#ive forgotten all perception of time sorry
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so sorry you've been getting these anons ana :( i thought as a native i could give my two cents on the fire lady katara trope? ill admit im more of a casual zutara shipper, so i havent seen a good chunk of the fandom, but ill give it my thoughts. for me personally, i am not a fan of fire lady katara- it's not particularly to do with the trope itself, but the execution often done by the fandom. ive discussed this with other natives before, but sometimes in the fire lady trope, it is often that katara moves to the fire nation, that she wears fire nation clothes and is surrounded by fire nation culture. obviously, that isn't wrong! the sharing of culture is a beautiful thing, but there is a good majority of fics where it feels like her water tribe culture is forgotten, that she is made to move permanently to the fire nation in favour of zuko. specifically in a post war climate, where a good majority of the people in the fire nation would still hold onto imperialist and racist beliefs, the idea of katara living there permanently is uncomfortable. i moved out of my mostly native village into a nearly fully white uni, and it's scary, and so when i apply those thoughts to katara living in the fire nation, its uncomfortable. and as for the rest, it's mainly just how sometimes it feels like the fandom doesn't value her culture as much as zukos, even unconsciously- it often feels like the fandom values the perceived glamour and power of the fire nation royalty, and finds fire nation culture more understandable than anything water tribe, and so prefer to have katara in a setting that is more 'easy' for them. in hand with this, is often the fandom perception that the water tribe is less progressive than the fire nation, that they are sexist and that zuko is giving katara a better life (i will say that this is not something i have not seen often, especially recently, but it is something i have discussed w people so i thought id mention it, especially since its usually not intentional). sorry this got so long, i went on a bit of a ramble but obviously this isn't the be all end all. like you said, there are lots of people who are fine, or enjoy fire lady katara because they perceive or write it differently, and that is fine! everyone perceives media differently, just like some people will be uncomfortable with zutara, some might not be. i just thought id send this as a reason why some of us do dislike the trope, and things to keep in mind when ppl are writing it
hi anon, thank you so much for sharing this with me! i really appreciate you taking the time to write out your thoughts and offer your perspective on this.
i definitely agree that the fire lady katara trope can be executed in some exceedingly problematic ways. there are many zutara fics that i've clicked out of for the reasons that you've mentioned, especially older ones that were written around when the show aired or shortly after. i won't deny at all that there are ways people write the zutara relationship that make me profoundly uncomfortable. my problem arises when someone assumes that the trope itself is inherently racist or wrong, instead of understanding that it can be written in a variety of ways by a variety of people, who bring their own perspectives - and prejudices - to their individual portrayals.
what you said about moving from your mostly native village to a fully white university really struck a chord with me because (although it's not the same, and can never be) i can really sympathize with those feelings of alienation and sudden lack of belonging. i'm part of the desi diaspora myself, and i've grown up in a country where i've always been the minority, and had to deal with racism and ignorance, so your experience really spoke to me. i hope that doesn't come across like i'm trying to co-opt your struggle or anything like that, because that was not my intention at all. i just wanted to let you know that i can understand what a scary feeling it is, even if not exactly in the same way.
that being said, personally if i could choose between spending my life in india or growing up overseas, i would still choose to do the latter even if it meant living through the bigotry and ostracization i've experienced again. i love the life i've built here, though it's a more difficult one than what i could've led back home.
in the context of atla, i agree that katara would most likely face racism and discrimination in the fire nation, at least in the immediate years following the war. but personally i also find a very empowering narrative in seeing her confront and dismantle the prejudices within the fire nation system, just as she did with the sexism of the northern water tribe. katara wouldn't abide bigotry in any form, and i think fighting inequality is a battle that she would want to take on, and would willingly choose to take on whether she ended up with zuko or not. that's why i take issue with the insistence that her becoming queen of the fire nation inherently equates to her victimization, because it can also very much be a power fantasy, and i know many woc who do see it as such.
(of course, that is just my own perspective, and i completely understand why others see it differently and might not be comfortable with it. their feelings are just as valid and legitimate.)
ultimately, i think correctly executing the fire lady katara trope isn't just about katara herself valuing her culture, but zuko doing it as well. i love seeing explorations of the trope (and the zutara relationship in general) where zuko takes an active interest in katara's heritage, incorporates her traditions and practices into his own life and home, and involves himself in her culture just as much as she involves herself in his. zutara is a ship that has always been about equality to me, and that's something that can and should carry over to how they blend their cultures together. like you said, there is nothing wrong in katara wearing fire nation clothes, or being surrounded by fire nation culture - so long as she isn't the only one in the relationship taking an interest in her partner's heritage. thankfully, in most zutara content i've seen, she isn't.
in my own personal view of katara becoming fire lady, it happens only years after the war ends. she spends her time postwar travelling the world and kicking ass, empowering women in the north to learn waterbending, rebuilding the southern water tribe, meeting and learning from everyone she can. when she becomes fire lady, she continues to travel often - home, of course, but also to the other nations when necessary, using her skill of inspiring and motivating others, and her desire to help the less fortunate, in matters of international diplomacy. when she returns, her husband is in blue, and her children wear whalebone beads in their hair, and there are fire flakes next to stewed sea prunes on her dining table. there are hard times, but there is also love and respect, and so she changes the world as she damn well deserved to in canon.
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Fluff prompt!
You missed me? / of course I did
Peterpatterlina (feel free to change to we/us)
(Also Available on AO3)
Julie’s landing wasn’t smooth. Just like the first time she stumbled out of the mirror and straight towards the floor. And just like the first time the momentum combined with the loss in balance resulted in her shoulders and head receiving the brunt of the impact.
Throbbing pain in the back of her head and the muffled distant shouts of worried voices melted away. The voices blended bizarrely into her memories and her uneasy dreams. While the pulsing in her ears, morphed into steady high pitched beeping and mechanical whirring.
Slowly, Julie blinked her eyes open. She wasn’t greeted by the dark alleyway she expected to find herself in. Instead, sterile white surrounded her, hazy and unfocused. She looked down at the weird heaviness on the back of her hands to find an IV and a couple of cables leading to nearby machines.
When did she get moved to a hospital? She must have hit her head harder than she thought.
As the room focused, she recognized the silhouetted figure sitting on the edge of the bed she was in. “Tia?”
“Julie.” Her Aunt said, her voice full of relief. One of her hands rested on Julie’s forehead. “Sobrina, you can’t worry me like that.”
“Sorry.” Julie swallowed, her throat wasn’t as dry as she thought it should be. The memories of her time away began to filter through the hazy grogginess of waking up.
The impossibly tall city in the sky, the centuries old forest hiding the fantastical ruins of a nearly forgotten people. Nick’s true identity as the son of a tyrannical monarchy. The resistance movement she’d found herself caught up with.
The real reason Nick had shown up in her life. The people she had to leave behind.
Warm tears began to sting Julie’s eyes as the built up tears blurred her vision. She couldn’t think of all that right now, couldn’t allow herself to let her thoughts linger there. She was home now.
Well, in this hospital room. But It was definitely a hospital in her world and not Wonderland medicine.
Her family and friends must have been so worried about her. And she’d need to figure out how to explain her absence to not only them but to work. She wasn’t even sure how long it’d been, she lost track of the days with everything going on and the time spent in the Library and the Casino.
“How long was I?”
“They think you were in there for only a couple hours.” Her Aunt said, her hand moving to gently comb through Julie’s hair.
“A-a couple hours?” That couldn’t be right. If that was right, had it all been some bizarre dream?
Her Aunt hummed, and tried to hide her worry behind a wobbly smile as she continued to explain. “They say you're lucky that those construction workers saw you.”
“Oh.”
It was all Julie could think to say. She had too many questions her Aunt wouldn’t be able to answer. Logic was at war with her perception, memories, and experience.
Her short adventure had been so absurd and it would make perfect sense for it all to have been some bizarre dream. Only it wasn’t hazily fading away like every other dream she’d had. And it’d all felt so real in a way dreams never did. She could still feel it.
The burn of the Oyster mark searing into her skin. The absolute terror of the wind whipping around her as she followed Hatter and his stupid orange hat along those thin walkways. Inches away from a potential fall to her death.
The short lived moment of joy being reunited with her mom only for her to sacrifice herself for Julie’s sake. To lose her again almost as soon as Julie had gotten her back. The firm but gentle hold of Reggie and Hatter’s hands pulling her to safety in spite of her wails and screams and fighting.
“Julie?” Her Aunt looked blurrier than she had before. Julie distantly realized it was because the tears that had been building were freely falling. “Julie, what’s wrong?”
“Mom. Mom’s not coming back.” Julie sobbed. At first her tears fell down her face but soon they were soaking her Aunt’s shirt as she was pulled into a hug.
The following days were a near numb affair as Julie tried to come to terms with everything that had happened. She silently packed up her maps detailing her years worth of work searching for her Mom. While she initially thought her Aunt would be glad to see her moving on, she still caught her occasionally forlornly staring at the newly blank walls. The first time Julie caught her, she’d tried to brush it off, and quickly moved the topic to all the people who wanted to see her.
Her Dad and Carlos made sense-no matter how much she thought they were overreacting. And of course they both promised that as soon as they were able to clear their schedules they would fly out and visit.
Flynn called every day. While they weren’t entirely sold on the idea of Julie having some sort of cross dimensional adventure, they didn’t immediately write it off like everyone else had either. “Besides, even if it was only the world’s most vivid dream, maybe it was your brain's way of letting you know it’s ok to move on.”
Perhaps Flynn was right. She’d been holding herself back for so long. Who knew if Dr. Turner was right and she was using it as an excuse to justify avoiding her own fears. Or her Aunt believing clinging to the past so desperately meant Julie couldn’t truly be happy no matter what the future held. Answers like that didn’t matter.
What mattered now was moving forward. No matter how painful. Or lonely.
It had been less than a week since the incident when her Aunt brought up the possibility of a visit from the construction workers who had found her. Apparently they wanted to make sure she was ok. And her Aunt had been taken in by how sweet they were.
Julie figured she probably should thank them.
It was the day after she agreed that the doorbell rang. Her Aunt's laugh carried down the hall as she greeted their guests. “Julie. Come say hi to Luke and Reggie.”
Julie snorted as she pulled herself from her desk chair, this melody wasn’t really going anywhere anyway. Reggie? What were the odds of that?
It wasn’t just the same name though. Julie froze in the hallway as soon as she spotted them amicably chatting with her Aunt in the living room.
She had to be imagining things. It couldn’t be them.
But it had to be them.
Reggie’s dark hair, slicked back away from his face. His bright green eyes danced above his wide crooked grin as he laughed at something her Aunt had said. Hatter-or Luke she supposed-still had his bird nest hair covered, even though he'd swapped the hat for a beanie. His hazel eyes caught sight of her first.
It was like summer broke out across his face. His already bright smile somehow grew brighter. He not so subtly slapped Reggie’s shoulder, drawing his attention away from her Aunt. She thought they were almost too bright to look at before but Reggie’s relieved smile coupled with Luke’s was almost blinding.
“Oh my God.” She didn’t even realize she’d shouted let alone that she’d run at them until she found herself sandwiched between them.
Luke’s arm wrapped securely around her waist, while he buried his face into her shoulder. While Reggie held her head close to his chest, his own face pressing against the side of her head.
“Gods, we missed you.” Reggie whispered, and she’s sure if it weren’t for how they were holding each other she wouldn’t have heard it.
“You missed me?”
“Of course we did.” Hatter-Luke-said as he and Reggie both pulled back just enough for her to see their faces again.
