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k7l4d4 · 3 years

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Midnight Striga: Fairy Tail/Owl House Cross Fic Episode 4 Part 4

Hello, once again, another piece of Midnight Striga for your reading pleasure!! Everybody Clap Your Hands!!!

With a grunt of exhaustion, Boscha crashed to the floor. The spar had dragged on just long enough to make her and the demon long for rest without them actually needing it. While it may not have been the nightmare she had been dreading when she saw Luz’s smile, it was certainly its own kind of hell. ‘But,’ she mused, a small grin forming, ‘At least I’m starting to make real progress.’ She slowly traced a circle, free of the instability that seemed to plague every spell she formed lately, a small flame forming in front of her. She chuckled to herself at the irony.

Here she was, captain of the Grudgby team, Fire Magic Specialist and Potionist in Training, and she was reduced to the most basic spells she knew of. The fact that she could even get this little flame, no bigger than her thumbs pressed together, without worry was a vast improvement over where she started after that day. She sighed, hauling herself to her feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Luz pouring over that strange crystal thing she had brought in; it was sort of like a Scroll, apparently, not that Boscha understood how. Helping the so-called Demon King to his feet, they wandered back over to Luz.

“Ahem!” Boscha cleared her throat, prompting Luz to throw up her arms in shock, suddenly scrambling to secure her… Terminal, she called it? “So, how did we do?” She said calmly, raising a brow as Luz sheepishly chuckled.

“As much as it pains me to be in agreement with the interloper,” King began, prompting a tick-mark of annoyance from Boscha, “I too wish to know just how impressive I am, and how I can become even greater!!” It took a lot of effort for Boscha not to yell at the little menace for the ‘interloper’ comment, it’s not like she intended to come here!

“Now King,” Luz lightly admonished, “A ruler must be gracious to their guests, even unexpected ones. While you may not be comfortable with Boscha’s presence, and understandably irritated from your earlier encounter, that must not influence your behavior and judgement. A King looks after his Kingdom, and all who dwell within it.” Boscha honestly expected the pompous little demon to start screaming at that, so she was genuinely surprised that he only grumbled slightly and kicked at the ground. “If you apologize for being rude, and say it like you mean it, I’ll get you some snacks later.”

“Hmm… Deal!” King agreed. He turned to Boscha and visibly pulled himself up to his full height. “As the King of Demons, I offer my sincerest apologies for my conduct. Will you accept it?” Boscha had to admit, he certainly sounded sincere. She figured he wasn’t, but it was still impressive.

“I accept your apologies… your majesty.” Boscha said, only reluctantly tacking on the last bit at Luz’s expectant look. How was she so good at getting under Boscha’s skin?

“Well, now that that’s out of the way,” Luz drawled, a too-pleased look on her face. “Let’s take a look at what you can work on.” Boscha and King both made inquisitive noises as she turned the screen of the Terminal towards them, eyes widening as they saw their fight lay across the screen. It was something you could see on any Scroll, but this certainly cemented the fact that Humans had some analog to the communications device.

An image appeared, Boscha launching some rocks that had cracked off the ceiling in response to King’s first spell like Grudgby balls. She remembered the stinging sensation in her hands at that stunt, but the sight of King frantically dancing out of the way on screen brought a tiny smile to her face. “Boscha, you displayed some solid tactics, not instantly going for your magic and using your environment to attack with you. However,” She let the video play, showing Boscha rapidly spinning up Spells to launch… only for them to detonate and send her flying back, King sprawled on the floor in laughter at her expression. “Your muscle memories for Spell Casting, while ordinarily a useful trait for combat if you can avoid overly recognizable patterns, are hindering you while you’re recovering your skill.” Luz finished.

Luz turned to King, who straightened up with a gulp. She narrowed her eyes. “Now, on to King.” She turned back to the Terminal, tapping away rapidly before pulling up some new scenes from their spar, King nervously ringing his paws. Another video popped up, showing King launching his spell towards Boscha, thankfully without any sound coming through. The on-screen Boscha avoided the massive spell by the skin of her teeth, Boscha’s ears ringing in sympathy at her memory. She grinned at the sight of King panting after his spell ended, only to yelp and run as her on-screen double rushed him in anger. “King, I’m gonna be blunt, your magic is powerful, but it’s incredibly draining, and the fact you are totally still while using it means that when the spell ends, you are basically defenseless.” King sheepishly kicked his feet, glancing to the side, while Luz looked on.

Luz cracked again. “I got to say, I’m impressed.” She chuckled at the dumbfounded looks she received. “I’m serious, the two of you did way better than I thought you would.”

“Well, how did you think we’d do?” King tentatively asked.

“I expected you to exhaust yourself inside of a few minutes blasting away at Boscha,” Luz bluntly replied, steam-rolling past his squawk of outrage, “and I expected Boscha to lose focus and just keep trying to cast spells.” Boscha would’ve been offended, but that honestly sounded like something she would’ve done if she hadn’t gotten that demonstration of how powerful the demon’s spell was. Luz smirked. “There isn’t a whole lot I can do to help right now, but in the long run, I think I can sketch out some training regimes to cover your respective weak spots.”

Boscha and King exchanged glances, then nodded. It made sense to them. With that settled, the three decided to head back upstairs. Boscha idly wondered why Luz had the hesitant look in her eyes when she said there wasn’t much she could do, though.

Luz groaned internally, resisting the urge to slam her head against the nearest wall. She was absolutely certain that the debriefing she had gone through with Boscha and King had been a disaster. She had visually confirmed how haphazardly they had gone about things in their spar, even if they had been smarter about it than she thought they would be going in, and had basically admitted that she had thought they would’ve been brain-dead rookies only to be proven wrong! Why had she agreed to taking that job!? Oh, right, because it gave her a way to help people and covertly undermine an undoubtedly corrupt regime starting with the youth; curse her bleeding heart!

As she gathered up the assorted snacks and drinks, making care to remember to grab the treats she had promised King, she wandered out of the Kitchen. As she entered the backroom the group was using to discuss things while Eda got her rest, she was surprised to see Boscha and King laughing about something like old buddies. She spoke up, bemused. “Well, don’t you two look chummy.”

“Oh-hohoho My Titan! Luz! Boscha just told me the funniest story about a Slingshot, a Stink Potion, anda Coven Guard!” King cackled, pounding on the table as he laughed.

“Oh, really? Now this I got to hear.” Luz mused, setting the assorted drinks and snacks on the table. Half a minute later, she was pounding her fist on the table right beside King, tears of uncontrolled laughter gushing down her face. Boscha looked painfully smug at the reaction her story had gotten. “Pffff! W-W-With the Gu-guard! A-And the B-bom-b! And the Cheese!! How you did all that and didn’t get caught, I will never know!!”

“Yeah! I didn’t get caught! That’s what happened!” Boscha sheepishly chuckled, deciding against telling them she had to be bailed out by her parents for that stunt. At least it was funny, though.

As the group enjoyed the treats Luz had brought back, Luz let out a sigh of content. “This is nice.”

“Yeah.” Boscha mused, feeling relaxed after the… drama from before. “Not what I expected from the Owl Lady’s place.”

“Huh? What do you mean by that?” King queried. Luz was just as lost. Eda’s reputation wasn’t that bad, was it?

Boscha blinked, puzzled. “Wait, are you saying that you guys don’t know?” She said, something like shocked awe in her voice.

“Know what, Boscha.” Luz droned.

“Well…” Boscha drawled, still shocked at their lack of knowledge on the topic. “When it comes to the Owl Lady, rumors have always been flying around.”

King snorted. “Trust me, we know. We live with her, remember?”

“As I was saying.” Boscha enunciated tightly after being cut off. Her voice dropped into a deeper, more… mysterious sounding register. “Years ago, a Witch studied at Hexside who was gifted beyond compare. Considered a once in a lifetime prodigy, her skill at learning magic, using it, and her sheer power were without equal in her age group, even outclassing some adults. Her name was Edalyn Clawthorne.”

Luz and King paused, allowing themselves to sink into the story. They had to admit, some of what Boscha was saying lined up with Eda, ability wise at least.

“However, despite her incredible gifts, Eda was a maverick,” Boscha continued. “She openly held rules and order in contempt, and sneered at those who upheld them. Still, she was desired by the Covens, all vying for her incredible gifts, even those outside of her chosen track wanting to tap into her great power for their own agendas. Such attention made her arrogant, believing she was above the constraints of others.”

Luz and King deadpanned; while it was phrased more harshly than the reality, that was definitely Eda being described.

“One day, during tryouts for the Covens, particularly for a spot in the Emperor’s personal Coven, Edalyn boldly and publicly denounced the Coven System, proclaiming it beneath her. The crowd was shocked, unable to comprehend such a thing. As she walked away, smug in her superiority, she collapsed in pain.”

Luz and King leaned in, paying close attention to the details.

“Before the gaze of the crowd, Edalyn’s body twisted, growing in size. Feathers sprouted from her arms, her hands and feet twisting into sharp talons. Her body warped into an Avian form, sprouting wings large and powerful enough to hold her aloft. Her eyes became as dark as night, drinking in even the brightest of lights. Her jaw warped to accommodate a mountain of jagged fangs. She had become the Owl Beast.” Boscha paused, with Luz and King gasping in shock at the tale.

Clearing her throat and taking a drink, Boscha continued. “As the transformation ended, the monstrous beast was beheld by the crowd, and found to be repulsive, a monster. The crowd jeered, and chased the beast into the woods, it’s haunting cries echoing through the town. Eventually, Edalyn returned, and proclaimed herself a Wild Witch, and an enemy of the Covens. The Emperor’s Coven declared her transformation a punishment from the Titan for defying the system, making her to be an example. And thus, the Owl Lady was born.” Boscha finished, voice returning to normal. She leaned back, adding, “And ever since then, she’s basically been used as a scary story by parents to warn their kids about the dangers of pride and going against the system.”

Boscha shrugged. “I mean, I never really believed the story, not any more than any of the other kids, but it was still a big thing to learn about, and a lot of the more free-spirited kids growing up got less outspoken after hearing her story.” She paused, scratching her chin in thought. “It probably makes it more believable that she lives outside of town and regularly shows up and causes trouble. Seeing someone described as a once-in-a-lifetime prodigy reduced to a crazy old bat, no offense,” She quickly raised her hands placatingly at an angry King and Luz, “probably made a lot of kids treat the warning more seriously.”

Luz froze, not entirely sure how to process this. King was stock still, glancing at his pauses in confusion. Clearing her throat, Luz spoke up. “Well, that was certainly entertaining, I’ll admit, but how does anyone know she actually-”

“HOOOOOTTTTT!!”

Luz abruptly cut off at the sound of Hooty’s pained scream. The three glanced at each other, before quickly rushing out the door. As they crashed into the Living Room, they froze in horror. The place was ripped apart, the couch shredded, the assorted piles of random junk strewn about, Hooty’s door knocked off its hinges with Hooty himself out cold. Claw marks covered the walls.

The three scanned the room, stomachs filling with dread. As they wandered the room, Luz took stock of the damage; whatever had caused this either wasn’t very high on the intelligence level, or was insanely scared and angry. King crawled over to Hooty, sniffing at him, feeling a surprising degree of relief at the sound of his breathing. Boscha positioned herself in the center of the room, ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. Just as she was about to speak up, Boscha stilled, feeling hot, heavy breathing across the back of her neck.

With trepidation, Boscha slowly turned around, blanching at the sight behind her. A large, feathery body, twice as tall as she was. Long heavy wings pressed tight against its sides, but doubtless capable of spreading to full length in an instant. Deep pools of darkness where its eyes would be. A jaw filled with jagged fangs. Boscha screamed. The beast roared. Its claws slashed down towards the panicked witch.

#the owl house #fairy tail #owl house au #fairy tail au #owl house crossover #fairy tail crossover #luz noceda #boscha the owl house #king the owl house #hooty the owl house #eda clawthorne #magic

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ahouseoflies · 3 years

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The Best Films of 2020

I can’t tell you anything novel or insightful about this year that has been stolen from our lives. I watched zero of these films in a theater, and I watched most of them half-asleep in moments that I stole from my children. Don’t worry, there are some jokes below.

GARBAGE

93. Capone (Josh Trank)- What is the point of this dinner theater trash? It takes place in the last year of Capone's life, when he was released from prison due to failing health and suffered a stroke in his Florida home. So it covers...none of the things that make Al Capone interesting? It's not historically accurate, which I have no problem with, but if you steer away from accuracy, then do something daring and exciting. Don't give me endless scenes of "Phonse"--as if the movie is running from the very person it's about--drawing bags of money that promise intrigue, then deliver nothing in return.

That being said, best "titular character shits himself" scene since The Judge.

92. Ammonite (Francis Lee)- I would say that this is the Antz to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's A Bug's Life, but it's actually more like the Cars 3 to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's Toy Story 1.

91. Ava (Tate Taylor)- Despite the mystery and inscrutability that usually surround assassins, what if we made a hitman movie but cared a lot about her personal life? Except neither the assassin stuff nor the family stuff is interesting?

90. Wonder Woman 1984 (Patty Jenkins)- What a miscalculation of what audiences loved about the first and wanted from the sequel. WW84 is silly and weightless in all of the ways that the first was elegant and confident. If the return of Pine is just a sort of phantom representation of Diana's desires, then why can he fly a real plane? If he is taking over another man's soul, then, uh, what ends up happening to that guy? For that matter, why is it not 1984 enough for Ronald Reagan to be president, but it is 1984 enough for the president to have so many Ronald Reagan signifiers that it's confusing? Why not just make a decision?

On paper, the me-first values of the '80s lend themselves to the monkey's paw wish logic of this plot. You could actually do something with the Star Wars program or the oil crisis. But not if the setting is played for only laughs and the screenplay explains only what it feels like.

89. Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy)- In this type of movie, there has to be a period of the Ben Mendelsohn character looking around befuddled about the new arrangement and going, "What's this now--he's going to be...living with us? The guy who tried to steal our medication? This is crazy!" But that's usually ten minutes, and in this movie it's an hour. I was so worn out by the end.

88. You Should Have Left (David Koepp)- David Koepp wrote Jurassic Park, so he's never going to hell, but how dare he start caring about his own mystery at the hour mark. There's a forty-five minute version of this movie that could get an extra star from me, and there's a three-hour version of Amanda Seyfried walking around in athleisure that would get four stars from me. What we actually get? No thanks.

87. Black Is King (Beyonce, et al.)- End your association with The Lion King, Bey. It has resulted in zero bops.

ADMIRABLE FAILURES

86. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (Cathy Yan)- There's nothing too dysfunctional in the storytelling or performances, but Birds of Prey also doesn't do a single thing well. I would prefer something alive and wild, even if it were flawed, to whatever tame belt-level formula this is.

85. The Turning (Floria Sigismondi)- This update of The Turn of the Screw pumps the age of Miles up to high school, which creates some horny creepiness that I liked. But the age of the character also prevents the ending of the novel from happening in favor of a truly terrible shrug. I began to think that all of the patience that the film showed earlier was just hesitance for its own awful ending.

I watched The Turning as a Mackenzie Davis Movie Star heat check, and while I'm not sure she has the magnetism I was looking for, she does have a great teacher voice, chastening but maternal.

84. Bloodshot (David Wilson)- A whole lot of Vin Diesel saying he's going to get revenge and kill a bunch of dudes; not a whole lot of Vin Diesel actually getting revenge and killing a bunch of dudes.

83. Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash)- I was an English major in college, which means I ended up locking myself into literary theories that, halfway through the writing of an essay, I realized were flawed. But rather than throw out the work that I had already proposed, I would just keep going and see if I could will the idea to success.

So let's say you have a theory that you can take Force Majeure by Ruben Ostlund, one of the best films of its year, and remake it so that its statement about familial anxiety could apply to Americans of the same age and class too...if it hadn't already. And maybe in the first paragraph you mess up by casting Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, people we are conditioned to laugh at, when maybe this isn't that kind of comedy at all. Well, don't throw it away. You can quote more--fill up the pages that way--take an exact shot or scene from the original. Does that help? Maybe you can make the writing more vigorous and distinctive by adding a character. Is that going to make this baby stand out? Maybe you could make it more personal by adding a conclusion that is slightly more clever than the rest of the paper?

Or perhaps this is one you're just not going to get an A on.

82. Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard)- I watched this melodrama at my mother's encouragement, and, though I have been trying to pin down her taste for decades, I think her idea of a successful film just boils down to "a lot of stuff happens." So in that way, Ron Howard's loss is my gain, I guess.

There is no such thing as a "neutral Terminator."

81. Relic (Natalie Erika James)- The star of the film is Vanessa Cerne's set decoration, but the inert music and slow pace cancel out a house that seems neglected slowly over decades.

80. Buffaloed (Tanya Wexler)- Despite a breathless pace, Buffaloed can't quite congeal. In trying to split the difference between local color hijinks and Moneyballed treatise on debt collection, it doesn't commit enough to either one.

Especially since Zoey Deutch produced this one in addition to starring, I'm getting kind of worried about boo's taste. Lot of Two If by Seas; not enough While You Were Sleepings.

79. Like a Boss (Miguel Arteta)- I chuckled a few times at a game supporting cast that is doing heavy lifting. But Like a Boss is contrived from the premise itself--Yeah, what if people in their thirties fell out of friendship? Do y'all need a creative consultant?--to the escalation of most scenes--Why did they have to hide on the roof? Why do they have to jump into the pool?

The movie is lean, but that brevity hurts just as much as it helps. The screenplay knows which scenes are crucial to the development of the friendship, but all of those feel perfunctory, in a different gear from the setpieces.

To pile on a bit: Studio comedies are so bare bones now that they look like Lifetime movies. Arteta brought Chuck & Buck to Sundance twenty years ago, and, shot on Mini-DV for $250,000, it was seen as a DIY call-to-bootstraps. I guarantee that has more setups and locations and shooting days than this.

78. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin)- Add Dan Stevens to the list of supporting players who have bodied Will Ferrell in his own movie--one that he cared enough to write himself.

Like Downhill, Ferrell's other 2020 release, this isn't exactly bad. It's just workmanlike and, aside from the joke about Demi Lovato's "uninformed" ghost, frustratingly conventional.

77. The Traitor (Marco Bellochio)- Played with weary commitment by Pierfrancesco Favino, Tomasso Buscetta is "credited" as the first informant of La Cosa Nostra. And that sounds like an interesting subject for a "based on a true story" crime epic, right? Especially when you find out that Buscetta became a rat out of principle: He believed that the mafia to which he had pledged his life had lost its code to the point that it was a different organization altogether.

At no point does Buscetta waver or even seem to struggle with his decision though, so what we get is less conflicted than that description might suggest. None of these Italian mob movies glorify the lifestyle, so I wasn't expecting that. But if the crime doesn't seem enticing, and snitching on the crime seems like forlorn duty, and everything is pitched with such underhanded matter-of-factness that you can't even be sure when Buscetta has flipped, then what are we left with? It was interesting seeing how Italian courts work, I guess?

76. Kajillionaire (Miranda July)- This is another movie so intent on building atmosphere and lore that it takes too long to declare what it is. When the protagonist hits a breaking point and has to act, she has only a third of a film to grow. So whispery too.

Gina Rodriguez is the one to inject life into it. As soon as her motormouth winds up, the film slips into a different gear. The atmosphere and lore that I mentioned reeks of artifice, but her character is believably specific. Beneath a basic exterior is someone who is authentically caring but still morally compromised, beholden to the world that the other characters are suspicious of.

75. Scoob! (Tony Cervone)- The first half is sometimes clever, but it hammers home the importance of friendship while separating the friends.

The second half has some positive messaging, but your kids' movie might have a problem with scale if it involves Alexander the Great unlocking the gates of the Underworld.

My daughter loved it.

74. The Lovebirds (Michael Showalter)- If I start talking too much about this perfectly fine movie, I end up in that unfair stance of reviewing the movie I wanted, not what is actually there.* As a fan of hang-out comedies, I kind of resent that any comedy being made now has to be rolled into something more "exciting," whether it's a wrongfully accused or mistaken identity thriller or some other genre. Such is the post-Game Night world. There's a purposefully anti-climactic note that I wish The Lovebirds had ended on, but of course we have another stretch of hiding behind boats and shooting guns. Nanjiani and Rae are really charming leads though.

*- As a New Orleanian, I was totally distracted by the fake aspects of the setting too. "Oh, they walked to Jefferson from downtown? Really?" You probably won't be bothered by the locations.

73. Sonic the Hedgehog (Jeff Fowler)- In some ways the storytelling is ambitious. (I'm speaking for only myself, but I'm fine with "He's a hedgehog, and he's really fast" instead of the owl mother, teleportation backstory. Not everything has to be Tolkien.) But that ambition doesn't match the lack of ambition in the comedy, which depends upon really hackneyed setups and structures. Guiding Jim Carrey to full alrighty-then mode was the best choice anyone made.

72. Malcolm & Marie (Sam Levinson)- The stars move through these long scenes with agility and charisma, but the degree of difficulty is just too high for this movie to reach what it's going for.

Levinson is trying to capture an epic fight between a couple, and he can harness the theatrical intensity of such a thing, but he sacrifices almost all of the nuance. In real life, these knock-down-drag-outs can be circular and indirect and sad in a way that this couple's manipulation rarely is. If that emotional truth is all this movie is trying to achieve, I feel okay about being harsh in my judgment of how well it does that.

71. Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)- Elusive in how it refuses to declare itself, forthright in how punishing it is. The whole thing might be worth it for a late dinner scene, but I'm getting a bit old to put myself through this kind of misery.

70. The Burnt Orange Heresy (Giuseppe Capotondi)- Silly in good ways until it's silly in bad ways. Elizabeth Debicki remains 6'3".

69. Everybody’s Everything (Sebastian Jones and Ramez Silyan)- As a person who listened to Lil Peep's music, I can confidently say that this documentary is overstating his greatness. His death was a significant loss, as the interview subjects will all acknowledge, but the documentary is more useful as a portrait of a certain unfocused, rapacious segment of a generation that is high and online at all times.

