#she was there for his trial when he killed two adults as a CHILD shes not fighting the adult version no ty

[lovesickeros]

☆ even the gods bleed [ pt 3 ]

{☆} characters neuvillette, wriothesley, furina {☆} notes cult au, imposter au, multi-chapter, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings none {☆} word count 1.9k {☆} previous [ 1 ] [ 2 ]

Wriothesley was not a man of superstition. He did not kneel at the altars until his knees bled, he did not pray until his voice gave out– he did not, contrary to popular belief, suffer divine punishment for his apparent lack of respect.

After all, what Divine would look so deep beneath the waves just for a glimpse of the sinners that inhabit it?

Not them, evidently.

He hadn't slept in the past four days, though. There was a heavy air of something where ever he walked– it followed him like a thick fog, lingering and choking him until it dragged him to his knees like a chain. His thoughts inevitably linger on the striking, extravagant letter so conveniently adorning his desk at the fortress– the broken wax seal, the letter tucked into his pocket.

He'd recognize the seal of the Iudex any day. Wasn't often he spoke to him– but the shaky, distorted words hastily etched into the paper made him pause. Neuvillette always had a steady hand– elegant, flowing script that him of flowing water.

It had kept him up for days.

The implications were..haunting. He'd poured over the letter for hours, illuminated only by faint light of his desk lamp. Yet no matter how many times he tries to see what must be hidden beneath the ink, the paper itself even, he finds nothing but the shaky script of a request that sends a bolt of pure frost through his veins.

He noticed, of course, the odd goings on of Fontaine. He'd heard vague whispers of the Divine's hunt for the imposter– he'd heard, too, of the ceaseless rain pelting Fontaine until even he wondered if the nation would finally sink beneath the waves.

It didn't, though. And that only made it all the more odd. Days of constant rain, just for it to stop suddenly..he tugged his coat tighter around him, throwing up the hood of the cloak clasped even tighter over it with a grunt as he leaned around the corner of the alleyway.

He didn't believe in superstition, but this was too hard to ignore as a simple weather anomaly.

Maybe that was why he ignored his gut– he knew that this was probably a trap, at the very least it was suspicious. But damn it, he couldn't ignore the instinct to follow the only lead he had.

His boots clicked against the rain stricken streets as he stalked through the shadows, mindful of the clinking of machine patrols just a few streets away. Yet every step felt heavier then the last as he took a long, good look at the Palais Mermonia. He almost considered bringing out his gauntlets, but he thought better of it– if it came down to it, he needed information. And he would need whoever was waiting for him alive for that– the dead don't speak and all that.

The letter's directions led him in a..rather roundabout entrance to a secluded room, evidently, as he lifted his hand and quietly knocked against the door. Two rapid knocks, pause, another knock, pause, four knocks. It doesn't take long until he hears the latch of the door unlock.

The leather of his gloves creaks as he clenches his fists, adjusting his stance. He's ready for a fight, if he must, but as the door quietly slides open he feel the weight on his shoulders relax slightly– the familiar, sharp features of Neuvillette meets him. He almost reflexively smiles at the way his pupils turn into thin slits, a momentary surprise that he quickly hides well behind a cough and the creak of the door as he pulls it open fully.

"Wriothesley. I see my letter has found you well. Please, come in." Polite as ever, Neuvillette steps aside to let him in, but he can see the exhaustion lining his features– the bags under his eyes aren't as well hidden as he thinks, at least to him. "Bit odd to be inviting me all the way out here in the middle of the night, don't you think?"

His tone is smooth as he steps into the room, brushing down his hood and glancing at Neuvillette over his shoulder, watching as he shuts and locks the door behind him.

"I apologize for the..less then ideal circumstances, but I'm certain you will understand when you see for yourself." He wants to retort, but the Iudex beats him to it, vaguely motioning to the room behind him. An invitation– but he wonders if it's worth taking.

His gut says no, but he's feeling a little risky today, he supposes.

He turns back slowly, barely able to make out the two figures he'd missed on the first glance on the other side of the room– though it's hard to mistake the flourish of the Hydro Archon, even in the dark. It's the other figure that makes the breath hitch in his throat, though.

Or maybe, more accurately, it freezes. So does his blood, his whole body even, locked in stasis for a long, tense moment– he can't see them clearly, but his instincts are going haywire. He can feel his vision almost rattle where it rests against his left shoulder, cold leaking through the layers of clothes and into his skin until he has to fight to suppress a shiver.

He'd always fancied himself the hunter– he was the one who dealt with unsavory folks, in the end. But he felt like a rabbit pinned beneath the crosshairs of a gun this time. He could almost feel the teeth of the bear trap snapping shut around him, crushing bone and flesh beneath cold metal.

For a long moment he thinks he feels fear.

And with a sharp click and a burst of light, it's gone and he takes a raspy, choked breath as he blinks away the blurriness in his vision, taking in the room illuminated by the lamp.

He's not sure what he sees is better, though.

Because his body knows that their Divinity is as real as the blood running through his veins.

So why do they remind him so much of himself? Why does he see the look of the boy who died in a pool of blood not his own in them?

It is a sick, cruel kind of familiar.

Wriothesley didn't believe in superstition– but that was born of the unknown. He knew, now. He could reach out and touch the truth with his own two hands.

The throne of the world was a lie.

The thing sitting on it bled red. And if it bled, it could die.

He clenched his fists tighter– and released, letting his shoulders slump with a huff and a half hearted chuckle. "I wasn't expecting you to be in possession of a wanted criminal when you sent me that letter." He could see the gears whirring in their heads, the subtle dampness in the air reminding him just how delicate a situation it truly was.

He wasn't particularly inclined to getting blasted by a jet of water today.

"Relax, I'm not going to spill to anyone else. Seriously– don't get my jacket wet. It's expensive and a nightmare to dry." His lips quirk into a half smile, but it twists into something almost genuine at the laugh covered up by a cough he hears from the Divine. Bingo.

"It's fine, Neuvillette. Let him go." Their voice is like honey dripping from their lips, and he has to close his jaw with his hand before they can see the way it dropped in his surprise. "Of course, most Divine. My apologies." He relaxes at the sharp click of his heels as he joins them on the bed, his posture far more relaxed then he's ever seen. The Hydro Archon, much to his confusion and amusement, is far too invested in playing with their hair to pay much attention to him now that things have calmed, evidently.

Huh.

They seemed pretty cozy about it, he noted. He guesses they three of them had some time to get acquainted.

"So..who's going to explain what the hell is going on?" He probed, crossing his arms over his chest and watching the three carefully– they all looked tired, but even through the exhaustion neither seemed inclined to stray too far from the Divine. "And what exactly your plan is? You can't keep hiding them here forever. Someone will sniff them out sooner or later."

"We are aware," Neuvillette interjects, lips pursed into a thin line and his thin brows furrowed. "But as I'm sure you've noticed, the hunt for the..forgive me, most Divine, but the hunt for the alleged imposter is still at it's peak."

He grumbles in acknowledgment, hanging up his cloak by the door and sliding out of his heavy coat, resting it over the back of a nearby chair. "Hm. Suppose that's why the patrols are so common now a days."

"I'm afraid so. As you can imagine, we cannot simply ask them to..stop the search. It would draw unwanted attention and suspicion. The Divine would be found immediately if we tried to bring them out of the city at the moment." Neuvillette added, looking proper and elegant, despite the circumstances– even in the face of the Divine and the Archon turning on him and tugging his hair into intricate braids. "So I hope you understand that it was a great risk to send you that letter."

He rubs his chin, huffing in amusement– a solid plan, maybe, but his power didn't extend too far out of the Fortress. He had his connections, sure, but what use were they when he had to get the, uh, "imposter" out of Fontaine? Smuggling them out wouldn't be easy, and then there's the point of where to take them they'd have to contend with.

"Yeah, yeah– I get it. But it's not like I can just smuggle them out or keep them in the fortress. Even if we got them out of the city, we'd have to find somewhere to bunker down, and if someone spots any of us lingering there.." Archons, what a mess he'd gotten himself into. He was really looking forward to the next time he could kick his feet up with a cup of tea.

"I understand. I have already made plans, in fact." Neuvillette hesitates, and he can feel the temperature drops a few degrees. "I..cannot share them in full at the moment, but it is not for a lack of trust." Neuvillette reasoned, hands folded neatly in his lap– not that it hid the way they shook slightly. He wanted to ask, but he thought better of it.

"Eh, I don't hold it against you. The walls have ears, even up here." He deflected, running a hand through his hair. He really hoped Sigewinne wouldn't ask too much when he gets back. "I trust your judgment." He hesitates for a long moment, pulling out a simple, neatly folded letter of his own.

"Memorize the code words, then burn it. I'll be waiting for your next letter." He murmurs, plucking his coat and cloak and tugging them back on one after another, shuffling back over to the latched door. He hesitates again, his hand lingering on the door.

"I just hope your plan is worth the risk, Neuvillette."

He leaves before he can respond, the harsh click of the door ringing in his ears even as he steps back into the shadows of the night.

#sagau #genshin sagau #self aware genshin #genshin impact sagau #self aware genshin impact #imposter au #genshin cult au #genshin impact cult au #furina #neuvillette #wriothesley #furina in the back just awkwardly sitting there bc she aint fighting wrio KHSDKHFKHJ #she was there for his trial when he killed two adults as a CHILD shes not fighting the adult version no ty #also writing reader to be as lowkey eldritch horror as possible. they r just playing nice rn but :) #reader collecting fontaine chars like pokemon cards #anyway wow i wonder what his plan is...wonder who it is he's involved besides wrio.......haha #cough cough #:] #looks at my other fics. haha.........ha.... #anyway #slowly bringing in the key players one by one but it's probably gonna be in multiples now #if u guess correctly who neuvi is making plans w u get a lopsided gold star sticker that says “good job!” :] #i promise the lore will make sense soon (it wont im making it up as i go along) #if u see any typos no u didnt #zzzzzzzzzzzz gn #fic tag

[yall-hate-kids-tourney]

Round 5 (main finals): Chara Dreemurr (Undertale) vs. Amane Momose (MILGRAM)

Propaganda below the cut

Chara Dreemurr (?):

They were constantly blamed for killing all of monster kind in the no mercy route, despite players choosing to go that route. People ignored that they sacrificed themselves to attempt to free the monsters from the underground.

----

everyone wants to blame their own actions (genocide route) on chara, who is a literal child. i don’t know how to tell you this but you are the one playing the game. it’s about YOUR CHOICES. chara is there is punish you for that, you killed the only family that ever loved them! how could they not be upset at that! also if you don’t mind, here’s a good video essay on the subject 

Amane Momose (12):

Amane was voted guilty in the first trial so that she would acknowledge her guilt. It backfired, and now she’s considered a threat. Well, everyone is a threat, but nobody’s threat level has been as heavily discussed and debated as hers. Consider the next prisoner in line, Mikoto. He’s objectively more dangerous and cannot be restrained. He beat up the guard in trial 1, and he was able to hold his own when the other guilty prisoners were attacked. But a good incentive to forgive him is so that he will calm down. You know what? That’s a good incentive to forgive Amane too! But she *can* be restrained, so a good portion of the discussion went into how she should be voted guilty so she *will* be restrained and not a threat. Since her vote was a near 50/50, of course a good chunk of the voters expressed dissatisfaction with her forgiven verdict. Some are already planning to vote her guilty for trial 3, calling her a “lost cause”. She hasn’t even done any concrete harm yet. Hold the pitchforks until she actually causes harm, please? And what if she *was* voted guilty in trial 2? We’ve been warned that she will continue to deny our judgement. A second guilty verdict won’t make her better either, and then what? She’d be called a “lost cause” as well. There is no winning with her.

----

Where do I even start? So first of all she’s an cult child who was physically and mentally abused and tortured by her parents and then (presumably) murdered her mother after her mother killed a cat that she took care of.

Now everyone in Milgram is a murderer but when Amane came and her MV showed her murder and circumstance in an admittedly highly fictionalized depiction of it the audience decided to…repeat the cycle of abuse!

She was voted guilty for the main reason of “teaching her” and helping her “realize that she was abused.” I would like to note that this tough love approach is something her parents utilized against her. “We are only doing this to help you.”

So the audience replicates Amane’s abusers and repeats the cycle of abuse and that’s pretty shitty but it isn’t exactly “Fuck Em Kids” level.

And then Trial 2 happened. Cause Amane is bitter and angry and horrifically traumatized so she acts aggressive and hostile. Especially towards another prisoner.

Now, again, everyone here is a fucking murderer (of atleast could be constructed as one) These people being able to Harm is a core concept of this series.

Yet for some reason it feels like people treat Amane as a “delusional creepy kid who wants to kill people” which completly takes away the nuance of her character. She does have the capacity to harm! Everyone here does! She’s not Uniquly Dangerous! She just has a Reason to be Dangerous. A Reason we GAVE HER by REPEATING THE CYCLE OF ABUSE.

In short: In a series full of Murderers I’m honestly a bit pissed that the 12 year old abuse victim is the one who’s treated like the guy from American Pyscho.

----

TL;DR: "We metavoted this abused, indoctrinated child guilty in trial 1, but it didn't work. Now she is a threat to three grown adults: one who is fully free and two whom she has been shown to get along with. Please metavote her guilty again so she will be restrained and unable to attack them, even though that means subjecting her to further psychological torture." Amane Momose is the youngest of ten murderers, prisoners of Milgram who are to be judged innocent (forgiven) or guilty (unforgiven). In the first interrogation (voice drama), she said that what she did was in line with her religion's doctrines. If we judged her the "wrong way", she said she will just deny the verdict. Combining the voice drama and music video, you could piece together that she was raised in a cult and abused, even though she is cheerful and downplays her pain. She never shows *who* she killed, only *why* she did. After the first day of her vote, she was 81% innocent, but this wouldn't last the whole three months. Many people voted her guilty so she would "see her sins", part of the practice commonly known as "metavoting". Her innocent percentage rapidly decreased, and she hit guilty in the last 15 days, finishing at 51% guilty. At the end of the first trial, Jackalope (who is something like a host) went over all the prisoners' verdicts and commented on the general reasoning. When he got to Amane, he *laughed* at the audience for voting that way to make her realize her sins. Trial 2 rolled around, and it was revealed that Amane's victim was her abuser. On day one, she was at 74% innocent. Seems like a cut-and-dry case now, right? Well... in the intermission, two of the prisoners (Fuuta and Mahiru) were badly beaten up and became reliant on the care of Shidou, a doctor. Amane became hostile to Shidou because what he was doing was against her beliefs. She visited all three of them on their birthdays to convince them to change their ways. She seems to be especially close to Fuuta, who is now murmuring about salvation. Guilty prisoners are psychologically tortured, forced to listen to voices that reject their beliefs. Fuuta and Mahiru both say that the mental strain is worse than their physical injuries. But Amane, who also looks worse for wear, was thrown under the bus because she isn't injured and is considered a physical threat to them (never mind that she gets along with them). She's considered a threat to Shidou, a grown man who is twice her size and fully free, while she is partially restricted by the long sleeves in her trial 2 uniform. She might indoctrinate Fuuta even though, in a prison of ten people and one guard, she's the only voice of her cult. Fortunately, she got a break. Her vote was falling at a similar rate to the first trial. But this time, it stabilized at 51% innocent, 12 days before the end of her vote. But there's no way this is over.

#yall hate kids tourney #round 5 #undertale #undertale spoilers #chara undertale #chara dreemurr #chara #milgram #milgram project #amane momose #momose amane #cw suicide #cw self sacrifice #cw child death #cw child abuse #cw cults #cw torture #cw psychological torture #cw animal death #Youtube

[naehja]

About the idea of Legend and Fable being siblings

You know, I love the idea of Legend and Fable being siblings because…

…It could actually make sense. and it could have a reason to exist.