She couldn’t help it. Her hands rose up to cup their faces, they felt warm and real, only growing warmer as a noticeable blush broke out across Reggie’s face.
“I missed you, too.” She said, despite how weird the truth of it was. It hadn’t even been that long and she’d missed them so much, half convinced they didn’t exist in the first place. Worried if they did she’d never get to see them again anyway.
Out of the corner of her eyes she caught her Aunt’s confused face, no doubt the reunion inspiring a plethora of questions. They would have to figure out how to explain it all later.
For now, Julie was going to celebrate having Luke and Reggie back in her life again. Hopefully, in a permanent sort of way.
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Some doodles from like, what, August???
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hi i binged through all of salad fingers for the first time in like 8 years and im fixating again here are. My Theories. pls talk to me if anyone else has Thoughts or wants to discuss things. this is really long i am sorry :’ )
also shout out to the salad fingers wiki for helping me keep track of details and also for this
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thought: salad fingers is not violent on purpose he did not mean to kill that kid
this is less a theory and more “if you slander my boy with accusations i will Get you” but listen. i see people going “but he mURDERED A CHILD!!” because of the oven incident but listen. listen to me. he didnt mean to and cannot be held to the same standard of morality and understanding consequences as a. person who isn’t..... in whatever situation and mental state he has going on
- yes, the kid getting trapped in the oven was his fault. but it was not intentional or malicious and i sincerely doubt he understands what happened or why.
he was asking for help reaching the fish (there’s no reason to believe he wasn’t just genuinely asking for help. he tears up in gratitude. theres no evidence of him Tricking People Maliciously in any other context i do not believe he would do that) and was distracted by the rusty nail, causing him to let go of the door. it wasn’t “he cares more about rust than about a child’s life” or something, i dont think he can actually hold “hey look at that i gotta check that out” and “i need to hold the door open so the child doesn’t get hurt” in his head at the same time, rust is his favorite stim/an impulse thing that takes over everything else and his perception of reality and the things going on around him changes very quickly and easily. more on that later. but the important point here is it wasn’t a malicious plot, or a neglectful careless action, he literally did not realize letting go of the door would cause harm
he stabbed himself accidentally with the nail and passed out for a while (the fact that he immediately bled that much is concerning too, he probably has hemophilia which is. a medical condition outside of his control, as well) and after all that he had completely forgotten about the child altogether (and says “i must have dozed off” so he doesn’t even understand he passed out. and might not remember the nail thing in the first place)
we don’t see what happened after this, we don’t know how he responds when he investigates the fish and inevitably finds an unexpected charred corpse in there, but i guarantee he won’t remember why its in there or understand that its a corpse. we dont see it again so its. entirely possible he didnt recognize it as a person and either just disposed of it or, uh, ate it. but if he did, it wasn’t with the knowledge and comprehension of it being A Corpse or the memory of how it got there
theory: on salad fingers and memory / comprehension of death and consequences
more on that subject
- we see him frequently doing things and then immediately forgetting he did it or forgetting what was happening. he accidentally squishes the bug (which also was not malicious or intentional, he intended to pet it but just. went too hard) and has no understanding either that its dead, or that he killed it. she has gone flat and gooey for some unknown reason. that’s strange. she needs to go have a wash, that’s no way to be.
he eats the jeremy fisher puppet at one point and then immediately goes “where have you gotten to??”
he even briefly forgets hubert cumberdale’s name and immediately comes up with another one without realizing it, and then later goes back to hubert cumberdale again with no mention of barbara logan-price
he refers to the same little yellow guy as “young child” and also Auntie Bainbridge later on. he keeps up the fantasy of... whatever the fuck yvonne was being his child for a pretty long time but then when he arrives at “auntie bainbridge” ‘s house he suddenly forgets why he’s there, and even apparently forgets what yvonne is and uses ‘her’ as a window rag instead and never mentions it again (I also don’t think she was in the sandwich at the end either. it’s hard to see but the sandwich contents are vaguely brown and theres a visible lump in the black goo behind him. i like the idea that the lil yellow guy made the sandwich for him)
salad fingers is constantly subconsciously adjusting his reality to fit Whatever Makes The Most Sense At The Time and does not consistently remember things (sometimes even major things. he remembers his puppets the most consistently and still even forgets hubert’s name) or have a concept of cause and effect
i think he possibly has some sense of recognition, “I’ve seen this person before,” but doesn’t always remember Why he knows them, and his mind just automatically fills in the blank with whatever makes sense to him. he doesn’t remember who the yellow guy is, but knows he knows them Somehow, so, ah, of course, it must be auntie bainbridge out for her sunday stroll :) and he knows he’s there for a reason, but not what that reason was, so he decides it must be time to clean the windows
- milford cubicle was already dead when salad fingers opens the door, but he has no idea that hes dead. this isn’t even a cause for concern. my, he must be tired, that’s all. he kept milford there until he rotted away, too, so there was never a point where he realized anything was wrong (until he became skeleton. more on That later too)
- he finds a corpse buried in the yard and rather than confronting the confusing and alarming reality of that situation, why it must be kenneth, back from the great war! at no point does he understand kenneth is definitely dead
theory: kenneth vs glass brother
i think he really did have a brother named kenneth who probably died in the war. could be some subconscious connection between “recognizing” a corpse as his brother, but i dont think he realizes any of that. i think the glass family is probably a trauma based hallucination, but a... well, reflection. pun not exactly intended lmao. on how his real family was and how they treated him
i dont think glass brother is the same brother as kenneth, since salad fingers interacts with them completely differently
kenneth is a corpse that salad fingers projects a personality on and speaks for, while glass brother seems independent and malicious toward him. i think he had a good relationship with kenneth (so, when salad fingers imagines that he’s here, it’s cause for celebration and he’s projecting onto something inert and “safe”) and also had another brother (who was probably his twin) who bullied him and acted violently, so when that trauma resurfaces, he hallucinates a vicious Other that he cannot control or speak for.
it also tracks that the abusive brother was his twin - he sees himself reflected in the mirror, and something in his own face reminds him of that lost brother until it “becomes” him
he refers to kenneth as his younger brother, and sees him as a being that does not look like him, while glass brother is literally his reflection, so it would make sense if he had one identical twin and one younger brother
ive seen theories that he had a real sister named bordois too, but i think him calling the bug “little sister” was just. a term of endearment or one of his little odd language quirks, he seemed to be talking to it more like a pet than like a sibling
theory: regarding mable
- ok people are saying salad fingers killed mable at the picnic but i Really Don’t Think He Did
we never see him acting out violently when he gets scared. he tends to try to escape situations that stress him out, he shrinks, he cries, he goes into his cupboard (which is. incredibly upsetting given the fact he was almost definitely abused by his family)
he takes on a kind of Authoritative Tone often, he gets sort of ruffled up and disdainful toward things, but that’s not what he does when he’s scared
when he’s actually distressed (rather than irritated) he tends to break down and retreat. this includes when other independent beings act in ways that unsettle and upset him
so i dont know where the “he freaked out and killed her” idea is coming from. he suddenly goes from outside at the picnic to having a breakdown in his house so. he most likely just ran
i think the Only time we see him act out violently is when he decides he has to punish marjory for not getting a haircut like he asked - he tears her hair out, but for me that scene was particularly concerning because it was so unlike him. that was an anger response, not a fear response, though, and he tends to be harsher toward things that he’s actually controlling (I don’t think we ever see him decide to Discipline something that was independent from him other than the horses, and he didnt hurt them)
ordinarily when something irritates him he just goes “hmph! so distasteful. how rude. i shan’t have this behavior, you know” but doesn’t really actually do anything about it, and moves on
anyway we never see mable again so i think either he freaked out and ran away and she just didn’t come back, or he scared her and she ran away, or both
there’s a dress visible briefly when salad fingers is making his Flesh Boy which could be mable’s (he did comment he liked it) but it’s not 100% clear, and that doesn’t necessarily mean he KILLED her for it. she could have changed into something else and left it somewhere and he found it. she could have died under unrelated circumstances, and salad fingers found her - he doesn’t comprehend death, so. probably he decided they’ve made amends now and she’s given him her dress as a token of friendship, or something
i dont think it really looks that significantly like hers but the fact that it stands out so distinctly from the rest of the Pile could mean something
but i just feel like if he had killed her we would’ve seen her corpse again, he doesn’t have a concept of murder, or death at all, or consequences, and his memory doesn’t hold out that consistently, so if he killed her, he probably would have calmed down later and then forgotten what he did and came up with a new way to explain the corpse in front of him - oh, how rude of me, mable’s here dozing right off and i havent even offered her a blanket. let’s get you to bed
like, he probably would have dragged her home with him, with the intention of being a good friend/host to his guest, not understanding what happened. he kept milford cubicle around a really long time
it wouldn’t be like him to have any concept of hiding the evidence
speaking of milford
theory: regarding milford cubicle
salad fingers keeps milford’s corpse around until it starts rotting, and then after a very confusing series of events, the corpse is suddenly a skeleton, which surprisingly alarms salad fingers considerably, and then he goes out to find a whole bunch of himselves eating various bits of gore. they give him a present, which is a hat very clearly made of milford’s skin
my conclusion: salad fingers, in some kind of dissociative fugue state, skinned and ate the remains of milford cubicle himself and turned the remaining skin into a hat. he also saves some of it to make hubert cumberdale (the real boy) later as well, probably forgetting where it came from. he does not realize he’s done this or remember doing it, so his scrambled mind tries to make sense of it with other selves eating unknown flesh, and a lovely hat appearing (which he doesn’t seem to notice is made of flesh)
you can also see milford’s original name tag in the drawer later on when he’s building the flesh boy, so. he kept that after the mysterious disappearance of milford’s flesh, apparently. more evidence that that skin is probably also his
some other scattered thoughts regarding the most recent string of episodes and salad fingers’ mental state:
ive been trying to figure out what the fuckhell happened with the yvonne incident and everything that happened in the birthday episode
im really concerned for salad fingers’ health and mental state, as it seems to be deteriorating
some yvonne theories ive seen:
1. he ate the burned corpse of the kid who died in the oven, and it made him very sick, which ultimately resulted in a charred mass he couldn’t digest - he steadily gets worse, until his body finally ejects it (yvonne’s “birth”) and after that his health starts to recover again. since the oven incident happens really early on, all the times he mentions his stomach being upset after that until he becomes deathly ill would make sense, so i think this is plausible
2. the hair he found in the cupboard was actually a parasitic worm that grew in his stomach after he ate it and became yvonne. i think this is Possible, it is a really strangely wormy looking hair, but it doesn’t move and he mentions stomach pains before this, so it seems less likely to me
3. i also saw the concept that salad fingers is a trans man who suffered a miscarriage at some point in his past and yvonne represents that, and i can definitely see where the idea is coming from but i do think something really physically happened to him in the present time, i dont think it was all a trauma-based hallucination, since the yellow guy reacts to the black ooze and something was definitely making him severely ill
so. i Don’t Know what the fuck that was about but i think the burnt corpse theory makes the most sense
on that note: there’s a lot of cannibalism imagery in salad fingers
we have no IDEA where he’s getting food from. im pretty sure its been confirmed that he is Not a zombie, we see him bleed, pass out, sleep, etc so it seems like he must be a living person who has ordinary needs. but we see him eat... his own puppets. hairs. sand. the soup glass mother instructed him to make, which made him very sick. he has a working oven but doesn’t seem to have consistent access to water. he had a fish somehow but who knows where it came from. it’s very likely he doesn’t get food often and some of his hallucinations and mood swings could be caused by starvation (and when he does eat, it’s things that are outright inedible or probably not good for him)
the burned corpse disappears and is never mentioned again (though salad fingers is very sick afterward). milford’s flesh disappears and salad fingers violently hallucinates multiple selves gorging themselves on unknown flesh
and what concerns me the most about that is that he loses a lot of time in that episode
he passes out in the woods and when he wakes up, it looks like a shit ton of time has passed
we don’t know how much is reality and how much is his warped perception, but it looks like a tree has grown and his physical condition has deteriorated
he looks really, really unhealthy and haggard for the rest of the episode
i think he had a huge dissociative episode and lost possibly weeks of time, probably due to starvation, and he ate milford cubicle and very possibly other people as well
so my question is. how often does this happen to him
and what happens to him during that state? does he become violent and dangerous without being aware of it when he returns to himself again? or has he just been ravenously scavenging corpses when he gets desperate enough?