68. The Witches (Robert Zemeckis)- Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo Del Toro are the credited screenwriters, and in a fascinating way, you can see the imprint of each figure on the final product. Adapting a very European story to the old wives' tales of the American South is an interesting choice. Like the Nicolas Roeg try at this material, Zemeckis is not afraid to veer into the terrifying, and Octavia Spencer's pseudo witch doctor character only sells the supernatural. From a storytelling standpoint though, it seems as if the obstacles are overcome too easily, as if there's a whole leg of the film that has been excised. The framing device and the careful myth-making of the flashback make promises that the hotel half of the film, including the abrupt ending, can't live up to.

If nothing else, Anne Hathaway is a real contender for Most On-One Performance of the year.

67. Irresistible (Jon Stewart)- Despite a sort of imaginative ending, Jon Stewart's screenplay feels more like the declarative screenplay that would get you hired for a good movie, not a good screenplay itself. It's provocative enough, but it's clumsy in some basic ways and never evades the easy joke.

For example, the Topher Grace character is introduced as a sort of assistant, then is re-introduced an hour later as a polling expert, then is shown coaching the candidate on presentation a few scenes later. At some point, Stewart combined characters into one role, but nothing got smoothed out.

ENDEARING CURIOSITIES WITH BIG FLAWS

66. Yes, God, Yes (Karen Maine)- Most people who are Catholic, including me, are conflicted about it. Most people who make movies about being Catholic hate it and have an axe to grind. This film is capable of such knowing wit and nuance when it comes to the lived-in details of attending a high school retreat, but it's more concerned with taking aim at hypocrisy in the broad way that we've seen a million times. By the end, the film is surprisingly all-or-nothing when Christian teenagers actually contain multitudes.

Part of the problem is that Karen Maine's screenplay doesn't know how naive to make the Alice character. Sometimes she's reasonably naive for a high school senior in 2001; sometimes she's comically naive so that the plot can work; and sometimes she's stupid, which isn't the same as naive.

65. Bad Boys for Life (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)- This might be the first buddy cop movie in which the vets make peace with the tech-comm youngs who use new techniques. If that's the only novelty on display here--and it is--then maybe that's enough. I laughed maybe once. Not that the mistaken identity subplot of Bad Boys 1 is genius or anything, but this entry felt like it needed just one more layer to keep it from feeling as basic as it does. Speaking of layers though, it's almost impossible to watch any Will Smith movie now without viewing it through the meta-narrative of "What is Will Smith actually saying about his own status at this point in his career?" He's serving it up to us.

I derived an inordinate amount of pleasure from seeing the old school Simpson/Bruckheimer logo.

64. The Gentlemen (Guy Ritchie)- Look, I'm not going to be too negative on a movie whose crime slang is so byzantine that it has to be explained with subtitles. That's just me. I'm a simple man. But I can tell you that I tuned out pretty hard after seven or eight double-crosses.

The bloom is off the rose a bit for Ritchie, but he can still nail a music cue. I've been waiting for someone to hit "That's Entertainment" the way he does on the end credits.

63. Bad Hair (Justin Simien)- In Bad Hair, an African-American woman is told by her boss at a music video channel in 1989 that straightening her hair is the way to get ahead; however, her weave ends up having a murderous mind of its own. Compared to that charged, witty logline, the execution of the plot itself feels like a laborious, foregone conclusion. I'm glad that Simien, a genuinely talented writer, is making movies again though. Drop the skin-care routine, Van Der Beek!

62. Greyhound (Aaron Schneider)- "If this is the type of role that Tom Hanks writes for himself, then he understands his status as America's dad--'wise as the serpent, harmless as the dove'--even better than I thought." "America's Dad! Aye aye, sir!" "At least half of the dialogue is there for texture and authenticity, not there to be understood by the audience." "Fifty percent, Captain!" "The environment looks as fake as possible, but I eventually came around to the idea that the movie is completely devoid of subtext." "No subtext to be found, sir!"

61. Mank (David Fincher)- About ten years ago, the Creative Screenwriting podcast spent an hour or so with James Vanderbilt, the writer of Zodiac and nothing else that comes close, as he relayed the creative paces that David Fincher pushed him through. Hundreds of drafts and years of collaborative work eventuated in the blueprint for Fincher's most exacting, personal film, which he didn't get a writing credit on only because he didn't seek one.

Something tells me that Fincher didn't ask for rewrites from his dead father. No matter what visuals and performances the director can coax from the script--and, to be clear, these are the worst visuals and performances of his career--they are limited by the muddy lightweight pages. There are plenty of pleasures, like the slippery election night montage or the shakily platonic relationship between Mank and Marion. But Fincher hadn't made a film in six years, and he came back serving someone else's master.

60. Tesla (Michael Almereyda)- "You live inside your head." "Doesn't everybody?"

As usual, Almereyda's deconstructions are invigorating. (No other moment can match the first time Eve Hewson's Anne fact-checks something with her anachronistic laptop.) But they don't add up to anything satisfying because Tesla himself is such an opaque figure. Driven by the whims of his curiosity without a clear finish line, the character gives Hawke something enigmatic to play as he reaches deep into a baritone. But he's too inward to lend himself to drama. Tesla feels of a piece with Almereyda's The Experimenter, and that's the one I would recommend.

59. Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)- I can't oversell how delicately beautiful this film is visually. There's a scene in which Vitalina lugs a lantern into a church, but we get several seconds of total darkness before that one light source carves through it and takes over part of the frame. Each composition is as intricate as it is overpowering, achieving a balance between stark and mannered.

That being said, most of the film is people entering or exiting doors. I felt very little of the haunting loss that I think I was supposed to.

58. The Rhythm Section (Reed Morano)- Call it the Timothy Hutton in The General's Daughter Corollary: If a name-actor isn't in the movie much but gets third billing, then, despite whom he sends the protagonist to kill, he is the Actual Bad Guy.

Even if the movie serves up a lot of cliche, the action and sound design are visceral. I would like to see more from Morano.

57. Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen)- Well-made and heartfelt even if it goes step-for-step where you think it will.

Here's what I want to know though: In the academy training sequence, the police cadets have to subdue a "berserker"; that is, a wildman who swings at their riot gear with a sledgehammer. Then they get him under control, and he shakes their hands, like, "Good angle you took on me there, mate." Who is that guy and where is his movie? Is this full-time work? Is he a police officer or an independent contractor? What would happen if this exercise didn't go exactly as planned?

56. Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart)- The visuals have an unfinished quality that reminded me of The Tale of Princess Kaguya--the center of a flame is undrawn white, and fog is just negative space. There's an underlying symmetry to the film, and its color palette changes with mood.

Narratively, it's pro forma and drawn-out. Was Riley in Inside Out the last animated protagonist to get two parents? My daughter stuck with it, but she needed a lot of context for the religious atmosphere of 17th century Ireland.

55. What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (Rob Garver)- The film does little more than one might expect; it's limited in the way that any visual medium is when trying to sum up a woman of letters. But as far as education for Kael's partnership with Warren Beatty or the idea of The New Yorker paying her for only six months out of the year, it was useful for me.

Although Garver isn't afraid to point to the work that made Kael divisive, it would have been nice to have one or two interview subjects who questioned her greatness, rather than the crew of Paulettes who, even when they do say something like, "Sometimes I radically disagreed with her," do it without being able to point to any specifics.

54. Beastie Boys Story (Spike Jonze)- As far as this Spike Jonze completist is concerned, this is more of a Powerpoint presentation than a movie, Beastie Boys Story still warmed my heart, making me want to fire up Paul's Boutique again and take more pictures of my buddies.

53. Tenet (Christopher Nolan)- Cool and cold, tantalizing and frustrating, loud and indistinct, Tenet comes close to Nolan self-parody, right down to the brutalist architecture and multiple characters styled like him. The setpieces grabbed me, I'll admit.

Nolan's previous film, which is maybe his best, was "about" a lot and just happened to play with time; Tenet is only about playing with time.

PRETTY GOOD MOVIES

52. Shithouse (Cooper Raiff)- "Death is ass."

There's such a thing as too naturalistic. If I wanted to hear how college freshmen really talked, I would hang out with college freshmen. But you have to take the good verisimilitude with the bad, and good verisimilitude is the mother's Pod Save America t-shirt.

There are some poignant moments (and a gonzo performance from Logan Miller) in this auspicious debut from Cooper Raiff, the writer/director/editor/star. But the second party sequence kills some of the momentum, and at a crucial point, the characters spell out some motivation that should have stayed implied.

51. Totally Under Control (Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, Suzanne Hillinger)- As dense and informative as any other Gibney documentary with the added flex of making it during the pandemic it is investigating.

But yeah, why am I watching this right now? I don't need more reasons to be angry with Trump, whom this film calmly eviscerates. The directors analyze Trump's narcissism first through his contradictions of medical expertise in order to protect the economy that could win him re-election. Then it takes aim at his hiring based on loyalty instead of experience. But you already knew that, which is the problem with the film, at least for now.

50. Happiest Season (Clea Duvall)- I was in the perfect mood to watch something this frothy and bouncy. Every secondary character receives a moment in the sun, and Daniel Levy gets a speech that kind of saves the film at a tipping point.

I must say though: I wanted to punch Harper in her stupid face. She is a terrible romantic partner, abandoning or betraying Abby throughout the film and dissembling her entire identity to everyone else in a way that seems absurd for a grown woman in 2020. Run away, Kristen. Perhaps with Aubrey Plaza, whom you have more chemistry with. But there I go shipping and aligning myself with characters, which only proves that this is an effective romantic comedy.

49. The Way Back (Gavin O’Connor)- Patient but misshapen, The Way Back does just enough to overcome the cliches that are sort of unavoidable considering the genre. (I can't get enough of the parent character who, for no good reason, doesn't take his son's success seriously. "Scholarship? What he's gotta do is put his nose in them books! That's why I don't go to his games. [continues moving boxes while not looking at the other character] Now if you'll excuse me while I wait four scenes before showing up at a game to prove that I'm proud of him after all...")

What the movie gets really right or really wrong in the details about coaching and addiction is a total crap-shoot. But maybe I've said too much already.

48. The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu)- Porumboiu is a real artist who seems to be interpreting how much surveillance we're willing to acknowledge and accept, but I won't pretend to have understood much of the plot, the chapters or which are told out of order. Sometimes the structure works--the beguiling, contextless "high-class hooker" sequence--but I often wondered if the film was impenetrable in the way that Porumboiu wanted it to be or impenetrable in the way he didn't.

To tell you the truth, the experience kind of depressed me because I know that, in my younger days, this film is the type of thing that I would re-watch, possibly with the chronology righted, knowing that it is worth understanding fully. But I have two small children, and I'm exhausted all the time, and I kind of thought I should get some credit for still trying to catch up with Romanian crime movies in the first place.

47. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Jason Woliner)- I laughed too much to get overly critical, but the film is so episodic and contrived that it's kind of exhausting by the end--even though it's achieving most of its goals. Maybe Borat hasn't changed, but the way our citizens own their ugliness has.

46. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)- Despite how little happens in the first forty minutes, First Cow is a thoughtful capitalism parable. Even though it takes about forty minutes to get going, the friendship between Cookie and King-Lu is natural and incisive. Like Reichardt's other work, the film's modest premise unfolds quite gracefully, except for in the first forty minutes, which are uneventful.

45. Les Miserables (Ladj Ly)- I loved parts of the film--the disorienting, claustrophobic opening or the quick look at the police officers' home lives, for example. But I'm not sure that it does anything very well. The needle the film tries to thread between realism and theater didn't gel for me. The ending, which is ambiguous in all of the wrong ways, chooses the theatrical. (If I'm being honest, my expectations were built up by Les Miserables' Jury Prize at Cannes, and it's a bit superficial to be in that company.)

If nothing else, it's always helpful to see how another country's worst case scenario in law enforcement would look pretty good over here.

44. Bad Education (Cory Finley)- The film feels too locked-down and small at the beginning, so intent on developing the protagonist neutrally that even the audience isn't aware of his secrets. So when he faces consequences for those secrets, there's a disconnect. Part of tragedy is seeing the doom coming, right?

When it opens up, however, it's empathetic and subtle, full of a dry irony that Finley is already specializing in after only one other feature. Geraldine Viswanathan and Allison Janney get across a lot of interiority that is not on the page.

43. The Trip to Greece (Michael Winterbottom)- By the fourth installment, you know whether you're on board with the franchise. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" to Coogan and Brydon's bickering and impressions as they're served exotic food in picturesque settings, then this one won't sway you. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" about life, like they are, then I don't need to convince you.

I will say that The Trip to Spain seemed like an enervated inflection point, at which the squad could have packed it in. The Trip to Greece proves that they probably need to keep doing this until one of them dies, which has been the subtext all along.

42. Feels Good Man (Arthur Jones)- This documentary centers on innocent artist Matt Furie's helplessness as his Pepe the Frog character gets hijacked by the alt-right. It gets the hard things right. It's able to, quite comprehensively, trace a connection from 4Chan's use of Pepe the Frog to Donald Trump's near-assuming of Pepe's ironic deniability. Director Arthur Jones seems to understand the machinations of the alt-right, and he articulates them chillingly.

The easy thing, making us connect to Furie, is less successful. The film spends way too much time setting up his story, and it makes him look naive as it pits him against Alex Jones in the final third. Still, the film is a quick ninety-two minutes, and the highs are pretty high.

41. The Old Guard (Gina Prince-Bythewood)- Some of the world-building and backstory are handled quite elegantly. The relationships actually do feel centuries old through specific details, and the immortal conceit comes together for an innovative final action sequence.

Visually and musically though, the film feels flat in a way that Prince-Bythewood's other films do not. I blame Netflix specs. KiKi Layne, who tanked If Beale Street Could Talk for me, nearly ruins this too with the child-actory way that she stresses one word per line. Especially in relief with one of our more effortless actresses, Layne is distracting.

40. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)- Whenever Sacha Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman opens his mouth, the other defendants brace themselves for his dismissive vulgarity. Even when it's going to hurt him, he can't help but shoot off at the mouth. Of course, he reveals his passionate and intelligent depths as the trial goes on. The character is the one that Sorkin's screenplay seems the most endeared to: In the same way that Hoffman can't help but be Hoffman, Sorkin can't help but be Sorkin. Maybe we don't need a speech there; maybe we don't have to stretch past two hours; maybe a bon mot diffuses the tension. But we know exactly what to expect by now. The film is relevant, astute, witty, benevolent, and, of course, in love with itself. There are a handful of scenes here that are perfect, so I feel bad for qualifying so much.

A smaller point: Daniel Pemberton has done great work in the past (Motherless Brooklyn, King Arthur, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), but the first sequence is especially marred by his sterile soft-rock approach.

GOOD MOVIES

39. Time (Garrett Bradley)- The key to Time is that it provides very little context. Why the patriarch of this family is serving sixty years in prison is sort of besides the point philosophically. His wife and sons have to move on without him, and the tragedy baked into that fact eclipses any notion of what he "deserved." Feeling the weight of time as we switch back and forth between a kid talking about his first day of kindergarten and that same kid graduating from dentistry school is all the context we need. Time's presentation can be quite sumptuous: The drone shot of Angola makes its buildings look like crosses. Or is it X's?

At the same time, I need some context. When director Garrett Bradley withholds the reason Robert's in prison, and when she really withholds that Fox took a plea and served twelve years, you start to see the strings a bit. You could argue that knowing so little about why, all of a sudden, Robert can be on parole puts you into the same confused shoes as the family, but it feels manipulative to me. The film is preaching to the choir as far as criminal justice goes, which is fine, but I want it to have the confidence to tell its story above board.

38. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV)- I have a barfly friend whom I see maybe once a year. When we first set up a time to meet, I kind of dread it and wonder what we'll have to talk about. Once we do get together, we trip on each other's words a bit, fumbling around with the rhythm of conversation that we mastered decades ago. He makes some kind of joke that could have been appropriate then but isn't now.

By the end of the day, hours later, we're hugging and maybe crying as we promise each other that we won't wait as long next time.

That's the exact same journey that I went on with this film.

37. Underwater (William Eubank)- Underwater is a story that you've seen before, but it's told with great confidence and economy. I looked up at twelve minutes and couldn't believe the whole table had been set. Kristen plays Ripley and projects a smart, benevolent poise.

36. The Lodge (Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala)- I prefer the grounded, manicured first half to the more fantastic second half. The craziness of the latter is only possible through the hard work of the former though. As with Fiala and Franz's previous feature, the visual rhymes and motifs get incorporated into the soup so carefully that you don't realize it until they overwhelm you in their bleak glory.

Small note: Alicia Silverstone, the male lead's first wife, and Riley Keough, his new partner, look sort of similar. I always think that's a nice note: "I could see how he would go for her."

35. Miss Americana (Lana Wilson)- I liked it when I saw it as a portrait of a person whose life is largely decided for her but is trying to carve out personal spaces within that hamster wheel. I loved it when I realized that describes most successful people in their twenties.

34. Sound of Metal (Darius Marder)- Riz Ahmed is showing up on all of the best performances of the year lists, but Sound of Metal isn't in anyone's top ten films of the year. That's about right. Ahmed's is a quiet, stubborn performance that I wish was in service of more than the straight line that we've seen before.

In two big scenes, there's this trick that Ahmed does, a piecing together of consequences with his eyes, as if he's moving through a flow chart in real time. In both cases, the character seems locked out and a little slower than he should be, which is, of course, why he's facing the consequences in the first place. To be charitable to a film that was a bit of a grind, it did make me notice a thing a guy did with his eyes.

33. Pieces of a Woman (Kornel Mundruczo)- Usually when I leave acting showcases like this, I imagine the film without the Oscar-baiting speeches, but this is a movie that specializes in speeches. Pieces of a Woman is being judged, deservedly so, by the harrowing twenty-minute take that opens the film, which is as indulgent as it is necessary. But if the unbroken take provides the "what," then the speeches provide the "why."

This is a film about reclaiming one's body when it rebels against you and when other people seek ownership of it. Without the Ellen Burstyn "lift your head" speech or the Vanessa Kirby show-stopper in the courtroom, I'm not sure any of that comes across.

I do think the film lets us off the hook a bit with the LaBoeuf character, in the sense that it gives us reasons to dislike him when it would be more compelling if he had done nothing wrong. Does his half-remembering of the White Stripes count as a speech?

32. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe)- This is such a play, not only in the locked-down location but also through nearly every storytelling convention: "Where are the two most interesting characters? Oh, running late? They'll enter separately in animated fashion?" But, to use the type of phrase that the characters might, "Don't hate the player; hate the game."

Perhaps the most theatrical note in this treatise on the commodification of expression is the way that, two or three times, the proceedings stop in their tracks for the piece to declare loudly what it's about. In one of those clear-outs, Boseman, who looks distractingly sick, delivers an unforgettable monologue that transports the audience into his character's fragile, haunted mind. He and Viola Davis are so good that the film sort of buckles under their weight, unsure of how to transition out of those spotlight moments and pretend that the story can start back up. Whatever they're doing is more interesting than what's being achieved overall.

31. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg)- It's definitely the film that Vinterberg wanted to make, but despite what I think is a quietly shattering performance from Mikkelsen, Another Round moves in a bit too much of a straight line to grab me fully. The joyous final minutes hint at where it could have gone, as do pockets of Vinterberg's filmography, which seems newly tethered to realism in a way that I don't like. The best sequences are the wildest ones, like the uproarious trip to the grocery store for fresh cod, so I don't know why so much of it takes place in tiny hallways at magic hour. I give the inevitable American remake* permission to use these notes.

*- Just spitballing here. Martin: Will Ferrell, Nikolaj (Nick): Ben Stiller, Tommy: Owen Wilson, Peter: Craig Robinson

30. The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell)- Exactly what I wanted. Exactly what I needed.

I think a less conclusive finale would have been better, but what a model of high-concept escalation. This is the movie people convinced me Whannell's Upgrade was.

29. On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola)- Slight until the Mexican sojourn, which expands the scope and makes the film even more psychosexual than before. At times it feels as if Coppola is actively simplifying, rather than diving into the race and privilege questions that the Murray character all but demands.

As for Murray, is the film 50% worse without him? 70%? I don't know if you can run in supporting categories if you're the whole reason the film exists.

28. Mangrove (Steve McQueen)- The first part of the film seemed repetitive and broad to me. But once it settled in as a courtroom drama, the characterization became more shaded, and the filmmaking itself seemed more fluid. I ended up being quite outraged and inspired.

27. Shirley (Josephine Decker)- Josephine Decker emerges as a real stylist here, changing her foggy, impressionistic approach not one bit with a little more budget. Period piece and established actors be damned--this is still as much of a reeling fever dream as Madeline's Madeline. Both pieces are a bit too repetitive and nasty for my taste, but I respect the technique.

Here's my mandatory "Elisabeth Moss is the best" paragraph. While watching her performance as Shirley Jackson, I thought about her most famous role as Peggy on Mad Men, whose inertia and need to prove herself tied her into confidence knots. Shirley is almost the opposite: paralyzed by her worldview, certain of her talent, rejecting any empathy. If Moss can inhabit both characters so convincingly, she can do anything.

26. An American Pickle (Brandon Trost)- An American Pickle is the rare comedy that could actually use five or ten extra minutes, but it's a surprisingly heartfelt and wholesome stretch for Rogen, who is earnest in the lead roles.

25. The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow)- At two hours and fifteen minutes, The King of Staten Island is probably the first Judd Apatow film that feels like the exact right length. For example, the baggy date scene between a gracious Bill Burr and a faux-dowdy Marisa Tomei is essential, the sort of widening of perspective that something like Trainwreck was missing.

It's Pete Davidson's movie, however, and though he has never been my cup of tea, I think he's actually quite powerful in his quiet moments. The movie probes some rare territory--a mentally ill man's suspicion that he is unlovable, a family's strategic myth-making out of respect for the dead. And when Davidson shows up at the firehouse an hour and fifteen minutes in, it feels as if we've built to a last resort.

24. Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)- The tricky part of this film is communicating Hunter's despair, letting her isolation mount, but still keeping her opaque. It takes a lot of visual discipline to do that, and Claudio Mirabella-Davis is up to the task. This ends up being a much more sympathetic, expressive movie than the plot description might suggest.

