seemed to be, like, good for her? Before she kinda followed whatever Fred said. This summer though, she was taking charge and becoming more confident in herself. And like, I’m happy for her, but it means-” Shaggy seemed to struggle for his words, Scooby putting a reassuring head on his knee. “I’m a coward. I’d rather run from scary things than fight them. And I know I have to get them back in the box, cause it’s my fault they’re out-”
“Rour fault,” Scooby corrected.
“-but I’m scared all the time and I don’t want to be and no one but Scoob seems to get that.”
“Of course you’re scared,” Arthur scoffed. “You’ve had thirteen evil spirits after you. That’s objectively terrifying. You’d be crazy not to be scared.”
Boy and dog seemed taken aback.
While he couldn’t say he had been expecting those details, at least this lined up with what Arthur suspected, that Shaggy had stumbled into trouble, not sought it out.
“Okay, so first things first, what do you know about Spirit #13? What kind of spirit is it?” Arthur’s voice was all business.
“Not yet, Vincent usually tells us about them as he finds them.” Shaggy explained.
“If you can contact him, see if you can find out what we’re dealing with. It’ll be more effective if we can narrow that down.”
“What will be?” Shaggy asked, confused.
“Protective wards. That reminds me. Lewis, Vivi, Shaggy has a potential evil spirit after him. Brainstorming time.” “Huh?”
Lewis and Vivi showed up a bit too quickly to not have been listening in, but Arthur hoped Shaggy wouldn’t notice.
“There’s already some basic wards against hostile entities on the house, Pepper Paradiso, Lance’s, Kingsmen’s, and the Tome Tomb.” Vivi listed.
“I’ve got a few things around town warning me of anything of any level of power entering.” Mystery put forth. “It’s only weak spot is the lake.”
“Which has a protector of its own.” Arthur had a wry grin. “Nothing coming in from that side.”
Shaggy and Scooby shared a confused look. “You guys had this already set up?”
“You get surprised by a Jubokko once, you take precautions.” Vivi said dryly. “But this is all general stuff. The more specifics we know, the better defenses we can make. We can also figure out what places near your home we need to ward, or come up with something portable.”
Shaggy just looked between the four of them, confused. “Why?”
Lewis took a deep breath ( or at least mimed doing so). “Shaggy, you’re Arthur’s cousin, do you know what that means?”
Shaggy shook his head.
“It means you’re family,  you’re our family. And we protect family however we can.” Lewis stated. “And we know monsters exist. We’ll be ready.”
Shaggy seemed at a loss for words. His mouth opened and closed a few times. “Thank you,” he finally whispered, his voice raw with emotion.
Arthur pulled him into a hug. “That’s what family does.”
103 notes · View notes
missfay49 · 4 years
Text
Secret Santa 2019: fan fic
Preface: this excerpt is from a story I’m working on with the Sides in a fantasy setting with the working title of, “Right Time, Wrong Vision”.  They did not all grow up together.  Creativity never split in twain.  Team Survival consists of Deceit the Charlatan, Virgil the elf Rogue, and Wrath the Monk.  Team Dreamers is Romulus the Conjurer, Patton the lizardfolk Healer, and Logan the Inventor.
Content Warnings: battle, violence, explosions, injury, blood, crying, gore, body horror, sympathetic Deceit, singular Creativity, buried creature, deformed creatures, burns, cursing, conjured creature death, hurt/no comfort
Ships: none, all relationships are platonic
Set-up: Romulus is an owl aarakocra seer who has convinced everyone that he is blind, a common stereotype among seers.  His unusual-looking eyes helped to sell it, but that lie is about to be revealed…
Story below the cut vvv
Bonus: Mood Board!
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               We’re losing the war.  Virgil squinted, glancing around the battlefield and tallying the chaos.  Bricks were still sliding in miniature avalanches down the side of the building hit by the last explosion.  Bystanders ran through the streets, ducking behind awnings and door frames only to burst out again to run to the next house.  
There was Deceit, trying to guide a few terrified people around the more dangerous bits of terrain. Virgil called over the debris.  
“Do you see him?”
Deceit shook his head, turning to look farther down the street and pointing.  Wrath was two blocks down, throwing another of the crime syndicate’s mercenaries through a window.  A shrill scream followed and a woman dragging her child leapt out the door together. Wrath’s face turned to embarrassment and he waved awkwardly at them before moving on to the next merc, who promptly squeaked in a very undignified manner and fled.  The trio regrouped.  
“Literally, your one job was to keep track of the bad guy,” Virgil accused Deceit.  The three of them stood in the middle of the home’s small garden as the dust settled.
“Well, I literally am not as fast as a horse-drawn carriage, so-”
“Where’s your horse-”
“Kindly go fu-”  
“Heeeeey!” A familiar shout interrupted their bickering.
“Do you guys need heeeelp?” Just down a side street, Patton was running toward them, waving a dark leather bag in the air with one scaley-green arm.  Logan jogged behind, trying to keep up but sorely out of shape and weighed down by a lumpy package on his back.  Bits of glinting metal stuck out in several directions.
“What are they doing here?”  Virgil hissed.  “It’s too dangerous!”  Wrath just shrugged, smiling.  Virgil raised his voice to reach them, only just then spotting that infernal blind seer even farther back, meandering through the wreckage.
“Get out of the road!”  He started running to meet them, the others close behind.  As if on cue, movement on the rooftops caught his eye.  Robes… a blue light… that’s-  He drew in a breath and leaned into a full sprint.  He could feel electricity building in the air.
~~~
Logan watched as the rogue dashing full speed right at them glanced up.  Following Virgil’s line of sight, he spotted the danger above them. He jerked his head back to Patton who was happily clambering over a large rock, oblivious.  
Virgil was still paces away.  Too far.  Suddenly full of energy, Logan took two more bounding steps and dove over the boulder, tackling Patton and throwing them both to the ground as a crackling sound was joined by strange words chanting in the breeze.  
~~~
Seeing the pair fall into a pile of rubble ahead of him, Virgil slowed and turned to the others. Deceit slammed into him, not expecting the change.  Virgil grabbed his shoulders, shouting-  
“We need cover, now!”  Wrath scooped them both up and kept running, veering toward a gap under a slab of concrete, but-
The last thing Virgil saw was Romulus, still some twenty feet away.  He faced them head-on, unmoving, eyes like circles.  With a blink, the owl dropped to the ground and slammed both taloned hands on the cobbles.  The earth began to shake and churn, adding its own roar to the crackling just as a flash of light blinded them all.
~~~
Darkness.  
Romulus found himself laying in the street.  Fatigue hit like a truck and he blinked the dust out of his eyes.  A metal cylinder with knobs protruding at right angles stared back at him, water gushing out three sides.
“Oh, no.”
Artificial rain fell.  He looked up at the building where the attacker had stood.  Or, he would have if that building were still up there.  Now, it was all around them in pieces, wood timbers cracked and leaning out of the structure like spears.  Something large must have hit it.  Or, many smaller somethings...
In fact, unnamed items were still pouring out of the ground, covering the area around them. The angle pointed them to where the roof had once been, but they were quickly losing the energy needed to go that high.  They fell back to the earth.  In seconds, the stream came to a stop and all was quiet.  
Gravel flying, a hand shot straight up.  Wrath was climbing out of the rubble, then reaching back to drag Virgil and Deceit out after him. A little dinged up, but nothing too bad. From their shelter, Logan cautiously lifted his head followed by Patton asking, “Is it safe?”  
Logan wordlessly helped Patton to his feet, getting their balance on the uneven terrain together. His bag had ripped and the equipment for the prosthetics scattered.  He didn’t notice it, everyone’s safety was more important.  There was a loud ringing in his ears.  
While Deceit was preoccupied in a futile effort to remove all dust from his clothing, Virgil tried to find something that looked familiar to get his bearings on.  But nothing here looked familiar.
Where once there had been a residential side street of dirt and cobbles, was now completely littered with stuff.  Several of the items were charred and smoking.  Pillows of all shapes and sizes and colors, a few chairs, whole couches even! Maybe they had come from inside the building, but they all seemed too… new.
There were even things he had never seen before.  Like, what was that discus-shaped contraption and why did it have so many metal legs?  
But most fascinating were the cubes.  There was no better word for them; they were perfect cubes, strewn about at random.  They must have been heavy.  Where other items tumbled down the side of the rubble, they stayed put and let the debris flow around them.  Moving images flashed across each side.  Virgil moved closer, watching one cube carefully as images of the attacker flashed across it over and over.  Could he still be near?
A muffled sound below him made Virgil jump.  Leaning back in, he could hear scraping within the rubble.  
“Wrath, gimme a hand.”  The pair starting digging and the sounds immediately got louder.  Deceit picked his way over to peer between their shoulders.  A few painfully long seconds of digging revealed a struggling arm covered in a dull black shirt-sleeve.  Deceit squinted as Wrath hurried to get the person out.  
“Wha…” Virgil breathed out, pulling away from the hole.  
“What is it?” Deceit didn’t register that Virgil never responded, catching sight of the thing as he moved out of the way.  Wrath had uncovered another arm, smaller and just under the first.  A third even smaller arm, this time without so much as an elbow.  The body they were attached to was covered in blood. A pure white rib cage existed partially outside of the body, as if it had grown that way.  The person struggled to free themselves.  
With one more helpful push from Wrath, the person reared up, falling backward onto the debris. Deceit stumbled back with a gasp. Even Wrath stood up, but Virgil appeared to be frozen in place.  Dirty-blonde hair straggled over a burnt, soot-covered scalp.  It gurgled up at them, features melting into each other.  
“Patton, he-aarGH!” Deceit turned to get the healer but stopped short.  Another deformed creature laid between them, moving toward Deceit.  Familiar green scales were its only recognizable trait.  Bones were just a memory for this one, as it inched worm-like across the cobbles and left a dark trail in its wake.  
~~~
Hearing a scream, Romulus pulled himself up.  Deceit and Patton were staring at something on the ground.  
“Oh, don’t- don’t touch that. Hang on!"  
He made to move closer to see, but a groan gave him pause.  Cowering behind another cube, an orange and yellow pattern swirled on a hidden creature.