its possible dr papanak is another personality he has, one that’s “buried out in the woods” that he becomes when he’s in a really, really bad mental and physical state
he looks much better in the next episode (though that’s also when he has his outburst with marjory. could be that he’s still staving off the violent urges/hasn’t fully come back to himself after the last incident) and I’m really hoping the fact that he was able to finally stand up to his family (at least in some sense) and smash the mirrors could mean he’s making steps toward recovery after whatever the hell all that was
there’s not really much space to do anything with his life or get much help given the circumstances but watching him slowly losing himself even more is Awful :(
i hope we get more episodes im so desperate for more information now
lastly, some random observations
i tried to read this newspaper and it looks like it’s actually written in french, which is interesting given that salad fingers seems to be british (but fond of france, and seems to speak french or at least knows one phrase)
i wonder where he got this, or whether it ever meant something significant to him
theres a lot of evidence that he can’t read (takes no notice of the “harry” nametag and immediately names him something else, “reads” a letter that is actually a newspaper clipping in another language he’s holding upside down, “writes” a letter that is just scribbles) so i dont think he learned his one french phrase from this or anything but, still. vaguely interesting. maybe he has been to france before and brought this back with him for some reason. maybe he’s actually in post apocalyptic france and was just originally from england. We Don’t Know
theres a weird little face in the. heater? whatever that is in the background for a second and i dont like it
salad fingers leaves horace in charge, but then sees him (as a live horse) in the woods, but then comes back to find him both still on the shelf (as a toy) and in the room (as a live horse, now with his, uh, surgery scars) but doesn’t seem to notice this and doesn’t comment on it
i dont know what the hell that means other than possibly his reality is even less consistent and logical than usual/a reflection on his mental state deteriorating
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Selfish
Kuroo x Reader x Kenma
MASTERLIST
Genre: Angst, Fluff
Warning: Angst, swearing, implied sexual acts
MASTERLIST
PART IV:
The second time:
Third year was a time of stress, college, and change. Kuroo knew from the time he was in his third year of middle school, that he wanted to leave Japan for college. He had never been anywhere outside of his home country. As laid back as he was, he busted his ass to keep up with his grades. Sure, he partied and had a good time; but he ensured he did well so he could apply to schools like Yale and Harvard. His hope was to get accepted into Harvard. He had heard from former Nekoma graduates that parties in America were wild and he wanted in. Harvard offered a great business program so he figured he’d kill two birds with one stone. You had no plans to leave Japan. As much as you liked the idea of going with Tetsu across the world, it wasn’t your dream. Aside from the New Years incident the two of you hadn’t had another issue. He stopped going to parties for the rest of that year and you two spent all your free time together or with Kenma. The summer before your third year Kuroo was made captain of the Volleyball club and suddenly all the parties started sprouting up again. As uncomfortable as it made you; you trusted him. He stopped inviting you out to parties and just went out on his own. The start of third year found you building time tables and study material so you could do well and get accepted into Miyagi. Instead of spending time with Tetsu at lunch, you were huddled in the library. After school you were usually at the internet cafe or occupying Kenma’s floor as he gamed. While you were busting your ass Kuroo was living the high life. School had never been difficult for him, so he never really had to try. He spent his lunches talking to the cheerleaders and the other sports captains. He would make sure to text you throughout the day, but more often than not if you didn’t text first; he wouldn’t bother. After practice he would go out with the girls of the volleyball team or the cheer squad. It depended on who got to him first. In his mind, what he was doing was harmless; you were his best girl, but you were never his actual girlfriend. Too bad no one thought to inform you of that fact.
As third year carried on the two of you spent less and less time together. When entrance exams came around you spent an entire week holed up in your room preparing. Kuroo spent the whole week in a different girls bedroom every night.
After the New Years incident the year prior, things were awkward between you and Tetsu. Kenma being caught in the middle asked you what happened. When you explained what happened Kenma only shook his head and carried on with the game he was playing. He didn’t tell you, but that one moment solidified the fact that he just didn’t want anything to do with Kuroo anymore. He only dealt with him during practice and if he had to deal with him on the weekends it was solely because you were there. Any other time he pretended he was busy or ignored any form of contact Kuroo attempted.
While Kuroo decided to party and sleep his way through third year; Kenma was the one who made sure you were eating enough. He learned how to cook and made an extra bento for you every day. He made sure you weren’t overworking yourself and dragged you out of the library after he finds out you’d been sitting in there for hours. Sundays were usually days where you and Kuroo would go out and do something, but with studying and exams; you stayed in and he was hungover. Kenma ended up shutting his games off on Sundays and dragging you all over Tokyo. As much as he hated going out and dealing with people, he didn’t mind going out with you. In the time that he had come to know you, he had grown to see you as someone more than the giver Kuroo liked to take advantage of.
Kuroo, though selfish, wasn’t an oblivious idiot. He knew deep down that if Kenma could he would tell you about what he had been doing. As aloof as Kenma seemed, he had always been a perceptive child. And he knew that Kenma had grown to respect you. Sometimes Kuroo would feel guilty about the things he had done, and the way he had treated you. But more often than not he would forget about it as quickly as the thought came. You were his best girl afterall, you’d never abandon him. He knew you didn’t have social media outside of FB. You never saw the need for it, so he made sure to keep his posts private and vague; just in case Kenma saw something he felt the need to share with you.
Entrance exams came and went. You and Tetsu received your letters and were sitting in his bedroom waiting for the other to open it. He had no idea that you didn’t apply to any schools outside of Japan. You had no idea he only applied to Harvard. You knew what his dream was, but deep down you had hoped that what you had was enough to compromise. Ripping your letters open you both screamed as you received the best news you could possibly hope for. Clutching the letter to your chest you smiled. “I got into Miyagi Tetsu, I got into Miyagi!” He looked at you a little confused. “Miyagi?” he questioned taking the letter and reading it over. “Why would you only apply to schools in Japan?” he asked looking up at you. “I told you, Miyagi was my first choice; I want to be a teacher in the prefecture I grew up in.” You murmur softly folding your hands together. Shaking his head he scoffs. “You can be a teacher anywhere baby, and you can learn anywhere...you were supposed to come to Harvard with me.” taking your hands in his he pulls you closer. “We were supposed to go to the US together. Maybe its not too late for you to a-” cutting off his sentence you pull your hands back and shake your head. “I’m not leaving Japan Tetsu...this has been my dream since I was a child. You should be happy for me.” you declare getting up and placing the letter on your desk. “And what about my dreams? You knew I wanted to go to the US.” he demands standing and facing away from you. Touching his shoulder he shrugs away from you. “Sometimes I wonder who puts more effort into this.”he states making his way towards the door. Opening it he waves his arm, “I need time to think, so you need to go.” You sigh softly, grabbing your bag. You whisper an apology as you make your way to the front door. “I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk [name] I can’t even look at you right now.” he states watching you walk out the front door.
You spent that evening mulling over all the times you and Tetsu had talked about the future. You recalled him mentioning Harvard and going to the US together. You couldn’t help but feel guilty for overriding his opinions. You had spent so little time together this year that you had forgotten. Laying in your bedroom staring at your ceiling your eyes started bristling with tears just waiting to fall. You felt so guilty for pushing him aside. For not communicating your thoughts and opinions. You loved him after all. Neither of you had ever said it, but you felt that you never had to say it. He must have known you loved him. While contemplating whether or not you were actually going to leave Miyagi your phone started ringing. It was Tetsu. You answered immediately and at first all you could hear was loud music in the background. A few seconds later you heard Tetsu talking into the phone. He was drunk and he had called you to pick him up. You spent 15 minutes trying to get a location out of him ignoring the lewd moaning in the background. Hanging up the phone you grabbed your parents car keys and threw your shoes on. Twenty minutes later you made your way to his most recent location. Weaving through the sweaty bodies you looked around trying to find his signature hairstyle. You walked up the stairs knocking on doors. You reached the last door on the left that was slightly open.
Placing your hand on the door you push it open only to drop your keys at the sight of Kuroo, head back, mouth open. His pants are around his ankles and his hands are knotted in a strange girl's hair as she takes him into her mouth. “What the fuck Tetsu!” you screech at him. His eyes snap open, red from the alcohol he ingested before you got there. “Fuck, baby no!” he scrambles to pull his pants up as you grab your keys and make your way down the stairs. Rage and sadness fueling your feet to move to the car before letting your tears fall. He follows you stringing out half drunken apologies. “Baby, no...I’m sorry...fuck I’m sorry.” he sobs falling to his knees gripping the back of your knees as you stand in front of the drivers side door. “Fuck, I’m such a fuck up baby.” he sobs. You try to shake him off but he just grips you tighter. Sobs getting louder he pulls you closer. “Don’t leave me [name].” he begs into your thighs. “I know I’m a fuck up, but please...I can’t do this without you...I can’t have a future without you.” the crack in his voice ebbs your anger slightly. Turning you peer down at him and watch as the tears stream down his face. You sigh softly, and stroke his cheeks. “I can’t do this again Tetsu, I came because you called and that’s what I walked into?” you asked. Pushing his face into your thighs he squeezes softly. “I had too much to drink, I was upset because I want you to come to the US with me.” you stroke his hair softly as he continues to explain his reasonings. “I’m sorry I kicked you out earlier. And I’m sorry I said I didn’t support you.” He mumbles softly. “I want you to be happy, and if going to Miyagi is what makes you happy then...we can do the distance.” You pull him up and snuggle yourself into his chest. “Forgive me baby, I need you. You’re my best girl.” he smiles at you softly stroking your cheek. And with the soft smile you find yourself forgiving him once again.
@dabilove27
PART III|PART V
A/N: Angsty Angst >:]
#kuroo tetsurō#kuroo scenarios#kuroo x reader#kuroo imagine#kenma kozume#kenma x reader#kenma imagines#haikyuu concepts#haikyuu imagines#haikyuu
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Dany telling herself hopeful stories
As I was rereading ASOIAF, I made it my goal to compile all* the book passages demonstrating either certain key attributes of Daenerys Targaryen (e.g. that she's compassionate and empathetic) or aspects of hers that are usually overblown (e.g. that she's violent and ambitious). Doing such a task may seem exaggerated, but I'd argue it's not, for many, many misconceptions about Dany have become widespread in light of the show's final season's events (and even before).
It must be acknowledged that it can be tricky to reference, say, ADWD passages to counter-argument how she was depicted in season eight (which allegedly follows ADOS events). Dany will have had plenty of character development in the span of two books. However, whatever happens to Dany in the next two books, I would argue that there is more than enough material to conclude that her show counterpart was made to fall for flaws that she (for the most part) never had and actions that she (for the most part) would never take.