(In the tie dispute, Hunter and Richie are both wrong. That type of silk--I couldn't tell how pebbled it was, but it's probably a barathea weave-- shouldn't be ironed directly, but it doesn't have to be steamed. On a low setting, you could iron the back of the tie and be fine.)

23. The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson)- I wanted a bit more "there" there; The film goes exactly where I thought it would, and there isn't enough humor for my taste. (The predictability might be a feature, not a bug, since the film is positioned as an episode of a well-worn Twilight Zone-esque show.)

But from a directorial standpoint, this is quite a promising debut. Patterson knows when to lock down or use silence--he even cuts to black to force us to listen more closely to a monologue. But he also knows when to fill the silence. There's a minute or so when Everett is spooling tape, and he and Fay make small talk about their hopes for the future, developing the characters' personalities in what could have been just mechanics. It's also a refreshingly earnest film. No one is winking at the '50s setting.

I'm tempted to write, "If Andrew Patterson can make this with $1 million, just imagine what he can do with $30 million." But maybe people like Shane Carruth have taught us that Patterson is better off pinching pennies in Texas and following his own muse.

22. Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)- At first this film, adapted from a picaresque novel by Jack London, seemed as if it was hitting the marks of the genre. "He's going from job to job and meeting dudes who are shaping his worldview now." But the film, shot in lustrous Super 16, won me over as it owned the trappings of this type of story, forming a character who is a product of his environment even as he transcends it. By the end, I really felt the weight of time.

You want to talk about something that works better in novels than films though? When a passionate, independent protagonist insists that a woman is the love of his life, despite the fact that she's whatever Italians call a wet blanket. She's rich, but Martin doesn't care about her money. He hates her family and friends, and she refuses to accept him or his life pursuits. She's pretty but not even as pretty as the waitress they discuss. Tell me what I'm missing here. There's archetype, and there's incoherence.

21. Bacurau (Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles)- Certain images from this adventurous film will stick with me, but I got worn out after the hard reset halfway through. As entranced as I was by the mystery of the first half, I think this blood-soaked ensemble is better at asking questions than it is at answering them.

20. Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh)- The initial appeal of this movie might be "Look at these wonderful actresses in their seventies getting a movie all to themselves." And the film is an interesting portrait of ladies taking stock of relationships that have spanned decades. But Soderbergh and Eisenberg handle the twentysomething Lucas Hedges character with the same openness and empathy. His early reasoning for going on the trip is that he wants to learn from older women, and Hedges nails the puppy-dog quality of a young man who would believe that. Especially in the scenes of aspirational romance, he's sweet and earnest as he brushes his hair out of his face.

Streep plays Alice Hughes, a serious author of literary fiction, and she crosses paths with Kelvin Kranz, a grinder of airport thrillers. In all of the right ways, Let Them All Talk toes the line between those two stances as an entertaining, jaunty experiment that also shoulders subtextual weight. If nothing else, it's easy to see why a cruise ship's counterfeit opulence, its straight lines at a lean, would be visually engaging to Soderbergh. You can't have a return to form if your form is constantly evolving.

19. Dick Johnson Is Dead (Kirsten Johnson)- Understandably, I don't find the subject as interesting as his own daughter does, and large swaths of this film are unsure of what they're trying to say. But that's sort of the point, and the active wrestling that the film engages in with death ultimately pays off in a transcendent moment. The jaw-dropping ending is something that only non-fiction film can achieve, and Johnson's whole career is about the search for that sort of serendipity.

18. Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee)- Delroy Lindo is a live-wire, but his character is the only one of the principals who is examined with the psychological depth I was hoping for. The first half, with all of its present-tense flourishes, promises more than the gunfights of the second half can deliver. When the film is cooking though, it's chock full of surprises, provocations, and pride.

17. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittmann)- Very quickly, Eliza Hittmann has established herself as an astute, empathetic director with an eye for discovering new talent. I hope that she gets to make fifty more movies in which she objectively follows laconic young people. But I wanted to like this one more than I did. The approach is so neutral that it's almost flat to me, lacking the arc and catharsis of her previous film, Beach Rats. I still appreciate her restraint though.

GREAT MOVIES

16. Young Ahmed (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)- I don't think the Dardennes have made a bad movie yet, and I'm glad they turned away from the slight genre dipping of The Unknown Girl, the closest to bad that they got. Young Ahmed is a lean, daring return to form.

Instead of following an average person, as they normally do, the Dardenne Brothers follow an extremist, and the objectivity that usually generates pathos now serves to present ambiguity. Ahmed says that he is changing, that he regrets his actions, but we never know how much of his stance is a put-on. I found myself wanting him to reform, more involved than I usually am in these slices of life. Part of it is that Idir Ben Addi looks like such a normal, young kid, and the Ahmed character has most of the qualities that we say we want in young people: principles, commitment, self-worth, reflection. So it's that much more destructive when those qualities are used against him and against his fellow man.

15. World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (Don Hertzfeldt)- My dad, a man whom I love but will never understand, has dismissed modern music before by claiming that there are only so many combinations of chords. To him, it's almost impossible to do something new. Of course, this is the type of thing that an uncreative person would say--a person not only incapable of hearing the chords that combine notes but also unwilling to hear the space between the notes. (And obviously, that's the take of a person who doesn't understand that, originality be damned, some people just have to create.)

Anyway, that attitude creeps into my own thinking more than I would like, but then I watch something as wholly original as World of Tomorrow Episode Three. The series has always been a way to pile sci-fi ideas on top of each other to prove the essential truths of being and loving. And this one, even though it achieves less of a sense of yearning than its predecessor, offers even more devices to chew on. Take, for example, the idea that Emily sends her message from the future, so David's primitive technology can barely handle it. In order to move forward with its sophistication, he has to delete any extraneous skills for the sake of computer memory. So out of trust for this person who loves him, he has to weigh whether his own breathing or walking can be uninstalled as a sacrifice for her. I thought that we might have been done describing love, but there it is, a new metaphor. Mixing futurism with stick figures to get at the most pure drive possible gave us something new. It's called art, Dad.

14. On the Record (Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering)- We don't call subjects of documentaries "stars" for obvious reasons, but Drew Dixon kind of is one. Her honesty and wisdom tell a complete story of the #MeToo movement. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering take their time developing her background at first, not because we need to "gain sympathy" or "establish credibility" for a victim of sexual abuse, but because showing her talent and enthusiasm for hip-hop A&R makes it that much more tragic when her passion is extinguished. Hell, I just like the woman, so spending a half-hour on her rise was pleasurable in and of itself.

This is a gut-wrenching, fearless entry in what is becoming Dick and Ziering's raison d'etre, but its greatest quality is Dixon's composed reflection. She helped to establish a pattern of Russell Simmons's behavior, but she explains what happened to her in ways I had never heard before.

13. David Byrne’s American Utopia (Spike Lee)- I'm often impressed by the achievements that puzzle me: How did they pull that off? But I know exactly how David Byrne pulled off the impish but direct precision of American Utopia: a lot of hard work.

I can't blame Spike Lee for stealing a page from Demme's Stop Making Sense: He denies us a close-up of any audience members until two-thirds of the way through, when we get someone in absolute rapture.

12. One Night in Miami... (Regina King)- We've all cringed when a person of color is put into the position of speaking on behalf of his or her entire race. But the characters in One Night in Miami... live in that condition all the time and are constantly negotiating it. As Black public figures in 1964, they know that the consequences of their actions are different, bigger, than everyone else's. The charged conversations between Malcolm X and Sam Cooke are not about whether they can live normal lives. They're way past that. The stakes are closer to Sam Cooke arguing that his life's purpose aligns with the protection and elevation of African-Americans while Malcolm X argues that those pursuits should be the same thing. Late in the movie, Cassius Clay leaves the other men, a private conversation, to talk to reporters, a public conversation. But the film argues that everything these men do is always already public. They're the most powerful African-Americans in the country, but their lives are not their own. Or not only their own.

It's true that the first act has the clunkiness and artifice of a TV movie, but once the film settles into the motel room location and lets the characters feed off one another, it's gripping. It's kind of unfair for a movie to get this many scenes of Leslie Odom Jr. singing, but I'll take it.

11. Saint Frances (Alex Thompson)- Rilke wrote, "Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." The characters' behavior in Saint Frances--all of these fully formed characters' behavior--made me think of that quotation. When they lash out at one another, even at their nastiest, the viewer has a window into how they're expressing pain they can't verbalize. The film is uneven in its subtlety, but it's a real showcase for screenwriter and star Kelly O'Sullivan, who is unflinching and dynamic in one of the best performances of the year. Somebody give her some of the attention we gave to Zach Braff for God's sake.

10. Boys State (Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine)- This documentary is kind of a miracle from a logistical standpoint. From casting interviews beforehand, lots of editing afterwards, or sly note-taking once the conference began, McBaine and Moss happened to select the four principals who mattered the most at the convention, then found them in rooms full of dudes wearing the same tucked-in t-shirt. By the way, all of the action took place over the course of one week, and by definition, the important events are carved in half.

To call Boys State a microcosm of American politics is incorrect. These guys are forming platforms and voting in elections. What they're doing is American politics, so when they make the same compromises and mistakes that active politicians do, it produces dread and disappointment. So many of the boys are mimicking the political theater that they see on TV, and that sweaty sort of performance is going to make a Billy Mitchell out of this kid Ben Feinstein, and we'll be forced to reckon with how much we allow him to evolve as a person. This film is so precise, but what it proves is undeniably messy. Luckily, some of these seventeen-year-olds usher in hope for us all.

If nothing else, the film reveals the level to which we're all speaking in code.

9. The Nest (Sean Durkin)- In the first ten minutes or so of The Nest, the only real happy minutes, father and son are playing soccer in their quaint backyard, and the father cheats to score on a children's net before sliding on the grass to rub in his victory. An hour later, the son kicks the ball around by himself near a regulation goal on the family's massive property. The contrast is stark and obvious, as is the symbolism of the dead horse, but that doesn't mean it's not visually powerful or resonant.

Like Sean Durkin's earlier film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, the whole of The Nest is told with detail of novelistic scope and an elevation of the moment. A snippet of radio that mentions Ronald Reagan sets the time period, rather than a dateline. One kid saying "Thanks, Dad" and another kid saying, "Thanks, Rory" establishes a stepchild more elegantly than any other exposition might.

But this is also a movie that does not hide what it means. Characters usually say exactly what is on their minds, and motivations are always clear. For example, Allison smokes like a chimney, so her daughter's way of acting out is leaving butts on the window sill for her mother to find. (And mother and daughter both definitely "act out" their feelings.) On the other hand, Ben, Rory's biological son, is the character least like him, so these relationships aren't too directly parallel. Regardless, Durkin uses these trajectories to cast a pall of familial doom.

8. Sorry We Missed You (Sean Durkin)- Another precisely calibrated empathy machine from Ken Loach. The overwhelmed matriarch, Abby, is a caretaker, and she has to break up a Saturday dinner to rescue one of her clients, who wet herself because no one came to help her to the bathroom. The lady is embarrassed, and Abby calms her down by saying, "You mean more to me than you know." We know enough about Abby's circumstances to realize that it's sort of a lie, but it's a beautiful lie, told by a person who cares deeply but is not cared for.

Loach's central point is that the health of a family, something we think of as immutable and timeless, is directly dependent upon the modern industry that we use to destroy ourselves. He doesn't have to be "proven" relevant, and he didn't plan for Covid-19 to point to the fragility of the gig economy, but when you're right, you're right.

7. Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen)- swear to you I thought: "This is an impeccable depiction of a great house party. The only thing it's missing is the volatile dude who scares away all the girls." And then the volatile dude who scares away all the girls shows up.

In a year short on magic, there are two or three transcendent moments, but none of them can equal the whole crowd singing along to "Silly Games" way after the song has ended. Nothing else crystallizes the film's note of celebration: of music, of community, of safe spaces, of Black skin. I remember moments like that at house parties, and like all celebrations, they eventually make me sad.

6. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht)- I held off on this movie because I thought that I knew what it was. The setup was what I expected: A summer camp for the disabled in the late '60s takes on the spirit of the time and becomes a haven for people who have not felt agency, self-worth, or community anywhere else. But that's the right-place-right-time start of a story that takes these figures into the '80s as they fight for their rights.

If you're anything like my dumb ass, you know about 504 accommodations from the line on a college syllabus that promises equal treatment. If 2020 has taught us anything though, it's that rights are seized, not given, and this is the inspiring story of people who unified to demand what they deserved. Judy Heumann is a civil rights giant, but I'm ashamed to say I didn't know who she was before this film. If it were just a history lesson that wasn't taught in school, Crip Camp would still be valuable, but it's way more than that.

5. Palm Springs (Max Barbakow)- When explaining what is happening to them, Andy Samberg's Nyles twirls his hand at Cristin Milioti's Sara and says, "It's one of those infinite time-loop scenarios." Yeah, one of those. Armed with only a handful of fictional examples, she and the audience know exactly what he means, and the continually inventive screenplay by Andy Siara doesn't have to do any more explaining. In record time, the film accelerates into its premise, involves her, and sets up the conflict while avoiding the claustrophobia of even Groundhog Day. That economy is the strength that allows it to be as funny as it is. By being thrifty with the setup, the savings can go to, say, the couple crashing a plane into a fiery heap with no consequences.

In some accidental ways, this is, of course, a quarantine romance as well. Nyles and Sara frustratingly navigate the tedious wedding as if they are play-acting--which they sort of are--then they push through that sameness to grow for each other, realizing that dependency is not weakness. The best relationships are doing the same thing right now.

Although pointedly superficial--part of the point of why the couple is such a match--and secular--I think the notion of an afterlife would come up at least once--Palm Springs earns the sincerity that it gets around to. And for a movie ironic enough to have a character beg to be impaled so that he doesn't have to sit in traffic, that's no small feat.

4. The Assistant (Kitty Green)- A wonder of Bressonian objectivity and rich observation, The Assistant is the rare film that deals exclusively with emotional depth while not once explaining any emotions. One at a time, the scrape of the Kleenex box might not be so grating, the long hallway trek to the delivery guy might not be so tiring, but this movie gets at the details of how a job can destroy you in ways that add up until you can't even explain them.

3. Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)- In her most incendiary and modern role, Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, which is short for Cassandra, that figure doomed to tell truths that no one else believes. The web-belted boogeyman who ruined her life is Al, short for Alexander, another Greek who is known for his conquests. The revenge story being told here--funny in its darkest moments, dark in its funniest moments--is tight on its surface levels, but it feels as if it's telling a story more archetypal and expansive than that too.

An exciting feature debut for its writer-director Emerald Fennell, the film goes wherever it dares. Its hero has a clear purpose, and it's not surprising that the script is willing to extinguish her anger halfway through. What is surprising is the way it renews and muddies her purpose as she comes into contact with half-a-dozen brilliant one- or two-scene performances. (Do you think Alfred Molina can pull off a lawyer who hates himself so much that he can't sleep? You would be right.)

Promising Young Woman delivers as an interrogation of double standards and rape culture, but in quiet ways it's also about our outsized trust in professionals and the notion that some trauma cannot be overcome.

INSTANT CLASSICS

2. Soul (Pete Docter)- When Pete Docter's Up came out, it represented a sort of coronation for Pixar: This was the one that adults could like unabashedly. The one with wordless sequences and dead children and Ed Asner in the lead. But watching it again this week with my daughter, I was surprised by how high-concept and cloying it could be. We choose not to remember the middle part with the goofy dog stuff.

Soul is what Up was supposed to be: honest, mature, stirring. And I don't mean to imply that a family film shouldn't make any concessions to children. But Soul, down to the title, never compromises its own ambition. Besides Coco, it's probably the most credible character study that Pixar has ever made, with all of Joe's growth earned the hard way. Besides Inside Out, it's probably the wittiest comedy that Pixar has ever made, bursting with unforced energy.

There's a twitter fascination going around about Dez, the pigeon-figured barber character whose scene has people gushing, "Crush my windpipe, king" or whatever. Maybe that's what twitter does now, but no one fantasized about any characters in Up. And I count that as progress.

1. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman)- After hearing that our name-shifting protagonist moonlights as an artist, a no-nonsense David Thewlis offers, "I hope you're not an abstract artist." He prefers "paintings that look like photographs" over non-representational mumbo-jumbo. And as Jessie Buckley squirms to try to think of a polite way to talk back, you can tell that Charlie Kaufman has been in the crosshairs of this same conversation. This morose, scary, inscrutable, expressionist rumination is not what the Netflix description says it is at all, and it's going to bother nice people looking for a fun night in. Thank God.

The story goes that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, when constructing Raiders of the Lost Ark, sought to craft a movie that was "only the good parts" with little of the clunky setup that distracted from action. What we have here is a Charlie Kaufman movie with only the Charlie Kaufman moments, less interested than ever before at holding one's hand. The biting humor is here, sometimes aimed at philistines like the David Thewlis character above, sometimes at the niceties that we insist upon. The lonely horror of everyday life is here, in the form of missed calls from oneself or the interruption of an inner monologue. Of course, communicating the overwhelming crush of time, both unknowable and familiar, is the raison d'etre.

A new pet motif seems to be the way that we don't even own our own knowledge. The Young Woman recites "Bonedog" by Eva H.D., which she claims/thinks she wrote, only to find Jake's book open to that page, next to a Pauline Kael book that contains a Woman Under the Influence review that she seems to have internalized later. When Jake muses about Wordsworth's "Lucy Poems," it starts as a way to pass the time, then it becomes a way to lord his education over her, then it becomes a compliment because the subject resembles her, then it becomes a way to let her know that, in the grand scheme of things, she isn't that special at all. This film jerks the viewer through a similar wintry cycle and leaves him with his own thoughts. It's not a pretty picture, but it doesn't look like anything else.

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jokerfan99 · 4 years

Photo

Curiousity (Almost) Killed The Cat (RWBY/RVB) by Necroceph

*RVB Opening Theme*

Flying above a barren desert.

Fuel's at 9%. It's not enough to keep this thing flying in space in another few hours. Luckily for Xenotarian Four, she spot this M-class planet on the way with man-made structures with functioning electricity says the scanners. She should reach a base in another few clicks. The residents there should provide her the fuel needed to reach Menagerie Prime. There have always been risks of xenotarian aid but who would've thought that flying a longsword in low fuel would be one of them. Through the windshields, she spots structures in the distance and begins to slow the ship down for landing. She attempts to contact the base's denizens to have their permission to land and refuel.

???: This is Xenotarian Four, calling to whoever's in charge of the base. I wish to have permission to dock my ship there for refueling. I would appreciate the help, over.

No reply, yet they did not give any warning to her. There is an empty landing pad where the ship can land on. The thrusters switched to vertical mode and carefully lands on top of the pad smoothly without problems. Time to fuel up this baby. She couldn't wait to get back home to her kids. They're probably waiting for her at her parent's doorstep ready to pounce at her with one big hug. Before she left, her father was against the idea of her taking this assignment because she's the mother of two litters and can't just leave them orphaned if anything bad ever happens to her. But who's better at delivering xenotarian aid beyond the border without being spotted by the Jiralhanae fighters? That's her. Unless she finds somebody with better skills to take her place. She exits the ship and awaits for the fueling crew, but no one seem to came. And that's not the only thing that surprises her, she looks around and doesn't see a single soul at sight. Don't tell me I landed in an abandoned facility, she thought. If this place is abandoned, then why are there still lights functioning here?

XF: Hello!

Beside the howling desert wind, no one called back. Guess she has no choice but to walk around and find somebody. This place appears to be a military base and human in design. She's not sure whether it belongs to the UNSC or Insurgents due to the lack of any known military insignia at sight. There is one she spots on a wall along the way but not one she's familiar with. It is a black trifoil logo. There's no title or anything written around it, could be just a random graffiti or maybe not. As she examines it, a smell that's described to be rotten fish, stung her senses. Good God, what is that awful smell? It stinks of high heaven! It's coming from that nearby archway leading to an opened field. She crosses through the archway, with nose pinched, to investigate the source but what she found is something she'll regret seeing.

XF: Oh... my... God.

Her curious expression turned to shock for right in front of her are the bodies of soldiers lying on the dirt. Their armor is riddled with bullet holes with blood seeping out through them. Some have been burned to black charred husks and others still clinging onto their exposed rotten guts. Not a single movement can be seen from any of them. It looks like a huge battle took place, no, a massacre. They didn't seem to have a chance at fighting back. She has never seen soldiers like them before but they do have the same logo on their armors she has seen earlier. They could be part of some paramilitary group, but that's just a theory. She tuned in her cochlear implants, adjusting to the right frequency to hear any heartbeats from any of the soldiers just to be sure if there's any alive. Not a single pumping of blood can be heard from any of them. From the concentration of the pungency they emit, they must've been dead for over three or four days. Good thing if it'd not for her experience in the field, she wouldn't be able to hold out her lunch much longer. What happened to these poor souls or more importantly, what happened here?

TING TING TING

A repeating sound can be heard from nearby. It's coming from one of the buildings, with the blown up radio tower on the roof. She stealthily walks into the building and observe the contents inside. Inside contains a variety of computer terminals, most have been destroyed by gunfire, except for one with a blinking red button on the console. It's as if it's calling out to her to activate it. She approached the terminal and presses the blinking button. The machine activates followed by a Macintosh boot up before a voice synthesizer spoke out through the speakers.