Time died in this timeline, whatever it was a timeline where he didn't have the seven years gap and get killed as a child, either he failed during his final fight as adult.

Whatever how Time died, he died. Hylia's hero failed, because he was too young, not enough experimented, ect…

Lullaby/Zelda barely managed to do something after Time's death and the situation was not great. For years, centuries, it has been terrible.

It was the start of the Downfall Timeline.

Years and years after the death of the poor young one, Hylia realized that Ganon was going to return. That she had to trigger the two reincarnations, Zelda and Link, to stop him. Or it would be the end of the world.

But she didn't want to make the same mistake. Link wouldn't be a nobody or a helpless child. He would have more power. So he would be more armed to face the menace, more prepared.

He would have the blood of Sky, her second hero, he would have the blood of Four, who married his Zelda at his Era. And he would have her sacred blood. The kid would be powerful. So he wouldn't face a tragic end.

And so Legend and Fable were twins.

What Hylia didn't plan was the reaction toward a little prince. Good thing, the mother of the twins refused to let her baby die and asked to her most faithful personnal knight to take the baby and to protect him. He accepted, thinking that killing inocent baby was a horrible thing, whatever a prince was a monster ONE time, this baby didn't do anything.

The twins didn't grow together, of course. Legend was a energic kid, and he was very smart for his age. He was able to speak to animals and to trees. At first his uncle didn't believe him but was forced to do it when faced the truth. Legend was a sensitive kid who always wanted to help people. He didn't want to become a knight but he liked the sword traning.

Sadely, the events of Link to the Past happened a lot sooner than Hylia had planned. Legend was barely eight. (Hylia has really failed her tactic to kill Ganon with a prepared adult, yeah)

He had some training with a sword, but wasn't a soldier. He survived to all the trials until finding Fi. Because he was talented, smart, lucky.

Fi was…not in a good state. Nobody hads taken care of her since the death of the previous hero. She was forgotten. She had still his blood on her. And then this tiny child take her in his little hands and she recognize her master's blood, he hears her voice. She sees how much he was young, fragile, still innocent and decided that no, this one wasn't going to die.

So Legend, without knowing it, has learned some of Sky's fighting style thank to Fi.

He has reforged her with his tiny hand, treating her as the most precious thing in the world.

He was always holding her when sleeping because he had a lot of nightmares for obvious reasons.

And Fi corrected his movements in a fight.

He could hear her because of Hylia's blood and because of Sky's blood in his veins.

And so the idea of Hylia, after the death of the previous hero, deciding to reincarne her hero as Sky's descendant, as her descendant to give him more powers, more capacities to survive….is very interesting.

And imagine, during the events of Linked Universe, Sky being like "you have the same fighting style than me?"

"The master sword teached me!"

"She SPOKE to you *o*?"

#lu #linked universe #lu legend #Legend #Sky #Lu Sky #Lu Time #Time #Lu FI #Fi #Hylia #Loz #lu meta #Legend and Fable being siblings #lu fable #fable #Downfall Timeline.

[bokettochild]

You know, I love the idea of Legend and Fable being siblings because…

…It could actually make sense. and it could have a reason to exist.

Like it wasn't a coincidence.

It was planned by Hylia.

Time died in this timeline, whatever it was a timeline where he didn't have the seven years gap in this timeline and get killed as a child, either he failed during his final fight as adult. The thing is that he died, and it's worse than Wild since he's really dead.

(ok he's still alive in two other imelines, but it's like the Age of Calamity Timeline where all the champions are alive, Calamity Ganon is gone, and Wild didn't lose his memories, wasn't almost killed, and didn't take a 100 years nap, all that while the botw/totk timeline still exist)

Whatever how Time died, he died. Hylia's hero failed, because he was too young, not enough experimented, ect…

Lullaby/Zelda barely managed to do something after Time's death, to stop Ganon, but the situation was really REALLY not great. For years, for even centuries, it has been terrible.

It was the start of the Downfall Timeline.

Years and years after the death of the poor little young one, Hylia realized that Ganon was going to return and mess with humans AGAIN. And that she had to trigger the two reincarnations, Zelda and Link, to stop him. Or it would be the end of the world.

But she didn't want to make the same mistake two times. Link wouldn't be a nobody or a helpless child. He would have more power. So he would be more armed to face the menace, more prepared, he would be trained.

He would have the blood of Sky, her second hero, he would have the blood of Four, who married his Zelda at his Era. And he would have her sacred blood. The kid would be powerful. So he wouldn't face a tragic end.

And so Legend and Fable were twins.

What Hylia didn't plan was the reaction toward a little prince. Good thing, the mother of the twins refused to let her baby die and asked to her most faithful personnal knight to take the baby and to protect him. He accepted, thinking that killing inocent baby was a horrible thing, whatever a prince was a monster ONE time, this baby didn't do anything.

The twins didn't grow together, of course. Legend was a energic kid, and he was very smart for his age. He was able to speak to animals and to trees. At first his uncle didn't believe him but was forced to do it when faced the truth. Legend was a sensitive kid who loved animals and who always wanted to help people (yep it was a good kid). He didn't want to become a knight but he liked the sword traning.

Sadely, the events of Link to the Past happened a lot sooner than Hylia had planned. Legend was ...eight. (Hylia has really failed her tactic to kill Ganon with a prepared adult, yeah ^^")

He had some training with a sword, but wasn't a soldier. He survived to all the trials until finding Fi. Because he was talented, smart, lucky. He escaped the danger more that he won against it. Until he found Fi, it was pure luck + his training.

Fi was…not in a good state. Nobody hads taken care of her since the death of the previous hero. She had still his blood on her, she was used by time, by the wind, by the rain. She was forgotten. And then this tiny child take her in his little hands and she recognize her master's blood, he hears her voice. She sees how much he was young, fragile, still innocent and decided that no, this one wasn't going to die.

So Legend, without knowing it, has learned some of Sky's fighting style thank to Fi.

He has reforged her with his tiny hand, treating her as the most precious thing in the world.

He was always holding her when sleeping because he had a lot of nightmares for obvious reasons.

And Fi corrected his movements in a fight.

He could hear her because of Hylia's blood and because of Sky's blood in his veins.

She could warm him if danger was near of him.

Fi has raised him in some ways.

And so the idea of Hylia, after the death of the previous hero, deciding to reincarne her hero as Sky's descendant, as her descendant to give him more powers, more capacities to survive….is very interesting. and could be logical. She didn't need to do it in the other timelines because Time won.

And imagine, during the events of Linked Universe, Sky being like "you have almost the same fighting style than me?"

"The master sword teached me!"

"She SPOKE to you *o*?"

Yes! Yes!

I definitely agree. The Downfall timeline is the worst Hyrule has seen, and ever will, so Hylia needed the strongest hero there would ever be to protect it. There is a reason Nayru named him 'the greatest of all the Hylian Heroes' , a reason why the Master Sword speaks to him when she was silent before.

I wouldn't say Hylia gave him every advantage, but she certainly tried by choosing to bring him out of her bloodline and that of the heroes past, by activating his triforce piece when he was still too young to actually need it, and by ending Fi's slumber. Honestly, now that I think about it, she probably elected to wake Fi again so that the sword spirit would act as guide and care-taker to her little hero, a nanny almost sicne she couldn't actively e beside him herself.

This in mind though, it really highlights a point I've held for a while, although privately. In my opinion, Legend has no reason to truly hate Hylia. I never knew why people added that to his character? Not only is she never mentioned in his games, but if, based on the above, he was actually brought up by Fi, he'd probably have come to have a warm regard for the goddess who was actively looking out for him. Maybe a slightly complicated view of her, since she lets bad stuff happen too, but she always gets him through it as well, and gives him her blessings and tools and servants to help him along.

All this to say, I now want to write a Good Mom Hylia fic, although it would definitely come across as Hylia playing favorites LOL

#asks and answers #linked universe #linkeduniverse #lu legend #lu hylia #fic ideas

[separatist-apologist]

Still A Sunbeam

Summary: As a child, Elain Archeron is pushed into a pond by the heir to the Day Courts throne, Lucien Spell-Cleaver, and vows she'll never forgive him for it. But as an adult, Elain finds that if she wants out of an arranged marriage to a Spring Court prince, she will need Day Court's help. More is at stake than a decades-old rivalry, and when their home is threatened, Elain and Lucien will have to set aside old differences and work together

Previous Chapter | Read on AO3

Cadmus’s grip on Elain’s wrist was iron clad as he pulled her through the silent halls. Drawing a steady breath, Elain forced herself not to think about what she’d just done or who was trailing right behind her. Killian had seen her, and no matter what Eris told the world, Spring was always going to know the truth of the matter—the High Lord’s death was the fault of two Day Court females.

Helion was going to kill her. 

“Cadmus,” Elain began, breathless with fear. Maybe she should ask him to say. Facing down Lucien and his family, who had only ever been kind, only to tell him she’d likely dragged them into war, was Elain’s nightmare.

She’d forgotten about Killain for one blissful second. Just long enough for him to surge forward and grab for her, too.

“She needs to come with me,” he said, yanking so hard Elain stumbled, nearly hitting the floor. A warning snarl rumbled from Cadmus who reached for his sword when he saw Elain was now in Killian’s grip. “I can shield her. We’ll marry and—”

“If you put your hands on her again, I will cut them off. Elain Archeron has asked me for sanctuary, and I have granted it,” Cadmus growled, unsheathing his blade. “You will take her nowhere.”

Killian, wide eyed and speechless for perhaps the first time in life, gripped Elain by her shoulders. “They will put you on trial, Elain. How could you ask that of these—” Another snarl killed whatever insult Killian had been about to offer up. “Is it so awful, the prospect of marrying me, that you would choose death instead?”

“What makes you think I would let anything happen to her?” Cadmus demanded. Elain knew what was coming. She had to just tell Killain the truth, to be brave and admit that Cadmus was helping her because she was his brother's mate. She could see the conclusion Killian was drawing, eyes bouncing from the silver pointed sword and the violence etched over Cadmus’s handsome features. 

“What did you promise him—”

“Not him,” Elain interrupted breathlessly. “His brother. Lucien. He—”

Killain’s fingers dug rougher against her shoulder, likely bruising her sensitive skin. “He what?”

Cadmus pried Killain’s fingers from Elain’s body, sword pointed at Killian’s throat.

“I’m not afraid to kill you, prince. Your worthless brothers would likely thank me for it. Do not put your hands on her ever again.”

“HE WHAT, ELAIN?”

Elain let Cadmus shove her behind his back before saying, “He’s my mate! And I’m going…I’m going home to him.”Cadmus looked over his shoulder, brows raised. “Aright,” he said, a smile cracking his once furious features. “Anything else, little sister.”

Killain looked as though Elain had personally stabbed him. Cadmus put his sword away, lacing his fingers through Elain’s. “You never even asked me,” Elain managed to get out, her anger threatening tears again. “Not once did you ever even ask if I liked you.”

“Oh, and I’ll bet he does?” Killain sneered, though there was no real ire to his words. It was merely exhaustion lacing his tone, making his green eyes seem so much sadder than she’d ever seen them.

“Yes,” Elain replied, missing Lucien so much it made her teeth ache. She wished it was him, and not Cadmus who was keeping her steady. “Yes, he does.”

“Time to go,” Cadmus muttered, yanking her down the hall before another fight erupted between Elain and Killain. Elain let Cadmus jerk her away, not daring to look behind her. “For what it’s worth, I thought that was brave.”

“Just take me home,” she whispered. Killian still knew. If he was petty, he’d tell every other court what she’d done, forcing Helion to release her into the hands of a tribunal. Assuming, of course, Helion didn’t call it himself. He was one of two courts that were supposed to be neutral—Day and Summer, specifically—which meant he could imprison her while waiting for the other High Lords to decide her fate.

Eris wouldn’t vote against her, surely. But the others…? Elain wasn’t sure. And as Cadmus led her toward the entrance of the Forest House where he could safely winnow her out, she wasn’t even sure Lucien would side with her. Maybe he’d be furious with her. All those lessons in which he stressed how important diplomacy was, wasted in one foolish, impulsive moment. 

Elain wished she regretted her decision, but all Elain regretted was the position she’d put everyone else in. As far as Beron went, well…good riddance. The world was surely better off without him? High Lord or not, he was a terrible, cruel man and Elain hoped he was being punished by the mother for a life poorly lived. 

Cool, autumn air whipped around Elain’s face. “I’ll take you to Day Court,” Cadmus told Elain, reaching for her face so she had to look at him. Of all his brothers, he looked the most like his now dead father. Cadmus wore those handsome features well. There was light in his eyes, kindness in his features. “And I’ll stay while you tell Lucien what happened. If…look, Elain, you have a place here. A safe place. If my brother reacts poorly, ask me for sanctuary and I will be honor bound to provide it—”

“Why? Why would you risk yourself for me?”

“You don’t know what he was like,” Cadmus breathed, swallowing hard. “Eris isn’t going to let you claim that kill. No matter what Killian says he saw, it's his word versus the High Lord and his wife. Eris is going to claim that kill as his own. That’s how things are done in Autumn Court. So you tell Lucien the truth, and if he wants to imprison you, I will bring you back. Do you understand?”

Elain nodded her head, a tear sliding down her face. It was all so wrong. “I understand,” she whispered. Elain expected Cadmus to take her home. But there, standing beneath twinkling stars and the rustling, dark treetops of Autumn, the prince yanked Elain against his chest for a strong armed hug.

“Thank you,” he whispered into her hair, so soft she might have imagined it. Elain hugged back, leaning into Cadmus’s strength. She’d need it for what was coming. Cadmus’s winnow smelled like a crackling fire, comforting for the brief, crushing moment she was trapped in that wind. The chill of Autumn vanished, replaced with the humidity of Day. 

Elain felt like she could breathe again. Inhaling sharply, Elain let Cadmus take her toward the looming, moonlit palace still burning bright despite the late hour. Perhaps a party, she thought, plodding up the steps with a sense of dread. Elain didn’t make it far—Lucien met her just at the top, armed to the teeth in golden armor with a fluttering, red cape slung casually over one broad shoulder.

Behind him, a line of guards also halted when he raised one broad hand. Did he know, then? Elain swallowed, frozen beside Cadmus who kept a hand on the hilt of his sword, the other on Elain’s shoulder.

Lucien took a dangerous step toward them, burning so bright he might have been a living candle. She’d never seen that kind of heat radiating from him, never seen the light that was always present just beneath his skin flare the way it was now. Lucien looked as though he were just keeping a lid on his power.

“What,” he began, looking not at her, but at his brother, “did you do to my mate?”

Too late, Elain had forgotten she was still covered in the blood of the High Lord. Cadmus rolled his eyes. “I’ve returned her to you, safe and sound.”

“She’s injured—”

“I’m fine,” Elain breathed, stepping between the two males before a fight broke out on Helion's step. “The blood isn’t mine.”

Lucien held her gaze, so utterly still it scared her. Pressing her hand against his armored chest, Elain added, “Your brother helped me.”

“So bloodthirsty,” Cadmus added from behind her. “You’re one of us whether you like it or not. She certainly is. Remember what I said to you, Elain Archeron. Sanctuary—it’s yours without having to ask.”

Lucien snarled, but Cadmus was already gone, popping away without so much as a goodbye. It left Elain to face down Lucien, unsure if he had been coming to rescue her or imprison her.

“Why do you need sanctuary in Autumn?” Lucien asked, his tone softening. He reached for her face, cupping her cheek in one broad, gloved hand. Behind him, the soldiers who had been prepared to march with him to war melted away, vanishing back into the palace to give the prince privacy. “Whose blood are you wearing, my love?”

Elain took a breath. “Beron Vanserras.”