Another objection to the purpose of these lists is that Game of Thrones is different from A Song of Ice and Fire and should be analyzed on its own, which is a fair point. However, the show is also an adaptation of these books, which begs the questions: why did they change Dany's character? Why did they overfocus on negative traits of hers or depicted them as negative when they weren't supposed to be or gave her negative traits that were never hers to begin with? Another fact that undermines the show=/=books argument is that most people think that the show's ending will be the books', albeit only in broad strokes and in different circumstances. As a result, people's perception of Dany is inevitably influenced by the show, which is a shame.
I hope these lists can be useful for whoever wants to find book passages to defend Dany's character in analysis or even conversations.
*Well, at least all the passages that I could find.
Also, people may interpret certain passages differently and then come up with a different collection of passages, so I'm not arguing that this list is completely objective (nor that there could ever be one).
Also, some passages have been cut short according to whether they were, IMO, relevant to the specific topic of the list they're in, so the context surrounding them may not always be clear (always read the books!). Many of them appear in different lists, sometimes fully cited, sometimes not.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm not including quotes that misrepresent Dany here because I couldn't find them on a quick glance and, frankly, I didn't want to find them. But we know that some people like to paint Dany in an overly negative light for taking pride at her ancestors (never mind the numerous double standards) or for not being completely aware of their history. And we know that she should be defended from these accusations. I interpret Dany as someone who, sometimes, needs to tell herself hopeful stories to keep going, especially for having had no family but an abusive brother. Her bias in regarding her relatives and Westeros in an idealized light and her enemies in an overly negative one is part of that pattern (which is contextualized by the universe she lives in, in which familial bonds are the most important ones). And so, I'm listing passages in which we see that pattern come up.
A Dance with Dragons
ADWD Daenerys X
She might have wished for colder, clearer water ... but no, if she were going to pin her hopes on wishes, she would wish for rescue.
She still clung to the hope that someone would come after her. Ser Barristan might come seeking her; he was the first of her Queensguard, sworn to defend her life with his own. And her bloodriders were no strangers to the Dothraki sea, and their lives were bound to her own. Her husband, the noble Hizdahr zo Loraq, might dispatch searchers. And Daario ... Dany pictured him riding toward her through the tall grass, smiling, his golden tooth gleaming with the last light of the setting sun.
Only Daario had been given to the Yunkai’i, a hostage to ensure no harm came to the Yunkish captains. Daario and Hero, Jhogo and Groleo, and three of Hizdahr’s kin. By now, surely, all of her hostages would have been released.
~
It makes no matter. By now the Yunkai’i will be marching home. That was why she had done all that she had done. For peace.
~
But none of those things had happened. Bells, Dany thought again. Her bloodriders had found her. “Aggo,” she whispered. “Jhogo. Rakharo.” Might Daario have come with them?
ADWD Daenerys IX
The boar was a huge beast, with tusks as long as a man’s forearm and small eyes that swam with rage. She wondered whether the boar that had killed Robert Baratheon had looked as fierce. A terrible creature and a terrible death. For a heartbeat she felt almost sorry for the Usurper.
ADWD Daenerys VII
“And my father? Was there some woman he loved better than his queen?”
Ser Barristan shifted in the saddle. “Not … not loved. Mayhaps wanted is a better word, but … it was only kitchen gossip, the whispers of washerwomen and stableboys …”
“I want to know. I never knew my father. I want to know everything about him. The good and … the rest.”
“As you command.”
~
How beautiful, the queen tried to tell herself, but inside her was some foolish little girl who could not help but look about for Daario. If he loved you, he would come and carry you off at swordpoint, as Rhaegar carried off his northern girl, the girl in her insisted, but the queen knew that was folly.
ADWD Daenerys V
The day might come soon when she would have need of every knight. “Will they joust for me? I should like that.” Viserys had told her stories of the tourneys he had witnessed in the Seven Kingdoms, but Dany had never seen a joust herself.
“They are not ready, Your Grace. When they are, they will be pleased to demonstrate their prowess.”
ADWD Daenerys IV
“One day I will want to return to Westeros, to claim the Seven Kingdoms that were my father’s.”
“One day all men must die, but it serves no good to dwell on death. I prefer to take each day as it comes.”
Dany folded her hands together. “Words are wind, even words like love and peace. I put more trust in deeds. In my Seven Kingdoms, knights go on quests to prove themselves worthy of the maiden that they love. They seek for magic swords, for chests of gold, for crowns stolen from a dragon’s hoard.”
~
“Ninety days and ninety nights without a corpse, and on the ninety-first we wed?”
“Perhaps,” said Dany, with a coy look. “Though young girls have been known to be fickle. I may still want a magic sword.”
~
“I saw your father and your mother wed as well. Forgive me, but there was no fondness there, and the realm paid dearly for that, my queen.”
“Why did they wed if they did not love each other?”
“Your grandsire commanded it. A woods witch had told him that the prince was promised would be born of their line.”
[...] “What became of her?”
“Summerhall.” The word was fraught with doom.
Dany sighed. “Leave me now. I am very weary.”
~
“Most queens have no purpose but to warm some king’s bed and pop out sons for him. If that’s the sort of queen you mean to be, best marry Hizdahr.”
Her anger flashed. “Have you forgotten who I am?”
“No. Have you?”
Viserys would have his head off for that insolence. “I am the blood of the dragon. Do not presume to teach me lessons.” When Dany stood, the lion pelt slipped from her shoulders and tumbled to the ground. “Leave me.”
ADWD Daenerys II
Dany shut her eyes and tried to think of home, of Dragonstone and King's Landing and all the other places that Viserys had told her of, in a kinder land than this ...
~
“Tell me a tale, ser,” Dany said as they climbed. “Some tale of valor with a happy ending.” She felt in need of happy endings. “Tell me how you escaped from the Usurper.”
“Your Grace. There is no valor in running for your life.”
Dany seated herself on a cushion, crossed her legs, and gazed up at him. “Please. It was the Young Usurper who dismissed you from the Kingsguard …”
~
“[...] I was gathering my things when it came to me that I had brought this on myself by taking Robert’s pardon. He was a good knight but a bad king, for he had no right to the throne he sat. That was when I knew that to redeem myself I must find the true king, and serve him loyally with all the strength that still remained me.”
“My brother Viserys.”
~
“Stark was a traitor who met a traitor’s end.”
“Your Grace,” said Selmy, “Eddard Stark played a part in your father’s fall, but he bore you no ill will. When the eunuch Varys told us that you were with child, Robert wanted you killed, but Lord Stark spoke against it. Rather than countenance the murder of children, he told Robert to find himself another Hand.”
“Have you forgotten Princess Rhaenys and Prince Aegon?”
“Never. That was Lannister work, Your Grace.”
“Lannister or Stark, what difference? Viserys used to call them the Usurper’s dogs. If a child is set upon by a pack of hounds, does it matter which one tears out his throat? All the dogs are just as guilty. The guilt …” The word caught in her throat.
A Storm of Swords
ASOS Daenerys VI
“Your father is called ‘the Mad King’ in Westeros. Has no one ever told you?”
“Viserys did.” The Mad King. “The Usurper called him that, the Usurper and his dogs.” The Mad King. “It was a lie.”
“Why ask for truth,” Ser Barristan said softly, “if you close your ears to it?” He hesitated, then continued.
[...] The truth is, I wanted to watch you for a time before pledging you my sword. To make certain that you were not ...”
“... my father’s daughter?” If she was not her father’s daughter, who was she?
“... mad,” he finished. “But I see no taint in you.”
“Taint?” Dany bristled.
~
“Was my father truly mad?” she blurted out. Why do I ask that? “Viserys said this talk of madness was a ploy of the Usurper’s ...”
“Viserys was a child, and the queen sheltered him as much as she could. Your father always had a little madness in him, I now believe. Yet he was charming and generous as well, so his lapses were forgiven. His reign began with such promise ... but as the years passed, the lapses grew more frequent, until ...”
Dany stopped him. “Do I want to hear this now?”
Ser Barristan considered a moment. “Perhaps not. Not now.”
“Not now,” she agreed. “One day. One day you must tell me all. The good and the bad. There is some good to be said of my father, surely?”
“There is, Your Grace. Of him, and those who came before him. Your grandfather Jaehaerys and his brother, their father Aegon, your mother ... and Rhaegar. Him most of all.”
“I wish I could have known him.” Her voice was wistful.
“I wish he could have known you,” the old knight said. “When you are ready, I will tell you all.”
ASOS Daenerys V
“...Your war is in Westeros.”
“I have not forgotten Westeros.” Dany dreamt of it some nights, this fabled land that she had never seen. “If I let Meereen’s old brick walls defeat me so easily, though, how will I ever take the great stone castles of Westeros?”
~
“Why are you here?” Dany demanded of him. “If Robert sent you to kill me, why did you save my life?” He served the Usurper. He betrayed Rhaegar’s memory, and abandoned Viserys to live and die in exile. Yet if he wanted me dead, he need only have stood aside ...
~
“...And since the day you wed Khal Drogo, there has been an informer by your side selling your secrets, trading whispers to the Spider for gold and promises.”
He cannot mean ... “You are mistaken.” Dany looked at Jorah Mormont. “Tell him he’s mistaken. There’s no informer. Ser Jorah, tell him. We crossed the Dothraki sea together, and the red waste ...” Her heart fluttered like a bird in a trap. “Tell him, Jorah. Tell him how he got it wrong.”
“The Others take you, Selmy.” Ser Jorah flung his longsword to the carpet. “Khaleesi, it was only at the start, before I came to know you ... before I came to love ...”
“Do not say that word!” She backed away from him. “How could you? What did the Usurper promise you? Gold, was it gold?” The Undying had said she would be betrayed twice more, once for gold and once for love. “Tell me what you were promised?”
“Varys said ... I might go home.” He bowed his head.
I was going to take you home!
ASOS Daenerys IV
“Tell me more of my brother Rhaegar, if you would. I liked the tale you told me on the ship, of how he decided that he must be a warrior.”
~
“...He never loved the song of swords the way that Robert did, or Jaime Lannister. It was something he had to do, a task the world had set him. He did it well, for he did everything well. That was his nature. But he took no joy in it. Men said that he loved his harp much better than his lance.”
“He won some tourneys, surely,” said Dany, disappointed.
~
Dany did not want to hear about Rhaegar being unhorsed. “But what tourneys did my brother win?”
~
“But that was the tourney when he crowned Lyanna Stark as queen of love and beauty!” said Dany. “Princess Elia was there, his wife, and yet my brother gave the crown to the Stark girl, and later stole her away from her betrothed. How could he do that? Did the Dornish woman treat him so ill?”
~
“But I am not certain it was in Rhaegar to be happy.”
“You make him sound so sour,” Dany protested.
ASOS Daenerys II
“Yet I must have some army,” Dany said. “The boy Joffrey will not give me the Iron Throne for asking politely.”
“When the day comes that you raise your banners, half of Westeros will be with you,” Whitebeard promised. “Your brother Rhaegar is still remembered, with great love.”
“And my father?” Dany said.
The old man hesitated before saying, “King Aerys is also remembered. He gave the realm many years of peace.[”]
~
“Viserys would have bought as many Unsullied as he had the coin for. But you once said I was like Rhaegar ...”
“I remember, Daenerys.”
“Your Grace,��� she corrected. “Prince Rhaegar led free men into battle, not slaves. Whitebeard said he dubbed his squires himself, and made many other knights as well.”