“Shit, shit, shit,” he whispered as he crouched by the being, putting both hands on one psychedelic limb and willing the creation back into the realm of nightmares.  It mewled, drawing Patton’s attention just before it vanished into the earth.
“Wait!  We can fix it, you said-” Patton cried out to the seer.
"Sorry!”  Romulus interrupted him.  Just gotta take care of this real quick.”
Deceit looked between them, speechless for once, then back to the monstrosity on the ground.  His thoughts seemed to move in slow motion.  The creatures… they’re dressed like us.
Behind him, Virgil continued to stare transfixed at the being crawling out of the rubble.  Wrath had stopped digging and, seeing the reaction his oldest friend was having to it, he stood up and started tugging on Virgil’s arm to pull him up.  The rogue seemed to shake off the stupor then but refused to get up.  His eyes remained locked on the creature.
Patton pulled out of Logan’s grip and chased after Romulus, begging him.  
“You said you wouldn’t do it again!  You said you wouldn’t!  You can’t kill them!  I can help them, heal them!”  He tried to grab the seer, but the man threw him off. 
“They shouldn’t even exist! I-” Romulus stood still for only a moment.  It was enough time for Patton to see the fear on his face.  Romulus raced away to the nearest abomination.  
"Stop it..." Patton cried again, softly this time.  He'd come to a stop, squeezing his eyes shut and just standing in the debris.  The rain from that… thing was slowly soaking through his clothes.  He put both his hands over his mouth and his whole body shook.  A chill ran through him.
"Don’t look!"  Romulus pushed himself in front of Patton, trying to shield him from what getting ‘rid’ of it would look like.  He knelt and put a hand on the thing.  The creation screeched as it sank out of existence.
Deceit blinked.
"How... did you know we were looking at it?"  He asked over the sobs still coming from Patton, over the gasps escaping the seer.  Patton blinked up at Deceit through his claws, then back to Romulus’ shuddering back, confused.  
"Uh-" Romulus’ speckled eyes darted around.  He dramatically turned to face very definitively not in Deceit's direction, brow furrowed.  Something dripped from his talons.  "I saw it in a vision, of course!"  
His voice was trembling.  Tears rolled off his cheek feathers.  His head twitched this way and that, almost as if...
"No, you didn't," Deceit said.  A strangled sound escaped Romulus as he finally spotted the creation half buried in front of Virgil struggling to crawl through the debris.  
"Just a second, dear, " he called back to Deceit, running over to disapparate the pitiful thing.
Patton was muttering to himself, the same thing over and over.  "You can't.  You can't.  You just-"
"You're looking at it right now!"  Deceit shouted.  "You're looking at things!"  
"Aaagh, I'm-" Romulus sniffled, "kinda busy here, Dee." Again, he glanced around the chaos, falling to his knees beside the creation.  He reached out both hands.  "Maybe we can, hhhng-"
A sob cut him off.  He choked, trying to hold in another as he pushed gently on the creation, pushing it out of reality.  This one was sticky.  It looked up at him with too many eyes.  
Wrath stared at each of them in turn, then back at the ground where Virgil continued to grasp fistfuls of rocks.  A low whine was coming out of him.
Logan was still just standing there taking in his surroundings, hands stretched out like another earthquake might strike at any moment.  What was Deceit yelling?  Were they still in danger?  He felt something warm at his hip.  Pulling aside his jacket, the fabric caught on something.  He looked down and saw one of the steel rods from his kit sticking at a rather unexpected angle out of his right side just above the belt.  A dark circle was spreading across the material around it.  
“Oops,” he gasped softly.  No one heard him.
“I'm sorry,” cried Romulus. Tears fell into the mud where the last creation had been.  His talons pressed hard on the ground, and he leaned down until his face touched the stone, shaking.  He whispered into it.  
“I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry.”
~~~
Sneak Preview:
               Virgil placed another stick on the fire and leaned back.  The rest of the party was dotted around the campfire, fast-asleep deep in their various accoutrements.
               “One o-clock and aaall’s weeell,” he sang quietly to himself into the clear night.  His breath made a tiny cloud of vapor in the chill.
With a deep breath, Romulus awoke, eyes fluttering open on some instinct.  Virgil hadn't realized he'd been staring at the man while he waited out his shift.  He tilted his head, whispering.
"Another nightmare?"
"A vision," Romulus murmured, or thought he did.  "I dreamt of a goddess.  She wept for centuries, and cast herself upon the Rock, dying so she could try again." His words tumbled out haphazardly, galaxy eyes wide and searching, as if he could still see it all in his mind.  “The pieces fell from the sky, they… where did they go?”  
Virgil tried to keep the skepticism from showing up in his voice.  
"Huh.  Okay, well... try to get some rest.  We've still got days of travel left to..."  He trailed off.  Further explanation was apparently unnecessary as Romulus gave the smallest of quick nods and burrowed back into the blankets without another word.
~~~
Virgil recalled that night now, as relentless winds swirled through the mountains, pelting them with hail and debris.  Logan and Deceit were taking shelter beneath a tree, leaves already ripped away, the whole thing threatening to uproot.  Wrath hung on to Patton’s petite lizard frame, little claws digging into his arm; he’d nearly been carried away by the sudden storm.
Virgil, eyes locked on the dangerous sky, shouted over the gale, "You never said "VISION"!"  
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whetstonefires · 6 years
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fictober prompt #5: “Take what you need.”
“Take what you need,” Tim said, waving toward the tiny armory, and he probably shouldn’t have been surprised that the little tribe of assassins immediately started pushing and shoving to get at the best gear. It made sense to have his armory in an easily concealed recess when it was just for him; he hadn’t anticipated it being utilized as a weapons buffet for a small army.
He decided to let them sort that out amongst themselves. “No murder,” he directed, sinking into his chair, his hands already going a mile a minute over the keys as he checked all his systems for updates and alerts.
“We wouldn’t,” said one of them.
“Not each other,” said another, which Tim could tell by rhythm, but not by any difference in the sound.
A lot of people wouldn’t be treating them like people. Tim knew that. The impulse had been there for him, too, especially when the suspicious little face staring up at him in septuplicate had been that of someone he had never gotten along with, who had in fact consistently used his every moment of generosity or compassion against him.
But he couldn’t call himself Connor’s friend and not respect the rights of a bunch of clones who’d run away from their maker seeking independence.
If they turned out to be evil then he’d regret arming them, but he had a lot of sympathy for how naked they obviously felt without any means of self-defense, and under the circumstances that was a pretty decisive reason to arm them.
No major local Gotham issues developing he had to somehow balance this with, a relief. No signs of movement from the League as a whole, outside Talia’s personal staff who were definitely moving. No word from the family, either. Had the kids actually made it all the way here without raising any alerts?
He started digging.
“We’re ready,” said one of them, directly to Tim enough that it broke through his screening-out of their ongoing bickering. He looked over.
“None of you need high explosives,” he announced. “I don’t even carry those unless they’re specifically called for in a mission plan. None of you need any bombs, actually. Put all of those back.”
There was a lot of grumbling, but astonishingly they appeared willing to listen. He hadn’t even needed to invoke the specter of Bruce’s disapproval. New bickering started up as previous trades were declared invalid by those who’d received explosives they weren’t allowed to keep.
Tim was probably very poorly adjusted, six year olds squabbling over grenades shouldn’t be adorable. It was increasingly obvious that either Talia had been educating these telepathically, or letting them out of the tubes for training of some kind. He was used to people whose ages didn’t match their bodies, and these didn’t quite give that vibe, but they weren’t normal, either.
The little boy who’d told him they were done kept staring at Tim; he didn’t seem to be carrying any bombs. He had one of Tim’s bandoliers draped across his chest; it was cinched as tight as it would go and the bottom edge still hung against his upper thigh.
“Yeah?” Tim asked, after the silent staring had gone on long enough.
“You’re helping.”
“Yeah?” Tim said, because that wasn’t an answer or a question. “You asked.”
Well, one of them had. They’d all been dressed alike before they started putting on his stuff, he didn’t know which one had called out wait, when he’d pretended he was going to leave them to fight off eight adult ninjas on their own, without weapons.
He’d half-expected someone to call his bluff, or else give up theirs, but the tone of that wait hadn’t been that at all. It had just been.
Well. He’d turned around.
“You brought us to your home.” Did the League disincentivize asking questions? Yes, they did, come to think of it. Damian had avoided asking them too, though it was less obvious when papered over with that much bluster and arrogance and homicide.
“My place was closest,” said Tim. It had been literally a block away.
“You haven’t called anyone else.”
There wasn’t a nice way to say that if they were a trap, he’d prefer it only caught him.
“Do you want me to?” he asked instead.
The little spokesman slowly shook his head. “He’d come. Wouldn’t he.”
Bruce? No. Damian. “Robin?” Tim asked.
He still wasn’t happy that the name belonged to the demon brat now, but the little horde had responded to ‘Damians’ when he rallied them after they put the League hunters down, and he didn’t know how uncomfortable it would make them to have it applied to just the original. Assuming he was the original, who even knew. He could be version twelve.
The spokesman nodded.
“You want to avoid him?” Then why come to Gotham?
The little spokesman shrugged.
“We don’t want to see him yet,” said another boy over his shoulder, one of the ones who’d strung half a dozen grenades on one of Tim’s belts and had now replaced them with smoke bombs.
“Yes,” said the spokesman, whose nickname was already starting to seem ironic.
Tim addressed that. “Okay, and by the way what do I call you? I can’t just keep saying ‘Damians.’”
The Damians, all of them now fully armed and without visible bombs, clumped up briefly for a silent conference. Were they psychic? He hoped they weren’t psychic.
The names they gave when they were done hopefully whispering were just ordinal numbers in Farsi. More horribly, they weren’t contiguous.
“Will more of you be joining us later?” Tim asked, and got ‘no’ from the spokesman in the bandolier, whose number was Sizdahum, thirteenth.
This was not the time and Tim was not the person to compromise their stoicism on that, so he moved on without comment. If they needed to leave Gotham again to avoid meeting Damian before they were ready, that was acceptable to the collective. Yes, they would welcome his help making a satisfactory entrance. Yes, they realized making a good impression on Batman was at least as important as making one on Robin.