???: Hello. I am the Freelancer Integrated Logistics and Security System, abbreviated F.I.L.S.S. You may call me, Gary. XF: Did you just talk? Gary: Of course I did. What were you expecting, a blue naked babe? XF: Not at all. What is this place? Gary: This is a top secret ONI training facility to train new Spartan soldiers through experimental augmentation and cybernetics. I am the computer system responsible for maintaining this facility to excellent capacity and assist all staff member to easily perform their duties, and daily military reports. I have no record of you in the data banks. Please identify yourself, for you have five seconds to live. XF: Pvt. Blake Belladonna from the White Paw Xenotarian Aid. I'm here because I stopped by to fuel up my ship. Gary: I see. Then why are you in the communications room? Blake: Well nobody came to help so I walked around to try find someone. Gary: And have you encountered the staff? Blake: No. The ones I found are lying dead outside. Gary: Dead? Explains? Blake: The ones lying outside this building. Don't you know about it? Gary: No. I have been offline for... what day is it today? Blake: Tuesday. Gary: Nine days ago. Please let me check the security cameras... oh. They really are dead. What a pity. But at least Jameson Locke's dead too, so that's good news. It would seem that I have missed out what had transpired here. Blake: That's like a week ago. Computer- Gary: Gary. Blake: Sorry... Gary. What happened here exactly? Gary: I do not know, I only remember the events before my deactivation. Blake: Well we just have to go with that first. Starting off, who attacked this base? Was it the Jiralhanae, Insurgents? Gary: No. And if it was those damn dirty apes, I would've detected their ships' signature in orbit before they attack. From what I examined from outside, it is likely that the soldiers killed one another. Blake: They killed each other?! Why? Gary: Did you see any bodies from any opposing forces you mentioned? Blake: Now that you mention that, no. They're all wearing the same uniform and color. Gary: That is correct. No doubt it's connected to the strange events that happened before my deactivation. Blake: Strange events? Gary: Yes. This can be easily explained in the form of a knock knock joke. Knock knock. Blake: Who's there? Gary: You are a dirty dirty Shisno. Ha Ha Ha. Blake: Please I'm not here for jokes, this is serious. What's a Shisno? Gary: Don't ask. It all happened with a blackout three days prior to my deactivation. Every electronic equipment was shut down when one of the base's generators overheated beyond recommended levels. The engineers have no idea what caused it to heat up like that but have concluded there was a computer glitch within the system, so there was nothing to worry about. However, strange things begin to happen the day after. There have been numbers of violent cases reported throughout the facility. A private tried to strangle his drill sergeant with the UNSC flag and an hour after that, the same drill sergeant stabbed the mess hall's chef through the eye with a plastic fork. Blake: Please no jokes. Gary: I'm not. See it for yourself.

Gary opens up a window in the terminal. The video shows the footage of a soldier, probably the drill sergeant Gary mentioned, standing on a table, trying to scare away the other soldiers with... a plastic fork?! And EW, is that an eyeball at the end?!

???: Sir, please put the fork down. We don't want to hurt you. ???: BACK YOU WORTHLESS UNGGOYS! Come any closer and I will use this fork to eat your intestines like spaghetti, with a pinch zucchini and mozarella! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! ???: NOW!

The soldiers quickly grabbed him. He tried to fight back but the plastic fork broke in the process.

???: GAAAAH! GET OFF ME YOU FOOLS! I WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!!!

End of video.

Blake: Okaaaaay? Gary: There's more if you like. Blake: No thank you. Continue. Gary: In the third day, the staff have been ordered to remove the radios from their helmets and destroy, deactivate or dismantle every military asset within the facility. Landlines, cellphones, vehicles, radio towers and finally me. That is all I remember. Blake: Thank you for telling me this. Sigh, guess I got more work to do after all. First I'll need to get back to the longsword and report Command about this. Gary: Uh oh. Blake: Something wrong? Gary: You might want to have your gun ready. Blake: I didn't bring a...

Suddenly, her implants detected heavy breathing six meters behind her. She turns around and sees a soldier, magnum in hand, looking at her through his broken visor with raging eyes. A survivor! Except it doesn't look like he wants any help. From the way his eyes are looking at her with hate, something bad's about to happen in this room.

Blake: Are you okay? ???: Who are you?... Are you from Recovery... or maybe a Freelancer agent? Blake: (whispers) Gary, what is he talking about? Gary: He's talking about a rescue team. Blake: Well he's got one. Hello, sir. I'm from the White Paw Xenotarian Aid. I've come here to help if you can just put that gun down.

Blake slowly approaches the unstable man and attempts to take the gun from his hand.

???: STAY BACK!!!

But was too late once the soldier aims it at Blake.

???: DON'T YOU LIE TO ME! OH NONONONONONONONO, NOT THIS TIME YOU'RE NOT! I'M NOT GETTING BACKSTABBED AGAIN. YOU'RE JUST LIKE AAAAALLLLLL THE OTHERS! 'HELP ME WITH THIS, HELP ME WITH THAT' UNTIL THEY SHOOT YOU BEHIND THE HEAD! PARANOIC BASTARDS, THEY DESERVED IT!!! Unless... he's inside you... Blake: Inside me? What are you talking about?

BANG!

The soldier fires but the bullet misses her, passing through her ebony hair.

???: YOU THINK I'M THAT STUPID, OMEGA?! I KNOW YOU'LL GET THE CHANCE OF SURPRISING ME WITH THAT INNOCENT ACT OF YOURS AND DON'T YOU DARE ABOUT TRYING TO OUTSMART ME, YOU GODLESS AI! Blake: Sir, wait! Put the gun down, I'm not here to- ??? DIE YOU SON OF A-

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG

The soldier frantically fires at Blake again. She manages to jump behind a nearby pillar, giving her cover from the little pellets of death. He's not going to stop until he kills her! She'll have to wait until he runs out and try to knock him out. However, there's a high chance he'll anticipated her move and strike her. She'll need a distraction, something to keep him off his guard enough for her to strike.

Blake: Gary, do something! Gary: What? Blake Talk to him, I have a plan! Gary: Ahem. Hello. I am the Freelancer...

BANG BANG

Two 12.7×40mm armour piercing bullets pierce through the terminal, one making a large cracked hole on the screen and the other on the console.

Gary: Ow. ???: WORKING WITH, OMEGA EH GAMMA? TOO BAD, YOU'LL DIE WITH HIM TOO!!! Huh?

Now the opportunity's open. She gets out off cover and dashes toward the soldier. He quickly notices her but was too late to fire another shot when Blake swings her fist and punches him to the broken face plate, giving him a nasty bloody nose before falling unconscious to the ground. She quickly takes the magnum from his hand to prevent any further use from him. With the crazed soldier taken cared off, Blake turns to, Gary who has been badly shot. The terminal's screen is beginning to glitch out violently and the buttons on the console are popping up sparks like popcorns in a microwave.

Blake: Gary, are you okay? Gary: No-no-no-no. Hu-hu-hu-hu-hurry please remove the-the-the-the-the-the data chip from the sto-sto-sto-storage bank beneath the co-co-console.

Blake rushes to the bottom of the console. She spots a panel and removes it to find the data chip. It wasn't so hard for her to spot it as there's a yellow arrow with a writing which reads: 'Data crystal chip. DO NOT YANK IT!!!' pointing at a chip in a slot and yanks it, despite the warning. She was relieve to get him out before the console catches on fire. To check whether Gary is still intact, she inserts the chip into her armor to see if it's functioning well without problems. Good thing whoever designed the MJOLNIR added an AI slot. Not long after the insertion, a blue ghostly projection flickers in front of her, taking the form of a blue humanoid in standard UNSC uniform. This is something Blake has never seen before.

Blake: Okay this is new. Gary: System diagnostics at 100%. Ah... much better. Blake: You okay? Gary: I am working in perfect condition, thanks to you. I owed you your life twice. Blake: Hey, I'm a xenotarian aid member after all. AIs also qualifies as a life. Anyways.

She turns to the unconscious soldier.

???: Hi, I'm Utah... like the state of Utah... uuhhh. Gary: We should leave before that maniac wakes up.

Gary's got a good point. The man's too mentally unstable to be brought back with them.

Blake: Maniac, yes. But we can't just leave him here. Gary: He manage to survive this long alone, I think he'll be alright by himself. Blake: Gary, this man has gone through a lot over the last six days. He deserves to be in a medical care. We'll bring him along once we find someone who can help him. Gary: I don't like this.

Three minutes later

It's a good thing she found this cart to carry the unconscious wacko, no way she can carry him with her fragile frame. She even tied him up in wires for his own good too. On the way to the longsword, Blake discuss a thing or two with Gary about the base.

Blake: I wonder why ONI needed to develop more Spartans. I thought the UNSC already can handle itself without them ever since the Sangeili traded us Covenant weaponry. Gary: ONI is still paranoid for another interstellar war in the future, so they decided to make more Spartans in case flying spaghetti monsters start attacking the galaxy. Blake: And what does this have to do with that 'omega' this soldier said? Gary: I'm not sure. I have no record of any 'omega' in the files. Maybe he was speaking gibberish. Blake: Well it had something to do with the event you explained. Maybe a secret military weapon, ONI developed. From what I heard , ONI will go beyond ethical restraints to get what they want. Ship's just around that corner, we should... you have got to be joking.

It's no joke. The whole longsword's on FIRE! This is no doubt the work of their friend here.

Gary: Now what? Blake: I don't know. That ship's our only way out off here and without the radio, we can't call for help! Gary: No need to panic. There is another nearby base we can look for assistance, it might still be vacant. Blake: Well that's a relief! And how long will it take us to reach there? Gary: By foot, seven days. Blake: Seven days? Gary: Unless you like walking. ???: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Uh oh, his conscious again. The soldier starts writhing in the trolley as he tries to wiggle himself out off these wires.

???: YOU'LL NEVER LEAVE HERE, OMEGA!!! NEVER! NEVEEEEEERR!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!! Gary: Will you just shut up, you dirty Shisno? Blake: Gary, are there still any functioning vehicles we can use? Gary: The staff have disabled all of them to prevent any use. Blake: Well they're still our only ticket out of here. I know a thing or two about repairing a Mongoose. So if I can fix one, we can finally get out of here. ???: YOU WILL NOT! Blake: Shh! Gary: Since you're confident about that, it's worth a try. There's one Mongoose over there.

Gary points his holographic finger to a nearby Mongoose. Blake looks into the engine. There's some disconnected parts, so it isn't a hard fix but the problem is that the handle bars have been removed. She can't drive this thing without steering. She'll need to find a new handlebar. However Gary has a plan.

Gary: Hold on for a sec. Blake: What?

Gary went silent all the sudden. Suddenly, the engines of the Mongoose sprang to life on it's own, almost made Blake jumped from where she stood.

Gary: 76% of the Mongoose is in working condition and fuel is now 79.3% capacity. Blake: Oh my God, how did you do that? Gary: I am also programmed to take control of vehicles in case of emergencies. Blake: Heh, guess I won't have to drive after all. Not bad for an Artificial Intelligence. Gary: Thank you. Alright I have scanned what you need to fix, first get a toolbox... ???: NOOOOOO!!! YOU CANNOT LEAVE! Gary: And second, shut him up.

Blake presses the helmet's mute button finally shutting him up.

Gary: Ahh... finally. Blake: So this base you mentioned, what's it called? Gary: Blood Gulch.

Deviantart: https://www.deviantart.com/necroceph

#blake belladonna #rwby #Red vs Blue #Rooster Teeth #monty oum

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sgtduckybucky · 4 years

Text

coming home to you

Genre: hurt/comfort, romance, angst and slight fluff.

Warning(s): slight au

Words: 2058

A/N: euhedeuhed NO ONE TOLD ME ALFIE WAS BACK!! UJHUEHEIUED I haven’t watched s5 and i wont for a while because im watching one piece so forgive me if this isn’t as accurate as the show. that’s why I added au as a warning since i only saw a clip of alfie on youtube.

this is a sequel to farewell and a gif but can be read alone! i won’t add links since posts don’t show up with links but send me an ask and i’ll give you think!

lastly, sorry for any spelling or grammar errors!

»»————-　♡　————-««

the sound of the fire cackling in the fire place was an odd source of comfort as the harsh december wind howled outside. this year’s winter was harsh and unkind to humans. just this morning, you’ve read in the paper that five people died from the extreme cold britain’s getting this year.

you poured yourself another cup of earl grey as a new louis armstrong song began playing on the record player as you enjoyed reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles. and just as you were about to doze off three chapters, cyrill suddenly lifts his head up and trots to the window, a low whine coming from deep within him.

you paid him no mind at first, but when he started pawing at the window, you closed your book and stopped the record player before walking to where cyrill was. pulling back the shades, you picked through the snow caked windows. squinting your eyes to see what got cyrill so worked up. when you couldn’t spot anything you drew the windows and patted the dog’s head, “there’s nothing there, cyrill.” you smiled down at him, “probably a squirrel trying to hide from the snow.”

glancing at the wall clock, you were surprised to find that it was getting close to midnight. once you’ve cleaned the living room, you switched off the lights and head to one of the guest rooms on the first floors. ever since your pregnancy started showing the baby growing heavier, you’ve decided to move your bedroom on the lower level since it was way too exhausting for you to get up the stairs. the room wasn’t much, barely decorated, but it was a place for you to rest and sleep in. and the bathroom next to it had standing shower which was also another reason why you moved to this room since you had quite a scare by almost falling out of your bathtub as you were getting up.

as you settled into bed, you glanced at the picture frame on the night table. the picture was of you and alfie from almost two years ago. you were at the pier on a rare and sunny day in britain and you had begged alfie to go. it was on of the most memorable days you’ve had together. the picture was of you and alfie standing behind those cutout boards where they had a muscled man lifting a woman and, thinking it would be hilarious, you stood behind the man’s cutout face while alfie, grumbling at first, stood behind the woman’s cutout face. slowly, your eyes closed shut at the fond memories.

»»————-　♡　————-««

life as an eight month pregnant woman wasn’t easy. you can’t bend any more to pick anything so once that object is on the ground, it stays there until either cyrill picks it up or when ollie drops by later and picks it up for you. you can’t have a good night’s sleep either since the baby keeps kicking you from all sides every two fucking minutes and you were always hungry for the strangest food! oh, and you’d pee a lot too which was getting on your nerves.

however, there are small perks to being this far along. the most noticeable one, and by your favorite, is the many discounts from markets and stores. the minute they lay eyes on you, pity brimming in their eyes, they just lower the price for whatever it was you were buying.

like today for example. you were suddenly craving an orange cake and chicken for dinner so you decided to head to the market early and start cooking. maybe even have ollie for dinner if he wasn’t too busy. the elderly woman took one look at you and lowered your groceries from thirty pounds to twenty pounds. and when she heard that your boyfriend died before he could even propose, she lowered it to fifteen pounds!

sometimes, it’s great being pregnant. you chuckled to yourself as you made home. it wasn’t too cold this afternoon so you weren’t in a rush as you walked through town. however, you couldn’t shake off the feeling that someone was watching you. but every time you turned around, there was no one there. it was when you started hearing a second set of footsteps behind you did you pick your pace and take the long route home hoping to shake whoever was following you off. when you were certain the person wasn’t following you anymore, you quickly made it to your home and locked the doors. and rushed to pick the phone.

“hello?”

“t-tommy.” you stuttered into the phone.

“y/n?” tommy asked in slight surprise since you haven’t spoken to each other since that day you threatened to shoot his face off when you found out that you were pregnant with alfie’s baby.

“ca-can you come over? i think someone’s following me.” you whispered into the phone as you peaked through the window to make sure that no one was standing outside of your house.

“i’ll be right over.”

»»————-　♡　————-««

it’s been two weeks and you were positive that someone’s stalking you. tommy had insisted that him and the rest of your brothers would take turns staying the night at your place and accompanying you to any appointment or errand you need to run.

you were about to protest at first, yell and remind them that you weren’t some damsel in distress but when arthur said, “what if alfie’s enemies know that you were carrying his child.” he didn’t have to continue that statement as it was pretty obvious what he was saying. what if they knew you were carrying alfie’s baby and they were trying to kill you?

shaken to your core, you placed a protective hand on your belly and nodded your head.

“are you sure you don’t want me to stay over?” finn asked you, a frown tugging at his lips in concern.

you tried not to roll your eyes at your younger brother, “for the millionth time, i’m sure, finn.”

finn bit his lips, ready to ask the same question again when your house came into view, “finn, i love you all to death but having you lots breathing down my neck and jumping to your feet the minute i feel a cramp is getting on my damn nerves.”

finn looked away in guilt, “we’re just worried is all.”

you smiled appreciatively at your brother, “and i’m thankful for you all.” you said you leaned in and kissed his cheek, “but i need some time alone before i go fucking insane.”

chuckling along with you, finn nodded his head and watched you enter your home before leaving to meet up with michael.

“cyrill, i’m home!” you called as you discarded your coat and scarf and hung them on the coat rack by the door, “cyrill?”

confused, you slowly and quietly made your way to the living room in case he was sleeping.

but what greeted you wasn’t cyrill sleeping soundly on the couch, but of a large and burly man sitting on the couch with cyrill laying across his lap. his hair was short and a dark brown color that turned golden under the sun. his chin was covered in a greying brown beard while his mustache dropped down his lips. the left side of his face was scarred and almost disfigured with his left eye was a hauntingly greyish white color.

“a-alfie?” you chocked. your legs shook and almost gave out had you not slammed your hand on the coffee table in time.

“in the flesh.” he replied while shrugging nonchalantly, as if it was no big deal to show up at yours and your girlfriend’s house despite being supposedly dead.

“h-how?”

“i think you should sit down, love.”

shaking your head, you lifted your finger and pointed at alfie, voice going into hysterics as you said, “you’re s-supposed to be d-dead! t-tommy...tommy shot you! you died!”

aflie just sat as he silently watched the tears falling down your cheeks and into the carpeted floor, “like i said, y/n, you should sit down.”

and as if you were a puppet being controlled by your master, you shuffled your way to the armchair across the couch alfie was sitting on with cyrill.

“where do i begin.” alfie heaved as he dragged his hand down his face, making you wince as his hand came in contact with his scarred skin.

“from the start.” you spoke softly.

and alfie did as told. he talked about that day on the beach when tommy confronted him, how he was willing to die after he found out he was terminally ill and was going to die anyways and how tommy shot him.

“you were dying.” you whispered, eyes widening in shock at the revelation, “why didn’t you tell me?”

guilt flashed in alfie’s eyes, “i didn’t want you to worry.”

you stood up on your feet in rage but the abrupt movement made you dizzy so you sat back down, a hand on your head to stop your head from spinning. all the while alfie watched with a deep set of frown.

“you were going to leave me.” you said, a dry chuckle escaping through you lips, “you were going to leave us.”

“so that’s mine.” alfie pointed at your enlarged stomach with his, “good to know.”

anger bubbled inside of you at his words and at his carefree attitude, “he’s not yours. not after what you did.” you couldn’t help the tears from rolling down your cheeks but you were angry. you were angry that your brother had shot your lover, angry that you mourned someone who wasn’t even dead, you were angry that he kept his illness from you and you were angry that he didn’t even tell you he was alive.

“why didn’t you tell me?” you chocked on your sob as tears blurred your vision, “why didn-” your throat tightened and you swallowed thickly. you were hurt. you were hurt, alone and scared these past eight and half months. worrying if you and your baby would survive this pregnancy, if your baby could survive the harsh winter and with someone stalking yo-

“have you been following me?” you asked as realization dawn on you.

“i was.” alfie replied.

“why?”

it took alfie a couple of seconds before he replied, “i wanted to see if you were safe.”

“were you going to come back?”

alfie looked away, wether in shame or to feed you a lie, you didn’t know.

“I was going to remain in hiding, keep a low profile from the bloody police but then i saw you were with child.” he pointed at your belly with his finger, “and i had to make sure whichever bastard did that to you was taking good care of ya. turns out i was the fucking bastard.” he chuckled humorlessly.

there was a short pause before you asked, “so why are you here?”

alfie’s fingers brushed cyrill’s thick fur, his miscolored eyes never leaving yours as he answered, “i wanted to come back home to you.”

“and what if i don’t want you back?” you raised an eyebrow challengingly, “what if i wanted you gone? what if i never wanted to see you again?”

“then i’ll leave.” alfie quickly replied.

“and what about your cancer? what if you leave us again, i-”

this time, alfie got up from the couch and kneeled down in front of you, taking both of your hands into his bigger and rougher ones.

“i promise i won’t leave you.” he kissed your hands with his chapped lips.

“how can i trust you?” you whispered.

“call fate or divine intervention or whatever but when your fucked up in the head of a brother shot me, the doctors drugged me up so much for so long that it cured my skin cancer.” he kissed your hands again but when he felt a tear drop land on his nose, he sat up straighter and kissed your tears away.

“i’m giving you one more chance.” you held alfie’s face in your hands, your thumb gently caressing the scarred skin, “if you leave us again, i swear i’ll bring you back from the dead and kill you myself.”

alfie chuckled, leaning in to softly peck your lips, “it’s a promise.”

#Alfie Solomons #alfie solomons imagine #alfie solomons x reader #alfie solomons x you #alfie solomons fanfic #peaky blinders x reader #peaky blinders imagine #peaky blinders x you #peaky blinders fanfiction

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steves-on-a-plane · 5 years

Photo

Deviant Halloween

Part Two Words: 1415 Pairings: Reader x Connor (Rk800) Summary: Connor invites reader to a Halloween party at Hank’s where Lt. Anderson reveals something he didn’t think was actually a secret. Author’s Note: Honestly this started out as what if Connor was Hank for halloween and the rest came out of that. 🤷‍♀️ might do a part two if there’s any interest.

“Detective [Y/N]?” You looked over from your workstation monitor to see Connor standing by your desk.

“Connor.” You smiled and offered him an acknowledging nod before looking back at your monitor.

“You have not responded to my invitation.” He told you in his usual level tone. As always Connor’s voice was void of emotion or accusation. He was just stating a fact.

“Wait what? What invitation?” You turned away from your work again to give him your full attention.

“One month ago, I sent you an email invitation to a party. The event is soon and you have not responded. I would like to know why.” He explained.

“Party?” You tried to think back. Connor hardly ever sent emails to you that weren’t business related. There was the occasional meme or dog video but other than that... “Wait, do you mean the invitation you sent me for a Halloween Party at Hank’s place?” You reached for your phone and started searching through your emails. Luckily you never clean out your inbox. After a few taps, and filtering by sender, you found the RSVP in question.

“I didn’t respond because I thought it was a joke. Hank’s not exactly the party throwing type.” You reminded him

“It’s not Hank’s party.” Connor said. “It’s mine. Hank was just nice enough to let me use his house, but I can see how that might be confusing.”

“Oh, I’d love to come to your party Connor.” You tapped the box next to ‘going’ before sending the reply. “Sorry it took me so long to respond.”

“It’s alright. I look forward to seeing what your costume will be.” Connor nodded politely before walking off to accomplish some other task.

“Right.” You sighed, leaning back in your chair. “My costume…What the hell do you wear to an android’s Halloween party?”