“There was no higher honor than to receive your knighthood from the Prince of Dragonstone.”
“Tell me, then—when he touched a man on the shoulder with his sword, what did he say? ‘Go forth and kill the weak’? Or ‘Go forth and defend them’? At the Trident, those brave men Viserys spoke of who died beneath our dragon banners—did they give their lives because they believed in Rhaegar’s cause, or because they had been bought and paid for?” Dany turned to Mormont, crossed her arms, and waited for an answer.
“My queen,” the big man said slowly, “all you say is true. But Rhaegar lost on the Trident. He lost the battle, he lost the war, he lost the kingdom, and he lost his life. His blood swirled downriver with the rubies from his breastplate, and Robert the Usurper rode over his corpse to steal the Iron Throne. Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died.”
ASOS Daenerys I
“Did you ever meet my royal father?” King Aerys II had died before his daughter was born.
“I had that great honor, Your Grace.” “Did you find him good and gentle?”
Whitebeard did his best to hide his feelings, but they were there, plain on his face. “His Grace was ... often pleasant.”
“Often?” Dany smiled. “But not always?”
“He could be very harsh to those he thought his enemies.”
“A wise man never makes an enemy of a king,” said Dany.
~
“Along with a thousand others at some harvest feast. Next you’ll claim you squired for him.”
“I make no such claim, ser. Myles Mooton was Prince Rhaegar’s squire, and Richard Lonmouth after him. When they won their spurs, he knighted them himself, and they remained his close companions. Young Lord Connington was dear to the prince as well, but his oldest friend was Arthur Dayne.”
“The Sword of the Morning!” said Dany, delighted. “Viserys used to talk about his wondrous white blade. He said Ser Arthur was the only knight in the realm who was our brother’s peer.”
Whitebeard bowed his head. “It is not my place to question the words of Prince Viserys.”
“King,” Dany corrected. “He was a king, though he never reigned. Viserys, the Third of His Name. But what do you mean?” His answer had not been one that she’d expected. “Ser Jorah named Rhaegar the last dragon once. He had to have been a peerless warrior to be called that, surely?”
~
Dany turned back to the squire. “I know little of Rhaegar. Only the tales Viserys told, and he was a little boy when our brother died. What was he truly like?”
The old man considered a moment. “Able. That above all. Determined, deliberate, dutiful, single-minded. There is a tale told of him ... but doubtless Ser Jorah knows it as well.”
“I would hear it from you.”
“As you wish,” said Whitebeard. “[...] Until one day Prince Rhaegar found something in his scrolls that changed him. No one knows what it might have been, only that the boy suddenly appeared early one morning in the yard as the knights were donning their steel. He walked up to Ser Willem Darry, the master-at-arms, and said, ‘I will require sword and armor. It seems I must be a warrior.’”
“And he was!” said Dany, delighted.
~
I am still half a world from Westeros, Dany reminded herself, but every hour brings me closer. She tried to imagine what it would feel like, when she first caught sight of the land she was born to rule. It will be as fair a shore as I have ever seen, I know it. How could it be otherwise?
A Clash of Kings
ACOK Daenerys III
“The Arbor makes the best wine in the world,” Dany declared. Lord Redwyne had fought for her father against the Usurper, she remembered, one of the few to remain true to the last. Will he fight for me as well? There was no way to be certain after so many years.
~
“If you go west, you risk your life.”
“House Targaryen has friends in the Free Cities,” she reminded him. “Truer friends than Xaro or the Pureborn.”
~
“Illyrio believes in no cause but Illyrio. Gluttons are greedy men as a rule, and magisters are devious. Illyrio Mopatis is both. What do you truly know of him?”
“I know that he gave me my dragon eggs.”
He snorted. “If he’d known they were like to hatch, he would have sat on them himself.”
That made her smile despite herself. “Oh, I have no doubt of that, ser. I know Illyrio better than you think. I was a child when I left his manse in Pentos to wed my sun-and-stars, but I was neither deaf nor blind. And I am no child now.”
~
“Sellswords have their uses,” Ser Jorah admitted, “but you will not win your father’s throne with sweepings from the Free Cities. Nothing knits a broken realm together so quick as an invading army on its soil.”
“I am their rightful queen,” Dany protested.
“You are a stranger who means to land on their shores with an army of outlanders who cannot even speak the Common Tongue. The lords of Westeros do not know you, and have every reason to fear and mistrust you. You must win them over before you sail. A few at least.”
ACOK Daenerys II
It felt good to close her eyes and float, knowing she could rest as long as she liked. She wondered whether Aegon’s Red Keep had a pool like this, and fragrant gardens full of lavender and mint. It must, surely. Viserys always said the Seven Kingdoms were more beautiful than any other place in the world.
[...] Viserys had believed that the realm would rise for its rightful king ... but Viserys had been a fool, and fools believe in foolish things.
~
The Usurper will kill you, sure as sunrise, Mormont had said. Robert had slain her gallant brother Rhaegar, and one of his creatures had crossed the Dothraki sea to poison her and her unborn son. They said Robert Baratheon was strong as a bull and fearless in battle, a man who loved nothing better than war. And with him stood the great lords her brother had named the Usurper’s dogs, cold-eyed Eddard Stark with his frozen heart, and the golden Lannisters, father and son, so rich, so powerful, so treacherous.
~
“A gift of news. Dragonmother, Stormborn, I tell you true, Robert Baratheon is dead.”
Outside her walls, dusk was settling over Qarth, but a sun had risen in Dany’s heart. “Dead?” she repeated. In her lap, black Drogon hissed, and pale smoke rose before her face like a veil. “You are certain? The Usurper is dead?”
“So it is said in Oldtown, and Dorne, and Lys, and all the other ports where we have called.”
He sent me poisoned wine, yet I live and he is gone. “What was the manner of his death?” On her shoulder, pale Viserion flapped wings the color of cream, stirring the air.
“Torn by a monstrous boar whilst hunting in his kingswood, or so I heard in Oldtown. Others say his queen betrayed him, or his brother, or Lord Stark who was his Hand. Yet all the tales agree in this: King Robert is dead and in his grave.”
Dany had never looked upon the Usurper’s face, yet seldom a day had passed when she had not thought of him. His great shadow had lain across her since the hour of her birth, when she came forth amidst blood and storm into a world where she no longer had a place. And now this ebony stranger had lifted that shadow.
“The boy sits the Iron Throne now,” Ser Jorah said.
“King Joffrey reigns,” Quhuru Mo agreed, “but the Lannisters rule. Robert’s brothers have fled King’s Landing. The talk is, they mean to claim the crown. And the Hand has fallen, Lord Stark who was King Robert’s friend. He has been seized for treason.”
“Ned Stark a traitor?” Ser Jorah snorted. “Not bloody likely. The Long Summer will come again before that one would besmirch his precious honor.”
“What honor could he have?” Dany said. “He was a traitor to his true king, as were these Lannisters.” It pleased her to hear that the Usurper’s dogs were fighting amongst themselves, though she was unsurprised.
A Game of Thrones
AGOT Daenerys IX
She told herself that there were powers stronger than hatred, and spells older and truer than any the maegi had learned in Asshai. The night was black and moonless, but overhead a million stars burned bright. She took that for an omen.
AGOT Daenerys VIII
She was the blood of the dragon, she would not be afraid. Her brother Rhaegar had died for the woman he loved.
AGOT Daenerys VII
Slaves, Dany thought. Khal Drogo would drive them downriver to one of the towns on Slaver’s Bay. She wanted to cry, but she told herself that she must be strong. This is war, this is what it looks like, this is the price of the Iron Throne.
AGOT Daenerys IV
And sometimes she found herself wishing her father had been protected by such men. In the songs, the white knights of the Kingsguard were ever noble, valiant, and true, and yet King Aerys had been murdered by one of them, the handsome boy they now called the Kingslayer, and a second, Ser Barristan the Bold, had gone over to the Usurper. She wondered if all men were as false in the Seven Kingdoms. When her son sat the Iron Throne, she would see that he had bloodriders of his own to protect him against treachery in his Kingsguard.
#daenerys targaryen#dany passages#a dance with dragons#a storm of swords#valyrianscrolls#a game of thrones#a clash of kings
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Drpepperony Prompt: Pepper gets sick/injured and Tony calls the hospital demanding they send their absolute best doctor. Leaves Pepper to answer to phone and walks back in on the most handsome man ever taking care of Pepper.
hello! took quite a few liberties with your prompt here (again 😅), but i still hope you like it 💖
set shortly after Iron Man 2 and before the first Avengers movie.
[10/03/2019: NOT ACCEPTING NEW PROMPTS AT THE MOMENT. Thank you for understanding 💕]
***
One day without Ms. Potts was manageable. Barely.
Two days was hell.
Three days got Tony inquiring after the state of her health.
When he learned she was in the hospital recovering from extreme fatigue, he dropped everything to race over to said hospital.
His first impulse was to use the Iron Man suit. It would have taken him there faster.
But it was a hospital. She (as well as everyone else there) would not have appreciated the loud and flashy disruption. Therefore, a car would do.
Extreme fatigue.
She had only said she was under the weather. He was imagining she was sitting at home, bundled up in blankets or in a fluffy robe, sniffling cutely while nursing a mug of hot cocoa she’d made for herself.
At worst, it would be the flu. She would still call. Assure him and all other stakeholders that way that everything was going to be fine.
But it had been fatigue, not the flu. She had collapsed as she was walking to her parked car three days ago, on her way to work. Other tenants of her apartment building found her and rushed her to Metro General.
The hospital Tony was rushing to get to.
He hadn’t thought about bringing her anything. That was why the balloon he’d bought at the hospital lobby, when Shit I’d forgotten to bring her something finally crossed his mind, said “It’s a boy!” instead of “Get well soon!” (he was in a hurry and had grabbed the wrong balloon).
He hadn’t even thought about calling ahead. Which would have been a wise idea.
It would’ve spared him the shock of finding her smiling and laughing with a cute, young, blue-eyed doctor as she lay in her hospital bed, hooked up to an IV.
Tony didn’t know what he had been prepared to find. Ms. Potts still unconscious, maybe? Emaciated, barely able to move, like a damsel in distress?
But she looked fine. Just a little pale and weak, perhaps, but stunning as ever. Certainly strong enough to flash her billion dollar smile at a total stranger.
And the doctor she was with…looked fine.
“Don’t worry, sir, she’d asked for the best doctor in the hospital,” the nurse rushed to tell his anxious ass at reception, but he didn’t stay to hear the rest of it.
So this was the best doctor in the hospital.
“Tony!” she greeted breathlessly. “What are you doing here?”
She looked genuinely surprised to see him. The doctor standing by her bed, however, seemed unimpressed.
“I, uh,” he began. Man, that doctor had pretty eyes. “Heard you were sick? Thought you may appreciate seeing a familiar face.”
All things considered, she really did look glad to see Tony. Which was a relief.
“Of course,” she said softly. “Thank you. And I’m sorry you had to come all this way. I didn’t want to trouble you.” She glanced over at the doctor. “I was going straight to the office to take care of everything after getting discharged tomorrow.”
“Hold on, Ms. Potts,” the young doctor sternly interrupted, in a deep baritone that flowed over to Tony like melted butter. “First of all, I haven’t signed off on that yet. We still have a couple more tests to run and I may decide to keep you here another night.”
“That’s why I got the best doctor in the house,” Ms. Potts argued, in a lightly flirtatious tone that did not escape Tony. “I have no choice but to get better fast, and I will.”