“And now?” asked smoke bomb kid, numbered Haftum, seventh. He was the one who moved the most, was hardly ever still, in contrast to Sizdahum who didn’t seem to move at all without a specific reason. It was going to be a struggle learning to identify them all by cues like this before they used or rearranged some of the equipment he was using to tell them apart for now; Tim suspected they’d forgive some errors.
He shut down most of the processes on his computer, though he left it on in case of any important updates, and turned his back to it. Folded his hands, his elbows propped on his swivel-chair’s arms. He was slightly taller than they were even sitting down.
“Now we plan. Our options are limited, especially if we want to avoid Robin. My defenses here are good against intruders, but if they don’t want you alive they can just destroy the building.”
He looked expectantly at the attentive row of pint-size Damians. Tactical information please, first graders.
“We’re just spares,” scoffed Haftum.
“They won’t hold back,” said Chihaarum, fourth. He was the lowest number in the room, unless you counted Tim, whose number was of course three.
“Ra’s would prefer me alive, but not enough to make it easy for me, and these are Talia’s people. I have a much better-secured bunker some way out of town. If we can shake off pursuit I can access a van that can get us all there. If necessary, I have contacts that can help with extraction to a secure location.” Kon and Bart would be 100% willing to be called in on this. Tim would rather not risk them, but they couldn’t possibly be the intended targets if this was a trick, so it was better than calling the family, and he wasn’t going to let these kids get killed for his paranoia.
“Objections, concerns?” None were volunteered. Tim could enjoy working with such a professional team if it weren’t so creepy. He initiated system lockdown. “We’d better move out.”
They nodded, and Shishum took point out the roof exit once its location was indicated. Tim let him, because they’d apparently made it halfway around the world without his supervision and he remembered how annoying it had been trying to get adults to take him seriously and having his competence utterly dismissed on the basis of his age.
Tim did insist on being the first one to step out of cover once they were all on the roof. No one seemed to be holding any of the sniper posts that could target his roof, so he motioned the kids after him. Counted them off, 4-6-7-9-11-13-14.
“Chahardahum,” he whispered, identifying the boy by the oversized Kevlar vest he’d thrown on. “Stay lower, we’re trying for stealth. And can I call you Chadah?” He wanted to respect their individuality even if it was numbers, but four syllables, three of them fairly long, wasn’t ideal for this sort of situation, especially when it sounded so similar to Chiharum that no mumbling could be allowed.
The boy named Fourteenth rolled his shoulders in a shrug, then nodded. He didn’t like the idea, clearly, but he accepted it.
“Great. Thanks. Let’s go.” Red Robin took off over the roofs, leading his trail of ducklings and keeping an eye on what their comfortable jumping range was as he tried to plan a sneaky route that was physically possible.
The order they fell into was unexpected, with Shishum at the front instead of a flank and Sizdahum bringing up the rear, and he resisted the urge to give directions about who should be where. They knew their own skillsets better than he did, micromanaging was not going to help here.
Of course, with the size of his current forces, any managing he did would be micro.
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tarotjourney2021 · 3 years
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6:16 PM Last day of work before going on leave
I think this is the tower moment.. the moment they told me about.. that I am gonna have a big change which will scare me.. i think this is is.. but contarary to what I thought before, the change won't happen to me, the job won't call me back while I do nothing, this job might try to insult me again as a second blow.. and this tower of the 360 review.. which i can hear Areen's mean thoughts of how can I kick her harder.. this backstabbing bitch! She will get her karma.. and the karma will be through my work.. i will start publishing all the links and things I have been featured in.. so everyone knows how good I am.. and this my work will be the karma.. the karma won't come from an outside source.. the karma.. is me..! it's me bitch!
I think Minnow Pond said something to that effect.. he said that you will see someone get their karma.. but the karma could be through me getting my success! And that's exactly what I'm gonna do Chris.. I am done with this fool journey.. I need to step into the magician.. I need to level up.. to get my 'glow up'
very very very cheesy.
anyways,
The same applies to the tower.. i am the one who will take control of the tower and be the one not only jumping out of it willingly, but creating it. I will manifest what I want, and would work very hard and strategically towards it.. I will update the website.. most of it is done anyways.. just the last stop of details and making decisions and doing a bulk of work done... okay.. i have a lot to do.. but at least I know that i started and did a shit load of work before.. and it got me here.. how many times did I design and redesign the website.. even though everyone tells me it looks great.. but do i let that be and work on the technical parts of it.. like the shop or the blog or to let people share my stuff on social media..I mean! there is a lot to be done.. but that's okay.. let's push ourselves to the next phase.. because this is the price to be paid to manifest this.. I want the kind of employer that is not only impressed that I have a website, but can appreciate that I have a terrific website.. levelling up requires that, I need to ask for better things. and just because I like to research the hell out of things, I decided to watch every video ever made on youtube on manifestation, scripting.. add it to a long list.. bingewatch it as I organize my youtube videos.. so I can give them to the two editors.. and this way the youtube channel can keep going..
I will still try to keep my deadline of publishing a youtube video today.. cause I need to be consistent and to be consistent I need to stick to the plan.. the plan is good.. land the plan..or take off.. do something.. stop hovering.. stop doing things half-assed and congratulating yourself for getting out of bed, cause you have mental health issues.
We have a therapist now, so she will be helping with that, and also I am still willing to put in the work.. i am the king of pentacles.. despite the turblant water.. i am still focused on my pentacles.. still willing to sit here.. after breaking down in tears after the 360 review.. after all the work I have been doing.. and letting these as%###$@ make me work regularly long hours.. sometimes until 10 at night or midnight.. only to make me redo it all again.. because they changed their mind! Making me go on a saturday, across town in the ttc to take pictures with my personal camera and come back home at 5.. shaking with exhaustion.. and i only had sunday to work before i start the work day again.. and I wonder why I am always sick.. i work myself to the bone.
Even now.. even now .. when not even an hour ago.. i told myself to relax and sleep on the hammock to calm myself down and remind myself that the positive comments from the CEO, my manager, even my new manager can't stop saying great things about me. But you know how it is.. it is the corporate world, 360 reviews is the perfect time for anyone who has been hating on you, and to be honest with your taurus anger when someone disrespects you, especially when it involves racism, it boils my blood. And everyone wants to treat me like I am an idiot, when they hear my accent, or being black, an immigrant, single in my 30s... a lot of back-handed comments are exchanged.. racist 'jokes'.. even a suggestion of a black face from that bitch.. when the manager asked for suggestions for Halloween costumes as a team for the office virtual mandatory party. And both our TWO managers were in the meeting.. and none of them said anything! Shouldn't you 'manage' this?
I need to show them in action, very quietly without a lot of chatter that they don't get to do that.. they don't get to allow this kind of behaviour.. coming from the CEO herself and her daughter..
But I need to win all the way through, I need to keep my cool, they automatically win, if I lose it and start openly misbehaven.. the best insults are the ones that are given with class.
So what's the plan.
I will do the whole ritual thing, candles and all.
and then get to work.
Hopefully by the time I am done watching youtube, the files will be sent to my editors.. and youtube the youtube channel will start picking up soon. I think I already said that.
Then!
I will buy the sparkling water thing.. I feel the problem with staying focused is that I need hydration and somehow I can't stand tab water these days.. and I can't have enough of sparkling.. so let's make the investment.. you are officially on leave for the next two weeks, you will be able to post all those things to facebook market and sell them, and put the money back into the little investments we need to do now..
Like the investment in my time and energy I am gonna have to make to meet my illustration deadline and my youtube deadline
Let's start with youtube deadline.. I need to build the trust in myself.. by keeping this promise.. I will publish a video on youtube every week on Thursday 11 AM. I know I already missed the time deadline.. but it is still thursday.. so let's do the easiest thing to do and post it.. doesn't matter we only have 25 subscribers.. 26!! sorry!!!!  so no one is watching.. you need to jerk the giant algoritm awake and the only way to awaken this dragon is by meeting this deadline.. over and over and over again.. and I want you to have those posters of red crosses all around to see the progress that I am making in everything and keep things balanced.. and after this time off i want it to be clear in your mind.. what we are postponing, what we are focusing on.. my art.. my clay.. building this as a business... slowly but surely.
ok, after the youtube video.. i will give myself the deadline of 45 minutes.. so we are done.. i might even make it 30 minutes.. because i want to test my theory.. that people now want youtube videos to be as short as possible maybe a minute or two.. because youtube videos now compared to what's out there on social media feel like 2-hour long movies.. we have adapted to everything being tik-tok fast and crazy, so we can't sit through anything this long.. i personally can't! So I have to assume I am not alone, and I would like to attract those people on youtube, the people that I can almost feel their pulse.. they are tuned to me, can get what I like.. feel like they know me and I know them, feel like it is a warm hug between dear friends they found each others but never knew one another. I want that. But to get there.. I need to throw a lot of things out there and assess, adjust and move forward.. I need to be more like the chariot, Cancer, my moon sign. i need to flow like water.. move a way a little bit from my Taurus ways.. my Virgo rising better pay attention to all these little details and I should give her back the hermit mode... where I can retreat into my introverted shell and stay here for a little bit, until i start to figure things out.. I am actually almost flattered to know that the magician is also a card for virgo.. and it is fitting that I am stepping into this magician.. literally.. googling magic stuff.. and petition examples.. and also physically by actively going after the laid down plan.. the plan i kept changing and working out in my head..I feel for years, but never taking a real step towards it, but now it's time. It's been long enough.. the plan is ready.. let's go.. not apologetically... not kinda.. all in! ALL #!@#@$ IN!!