In the days that followed you thought long and hard about what you wanted to wear to Connor’s party. You’d considered Sarah Connor and other characters from the Terminator franchise but thought that might be too on the nose. You thought about going the easy route, a cop, after all you had a few of your old uniforms lying around somewhere. Still this felt a little lazy. Timing played a large part in choosing your costume too, it wasn’t exactly easy to pick a good costume two weeks before Halloween.

The night of Connor’s party you felt a nervous feeling building in your stomach. Your costume wasn’t as jaw dropping as you had hoped. It was simple. A pair of brown leggings, a brown long sleeve shirt, a furry brown vest. The look was topped off with a blue choker necklace and your hair pulled into pigtails to mimic big floppy ears. Yup, you, a highly trained detective of the DPD and a certified adult, had shown up to your android friend’s Halloween party in a makeshift dog costume.

“What the hell was I thinking?” You mumbled to yourself as you stood on Hank’s stoop. You stared at the doorbell, wondering if you should just turn back and head home. Too late. Hank’s front door opened suddenly, and you weren’t expecting the sight before you.

“[Y/N]!!!” Connor’s face lit up at the sight of you. “I saw your car entering the driveway.” He explained. You didn’t respond right away. You were still soaking in what must have been his costume. Connor was wearing a baggy pair of jeans with a button up shirt only half tucked into it. The shirt fit him poorly and was covered in a loud orange and yellow pattern. He wore a long brown coat over his ensemble.

“Connor are you…” You couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you dressed as Hank?”

“You noticed!” Connor acknowledged excitedly. “And you came as a dog? I love dogs.”

“Yeah, ah, I know.” You felt yourself blush.

“Connor, whoever that is, let them in and close the door. It’s freezing outside.” You heard Hank’s voice calling over the music. Considering this your invitation, you didn’t wait for Connor to say anything else. You stepped inside and let him close the door behind you.

Once inside, you could see that you weren’t the first to arrive to Connor’s party. You recognized three or four uniformed members of the Detroit Police department in attendance. There were also two androids in attendance who you did not know. Hank came swaggering over to you when he recognized you from across the room. He was wearing a pair of ill-fitting jeans and a faded tshirt that read “This is my Costume.” Hank offered you a weak smirk.

“Oh [Y/N], Connor mentioned that you might be stopping by.” He said.

“Oh, I hope that’s okay.” You replied worriedly.

“Okay?” Hank scoffed. “He hasn’t stopped talking about you since…”

“Hank, do you think we have enough ice?” Connor interrupted his friend.

“Ice? What the fuck are you talking about?” Hank eyed the android for what felt like a full minute. “Nevermind, I know what this is about.” He shook his head. Sure Connor, I’ll go in the kitchen and make us some more ice.” Hank slipped away from the conversation mumbling about ice the whole time. You thought it was strange behavior for the two of them, but it was also strange for the two of them to be throwing a party in the first place, so you were able to shrug it off.

“Hank let me dress Sumo in a costume too!” Connor told you excitedly.

“Really? Can I see?” You wanted to know. You’d been to Hank’s place a couple of times just to meet up while working on a case. You didn’t typically stick around for very long and as a result you hadn’t spent much time with Sumo. All you knew was that Connor thought the St. Bernard was a big softy.

Connor waved you over to a quieter corner of the living room where Sumo was laying with his head lazing resting on his two massive paws. The dog was dressed unmistakably as Sherlock Holmes. He had a brown plaid cloak wrapped around him and an appropriately sized deerstalker hat, a tobacco pile chew toy laid forgotten next to him.

“He’s a detective.” Connor said.

“Well how about that buddy, you’re a detective and I’m a dog!” You crouched down and offered Sumo an affectionate scratch between the ears. Sumo briefly lifted his head in appreciation but was otherwise unaffected.

“Hey [Y/N], can you give me a hand with this ice?” You heard Hank calling for you from the kitchen.

“I’d better go see what he wants.” You rolled your eyes as if to say ’You know how Hank is.’ You left Connor to join Hank in the kitchen. The senior detective was leaning against his kitchen counter, watching the party and drinking whiskey straight from the bottle.

“I thought you were having an ice crisis in here.” You huffed.

“How the hell did you become a detective?” Hank complained before taking another swig of his drink. “There is no ice. Connor just wanted to talk to you alone, but I want to talk to you first.”

“Talk to me about what?” You didn’t miss how goofy you must have looked tilting your head to the side with curiosity just like an actual dog would.

“Don’t do that!” Hank grumbled. “I want to talk to you about Connor. Listen, you know normally I don’t like to get involved in people’s lives like this but Connor he’s…well…you know emotions are still really new to him and I just want to make sure that he’s not putting himself in danger.”

“Hank, what are you talking about? We’re at a Halloween party, at your house by the way, how would that put him in danger?” You asked. Hank covered his face with one of his hands.

“You’re seriously going to make me spell it out for you?” He complained, the words barely audible through his fingers. “Connor loves you, or at least he thinks he does.”

“I-wait what? Connor? Me?” You looked across the room where Connor was mingling with some of the uniformed officers. “Why?” You questioned Hank.

“Hell if I know.” He shrugged, reaching for his bottle again. “But you need to decide what you’re going to do about it, because I’m not going to let you lead him on and break that kid’s heart.”

“Hank I could never!” You assured him.

“Well, what are you going to do then?” He wanted to know.

#Connor x Reader #Connor RK800 #Connor RK800 FF #Connor RK800 Fan Fiction #Connor RK800 Fan Fic #detriot become human #DBH Connor #DBH Connor x Reader #DBH Connor FF #DBH Connor Fan Fic #DBH Connor Fan Fiction #Halloween

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kpopshitposter · 5 years

Note

Prompt 7 with ten 🙏🏻💖

“This isn’t goodbye.”

Writing Prompt Meme

TW: Terminal illness topic, death mention. Be safe out here, flowers.

It felt like staring at an abyss… but it wasn’t what everyone thinks. An abyss isn’t dark. An abyss isn’t empty. An abyss isn’t isolating. Abysses are pure and untainted. Abysses are the flecks of light and colour you see behind your eyelids. Abysses are full of possibility. That’s what it was like to have Ten’s arms around you.

The longing had been so prominent. You had fallen for him so quickly and so hard. Despite this, you have never entertained the idea… especially with the very serious, very true, and very looming fact that you’ll be gone soon. The simple fact is one you’ve known for a while. You’re not well, you never have been, and you never will be.

You never brought it up with Ten because it never felt relevant. It’s not like you lied, you just… didn’t mention it.

Not even when your health started to get worse, and worse…

You’re sure his parents know, you can tell by the pitying looks they give you, but nobody has told Ten.

Thinking back, that was a little cruel…

It’s too late to do anything about that now, though.

Ten spoke about the future a lot. He spoke about adventures, exploring, living. He had goals and dreams. Perhaps the worst part about knowing you’ll never get better isn’t the outcome, but the way it steals your optimism. You don’t get to fantasise. Still, though. It’s nice to hear about what Ten hopes to accomplish after you’re gone.

When he talks about a future with you, it stings. It stings in a faraway, distant, barely there kind of way. As if you’re just reading a book. Your lack of attachment has been why you’ve always been missing his hints.

“Do you think…” he’d begin, while you stared at the stars as you lay back on grass, “we’ll be more than friends when we’re older?”

You’d always smile and shrug. “We’ll know one day.”

It wasn’t uncommon for Ten to surprise you. The worse your health got the less inclined you were to make plans in advance, so he’d been taking initiative. He’s at your door with a bright, beautiful smile one evening. Let’s go for a drive and spend some time together. It was things like driving around with Ten which made you seem like a fully functional person. The silent evil inside of you allowed this much normalcy.

He cranked up the music and sang along as he always did, swaying back and forth, toying with you as much as possible to get you to feel like you’re performing a concert with him. The drive to your favourite spot overlooking the city is filled with attempts to harmonise, making up seated routines, playful pokes, and laughter.

The car is brought to a stop and you both fall silent. Everything looks so peaceful at night. The city shines brightly.

Ten unbuckled his seatbelt and licked his lips. He reaches over for the lever down the side of your seat, one hand on the headrest he pushes it back. With a gasp, you’re laying back with Ten stretched out over you.

He looks so focused.

After a moment of staring he does the same to his own seat, tilting it back the whole way.

You kind of hear your name as he gets comfortable on his side, looking over you. You’re still flat on your back.

He repeats your name and you’re snapped out of a trance.

“Did you say something?” you ask.

He sighed and rolled his eyes at you. Why? Why did you have to be so clueless?

“Hey, will you sing for me?”

“What should I sing?” he never gets tired of singing for you. If he had to pick just one person to hear his voice for the rest of his life, it would be you.

“A song that reminds you of me.”

He seems excited by this task. He thinks and thinks and - oh!

“You’re my honeybunch, sugar-plum, pumpey-umpey-umpkin--”

You burst out laughing and reach over to whack him, giggling while he laughs through the words, catching your hands and pawing back at you.

“You’re my sweetie pie!”

“Stop it!”

“You’re my cuppey-cake, gumdrop sh-shnu-ah!”

You’re on top of him now, trying to cover his mouth. He catches your wrists and grins up at you. His smile is so gorgeous. There’s a moment of stillness.

His lips part to whisper - but you cough and climb off of him.

He scrambles to find a bottle of water for you. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” you say, only after taking a sip and catching your breath again. Ouch. Your chest hurts.

Slowly, you lay back down.

You can feel his eyes on you but you look out of the window. It’s starting to rain.

“Should I take you home?”

“Not yet,” you ball up on your side, “keep singing.”

So he does, it’s the most comforting sound in the universe, the perfect melody to help you fall asleep.

Once he’s sure you’re settled he starts the car. By the time he reaches your house it’s not raining anymore, so he doesn’t try to wake you up. Instead, he calls your parents to let them know you’re outside and scoops you up in his arms. They open the door for you. He carries you up to your room and lays you down on your bed.

You’re sleeping so heavily you don’t notice. Is this just another symptom of your illness? It’s hard to tell at this point. You’ve lost your personality within the mix of side effects.

“Thank you for bringing her home.” your parents whisper to him.

“That’s okay. Goodnight.” Ten is polite as ever, smiling sweetly and lowering his head. He’s ready to walk out when they stop him.

“Actually - we’re going out now. It’s a work event this weekend and we can’t miss it. We did arrange for a neighbour to come and stay the night, but she cancelled and since you’re already here… would you mind staying? We’ve been worried about it all day.” He seems confused. “It’s just one night. The daily morning medication is in the cupboard above the sink downstairs, I think that’s all you’ll really need to know.”

“… Medication?” he glances back at you while you sleep soundly. Ignorant to the way your world is about to change.

“Yeah,” it must have slipped their mind… or perhaps they just didn’t know… or maybe they did this on purpose… “Can you stay? Please. We don’t want to leave her alone…”

“Y-yeah-” Ten kind of half stumbles over being nice. He walks them to the door and the moment he’s alone… he heads straight for the cabinet.

Medication? Daily medication?

He stills at the sight. There’s so many bottles. How is he meant to know which ones…

He takes them all out.

Onto the table they go and out comes his phone. He’s going to Google every single one until he can’t breathe. Until he’s sobbing in the kitchen while you rest upstairs. His face is in his arms. His whole body trembles at the thought, the realisation… he’s going to lose you.

He stays there all night.

You wake up in confusion, still in your clothes and unsure of how you got home.

You check the time on your phone with a yawn. Your alarm to take your medication hasn’t gone off yet, but you’re pretty hungry so you get up anyway.

You don’t expect to find Ten, dishevelled, cheeks and eyes swollen from crying, surrounded by your medication and used dirty tissues.

Someone is strangling you.

Slowly, you inch closer. Oh no. Oh no. Your heart races. This can’t be happening. This has to be - you suddenly cough and this wakes Ten up. He straightens with a jolt and rubs his face. He seems disoriented for a moment and ever so briefly… maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t know what you think he knows.

When he looks over the table and back at you, it’s over. You can tell. It’s exactly what you’ve been trying to avoid. Pity. Concern. Confusion. Pain.

He says your name and it somehow rhymes with Don’t Leave.

“Are you hungry?” this is your attempt to seem normal. “I was going to make eg-”

He says your name again and this time it rhymes with I Need You.

“Don’t worry about this mess,” the one he made with all your different medications, “I’ll sort out the box again and-”

One more time. He says your name one more time and that’s as much as you can handle. You sniffle, not quite realising the tears in your eyes. Your hands are gripping the back of a chair tightly. Ten stands and comes closer to you.

“This is yours, right?” he picks up the one medication which unravelled it all for him, the one which made everything crystal clear.

You clear your throat. You shift awkwardly. You nod, allowing a tear to roll down your cheek.

Ten sets it down and he’s quickly got both hands on your face, cradling your jaw and bringing you closer. He rests his forehead against yours. He’s crying, too. He says your name and it sounds a lot like Spend Your Last Moments With Me.

“Ten…” your hands gently settle on his sides.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It didn’t matter.”

“How can you say that?”

“I never acted differently around you, Ten. What you saw was always me. This doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes everything!” he’s getting frustrated with your answers. He releases you a little and backs away, tears staining his skin.

“What does it change? It doesn’t have to change anything! I’m still me!” At least that’s what you’ve been telling yourself. Maybe avoiding it has been the game all along.

“It changes the way I want to treat you!”

“Well it shouldn’t! I don’t want your pity, I get enough of that!”

He’s coming closer again, once more his hands are keeping you in place.

“I kept waiting for the right time with you. I kept waiting… I shouldn’t have waited.”

“For what?” Oh, you’re so foolish.

He pulls you in for a firm kiss. It’s a kiss full of relief and desperation, it’s tense and calm, it flows like water and hits like lightning.

“Let me love you,” he pleads.

“T-Ten I’m confused-” not enough to stop him, of course. You’ll speak between kisses.

“I’ve always wanted this. I’ve always wanted you. If you want me too, let’s not waste time.” If you want me too? Where did confident, sassy Ten go? Ten’s heart was in shreds; Confident and Sassy didn’t exist in that moment.

“I-I’ve always liked you, too… but…” he starts to dab your tears with his sleeve, “Ten, you’re going to get hurt. I don’t want you to see me when I get more sick.”

“Then I’ll cure you.”

Words can’t fix things. If they did, all those nights you spent whispering to each other would have ended world hunger. If they did, all of those confessions which followed Ten finding out the truth would have solved global warming. If they did, the sweet I Love Yous would have extended your life. They didn’t, though. Ten would call himself your cure, but words can’t fix things.

He watched you get progressively more unwell. He stayed by your side every time you were hospitalised. He held your hand when you couldn’t stop shaking. He fed you when you couldn’t even think about eating.

It wasn’t too long until everyone knew. It was time. The doctor had recommended goodbyes be shared, even if it was a little early it’s better early than… well… never.

Ten combed his fingers through your hair, the other hand clutching yours.

“I’m sorry, Ten.” you barely managed.

“I’m not.” you’ve had that exchange so many times. When your coughing woke him up. When your discomfort was so chronic that he couldn’t reach the closeness with you that he wanted. He did what he always does, kissed your cheek, smiled at you, and let you know that he accepts everything. He loves you so, so much. It’s such a painful shame that you won’t be around to receive it anymore.

“Don’t miss me too much, okay?”

“Don’t say that like that. This isn’t goodbye.” his strong words juxtaposed his voice and his eyes. He didn’t seem so sure… but perhaps he was right.

“Will we be more than friends in our next life together?” you ask him.

“Yeah, we will be.” he nods, and you believe him. It fills you with so much hope.

#ten x reader #nct x reader #nct scenarios #ten scenarios #superm scenarios #Anonymous #wayv x reader

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madpanda75 · 5 years

Text

“The Negative” Part Two

Greetings from Boise! During my cross country travel day, I was able to edit the conclusion of my Nevada story. Please forgive any blursts, editing is not easy in a crowded loud airport terminal.

Get ready for some super fluffy soft Nevada and of course his beloved sidekick Vegas ❤️😍

Check out Part One of the story

You came back from your run, exhausted, sweaty, and in need of a long hot shower. Not wanting to wake Nevada, you tiptoed into the apartment, only to see that he was already awake and sitting on the couch, waiting for you with a pregnancy test in his hand.

You stopped in your tracks, looking between the test stick and your boyfriend. “Where did you get that?”

“I found the cat pissing on it this morning,” he dryly said.

“Really?” You glanced down at Vegas and for a moment seriously believed Nevada. It wasn’t that ludicrous an idea, you had heard that cats could be potty trained and Vegas was highly intelligent.

“No, not really. Where do you think I got them,” Nevada snapped. “I found them in the bathroom. Care to explain?” He stood up and walked towards you, holding up the empty E.P.T. box. Hearing the betrayal in Nevada’s voice made you feel like you had just been caught with your hand in the cookie jar. You said nothing and simply stared at the floor, studying the grooves in the hardwood. “Someone in this house bought these tests for a reason and it certainly wasn’t me or the retarded cat,” Nevada continued.

“They’re mine,” you confessed. “The tests are mine.”

Nevada ran his hand through his hair. Of course he knew the tests were yours but somehow hearing you say the words made it seem all too real. “How long have you known?”

“A few weeks,” you said with a shrug and walked past him to grab a glass of water from the kitchen.

Nevada’s eyes widened, following close behind you. “You’ve known for weeks! Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?!”

It suddenly dawned on you that he thought you were pregnant. You should’ve told him that the test was negative but you couldn’t get the words out. Maybe they were stuck in your throat. Maybe you weren’t ready to say them out loud just yet. Whatever the reason, you played along with the idea that you were pregnant. “Because I wasn’t sure how you would react. I didn’t think you liked kids or even wanted kids.”

Nevada glared at you. “Who the fuck do you think you are. I have a right to know if you’re pregnant. It’s my kid too!” He stepped towards you, his voice booming. All of the emotions and stress that had been building up led to this moment. “Were you never gonna tell me?! It’s only after I catch you hiding the evidence that you even decided to come clean!” He paced the floor before stopping and pointing his finger at you. “You’ve shut me out for weeks. I’ve asked you what’s wrong and you don’t talk to me.”

“Well the floor’s yours, Papi! I’m letting you talk! So tell me Nevada, do you want kids? Do you want a family with me?!” You got right in his face and screamed at him. To be honest, it felt good to be angry, to have an excuse to lash out. “Do you!?! Fucking tell me!”

Nevada didn’t say anything. His face unreadable. “I thought so!” You hissed. “Oh and by the way, there is no baby. There never was a baby! I’m not pregnant! Happy now?!” Finally the words came out, lingering in the room, long after you had said them. It was a shot right through your heart. You walked past Nevada, leaving him standing alone in the kitchen, completely stunned by your confession.

The sound of the door opening brought him back to reality. He followed you down the hallway to the elevators, the two of you creating a scene that would give a trashy reality show a run for their money. It wouldn’t have surprised you if you nosy neighbor, Mrs. Castillo, had her ear pressed up to the wall, listening to your shouting match. “Oye, where are you going?! Get back here! We’re not finished.”

“Oh yes we are,” you said as the elevator doors closed.

Nevada ran back into the apartment and opened the window to see you leaving the building. “Get back here!!!”

“Suck a bag of dicks, Nevada!!!!!” You yelled, several innocent bystanders stopping to watch the scene unfold.

“Hey, you forgot your fucking cat!!!!” He bellowed back. You flipped him off and continued to walk down the street.

Nevada slammed the window down so hard it nearly broke. He whipped out his phone and called for one of his men to follow you. Even though you had just had a fight, he wanted you to be safe. The anguished look on your face when you told him there was no baby nearly broke his heart. You may not have wanted to be near him at that moment, but he would be damned if he left you alone right now.

People glanced your way as you brushed past them. You were sure you looked a mess, sweaty with tears streaming down your face, but you didn’t care. You didn’t care about anything. Walking was all you could process. One foot in front of the other. Maybe you’d find another cat and bring them home. Out of the corner of your eye, you spied a large black SUV Escalade practically pacing you. Turning your head, you spied one of Nevada’s men.

They would follow you for blocks, giving you your space but still keeping a watchful eye out. In a small way it brought you comfort that they were there. When it felt like your feet were about to fall off, you stopped and went to get in the passenger side of the car.

“Manny, will you please take me home,” you quietly instructed the driver. He nodded his head and turned the car around.

*****

Nevada stared off into space. It had been hours since you had left. He sat in the living room, puffing on his cigar, trying to process the bomb you had just dropped. A wave of emotions washed over him, shock, anger, followed by sadness. Nevada never thought about being a father. It was one of those things that normal people who led normal lives may have wanted but not Trujillo. But then again he never thought he would ever fall in love until he met you. Nevada knew you would be an amazing mother. Hell, you were already like a mother to his men, always doting on them, stopping by the club to bring them a home-cooked meal, making sure they were taking care of themselves. But would he make a good father? Did he even want kids? Moments flashed before his eyes of you barefoot and pregnant, cradling your protruding bump then later you at the hospital, placing a baby in his arms. A baby that had your delicate features, gazing up at their father as they wrapped their tiny hand around his finger. An inexplicable warmth radiated from his heart at the thought and right then he knew. Yes, he did want kids and he wanted them with you.

Vegas jumped up on the couch, interrupting Nevada’s reverie and pawing at his leg. He glanced down at the cross-eyed, scraggly cat. “I suppose you’re pissed at me too, huh?” The cat crawled up onto Nevada’s lap, nuzzling his head against his stomach. With a tentative shaky hand, he reached out and pet the cat. Vegas purred and tilted his head while Nevada scratched behind his half-bitten ear. “This is pretty nice. I can see why Y/N likes you.” That was when he realized how much of a comfort Vegas was to you. Taking care of Vegas helped heal your heart. You needed him just like he needed you. Even though it stung that you never came to Nevada with your pregnancy scare, he was grateful you had someone or something to rely on. “Listen, thanks for taking care of my girl. I owe you one, pero I can take it from here, ok?” The cat yawned in response and soon fell asleep while Nevada waited for you to come home.

*****

You opened the door of your apartment. Nevada glanced over when he heard the latch unlock and stood up, walking over to the foyer. “You ready to talk?”