“Second,” - completely ignoring said flirtatious tone - “you’re heading back to work as soon as you get out of here? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“That’s right, Ms. Potts, you’ve got to be kidding,” Tony immediately echoed. “You’re going to stay and rest for as long as you need to.”
He stepped forward to hand the “It’s a boy!” balloon over to his former executive secretary. Who seemed amused and discreetly weirded out at the gift.
“Really,” Ms. Potts muttered, one corner of her lip raised. “I seem to recall you are no longer the boss of me.”
Tony made a playful warning gesture with one hand. “I made you CEO. I can take that back, you know.”
She smiled. Gosh, how he loved when he could make her smile. He was going to have to tell her that someday.
“I’m sorry, you are - ?”
This was from Doctor Hottie at her bedside. The question made Tony pause. Or maybe it was the way the doctor’s eyes seemed to look right into his soul.
“I’m her - ” What? Significant other? Ex-boss? Biggest headache? “ - friend.”
Ms. Potts’ eyebrows rose upon hearing that…though she didn’t overtly dispute it.
“Right,” the doctor answered, incredulous - apparently every bit as perceptive as he looked. “I’m Doctor Stephen Strange, Ms. Potts’ attending physician. I was in the middle of discussing Ms. Potts’ test results with her. This is normally information reserved for the family and the patient herself, so I’ll continue if Ms. Potts allows me - otherwise I’ll come back later. I do have other patients to see.”
Uh, wow. Self-important, much?
“Okay, Doc uh…” Tony fumbled for the name. “…Strange, is it? Can I talk to you outside for a bit?”
Strange looked over at Ms. Potts. Ms. Potts nodded, giving him permission.
He stepped out of the room with Tony without further argument.
Tony wasted no time in introducing himself properly - Tony Stark, president of Stark Industries, yadda yadda - and asking Dr. Strange what the deal was. And Strange was no-nonsense about it, which Tony appreciated.
Ms. Potts had not been sleeping. She’d been neglecting drinking fluids and eating healthily. She had been going to the gym, but without proper rest and nutrition, she had just been pushing her body past its limits. Her stress and anxiety levels were through the roof. And all of it had been going on for months.
Tony’s quick-working brain translated it as this:
Ms. Potts getting sick was his fault, for forcing her into a promotion.
They’d known each other for a while now. He should have known that the perfectionist in her might push her to be harder on herself than she actually needed to be.
Lots of company heads barely did any work. But Ms. Potts was always a hands-on manager. She would never be that kind of CEO.
“She needs rest,” Dr. Strange emphasized. “Bed rest. At least a week of it. Two would be ideal.”
“Two weeks,” Tony thoughtfully repeated. “There’s…no way to speed that up, is there?”
An eyebrow shot up. “Eager to get her back to the grind, are you?”
“No.” Asshole. “I just know her well enough to know that there’s no way in hell she’ll take to two weeks of staying indoors. Stark Industries is her baby. If she’s not with her baby, she won’t be able to rest anyway.”
To Tony’s surprise, a note of compassion entered the doctor’s voice.
“I’m not recommending so much downtime on a whim. The fact of the matter is, Ms. Potts’ body badly needs to remember how to relax. When was the last time she went on vacation?”
Tony tried to think back. And came up blank.
“I…huh,” he remarked. “I don’t think she’s ever taken a vacation since she started working at SI.”
“You say you’re her friend,” the doctor said. “The best thing you could do for her as a friend is to convince her to listen to her doctor. And try to ease her burden.”
Tony thought for a second.
“I do have a place upstate,” he mused aloud. “A lakeside log cabin…nice little place, perfect for an extended vacation. She ought to be able to relax there.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Strange agreed.
“It’s about a two-hour drive from here. How much to book you for regular home visits?”
The question seemed to take the good doctor aback.
“I’m a resident, Mr. Stark. I don’t do home visits.” He sounded genuinely offended, and just a tad amused. “And you can’t ‘book’ me, I’m not a taxi.”
“Wrong choice of words.” Tony threw his hands up in apology. “I’m just saying…she seems to like you. And I want her to get the best medical care while she’s recovering. Money’s no object.”
The doctor looked Tony up and down. Man, how could he look so handsome while being so annoying?
“In that case,” Dr. Strange responded, smirking, “we may be able to arrange something. Call my assistant.”
This seemed to conclude their conversation. Without so much as a by-your-leave, the annoyingly hot young doctor left to resume his rounds.
Tony let him go; his mind was already buzzing with plans to accommodate Ms. Potts in his lakeside cabin for two weeks. He had better make sure he was with her for those two weeks, just to make sure she really was resting, you know, and not on her phone stressing out and trying to run things by remote control.
And he had better be around for when Doctor Sexy came to visit.
You know.
Just to be safe.
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Fathers - A Duty Sideshot
Author’s note: I’m so incredibly sorry that there is no new Flight Risk today. This sidetracked the hell out of me as I started to put my final touches on the chapter. All the baby fever fics for Father’s Day got to me and in my natural fashion I couldn’t be too happy about them. This is a tribute to all the different kinds of fathers in someone’s life. Real, biological, adoptive, foster, step, overprotective, intimidating, goofy, serious, or fun. I cried so much writing this and I thought I put Duty behind me, but it’s so obvious I haven’t. If you haven’t ready my series Duty, it’s here:
Part I: Déjà Vu - Part II: Hopelessly Cold - Part III: Bitterness - Part IV: Rage - Part V: Promises - Part VI: Oath - Part VII: Dysphoria - Part VIII: Toska - Part IX: Credence - Part X: Unconditional
Summary: Eleanor reflects on the fathers she’s had over the years and what each of them has taught her.
Perma-tags: @madaraism, @mfackenthal, @blackcatkita, @never-ending-choices, @darley1101, @pbchoicesobsessed, @flyawayblue56
Tags (I tagged those of you who were tagged throughout Duty): @queencatherynerhys, @theroyalweisme, @crayziimaginations, @boneandfur, @lizeboredom, @gardeningourmet, @hopefulmoonobject, @hamulau
Eleanor Charlotte Rhys adored each one of the men she considered a father to her; she loved each one differently and no one more than another. It was fun, having so many fathers to call hers even if her past was marked with sadness and loss. They managed to pull her from it but still maintain an acknowledgement that it existed and deserved to never be forgotten. She was thankful for that because to do so would be a disservice to one of the greatest men to ever walk the earth. But still, each of them had something unique to offer and a valuable lesson to teach her, and for that she was grateful.
Uncle Leo. A man tossed from his country because of his heart. Even her own mother had a difficult time looking him in the eye. But Ellie saw something more, something special in the way he looked at the world around him. It was her Uncle Leo who taught her to follow her dreams and that they were limitless even when she felt so weighed down by the crown. Being sworn to the throne at not even the age of five was terrifying and rarely afforded Ellie the time to breathe and so it was one summer in her early teens that Ellie persuaded her mother to allow her to spend a month in the states with her Uncle Leo.
Even though her royal guard surrounded her every moment of the trip, from the time she stepped out of the limo onto the tarmac of the Cordonian airport, to the moment she returned to the palace, Eleanor had never felt so free, so normal. The sand of the beautiful beach her uncle’s house shared squished between her toes in a way she had never felt before. They’d sneak out and skirt her guard to see a show in New York City or paddle a boat to a nearby cove to watch the sunset through the trees just so. She cherished that summer as her uncle recalled stories of his youth, a carefree but sheltered time with his brother. The minutes spent without her guard liberating and exhilarating, but always short. Once the cloak of surveillance enveloped her she felt relieved.
As the month rolled on, Eleanor found herself counting the days to her return to Cordonia even as she continued to adore every moment. The solitary life of a fox was not for her, flitting from place to place not calling anywhere or anyone home. She was born for the throne and no taste of freedom would pull her from her responsibility to her country and her people.
Uncle Bertrand. Ever a stick in her side. He always meant well. Bertrand was a stickler for rules and tradition. He reminded her why things were done a certain way, why titles were important, and why the dessert fork was located at the top of her place setting. Eleanor never retained all of it, but his lessons instilled a sense of pride behind how she pinned her medals just so and solidified the depth at which she bowed her head when greeting a guest. Never too far, you are queen after all. Being the expert of courtly traditions, Bertrand was tasked with ensuring she understood the meaning and origins of all of them.
She recalls being in full regalia late in her teens, wobbling on her high heels as Bertrand places a book on her head. A queen must walk with poise and never stumble, lest she give others something to talk about. Attention spans of people at court were short and if their queen tripped at an event the day after cementing the largest trade deal in the country’s history, only one moment would be talked about over dinner and it wasn’t the important one. Things were done a certain way out of respect and tradition. While it may seem outdated, sticking to it in many cases did little harm to others. It was in the grey areas however, Bertrand told her, that she would be asked to help the country forge a new path and develop new traditions to keep them ahead of an ever changing world.
As the book slipped from her head for the umpteenth time, Eleanor wondered what sort of lesson this was supposed to teach her. She watched Bertrand’s face as he sighed once again and scurried over to gather up the book. He smiled a rare smile and nodded at her. When she looked at him, confused, he merely shelved the book and complimented her inability to become frazzled by his ridiculous request. An important quality when one must speak with vapid and self-centered nobles.
Uncle Max. The brightest spot in her childhood. Maxwell never ceases to make her laugh and forget whatever issue had her down at the moment. He could never erase the largest pain of her life but he worked hard to help her deal with it in constructive and healing ways. He was more than the resident goofball; he was perceptive and loyal. Her most vivid memory of him was one afternoon as the sixth anniversary of her father’s passing. The age of ten can be a difficult time for a young girl and she envied more than anything her friends’ families, so whole and perfect. Not this broken amalgamation of people who never perfectly fit together. She couldn’t very well invite them all to parent’s night.
Her Uncle Maxwell senses something wrong and offers to help her pay tribute to her father, spending the better part of the day wandering the maze, standing at the well with her, in search of the perfect flower. Each time they think they’ve located it, another appears just around a bend or a few steps ahead. By the time they’d scoured the gardens they had well over a hundred. Her Uncle Max helped weave them into a gorgeous wreath and took her to hang in at the Royal Tomb. Never once did he make her feel like her feelings were silly or small.
As she hung the wreath at the placard indicating her father’s grave, Ellie noted just how valid her Uncle Maxwell made her feel that day. He took her broken heart and mended it with smiles and laughter, weaving it all together with the beautiful love he had for her. That they all did. It didn’t matter that they weren’t the same as the families of her schoolmates, they were something more. It didn’t matter that they were different.
Uncle Drake. The rock. Ever present and always reassuring. He’d taken it upon himself after her father’s death to give her some semblance of a childhood because it was what she deserved. She also realized at some point it was what probably held him together as well. He clung to her and kept her as safe as he possibly could. He played incessant princess games with her, fueled merely by her shrieks and laugh. She put him through a ringer, from the moment she got her first period when her mother was out of town to the time he caught her in the gardens during her first kiss, at her fourteenth birthday celebration. He was never angry or upset with her; he could never be. She was mortified when he chased the noble boy off, even if she laughed at the memory later that same night.
She never quite understood her mother’s and Drake’s relationship as she grew up. Somewhere in-between being friends and something more. She’d asked both of them on numerous occasions if Drake was going to be her new father. It was something neither of them ever needed from the other, a deep understanding that their relationship was never meant to be. Had her father still been alive, neither of them would’ve needed it. So it was that Drake took up residence eventually in an extra bedroom of the royal suite. Always nearby when needed, never too close for comfort when they both required space if the memory of her father became too real for them. She never understood it until much later, the need to just feel someone’s lips against your own, their skin under your fingertips, so you could feel like yourself, like you were alive.