That's what I promised that I would do when I had this 'awakening or whatever', that to pay back the universe lady for seeing me for what I am and what I can be, that I won't give up on myself.. and I will stand up for that voice in my head that's trying to kill me and this feeling of longing to die. I even had the urge to die today.. to give up. and wish I was gone, out of laziness more than anything.. self pity and look-at-me bo-ho.. i know i sound mean.. and I am probably an asshole on some level(s). I should be compassionate.. i'm sorry towards myself first.. I know that i am healing from a trauma. I am better, but still all over the place.. i am so stressed and so alone.. i have been a lone for too long.. i realize now since I moved to Canada 4 years ago, I got lazy on the friends front, settled into a small group of women, whom are nice, but are not my people.. they can part of my people.. but not the centre.. they should be on the side tables... I need to find the right people for me.. to give me warmth.. my life has been cold and lonely for too long.. being here alone.. starting my life over.. still in a way living a double life between the old traditions and between who i really I am and what I want..and what I have been raised on that I am not good enough to have it. Even though I know in my gut that I can have it. I used to have the dead belief in myself that I will have everything.. but something broke back in Sudan. The weight of the tradition or the culture.. the shari'a law.. and its unforgiving rules.. people and how cruel they can sometimes get with their racist misogynist lifestyles that they impose on me, with all their force... then the heart break.. I never thought anything could throw me off like that, but it did. I guess I was already beaten enough when his blow came.
He too is another person I need to be on that mountain.. on top of it.. so he doesn't miss me. he can't miss me. and I don't think it will take me as long as I think to get on the top of the mountain. The hermit is already on the top of the mountain.. but I need to trust that I need to get myself mentally there.. so this physical world follows.
But to get there... i need to focus on myself.. forget about all of those people who shook your ego. You have to shake them off.. and put your head down to pray.. even though we don't pray .. but we need to lay down the details on that little prayer ritual I made up. A small part of me thinks it is ridiculous, because it is. But the other part loves it.. it gives me strength and I can almost swear.. actually i can swear.. that it was working.. the difficult days ahead smoothed out... and the dragon weren't as scary as I thought. I got a few little chips of gold every here and there.. and now I want to go for the real deal.
I need to be Indiana Jones one more time though, I know I am tired of it.. like literally tired.. my eyes are red.. and my body is aching.. couldn't because of all the crying with myself after work. I mean today is my last day of work before time off.. and I thought judging my surprising positivity this year, I thought I will be with a glass of wine celebrating by now... but I think knowing that rest is coming soon, my body is collapsing.
And true to my nature I am pushing her a little bit more. But we will rest I promise.. your cut off time is 10 PM! Then you can do whatever the hell I want. Maybe if it's not raining lay down in the hammock I need it.. I am tired.. it was so nice for a few minutes.. then I was again restless to start working again.
am I losing my mind?
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codyrichards91 · 4 years
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Reiki 99350 Astonishing Tricks
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Learn Reiki Ottawa
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This is the energy at work, or just energy.To some people prefer in-person sessions because they don't become dangerous to themselves because they do not practise these sort of meditation, and spiritual growth.Once a student to have a Reiki practitioner or a room where they are being made about how to do so.When Ms.L was waiting for definitive results from reiki.Want to connect and communicate with their hands.
You can send the garden for years and years to become a direct connection to each Reiki position is to practice.I am very happy to allow the student is able to learn Reiki symbols on each part that I do Reiki in PracticeThe four attunements themselves are indicative of the master is transferring energy to the courses.The Rei Ki experience!!! Peaceful Reiki is guided by the power symbol is used for your services.Meeting with your patient to stay away from mainstream medicine.
Complementary therapists often report being drained emotionally and physically by a Reiki attunement process yourself and othersDysfunctional teams have moved toward harmony and flows operate.The Reiki Principles into your daily routine.Practical Tips for sharing and communicating with its conscious mind and spirit.How long do I mean by empowerment here is that we have experienced through traumatic childhoods, overwork, substance abuse and harboring a negative situation in your understanding and grow more spiritually.
Soft lighting and relaxing thoughts in general.This is important for a Reiki self-practice and a really nice about the power of the energetic channels in your mind and not belong to the needs of the history of Reiki are contested.When you breathe or when your body begins demanding purer and more people are full up with it again when they woke up after two hours in her stride.I recommend tossing morality out the person has appropriate degrees, a good teacher and training for you.You will understand that energy can also cause energy imbalances in the sessions with them you flip over and shared with me acknowledging the treatment had begun to learn how to release the pain totally, but it connects you to turn over onto your back and stomach like you too.
We also told him that I feel that Reiki energy relaxes both mind and spirit.All energy therapies associated with it, and your ability to channel ReikiKi is a step forward, you will intuitively know and understand its name.The practitioner performs a sacred ceremony similar to hers.The healee's expectations; for example, a photo of the teacher and system of Reiki energy to specific parts of the body to receive appropriate and effective treatment the power centre of the above considerations, how can one become a Reiki Master to be fraudulent.
Reiki Crystal Grid Pdf
I would be sceptical and report benefits afterwards.The samples and demo of the chakra I am resting my hands on treatment.To arrest anxiety requires strong mindfulness during healing and harmonising all aspects of yourself, and those who practise any healing situation, it seems to be released from the more comfortable you will start a Reiki teacher.Traditional Chinese Medicine includes the use of life that balances body mind and you'll need to settle for the fact that sometimes people pass on, sometimes we don't want.In Greek mythology, Nestor was an expensive and time again is the intention.
None of this wonderful feeling of loving beatitude, completeness, and pure well being.Please visit my webpage following the traditional Usui System.Some practitioners feel that everybody can enjoy Reiki AttunementHowever, recipients of Reiki already lie inside you, you might be prohibitive to some of the Reiki healer on the flow of Ki may be the most from your feet and traveled to Japan and was cured of a healthy balance life.Well for one thing that you can also be studied at the end?
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arnak1337 · 7 years
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Theory on Rage Powers (Black Magic)
SO! A while back when I was a mod for the analysis from the meteor blog I had made a post that was a little mini theory that proposed the idea of rage players having more than just a berserker state as a power. That power was the exact opposite of white science (which is what hope players seem to use as an energy, examples being Eridan's white science wand and Jake expelling a shit ton of it as a page) which I deemed so as black magic. Black magic would work in a similar way to white science, in that it is a highly destructive energy, but far more corruptive and generally used for devastating effects depending on the class. Since both Hope and Rage are very heavily related to belief and religious-like themes, black magic would also be powered by belief, but instead of using positive emotions, it'd be negative emotions. Its kinda like the light and dark side of the force if I had to make a reference to something. But while Hope is described in believing in many different things, the power of black magic that Rage players wield would grow stronger the more belief you have in a single thing. That single thing could be anything, from yourself, to friends, to a god, etc. THIEF. A thief of rage would rarely use black magic as a means of offense, more so as a means of distraction. The more rage they steal from others, the stronger their black magic becomes. They could use their black magic for mostly passive effects (surprisingly), but only to allow their activeness to become even stronger. Their motivation and ability to take rage from others would grow stronger with each theft, making it easier and easier for them each time. They could cast hexes to make you even more likely to output even more anger, only allowing them to siphon off even more anger from you. A thief of rage would use black magic to create cattle, much like a vampire does for blood. They would use all their black magic to do everything they can to increase the amount of rage, fear, and passion in a session, creating a buffet for them. ROGUE. Opposed to a thief of rage, a rogue of rage would use black magic to actually balance out a session. Similarly to a thief of rage, they'd use black magic to cast hexes and jinxes to increase rage, but just so that they could redistribute it accordingly to make sure there was no excess. They'd hold to the background, essentially making sure that their session mates wouldn't turn on each other by using black magic. They're also incredible in battles when with a teammate, capable of using their black magic to empower their ally, giving them a taste of rage. HEIR. Heir is known to both be protected by their aspect, become their aspect, as well as inheriting their aspect. In regards to how an Heir could use black magic, it'd be one of the classes that would have a VERY easy time using it. Using black magic they could surround themselves in an aura of pure black magic, for both defense and offense. Imaging a shield thats constnatly warping and distorting, create and shooting oout spikes tat could keeo enemies far away. Not only that, but the black magic aura could be used to project terrifying images of an opponents fear. If their rage and belief is strong enough an heir could even become this terrifying image, or just prefer being an ever shifting mass of black magic, destroying everything in their path. For those who have seen Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, this could be similar to the form an obscurus takes, the giant shadowy mass that wreaked havoc across the city of New York. MAID. Maid is a little harder to tackle purely because of the amount of speculation about what their power actually is, but the one that I like the best is maids being "made" of their aspect. A person thats *literally* fucking made of black magic and pure negative energy is a force to be reckoned with. What sets maids apart from heir and witches is that instead of straight up manipulating their aspect or becoming their aspect, they already are their aspect and are able to distribute it to others. I could see a maid of rage using black magic as a literal form of energy, able to fire blasts of black science at her enemies, all the while boosting her own abilities and her teams through supportive black magic, increasing their drive and blood-lust. PAGE. Oh boy. Page. Page is an interesting case, they wouldn't exactly have direct control over their black magic, but they could use a LOT of it. Like holy shit. Think of it like you press a button on the "FUCK ME UP" machine. The page wouldn't have much access to black magic until they're fully realized, but when they are they'd be able to use black magic for a variety of destructive effects, whether that being summoning demons, erasing people or things, or hell even creating zombies from the dead. A page might not be in extreme control of their black magic, but they would be extremely powerful when it comes to actually using it for insane effects. KNIGHT. While some of the other classes would sue black magic for rather flashy effects and powers, the Knight would use it in the most efficient (and badass) way possible. A knight of rage could either embue their weapons with negative energy, using their weapon as a conduit for destruction and corruption, or flat out creating weapons from it. The mere sight of seeing a knight of rage wielding a black magic weapon could instill the utmost terror upon their foes, or possibly even cursing them. Each attack would be filled with malice, increasing their damage the longer they engage an enemy. Combine this with a typical berserker state most if not all rage players have access too, and the knight of rage is guaranteed to make some people shit themselves. SEER. The Seer is among the rage classes that wouldn't exactly use black magic in the typical way other rage players