Lucien paused. This was it. This was the moment he’d decide how much she—and their mating bond—truly meant to him. Lucien was a consummate diplomat and bound by the same laws that governed his father. He was, she thought miserably, a fair prince who was likely weighing her life against the safety of his people, his territory. 

“Did you…?”

“Eris helped,” she whispered, unable to look at him for a moment longer. “And Arina, who I think isn’t coming back.”

Lucien exhaled a breath. “Eris won’t let you claim that kill.”

She looked back up at him, surprised to find not anger or disappointment, but admiration shining on his face.

“Killian saw me.”

Lucien swore softly, pulling her into his body the way his brother had done mere moments before. “It’s his word against the High Lords. And I suspect Killian has bigger problems to worry about than you.”

“Lucien, I killed a High Lord. I should…shouldn’t I…be punished?”

“You did this world a favor,” he disagreed fiercely, mouth pressed into her messy hair. “They can try and take you from me, and they’ll die for their trouble. Come inside, Elain. Let me…let me take care of you.”

A soft sob ripped out of her. “I thought you’d be angry with me.”

“Is that why Cadmus offered you sanctuary?” Lucien murmured, fingers dipping beneath her chin to tilt her face toward him. “You thought I’d want to see you punished for killing the male I’ve longed dreamt of killing?”

“Yes,” she whispered, hating the soft tremble in her voice. “It’s a crime—”

“I only love you more,” he whispered, mouth ghosting over her own. “And even if you’d killed every member of the royal family—my brothers included—I would fight a war to keep you here. I thought you knew that.”

“I…” Elain didn’t know what to say to any of that. Instead, she surged upward on her tiptoes, pressing her lips to his. “Were you coming for me?”

“Yes. It’s a bad week to be a High Lord and I wasn’t willing to take a chance when it came to you.”

“Lucien—”

“Tell me how you did it,” Lucien whispered, sweeping her up off her feet in his gleaming, golden armor. Elain was breathless, practically giddy as he walked her back into the palace. “Did he suffer?”

“Yes,” she murmured, kissing the exposed skin of his neck. “For a moment…before Eris severed his head from his shoulders.”

“Do I want to know Arina’s part in all this?” Lucien asked, ignoring the guards that waited just inside the entrance. Nor did Lucien track down his father like she’d expected he might, so they could explain her role in all this. 

“Probably not. Lucien, what are you going to do if Killian tells people what I’ve done?”

“Lie,” he replied smoothly, his steps quick as he took her back to his bedchamber. “Lie through my teeth, deny you had any involvement, and if none of that works, pull out my sword and dare him to try and take you from me.”

“He knows,” Elain said, mouth back on Lucien’s neck. He shuddered.

“You’ve said—”

“About the mating bond. He knows. I think he scented it, but before I left, I told him.”

Lucien exhaled noisily. “I’ll bet that went well.” 

She shrugged. “At least it’s done. And when he tells the High Lord—”

“He won’t. Well—he can’t. Tamlin is High Lord, now. Killian will be lucky to survive the night once he returns home, and if Tamlin is smart, he’ll eliminate his last brother.”

Lucien set Elain onto his bed, unconcerned by the dried blood still clinging to her skin and hair. Elain was left reeling as Lucien reached for the straps and chains of his armor, discarding it now that it was no longer necessary for him to march on Autumn. She tried to picture it—Lucien sweeping in moments after Beron was murdered, armed to the teeth and prepared to kill his own brothers. 

For her. 

“How?”

Lucien glanced over, his expression tight. “A feud between Night—”

“Feyre?”

“She’s fine. She—this wasn’t about her. The High Lords of those territories have been fighting longer than we’ve been alive, and likely would have continued to fight long after we died. Feyre was merely a pretense, but this was planned likely long before your sister fled, and would have happened even if she’d agreed to marry Tamlin.”

“Who is dead?”

“Everyone,” Lucien murmured, rolling his neck as though it was of little consequence to him. “The High Lord and his wife…everyone but Killian and Tamlin. The Night Court has lost their High Lord, and well as the Lady and daughter. And now Autumn…I’m sure every other High Lord in Prythian is sleeping nervously tonight.”

“Your father—”

“Safe,” Lucien said, kicking off his boots with a heavy thud. He was down to only the linens he wore beneath the heavy armor, conforming to his muscular frame so tightly that Elain could see every grove and dip. “There are extra patrols around the city, and the borders are being monitored. It’s how we knew Cadmus had come in—Day has been spelled against intruders, at least for the time being.”

“But…but you’re safe?”

Lucien’s smile was the loveliest thing she’d seen in days. “I am now. You’re home. That’s all I wanted.”

He came to her, tugging off his tight, white shirt and tossing it to the floor. Elain reached for him, thinking she ought to make him put her in the bath. Lucien, it seemed, had the same idea.

“Can I clean you up?” he asked, mouth ghosting her cheek. Lucien’s tongue slid down her jaw toward her neck, his fingers fisting in her hair so her neck arched upward.

“Yes,” she breathed, though what she truly meant was no. 

Covered in blood or not, Elain knew one thing with absolute certainty.

She was accepting their bond—tonight.

LUCIEN:

Lucien Spell-Cleaver was being driven out of his mind. The sight of his mate covered in blood ought to have disgusted him. Horrified him, even. Maybe it was instinct—the animal he’d once been rearing its stupid head in interest, scenting blood and wanting more. Or maybe it was knowing it was his mate who ended the cycle of violence Beron Vanserra had kept his family trapped in. 

Lucien kissed her, groaning when he tasted copper on her mouth, mingled with her usual sweetness. He was going to take it too far. Lucien knew that the minute he crawled up the bed, laying atop Elain who was perched sideways, her legs dangling off the edge. Had it really only been a day? It felt like a lifetime since he’d last been with her.

Elain didn’t push him off her, giving Lucien access to her open mouth and her body, still splattered with blood. Lucien liked the sight of her like this—vicious and sweet, all at once.

Just for him. No one else saw her like this, would ever have her like he was. Not even Killian, who was going home to a ruined court, his brother newly crowned High Lord, and without the female he’d always dreamed of marrying.

It felt like justice to Lucien. 

Bath, his stupid brain reminded him. Take her to the bath.

Maybe he’d just undress her, first. He could peel her out of her clothes and then he’d take her to the bathroom, where he was certain he’d display an embarrassing lack of self-control. Just like now, fingers tugging at the laces of her dress while Elain pulled the braids from his hair without meaning to. Their mouths moved hungrily, with the sort of heat he’d long been dreaming of.

This was happening. She was going to take him—all of him—and when it was over, Lucien hoped she might seal it with some food. 

Lucien gave up on the laces, pulling his mouth off her just long enough to rip the fabric clean in half. Elain gasped, elbowing her way further up the bed so he could pull it from beneath her and throw it to the floor. While he did, she unclasped her under things, removing them, too. It left her half blood stained, half smooth, unblemished perfection. Blood on her arms, her breasts untouched. Lucien didn’t know why the sight of her made him feel as wild as it did, only that his control was rapidly fraying and if he didn’t get inside her, he was going to lose his mind.

“Look at you,” he whispered as she reached for his shoulders. Elain yanked him against her, their bodies separated by only his pants, too tight against his overheated skin. “You used to hate me.”

“I might still, if you don’t stop talking,” she breathed before kissing him again. She was so clever with her tongue, stroking it over his own until Lucien was panting and grinding his rigid cock against her. He was close to begging. 

Please, Elain, please— Maybe he spoke the words out loud, because Elain said, “Take me, Lucien. I’m yours.”

He didn’t realize she’d undone his pants until she was yanking them over his hips, legs spread wide. It was happening. Lucien’s mind went suddenly quiet, only focused on her hands sliding down his lower stomach, curling against the base of his cock. Arousal perfumed the air, thick and heady as Lucien tried—and failed—to think of something helpful.

Wasn’t she supposed to taking a bath?

Lucien licked the column of her throat, tasting the copper and salt of her skin. She’d managed to get his pants to his knees, a feat given he was unable to keep himself still long enough to help her. Kicking them the rest of the way off, Lucien positioned himself between her legs. The slickness of her body hit him like a bolt of lightning. 

“Are you sure?” he whispered against her neck, nipping just behind her ear. 

“Stop talking, Lucien,” she replied, lifting her hips in invitation. She was new, he reminded himself, chanting the words over and over in his head so when he began to inch his way into her perfectly tight, warm body, he wouldn’t be tempted to slam himself fully in. If Elain didn’t enjoy herself, she wasn’t going to accept. And if she didn’t accept, Lucien thought he might die.

Certainly, Lucien’s self control was tenuous at best. With each new inch, the urge to give in to his base urges ripped through him until he was trembling.

But fully seated inside her.

Elain panted, eyes wide, pupils blown out until the pretty brown of her eyes had all but vanished. 

“Do you like it?” he asked, though what he was really asking was do you like me?

“Yes,” she breathed, squeezing so tight around him Lucien’s lungs expelled all the air they’d been holding. 

“And this?” he managed, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple. Lucien rolled his hips, drawing a soft moan from Elain’s lips.

“Yes,” she whispered, looking up at him with such trust. Lucien wasn’t certain he deserved it, though the gods knew he wanted to. Lucien pushed again, bracing the majority of his weight against his wrists in an attempt not to crush her. It wouldn’t always be this way, he reminded himself. Once she grew accustomed to him, they could have each other the way they wanted—with wild, unyielding abandon. 

Between them, the cord that tethered their souls began to solidify, humming some ancient song Lucien would have recognized anywhere. With each new thrust, the link between them began stronger, made of shimmering, unbreakable gold. It was making him insane, robbing him of all his good sense. Elain, too, seemed to be falling beneath the spell of the mating bond.

Lucien could hear himself chanting her name like it was some kind of prayer. He supposed it was. She was everything to him—his mate.

“I’m yours,” he breathed, capturing her lips as she built higher. He could feel those pulsating walls fluttering around him, threatening to ruin them both. “And you’re mine.”

Elain’s tongue touched his own, whimpering against his skin. It was too much. Elain came mere seconds before Lucien did, legs squeezed tight around his hips. It was quick—and messy—but somehow still the best sex Lucien had ever had in his life. He might have howled or he might have whispered. He wasn’t sure, could barely hear over the roaring in his ears. 

He didn’t know what he was doing—Lucien grabbed her, standing on trembling legs while he was still inside her. They didn’t make it to the bathroom, where he realized he was taking her. Lucien fucked her up against the wall, fingers rubbing between her legs so she’d come before he did. It was close—Lucien had mere seconds to spare. 

They got to the bathroom, too, where he had her against a rug, and then, and only then, did Lucien manage to get the tap going and put Elain inside it. Settled between his legs, Elain was content to let Lucien scrub the blood from her skin and hair, drain the tub, and refill it again—this time, with bubbles.

Elain reached for a glass jar of purple salts, handing it to him with a smile.

“I can’t eat this,” he deadpanned, hoping she still wanted to accept. Elain snorted a soft laugh.

“Too bad. Put them in anyway, Lucien.”

Lucien unscrewed the cap, dumping the beads around them until Elain practically purred with pleasure. It satisfied him to see her happy—content, head resting against his shoulder, fingers grazing against his thighs under the water. 

“What happens now, Lucien?”

“My mother will likely want a wedding in the city. We could probably elope, but—”

“Not with us,” she interrupted, her amusement plain. “With…with Prythian?”

Oh. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

“Together?” she asked, her fingers coming awfully close to his still too-hard erection. Lucien wondered how long it would take for the mating bond to settle. 

“Of course,” he murmured, lips brushing the shell of her ear. “I have no intention of living this life without you, princess.”

“Who knew you’d turn out to be so sentimental?” Elain asked, twisting in the water so she could look at him. Lucien laughed, running his fingers through her silken, wet hair. 

“Trust me—I’m just as surprised as you.”

“If you would have told me I’d be kissing the very same male I once watched put his head beneath another ladies skirt, I would have called you a liar.”

“It was practice,” he breathed, strangely apologetic. Lucien wished he’d waited, too. They could have come together for the first time and he’d fucked that all up by assuming he’d always be a single male—that he’d never have to get married. “It was practice for you.”

“Don’t get soft on me now,” she teased, poking him in the stomach. 

Lucien shifted, his cock brushing against her hip. “There is nothing soft about me.”

“No,” she agreed, kissing beneath his jaw. “I suppose there isn’t. Tell me, prince, about this wedding you might throw.” Lucien’s heart stumbled. “Is that something you want?”

“I suppose that depends on if you ask me—not in a bathtub,” she added quickly, reading his mind. Lucien had intended to ask without thinking, without a ring or anything that might make the moment special—romantic. He settled, mind racing. He’d make a spectacle of it, if only to cement his claim on her permanently.

His wife and mate. Nothing had ever sounded more appealing to him in his life. “We’ll figure it out,” he murmured into her damp hair. “There’s no rush—we have eternity, remember?”

“An eternity to remind you of all the reasons you used to loathe me,” she joked, fingers returning to tease his thigh. They weren’t going to make it through the bath. Lucien’s need roared through him again, demanding he finish what he’d started. 

“I look forward to it,” he murmured, lips over her neck. 

And oh. How Lucien did. 

#spolier: helion is going to throw her a parade #and make her mayor of the city #elucien #also something something calm before storm something soemthing

[endlessnightlock]

number 7 and 8? you don’t have to combine them but that would be cool too! thank you for doing this!

because this is what we’ve done since we were kids no matter the adult implications of it now, with an added bonus of because

because you’re crying as if i’m about to disappear?

50 Reasons to Share a Bed

I already wrote a drabble with the first prompt, so I'll just use the second one :).

8. Because you’re crying as if I'm about to disappear?

The hospital bed sat empty, sterile, and silent in the corner of the room. What would have been an innocuous feature in any healthcare facility represented something entirely different in a house once teeming with life and vitality.

Katniss bit the edge of her fingernail to keep from screaming. She wasn't one for public emotions of any sort, and amongst the crowd gathered at her childhood home, she wasn't planning to start now. She couldn't stand to look at that hospital bed, and yet she couldn't stop looking at it.

"Why haven't you gotten rid of that thing yet?" she asked, taking a deep drink from the whiskey glass someone had handed her half an hour or so ago. Grief did funny things to a person; She'd lost all concept of time over the last few days. The days and nights were unending, and she floated listlessly through them, only half alive herself. She wished there was a remote control she could use to fast forward past the period of her life.

"Hospice hasn't come for it yet," Prim said. She shrugged. "I don't spend time in this part of the house anymore."

Katniss knew that. Prim had moved her room to the basement of their childhood home years ago. While Katniss had flown the nest after high school graduation, Prim didn't take that step. It turned out to be fortuitous; their father died when Prim was twenty, and their mother's cancer showed up only two years later. By that point, Katniss was busy with work and life hours from their hometown, leaving Prim to carry the burden of taking care of their mother through oncology appointments, endless tests, drug trials, and finally, end-of-life care and funeral planning.

"I'm sorry I wasn't here much," Katniss said, realizing she hadn't apologized for her absence yet. She wouldn't have been much good to Prim or their mother anyway, but it still needed to be said. Mostly she was sorry she wasn't the sort of sister who was good at being supportive.

"It's alright, Kat," Prim whispered, patting her on the arm. "You did what you could. I couldn't have afforded all that time off work to take care of her if you hadn't sent money."

Still, it didn't seem like enough. But that part of their life, the part where she and Prim were someone's child, was over, and there was no going back and changing any of it.

KPKPKPKPKP

Katniss knew Peeta didn't keep any weapons in his house, and that knowledge was all it took to convince her it would be okay to unlock his front door in the middle of the night and let herself into his house with the key he hadn't asked her to give back to him when she split up with him last month.

On silent feet, she made her way up the carpeted steps to his bedroom on the upper floor of the house. Knowing she had no right to assume he was alone since she was the one who left, Katniss still breathed a sigh of relief when she found Peeta alone, asleep in his bed.