You stared at him, masking your pain behind cold eyes, refusing to let him see you cry. “I forgot my cat,” you sneered and tried to move past him.

Nevada stopped you, pulling you to his chest. All attempts made to wriggle out of his grasp were useless. The harder you fought back, the harder he held you until you eventually gave up and began to sob. He wrapped his arms around you, running his fingers through your hair.

Nevada enveloped you, resting his cheek on top of your head, not saying a word because he knew you didn’t need words, all you needed was to cry and he would hold you until every single tear was shed. You clung to him, soaking his shirt, feeling the strong sinewy muscles under your palms. The sweet smoky smell of cigars combined with the musk of his cologne calmed you. For the first time in a long time, you felt safe.

Vegas brushed up against your leg, softly mewling. You pulled away from Nevada and scooped him up, nuzzling your face against his soft fur as you walked towards the living room.

Nevada followed and sat down next to you. “I’m sorry,” he softly said. This was a historical moment in Nevada’s life. Trujillo never said he was sorry to anyone. It was a hard rule. Saying you were sorry meant that you were weak and Nevada never wanted to come across as weak. You were the only exception. The only person that he could be vulnerable with.

“I’m sorry too. I know I should’ve told you about the pregnancy but I got scared. Then when it turned out we weren’t pregnant, I was heartbroken,” you said, your voice beginning to crack. “Taking that test made me realize how much I want to have a family. How much I want that with you, Vada.” You reached out and took hold of Nevada’s hand, meeting his gaze. “But if you don’t want children….if you don’t want a family with me…. then I understand.”

The silence that followed was unbearable. You could hear a pin drop. During your walk, you had steeled yourself to the fact that you would probably never have a family with Nevada. It hurt like hell, but you had accepted it.

Nevada leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, steepling his fingers. “I know I didn’t react so well to the news pero it was a shock. I didn’t think you were gonna spring this on me. I needed time to think, ya know.”

“I know,” you said in a barely audible whisper.

He sighed and turned towards you, watching you stroke the cat. The image of you cradling a baby in your arms once again drifted back into his mind but then he thought of himself as a father and that gnawing sense of doubt began to creep in. “You’d be an incredible mom. But me? I don’t know if I would be that great of a father.”

You shook your head and squeezed his hand. Nevada may not have believed it but he was already like a father to his men, taking care of them and their families. He was fiercely loyal and protective. If only he could see what you saw in him. “Don’t say that. You’d be an amazing father.”

His lips quirked into a smile. “You think so?”

“I know so.” You ran your fingers through his hair, kissing his temple.

“Well, while you were out, I did look online at one of those baby store websites to see if they made baby leather jackets. Turns out we can get one custom-made.” Nevada said with a shrug and motioned towards the hallway. “We could change the guest room into a nursery or we could move somewhere else. Maybe someplace bigger with a backyard.”

Your heart skipped a beat as you listened to Nevada rattle off several more ideas he had for your family. “So does this mean we’re doing this? You and me?”

He reached out to cup your face, stroking your cheek with his thumb. “I think we are.”

You burst into tears and practically jumped into Nevada’s lap, planting a big kiss on his lips only to pull away when another thought crossed your mind, a thought that had been plaguing you ever since you peed on a stick. “But what if I can’t get pregnant. What if this doesn’t happen for us. I can’t pick a cat up off the street every time I have a negative pregnancy test.” You looked over at Vegas, who was currently licking his crotch. “You’ll end up with a crazy cat lady.”

“That was one time. One result. We can try again. I mean practice makes perfect, right?” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “If we don’t get pregnant then I’ll buy you a whole fucking zoo. Don’t worry, mi amor.” He ran his hands up and down your back, kissing your forehead, then the tip of your nose, and finally dropping a sweet kiss on your lips. “And remember no matter what happens, you always have me. I’ll always need you and I’ll always love you.”

“I love you too.” You whispered before softly kissing him. The kiss quickly gained momentum, becoming feverish. He parted your lips with his tongue, groaning against your mouth. You moaned and tugged the hairs on the back of his neck, craving his touch. It had been so long since you had been intimate with each other. Your body was quivering with need. “Why don’t you come hop in the shower with me and then we can spend the day in bed. We have some lost time to make up for,” you softly said, playfully biting down on his bottom lip.

You stood up and grabbed Nevada by the hand. Your lips never leaving his, tangled in a passionate embrace as you both stumbled down the hallway, ripping each other’s clothes off. You whipped off Nevada’s shirt and blindly tossed it. The garment covered Vegas, who was traipsing behind you.

When you reached the bedroom, he stopped and picked up the cat, placing Vegas in his kitty mansion out in the living room before heading back to the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

“What about Vegas?” You asked still panting from your makeout session.

“The cat can wait.” Nevada slowly approached you, his eyes darkened, full of lust as he raked you over from head to toe. “Tonight you’re mine,” he purred and lifted you in his arms, carrying you to the shower.

*****

One year later:

Nevada stood outside your room, casually glancing around the bustling hallway. A nurse sitting at her station, glanced over at him. She had been cautiously eyeing up Nevada for the last twenty minutes. “Can I help you with something, sir?”

“No, gracias. I’m good, Mami.” He said with a wink, trying to appear completely innocent or as innocent as a man dressed in leather could be. After a few minutes, Manny walked down the hallway with a large duffle bag in his hand, sidling up to his boss. “We all good,” Nevada mumbled, adjusting the ring on his finger.

“Yep, got it right here.” Manny looked around and made sure the coast was clear, handing the bag over to Nevada.

“Gracias, mi amigo. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Nevada said, pulling the man into a half hug.

You smiled at the tiny baby girl in your arms, humming a lullaby while you stroked the soft dark downy hair of your newborn. Nevada quietly entered the room, drinking in the sight before him. He thought he knew what love was when he first met you but this was different. Seeing you cradle your child in your arms, it was almost overwhelming. Nevada could feel his heart swelling.

“Look, Lara” you whispered to your baby girl. “There’s Papi. Can you wave hi to Papi.” You gently shook her tiny hand towards Nevada, making it look like the newborn was waving to her father.

He laughed and came to sit next to you on the bed. “How’s it going in here?”

“Good. Just finished feeding her,” you said, tugging your hospital gown back up and dabbing away some milk that had dribbled down Lara’s chin.

“She’s so beautiful,” Nevada whispered.

You nodded your head. “She’s perfect.”

“You were amazing,” he said with a smile and kissed your temple. “I’m so fucking proud of you.”

You turned and kissed him fully on the lips, resting your forehead against his when you spied a bag that you could have sworn was moving. “What’s in the bag?” You asked, arching your eyebrow at Nevada.

“This?” he replied, picking up the duffle bag and moving it onto the bed. “A surprise for you.”

“Another surprise! I thought this was the big surprise.” You giggled and held up your left hand to show off the large diamond ring on your finger.

“I always have a trick or two up my sleeve, Mami.” Nevada unzipped the duffle bag and pulled out your beloved black cross-eyed cat. He had snuck him into the hospital just for you.

“Vegas!” You exclaimed. The feline softly meowed and brushed up against your arm. “Vegas, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.” You leaned forward towards your cat, showing him the baby in your arms. “This is Lara.” The cat blinked and glanced down at the tiny baby, nuzzling against her blanket and purring. Vegas had been by your side for your entire pregnancy, laying his head on your ever-growing stomach for the past nine months, always keeping a watchful eye on you.

“You’re going to look out for her.” Nevada smirked and scratched behind the cat’s ear. It took some time, but eventually Vegas had grown on him. The two became quite close. Although Nevada still could not understand why the damn cat always wanted to sleep on top of his head.

You smiled at Nevada, his eyes transfixed on the baby. “Do you want to hold your daughter?”

“Yeah, I do,” he replied, nodding his head.

You handed Lara over to him. He leaned down and gently kissed her forehead. “Hola, mi princesa. I’m your Papi. I promise I’m going to take care of you for the rest of my life, mi vida.” The tiny baby cooed and wrapped her hand around his finger.

Nevada locked eyes with you, feeling a lump form in his throat. “I love you,” he mouthed.

“I love you too,” you mouthed back, tears forming in your eyes. You and Nevada sat there gazing down at your brand new daughter completely mesmerized by the beautiful life you brought into this world, experiencing a love like no other. Finally you had the family you always dreamed about and to think it all started with a cat in a rainstorm.

@glimmerglittergirl @southern-magnolia @sweetcannolicarisi @delia26 @obfuscateyummy @sass-and-suspenders @eclecticminded @thatesqcrush @katmstanton @amirightcounsellor @beltzboys2015-blog @letty-o @sonnysdoll @lyssa1385 @sweetsummertime99 @burningsorr0ws @gibbs274 @izzythefanfreak @riodallas @babypink224221 @livxrafa @esparza-army @obsessionprofessional @ottosuricato @melsquared79

#Nevada ramirez #nevada ramirez imagine #nevada ramirez x reader #nevada ramirez fic #trouble in the heights #raúl esparza

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acnhplayertwo · 4 years

Text

Player Two's Diary.

Entry 1.

Dear diary,

Thanks Bobness I have this phone with me. Not gonna lie, I'd totally be going cuckoo without an outlet by now.

Why, you ask? Well, it's simple! Let me explain.

This utter mess began something short of one week ago, when my partner, let's call 'em S, presented me with an idea.

"Let's go away, buddy. Let's just toss this boring life behind and go somewhere new. New and fresh. Like... like the Outskirts, or-- or an island. A deserted one, maybe. Somewhere nobody knows us and none of our problems would ever be able and find us. Come on, buddy. Let's do it."

And, pal, I know not whether it was their enthusiasm, or the fact I was starting to resent my life as mayor of a lethargic town, or that we both had a glass too many of Wolfgang's homemade apple wine, but... I accepted.

I said yes.

Actually, I may have said something more than that. In my drunken haze, I remember yelling something like "OH MY BOB, THAT'S AN AWESOME IDEA AND I ALSO HAVE A FRIEND WHO TOLD ME HE'D TAKE ON A DEAERTED ISLAND BUSINESS AND CAN YOU BELIEVE THE COINCIDENCE HAHA, LET ME CALL THAT OL' RASCAL NOOK!"

And that was it, dear diary. In the span of an our we had traded our entire life's savings for a couple tickets to Nowhere.

But it wasn't that bad at first. I was actually psyched. "You go first, S!", I said. "You go and prepare a cozy spot for us. I'll reach you in three days tops."

And so we did. The next day, S kissed me goodbye, nothing but a backpack on their shoulders and hope in their eyes. "Plane's departing soon. I'll be waiting for you in our lives' next chapter, buddy."

So they went, while I stayed. I had too much stuff to do still, what with signing my temporary resignment as town mayor, packing up, saying goodbye to my citizens.

Then, 48 hours later, there I was, waiting to hop aboard on one of Dodo Airlines' rickety machines.

"Oh my, you won't believe how perfect it is here!" S' voice crackled assaulted my ears with a mix of squawking happiness and bad reception through my phone's speaker. "Weather is marvellous, and Sakura's are bloomin' and and and everything is just SO PERFECT!! There's so much stuff to do, and things to craft, and everyone is just SO DEAR!! They even threw a welcome party for the first residents, and there were confetti, and juice, and even a BONFIRE!!"

I found myself smiling as I left my old life behind and flew through the skies that would lead me to a brand new one. But my smile soon faltered as I stepped off the plane and onto Sleepwalk Island's wooden dock.

"Oh, you here. Finally. Fearless Leader's waiting for you."

"Allright," I thought as I followed Tim ad Tommy’s fuzzy shadows across the island and into a green tent, “they have never been the friendly type, but... is a hug really too much to ask?” I ignored my disappointment, telling myself that they must have been busy, like they always are, and let my face melt in a huge smile as I breathed in the familiar musk of wood and tanuki fur.

“PT!! Such a pleasure to see you here, yes yes!“ Tom rushed towards me, paws extended, his eyes nothing more than a couple happy slits. “I heard of your arrival and boy, I couldn’t wait! Here, drink something and make yourself at home...“ He slapped a can of soda in my open hand and began explaining me the hows and whys of his new business venture, nodding with his usual verve. “... and from this terminal here you can order anything you want and have it shipped right at your door-- ahem, tent step! Isnt’ it great??“

I smiled, knowing full well there was nothing I could say or do to stop his tirade. “And look! This is my new workbench! You can use it anytime, and-- let me show you how it’s done!“

Twenty minutes later, I stepped back out into the morning sun, arms heavy with Nook’s patented survival bundle, head buzzing with info.

“Awesome! I will repay this trifle of a loan by nighttime, and after that, this island will be mine! Oh boy, I can’t wait! It’s gonna be so rad!“

Or so I thought.

Reality, in fact, was soon to smack me in the face. Hard.

You see, S had told me all about how they had been able to trade bugs and fish for much-needed DiY recipes. “And you’ll be able to craft lotsa useful stuff, like axes, and you’ll need those to find wood and get stones and iron from rocks and build so much amazing objects-- I just can’t even!!“

So, understandably, I was all set to seize the occasion and do the same.

That afternoon, I stepped into Nook’s headquarters with a bucket of fish, looking forward to my bright future as Sleepwalk’s craftmaster, when...

“Oh. I see. well, buddy, I’m afraid I can’t help you at this time,“ Tom said, avoiding my gaze and preferring to stare at one of my flapping mackerels instead.

“What d’you mean?,“ I asked, wiping the sweat from my surprised face.

“Well, it’s kinda embarrassing, but...“ Tom scratched his head before continuing. “You see, every other person no this island came in here, trading their critters for recipes, and... there were more people than I expected and I didn’t take into account this possibility and...“ He sighed. “...I’m all out. I have no more recipes to give you, buddy. Sorry ‘bout that.“

I blinked more times than needed.

“But... what am I supposed to do now?“

Tom shrugged.

“You can still sell your catch to scrounge up a few bells, I suppose. Or you could keep some fish as pet, I dunno.“

“Yes, no, what I mean is...“ I looked around and gestured to the outside world.

“What am I supposed to do?!“

Tom cocked his head and bit his lip. Then, unexpectedly, he flashed me the biggest smile in the universe.

“It’s simple! ENJOY LIFE!“

He slid an arm around my shoulders and began dragging me towards the exit.

“You can fish some more, gather branches and craft a bug net, or-- or or, ehm, take pictures! Yes yes, pictures are nice, you can post them on Twitter and make all your friends jealous, and then Ireallyhavenoideaso GOODBYE FOR NOW!“

And just like that, he shoved me and my broken heart out of his tent and back into Sleepwalk Island’s untamed wilderness.

Needless to say, I was dumbfounded.

Still, I couldn’t stop now. I still had a debt to repay.

So, I took a deep breath and lunged into my activities.

I spent the entire day fishing, and fishing, and catching bugs, and picking fruit, until the sun set, and the fresh night breeze began freezing the sweat on my skin.

I was beyond exhausted, dirty and disheartened. But I was ready, and, most importantly, furious.

The moon was high in the sky when I stepped into Tom’s tent, and found him alone, beer in hand, a stack of paperwork under his muzzle.

“Nook,“ I announced, voice low and gravelly with rage, “check your phone.“

“Oh, PT! I didn’t see you the--“

“Check. Your. Phone.“

I stared at him as he obeyed.

“Ah. Your debt is settled, I see! Now we can think about building you a home proper, yes yes!“ He was trying to hide his embarrassment behind a thin layer of businesslike enthusiasm, but I wasn’t having it.

“Yes, I want my roof blue, thank you. But that is not why I am here.“

I sat on a stool beside him and spread my fingers on his desk.

“Now listen closely, Nook. I did everything you told me. I spent the entire day chasing bugs and I caught so much fish I will stink like one for a month. Then, I took pictures. I took so many my thumbs are sore, and people are wondering wether I am planning to become a professional photographer. And now, here I am, same as when I started, doing ZERO progress cause guess what?!“ I could hear my voice raising in volume, but could do nothing to stop it. “There is nothing to do on this island. Nothing. I can’t craft anything, cause there’s no recipes. And even if I did, I couldn’t craft, or build anything, cause there are no materials for me to gather. But tell me the truth, Tom. This isn’t the same for everybody, is it? No... these things are happening to me and me only. Cause there is nothing for me to do on this island. Ain’t it the truth, Tom?“

When the raccoon looked at me, he did it with his saddest eyes.

“Alright, PT, yes. You want the truth, you shall have it.“

He drew a long, shaky breath and tossed me a beer.

“You see, bud, Sleepwalk is an island. And until not long ago, a deserted one at that.“ He cleared his voice before resuming.

“So, yeah. There isn’t much here. Literally. Resources are awfully scarce. And in order to thrive, you need as much as you can get your paws on, and at times, even that isn’t enough. Sure, people here might seem kind and friendly. But truth is, we’re all locked in a constant fight for survival. Every single one of us. Never forget that.“

“But... But I...“

But I am the mayor, I wanted to yell.

“You are the second human relocator, my friend. It’s a first come first served world, buddy... and you, I’m afraid, arrived a bit late.“

I do not remember walking out of that tent and into the darkness.

I don’t even remember how I ended up on the beach.

All I know, is that I did not sleep last night, busy as I was hugging my tear-soaked knees, wrestling with that crushing realization.

The realization that, on this island, I will never be anything more than... Player Two.

#acnh #animal crossing new horizons #player two

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its-theeaqueen17-stuff · 5 years

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Alright folks! What with cringe culture being dead and everything I feel that its high time that I posted some Lion King headcannons! Heads up most of these will be about the events that happened during Scar's reign because I find that particular time period so interesting since there's so much left open for interpretation, so here are my thoughts.

~ The reason Zira was so obsessed with Scar is because he basically saved her life. Her and her sisters came from a far away land that was destroyed by fire. (This is where she got the idea to light the pridelands on fire in the second movie) When she and what was left of her previous pride came to the pridelands after their long and perilous journey, Scar welcomed them in. Because of this Zira saw Scar as a hero. In reality though Scar didn't let them in out of the kindness of his heart he really just wanted more hunters.

~ Zira came from a pride that was much more militant in custom, the lionesses from Zira's pride where a lot more aggressive and harsh, both in hunting tactics and in personality making them unpopular with the lionesses of pride rock. Causing tension between the two groups from the start.

~ When Zira first arrived to the pridelands she was already heavily pregnant with Nuka and that was another reason Scar approved of Zira and her clan joining his pride, when her cub was born he could choose it to be the heir to his throne.

~ Due to Zira's poor health during her long journey away from her old home Nuka was a stillborn, but he was revived by Rafiki.

~ Since he was the only male cub on pride rock at the time, he was originally supposed to be the heir to the throne.

~ Nuka was a very sickly little cub, always drifting in and out of illness.

~Because of this the all the lionesses put their differences aside to help take care of him.

~ Nala, Sarabi, and Sarafina even babysat for Nuka a few times.

~ Nuka isn't his real name (Who names their kid stinky?) it's Muujiza, Swahili for miracle. Nuka is just an unfortunate nickname given to him because of his less then savory personal hygiene habits.

~ Its not that Nuka likes being dirty he just often focuses all of his attention on the one thing that he's interested in at the moment and often forgets to groom.

~ Zira and Scar were never romantically involved with each other. Zira just really admired Scar, but she never formed much of a relationship with him outside of king and loyal subject.

~ Likewise Scar has no interest in courtship. He finds falling in love to be a foolish waste of time. That he could be spending ignoring his responsibilities as king.

~ The where times where Sarabi considered gathering up Nala and Sarafina and leaving. But she didn't want to give up on the land that she was born in. Plus the lionesses needed a leader who wasn't trash. She kept hope alive, and she genuinely thought that Scar would get it together once he got the hang of being king. (Spoiler alert: He didn't)

~To be Honest Sarabi was the emotional rock that held the pride together during Scar's reign. She kept it classy with they prey animals by maintaining good relationships and respect for them for as long as time and circumstance permitted her to, she was the voice of reason during internal conflict between the lionesses from pride rock and Zira's clan, and she was never afraid to stand up against the hyenas when they were getting out of line. She was still a Queen with or without Mufasa around.

~ The hyenas never helped out the hunting party. They where pretty much just a secret strike force for when Scar needed to get some shady shit done but didn't want to get his paws dirty.

~ During Scar's reign the hyenas outranked the lionesses; so the Lionesses where often forced to perform many difficult and/or humiliating tasks as a form of revenge

~ Nala got the brunt of this from Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed, as retribution for their little encounter at the elephant graveyard

~ The reason Zazu didn't snitch on Scar after he smacked him into that big ass rock in the stampede scene is because he had slight amnesia (You try getting hit in the head by a fully grown lion when you're already in a state of panic and see how much you remember)

~ The Lionesses where forced to overhunt in order to feed themselves and the hyenas so the lionesses often had to go on solo missions to scout out more food

~ On one of these solo missions Zira ran into her old mate Mwuaji who had survived, that's when Vitani, and Kovu where conceived.

~Zira brought him back to pride rock thinking Scar would welcome him as he did with her. But Scar didn't want another bigger male lion trying to usurp him, but he also didn't want to get on Zira's bad side since she and her group were excellent hunters and he didn't want her to take them to go live with Mwuaji. So he pretended to invite him to live with the pride then sent his hyenas to deal with him in the night.

~ In the morning, when everyone asked what happened Scar said that Mwuaji had attacked him to try to claim the throne for himself; and that the hyenas came to his defence.

~Zira believed him, and blamed herself for almost getting the king killed. This incident added to her paranoia.

~ When Kovu and Vitani where born Nuka was once again ill and it looked terminal this time. Since Kovu was such a healthy cub Scar choose him to be his new heir instead, as not to take any chances since Nuka was always sick.

~The reason Scar choose Kovu and not Vitani even though she was born first is because Scar has very regressive ideologies when it comes to females. He sees lionesses as hunters and nothing more.

~ At first Nuka was exited to be a big brother however when he got the news that he was no longer the heir to the throne because of his health coupled with the fact that as time went on Zira started to neglect Nuka more and more he started to resent his younger siblings especially Kovu.

~Zira and her clan went away on a trip to find more food when Simba returned. Needless to say they where not happy when they came back.

~There was another battle and in the end Zira and her sisters where banished to the outlands.

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spectraspecs-writes · 5 years

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Taris - Chapter 26

Link to the masterpost. Chapter 25. Chapter 27.