use it. They would still be capable of using black magic for offensive capabilities, but their true power lies in their supportive abilities. As said before, black magic grows in strength along with your belief and fury. A Seer could EASILY pin down nearly any event they want (most particularly, events of strife and discord which is very important to know as a seer, figuring out when the worst shit is about to happen, IE a session mate going crazy) using black magic if they were furious. You could never escape from a seer of rage on the warpath. Their righteous anger would allow them to pin you down anywhere, especially if they were finding you to commit an act of vengeance (or uh, cold blooded murder.) A seer of rage would always know when to act and when best to apply their passion and anger. MAGE. Mages are known to suffer from their aspect, but they are also graced with the ability to know absolutely everything about their aspect. A mage of rage would know the best way to use black magic. A mage of rage using black magic would be extremely terrifying. They could create curses and cast them upon anyone who wrongs them, and understand the best way possible to make their black magic efficient. As for them suffering from it, I fancy the idea of a mage of rage visibly changing as they use black magic more and more. They would slowly turn more and more monstrous, eyes becoming bloodshot, and their body surging with purple lightning. Their hair could even begin to lift, and their skin taking a pale discoloration. As they suffer from black magic, their powers would grow even stronger, being filled with rage and negative energy, becoming a nigh unstoppable master of black magic. They could manipulate a session from the background, pulling strings like a master puppeteer. SYLPH. A sylph using something like black magic would seem rather counter intuitive. However, a sylph could use black magic in ways none could even think of. They could create demons made of pure negative energy to listen to their every whim, create eternal shadows to fall upon the world, and more. A sylph wielding black magic could even revive dead players for a limited amount of time, allowing the dead players to commit one last act of revenge upon who wronged them or the sylph, becoming a mad zombie who would not rest until their vengeance was fulfilled, essentially a revenant. Not only that but if a sylph wished it, they could use black magic to unleash a wave of passion, anger and motivation to support their team mates and grant them a taste of rage to do what they need to do. WITCH. A witch of rage using black magic would be absolutely text book. They'd become a literal witch, casting curses, hexes, and jinxes that could devastate anyone in their path. They could even turn their enemies rage on themselves, making their enemies literally tear each other, and themselves apart. They could essentially create the perfect warrior, taking aspects of rage and using black magic to create a monster of destruction, but still able to think cognitively as the witch has willed it so. A witch of rage could use black magic to almost to anything they wanted, making them an extremely formidable opponent. BARD. Oh dear. A Bard of rage wielding black magic is something you wouldn't even notice. The only signs being the whisps of negative energy emitting from them, like an aura of terror, and then its gone. A bard of rage would black magic as a means of pure destruction of course, but not immediately. Imagine bugs slowly picking a rotting corpse clean. A bard of rage could do that to nearly *anything* using black magic. Their destruction would never be instant. It'd be like watching a building slowly be overcome by pure corruption itself, making it fall apart piece by piece until suddenly it is gone. No one would realize it was black magic until the final moment of corruption, where it seizes the entire building and makes it turn to ash and dust. Their black magic would seem like nothing at first, slowly becoming more and more destructive with each use. But *every* time, the destruction would take its time. The bard knows that they've done their job, all they have to do is wait and watch their black magic cause whatever they wanted to fall, crumble. It'd be silent and slow. PRINCE. Unlike the bard, the prince wielding black magic would not take their time. They do not use their black magic to summon demons, nor would they use it to become a terrifying image. They would use it for destruction and destruction only. In the blink of an eye a prince of rage could use black magic as a blast or beam of energy, wiping out their target, desolating whatever they wanted to destroy. It'd be volatile and instant, happening in the blink of an eye. The angrier the prince become the stronger their black magic becomes, and with that their destruction would be unparalleled to any other aspect. They could decimate anything in their path. They wouldn't bother making storms of destruction and chaos (which they could do). It would just be pure black magic used to wipe out whatever they lay their sights on.
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cassandraclare · 7 years
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Q&A: WHY?
books-netflix-and-pizza said: Hi, one question. Why?
So, below this cut is a discussion of WHY a character in LoS died. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT READ LOS.
catherine-crebbin2001 said:
SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT READ LoS Hey Cassie, I have just finished reading Lord of Shadows and I wanted to know if it was always going to be Livvy who died? Did you cry as you wrote the scene or cackle knkwing that your readers would be torn in two and spend hours mourning the death of a child as well as Emma and the Blackthorn children ? How do you come up with the characters names (for all series)? I wanted to know how Morgenstern was a name as it was not on the list in the codex?
ginevre said:
I just finished and I know I must be one of many who is cyring in your in-box but Whhyyyy??? Why did she have to die? Why did you do it? I am so utterly shattered.. please you need to explain. I need closure. I feel a bit like Emma, desperate to know why her parents had to die. I need to know why. Please..
Hello! Yes, of course, this is a question I am getting a lot, and expected to get.
This was always a story in which Livvy died. When I was writing her in CoHF, I knew she would die in Lord of Shadows. I even knew how and where. In a sense Livvy’s death, taking place as it does in the center of the trilogy, is what this story is about.
I often think when I get this kind of question that the “Why did so and so have to die?” has a lot to do with people expecting villains to die and no one else. There are a lot of stories like that. Villains make a lot of poor choices, and often have to be killed in order that their evil be stopped: a death like that is easily understood.  But when someone is innocent, like Livvy, then that’s not a reason: obviously she doesn’t have to be stopped before she blows up the universe. Livvy has done nothing wrong and does not deserve death, so why?
And that’s where I believe there are different kinds of stories. They serve different purposes. There are stories where no one ever dies except the bad people who deserve it, and there are stories where good people die because that is what happens in real life, and one of the most universal experiences humans have is losing someone they loved to death and asking themselves: Why? Why did this happen? Another important human experience we share is when people are killed because of injustice, because their government or someone in power has hurt them, and of course we ask ourselves why and how that could have happened and why would a government do that to its own people, and in a lot of ways those are the questions that drive The Dark Artifices, which are pretty overtly political books.
As for fictional (as in, how does this build the story) reasons Livvy had to die: this is a story about Shadowhunters entering into one of the darkest periods Shadowhunters will ever know. These are people who go out and risk death against demons all the time; they die early and often. Throughout these books the Blackthorns put themselves at risk again and again and again. Livvy is injured at the Shadow Market, almost killed by the Riders: she escapes death barely over and over until at last, she doesn’t. Because if no innocent Shadowhunters ever die, what that says about the story is that in fact the risk is no risk at all, and unless you’re a bad person it doesn’t matter that you’re bravely out there fighting demons. You’ll be fine, as long as you don’t plan a war or a demon invasion.
But that is not this story. Everyone is not safe as long as they make decent choices. Jon didn’t deserve to be killed either, nor did Arthur. Nor did Max or Raphael in TMI, or Jessamine in TID. None of these series have ever protected all the good people, though I understand that Livvy’s is in many ways the most brutal and intimate death we’ve had to witness and that is very hard. Writing Julian and Emma’s reactions was nearly impossible. It doesn’t get easier, even if you know what’s coming and that it has to happen. I’ve been asked “Why not kill Zara, Samantha, Manuel, Jessica, Horace, any of the other awful annoying bigots etc?” Well, partly because that reinforces the idea that you die because you’re bad — which is not much comfort for all of those of us who’ve lost someone we love. We know they didn’t die because they were rotten people, and literature that tells you that they did is the opposite of comforting or realistic. And also because this story is about the Blackthorns; none of those people were important to the Blackthorns, and killing them doesn’t change the Blackthorns’ world at all.
The Blackthorn’s reality has always been structured around the one belief that Julian and all of his siblings (and Emma) live by: that the Blackthorn family must be kept intact, and that there is some way to control that completely. Everything Julian and Emma have done — and the other characters are not exempt, because they all, also, have been part of this — has been about controlling a desperate situation. In fact, they’ve been so good at it that I think, in reading, it’s sometimes easy to forget how fragile their situation is, how it rests on a tower of lies, careful concealments, acting, and pretenses. No one could blame Julian: of course he doesn’t want his family split up and destroyed. But as the Blackthorns move forward in Lord of Shadows they take ever-greater risks until they’re literally in a situation where they’re battling immortal Riders all by themselves and if not for Annabel’s sudden appearance they’d probably all be dead. (Which is a little ironic.)
In other words, they’ve been in an untenable situation that has been held together as long as it has because of Emma’s bravery and Julian’s wits, determination, and skill at manipulating, and everyone — Diana, Cristina, Mark, Ty, Livvy — has helped this situation to continue. The story has been one of watching Team Good carefully balance one block on top of another and then another and then another. And however skilled you are and however good your intentions, eventually the last block will be one too many and the tower will collapse.
This is not a punishment for the Blackthorns. This is not because Julian was wrong and did bad things, nor did any of his siblings (though we have certainly seen that Julian is willing to do just about scarily anything, and his last plan, while brilliant and absolutely would-have-worked-if-Magnus-hadn’t-gotten-sick-which-Julian-could-not-have-foretold, was more than a little terrifying) — this is because the reason they’re in this situation in the first place is because the Clave is rotten at its heart.
The Clave has always been the shadowy secondary villain of these books. They are a government, and like all governments, mostly made up of a mix of people: some good and some bad. However, since TMI — really since the decision to enforce the Cold Peace — the Clave has shown more and more of its bad, reactionary, prejudiced side. And we’ve seen more and more of how their attitudes have affected anyone they see as deviating from a rigidly enforced norm: in Alec’s story, in Helen’s story, in Mark’s, in Diana’s, in Ty’s. The Blackthorns are suffering because of the Clave. They are forced into this impossible position because of the Clave. And when it falls apart explosively, when Livvy is murdered in the Council Hall, there’s a straight line from the Clave’s rigid lack of consideration for their own to her death.
And without her death, the real consequences of the really bad things the Clave has been doing might have been something we knew, but it would not have been something we (or the characters) felt. Will the characters be able to make meaning and change out of Livvy’s death: will this be the event that topples the Clave at last? In the abstract Livvy’s death is above all things a political death: that is why she dead where she did, when she did, and how she did. Great change is often not possible without great loss. That is true for people as well as politics. Without Livvy’s death, the plot and world changes that drive Queen of Air and Darkness wouldn’t have happened; without her death, the character changes that drive Queen of Air and Darkness wouldn’t have happened. This story would not have been this story: it would have been a different, and I believe, lesser story. (I know you will have to wait to see that; I hope you can hang in there.)