I hope he doesn't hate me, she thought, slipping her shoes off wearily and inching toward his bed and the promise of finally sleeping again. She wasn't just here because she was exhausted. She was here because she was the biggest idiot who'd ever graced the earth to break up with Peeta, and she missed him so much it was killing her.

Peeta didn't stir when Katniss pulled the covers back and climbed in, easily finding her old spot. He didn't wake up until she wrapped her shaking arms around him. His eyes blinked open. He stiffened in surprise but relaxed when he realized it was her. "What are you doing here?" he asked, pausing midway to clear the gravel from his throat.

She tried to tell him, but the emotional deluge beat her to it and there was no talking then. Peeta remained silent as she wept. Choking, uncontrollable, ugly sobs poured out of Katniss like he was the one on the verge of disappearing forever like her mother they'd buried that morning. He had every right to kick her out of his bed and his house, tell her to leave forever, and quit fucking with his heart, but he didn't.

"Hey, I'm here," Peeta said instead, repeating the words softly, over and over like a mantra.

#endlessnightlock writes #everlark drabble #everlark fanfiction #katniss everdeen/peeta mellark #everlark #y'all I wrote this quickly so forgive any errors lol

[noperopesaredope]

Persephone Retelling Idea

So I was watching a video essay on Lore Olympus and its flaws, and there was a part where the video creator talked about how, in Persephone retellings, Demeter is always villainized whilst Hades is glorified. I thought about this for a bit, and realized two things:

1) The most likely reason we want Persephone and Hades’ relationship to be mutually loving is because we hate the idea of a girl being kidnapped and forced into an unwanted marriage for the rest of eternity whilst her loving mother watches on helplessly. That’s why we make up versions where Persephone isn’t suffering: because it’s horrifying otherwise.

2) It would be so much more interesting to see a retelling of the myth that portrays Demeter and Persephone’s relationship as healthy and loving, then exploring their shared grief over being forcibly separated from each other 6 months a year. That would be fascinating to me, and focus on the love and loss between a mother and daughter. It could be bittersweet and beautiful.

That’s when I ended up writing this comment (then putting it in a Google Doc for later):

I have an idea for a Persephone Myth retelling that I think would be pretty fun without really villainizing anyone (besides maybe Zeus because I hate him? But he's like, not even really in it, so there's that). It mainly focuses on Persephone and Demeter, and is slightly based on my relationship with my mom as I've started getting ready for college (particularly as an autistic young adult who needs supports to function). It also later takes the idea of the Dread Queen Persephone as she girlbosses her way into a true goddess. 

Basically, Persephone is a young adult goddess (still hundreds of years old) who has a great relationship with her mother, but is still trying to figure herself out, and slightly wants to leave the nest. She isn't quite sure how to be independent in the big wide world, and she's a bit nervous. So for now, she likes to spend her time talking with her nymph friends about life and stuff. 

Meanwhile, in the underworld, Thanatos is...busy...with a situation, so Hades is forced to temporarily take over the role of death, a job he is very reluctant to do. Why doesn't some other underworld person take care of it? Because shut up. So, Hades takes the list of people he needs to take down (to the undERWORLD THAT IS!!! *Airhorn noises*) and just kinda comes out of the earth, snatches people out of their bodies, and dips, taking them along with him. Unfortunately, one of the Fates "misspelled" a name, so instead of taking Persebhone (or maybe Kora, because Persephone’s name might be Kore for the first half), he accidently ends up taking Persephone, not realizing who she is since he really needs to get out more often. 

So Persephone finds herself in the underworld after Hades abruptly dropped her off there and went to his palace. She goes to the trial place where souls are typically tried, and the judges are surprised when they realize that she is an immortal god. They assume she got lost or something trying to visit Hades, so they send her over to his palace. She sits in the waiting room for a bit, where they are serving out underworld pomegranates as refreshments. Persephone doesn't know about the rules of the underworld, so she eats one. Dun dun dun. Then she has a meeting with Hades, who is confused until she starts explaining that she really isn't supposed to be here and why. He understandably panics at this, aware that Demeter will definitely kill him. 

Meanwhile, Demeter is having a panic attack, because she doesn't know where her daughter is. The other gods are trying to comfort her, but nothing is working, and in this arc of the story, during the parts where we see what's happening in the overworld, we will explore themes of mental health, depression, and what it is like to have a missing child. The other gods will also be having a sort of mystery thing where they try to find the missing goddess. 

Meanwhile AGAIN, Hades is trying to figure out how to contact the other gods to sort things out, but the exit to the underworld is blocked or something (basically, no one can leave rn), and he can't communicate with the other gods. They are kinda trapped rn. So he tries his best to keep Persephone calm and comfortable because NOTHING IS WRONG AT ALL- (he does break the truth to her once he realizes it really will be a few months until he can contact the others, but at first he will pretend that things are mostly fine) 

Persephone herself is feeling very overwhelmed in this crazy new place, and is more than a little stressed out. But as time goes by, Persephone finds that she really likes it in the underworld, and can find some type of beauty in it. She also discovers new parts of herself with each person she meets. But this first arc mainly explores her trying to find a place in the world without that type of support that Demeter gave her, and wondering how her growing desire to stay in the underworld will affect her relationship with her mother. 

Eventually, we get a beautiful reunion between the two, but tragically discover that Persephone eating the pomegranate seeds have permanently tied her to the underworld. So then they need to figure things out about how to live independently from each other as Persephone starts living in the underworld officially and growing into a potentially badass Dread Queen of the Underworld, Demeter tries to cope with Empty Nest Syndrome (I actually love the idea of exploring a character in her changing situation), and Hades tries to get used to living with another person and also secretly attempts to handle his new guilt complex over accidentally trapping Persephone in the Underworld.

I have a lot more ideas, but that's the basic premise.

Hades and Persephone's dynamic will be so much fun. It isn't quite romantic so much as it is besties or something (I'm gonna make them slightly close in age, since Demeter is the 2nd oldest out of the siblings, and Hades is the 4th. Zeus was also pretty young when he freed his siblings. So Hades would be a bit young around the time Persephone is born. Not super young, but young enough to seem more like an older brother or something). They are so socially awkward that they end up becoming basically friends. Since Persephone basically lives here now, Hades wants to at least make her feel comfortable and welcome, so he hangs out with her sometimes, and eventually even invites her to start helping him out with underworld stuff. They just work together well and get along pretty great in all honesty.

Persephone and Demeter's relationship would be the main focus of the story, as well as Persephone's coming-of-age. Demeter, as I mentioned above, is a mother who is dealing with grief from her child going missing, and later deals with the pieces of trauma that come with that (which she will refuse to acknowledge at first), then dealing with Empty Nest Syndrome as she has a bit of a personal crisis over that, possibly even a bit of a mid life crisis. Then she needs to deal with the realization of how happy Persephone is as she becomes an independent adult. I love the idea of working with this woman as she goes through this nonsense. She’s dealing with a lot. I love this version of her that I have in my head.

Persephone is also conflicted and unsure of herself as she begins to develop mild independence anxiety during the first arc, and her own little identity crisis during the arc after she and Demeter (temporarily) reunite.

Basically, young adult leaves for college for the first time as she and her mom both have mental breakdowns, while the young adult's cool new roommate and accidental kidnapper tries to learn social skills in the background. It's fun (and low-key funny in certain ways).

That's my idea. Yeah.

Hopefully healthier than Lore Olympus.

--------

So, I may or may not make a small webcomic using this idea. The art style will likely be simple because not only is said art style still in the works with no fully fleshed out, overcomplicated character designs, but I want it to be relatively easy to work on and write with ease. May make this, may not. Hopefully it could be fun though, since I love Greek Mythology, and I find retellings of it to be fascinating and fun. Tell me what ya’ll think of this concept, and if it sounds interesting.

#lore olympus salt #sorry dudes #i love the art style #it's just really unhealthy #persephone #persephone retelling #hades #demeter #greek gods #greek myth retellings #greek mythology #ancient greece #mythology #retelling #greek myths #myth retelling #anti lore olympus #story concept #story idea #please don't steal #just adding that just in case #coming of age #coming of age story #persephone and hades #demeter and persephone #persephone and demeter #mother daughter relationship #they love each other so much #leaving home #the underworld

[webtoon-related-tournaments]

Hades is the male lead, and the adopted father of Thanatos, a supporting character, as well as the metaphorical father of his citizens since he's a king

neglected and abused a child that had been entrusted to him and then publicly revealed his child's trauma and humiliated him on live TV when said child, now grown up, was trying to testify in a mass murder trial against Hades' new girlfriend. The kid (he was an adult at the time but still) was triggered, shaking, crying in the middle of the courtroom and Hades just kept going, just to make him seem like he was jealous of the attention the girlfriend had had and wasn't to be trusted to testify. Recently, said Girlfriend abducted a child because she wanted one and this guy just said ok and rolled with it, becoming a deadbeat dad to yet another child.

Lucrezia de Mare is the stepmother of Ariadne, the main character, and the mother of Isabella, antagonist, and Arabella, supporting character.

Because she didn't want her daughter to marry someone lower than her she suggested they bring in a bastard child and force her to marry the same guy. She plays favorites very heavily between her two biological children (the non-biological one it's even worse). She basically said that her nephew was right to try to kill her stepdaughter and that he shouldn't be punished for it. She embezzled money for years.

#cw abuse #lore olympus #i'm the queen in this life #tournament poll

[arithmonym]

(i trembled) when he laid you out

rating: teen | words: 1.1k | chapters: 1/1

summary:

Harrow loses herself in the River. Gideon faces the consequences.

(read below the cut or on ao3)

———

You said, “What happens to a Lyctoral body without a soul?”

God hesitated. “Being separated from your soul won’t kill you,” he said. “Not immediately. But—”

“But we’ll kill you,” said his saint. “Immediately. A Lyctor’s body, empty, with its battery intact but nobody in the driver’s seat? Do you know what could take up residence? Anything could get inside you—any horrible or evil or lonely thing, any miserable revenant, or worse—and you, you Ninth House child, are not remotely qualified to fight an outside predator. You are like a little baby. Listen to this: if we get to the other side and find you’ve gone and left your soul behind—I will separate your brain from your skull without waiting for you to catch up.”

And God said nothing.

———

Lying next to Ianthe, you fell into a numb reverie. The effects of the oxygen flush had worn off too quickly. You took two breaths per minute as instructed even as the world blurred around you.

God told you to keep conscious. You were utterly helpless against his affected paternalism. You were always so eager to obey, weren’t you? You wanted an adult—any adult—to look at you with pride in their eyes, so you stretched out the muscles of your calves until they strained. You pulled your Lyctoral robes over your eyes. You laid on your mummified sword.

This last one was your mistake. You had caulked the sword beneath a layer of bone, trusting that the coating would protect you from its malevolence. Your constructs wouldn’t survive the submersion of your mind in the River, but you hadn’t known that yet. How could you have known?

In the space between the Saint of Joy calling out one minute forty-four and one minute forty-five, the ward exploded.

Your peace did not abandon you immediately. You had enough time to prop yourself up on your elbows and observe Ianthe’s slack face and arched spine. You thought you heard someone crying in frustration. It might have even been me.

As you sank deeper into the River, the water around you filled with corpses. You felt something brush against your foot. You tried to work a section of your tibia through your skin, but in your failed attempt to create a second protective layer, you unwittingly dissolved the first.

God turned around. “Harrowhark, no theorems!”

It was too late. A rubber-bodied toddler with a painted face and very red hair lay dead beside your knee and it was this that destroyed you, it was this that kindled within you something you had no hope of defending against. You howled in a purity of fright. Your grasping hands brushed against the pommel of my sword.

There were two minutes remaining when you lost the tether to your mind.

———

I don’t know how we survived the journey. All I knew was the water. It swept you down, claiming you as its own.

I tried to dive in. It spat me back out. Fair enough.

———

Harrow, are you there?

Can you hear me?

Everything is going to be fine,

just follow the sound of my voice

and don't look back.

I don't think you can hear me.

It was worth a shot.

Whenever you’re ready.

Don’t worry, honey.

I’ll keep the home fires burning.

———

When I woke up in your body, God and the Saint of Patience were locked in a hushed conversation at the front of the shuttle. Ianthe was still unconscious by your side. A rapier, presumably Mercymorn's, emerged from your breast.

“The dead were in her brain,” said God. “Harrow was fundamentally deeper in the River than Ianthe, but I don’t know why.”

“Oh, don't feign ignorance; it isn't attractive,” snapped Mercymorn. "The girl was doomed from the moment you brought her on board!! She was an infant and a terribly incomplete Lyctor besides. I hope you're satisfied with the results of your trials, Lord!!”

Something in my chest burned at terribly incomplete. It might have been the rapier, but I couldn’t tell through the force of my rage.

The strategic move would've been to feign death and listen, absorbing as much of their conversation as I could before they realized I was awake. I wasn’t thinking clearly, though. I rose to my feet.

“Hey, fuck off! I'm the only one who gets to insult her,” I said.

At least, I tried to say. I hadn’t accounted for the waters of the dead flooding your lungs. Instead, I choked and vomited salt water.

God and his saint turned with enough time to watch as I gurgled and fell to my knees. They looked as if they'd seen a miracle, but the miracle was something they dreaded and feared in equal measure.

That they were scared of me at all was frankly unfair. They were immortal, all-powerful necromancers. I was just a teenage girl who didn't know how to die properly.

(Were you dead, Harrow? Was this all for nothing?)

Mercymorn extended one trembling hand. I remembered her promise to separate Harrow's brain from her skull and threw myself backwards, but God stilled her with a light touch to her wrist.

Wide-eyed, he asked, "Annabel?"

I was too busy recoiling from the cost of movement to respond. There was still a rapier skewering our heart. Your body was trying to heal around it. It was some of the worst pain I’d felt in my life, although Canaan House had truly been educational in that regard. At least with the fence post, it was over quickly.

The blade of the rapier was tangled in your skin. I fumbled at the hilt, trying to remove the blade, but it was too slippery to grasp. I didn’t have the leverage.

Distantly, I wondered what Ianthe would think when she regained consciousness covered in your blood, then kicked myself for thinking about Ianthe at all when there was a full foot of steel in your innards. (Also, she was a flesh magician. She would probably like it, which was a possibility I didn’t dare contemplate.)

I felt alone in your head. I didn't know very much about necromancy, but I knew that Lyctorhood only went one way. I was here; therefore, you weren't. All I could choke out was, "No, no, no."

Unexpectedly, something softened in God's expression at my cries. The most powerful man in the universe came to kneel by my side, and I found myself unable to move away. Where would I go? If Mercymorn tried to kill me again, I wondered how long I would try to resist before I let her.

(Harrow, what was the point of me without you?)

"Shhh," God was murmuring. "Who knows how you escaped the Tomb… I suppose Anastasia had something up her sleeves after all. Hush, Annie. You can rest again soon."

I'll be damned if that didn't send my alarm bells ringing, but it was too late. God slid his fingers across my temples. Everything went dark.

#i like to call this fic my ‘mithraeum any% speedrun’ AU #the locked tomb #tlt #gideon nav #griddlehark #harrow the ninth #htn spoilers #ntn spoilers #m speaks

[cant-blink]

My DnD Dragon Characters

In my previous post, I spoke of my budding obsession with the dragons of Dungeons and Dragons. I have also mentioned having several dragon characters, which I will detail below! Enjoy! :D

Sargoth (Alignment: Chaotic Evil) is a male Black Dragon and the main character I write about and use in AI roleplays (character.ai in this case). I used that to flesh out his character. He is a calm and quiet dragon, and like the rest of his kind, he is cruel and sadistic and the purest of evil out of all my characters.