As she watched Drake chase a fourteen year old boy through the hedge maze and away from her, Ellie noticed how Drake’s loyalty to her and her mother outshined all else in his life. Underneath the deep crimson of her cheeks, it was a quality she hoped she herself had.
Her own father. Whom she could scarcely remember. The fiercest love she would never know. What she does know of him are fleeting snips of moments. She can sometimes recall them with no issue and on other days she can scarcely remember what his face looked like. She knew he was a man to be reckoned with, proud, honest, kind, and humble. He was a king in every possible sense. His duty to his country and people was unrivaled. His love for his family was unmatched. He treated each of these two halves of his life as if they were his whole self.
She remembers how he would peek over his glasses at her, when he worked late at night in their living room. Instead of scolding her and sending her back to bed, he would offer her a seat next to him. Her tiny hand would bunch into his shirt as she leaned sleepily into him. The morning would break and the two of them would be found on the same spot. Her father dare not move lest he wake her and pull her from sleep. She remembers how his eyes shined when he laughed at her silly stories from the day. He was a king, but he was never too busy to lend an ear. She remembers his arms, strong and comforting around her, as he holds her close during a particularly scary storm one summer. She remembers resting her head against his upper arm in the limo on the way to some sort of boring public appearance. She never was sure if these were her own memories or those she created from the memories of others.
As she is lifted and spun around one day after her father returned home from yet another long trip abroad, she wondered if all the other children she knew had fathers who were superheroes like him. She supposed that her dad was special and more important than the rest. When she looked back on her memories of him, she realized he taught her the most important lesson of all: how to balance the crown and the self.
It is because of these five men that Ellie cannot choose who should walk her down the aisle on her wedding day. Tradition dictates that a member of her regent council should be responsible, but to do that would fly in the face of all the great men who made her who she is. In the many long and boring planning meetings, she put her foot down time and time again on the subject when she was met with opposition. The conversation would then turn to other traditions and customs, detailing their meaning and what they entailed as the planning committee ran through the schedule of the ceremony.
It is because of these five men that Ellie decides to have each of them escort her a part of the way down the nave of the cathedral. Leo first, a few meters before he kisses her cheek and Bertrand puts his arm out for her to take. Tears shine in his eyes, this tradition was something she’d so beautifully and masterfully modified to bring her wedding into one that would be remembered forever. A few meters. Maxwell awaits her, his arms wide, drawing her into a tight hug before he remembers where they were, a few more meters. He kisses both her cheeks. Drake stands proud waiting his turn, trying hard to belie the fact that he’s already crying. Her hand slips into the crook of his elbow and he walks her a few more meters to the crossing, where the nave and transept meet in the cathedral. As she starts to let her hand fall from his arm, she feels him grasp her hand and he looks at her wordlessly and nods.
It is from here she walks alone. The furthest distance of her journey to be done in memory of the man she wishes she knew the most, her father, the king. The man. Her left hand slips from her bouquet to a small, discrete pocket custom sewn into her gown only days before. It is here where she keeps her most prized possession with her on this momentous day. The letter from her father, words meant only for her. Words that kept him alive in her heart. Her fingers run over the envelope’s surface within her pocket, a reassuring texture on this pivotal day in her life. As she starts her final steps and catches the glance of her husband to be, she wondered if he would’ve approved. She has to believe he would and her heart is so incredibly full.
#playchoices#play choices#the royal romance#trr#choices fanfiction#trr fanfic#trr au#duty#eleanor charlotte#long post
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My Mother 2.0 [2]
[Chapter 1]
Above all else, it’s the silence that that he cannot comprehend.
A deep quiet fills his ears, flooding with a silence so paradoxically deafening. Mere instinct reaches out as best it can, grasping for the slightest vibration it could feed to eardrums sorely starving for that hint of familiarity, but all it can scoop out of the stale air is an utter anomaly it doesn’t know what to make of. The frightening shadow of an indecipherable unknown looms over him, daring his powerless, broken shell to do something, anything about it that he obviously cannot. He could chalk it up to the numbness that seems to envelop his entire being, from the smallest atom to the very thoughts produced by his half-comatose brain, but even in his stupor, the boy knows better. And of all the interrogatives pressing down on him, this one feels the most daunting precisely because he can blame it on himself, rather than some factor outside the scope of his perceptions. It’s a minuscule, vibrant spark of audacity that the very mind culpable for its creation regards it with cautious hesitation, unable to fathom its own ability to birth it. For a time that his diluted consciousness desperately stretches into a seeming eternity, the child refuses to acknowledge the one truth he could process, choosing instead to wallow in an uncertain oblivion that is at least partially of his own making. It’s a long, drawn out, tiresome battle, a silent war fought without weapons, a peaceful, stubborn conflict where nothing happens aside from waiting, waiting.
Waiting.
He doesn’t realize the gradually shifting tide of his struggle until his sole serviceable eye timidly spreads open to brave the unknown sight that has been waiting all along for his acceptance.
Now, the boy finally admits it: that the very unknown he should fear, he very much welcomes far more than anything he’s ever been acquainted with.
And so…
At last…
Time begins to flow anew.
“Hey now, awake alread-D-D-D-D-D-y? Go figure.”
The rapidfire barrage of glitchy reverb is interspersed between words that sound like they’re rattling within a box made of thin metallic sheets. The auditory concoction stampedes its way through the child’s hearing with all the grace of a bombardment and hurting twice as much.
It’s odd, though.
Common sense etched deep inside tells him that the optimal response should involve either lots of thrashing and screaming, or curling into a ball and quietly begging for it to end. There’s the fact that the neural pathways in charge of his muscles are currently fueled with a thick, uncrossable gel paste-like form of paralysis, but that’s not the whole of it. The pain is far from pleasant, yet it conveys a clear message - that he is alive, and not anywhere he would recognize. One of these two conclusions fills him with something akin to relief; the other, not so much.
It’s hard for the boy to decide which corresponds to which. He decides that, for the time being, a better way to keep busy what few of his brain cells are awake would be deciphering exactly what it is that he’s staring at.
Through the fog blanketing his vision, the child sees grey lips, framed by a shade of dull blue well on its way to fading into the latter color. The plated shape gives him the impression that it must be a helmet covering the rest of the stranger’s face, but the two halves hug each other so harmoniously to form a solid mass that he questions this interpretation, despite any other making little sense. He seeks answers in the single black strip cutting into the superior portion: the bright red dot swimming inside it, however, dumps only more questions onto a pile that has already grown rather healthy.
His eye begins to burn, reminding him of such a basic need as blinking that he’d seemingly forgotten in his stupor. The boy’s eyelid trembles: will it manage to arise once more, after it’s fallen? The darkness was daunting, but he felt safe within its embrace. It tasted different from the one he’s grown accustomed to - ah, hold on, that’s not quite right.
As more and more of his consciousness tears itself free from its sleepy cocoon, the child begins to make sense of his own thoughts. He understands that it’s not quite that his unconsciousness felt safe in and of itself - rather, it’s what he feels now, after he’s already gotten out of it. Knowledge informs his less rational side, rewriting his immediate past in light of the present. It’s the fact that he knows what comes after the darkness, that leads him to trust it for the first time his short, young life. And for how utterly fruitless his attempts at making heads or tails of his present predicament may be, he has no doubt that he prefers it to the routine that preceded it.
Lingering for a long, drawn-out second more on the thing that may or may not be a face, the boy tells himself that he has nothing to lose anyway. And in the simple act of blinking once, he perceives the rush of an emotion he’s never known he could harbor.
If he’d ever had any conception of it, the child could relish in his first taste of freedom.
“Do yourself a fa-A-A-A-A-A-vor and don’t move, will you?”
More words come out from a mouth that doesn’t move to spell them. The boy speaks his obedience with silent immobility: at the end of the day, old habits are too stubborn to lie down and let themselves die; he receives a nod for his effort, or lack thereof.
“Not that you can move an-N-N-N-N-yway.”
From the corner of his vision, the boy witnesses what seems to be a shoddy impression of a shrug from a pair of stiff shoulders that must have been made for anything but.
“Had to strap you good in case these aneS-S-S-S-S-thetics failed to do their job, and what do you kno-O-O-O-O-w? Never trust chemic-C-C-C-C-als a couple centuries past their expiration date, kid.”
Peeling off the various layers of noise and glitching haunting it, the voice digs out the impression that he’s been talked to by a woman, despite his eyes’ struggle to acquiesce with this conclusion. If what she’s wearing is a protective suit of sorts, it’s nothing like the ones he’s seen.
Panic threatens to seize him. Could they have transferred him to another research facility?
No! No!
He’d just begun to warm to the idea that perhaps, finally, it had all ended, but now that his lucidity has wrestled back control of his ability to process things properly, he wonders how he even came to that conclusion. His path had never, ever strayed from its repetitive course until that fateful day. Why, exactly, should he believe it to be the case now?
Foolish. Stupid stupid stupid! He dared dream for the first time ever, and he knows that all it did was set him up for greater anguish than he’s ever known. Because now, he has tasted hope. It’s far too late to retrieve the resignation that he cast away at a whim. He’s left himself vulnerable, discarded his fragile shell in the spur of a momentary madness. For all he knows, he’s left himself bare against a realm of suffering that could surpass anything he’s experienced. That is… that is…!
He wants to cry. To scream atop his lungs until his throat will have burned away along with what’s left of his sanity.
Burning…
His throat is burning. He feels a lump in it that has nothing to do with the one born from his desire to cry his heart out. The distraction is a tiny one, yet he clings to it as best he can, a minuscule island in an ocean of self-made terror. He notices now that the noise he was picking up while barely conscious is his own breathing. A ragged, drawn out sound like dusty wind sweeping off a gravelly path. The boy’s eye moves down on its own, seeking an explanation. It can only manage to pick up the vague shape of a cylindrical shape, jutting out of the edge where his pupil meets his lower lid. The woman bends aside so that her masked face can meet his gaze again, her head tilted even further to express what her “face” simply can’t.
“Yeah, that w-W-W-W-W-W-W-ould be the reason why you’re tied like a b-B-B-B-B-undle of rations. I can’t have you thrashing all ov-V-V-V-V-er the place with a tube sticking out of your throat… wait, hold on. Does it hurt? Those painkillers I stuffed you w-W-W-W-W-W-ith are three decades older than the anaesthetics.”
There’s a long, drawn out pause filled mostly with one-sided blinking, and little else.
“Oh! Right! Can’t move! Sorry, this one’s on me. hA-hA-hA-hA!”
For a moment, the boy thinks his… caretaker? Captor? Whoever that may be, the way her voice spazzes out at the end and her whole body shakes, it looks and sounds dangerously close to a seizure. It comes to an abrupt conclusion and a return to her very relative normality, which means… what exactly was that supposed to be?
“That’s a face you’re making there… well, half-F-F-F-F-F a face. Did I startle you, maybe? Sorry, faulty voice m-M-M-M-M-odule. Gave up trying to fix it a couple centuries ago, not worth the has-S-S-S-S-S-S-sle. You don’t find many conversational partn-N-N-N-N-N-ers around these parts, you know?”
He doesn’t, but then again it’s not like he can point that out.
“Anyway, anywa-A-A-A-A-A-y, I’ve just told the IV to inject you with another sleepytime cocktail, so sit tight and relax. You’re g-G-G-G-G-G-oing to be doing a lot of that, honestly, at least until I’m done downloading all this medical training software for the surgery.”