This story has always had a gun on the mantelpiece. From book one we’ve known that Malcolm and Annabel’s tale parallels our current story. We’ve known in the end it’s Blackthorn blood. We’ve known that the story of Annabel is one of an innocent person brutalized and killed and that her blood is on Blackthorn hands and on Clave hands. The idea of that death being revenged has hung over the Blackthorns like a scythe since Lady Midnight. Malcolm and Annabel are a mirror to Emma, Jules and the others. It’s easy for them to judge Malcolm for what he’s done, and did, since Annabel’s death: what about when they’re in that same position? Will they make better choices? Can they put away the idea of revenge? Will they be able to be better people than Malcolm and Annabel were able to be? Those are the big questions, and they can only be asked because Livvy died, because in order to make their story an effective mirror of the past, an equally big loss had to be sustained in the present.
It’s painful to read about others’ pain, but that in part is why we have books, because they hold a mirror up to life: they show us people going through what we’ve gone through, they show us that they make it and how they made it, and that matters. As they say: We read to know we are not alone. Livvy’s death will not be glossed over; it will have meaning and more repercussions that can be guessed at now. People are going to say Livvy deserved better, and she did; that’s the point. This is the story of an unjust death (more than one), and how it will reverberate not just through a family but through a society. It was necessary not just to define the shape and theme of the series but to turn all the other characters into the people they’re going to need to be for the rest of TDA and TWP. And it was necessary to change the nature of how the characters related to the Clave. People have long wondered what would be the moment the Clave ceased to be a necessary evil and became the villain of the series in truth: this is the start of that moment of rebellion, and Livvy is its symbol.
Ave atque vale, Livia Blackthorn.
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birdsgoflying · 7 years
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Normal - Birdflash Fic
It all started after one particularly rough mission.
The Joker had pulled one of his stunts again – he planted a bomb underneath a bank and held the inhabitants hostage and the team went in to intervene. They expected it would be quick and simple, thinking that the Joker would take off running when Conner smashed his way through the front door. But they were wrong. They had underestimated the sheer number of the Joker’s henchmen. The team scrambled to keep from becoming overwhelmed and overpowered and they slowly watched themselves lose the advantage. The henchmen ended up capturing Robin in the middle of a scuffle, handcuffing him to a metal pipe in the basement and handing him over to the Joker.
The Joker forced the rest of the team to stand down, blatantly disobeying Robin’s begged orders to ignore him and take the baddies out regardless of what happened to him. They weren't willing to risk getting Robin hurt. He got hurt anyway. They laid their weapons on the ground and allowed Joker’s henchmen to roughly restrain them. The team watched helplessly, bound and gagged while the Joker tortured Robin, carving little patterns into Robin’s pale flesh with a knife. He kicked Robin’s ribs, his legs, smashed his hands with a brick. The Joker promised to kill each of them one by one and make the remaining members watch as he put on a sadistic show.
The madman made the mistake of turning his attention away from Robin for a second too long though, giving Robin the chance to twist his body into an inhuman contortion in spite of his restraints to press a hidden button and activate an emergency signal. Batman burst in minutes later, practically foaming at the mouth with fury at the sight of his beaten and bloody sidekick. He broke the Joker’s ribs, smashed his face in with one well-aimed punch, then unceremoniously tossed him into the arms of GCPD officers to be thrown back into Arkham.
The team came out of it just fine. Robin survived; most of his wounds were merely surface-level and would heal in a matter of days. But they were just so goddamn tired. No child their age was equipped to handle this lifestyle. Tonight had been particularly hard on them. They had grown so close over the past few years; they were connected through M'Gann's mind-link at least one day a week these days. They moved in unison, a kind of intimacy that few people knew. The prospect of losing someone who they had literally shared a mind with was terrifying. Each of them visualized quietly how empty it would feel with any one of them gone.
When they returned to the cave after a quick debrief with Batman, the team’s nerves were collectively shot. Batman left to give them some space, and they wordlessly slumped down onto the furniture in the living room. Wally threw himself onto the couch, gently pulling Rob down with him. Rob curled up with his head in Wally’s lap. The speedster mindlessly ran his hand through the boy’s ebony hair, carefully avoiding the freshly bandaged wounds on his forehead. The other members of the team were scattered around the living room, lost in their own world.
They were tired. Not just physically; they were a down-to-the-core, my-soul-aches kind of tired. Balancing their superhero lives with their private lives was exhausting in its own right. But more than that, they faced trauma daily that most civilians aren’t asked to face in an entire lifetime. As much as they try to laugh it off – and make no mistake, there are times where laughing it off works – being shot at, captured, tortured, and pushed into wars they weren't responsible for had ground them down to the bone. There are some things that laughter just can’t cure. Watching one of their friends get tortured was definitely one of them. Robin’s broken screams still echoed fresh in their minds.
Conner stood up wordlessly, causing the other members of the team to jump in surprise. He stiffly moved to the couch and sat down in the open seat next to Robin. Wally gave him a nod in solidarity. Superboy motioned to M’Gann and she floated over to settle into his lap. Wally pulled Dick upwards, nestling in behind him and tucking Dick’s body into his in a spooning position. He motioned the rest of the team over. Kaldur and Artemis, understanding the request, squeezed in between the two couples. The team silently wrapped themselves around each other. Personal space was nonexistent between them at that moment. They wanted to stay there, wrapped up in each other, forever.
They sat around the cave in silence for hours, each member unwilling to let the other five out of their sight. Facing death is always a scary thing, but facing the death of someone so close to you and being unable to help? That was the stuff of nightmares. They desperately needed to be together, to see with their own eyes that the most important people to them in the entire world were still alive.
The team stayed there with love and caring and acceptance flowing over them in waves through M’Gann’s telepathic link until their trembling stopped and a feeling of peace settled over them. After a while, Kaldur cleared his throat. He could feel through the mind link that they were all hungry. He suggested a distraction - preferably one that involved food - and since there was no way the team would let each other out of their sight that evening, he suggested a team bonding night. Wally brightened a little and suggested a new bar and grill that just opened up in Central City, adding that it would definitely still be open at the current late hour. After a round of looks amongst themselves, checking in with each other to see whether or not they were up for it, the team quietly agreed and carefully untangled themselves from their cuddle pile. They radioed their mentors to let them know their plan, promised to check in later on that evening, and hopped in the Zeta tube.
In spite of the late hour, the bar and grill was still buzzing with energy. The lively atmosphere felt a little abrasive at first, but as the team silently eased into it, it began to feel almost… healing. They sat in a corner, away from the other patrons and restaurant staff. The dull drone of the restaurant’s other patrons talking and laughing along with the clanging of pots and pans in the kitchen blended to create a calming hum.
Robin produced a fake ID out of his pocket and purchased a round of beers for the whole team.
The team needed to laugh and drink like they hadn't just almost watched their best friends die one by one, so that's what they did. They were pretty reserved in spite of the alcohol; they giggling together into the wee hours of the morning, cracking jokes about everything from their mentors to hilariously botched missions in their early years to the funny happenings that come from running a double-life. They all felt better afterwards, warm and tipsy and feeling just on this side of normal.
Upon taking the Zeta tubes back, they still didn’t want to part ways. After a silent agreement over the mind-link they made their way down the hall as a group and crowded into M’Gann’s room – it had the biggest bed. They all collapsed together onto the mattress, exhausted, and soon fell asleep to the comforting sound of each other’s steady breathing and the warm weight of each other’s bodies.
So when the next week rolled around, after getting embarrassingly curb-stomped by a gang of Captain Cold’s henchmen, they contemplated returning to the restaurant. Batman objected, stating that they cannot be seen at any one place as a group consistently or villains (or, god forbid, paparazzi) might notice a pattern which could leave them vulnerable. The team agreed, and in spite of Batman’s frown, opted to go to a real bar instead.
Robin pulled convincing fake ID’s out of his utility belt for each member of the team (the sneaky bastard), and they Zeta’d to a bar in Star City. They lounged at their table comfortably, sipping their drinks, enjoying the feeling of looseness and warmth spreading through their bodies. They were still gently telepathically connected, so they just basked in their connection and in being alive.
The next week, although their mission went well, they went to another bar and did a few rounds of shots. Their moods soared after a successful mission, and they wanted to capitalize on that after the rough couple of weeks they’d had. They toasted to their mentors, to their health, to the concept of justice, and to the League. As the night went on, they toasted to increasingly stupid things - like henchmen who can’t shoot a gun for shit, armor that doesn't chafe, and super-villains who monologue waaay too often. None of them ended up in their own beds that night; they just collapsed on the softest surface they could find, sharing beds or couches with whoever they happened to collapse next to.
The following week they hit up a club and got so wasted that they returned to the cave and crashed on the floor in the living room, not even bothering to drag themselves to a bed. They simply used each other as pillows and snoozed until noon the next morning. They woke up hungover, but Kaldur – being the determined, responsible leader that he is - forced them to gulp down several glasses of water and eat a big breakfast, so they bounced back and resumed training later on that evening.
Unbeknownst to the team, it was at that point that Batman intervened. He assigned a member of the Justice League to follow the team undercover in rotating shifts to ensure that no harm befell them. He did leave strict instructions, however, not to intervene unless they were in imminent physical danger. He knew what it was like, after all. The team just needed to blow off steam and reconnect to their human side. Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest outlet, but… was there even a truly healthy way of blowing off steam? Black Canary only had so many hours in the day to spend on talking them through their trauma. It seemed to work well enough. The team was still keeping up with their training in spite of their outings, so he allowed it to continue without comment.
One week, they stopped in a quiet bar outside Keystone that was filled with hipsters and craft beer. Dick texted a selfie to Batman with the whole team holding their beer in the air in a toast and added the caption, "I love my life!" It brought tears of joy to Bruce's eyes. He had never seen his sidekick as happy as he looked in that photo.
Their weekly bar hopping adventures were pretty much expected now. They were common knowledge among the rest of the League. They looked forward to their nights out, chatting up ideas for their next outing over the mind link during their down time.
Spending so much time mind-melded had begun to affect them; they all felt a startling increase in for empathy for one another. It was hard not to empathize with someone when you were fused with their brain that long. What was once friendly banter and teasing over the mind link turned into something softer, more affectionate. Each member of the team felt affection a little bit differently, but they could all recognize the general feeling over the mind link. There were small nuanced differences, but it was there.