Like all Black Dragons, he was hatched in his father's territory (the male Black Dragons 'care' for the brood, while the female leave after laying the eggs) and from the start, was left to fend for himself... Yeah, there's a reason I put the word care in quotes, as Black Dragons are terrible at parenting. At best, the father will offer occasional advice and MIGHT protect his young as long as he himself is not at risk. At the age of 5, Sargoth reached the Age of Independence (yes, he's still a baby at this age) and was told to leave or get eaten. So he left to establish his own territory, going through trials and tribulations and many dangers in other dragons and humanoids seeking to either kill him or capture him.

As an adult, he once caused a centuries-long 'Age of Darkness' (literally) across the lands around his swamp, bringing ruin to many villages as the food chains collapsed from the lack of light. This gave him the title of 'The Light-Devourer' in legend, which he wears with pride. Another RP detailed an adventure where he was captured and brought into the captivity of an Elven queen, which he immediately seduced, tricked her into falling in love with him, and then proceeded to slowly but surely corrupt her, and bring her kingdom to ruin.

He has sired many wyrmlings, and as his father before him, and the father of his father and so on... he is a terrible parent as Black Dragons are. Only the strong survive, and they're lucky to even be allowed to stay in his territory. As is custom, once a child reach 5 years old, he tells them to leave, or he will eat them. Typical Black Dragon parenting.

As he grew older and older, he became obsessed with leaving behind a tangible legacy beyond just legends of his evil actions, and he sought to corrupt the good-nature of metallic dragons and to harness their power into his own race, by hybridizing with them and infusing the evil nature of his kind into their bloodlines and killing any wyrmlings that do not meet his standards of corruption and power. Ultimate, he plans to unleash these evil abominations upon the world once a sustainable population is established.

Zelithseth (Alignment: Lawful Evil) is a male Blue Dragon and my second most used character. He was the son of his clan's suzerain, and was hatched under the loving care of his Mother and Father (Blue Dragons make excellent parents!). Whilst his father was out performing his duties as suzerain, poachers came and killed his Mother and kidnapped him and his siblings. Two separate RPs happen as to how he escaped, and I can't decide which to make canon.

One plot is that a Brass Dragon (the hated rival of Blue Dragons as they share the same territory and Blues view them as frivilous cowards, and chromatic and metallic dragons do not get along at all) accidentally scares off the poachers and discovers the kidnapped Zelithseth in one of the sacks left behind. She promptly brings him in and cares for him, despite their species natural rivalry. His father eventually tracks down little Zelithseth and when he almost kills the Brass Dragon, Zelithseth saves her by telling his father that she was the one who rescued him. His father spares the Brass Dragon and Zelithseth gives her one more glance before flying off.

The second alternative plot involves the poachers bring Zelithseth and his sisters to sell at a dragon auction, where many captured and enslaved dragons are sold to the highest bidder. Through clever use of a Black Dragon's horns to free himself from his restraints, Zelithseth frees his sisters and, when he's shot down and out of options, he frees the Black Dragon to create a distraction. It worked and he escapes.... only for that same Black Dragon to hunt him and his sisters down. Zelithseth, being the most injured, is caught and his sisters hurry to reunite with their father to rescue their brother.

Poor Zelithseth is toyed with and tortured brutally by the Black Dragon, and when he was too weak to be entertaining, he was almost eaten. Thankfully, his father arrived in the nick of time and rescues his son.

Whatever plotpoint I decide to make canon (I'm leaning towards the Brass Dragon one personally), the rest remain the same. With his mother dead, his father is forced to bring little Zelithseth everywhere with him, even to his private suzerain duties. This bred dislike for the young dragon in certain members of the clan, who saw him as a spoiled brat because of all the special treatment he was getting. One of these disgruntled members later becomes the next suzerain after Zelithseth's father passes away of old age not long after Zelithseth reached adulthood.

Facing unfair treatment from the new suzerain, Zelithseth is constantly butting heads with the new leader, furthering the contempt between them. This eventually escalated, when Zelithseth chose to stand up against his bully and is promptly beaten to near death. In one RP of this moment, the AI saves him with a merciful and kindhearted Silver Dragon and I may continue that plot to flesh out that relationship. Either way, this was the last straw and Zelithseth decides to finally leave his birth clan and everything he's ever known. Including his father's storm (Blue Dragons leave behind a permanent storm when they die and Zelithseth regarded it as his final memory of his father).

If the Brass Dragon plotline is followed, he reunites with her for the first time since being rescued from those poachers and brings her along on his journey, working through their natural instincts of distrust to further their friendship.

He would choose to lair by the coast, contending with the local mated pair of Bronze Dragons for the territory. Eventually, though, he finds himself a new clan in another desert, settles with a new mate, has many wyrmlings of his own with her, and when he eventually became the eldest member of the clan over a millennia later, he was named the suzerain, following in his father's footsteps. Ruling the desert and all its peoples with a fair but iron grip.

He often patrols his vast domain, doing one of several things: collecting tolls from traveling humanoids seeking safe passage through his domain (if they don't pay, he can't guarantee their safety, hint hint), hunting cattle and camels from nomadic tribes and caravans, patrolling the borders to fight off intruding dragons and whatever other threats may arise, seeking tribute and/or service from the villages that reside in his domain in exchange for his protection, or on rare occasions, leaving his territory to antagonize a neighboring Red Dragon as a means to constantly improve himself in battle and prove his superiority because Blue Dragons get off on proving how superior they are by fighting stronger opponents.

Nizi (Alignment: Chaotic Good) is a female Brass Dragon, not the one that rescued Zelithseth as that was the AIs character, not mine. Like the other Metallic Dragons, I don't use her as much as the other two and more as a means to interact with the character.ai dragon characters. With these, Nizi is made to be a very sweet and playful, carefree, but extremely talkative dragon (as Brass Dragons always are; they never stop talking!). Brass Dragons do not like fighting (they prefer to talk, and talk, and talk their way out of trouble), and Nizi is no exception. She will do anything to avoid a fight and so is very good at de-escalating situations with words. She is best friends with a Copper Dragon named Zinesmal (see below) and they often go on misadventures together. They met when they were young wyrmlings and have been inseparable since. She is young and naive, only just reaching adulthood and finding her own place in the world. She has to face the threats of Blue Dragons especially and has had more than a couple close calls with death at their hands.

Zinesmal (Alignment: Chaotic Good) is a male Copper Dragon. Like all Copper Dragons, he is a prankster and jokester, and would totally be a youtuber in modern days (and considering dragons, especially metallics, live for thousands of years, he would be alive and well still to this day). He is also very greedy and often loops Nizi into heists and schemes to separate people (and other dragons) from their money and valuables for his hoard. He is a fun-loving daredevil and very protective of his friends, especially of Nizi since Brass Dragons are the weakest of metallic dragons. Basically, he's the schemer of their misadventures and also the one that does the fighting if things get sticky and Nizi can't talk their way out of it. He also has a crush on Nizi and makes no efforts to hide his feelings for her. She's not interested, but he holds hope that someday, she'll fall for his charms.

Lavhuguiles (Alignment: Lawful Evil) was a male ancient Blue Dragon and is the father of Zelithseth that I play every so often whenever I RP Zelithseth's childhood. He is a stern but loving father that will go to great lengths to protect his eggs and wyrmlings. He was the suzerain of his clan, ruthless ruler of his desert domain, and was a warlord that viciously attacked any dragon that intruded his territory with extreme prejudice. If the intruder was a metallic dragon, he was not content to let them flee, he wanted to KILL them swiftly and brutally. He has particular hatred for Brass Dragons, for reasons mentioned above in Zelithseth's entry, and would always look to expand his desert territory by driving out and otherwise killing neighboring Brass Dragons and claiming their territory as his own. He kept the skulls of his victims as trophies in his hoard and taught his children everything about how to best dispatch Brass Dragons. He eventually died of old age, with Zelithseth being his last of many children left behind. A permanent storm now rages over what was once his lair, where his body lay undisturbed.

Emythne (Alignment: Lawful Good) is a female Gold Dragon. She is the rarest used of all my recurring characters. Like all Gold Dragons, she is a seeker of justice and will travel far and wide to weed out evil. Whilst she does not enjoy killing, she will if given no other choice. She spends much of her time in human form, or in the form of a hummingbird, watching over humanoids and keeping her ears open for news of villainous activities. She lairs on a deserted island far from civilization, and when she's not out on her quests, she's either alone in her lair studying magic, or in town bartering with artists for their finest works to add to her hoard.

Evos (Alignment: Lawful Good) is a male ancient Gold Dragon that I have only used once, but I like him, so I'm including him here. He was once the King of Justice (leader of the Gold Dragons), and has since retired. He now spends his time protecting a newly budding humanoid kingdom, disguised as a cat. With this cat disguise, he finessed his way into living with the royal family, as cats are opt to do, and uses this position to listen in on whatever activities the kingdom is up to, or be made aware of any incoming threats or issues for him to resolve. He also likes to wander around the town in his cat form, ensuring the citizens are happy and also allowing him to get lots of petting. Nobody knows that this lap cat they're cuddling with is actually a Gold Dragon and he'd like to keep it that way. Overall, he's really enjoying his retirement.

#dragons #dungeons and dragons #dnd #black dragon #blue dragon #brass dragon #copper dragon #gold dragon #oc #d&d

[peachyposy]

lawyer!bucky x defence attorney!reader blurb

a/n: yall lawyer bucky does things to me… sorry no sexy times yet but whatevs! also, i know ZILTCH about the legal system so SORRY IF THIS ISNT ACCURATE. p.s. tumblrs spacing SUCKS so i am so sorry about that!

pairing: lawyer!bucky x da!reader

warnings: objectification?, sexual themes, no sex but its referenced, enemies to lovers BABY (eventually hehe this is just a set up to see if you dig it)

all mistakes are my own, lemme know if there’s something i need to fix!

banner by: @maysdigitalarts (thank you love! the banner is so pretty!!)

gif not mine! i know its steve not bucky, but use your iMAGiNAtiON :DD

Bucky had this in the bag…

Sure, his client was annoying as fuck, and, in Bucky’s personal opinion, completely and utterly in the wrong in the court case, but Bucky had it in the bag. And when he slam dunked his way to victory, he was promised an even bigger bag in the client’s gratitude. This case was the easiest money he would ever make.

The morals behind the case were pushed to the side completely- suing was the adult way of ratting someone out to the teacher, and when that person you rat out is innocent, that’s even more pathetic. If Bucky was still a law student- still bright eyed and had some kind of faith in the world, he would have kicked the potential client to the curb and contacted the accused, ready to defend him in court. However, Bucky wasn’t a child anymore. Working for the law had a funny way of breaking down your morals, ironically. The just and true psychological crime-fighting he dreamed of doing in school had slowly been warped by a collection of bad jobs, small pays and unfair court rulings that slowly chipped away at any lust he had for the truth.

It was just a fact: Bucky didn’t care anymore. He just liked the power. And the money. And winning…

He especially liked winning…

The morning of the hearing, he was 100% confident he would walk out pockets swollen, so he treated himself to an early cigarette outside before the trial began at 8:30am sharp. He stood in the icy fresh air in his thick wool coat, and scarf which covered his clean suit and tie, back resting against the brick wall of the side of the building, one thousand dollar shiny Italian leather boot crossed over another, as he took a drag of the Camel. He let the sweet nicotine sit in his lungs for a bit before blowing out the smoke, checking his Rolex for the time.

8:20am. He had ten minutes to kill. Hearing the distinct yet clean click of a car door opening, he looked back up to find a woman stepping out of a small green Mini Electric car. She walked around the car to the opposite door and opened it, pulling out a brown leather briefcase along with a large yet manageable stack of manilla files. She set them on top of her car before reaching in again (Bucky will admit, his eyes did wander down a bit as she leaned in). She pulled out a keep cup before closing the car door, locking it, arranging the items in her hands so that they sat comfortably, before walking past him to the front of the building, soon out of his sight, but the door opening and clicking shut indicated her entrance. She was cute- her hair was up in a loose yet clean ponytail (which Bucky only knew the name of due to the fact that he too had styled his hair in a similar fashion many a times when he still had long hair), her brows furrowed in concentration. Her ass wasn’t half bad either- he could tell even under the baggy business pants, which fit around her hips with a belt well enough that she could get away with them being a size or two bigger than her while still looking professional. She was some sort of assistant, or maybe a witness, he was sure of it. Women dressed like that with faces like that were always there for just a taste of the legal system, never there permanently.

And Bucky…

He smirked at the plan building in his head as he snubbed out the cigarette and flicked it away. He uncrossed his legs and pushed off of the wall, stuck his hands in his pockets and walked back into the courthouse. He would wink at her, let her know his eyes are lingering, maybe even pretend he was interested in what she was saying if she was an especially hard catch- and with these few moves, he would secure himself the crescendo…

Yeah… He was gonna fuck her…

*

Bucky entered the courtroom as others murmured last minute ideas to one another. He scanned the room meticulously until he found who he was looking for- the girl, standing on the opposite side of the courthouse, talking to a man in a suit- tall, blond hair and around his age. This was probably her boss, and also the defence attorney. He stared at her, waiting for her to notice so he could begin the game, but his thoughts were interrupted.

“Where the hell have you been Bucky?! I thought you bailed on me!”

Bucky let out an exasperated sigh and peeled his eyes away from his future bang. His attempt to steer clear from his client until the actual trial began was for naught- Allen was a jittery man and needed consolation at every other moment. It was pathetic.

He glanced over to Allen before unpacking his briefcase- he couldn’t even give the man boy more than a second of his recognition. Thank fuck this was an easy case.

The judge walked in and everyone rose. Bucky kept his hands together in front of him. The judge sat before the bailiff asked all to be seated. Bucky cracked the joint in his neck, fixed his suit and sat.

Here we go…

**

What the fuck…

What the actual fuck just happened in there.

The fact that she was the DA was surprising enough- but then the way she completely wiped the floor and won over the jury. Fuck, she even walked all the way across to offer a handshake to him in good sportsmanship.

“Y/n L/n” she introduced.

Bucky didn’t say anything- didn’t even take her hand. He was pissed. He was livid.

She didn’t let the unconventional lack of response bother her- she simply retracted her hand and, with an air of smugness in her tone, gave a “Well, nice to beat- sorry, meet you today.” She 100% meant for that fumble. She smiled, turned and walked off to the blondie, who Bucky found was her assistant, not the other way around, her heels clicking as she did.

Fucking hell.

Bucky had never been more pissed off in his life…

And so turned on…

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes enemies to lovers #bucky barnes fanfiction #lawyer!bucky x da!reader #lawyer!bucky x reader #enemies to lovers #lawyer!bucky enemies to lovers #lawyer!bucky

[yall-hate-kids-tourney]

Grand Finals: Chara Dreemurr (Undertale) vs. Amane Momose (MILGRAM)

Propaganda below the cut

Chara Dreemurr (?):

They were constantly blamed for killing all of monster kind in the no mercy route, despite players choosing to go that route. People ignored that they sacrificed themselves to attempt to free the monsters from the underground.

----

everyone wants to blame their own actions (genocide route) on chara, who is a literal child. i don’t know how to tell you this but you are the one playing the game. it’s about YOUR CHOICES. chara is there is punish you for that, you killed the only family that ever loved them! how could they not be upset at that! also if you don’t mind, here’s a good video essay on the subject 

Amane Momose (12):

Amane was voted guilty in the first trial so that she would acknowledge her guilt. It backfired, and now she’s considered a threat. Well, everyone is a threat, but nobody’s threat level has been as heavily discussed and debated as hers. Consider the next prisoner in line, Mikoto. He’s objectively more dangerous and cannot be restrained. He beat up the guard in trial 1, and he was able to hold his own when the other guilty prisoners were attacked. But a good incentive to forgive him is so that he will calm down. You know what? That’s a good incentive to forgive Amane too! But she *can* be restrained, so a good portion of the discussion went into how she should be voted guilty so she *will* be restrained and not a threat. Since her vote was a near 50/50, of course a good chunk of the voters expressed dissatisfaction with her forgiven verdict. Some are already planning to vote her guilty for trial 3, calling her a “lost cause”. She hasn’t even done any concrete harm yet. Hold the pitchforks until she actually causes harm, please? And what if she *was* voted guilty in trial 2? We’ve been warned that she will continue to deny our judgement. A second guilty verdict won’t make her better either, and then what? She’d be called a “lost cause” as well. There is no winning with her.