I’ve got this big, anticipatory feeling in my chest. Apprehension, that’s the word. Lost it for a second there. Apprehension. Big apprehension. I’m in a gang base that is not accessible to the public like the Bek base. I just broke in with a Republic soldier and a 14-year-old Twi’lek to steal back a prototype accelerator for a swoop bike. Let me tell you, when I signed on to the Republic, this is not what I anticipated. I figured I’d be plotting out new hyperspace routes or something, you know? Or using my knowledge of Outer Rim territories to help the Republic garner support on non-Republic worlds. At the very least, I expected to be on a starship a lot of the time. This was nowhere in my expectations. War with the Sith? Okay, that was expected. Local gang war? Very much not expected. And yet here I am, anyway.

The first enemy we encounter is a patrol droid. But droids are easy - while Mission and Carth distracted it I got in behind it and triggered the shutdown. Easy. From the droid I turn right and go into the first door. There’s a disabled sentry droid here, and if you know anything about me at this point, then you’ll know when I see a droid, I want to fix it. So I fix it up, activate its weapons and shields and set it to patrol, taking out any Black Vulkars it sees. That should make things go a little more smoothly.

I then head directly across the hall - since I don’t know where the accelerator is, I figure, might as well check every room, right? You never know. But instead I end up in the Black Vulkar mess, fighting the cook. (You know, if I were the cook for a gang organization and someone broke in, I don’t think I’d fight them, you know? It’s just a job - I sit in a kitchen and make food all day. If someone breaks in, then, hey, I guess I’m not making lunch that day, you know? It’s a shame about my former employers, but that’s what they get for being in a gang, I suppose, I’m just there to make food. But for some reason this guy seems pretty devoted to the cause, even if all he does is prepare rations.) In the next room over, there are two more Vulkars and a human woman. She seems to be in distress. Guessing she’s not a Vulkar then. When the Vulkars are dead, I go over to her.

“Please, don't hurt me!” she pleads. And I don’t intend to, but I can understand how the swords might fool some people. “I just serve the food here,” she says, “that's all! I'm not like these others – I'm not even a Black Vulkar. Please don't kill me!”

“How did you end up here in the Vulkar base?” I ask her.

“My name is Ada. My father owed Davik some money, but he couldn't pay. Davik killed my father and sold me into slavery here at the Vulkar compound to pay off the debt.” Wow, clearly we’re seeing the best of humanity here on Taris.

“Don't worry,” I tell her, “I just want to ask you a few questions.”

“But I don't know anything!” she says, “I'm just a prisoner here - a slave! The Vulkars don't tell me anything, they treat me like dirt, they beat me if I screw up their orders.”

“You may know more than you think, miss,” Carth says, in that comforting voice he has when he’s not protesting my questions, “Help us and we'll help you, okay?”

“Well… alright,” she says after a moment of consideration, “I still don't know how much help I can be. But I sure hope you get rid of all the Vulkars. I hate them!”

“I’m here for the Beks, looking for a prototype accelerator for a swoop bike,” I tell her, “Do you have any idea where I might find something like that?”

“What?” she says, “I… I've never heard of such a thing. I guess it might be in the garage on the lower level – that's where all the Vulkars go to work on their swoop bikes. But I've never been down there. The elevator is protected by a security system – only the Vulkars are allowed to go down there.”

“Hey, that helps,” I say, “But I’m also looking for a prisoner. A woman named Bastila.”

“Is she that Republic soldier?”

“That’s the one.”

“I heard one of those Vulkar mention her, but she's not here. He said Brejik didn't trust his men around her. I guess she's too important to be a slave here in the kitchens, getting pawed and groped and kicked and spit on like me. Brejik must have take her somewhere safe.”

Well, I guess that was to be expected. “If I let you go can you find your way out of here?”

“Now that you've killed the guards who were supposed to watch me I think I could find my way out of here,” she says uncertainly.

“Then go,” I say, “get out of here.”

“I… I'm free to go?” she says, “You're not going to kill me? I… I don't know how I can ever repay you. Thank you! Thank you! I… I have to get out of here before any of the Vulkars see me.” And off she goes.

I go into the next room and out again and wind up in a huge space. There’s a computer terminal there - I think I want to see what I can see. I slice into the terminal, no problem, and hack into the security cameras.

The biggest problem looks to be in the barracks, but there’s a power conduit in there. I set the conduit to overload. That should take care of most if not all of the Vulkars in there. Then I look at the garage elevator - there’s some turrets there, and if I open that door, they’re going to have a problem with that. But not if I shut them down first. I also have all the security doors unlock and open. That opens up the door to the armory, which is apparently behind me. Might as well pillage the Black Vulkar weapons, if it only keeps them from using them on others. I get some grenades out of there and some blaster rifles.

But I still don’t quite know where the elevator to the garage is, so I have to keep looking. Oh, look, that must be the door back to the Lower City. Neat. I’ll have to keep that in mind. But I’m not ready for that yet, so I head to the right and find a now-open door. With a single Twi’lek Black Vulkar. When he attacks, naturally I strike back, but then he stops.

“I surrender! I surrender! Please, don't kill me. I'm not like these others. I'm not like Brejik and his new Vulkars!”

“What do you mean?” Mission says in a bit of an angry voice, “You’re a Vulkar, aren’t you?”

“I'm a Vulkar,” he says, “but I was here long before Brejik took over. I was a Vulkar back when it meant something. Back when we had honor. Then Brejik and his followers took over and turned our gang into a bunch of violent thugs and bloodthirsty punks. Now they treat all us original Vulkars like second class citizens. Take me, for example. I used to be one of the highest ranking Vulkars in the gang. Now I'm stuck on guard duty here in the back, all thanks to Brejik!”

“If you hate Brejik so much, why don’t you leave?” I ask.

“I've been trying to work up the courage to leave, but it's not that easy,” he says, “Brejik's followers will try to hunt down anyone who leaves the Vulkar gang. He says he won't let traitors live. Ha! Brejik and his followers are the real traitors. They turned on Gadon and now they slaughter the Beks in the streets… and anyone else they happen to run across. Brejik knows anyone with character will never willingly follow a leader like him, so he uses brutality and violence to stay in power.”

Well, I already know about where the prototype accelerator will be, and I already know Bastila isn’t here, so I don’t see any reason to keep this guy here. “I'm going to let you live,” I say, “Go on, get out of here!”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot. And don't worry, I won't cause any trouble for you on the way out. In fact, I hope you take Brejik and his Vulkars down!” And he runs out to the Lower City.

I leave and keep going to the right, to the next door. Looks like the barracks. Well, since I overloaded that power conduit I shouldn’t have much trouble in - oh, wait there’s still one alive! But one is better than six, let’s face it, and I take him out in no time. Of the ones that were already dead, two of them dropped some pass cards that look like they could have deactivated the turrets. Wish I knew about that sooner. Oh, well, what’s done is done.

The next room over just has an empty pool in it. No reason to go in there.

Down that hallway I just end up back where I was, in the empty space with the computer terminal. But there’s still one hallway I haven’t taken, and, process of elimination, that must be where the garage elevator is. And it is. So I head down. Hopefully this will all be over soon.

And there I go hoping for things again.

#star wars #knights of the old republic #star wars knights of the old republic #star wars kotor #kotor #swkotor #kotor fic #specs writes stuff #taris #rena visz #oc #fem!revan #carth onasi #mission vao

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eternityunicorn · 5 years

Text

The Miracle in the Forest

Author: eternityunicorn

Word Count: 2,787

Author’s Note: This is a short story I wrote for no reason really. So there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Thought I’d share it. Also, it’s completely unedited, so I apologize for any mistakes that might be found. Let me know what you think!

PS: Not a fanfic for the Last Unicorn. Just as a unicorn in it.

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A young man of his sixteenth year was dragged toward the forests of his rich uncle’s estate in rural Scotland by his much younger brother, a boy of eight. The elder brother was less enthused being tugged and pawed and frankly, harassed into following the younger one, especially when it was just after dawn, but the boy insisted. They were both from across the ocean, from America, and the younger brother was very into mythology and magic and the wonders of the old world.

“C’mon Mark,” the boy shouted, nearly hysterical in his excitement. “This way!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mark replied unenthusiastically with a roll of his bright green eyes and a slight crooked smile of amusement. “Though, you should be careful.” He attempted to detract his brother from his mission, “If Mom were here, she’d have kittens knowing you were out here, aggravating your condition.”

The boy paused, turned, and frowned at his brother. “Mom’s not here. Besides, the whole point of coming out here is to get rid of my ‘condition’,” he rolled his eyes, “Duh!”

“Going into the woods isn’t going to do anything positive to your condition, you know,” Mark responded. “You shouldn’t have listened to Uncle Jack’s old fables he was telling us last night. Those stories are just going to kill you or at least, break you heart. There isn’t an ‘eternal springtime because a unicorn living in old forest’, as the old man spouted on about. It’s a forest like any other, you’ll see - and unicorns don’t have healing powers. Both are myths!”

The boy went ahead again towards the forest, though he had let go of his brother’s hand, having planned on leaving the nonbeliever behind. Mark shouted of his brother to slow down and wait for him, but his brother was determined, and once Nick got an idea in his head, there wasn’t any stopping him. Stubborn to a fault like all of his Scottish relatives and easily conned into believing fables to be true too. Mark had to practically run to catch up to the sickly boy, whom for a terminal heart patient moved pretty well with a speed of a cheetah...or something. It was impressive, what strength his belief in silliness could bring him.

It didn’t take long before both boys were at the entrance of the great oak forest. Nick lead Mark inside without hesitation, though he had slowed down enough to keep his winded elder brother near. If he hadn’t been there, Mark knew that Nick would have raced through the forest. Well, as much as a dying heart patient could. But with his brother in tow, it reminded him to take it easy, if only to keep Mark from nagging at him or trying to keep him from his adventure fully.

On the outside, the forest looked as any forest would; large trees with great canopies of green leaves of early Summer, foliage of all kinds, including some berry species, right there at the border. There was a misty morning fog that encased the woods with mystery and wonder, that was a tiny bit creepy, but not foreboding or threatening. Once inside, however, the normalcy seemed a little more uncertain. There were smaller lilac trees all around along with white rose bushes growing around their bases. Birds sang happily above and other animals of all kinds frolicked and played on the ground as if there wasn’t any reason in the world to hide or to be afraid, even as travelers from the outside wandered into their territory, their home.

“We have to go deeper,” Nick murmured quietly to Mark, to not scare the animals whom all stared at them curiously, almost humanly. “Uncle said the unicorn will show if we go to the pond at the forest’s center.”

“This is ridiculous,” Mark hissed back, not liking the way the animals stopped and appeared to follow them as they walked on. It was as creepy as the forest itself. “We should leave!”

“Don’t be a chicken,” replied Nick, not looking back and not stopping. “C’mon!”

Mark resigned himself to follow the enthusiastic boy. Damn Auntie for making me go with him, he grumbled begrudgingly to himself. I would rather be anywhere but here on this fool’s errand!

It didn’t take very long for them to find the center, as there was an unnatural glow to the forest, despite the light of morning not being very prominent yet, and the normal shadowiness was nonexistent as a result of the glowing. Neither of them tripped nor stumbled. The path had been clear the entire time, even though they had to veer off the main path to get to the center of the place, which should have given them trouble since the forest was natural and untouched by human hands, or at least that was what their uncle had said.

“None dare to go in there,” Uncle Jack had said to them, just the night before, while he stroked his scraggly beard and smoked from his pipe. “No human has touched that forest in anyway, because none dare to approach,” he spoke quietly, as they all sat together for dinner. “Too caught by the blessin’ there to dare set foot within. Ye boy needin’ the blessin’, so ya have purpose for goin’ further than any have dared. Ya know, I could rake up quite the fortune, if I be wantin’, but I’m no cad nor greedy bastard. Nah, a well kept secret be the blessin’. You boys can go at morning’s first light. Just remember to keep yer mouths shut after. That be my only warnin’ to ya.”

If the old man had been right and nobody had been inside the forest, then why were their clear cut paths leading them on? Had the senile man been wrong? It was likely. Yet, his uncle owned the land, and therefore, the forest, so how could he not know? Or at least, Auntie Mary would have spoken up and corrected her crazy husband for his mistake surely, if he had made one.

Mark was even more unsettled by the strange paths and the even stranger glow that lit their way. It seemed so unnatural, but that was impossible. Nothing was supernatural because the supernatural didn’t exist. There were no mermaids, sorcerers, or the like in the world or in any other for that matter. Magic wasn’t real. All of it were just stories, passed down from generation to generation. Tall tales by men whom didn’t have the answers, so they made them up.

“We should wait here quietly,” Nick instructed his brother in a hushed tone. “The unicorn will come if we remain quiet and still.”

Mark rolled his eyes for what seemed to be the hundredth time that morning, but said nothing. Instead, he opted to sit on a fallen tree trunk and pull out his phone to scroll through the internet to pass what he thought would be a very long amount of time. Nick sat beside him, looking around anxiously for the strange white beast that wouldn’t come. Or at least, that was what Mark had been so sure of; that the unicorn wouldn’t come because the unicorn wasn’t real.

Yet, it turns out that it didn’t take long for the elder brother to be proven wrong and the younger one (and his uncle) to be proven the opposite.

They had only been waiting there a few minutes before she appeared, coming through the foliage to the left, on Mark’s side of the log. She had moved in silently, without disturbing the woods around her. Mark hadn’t been paying attention, having been engrossed in the mobile device in his hands. So when he saw the flash of white out of the corner of his eye, he startled; gasping and leaping back, nearly dropping his phone in the process. It was his reaction that prompted his brother to notice her arrival. The young boy leapt up joyfully, rushing forward in his excitement to get closer to the unicorn. Mark stood up too, but kept his distance, watching warily at the strange beast he had thought not to be real, unsure of how to process what he was seeing.

The unicorn was beautiful, more beautiful than anything Mark had seen in his life. She was ethereally glowing amongst the shadowy trees around her. She looked like hybrid of a horse and deer. Her body was that of a horse with a long mane that moved like ocean waves down her back, her face and legs were those of a deer (including her cloven hooves), her ears were long and her eyes were large, full of awareness and age. They were sapphire blue in color. Her horn was long, spiraled, and grayish in color. Finally, a lion’s tail swayed behind her as she stood there observing them both with curiosity.

Mark was gobsmacked at the sight of her. He was also deeply moved by her presence with tears forming in his eyes and the heaviness of emotion welding up inside his chest. He wanted to fall at her feet and stare in worship of her, an experience he had never had before and would probably never have again.

Nick, on the other hand, was simply excited and happy. He didn’t dare go near enough to touch the unicorn, but close enough to observe and admire her. “Hello,” he murmured in a small voice.

“Hello, young one,” the unicorn replied, her voice smooth, sweet, and full of grace.

“We’ve come to -.”

“I know why you are here.”

Mark was amazed. Not only was the unicorn real, but she could speak! Not only that, but speak in their language. Furthermore, she knew why they were there without either of them saying the reason. She must have had overheard them as they entered the forest or else she had some sort of psychic powers and perhaps read their minds! Mark would have called the latter ridiculous, but he knew that would be foolish, especially now that he knew unicorns were, in fact, real. Instead, his once closed mind to the possibilities was now open to all of them. Perhaps, she did have psychic powers. Maybe she was reading his thoughts this very moment while she conversed with his brother. He didn’t know what to think of that invasion, but knew not how to stop it. He wasn’t exactly an expert in the supernatural or how to counter it. So, he stayed perfectly still and listen to the two speak to each other, to distract himself from the slightly disturbing idea that his thoughts were no longer private in her presence.

“I can sense death all around you, child,” the unicorn was saying to Nick. “You are dying as mortals do. Your heart is giving out. You do not have long to live.”

“Will you help me?” Nick was asking the unicorn, pleadingly so.

“There is an order to things,” she replied gently. “Things that are meant for mortality come and go, are born and then die. This is the balance of mortal life. Everything has it’s time in the mortal realm. Somethings live longer than others. That is simply how it is.”

“So you won’t help,” the boy sighed sadly, disappointedly.

Mark felt terrible. He hated seeing his little brother deteriorate, fighting for his life, even when there was little hope for him. The unicorn had been Nick’s last hope. Yet, she wasn’t going to help him. Despite her purported great power, she was going to let his brother die? Mark raged with indignation at that thought. How dare she not help Nick, after he believed so fully that she would, if he went into her forest and sought her out, despite his failing health. He had been brave and full of faith, yet he was to be denied.

Mark was ready to tell the unicorn off, but then the unicorn made a musical sound, like a laughing whinny, and swung her head from side to side humorously. He refrained, holding back his choice of unkind words, as she said, “While that is the rules of life for mortals, that does not mean that the rules cannot be bent a little, especially for a child so young.”

“So, you’ll help?” Nick asked excitedly.

“Aye, young one, I will cure your dying heart,” she replied with a smile in her voice. Her sapphire eyes sparkled with joy at Nick’s happy reaction. “Your live will be prolonged, but who is to say for how long. You are mortal after all, a fragile human at that. Magic healing isn’t a guarantee of a long life. Death will come for you, as it comes for all mortals, but perhaps sooner than later. Do you understand, young one?”

Nick nodded anxiously. Mark said nothing.

Then the unicorn touched the sickly boy with the point of her horn. The dull gray horn lit up to a bright, glowing blue. It hummed sharply as the unicorn healed Nick. Nick didn’t seem to be in any discomfort. He just stared wondrously at the unicorn, so close that he could reach out to her, if he so chose to. However, he dared not, too respectful of the ethereal creature of grace and beauty to touch with his mortal hands.

Mark stood by and watched as the event unfolded with a little bit of worry and a whole lot of wonder. It was quick, the unicorn’s healing. The horn glowed brightly for just a few seconds before it faded to gray. Once her horn had faded, the unicorn swiftly vanished from the scene, as if she had never been there, leaving the boys to wonder about the encounter. They each wondered if it had been real.

Of course it had.

Nick knew it because he was stronger, not as frail as he had been upon entering the forest. Mark thought it was a miracle, his brother would live! Just wait until Uncle Jack heard about their adventure, he had thought as excitement coursed through him. He was a believer now, a believer in myths and legends, that was certain. He swore to never doubt again that tales told.

As they walked back to their uncle’s house, Mark wondered what else was out there. Did dragons exist? Did mermaid? Sorcerers? Witches? Demons? What else lay out there, hiding away from mortal eyes, he wondered. Perhaps one day he would find out. Perhaps he would see other nonhuman creatures. Maybe he would meet the unicorn again or a different one.

“Ack! Unicorns are rare,” he remembered his uncle saying once. “There aren’t many out there any more. Why? Nobody knows. At least, nobody mortal.”

Mark had dismissed the old man then, but now he found himself in awe, wondering how did his uncle know so much about these things? The guy was a mystery. That was for sure. However, at least, now he knew that his uncle wasn’t so raving madman.

Just as they came up to the house, Uncle Jack was hobbling out to meet them. “So, did it work? Did you see her? Are you healed, boy?” He asked rapidly, excited as well.

“Yeah, Uncle Jack, I saw her and she healed me,” Nick responded with just as much excitement.

“Ah, bless ye,” their uncle said with tears of joy in his eyes. He threw his arms around them both, one boy under each arm. “Your mother will be overjoyed to hear the happy news. Ya know, she saw the unicorn too, when she was little?”

Mark and Nick both were surprising by this revelation. Their mother had never spoken of such a meeting. She didn’t even seem to believe in anything supernatural. “It’s all make believe,” she would dismissively say about anything about it. “What utter nonsense!” So to hear that she too had seen the unicorn was shocking, to say the least.

“She did?” Nick asked.

“She never said,” Mark said.

Uncle Jack looked sad, though he still smiled at them. “Ack, no she wouldn’t. She lost the faith when your father died,” he said. “She pretends that the event with the unicorn never happened, that anything otherworldly is made up. Yet, she did meet the unicorn. I know it, because I was there.”

“Will you tell us about it?” Mark asked with interest.

“Aye,” Uncle Jack replied brightly, happy to see his oldest nephew had a change of heart and actually wanted to hear his stories. “Let’s get inside and I’ll tell ye the tale.”

The two boys grinned and followed their uncle inside.

So eager to hear the tale, neither boy saw the ethereally shining unicorn standing in the distance at the edge of her forest, watching them.

#short story #writing #fanfics #fiction #the last unicorn #unicorns #magic #healing #fantasy #original

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casskaykingston · 5 years

Text

all the way in

TAGGING → @amytaylcr LOCATION → Cass’s House TIMEFRAME → Sunday, February 2nd

Three days ago Amy thought their fight and the aftermath had gone on for too long. Now, she was adamant on putting a final stop to it. Weeks' worth of introspection and careful consideration had given her more than enough food for thought and she was full of it now, ready to lay her cards out on the table for Cass to see, as well. How much or what would eventually fall from her lips she couldn't say, but she knew enough to understand that silence wasn't an option anymore. The night before he went on his camping trip had been one for the books, their fingertips spelling out tenderness that they felt for one another, love drawing affectionate whispers from their mouths that had last spoken out such harsh truths she was worried the damage could never be undone. But underneath the hurt and the anger that had driven them into the argument, at the heart of their relationship, was a love like she had never thought she'd feel, and realized would do anything to protect, even if it meant protecting it from herself.

Especially if it meant that.

Standing by the arrivals gate at the airport, Amy checked the board one more time, an assurance that she hadn't imagined his plane touching down, and shifted on her feet impatiently. There was so much she needed to say, so much they needed to talk about, but above it all, Amy just wanted to see him, to hold him again. This distance was so unlike them, and Amy was ready to go back to how things were, if that was at all possible. Suppose she'd find it out soon enough. Spotting his towering figure come through the automatic doors, Amy stood on the tips of her toes and waved her hand through the air. "Cass!"