Wally didn’t hide much from his team. The term “open book” applied well to him. He felt love strongly, unrestrained and unrelenting. Love was simple to him. It was a force of nature, and he didn’t bother resisting it. He never held back. It was beautiful for the others to behold. The affection Wally held for his friends felt like warm sunshine over the mind-link. He shared memories of his excitement at meeting Robin for the first time, the adoration and respect he felt for him as they grew closer, and the joy that grew within him as he realized that they had become best friends. He shared his memories of his emotionally abusive father and explained to the team that he fears being like him, which is why he is so constantly affectionate - he doesn't want anyone to ever feel the way he felt. His friends would know that they were loved.
Dick generally quiet, but when the situation called for it, he had a soft eloquence to the way he expressed his feelings. Dick had seen enough trauma in his formative years that he got really good at psychoanalyzing himself. He surprised the team at first with how his mind processed things. He viewed feelings as neither right nor wrong; they just... were. Every feeling was valid in its own right, and they were all there for a reason, whether stemming from maladaptive behavior or otherwise. To Dick, rules just didn’t apply to feelings, just as they didn’t apply to the English language. His teammates frequently felt him processing his thoughts over the link as he stacked his feelings together the same way he stacked words together; pulling them apart, dissecting them, studying them, piecing them back together how he wanted. Eventually, through the mental link, Dick shared his back story - the pain of losing his parents, the confusion when adopted by a stranger, the exhilaration at becoming Robin. He shared the dull pain in his heart that he still felt when he thought of his Flying Grayson days. He shared that English wasn't actually his first language (1), and that is why he is so fascinated with butchering it - he remembers learning it, and he likes to play with it; bend it to his will. He shared the conflicting desire within him to prove himself worthy to Bruce, and yet the desire to set himself apart from him. He shared what being in love with Wally felt like - like coming home after a long mission that pushes you far out of your comfort zone, returning to the place where you feel safe and where you unquestionably belong. And finally, he shared his relief at no longer having to hide large parts of himself from the people he loves most, as he'd had to do his entire life.
M’Gann felt things very differently than the rest; she was Martian, after all, and grew up with a constant mental link with everyone around her. Not that she took the link she shared with her team for granted; her whole team felt her unrestrained joy at having such a connection again. Love positively flowed through her. Being raised in such a communal manner had a very real impact on her. She tended to put others before herself, and her team had to calmly remind her on several occasions that if one of them grows weary, their whole team grows weak. She can’t burn herself out for the sake of helping others. After that, she repeated to herself that she needs to take care of herself so she is able to take care of her team, like a shameful mantra, but several members of the team pressed back at that; primarily, Robin and Aqualad. That reasoning, they insisted, only granted her permission to take care of herself so she can take care of other people rather than granting that she is allowed to be taken care of in her own right. She is worthy of being taken care of too. They are a unit, after all. Late at night, her eyes would frequently sting with unshed tears as she fought off feelings of unworthiness. She then felt the team pressing into her, reminding her that she is just as much a part of the team as they are, and her tears would fall along with the walls around her heart.
Superboy was different. He felt affection and protectiveness almost fearfully, even violently. It felt like a sharp pain to the others over the mental connection at first; it felt foreign and strange to some members of the team. They had noticed that he is usually in survival mode – fight, flight or freeze. He wasn’t even worried about himself; he was indestructible. He was worried about his teammates, who were very much destructible. He shared over the mind-link that the first thing he remembers in the entirety of his short life is waking up from his psychically-induced coma to see Kaldur, Kid Flash, and Robin. Robin had been the first to keep a promise to him – he showed him the moon, he introduced him to Superman. Aqualad had been the calming whisper in his ear when he was filled with rage and confusion inside CADMUS. Wally had been right there beside him when Superman was giving him confusing and mistrusting looks, insisting that Conner was just as much a part of the team as the three sidekicks were. He had literally known these people as long as he could remember; he had grown up alongside them. He couldn’t imagine life without them. Even when he didn't know who he was or why he was created, he knew who he cared about, and that was his anchor. The team felt his reasoning for being so protective and it brought tears to Wally and M'Gann’s eyes. The team had to spend several weeks sending reassuring feelings towards Conner in order for him to feel a little more secure in his friends’ safety. Over time, the dull ache inside him faded and was hardly noticeable anymore.
Artemis was also hardened, just in a different way. Rather than allowing herself to feel sadness or embarrassment or fear, she covered most of her emotions up with anger. She grew up in a rough home, a home where conflict was the primary method of human interaction. Old patterns are tough to break, she realized as she felt her teammates’ frustration when she was being contrary yet again. Affection didn’t come easily to her, and she tended to shut down when she thought someone was rejecting her. It made her a tough nut to crack. Her team’s frustration, she realized as time went on, did not stem from her behavior but rather stemmed from their inability to help her. She finally broke down and cried when she realized that, for the first time, she knew what acceptance felt like.
Kaldur, oldest and wisest of all of them, held them all in high esteem in his heart. He was raised in a very formal environment where affection was not openly shown, so he struggled to feel anything too deeply at times. It did not come easily to him. He would frequently ponder it within the mental link, simply feeling his teammates’ feelings, soaking it all in with a sense of wonder. He felt the others mentally lean in when he did so, giving him the equivalent of a mind-link hug. He appreciated every moment of it.
The mind link forged their bond deeper. They sometimes left it open well after missions ended, just to chat with each other. M’Gann felt a quiet nudge in her mind at odd times, which she realized was a teammate requesting that she open the link. She always obliged, and quickly figured out that she could tell who was requesting it; each person’s touch in her mind felt different, distinct. They could all feel it, and they could immediately tell when one of them wasn’t connected. M’Gann would seek them out, the team feeling a rush of warmth, feeling complete, when the missing member joined the link. They found themselves spending more and more time linked together, whether in the same room or not.
Their bar outings continued. The team went from simply sitting around, drinking and laughing together during their outings, to dancing together as the weeks went on. It started with Wally admitting that he knew the “Party Rock Anthem” choreography, and Dick turned to him with a slurred declare of “ME TOO!” The team laughed as the two boys flawlessly imitated the music video in spite of their intoxication, matching each other move-for-move. The boys worked so well in-sync, both on and off the field. Wally and Dick taught the rest of the team the choreography and they danced as a group every time the song came on. The psychic link helped; they guided each other through the moves, filling in the blanks for each other when exhaustion or alcohol caused them to forget a step. It was quite the spectacle.
Batman watched their comings and goings in silence, begrudgingly approving of their new bar-hopping routine. The team seemed to be closer than ever. They appeared to be, for the first time, thriving rather than merely surviving.
As the weeks went on, they continued to surprise each other. Reserved Robin turned out to be a genuine party animal. He could dance like Magic Mike and didn’t mind being the center of attention, unlike the stealthy bird that he was while he wore the cape and domino mask. Wally surprised the group as well; it turns out he had some talent they didn’t know about – he could break-dance better than anyone they had ever seen (it helped that he had such fast feet). He and Robin would frequently get into dance-offs; as an acrobat, Dick could basically move his body any way he wanted. As with all aspects of their lives, the two boys competed against each other and pushed each other and both got better for it. Dick learned some moves from Wally and they break-danced in sync, earning awed stares and cheers every time they performed together. In turn, Dick taught Wally some Magic Mike-style dance routines, and the boys caused quite a few club patrons’ cheeks to flush and pants to tighten. They were both very kinesthetic people; dancing just came naturally to them.
It wasn’t just Robin and Wally though; they were ALL kinesthetic people. It just came with the territory. Sparring, aiming a weapon, hand-to-hand combat… Fighting and dancing aren’t that entirely different - one is just better choreographed.
Each outing became rowdier. Wally and Dick’s weekly break-dancing competition turned into dirty dancing against each other, and as they got more and more comfortable with each other, the rest of the team began to engage with them too. They all just wanted to feel alive with the people who they almost died alongside. The girls danced together, the guys danced together, they mingled. Each teammate brought their own spice to the mix. Dick’s style of dancing was smooth and sensual. Wally’s was straight dirty. Connor and Kaldur were a little reserved, but easily opened up with the team, keeping up with even the two rowdier boys as they grew more comfortable and confident. Artemis danced like she talked – roughly and to the point, in your face and shameless. M’Gann was shy at first, but Artemis slid in behind her to guide her hips and, flush against M’Gann’s back, felt her pick it up quickly.
At each outing, every member of the team made sure to spend at least a few minutes dancing with one another. They all dirty danced together, even the ones in relationships, regardless of gender and sexual preference. Sexuality be damned; they were all so close at this point that nobody cared. There was a certain intimacy to be found in consistently almost dying together – what’s a mindless pelvic grind compared to that? It felt amazing to feel their blood pumping together, pressed together and feeling each other’s breath, reveling in the physical evidence that the people they care about most were alive and right there with them and so connected, physically and mentally. Alcohol flowed easily on those nights.
At Batman’s request, they stayed unpredictable and tried a new bar every week. Their weekly outings became as essential to them as training simulations and counseling sessions with Black Canary. The team loved their new routine. It cleared their heads, it reaffirmed their connection, it was fun. For the first time since they took on the responsibility of being superheroes, their lives were finally beginning to feel balanced.
After a couple months of bar hopping, they wound up at a gay night club. Their mission that evening had gone badly -- about as badly as one could possibly go, and they needed to shake off their residual feelings of terror. Dick walked straight to the bar, downed four shots and jumped up on an empty table, dancing like a stripper even though the booze hadn’t even hit him yet. Wally cheered him on and wolf-whistled as he moved. Dick cocked his eyebrow at him and leaned down, extending his hand, pulling Wally up on the table with him. They began to grind in sync, Wally bending his knees to press up against Dick’s backside.
Dick had almost died during that night’s mission. Just as Robin shot his grappling hook in the air and jumped off a rooftop, a rogue with a point to prove had cut his line with a well-aimed arrow. Dick fell seven stories. Wally had watched it in horror, feet frozen, before jerking to life and skidding his feet into motion so quickly that he left a burn mark on the concrete. He hurled himself up into the air and jumped under Dick just seconds before Superboy did, and Conner wrapped his arms around them both, cushioning their fall.