----

Where do I even start? So first of all she’s an cult child who was physically and mentally abused and tortured by her parents and then (presumably) murdered her mother after her mother killed a cat that she took care of.

Now everyone in Milgram is a murderer but when Amane came and her MV showed her murder and circumstance in an admittedly highly fictionalized depiction of it the audience decided to…repeat the cycle of abuse!

She was voted guilty for the main reason of “teaching her” and helping her “realize that she was abused.” I would like to note that this tough love approach is something her parents utilized against her. “We are only doing this to help you.”

So the audience replicates Amane’s abusers and repeats the cycle of abuse and that’s pretty shitty but it isn’t exactly “Fuck Em Kids” level.

And then Trial 2 happened. Cause Amane is bitter and angry and horrifically traumatized so she acts aggressive and hostile. Especially towards another prisoner.

Now, again, everyone here is a fucking murderer (of atleast could be constructed as one) These people being able to Harm is a core concept of this series.

Yet for some reason it feels like people treat Amane as a “delusional creepy kid who wants to kill people” which completly takes away the nuance of her character. She does have the capacity to harm! Everyone here does! She’s not Uniquly Dangerous! She just has a Reason to be Dangerous. A Reason we GAVE HER by REPEATING THE CYCLE OF ABUSE.

In short: In a series full of Murderers I’m honestly a bit pissed that the 12 year old abuse victim is the one who’s treated like the guy from American Pyscho.

----

TL;DR: "We metavoted this abused, indoctrinated child guilty in trial 1, but it didn't work. Now she is a threat to three grown adults: one who is fully free and two whom she has been shown to get along with. Please metavote her guilty again so she will be restrained and unable to attack them, even though that means subjecting her to further psychological torture." Amane Momose is the youngest of ten murderers, prisoners of Milgram who are to be judged innocent (forgiven) or guilty (unforgiven). In the first interrogation (voice drama), she said that what she did was in line with her religion's doctrines. If we judged her the "wrong way", she said she will just deny the verdict. Combining the voice drama and music video, you could piece together that she was raised in a cult and abused, even though she is cheerful and downplays her pain. She never shows *who* she killed, only *why* she did. After the first day of her vote, she was 81% innocent, but this wouldn't last the whole three months. Many people voted her guilty so she would "see her sins", part of the practice commonly known as "metavoting". Her innocent percentage rapidly decreased, and she hit guilty in the last 15 days, finishing at 51% guilty. At the end of the first trial, Jackalope (who is something like a host) went over all the prisoners' verdicts and commented on the general reasoning. When he got to Amane, he *laughed* at the audience for voting that way to make her realize her sins. Trial 2 rolled around, and it was revealed that Amane's victim was her abuser. On day one, she was at 74% innocent. Seems like a cut-and-dry case now, right? Well... in the intermission, two of the prisoners (Fuuta and Mahiru) were badly beaten up and became reliant on the care of Shidou, a doctor. Amane became hostile to Shidou because what he was doing was against her beliefs. She visited all three of them on their birthdays to convince them to change their ways. She seems to be especially close to Fuuta, who is now murmuring about salvation. Guilty prisoners are psychologically tortured, forced to listen to voices that reject their beliefs. Fuuta and Mahiru both say that the mental strain is worse than their physical injuries. But Amane, who also looks worse for wear, was thrown under the bus because she isn't injured and is considered a physical threat to them (never mind that she gets along with them). She's considered a threat to Shidou, a grown man who is twice her size and fully free, while she is partially restricted by the long sleeves in her trial 2 uniform. She might indoctrinate Fuuta even though, in a prison of ten people and one guard, she's the only voice of her cult. Fortunately, she got a break. Her vote was falling at a similar rate to the first trial. But this time, it stabilized at 51% innocent, 12 days before the end of her vote. But there's no way this is over.

#yall hate kids tourney #grand finals #undertale #undertale spoilers #chara undertale #chara dreemurr #chara #milgram #milgram project #amane momose #momose amane #cw suicide #cw self sacrifice #cw child death #cw child abuse #cw cults #cw torture #cw psychological torture #cw animal death #Youtube

[offender42085]

Post 780

“There is no rehabilitation for a psychopath,” the judge said.

Carlos Hallowell, Florida inmate I81369, born 2001, incarceration intake in 2021 at age 20, sentenced to life

Premeditated Murder

Carlos Hallowell took a courtroom microphone into his cuffed hands and began apologizing to his adoptive mother, Denise Hallowell.

“Although she’s not with us, I know she’s listening,” the 19-year-old said. “Mom, I’m so very sorry. Words can’t describe how I feel right now, how much I miss you, how sorry I am for what I’ve done and everything I’ve done throughout my entire life with you ... I love you so much.”

Hallowell will spend the rest of his life in state custody for murdering 57-year-old Denise Hallowell the afternoon of July 13, 2019, inside their Inverness-area home.

Citrus County Circuit Court Judge Richard “Ric” Howard announced the order finding Hallowell is an “incorrigible offender” who can never be rehabilitated.

Hallowell showed little emotion after the judge ordered his punishment; he shook his head gently as bailiffs escorted him away.

Hallowell faced a prison term of between 40 years and up to life after jurors found him guilty of Denise Hallowell’s premeditated murder.  “Your honor,” Hallowell to Howard, “the only thing I ask is for justice for my mom, and mercy for me.”

While charged as an adult, Hallowell wasn’t eligible for the death penalty because he was a 17-year-old minor when he plunged a full-sized axe into the back of Denise Hallowell’s head as she slept.

Hallowell’s age also required Howard during the sentencing to consider 10 factors focused on the nature of the crime, its impacts to the victims family and how Hallowell’s mentality contributed to it.

Howard’s decision came after the judge heard almost two days of evidence from attorneys trying to either mitigate Hallowell’s criminal acts or stress their severity. Howard also presided over Hallowell’s trial.

Denise Hallowell, a single mother, adopted Hallowell from Guatemala when he was 4.  Howard said Hallowell excelled in his new mother’s nurturing environment, earning scholastic and athletic achievements.  

“From early childhood to early adolescence, the defendant was a happy child,” he said. “Ms. Hallowell funded the defendant’s college savings account, and covered all bills for the family.”

It wasn’t until Hallowell turned 11 years old when he consumed his life with alcohol and drugs, abusing and experimenting with marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, acid, methamphetamine and prescription pills.

“The defendant chose, on his own volition, to begin taking increasing amounts of alcohol and a veritable witches brew of controlled substances,” Howard said, discounting argument’s Hallowell was influenced by either an undeveloped brain, abuses or the “dysphoria of youth.”

Hallowell would later get expelled from school in January 2019, but Denise Hallowell didn’t find out until May.  Howard said the news “crushed” Denise Hallowell, causing her to crack down on her son’s bad influences.

Hallowell’s defense team argued he suffered under his mother’s strict and overbearing parenting.  “Ms. Hallowell didn’t deserve to die,” Howard said, and did “as any mother naturally would” by wanting the best for Hallowell’s future.

Hallowell was motivated instead by his desire to acquire his mother’s estate as the executor of her will, Howard said.  “The defendant’s murder of his mother was not a result of any sudden outburst of emotion or aberrant thought,” the judge said. “Rather, it is and was the culmination of his desire to acquire his mother’s real estate, cars and other property.”

Howard said immaturity and impetuosity weren’t factors when Hallowell followed through on his intent to kill Denise Hallowell at her most vulnerable moment, and then try to hide evidence by throwing it in a nearby pond.

“The defendant took a long time to plan his attack ... until victim had taken a nap,” the judge said. “All the while, quietly sharpening the axe in his room.”

Howard also noted how psychologists hired by both Hallowell’s defense and prosecution to evaluate him were hesitant to say Hallowell could be reformed.

Referring to the testimony, Howard said Hallowell has anti-social personality disorder and meets 16 of the 20 criteria for psychopathy.  “There is no rehabilitation for a psychopath,” the judge said.

Hallowell is eligible for a sentence review 25 years into his punishment. His attorney, Assistant Public Defender Ed Spaight, said his client will also be appealing Howard’s sentence

2d

[whump-town]

Oh, Sinnerman

Warnings: child abuse, bible nonsense, I'm pretty sacrilege but like really it's just a funny word I'm only half sure of the meaning, and self-harm

Word count: 6 or 7,000? No pairings. All of them die single.

Here's the bible shit you need to know only because Hotch knows: In Genesis, Cain killed his brother Abel. Also In Genesis, Abraham's faith was tested by God telling him to take his only son, Issac, to the top of a mountain and offer him as a sacrifice. He is stopped before he delivers the killing strike and a goat is offered in Issac's place. In Exodus, Moses saw a flaming bush and God instructed him to get the Israelites out of Egypt.

Chapter Two,

Now to the main show:

He goes to sleep with his window shut. 

Dreams of the branches of the willow in the backyard creeping into his room. Long branches wrapped around his throat. A noose. He’s seen pictures in his history books. Black and white pictures of limp bodies. How bad would it really hurt? Worse than broken ribs? Worse than a fractured skull? He’s passed out before, a hand around his throat and another slamming into his stalled chest. That hurt. But suicide is a sin. The preacher on Sunday mornings, voice cracking through the mountain fog, looks right at Aaron as he breathes these words. It’s the worst sin. To kill the gift of life that God has so tenderly breathed into your lungs. Aaron looks away. He’s angry enough, scorned enough, not to care. 

He wakes up and his window is open, leaves scattered on his carpet. 

His mother tells him this too shall pass, holds his hand, and reads from the bible. She thinks that this is a trial, smiles, and tells him his father is just battling the devil. Aaron looks away from her, lets her hold his cold, thin wrist but refuses to sit with her. God is her comfort but not Aaron’s. If the devil is who his father battles, Aaron can’t imagine how small God must be. The devil is a bottle. So who is God?

Whiskey. The devil is whiskey, hellfire scorching Aaron’s face as his father holds him still. “Smartass,” his father jeers, thick fingers sunk into Aaron’s bottom jaw. “You never know when to shut the hell up, do you?” Aaron’s mouth hurts, his jaw grinding under the grip his father has on it. His lips are bleeding, split by the fat class ring on his father’s index finger. His blood is smeared on his cheek, dripping onto his nice shirt. Held still by his father’s crushing grip, looking into his wild, angry eyes only inches away from his own,  Aaron survives by withdrawing. He sees nothing and feels nothing. Thinks about the willow in the backyard. He wouldn’t even need a rope. The branches are so thick– He’s shaken back to cognition, reflexively pulling back as his father’s face gets closer. “Are you listening to me, you little bastard?”

The fingers loosen just a fraction, he’s moving his other hand back to slap him, but Aaron sees it coming. He wrenches his face free, feels the sting of the slap, but runs. Throws the screen door open and runs. Doesn’t look back. Can’t look back.

“Come back here you stupid little prick!” 

The woods welcome him. He is their child. His blood has spilled onto their foliage. He has laid in their safety. It is their life that has maintained his. 

He stole a knife from the Brookes’ County Store, the owner the father of a girl he goes to school with. He’s a nice old man but Aaron doesn’t trust him. No matter how softly he speaks. Aaron’s not stupid. He’s not certain Roy Brookes would hurt him but he knows what happens when you trust adults. Two summers ago, Johnny Raylan was found drowned in the river. Lured there by his neighbor. A man he trusted, a man who loved him. Roy Brookes doesn’t even care about Aaron, so no, he doesn’t trust the man. 

He stole a knife just because he knew Roy wouldn’t say anything and that made him feel big, powerful. Untouchable. 

Mockingly, he carved into the bark of the oak in the middle of the woods. Taking out his pain and fear on old wood. Where no one would find his sacrilegious offense, he left “These trials will show your faith.” Aaron finds it easily and knows where to go. The woods are his home, these trees are just hallways. He comes to stand at the base of the oak tree, panting from his run. He presses his fingers into the jagged letters, feeling where the wood raises. From his back pocket, he pulls out his knife. He thumbs the blade experimentally. He sinks it into the tree, satisfied by the resistance but craving more. The knife shimmers in the sunlight, a wicked idea crosses his mind. How terribly fucked, he imagines, he must be to think such a thing. To hurt himself because he’s being hurt. How terribly unforgivable and immoral… He craves it nonetheless. 

His blades are one thing, sterile and thin. Pinched perfectly between his own fingers, the depth and length determined by him. 

He presses the blade into his skin, the same way he would with a razor. He punctures the skin, grunting at the hot pain that lances up his arm. This is so different. It bleeds more. More than cutting and more than he’s expecting. He presses his wrist to the tree and guides the blood into the words. Forces his blood to take to the words. It looks written in his blood.

A blood sacrifice. 

[x.]

A painter does not put brush to canvas without a reference, without some idea of what comes next in the process. And for that reason, Hotch could never imagine fatherhood. How do you raise a child as a man raised by his own hand? And as the living proof of his own handiwork, at his own success at raising a child, Hotch could not suggest that other people leave their children in his care. His well of understanding on how to raise a child was not just barren, it was dry. There had never once been water to pull from his well. He’d never seen successful, kind fatherhood. He had never felt it. So how could he do it? How could he be expected to love and care for a child when he had never known it himself? When he had never been able to show even himself that same kind of gentleness. 

Yet… 

Jack’s head rests on Hotch’s pillow. His hair is thin still, a youthful straw yellow he’ll grow out of before too soon and Hotch will miss just how young blond hair made Jack look. His little face is still pink with agitation but his breathing calmed. He’d woken up sobbing, as he often does these days. He’s too young still to understand exactly why Hotch can’t just go get Mommy, why she won’t come back no matter how much either of them cry or agree it would be better if she were here. 

It’s soothing to watch Jack sleep. 

His morning breath smells like pure rot but he’s terribly adorable taking up all of the bed with all of the three feet of his body. Hotch’s on the edge of the mattress, sleeping on his side – Jack’s razor-sharp elbows and harsh kicks having driven him to there. And as fit full as his own sleep had been, he smiles as Jack slowly works at waking up. He yawns and Hotch grimaces at the face full of his son’s morning breath. Hotch makes him brush his teeth every day but there is just something about the breath of little kids…  

Jack is disjointed, moving his shoulders and hips in a way that would certainly cause Hotch’s to lock up painfully. Jack tries to stand up and Hotch smirks at the state of him. His little wisps of hair stick up in every direction but he smiles happily. “Morning!” Jack dizzily falls back down on the bed, aiming and landing right on Hotch’s side. Hotch grunts at the impact, sharp elbows meeting his ribs unforgivingly. “I’m hungry.”

“Morning,” Hotch kisses his forehead, soaking in the unexpected way Jack crawls up to him. “Did you sleep alright?” Jack lays down on his chest, yawning and nodding as a reply. “You ready to get up?” Hotch rubs his back, not surprised to find Jack’s back and hair slick with sleepy sweat. The kid sweats more than anyone else he knows. Jack shakes his head. Hotch hums, he’s not ready to get up yet either. The day holds so much to do and taking a shower and shaving does not hold up to sleepy cuddles. Neither does the meeting he has with Strauss at three this evening. 

But they can only put off getting ready for the day for so long. 