A metal-clad arm raises: at the end of it, fingers lightly curl around a wire that begins somewhere outside the boy’s scope, and ends in a rectangular protrusion connected to a similarly shaped hole in the side of the mysterious stranger’s neck. It makes about as much sense as anything else the child has learned about her, and he’s given up trying to put together all the clues he’s been given into a cohesive, discernible whole.
“I mean, a thracheos-S-S-S-S-S-tomy’s a piece of cake by itself. But anything beyond going stabby-stabby on your tr-R-R-R-R-R-R-achea is a tad more complicated than that. I haven’t half a clue what they’ve d-D-D-D-D-D-one to you up there in that big floaty world of theirs, but whatever it was, it made a mess of your throat. There was enough goop stuck in there I had to spend an hour drain-N-N-N-N-N-ing it to make sure you wouldn’t choke on it. I reckon that when my scanning module’s been updated, we’ll disc-C-C-C-C-C-over that the rest of your body’s even worse for the wear.”
Silence falls anew at the end of a series of informations that the boy tries to digest all at once. Half of his features are still perfectly usable, and could lend themselves to expressing what a metal visage cannot. But the child does not visibly react to the news given to him. His lips do not smile. His eye does nothing but look at the one speaking to him with a half-lidded stare, unsure of what to make of any of it, less of all his worry that this may be a prelude to a nightmare.
The boy is tired. He closes his eye, deciding to thrust himself to the darkness, and the infinitesimal chance of salvation hiding in it.
If he has any hope left in him now, it’s the old, familiar brand that cannot wait for his body to do away with itself.
Sensors that were state of the art back when they were made do their best to try and do what they weren’t built for. The staticity on the little human’s face brings up correspondences with old, untouched corners of her databases. Visual data from times long forgotten by those they begot, visions of broken husks of flesh and bone, deader than the corpses of their comrades. Some of those fallen to the very same iron-cast hands that have done their best to keep a lone boy from biting the bullet, based on what can only be defined a whim.
The automaton born of war kneels besides her guest, and wonders. She does so by sending microscopic sparks across a net of data swimming inside her artificial brain, in search of an act that no medicine or surgical procedure could emulate - a way to heal something other than a body.
Something comes up. A tiny possibility buried among billions of others, at the very edge of her range of intended abilities. Fragments of culture acquired for mere curiosity and to stave off whatever form of boredom a machine could even feel to begin with, knowledge thought obsolete until it came up in this very moment, suggesting a pattern that seems convincing enough to be put into tentative, awkward practice.
Thunk. Thunk.
The child raises his eyelid, startled. A gelid, hard sensation is spreading on his head, where his forehead gives way to his disheveled hairline, right next to where the chitinous substance has overtaken the rest of it.
His view is obscured by something. A shadow that robs his sight of light, only to let him seep through again, cyclically going through the motions while the sharp feeling becomes more defined against his skin. It’s only after the fifth time that the shadow finally relents and draws back enough for him to find its source, staring at him through a red, unblinking light.
“How is it? I’m not entirely confident since it’s my f-F-F-F-F-F-irst time, but apparently headpats are supposed to feel g-G-G-G-G-G-ood for young humans like you.”
Her hand approaches again, stopping short of reaching him. It reels back just enough that he can see the black band where her eye resides, and the mouth whose lips cannot flap, nor curl.
“You want me to stop?”
He hadn’t noticed it before, taken as he was with pretty much everything else assaulting his senses, but… there is something about this voice. Beyond the metallic-sounding raspiness, aside from the occasional slip into an ear-piercing torture, there is a tone about this voice that feels unmistakably reassuring.
It’s a rough, alien-feeling sort of softness.
The boy’s eye lingers on the hand hovering above him, shifting to the person staring back with what he decides must be expectation, then back to the hand.
The lid falls like a curtain, letting the centuries old anaesthetics do their job. If he wishes to protest, he doesn’t make the slightest attempt to show it.
As sleep beckons him back to its thoughtless cradle, the child hears it again. Thunk. Thunk. It’s cold, and hard, so much so that at the epicenter of it he can feel a sharp, prickly pain.
Yet somehow, he doesn’t mind.
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Stuff like this happens to me too, so I’ve learned to ignore it as well. But if it were these guys...
Warning: Slightly NSFW? The moments in themselves are very fluffy...
-Ad Bloo~
SCENARIO: HOW WOULD RFA+V+SAERAN REACT TO ACCIDENTALLY TOUCHING YOUR CHEST
Yoosung
Depth Perception is the WORST when you only have one eye.
You guys were about to head out together to a fancy dinner, when he noticed you were wearing the necklace he had bought for your anniversary.
It was a simple gold chain with a bejeweled star pendant not completely real but pretty dang expensive
It warmed his heart that you were wearing it; he reached out to you to inspect the pendant a bit more properly.
…only to miss by a couple inches.
His fingers grazed the top of your breasts and even slipped into a bit of the cleavage It was a classy dress so it wasn’t too much or anything
?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? OH MY GOD I AM SO SORRY
His hand immediately flew away and both of you turned away from each other.
He was still bowing and vehemently apologizing to you; this poor boy was so worried that you would think he’s a creep.
But you shyly said that you… really didn’t mind it so much as you fidgeted with the skirt of your dress.
His head nearly exploded at that. “Wait- you- I- what?”
You giggled at his stammering and pulled him away to your reservation for the night.
Jaehee
You were sitting on a desk, in your cami and shorts, settling some papers.
Jaehee insisted that she help as well, but you wanted to do them yourself.
She brought you a cup of coffee to keep you alert.
When she came back to take the cup back, she chuckled when she saw you in the exact same position she left you in.
Except you had fallen asleep with your head propped up on your hand.
even with the coffee....
You had finished the drink, and put it beside you at a place Jaehee couldn’t reach very easily.
Careful not to disturb, she maneuvered her hand to finally grab the mug.
However, while pulling out, her arm grazed your breasts...
She stiffened as you shuffled a bit, but otherwise resumed your nap.
When she successfully procured the cup, she quickly made her escape.
The slamming of the door woke you up
She slid down the wall beside the door, heart racing at what had just happened.
For the next few days, she couldn’t look at you in the eye, and you were supremely confused, but let it be.
Zen
You both had finally gone on your very first date. And it was going great so far.
The amusement park is always one of the best places.
As you very eagerly wandered around from store to store, Zen couldn’t help but notice that you were attracting quite a few eyes.
He ‘casually’ draped an arm around your shoulders and glared at the other men who were looking.
When he was finally done with the others, he noticed that you had suddenly gone quiet.
He lowered himself to your head level to ask whats wrong, you being short and all.
You shyly pointed to his hand, which was very closely hovering over your right breast...
He immediately straightened up and pulled away super quickly.
“I’m so sorry! You should have told me earlier!!! Argh! And when I was trying my best to protect you too.”
He was so ashamed of himself, and so had put quite a bit of distance between you two.
Pouting, you come closer to him and rest his arm on your waist.
His heart raced at your boldness, and the happiness was restored as he pulled you even closer.
707/Luciel/Saeyoung
Finally with Vanderwood’s permission and Saeran agreeing to house-sit, he could finally take you out on a long drive today.
You were amused by just how eager he was to take you out.
You finally get to ride on one of my babies.
This boy is so eager, he all but pushed you into the passenger seat.
He then jumps into his own driver’s seat and starts the car, only to have it beep at the both of them for not wearing seatbelts.
Now, on a normal day, he would ignore it or just wouldn’t have forgotten.
But today, he ain’t having it.
He gets up on his seat and reaches over to your side to buckle your seat belt for you.
But then, he topples all over you because he wasn’t very balanced when he was doing it.
He tries to steady himself by pushing against the car seat... but he accidentally gropes you chest in the process.
SEEEVVVEEEENNNN!!
Before you could push him away, he jumps out and settles on his own seat.
Poor boy can’t look at you in the face now; he’s simply sits there as you adjust yourself.
You wanted to yell at him, but it looked like he was already beating himself up for it, so you let it pass.
It doesn’t take him too long to be his cheery self again, but he is definitely more careful now.
Jumin
It’s canon that this dude has a play Gray station and a Xbox Zet Box in the penthouse.
You would probably convince him to play it with you at least once a week.
Both of you like the more interactive games than the ones that don’t require moving around.
But we all know he is terrible with technology. If the vending machine wasn’t proof enough...
So whenever it is his turn, he’s frantically waving around the remote, trying to get the game to sense it.
You have to hold back your laughter at this adorable frustration.
He refuses to take any help from you though.
One time, he actually got so engrossed, he couldn’t tell his actions had gotten wilder.
So when his hand swiped through something soft at his side, he froze at the foreign feeling.
He turned to find you protectively covering your chest with your arms.
Putting two and two together, he set the controller aside and calmly apologized.
You chuckled awkwardly, saying that it’s okay since it was accident.
Nodding, he excused himself to the bedroom, saying that he had some work to look at.
But as soon as the door closed behind him, both of you turn super super embarrassed and try to calm yourselves down.
V/Jihyun
Would you believe me if I said that this happens a lot more than you think?
In fact, it is how your first meeting went.
Jumin introduced you to him at the RFA party.
But he may have forgotten to give him an idea about your height.
So when he outstretched his had to shake yours, you were shook when he was reaching towards your chest
Thankfully he stopped moments before contact, so you warily shake his hand.
Later on, you give him a pretty good idea about your height so that he doesn’t do it.
But sometimes you swear that he does it on purpose around the house.
The only proof you have that they are truly accidents is when his ears turn an adorable shade of red every time he realizes.
No matter how suavely he tries to ignore it or apologizes, his ears always give him away.
Unknown/Saeran
Twas a cold winter night, and the two of you were watching a movie under a large quilt on the sofa.
Saeyoung wanted to join you guys too, but Saeran hissed and glared at his brother until he finally gave up.
You both kept adjusting and readjusting your positions until finally Saeran had an arm linked to yours and settled comfortably on your shoulder.
Okay, so maybe the movie was bit too bland for his taste; his head kept bobbing as he dozed on and off.
In the middle, he fell asleep and his head slipped away from your shoulder.
Groggily, he set himself back on what he thought was your shoulder; admiring how soft it suddenly became.
When he did this, you abruptly tore your attention away from the screen, watching Saeran peacefully snooze on your chest.
You were freaking out, not knowing how to move him without waking him up...
But instead, you smooth his hair and pet him softly, smiling at the sight in front of you.
“LOOK WHAT WE HAVE HERE”
You jumped and shrieked a little, turning your head to see Saeyoung smirking at you both from his door.
Saeran’s eyes popped open, and upon realizing where he was, immediately jumped away from you.
You both yelled at Seven until he finally went back to his room.
“You wanna watch something else?” “I’ll choose this time.”
The thing with Saeran happened with my baby bro; he snuggled up to my side while I was doing homework. I didn’t realize he was asleep until I tried to get up. Since he was only four, it wasn’t as awkward as it could have been. XDD
#mystic messenger#mysme#mysmes#mystic messenger imagines#mystic messenger scenarios#mystic messenger zen#mystic messenger 707#mystic messenger yoosung#mystic messenger jaehee#mystic messenger jumin#mystic messenger v#mystic messenger unknown#hyun ryu#mystic messenger jihyun#jumin han#jaehee kang#yoosung kim#707#luciel choi#saeyoung choi#saeran choi#jihyun kim#mm#mm v#mm jihyun#mm zen#mm jumin#mm jaehee#mm yoosung#mm 707
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