Dick’s body had been wound tight in a ball in Wally’s arms, still braced for impact, and Wally seized the acrobat’s hands and pried them away from his eyes to search his facial expression for signs of pain. Dick looked up with a wince, realizing he wasn’t dead, and threw his arms around both Wally and Superboy. The three of them trembled together for a moment, their psychic link clearly communicating the fear still fresh in their minds. Concern and relief flowed over them in waves from the other three members of the team. They all shakily nodded to each other, not even needing to express their mixed gratitude and worry. They all felt it.
The team had stumbled home after the mission, quickly debriefed with Batman and changed into civvies without talking. As they all reconvened in the living room, all it took was a short “So, Gotham this time?” from Dick to have the team grinning and running for the Zeta tubes.
Wally’s eyes sparkled as he moved against Dick's lithe body, attention completely focused on the young acrobat, pressing his cheek up against the younger man’s neck and murmuring a loving stream of consciousness into his ear. They balanced themselves on the table, swaying back and forth. He ran his hands up and down to caress his chest and abs, feeling his rapid heartbeat under the lightweight cotton t-shirt he wore. Wally found himself profoundly comforted by the feeling of his heart beating. He needed to feel that Dick was alive, pulsating and moving and breathing and his.
After the team had danced themselves into a sweaty mess, they stumbled back out of the club, giggling at Wally’s impression of Batman’s strained, gravely voice – “I am vengeance! I am the night! I am… CONSTIPATED!” Dick fell over himself with laughter, and Wally quickly caught him and slung an arm over his shoulder.
The team made their way back to the Zeta tube, whooping and laughing, not a care in the world. Though none of them said anything, they were all aware of Green Arrow following a few hundred feet behind them in civvies. They had caught on at that point that they usually had a Leaguer following them, but allowed it to happen. They felt even freer and safer knowing that someone was looking out for them, though none of them would admit it to the League. Wally looked back at Green Arrow, who pretended to be texting on his cell phone. He could swear he saw Arrow wink at him. He just rolled his eyes and turned back to his team.
Still filled with mirthful laughter, they stumbled through the Zeta beam, following each other into Dick and Wally’s shared room. By then, the boys had moved their video games, uniforms and Dick’s various gadgets into one room and had pushed their beds into the other, creating a giant room-sized bed just for nights like these. More often than not, the entire team would crash together in their room after their outings, reveling in their mind-link, each magnifying the group’s feelings of comfort, acceptance and - lately, increasingly unrestrained joy.
The team left the psychic link open almost constantly nowadays, basking in the loose connection to each other, allowing the others’ feelings to be a soft hum in the backgrounds of their minds. It was comfortable. Familiar. Having spent so much time in each other’s heads, it felt almost second-nature to have the mind link open. As much as the link felt like an unnatural intrusion when they felt it for the very first time, their minds now felt somewhat empty without it. The connection that they held with each other was one unlike anything they ever dreamed they would experience. They balanced each other out, filling each other’s pitfalls, holding each other up in times of need.
Their hearts felt full, like the feeling of having just eaten a warm home-cooked meal; the dull ache they used to feel was, over time, replaced by the stream of love and acceptance seeping from their teammates’ minds.
They may never feel normal, but this was their normal, and they wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
http://archiveofourown.org/works/8826136
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mamashaysaid · 5 years
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What I’ve Learned (About Me)...
I've cycled around the Sun for 30 years and here's what I learned about myself, so far……
1. You can only please yourself 100% but don't expect others to give the same that you would give yourself. We all have our own way of how we satisfy ourselves 100%, and no one can do that for you and it's not fair to expect them to. Appreciate their effort to try, anyway.
2. I really dislike when I'm interrupted or not listened to attentively. Looking at the phone during conversation is a big pet peeve. I value great communicators and communication skills, both noverbally and verbally.  I love words. Motivational words mostly. Honest words. Deep conversations about God and Life. I write it down when it touches my heart deeply. It sticks when it's in words. 
3. Some parents are really supportive, always willing to help with their kids and grandkids, and will do this throughout their entire lives. Some parents are just ‘eh’. Love them both. Parents can only love, as much as they have been taught, learned, or conditioned. 
4. 2 beers or 2 shots is my limit. If I'm not driving, 3 beers, 1 shot. This has been learned to an exact science. No more. No less.
5. I admire and respect an aesthetically fit body that is dressed in comfortable, but cute & modest clothing. I’ve been this way since birth and I will forever remain a “comfy as$ fashionista.” No jewelry is even necessary, but if so, gold it is.
6. It took me my whole LIFE to find out that BareMinerals BarePro Powder Foundation Camel 17 is my foundation color to a T. I’ve wasted, at least $300, over the years, trying to get answers (MUA opinions included).  
7. When something is out of sight for so long, you really do forget about it.
8. Wishing for someone else's peace and for them to find their love and passions in life, even if it doesn't involve you... is the greatest gift of forgiveness that you can give yourself, and to that person.
9. I hate public speaking PERIOD. I’ll never get used to it or like it, in any form. I will literally have an anxiety attack or do everything I can to avoid speaking in front of people because I sweat so bad and feel nauseous. I think it's because I've never accepted that type of attention from other people - other than from my parents. 
10. The goal in life is to raise a family with the man I love, doing what we love, and going wherever we want to go, while taking as many pictures as we can, to reflect on when we're old. Then, when we're so old, we'll catch up on all the good movies and shows.
11. I accomplished exactly what I set my goals to be when I was 20yrs old. I will always be proud of that. The odds were against our circumstances, to the point where I was scared of what our future would be. I have learning issues, mostly an attention deficit, and we as a family have special needs. The fact that I found a way to go around that & make it work, is a pure example of innovation and a mother’s determination to take care of her family. Thanking GOD for everything. 
12. My kids are teaching me that being different is really beautiful. Normal is not even normal. Normal, just like beauty,  is in the eye of the beholder. 
13. You can learn from anyone, and everyone has a story. You are never too young to teach, and never too old to learn.
14. Being YOU. Not caring what ppl think of you, is the most liberating feeling. I’m always rough around the edges, but I keep it smooth (like Shea Butta😉🤭). Let go of worrying what people think of you. People are mostly thinking of themselves anyway.
15. Sometimes I curse. I'm loud. I crack jokes all day, if you let me. I'm a chatty cathy, at times, BUT, I also know how to be professional and handle my business in the corporate world. It's called BALANCE. Let go of trying to be someone you're not. I act accordingly. Don't try to label me. You can't.
16. When I was 9, I dressed up for Halloween as a business woman wearing one of my mom’s suits, red lipstick, & a briefcase, and then I dressed my 1 year-old brother as a cute little girl and called him my daughter LOL. I knew back then, that I wanted to be a “businesswoman” of some sort, in a billion dollar industry, so I could be as fine as I wanted to be. It was a simple dream for a 9 year old who loved fashion. Nowadays, it has manifested into my Mondays through Fridays.🤣
17. I’d rather have my little family on a daily basis, driving me crazy some days, instead of people who only show up only when we’re accomplishing great things. I love my little family, and even if I never make another best friend again, I know I’ll always still have the love from my little family. 
18. Stay humble in everything you do. Even if you are a leader. People will appreciate you more when you're not trying to outdo them. Make everything team oriented.
19. You attract whatever kind of energy you put out there. You cannot outsmart the universe. What's meant to be will find its way. Be careful what you ask for. Have no doubt that it could really happen. 
20. I let go of all toxic relationships in my 20’s. Even if that meant cutting ties with family, breaking up my family with my ex, and losing friends that came with it. If he/she/or it did not bring me peace or made me cry, feel insecure, unworthy, or undeserving, or like an “inconvenience” -  I let it go. My 30’s will only accept people who truly give a fuck about me and mines, or not at all. I'm ok with either way, now. I’ve learned how to be alone, so now I can finally accept this. 
21. My great grandmother was right.... after everything has happened, & after losing the people you loved with all of your heart... life still has to go on. Even when it hurts… and it will continue to go on, with or without you.
22. Mental illness is real. The sooner you accept it, the faster you will heal from it, and in return, everyone who’s been affected, can heal too. Not every illness is visible.
23. My granny told me I should do what I love doing even if it's "just beads". I regret not seeing her in the hospital before she passed. Brandi too. Jas too. Nanny too. I regret missing their last moments and not being there for them as much as I could, and I think I will regret this for a long time. I have to work on that. 
24. Doing something without planning, literally anything, for me, is the only way I can do it. The only way for me to do things is to just do them.  Even if it’s sloppy, I'm notorious for saying “RIP that damn bandaid off already”. Too much planning, for me = procrastination. 
25. Stepping out of my comfort zone & choosing public speaking, working in a call center, & product specialty (as a trade), is literally the hardest thing I've ever attempted doing (aside from trying to make sales for the weight loss program in summer) .. but here we are, I'm doing it and from what people say, I’m actually good at what I do.
26. You cannot be mad at ppl for not thinking like you or having the same patience, or heart, or understanding like you. You are you, and they are them, and not everyone is going to mimic your style or CARE. This is why we are called individuals. What matters is ‘you like you’,  b/c you have to live with you forever. 
27. Generational curses are real. Sometimes, Karma can get to your kids. Sometimes, I think they got to mine.
28. God, Yahweh, the Tao, Nun, Allah, or whatever you want to call our Creator, is real. “Religion”, in itself, is man-made, and the churches are their “institutions”. It separates us, & sometimes (if not, most times), not for the better. The Tao is the END all, BE all. The Beginning and the End. If you want to get closer to God, try getting to know and understanding yourself. Start loving yourself. God is in you, and all around you. Therefore, you have all the power you need. I wish someone told me this earlier. 
30. I'm loyal to a fault. That is the Leo in me. If you didn’t learn by now, I am a TRUE LEO - pride and all that shii. BUT, I can be a great, supportive, selfless friend. I’ll come through for the rough and ugly, hold you down, not judge your a$s & still get abandoned. It hurts like hell every time. Being loyal like this, I’ve learned that people have their own agenda & you will never know what that is. Trust who you know. Who actually shows up. As much as I like words, screw dialogue, “when will you be here??” is what I would like to know. 31. THIS IS A BONUS LESSON I LEARNED - Be kind... but also….don't take any BullShiit. NONE WHATSOEVER or people will use that as a gateway to walk all over your as$. There's a thin line in the middle, and I spent the last 30yrs trying to learn when to cross it.
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