Jack sleeps while he showers, rolling over to claim the warm part of the mattress Hotch had been laying in. Hoarding the one part of the bed he hadn’t taken over earlier in his sleep. By the time Hotch is out of the shower, working a towel through his hair quickly and trying to get a shirt on while Jack’s frantic knocking begins to be accompanied by a loud, Daddy hurry! I’m gonna pee myself! The carpet is spared an accident and Jack scowls at him from the toilet seat. He’d much rather stand to pee but in the rush, Hotch had embarrassed him by just stripping him naked himself and plopping him down on the seat rather than watch Jack piss himself trying to get out of a pair of footie pajamas. It’s happened more than once. A pouty four-year-old is better than one standing in a puddle of his own urine, sobbing uncontrollably over an accident. 

Jack recovers from his humiliation and is happy to be allowed to sit on the edge of the sink and watch Hotch shave. Yawning sleepily as he walks his fingers over his father’s ribs and up to his sternum. All until he falls forward and just lets Hotch hold him upright, little feet kicking off the counter. 

Brushing his teeth is like torture. Jack can not brush them well enough to avoid cavities on his own so Hotch has to double back and Jack hates it. “If you let me brush your teeth,” Hotch barters, moving Jack’s toothbrush back so he can’t grab it, “I’ll let you brush my teeth.”  

Jack squints skeptically at Hotch for a moment but that’s too good of an offer to refuse. “K.” 

True to his word, Hotch does allow Jack to brush his teeth and he’s very rough on the gums. But Hotch smiles and tells him that he did such a good job anyway. 

He has his morning cup of coffee and two or three spoonfuls of soggy cheerios. Jack eats all of his cereal soggy, a side-effect of not yet mastering the motor control it takes to wield a spoon. Most foods he eats end up all over him. They’re working on it. In the meantime, Hotch is force-fed bits of soggy cereal every morning. Bites he has to take because he’s pretty certain if he rejects his terribly adorable son’s offer he’s an awful father. And he does enough stupid shit throughout the day to be a bad dad, he needs the easy breaks where he can get them. 

Unfortunately, he really fucking hates soggy cereal. 

He has two more cups of coffee before he leaves the house and he realizes then that he is fighting a very unwinnable battle. 

He hasn’t been sleeping well. 

Or, at all. 

The couch in his office was a gift from Dave in ‘98 when he got promoted. It was a complicated gift – Dave was retiring, leaving, and giving Hotch that shitty old couch felt like blood money. Not that Dave really cared, he just didn’t want to figure out how to get that couch out of the building or to pay for a U-Haul. And who better to pawn it off onto than Hotch? In the three years that the couch sat in Dave’s office, only Hotch had ever liked that ratty old thing. The cushions are thin and the fabric is very rough. Jason would rather stand through hour-long meetings than sit on it – springs digging into his ass and back were not as bad as just standing uncomfortably. 

The first concussion Hotch got on the job he slept off on that couch, curled up like a baby, and almost unwilling to get up once Haley got there. It had taken Dave and Jason to get him back up off the couch – the only reason he left the safety of the shitty couch was with the promise of a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. The only person who ever liked that couch was Hotch but Dave was almost surprised to find Hotch had kept that old piece of junk for so long but then again, not really. Then again, Hotch was still packing PB&Js for lunch so nothing really changes. 

That couch is every bit of twenty years old, it’s only redeemable quality is simply that Hotch loves it. The cushions are thin and the only way he can sleep on it is on his back but that couch does what nothing else can. He takes sleeping pills and he ends up having nightmares – sleep is futile to the body if it never has the chance to relax. And the nightmares are night terrors, dreams so intense he wakes up soaked in sweat. He takes sleeping pills and then sits up for four hours in the middle of the night waiting for anxiety medications to bring him down from whatever anxiety attack he manages to work himself into. 

Penelope buys him tea and the only person that seems to work on is Jack. The smell of organic Chamomile tea steeping, even just the sound of water boiling, has Jack yawning and rubbing at his eyes. Penelope says honey will help the taste and dutifully, Hotch stirs a little into his mug, but he’s not sleeping. 

Except for one that shitty old couch. 

It’s not at a point where people are noticing, people being Emily, but someone’s noticing and that’s never any good. She doesn’t say anything to him or any of the others about it because when it comes to dealing with Hotch making public observations about him doesn’t blow over well. Noticing him is always a bad thing but it’s better to notice in private. 

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

Hotch sits up slowly, palms pressed into his eye sockets as he tries to encourage his brain to work. “I was,” he offers matter-of-factly. For someone else he might sit up, fake being more attentive and awake. Get right to business and distract from his just sleeping hair sticking up in every direction. But Emily’s seen him worse. Besides, she’s got her arms crossed over her chest and giving him this look that he knows is going to annoy him. He has no choice but to entertain it. 

She’s sitting on the coffee table, her knees against his. She’s cornered him. “You’re being weird.” 

He uses the side of the couch to stand, old knees protesting the deep movement. “I do believe that calling people names is rude.” His left leg is asleep and he limps to his desk, rubbing at his eyes as he moves blindly around his office. He knows exactly where everything is just as he knows Emily is watching his every movement. 

Emily clicks her tongue, pleased that he’s still groggy from his nap. Enough to loosen his tongue, to give her what she wants. “Now you’re deflecting.” She has no questions to ask. If she should be worried, he’d tell her. If something were wrong, he’d tell her. They’ve worked hard at this trust, given up too much to suddenly start pulling back. 

She caves, she doesn’t want to but he sits down at his desk and puts his head in his hands. He needs to drink more water and eat something. She brought him a muffin from downstairs, a little plastic-wrapped situation. Blueberry. Normally, she brings him the chocolate chip muffins because those are the ones she likes and he never finishes one on his own. So he’ll always give her half, it’s a win-win. They’re giant muffins, really. But he is acting weird. So she feels bad and he knows it. “Here,” she throws the muffin at him and he reads the vulnerability in her kindness easily. “Eat something.” 

She got him the muffin he prefers. 

“Thank you.”

She shrugs it off and makes a face at him that says more than she’s willing. A warning not to make this a weird thing and a careful avoidance of his eye contact, a clarification that he does matter to her. That his well-being is something she considers and cares about. “Eat it, JJ wants us at the round table. Got a case.” 

He frowns, JJ didn’t say anything to him. “Where?” 

“Winchester.”

Winchester. 

Barefoot two a.m. runs down the road, tearing off in one direction for as long as his legs would carry him. Hoping, praying, that his father would be too drunk to be able to find him. Seeing headlights coming up behind him and bracing for the impact. 

Squeezing between his mattress and the floor when the yelling got too much, hoping if he made himself scarce he’d suddenly be forgotten. Drunk hands swiping at him, trying to grab at an ankle or a wrist and pull him out. Coming into his room the next day to find his bedframe gone, his mattress on the floor. 

The clawfoot tub in the bathroom, being held under the water by a strong grip on his hair. He could never do anything right. His fear of water was born one summer afternoon, the lawn hadn’t been mowed the right way, and his t-shirt was too dirty at the dinner table. He couldn’t breathe, didn’t think he ever would after that. 

One short invaluable life measured out in quick, thundering heartbeats not certain things wouldn’t end right here. His head underwater. Headlights casting the shadow of his long skinny legs up the road. 

Winchester.

“Hotch?” Emily is still standing in his office, watching him just pause – this vacant, horrified look in his eyes. 

He clears his throat and lowers his eyes to his desk like he’s looking for something. “I’ll – I’ll be out in a second.” He opens the muffin but only to make her think he has any intention of eating it. He doesn’t. 

Winchester. 

In terms of relativity, is a big enough place. Logically, the odds are on his side that they run into no one that he knows. But he knows better than to hope that luck is aligned with that logistic. 

JJ hands him the file and he opens it, holding his breath as his eyes scan the page. And, of course, he’s wrong. JJ doesn’t need prompting to start so with him standing she begins the case outline. 

Abraham Boseman, thirty-four, was found in the woods at the base of an old dying oak tree. Laid out on a firewood prye, throat slit.

Under the table, Emily kicks his foot. Hard. No one else notices, Derek keeps on his worried path arguing with Dave about sacrilege. Reid is trying very hard to patiently wait them out. Lips pressed together to glue them shut and his entire body bounced with his leg. 

“It looks like  a sacrifice.”

Hotch can’t tear his eyes away from the pictures. 

“What’s that written on the tree?”

The tree. He can’t think. The tree? He looks up and watches Emily flip to pictures forward. He does the same. The tree. 

Solemnly, Derek reads, “these trails will show your faith.” His voice is steady and even, the opposite of Hotch’s beat skipping thundering heart. He can’t help but look up, search Derek’s face for some reaction to the thing that he is seeing. But Derek gives nothing. He just sighs and shakes his head. “Look at that tree, the coloration of the wood, the words?” He points the tip of his pen up at the board, “it’s dark. Aged. That was written there… years ago.” He shakes his head and looks back down at the photos in front of him. “So, either he chose these woods, this tree… or we’re missing years worth of bodies.” 

Hotch wonders if they can see the pulse he can feel in his face. 

Dave scoffs, “we don’t know that. Something like this?” They all look back at the photo, Hotch stares forward. “It upsets people. Southern, old people don’t sit well with sacrilege. They’d have called it in if there were more bodies or, at least, called in a priest.” Like an exterminator. Leave some traps to drag the pests out. 

JJ sighs, “I meant, where’s the quote from?”

Spencer raises his hand, fingers poised in that thoughtful way he does as he thinks. “It’s 1st Peter, These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.” 

Derek grunts, “so this is a sacrifice? For who, God? Kind of… grotesque.” 

Spencer shakes his head, “no not really. Biblically, sacrifices are very common. From the Israelites, God asked for a ram. From Abraham, his son Jacob”. From Aaron–” Spencer’s eyes move involuntarily to Hotch “–Mose’s brother, a bull.” 

Derek frowns, rolling his eyes, “animals are a totally different thing.” 

Penelope gasps. 

“Baby girl–”

Aaron clears his throat, his head throbbing as the attention in the room spins back to him. He feels immediately light-headed. “I think Dave’s right,” he knows, “but we won’t know for certain until we get to the scene.” It’s meant to be demissive, the sound of closing files following him out. They don’t but he’s also not going to stop for the meandering conversations that they’ll have once he’s gone. His residual presence in the room will make things awkward, they’re less open when he’s around. After all, he’s the boss, not their friend. 

Emily noticed his unnoticeable dissociation.  The way his eyes never left the photos JJ paperclipped to the file. She follows him out of the room, accusing his back, “you’re still being weird.” 

Hotch keeps on his path and ignores the Emily that apparates at his heels. He does leave the door open when he steps into his office and lets her take the time to close it behind them. He tosses the file on the desk, and lets it thud punctuate his sentence. Gives things a theatric pause. “Do we need to talk about the hostile work environment you’re causing?” He leans back onto his desk, arms crossed. There is no malice in his tone. He collected coins as a child. Endured torture at home and in class. Weird is on the list but it’s not that harsh or even creative. 

Narrowing her eyes, Emily crosses her own arms. “See?” She nods her chin at him, “now you’re being defensive.”

He opens his mouth nearly immediately but closes it and that’s nearly the same thing as answering her. At least this way he doesn’t arm her with words. Pushing himself off the desk he rounds the other side, puts the desk between them. Keeps being defensive. “Is there something I can do for you, Prentiss?” 

She frowns at him, calculating the response she’ll get from anything that isn’t her departure. He’ll kick her out, he’s done it before. “Yeah,” she decides. “I gave you the muffin to eat.” She turns back to the door, “so eat it, you get real… moody when you’re blood sugar is low.” 

“It’s not–” he shuts his mouth. He hates the way that she gets under his skin, and bothers him like no one else can. “Tell the others we’re heading out in thirty. I just need to call transport, get enough SUVs.” He smiles politely, already thinking about how he’ll send her in the same SUV as Penelope and Spencer. Payback. 

“Yes, sir.” 

It’s mocking and he knows it. 

“Thank you.” 

[x.]

It’s a forty-five-minute drive which is, truthfully, one of the more tame adventures they’ve endured in cramped SUVs. Not that Emily will forgive Hotch anytime soon for making her go with Derek, Penelope, and Spencer for it. Her head pulses to the beat of the song Derek and Penelope happily sing over, not even the wind from her downed window relieves the pressure. He’s a bastard and she stares at the SUV in front of them, trying to stare a hole into the tires. She wants him to have to change one on the side of the road. The sweltering sun beating down on his suit-clad shoulders. Make him get a weird pain in his back. Dirt all over his hands. He’s a rat bastard and she hates him. 

They’re greeted into the city of Winchester by an old wooden sign, rustic in an authentic, rotting in the ground kind of way. Derek cringes. Small towns are the worst cases to work.

Immediately, something is off. The Sheriff is a little too stiff as he shakes JJ’s hand. But Emily can’t figure out why. She narrows down the oddities to age – no one younger than thirty eyes them oldy. The woman who works the front desk frowns at them and not even Dave’s nasty way of flirting with her eases that tight frown. It’s weird, Dave’s charming. It’s also nasty but he’s very good at it. 

Leaning close to JJ, the only trustable person on this team, Emily asks, “Is it me or…” Emily frowns, “they’re acting weird.” All of the officers. It started with one or two, no reason she could wrap her head around. They don’t typically like having the team around but the reactions are… different. Too much whispering and side-eyes. Not the side-eye JJ gets or the kind Spencer gets. 

JJ looks up from her work, because she’s doing work and not gossiping like Emily, and frowns. She looks over her shoulder, around the room, and then back to them. “I guess,” she shrugs. “Why?”

Emily sits down, shaking her head. “Hotch.” JJ frowns. “They haven’t even noticed Reid, you notice that? Everyone notices Reid. And Garcia? Same thing. Hotch asks for something, they get weird.” She taps her finger, thinking. “Nobody does that to Hotch.” He’s big. Not broad but long. Mean too. And angry looking. Hotch asks for something and people do it. Not here. 

It started with the Sheriff, the old man’s face falling as quickly as Hotch’s had twisted into something unrecognizable. Something akin to fear or… at least recognition. Then a few of the older officers. They looked angry. 

JJ shrugs, “people are weird.” 

“Always,” Emily frowns. She leaves, suddenly, no warning. 

JJ doesn’t bother overthinking that comment or even wonder what the hell that’s supposed to mean. She has no particular interest in paying them any more mind than she has to. Places like this create a certain type of man. Those who eye her as she walks past because they don’t care to be seen watching. That’s exactly why Hotch asks her to go out to visit the victim’s family with him. He doesn't want to stay at the station any longer and he suspects JJ will have far less to say about everything than anyone else. 

Her silence is valued and then it’s corrupting. She doesn’t play music in the car and he has entirely too much time to think. 

His house of horrors was framed by woods on three sides, the front opening to a driveway connected to the end of a dirt road. As a boy, he’d rest his head on the fence in the backyard gazing out into the trees and imagining the life within them. His mother forbade this after one night he told her a story, one he’d come up with all on his own, about a deer with human teeth standing on the edge of the property. It stood on its hind legs and waved. He was, from then on, no longer allowed anywhere but the front yard. Which he thought peculiar given the front yard was where his story took place. His mother smoothed this over by making sure he understood to never tell that story again. His little head just got away from him sometimes, she said. He was a gifted storyteller with an overactive imagination. 

Though, typically, overactive imagination is what she called rehearsing his lies with him. Dotting fleshy color back into reddened, painful skin. Her fingers were gentle where his father’s had been rough the night before. “How’d you hit your head, sweetheart?” And with crooked teeth, he’d smile, “fell off my bunk bed!”

He wasn’t sure he’d actually seen a deer do what he told his mother he’d seen it do until that very moment. This was the line between fiction and truth – his overactive imagination.

He never really wanted to play in the backyard after that anyway.

Not to say he’s scared of the woods. He’s a grown man, faced real demons in the daylight, not ones living under his bed and waving at him from the edge of the woods. But that’s not to say he can’t feel a cold sweat breaking out underneath his shirt as JJ drives them down winding backroads of another Virginia county he wishes to not recall the name of in a month. It makes him nauseous as well, hills upon hills and forever winding roads. It has nothing to do with the trees. Nothing to do with Spencer’s sudden interest in folklore or the older man who Derek questioned who smelt exactly like honeysuckles and moonshine. It’s the road. Long and winding. 

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” JJ says, blinker keeping track of the pause that follows her comment. She looks down both sides of the road and turns left. The blinker stops with a click. He says nothing. She glances over at him again. Quiet is the polite way to put it. He let her drive. Aaron Hotchner doesn’t let anyone drive. He’s been acting oddly. Paranoid in the exact same way Spencer is – looking over his shoulder and sitting with his back to the wall. She thought he might just be ill. Hotch wears ailments like relapses in his PTSD. As if the flu brings George Foyet back to life and once again they are in an active manhunt. But she’s fairly certain he’s not sick.

JJ doesn’t want to test her luck, she’s planning on bragging to the others that he let her drive and it’s really salt in the wound if she gets to drive back to the precinct too. But she also just can’t let this go. “You grew up in the area, right?” she glances over at him. Finds a storm cloud in her passenger seat. Quickly, to throw the blame, she adds, “Emily said something about it.”

Head turned towards the window, he hides the eye roll he can’t really help.  

Both Derek and Emily have said something about it to him. No sooner than he could pull his hand out of the Sheriff’s, offering the man a small, tight nod, as they walked side-by-side the Sheriff’s attention going anywhere but Hotch. Which is never the standard. Sheriffs usually like to talk to Hotch, not because they like him but just because he’s the easily identified guy in charge. This Sheriff goes to Derek. Even less normal. 

Derek knew. Emily was only just starting to work it out. He might not know the name of the street Aaron grew up on or which backroad would take you there but he knew the county name and that look on Hotch’s face. The same one Sean gets when he’s had too many drinks and heads down a road Derek wishes he wouldn’t. 

Seatbelts unbuckling, the rest of their car ride spent in complete silence, Hotch pauses a moment before opening his door. JJ sees his contemplation and waits. After a moment he offers, “I grew up a few miles from here. On the other side of those woods.” Then he opens his door and leaves the conversation. That’s all he’s willing to say on this matter. 

JJ doesn’t look in the direction he vaguely nodded to until they’re walking towards the house. He grew up in a home, that much she knows for sure, but Hotch’s history is a patchwork of half-truths. This one she’s inclined to believe but she looks into those woods and can not imagine a boy. Knowing Jack, and loving him to pieces, she knows he’s entirely woven from Haley. JJ could never imagine such wide smiles coming from Hotch, such unashamed laughter. It’s heartbreaking. 

Normally, Hotch would send Derek or Emily out to do this sort of work. He is better at it and yields better results faster but he’s usually preoccupied with sheriffs and deputies. Here those people would prefer he stay very far away from them and he couldn’t be happier to oblige. He leaves them to Dave and prays the older man doesn’t say too much. 

They’re visiting a widow, the victim’s mother. She’s in her eighties, a very typical southern mother. It’s easy and Hotch is comforted by the idea of it. He plays fully into his southern charm, slipping into an accent occasionally guided by the older woman sitting across from them. “And your other son–?”

“Abel,” the old woman gushes. “Abraham, Abel, and Abigail.” She sips at her sweet tea, her smile never fading. “Two sons and a daughter and I couldn’t be happier. They make me very proud to be their mother.”

JJ smiles back, “three As, that’s impressive.” She’d never understood why parents are inclined to pick one letter of the alphabet and name all their children by its guide. 

Without looking away from the fireplace Hotch adds, “Abel the good shepherd, Abraham the obedient, and Abigail cause of joy.” The old woman smiles and Hotch looks away. Gideon had called him a divining rod, the kindest way to say traumatized. Adapted. He always knew which family members would be helpful when investigating. Which fathers would curl their lips when questioned and which mothers would weep, would come undone and spell out generations of just the way things are done. Always knew just what to say. 

Once she’s done giggling, prideful of his knowledge, the old woman asks, “you said your name was Agent Hotchner? You any kin to the Hotchner’s over thataway?” 

Hotch steadies his attention and keeps his eyes on the older woman so he won’t glance at JJ. “No,” he lies, smoothly. Smiles too wide. Too much. Too forced. “I’m afraid it’s a very common last name where I’m from. More Northern.” He glances at JJ, shying from her gaze. His eyes aimed back at the creaking floorboards below. 

The old woman shakes her head, “I’ll be damned if you don’t look exactly like that family, though. Could fit right in. Exactly like the daddy of that bunch, spitting image.” She shakes her head and turns to JJ. “Meaner than a snake, that ol’ bastard. ‘Bout beat the skin off his oldest more than once. Why if I had–”

Hotch clears his throat, and suddenly his collar is too tight. “Sorry,” he apologizes immediately. Old habits die hard. Sorry was the first word he ever learned. “Did your boys know them?” He already knows the answers. Against his better judgment, despite everything he knows, he takes a sip of the sweet tea she poured him. Tries to wet his mouth. “You said that – You’ve been in the area for a while. Could they be involved?”

He obviously knows the answer. Her sons are younger than Sean and no one knew anything more about Sean in this town than they did about him. The entire town decided the Hotchner boys were the only things to fear in those woods. Drugs and alcohol and screams. Besides, no one lives in that old house anymore. 

“No, no,” the old woman says, decisively. Without a shred of doubt, he doesn’t ask for further proof. Doesn’t need to. “Them boys… I couldn’t tell you what they’re up to. Likely prison.” She shakes her head, looks at JJ again. They share a kinship of motherhood and she suspects JJ will agree with her. As if one of those boys isn’t staring a hole into the floor beneath their feet, avoiding her eye contact. 

Prison makes the skin on Hotch’s arms stand. He thinks of Sean. 

The bails he’s paid off. 

The law he’s practiced long after his license expired. 

The rehab stays. 

“Neither one of them was worth a damn.” The old woman looks remorseful, shakes her head. “Not that their daddy ever let ‘em have the chance.” She looks off to the side, wistful. Imagines the thin, inky black-haired boy standing at the edge of her property. Picking blackberries tell his fingers bled with the juice. 

Hotch takes another drink from his sweet tea and sits it down with an air of finality, a southern sort of dismissal. “Thank you,” he manages, “your hospitality has been welcoming but Agent Jareau and I really should get back to the station.” He extends JJ the same smile, never reaching his eyes, “JJ can leave you with a card to contact us.” 

Aaron would be the final puzzle piece. His business card would be the damning piece of evidence and that’s a distracting conversation to have. It would destroy the relationship they’ve just built. She’d known in an instant. He is that little Hotchner boy, not worth a damn. 

The air is not nearly that humid but it stirs his vision dangerously the second they step out onto the porch. JJ is right behind him, having another goodbye, so she doesn’t see his miss-step. She doesn’t see the man standing in the woods either. 

“Who is that?”

The old woman said her oldest son had moved out of the county two years ago and started a family. Her daughter had done the same. The only kids who stay here are caught, if you know what’s good for you, you leave so Hotch hadn’t considered she’d lie. 

“JJ!” 

Shotgun pellets. His side stings. 

“Go!” JJ has the old woman pinned to the house’s wall. “Go! I’ve got this!” 

Abel and Cain. Guess he should have seen that one coming. A biblical retelling. All the wrong characters, the story jumbled. Close but not right. 

It suddenly makes too much sense. Hotch wonders what they’d find in Abel’s house. He’d only heard stories, awful, crass retellings of the sort of things recovered in the bedrooms of men and women in fitful delusions. Mostly, he just gets twisted up. Abel killed Abraham. Dave will eat this up, it’s perfect book material. The twisted biblical stories. Not right but intricate and interesting. 

Another shot is fired, this one aimed at his head. He falls down in the driveway, scrapes his knees up but doesn’t get shot. “Abel!” he shouts, following the back of the man in front of him. The bushes at the mouth of the woods have been beaten into a path of sorts, thistles pushed aside. They reach for his pants, tear at his clothing. “FBI! Abel, you need to stop running!” 

His side pulses, hot and angry, and he comes to a fumbled stop. He searches the woods for a moment, hearing nothing but the sound of his breath. Then white-hot pain blossoms across the back of his head. He falls back, sticks and rocks digging into his back. 

“I did what was asked of me!” Hotch pitches forward, gasping and spitting up vomit. His vision swims dangerously until his head is suddenly grabbed. Two hands hold his face still, forcing his eyes to meet the man in front of him. “I did what was asked of me,” Abel repeats. “You must understand. Who am I to disobey God?” A second time, more frantically, he repeats, “God!” 

Hotch tries to open his mouth, to encourage Abel to let him go or to find the right thing to say. But he just can’t think of any words. He just can’t feel anything. His eyes roll back into his head, his lips meeting in a soundless last attempt to stay alive.

#chapter two is already written but I gotta sit on it for a second #gotta make sure it's good #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner #emily prentiss #derek morgan #spencer reid #david rossi #jennifer jareau #jack hotchner #oh sinnerman #child abuse #self harm

[renee-writer]

Out of Time Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-seven

A/N Trigger warning for child rape and murder

AO3

All the teens will be questioned. The lasses, Claire, Jenny, Asha, Mary, Heather, they talk to the young women while the lads do the same with the young men.

 

Claire takes the three that he called his wives.

 

They squirm under her firm glance. She lets them for a moment. It is a tactic she learned in interrogation training.

 

“Where is Harry?” one finally asks. Betty, Claire recalls, is her name.

 

“Where do you think he should be?” turning the question back, another useful technique.

 

“With us. We only agreed to come here if we remained together.” The others nod along.

 

“Well Betty, it seems Harry wasn’t  treating you the way a leader should. He was doing…”

 

“He is our husband. Not just our leader.” This from another one, Luanne.

 

“Did he treat you well?” She focuses her question on the third, who seems less enthusiastic about Harry then the others.

 

“He was okay.” Her lowered eyes and the slight shake ‘no’ at the end tell a different tale.”

 

“Was he?”

 

“You don’t have to answer her, Penny.” Betty says. Claire ignores her, focusing on Penny.

 

“Was he?”

 

“No!” it comes out in an explosion. “I was just nine when the Mist hit. So scared. He seemed secure, made the situation less scary. Then, when I was ten, he told me I was to be his wife. I didn’t understand what that meant but trusted him.” She looks to the others, “You could have warned me! You knew, both of you. Why didn’t you?”

 

She is shaking. Claire longs to comfort but knows she needs to get it all out first.

 

“The wedding ceremony was him stripping me down in front of everyone and forcing himself on me. He had her,” she nods to Betty, “hold me down and cover my mouth so I couldn’t scream.”

 

Claire stares daggers at Betty. “It is the best way to get it done. It has to be and this way all know she is his.”

 

“How old was Harry when he raped her?”

 

Luanne squirms before answering, “Thirteen.”

 

“It wasn’t rape. They were married.” Betty smugly says. She has all she can take from Betty. She is a child who is suffering from severe trauma. Still, she needs a break from her.

 

“You may go Betty.” When she continues to sit there, she adds, “Go Betty, now!”

 

“What do you know of the missing?” Ian asks the two lads in front of him.

 

“He can’t hear us, can he?” Craig asks.

 

“No. He can’t I promise.”

 

“She was his wife. He had preformed the ceremony on her.”

 

“The ceremony?”

 

The two lads tell him what Penny told Claire. Ian, the father of a little girl, tightens his hands into fist. The thought of Maggie!

 

“So, we all knew she was off limits. Matt, he fell in love with her. Harry found out.”

 

“He killed them both. He doesn’t know but,” Kevin swallows, “I saw their bodies. Craig, they were with the old spoiled meat, he buried them among it.”

 

Ian feels his gorge raise. He recalled what area he was talking about. The smell, putrid. They should have known it wasn’t just animals rotting away.

 

It is evidence and will need to be fetched. They deserve a proper burial besides.

 

The  adults gather back together after a long emotional day. Claire rests on Jamie as she describes what Penny and Luanne told her. Ian tries to be delicate as he tells what he uncovered. The others share equal tales of evil. Rapes and beatings. Lost babies due to lack of medical care.

 

Asha stands at the end. “He needs to die. Irredeemable evil is what we are dealing with.”

 

John offers, “She may be right. I know, I am supposed to find a way to fix him. Right now I am more concerned with his victims. It sounds like Mary and a few others have Stockholm Syndrome. We have very young rape victims. In all honesty, lock him away or execute him. I will not treat him.”

 

“We will do this right. Have a trial. Present their testimonials. None need to face him. Allow him to defend himself, if he can. Then decide.” Jamie states. They all agree.

#my writing #outlander fanfic #out of time #chapter one hundred and sixty seven #trigger warning for child rape and murder #jamie and claire #cannon divergence #outlander fandom #modern au

[dephtiya]

hi, it's me. back again to writing. the last time i felt overwhelmed and wrote something on here, it became kind of viral, and even after more than a year, i still get notifications about people interacting with it here and there. to shorten what i said in that post - the indian education system is fucked up.

tw - mentions of suicide

kids are affected so much by the pressure they are subjected to by their schools, parents, teachers, and honestly, everybody around them. it's a sad reality, and i feel sorry for the kids who are infants/toddlers/unborn right now. they are going to grow up in a world where they have to compete to be the "better best amongst the best" in possibly everything. no one, and i mean, NO ONE has the luxury to fuck up now, because if you do, you might as well just kill yourself because that seems like a more plausible option than listening to the insane amount of unsolicited and unhelpful advice, comments, lectures from adults, who have no idea how different their perspective from when they were children, is from ours. they just end up gaslighting you into believing you're supposed to follow a particular set of rules or you're never gonna be good, no matter how much you try; instead of motivating kids, they just do the exact opposite and then have the audacity to wonder why suicide rates in adolescents are increasing rapidly. "trial and error" until you finally learn is kind of unrealistic now. kids are so unmotivated that they try once, and if they are not spectacularly good at it in one go, they just give up. the possibility of second chances is diminishing exponentially. it's a sad world we live in where the numbers given to you according to what you remember are more important than the knowledge you have truly absorbed in the process. it shouldn't be this way. the whole idea of education is to quite literally educate and not assign numbers to knowledge. the capitalist economy has driven to change the entire meaning of success. if Abraham Maslow had been alive in today's world, he would've been so ashamed of what humanity has been prioritising. i think my generation was the last to have, in its truest meaning, a childhood. we had play time. we had nap time. we were engaged in so many activities where it did not require us to be the best; just to perform and participate.

few days back, i was travelling by bus and had a lady sit beside me. she was talking to a friend on her phone. i have to mention - i was not eavesdropping, but i can't block out an adult woman's voice from right beside me. anyways, that conversation made me understand how fucked the growing generations are. this woman has two daughters, one who is probably my age and another as young as in third grade. she was explaining to her friend the dichotomy of the environments her elder had grown up in, and the younger is currently growing up in. the elder one had her teachers encourage her to be physically active, have regular play time along with the studies. the younger one has her teacher begging the mother to actually make her pay attention to studies, because apparently play time is not important. "nothing can be done, studying is more important. she will have to cut down on play time to study more" was the exact thing the teacher said to the woman. i can't help but wonder how will these kids, who don't experience the basic childhood that every child has a right to live, be able to raise kids of their own in the future. 50 years from now families on earth will only consist of materially successful adults and academically systemed children. i would pay a fortune to believe that an alternative to the above reality is possible, but it's not. it'd be foolish to believe otherwise. the world is doomed and no wonder so many of us wish to leave once and for all. we do not want to die but this world has become barely livable.

#indian education system #sad world #failing #success #childhood #generation gap #tragic reality #abraham maslow #this has been a personal post #the world is doomed