It was one of the best vacations he'd ever taken. It hadn't been very long, not to an exotic or extremely fancy location and there had only been one person for company, but it was Matias. His best buddy, sounding board, closest mate. The time in the outdoors with him had been needed and bonding, bring them closer together and helping Cass approach what waited for him at home with more clarity and peace of spirit. Things had been better than they had in the past two weeks the night before he left, her warm sleeping form and quiet breaths the lullaby that had given him his best nights sleep since the last time she'd spent the night on Sunday. He still didn't want to budge, at least not entirely, but he was prepared to give Amy as much leeway as she needed. All the blonde w anted to do was have the subject broached, that was all. All he wanted was his girl, and a future with her. A desire that was never as simple as it seemed.

Disembarking with Matias, their easy camaraderie manifested in little jokes they tossed at each other as they walked through the terminal, carry-on backpacks slung on their shoulders. They stayed together up until bag check when a solid bro hug signaled their impending parting, Harlow waiting for Matias in a slightly different area. Duffel bag slung across him, Cass ruffled a hand through his overly long hair, beard matching and displaying how long it had been since he'd shaved. Clear blues start searching through the waiting family the moment he gets through the doors, intent on looking for one person. The woman who held his entire heart, and who was unfortunately pretty short and hard to spot. That was, until he spotted a waving hand, her eyes and top of her head peeking out of the crowd. "Amelia!" Boomed his deep voice, it's deepness causing the people around Amy to shift, the man who'd spoken it absolutely beaming, hastening his steps.

Her name sounded over the heads of all the other people present at the arrivals gate, having spotted her petite frame, and a smile spilled across her lips. It hadn't been too long since she last heard it, hadn't been too many times that he called her by her nickname, but every time it happened it was a cut on her heart. For someone who detested the idea of being called as a person they no longer were, Amy had quickly grown used to the syllables of her full name rolling over his tongue in that deep, booming bass. The pace of her step quickened as she gained direction, and it was with her name still echoing through her mind that they finally stood in front of each other. Cass's thick head of hair a little messier than usual, his beard unruly; but the beaming smile on his lips was made all the more prominent with the kisses sun had left on his skin. Unable to control herself, Amy reached up and brushed her fingers against his cheek, hazel eyes tracing the movement her fingers made. "I've missed you," came the simple confession as she looked back up at him, arms coming to loop around his neck in a tight embrace.

The moments between getting in front of each other once more, her fingers touching gently on his grizzled cheek, and her arms wrapping round him are thankfully few, and for the first time in over 72 hours Cass got to touch his girl again. Her hair, sunny touched and longer than it had been at their remeeting so long ago, brushing her shoulders, is what his face gets buried into. The familiar aroma of her hair products joins the warm comfort of her in his arms and whatever was jittery inside him settled. The longer he was away from her, the more unsettled he got, he supposed. "I've missed you too, baby. So much." The blonde pulls back enough to rub his cheek along hers, pressing his lips to the apple of it. "Hope it's okay I'm a bit scratchy." The light tan he also acquired hides beneath the jacket Wilmingtons weather forced him to don upon their return, but that could wait for later. "Thanks for coming to pick me up."

There was still some hesitation between them as they hugged and he touched her cheek, pressing his mouth to the fullness of it. Any other day and Amy knew that it would be impossible to break a kiss between their lips. Even so, with all that in mind, having him close to her, the familiar scent of his skin and clothes, although buried deep underneath the scents of nature and wilderness, had been enough to ease her worried mind. Whatever was going on, she reminded herself, they would pull through it. A smile stretched her lips wide as she nuzzled her cheek against his in response. "Everything's okay as long as you're not going anywhere else any time soon." To think there was a time mere six months ago when she felt as though she had to─ that she could─ live without him, it would have made her laugh now. "It's my pleasure. Shall we get you home?"

He'd always known he was the affectionate sort in relationships. Romantic - a brush of lips against her hands, an arm around her waist, a touch at the wrist, and platonic - an arm thrown around the shoulder, hugs, secret handshakes, high fives. It was just a part and parcel of how Cass threw himself into everything, body and soul. "The only place I'm going is home with you, baby. Your place or mine, I don't care. As long as you're there too." A chuckle, and he pulls back, throwing an arm around her shoulders and kissing her temple while they walk, heading out of the terminal. "What did you get up to while I was gone?"

Catching Cass up on all that he missed in the few days of his absence─ not that it was long or there had been many things to tell him about─ proved to be enough of a distraction for the ride to his place. It had been on pure instinct that she took the right highway exits that brought her closer to his Murrayville home than her downtown place, but a part of her had to admit that when she thought of home, that was the place she imagined. Not the apartment to which she moved in recent months, although it had been absolutely hers and just the right move. But it still didn't feel like home. The white walls didn't breathe the comfort of a place to which she would always want to go back, not in the way Cass's place did. Then again, it might have had to do with the person who lived there more so than the place itself. And a good night's rest was mandatory after the few he's had sleeping under the stars, which he wouldn't be getting on her mattress again. He would have more likely spent the night putting the bed frame together, in all honesty.

Pulling up into his driveway, beside his forest green truck, Amy turned the ignition off and unlocked the door to let out Hudson, bouncing on his paws to greet his owner as Cass grabbed the duffel bags from the back of her car. "I think he's missed you, too. He puts my welcome to shame," Amy commented with a loving chuckle as Hudson stood on his hind legs and jumped on Cass in joyful delirium.

Three days hadn't made much happen at home, it seemed, but as the familiar territory sped past the windows and he gazed at her, it felt like a much longer amount of time. Since they'd gotten together, officially, for real, he couldn't be blamed if it that and Hudson had cultured a feeling of home to him. Of course when Cass was away for his thankfully not too frequent business trips he missed Wilmington, his home, his dog, and the family of friends he had found, but Amy had skyrocketed to the top of that list. How could she have not? Amy, who let him call her Amelia and had the most magical laugh in the world. Amy, whose pocket his hand belonged in and whose company he wanted always. Amy, that Cass wanted to come home to for the rest of his life. The smile that he wore for some of that trip was warm, to say the least, happy to be back with his girlfriend. Even if in a lot of ways, like Matias he too was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Hudson! What a good boy, aren't you? I missed you too, buddy." Warm words tumble out in his deep burr as he sweet talks his dog, arms unfortunately busy. "I don't know about that. He doesn't smell half as good as you, baby." The proper reunion occurs once they're inside and Cass gets to drop is bags in the foyer, taking a knee to scratch Hudson all over. The golden shepherd mix gave happy barks the whole time, tan and dark brown body wriggling all over in excitement, nonsense falling from his mouth as the blonde man baby talked his furry son. After giving Hud some attention, he finally stood up, one hand massaging at his shoulders, a bit sore from the flight and jetlag. Cass takes a seat on the back of the couch, scratching for a moment at the bottom of his beard with navy blues trained on her. Their agreement to talk when he returned had come to fruition, and he wasn't certain of what to expect. Or if he even wanted to be the one to broach it. Making up his mind, he held a hand out to Amy, a small smile tugging at his full lips. "C'mere, my Amelia."

"Well, at least I have that on him," Amy joked with a playful roll of her eyes as she set the house keys down and made herself at home. It didn't seem like Cass and Hudson would be finished greeting each other any time soon, not with the string of lovable nonsense falling from Cass's mouth, or the tongue lapping out of Hudson's mouth in utter bliss as his owner's fingers scratched behind his ears. She went ahead into the kitchen and put the kettle on for some tea. Turning the heat down, she came out of the kitchen and into the living room where Cass was, right in time to see him rubbing at his shoulders. Making a mental note of that, she slipped her palm into his extended hand, and came close to him, free hand scratching at his beard. "Hi," she said softly, resting her forehead against his. The weight of the conversation they needed to have lay on her chest, but she cherished the moment, the closeness and warmth of his breath on her skin. "I'm making us tea. Do you want to shower first, or?" Or do you want to jump right into the big conversation about our future that I know you're dying to have?

The moment that passes after she offers him the choice seems to stretch into forever, staring into her eyes. There's hesitation in the multishades of brown, gold, and green that shine in Amy's eyes, hesitation and anxiousness and yet an impatience that Cass would be lying if he said that some part of him didn't share. It was strange, to be on the other side of it, to know your partner wanted to talk about something and you weren't sure it was something you wanted to dive straight into, and Cass didn't like it. He tightens his grip on her fingers and turns lips into her hand, kissing her palm, words leaping from his mouth. "Just a brief shower, if that's okay. Haven't been able to use running water in way too long. And I'd love some tea." Coward. An expletive Cass only growled inwardly at himself, that he didn't let show when he stands and rubs at the back of his neck once more. "I'll be quick." The tall man promises, kissing her briefly but softly before he makes his way to his bedroom, holding onto her hand until the last minute. Cass darts a glance back over his shoulder at her before he enters the hall, paired with a slight upturning of his lips that doesn't match the cheek he's chewing on, before he disappears.

It's the most mentally chaotic shower he's had in a while, suds running down his muscular form, lathering his hair and beard as Cass's heart thumps so hard he can feel it all over his body. There is no calm to be found in the luxurious room fitted out just for that, and it's a crying shame. Thoughts about what she would say, if she kept going down the path Cass had stopped her from before leaving, swirled round and round in his head, a cacophony of doubts that keeps him quiet under the fall of water. Even as he finishes, dries his face and body with his fluffy towel, drags on black briefs and matching joggers, it doesn't occur to him that Amy could ever go down the road he so desperately wants. Not after all the times she'd reinforced the fact it would be something she couldn't give him. A t-shirt that was once white but that's enduring enough washings that the butter soft fabric has turned grey is the last thing he pulls on, all the while mentally shoring himself up for their talk.

It must have been a first in their relationship, that Amy wanted to do something, to dive into a moment that would push their relationship from the standstill they were at now, and Cass wasn't eagerly awaiting her there. He had always been the one to instigate change and progress, and she the one to reluctantly follow behind. How strange it was that she held the key to move them further, and he was hesitant to even try the door. Was this what it felt like for him all these times? Unlike Cass who would push for what he wanted, Amy let him come to her when he was ready. They were both aware of the elephant in the room, staring at them, waiting to be acknowledged, but she would not be the one to force anything on him if he wasn't ready for it. As he went to the bathroom to get himself ready, Amy returned to the kitchen in time to take the kettle off the stove and pour the hot water over two bags of tea she had already prepared in each of their matching mugs. Christmas felt a lifetime ago, she realized as she turned the ceramics in her hands, waiting for the quiet of the shower to ensue. It was brief by no means, but Amy figured he had things to think through, as well as a task to complete. Eventually, when she tired of waiting, she took the mugs with her into the bedroom, just as he leaves the bathroom clad in his comfortable, stay at home clothes. "Tea's cool enough to drink," she said, placing it on the nightstand and taking a seat on the bed, the side on which she usually slept when she was over. She patted the mattress beside her, and reached into the drawer for a body lotion she kept there. "Come here. I'll get at those knots in your shoulders that are bothering you."

There is no better present to see waiting on your bed than Amy Taylor, bonus points if she's got tea, and it makes a soft smile curve on Cass's face. Much in the vein of wanting to come home to her, always, is the ability to see her simply around his place. The way it had been more like before she had a real place of her own. Humming in the kitchen, sleeping on his bed, her shoes near his front door and her smile something he could be gifted with around any corner. "You don't have to do that, baby. Though I won't say no." Cass rushes to assure her, because Amy's got some sort of magic in her palms whenever she sets about making sure his back feels better. He sits easily next to her on the bed, but catches her hand before she gets the lotion. "Wait. Before you work on the knots with your hands, let's talk first. It will help a lot with the stress, I promise you. Half your work done before you even have to lay a hand on me." The crooked grin disappears briefly when he collects her other hand and presses both to his mouth, tugging on them a bit so she comes closer. "So."

There were very few things Amy felt she had to do, especially with Cass, but this was never one of them. She took just as much pleasure in removing the tension from his shoulders as he did in rolling them without the stress weighing on them. And to know that something she did actually helped make him feel better, as opposed to the alternative, was always a feeling she wanted to bask in. "You know I want to," she promised, but before she had a chance to go about her mission, her hands were clasped in his bigger palms, and she looked up curiously from the hold he had on her, to the look swirling in his oceanic blues. In an instant, her heart went from its idle, paced beat, to a furious gallop, even though she knew this was coming. Scooting closer to him, one leg folded underneath her on the bed, she faced him better and trapped her lower lip between her teeth. "So," came the echo, uncertainty lacing her voice. How do you start something you knew you had to do but weren't sure you were quite ready to do just yet? "I guess we need to talk, huh? About... everything."

He waits for her to come closer with patience he hadn't seen to have had in any other point in their relationship, the safety of their surroundings working overtime to try and calm them both. Cass wasn't a fan of this feeling, anxiousness with the one person who calmed him more than anything in the world, and he looks forward even more to the relief that will come after they talk. No matter what compromise the two of them come to, he has to believe it's in their future. One hand drops from their palms to fall on her thigh, and when he squeezes it is isn't from a standpoint of desire but of comfort. That they could get through this, and it was going to be okay. "Yeah. We do. Amelia, if I'm pushing too far just say the word, because I never want to make you feel that way. Or afraid of me, ever. But...are you open to have a conversation about it?" Cass is still afraid to say the word kids to Amy, unsure if it was a good move, but he keeps the assurance in his hand on her leg, blue eyes steady on her hazel.

Blueberries, the word flitted through her mind, an allusion to the safe word they’ve had on an occasion so far removed from where they were right now. An occasion that was framed in so much trust that was present now, too, but overshadowed with many of the worries that have infected the past couple of weeks. His words came as a reminder of the current that still lay underneath it all, strong and undeniable, and a small smile flirted with the corners of her lips as she lay a hand on top of his that held her thigh. “Blueberries,” she voiced the sentiment. Tension still gripped her shoulders tightly, but diminished somewhat as the topic was finally broached. The suspense of ‘we need to talk’ finally weakening its hold on her twisted insides. Instead, a flutter of winged things, bats or butterflies she wasn’t sure, took flight through the liberated parts. “I know. And I wish I could react in a way that’s different from shutting you down entirely when I panic. But... yes, I think I can talk about it now.” Now that I’ve had weeks to consider it, and a taste of a life without you in it as much as I’d like.

A callback to the night they'd spent after the winter gala, silk whispering against her skin and cries that he could still call to mind at a moments notice. Though they had still been at the stage wherein she hadn't said those eight letters to them, she'd shown him that night that her trust in him was something that couldn't be denied. Before Amy could tell him how she felt about him romantically, she'd told him that, a confession that tasted of the sea she'd so loved and followed with their first but far from last evening beach walk. Cass doesn't directly respond to it, more with a warm smile, her hand atop his anchoring them both. He gets a handle on the relief, knowing they were only halfway to the finish line. the hardest part was next. "Okay. That's step one. Step two is, you know I want kids. And you know I want you. Can I entertain the idea the idea that two can be had together? I'm not saying now. I'm saying at some point, maybe, before the clock runs out on our biology, could you see us having kids?"

Even if he hadn't told her as much when they were just getting to know each other, Amy would have no doubts about the future Cass wanted for himself. He was a family man, and that was clear in the way he carried himself, in the decisions he made, and the way he treated the people around him, especially his close friends and employees. Amy might have been that way once upon a time, something buried deep in her psyche that was only now blooming after the fifteen years long winter of her life, but she was still miles away from where Cass was, even if she was doing her mighty best to play catch up. A year ago, if asked, Amy would have shaken her head no at the idea of bringing children into the world. Some six months ago she discouraged it to the man sitting next to her now. But that night? Two weeks after she had screamed a firm, unmoving no, second thoughts have shaken up her core beliefs. "I know that," she nodded her head, her fingers slipping between his, her gaze glued to the movement. "Before I answer that, before I fully entertain the idea of that future, which I'm not saying I haven't thought of, but..." She trailed off, losing sight of the point she wanted to make. She drew in a breath, finding once more the course of her thoughts. "I know you felt as if in my fears I've excluded you from the life we'd have with these kids we'd hypothetically have, but Cass... I don't know if you can be as good a father as I can be a bad mother. And I don't know how to put that on the kids we'd have someday. Hypothetically."

It seemed he had had this conversation with everyone important to him but her. Of course, that was probably directly related to their argument about it and sought out advice, but it was still odd. As his girlfriend, and the closest person to him bar none, Cass told Amy everything first (with the exception of things he knew would freak her out). Their fingers lace together in the pause after his words, and he uses it as his own anchor, a support for the two of them through what wasn't a light subject. The fact that she'd at least thought about it, that it had occurred to her enough to have a feeling about it, was something he clung to with hope. Hope that morphed into incredulous frustration when Amy reiterates her belief that she wouldn't be a good mother. An idea that flabbergasted him on every level, and had him shaking his head immediately afterwards. "Amelia. Please listen to me. There isn't a universe in existence where you'd be a bad mother. You have so much love, love that you'd given me, your family, your friends. You take care of me when I need it, you're strong when I can't be, you don't compromise your beliefs but that doesn't mean you shut others out. You have all the ingredients a person would ever need to be a good mom." There is belief in every single one of his words, conviction that goes to his core, and it communicates in his voice and earnest gaze. Cass squeezes their conjoined hands, one hand coming up to cup Amy's cheek. "Hypothetically, as you said, I'm terrified that I could share any of my dads attributes if I get gifted with a child in the future. At the same time, I know that its that fear that will help keep me on the path of the kind of father I want to be. You know...metaphorically." He ends with a slight smile.

Amy heard him and indulged his request. She listened as he spoke, heard the iron-clad conviction and belief behind every word of assurance he told her, and the faith he had in her sparked some dead part of her heart. Minute and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, but a part of her nonetheless. The voices and worms of doubt still gnawed at her, impossible to silence even when his words rang so loudly in the small space between them, and Amy squeezed his hand, but her head shook from side to side. "I... That's all when I'm clean and I'm sober. What happens i-when I fall off the wagon? When my need for a fix becomes greater than anything else? What happens if I pass on my weaknesses to an undeserving child?" The certainty with which she proclaimed such turn of events would have been chilling to someone else, but Amy had been on the path of recovery a number of times before and not once did it stick. Not even when it seemed liked it had. So why should this time be any different when she was no stronger resisting her urges now than she had been before? She was just... lucky so far. Wasn't she? The hand on her cheek forced her to look up and meet his gaze, the warmth in his blue eyes a surprise in the cool of its oceanic allusions. "You're never gonna be anything like your father. No matter what happens or where you end up, that's the one thing that's never going to change."

This was his girl. Big hearted and second chancing it and hard headed with the best of them. Amy's lack of belief in herself and what she was deserving of, was capable of, baffled him still. Cass didn't know where she'd gotten it from, where along the line she'd stopped putting faith in herself, but he'd push against that train as much as he could for her, whenever she'd let him. Her head shake is expected, if unhappily so, and more of Amy's fears make it to light. Painting a picture of a future that Cass was utterly convinced would not happen. It might not have been as many months as it could've been between them, but their bond was forged tightly. He knew her. And Cass believed in her, whenever Amy wouldn't. Dropped eyes are made to meet his, unsurety seen in them, that pretty mouth telling him that in no reality would his greatest fear take place. "Thank you believing in me like that. Let me do that for you too. Baby..." Cass moves his hand to her chin to capture it and tilt her mouth towards his own so he can lay one kiss on her. Okay, maybe two. Sue him if Amy's taste wasn't something he'd ever stop craving. It's after those that he gets control of himself and pulls back a bit, faces still close as Cass gazed into her eyes.

"There is no when you fall of the wagon, baby. There's barely an if. If you ever start to feel like that again, you've got a support system to help you fight through it. You have me, your family, your therapist, all your friends that love you. I'm confident you'd conquer it." He taps her chin for a second with his thumb before he removed his hand from her face entirely, twining back with hers. "There's no other partner that I've wanted kids with, ever. Cross my heart, other than you." And Cass was telling the truth. Even when he felt his deepest love for Kiera he'd ignored any of the fatherly longings that were full fledged now, never picturing offspring. Amy was the only one he'd thought of in that way. "Tell me this. Would you want kids with me as the father? I understand the hesitancy there. They might come out wearing Stetsons and converses and twice as hardheaded as me." It was another of the important questions Cass had wanted to ask, half sure of the answer but wanting it all the same. Wrapped in a joke, it highlighted one of the man's most premiere personality traits, his striving to lighten moments with a bit of a smile.

Amy was one of the many people who tended to see the best in others, to believe in them even in the darkest times, and she was willing to hand out as many second chances as necessary, so long as they proved they wanted to change whatever the issue had been. Ironically so, however, she was so generous giving those out that she had none left for herself. She was her own hardest critic, greatest adversary, the one who nagged at herself about all her flaws and all her mistakes. The voice could sometimes be drowned by the people in her life telling her otherwise, but that was not always the case. There hadn't always been people around to do that for her─ by her own design. Cass had picked up the mantle of her advocate, fighting tooth and nail against these convictions she's kept of herself for the past fifteen years, but no matter how booming his deep timbre, still waters do run deep and it wasn't always enough.

She leaned into his touch, into the pressure of his lips on her own. Lids slid over her eyes like shutters, and stayed that way as he began talking again. She loved him, she appreciated everything he did for her, but this was not something he knew firsthand. "You don't know any of that. It's a constant battle. Some days it's easier to fight, other days it feels impossible. And you're not always going to be around. What if it happens when I'm pregnant?" A chill went down her spine, spreading through her bloodstream. She would ruin the child before she ever gave it a fighting chance, more so than just making them susceptible to addictions. The admission she came higher than Kiera in his ideas and plans for the future warmed her heart, but she couldn't tell him the same, he knew that much wasn't the truth. She hadn't thought about kids in detail when she was mere seventeen years old, but she knew there would come a time when Brooks and her would have them. Well, would have come if he hadn't died. And that was when she changed her mind about the idea of them. If she couldn't have his children, she'd have nobody's. Children, love, happiness. Life. Those were all things she renounced with his death, but had slowly been reclaiming with Cass. Were children the next step in the right direction? Or were they a roadblock to happiness? A scoff pushed through her nostrils, and a faint smile tugged at her lips. "As long as they don't come out humming Kenny Chesney, I'm okay with the Stetsons and converses," she teased right back, fingers curling around his own.

Hazel eyes met the oceanic ones once more, letting the silence settle around them before she answered. "I wouldn't want anyone else to be the father of my children. That's not what I'm hesitant about, because I know those would be the luckiest, happiest kids in the world having you as their dad. And I'd be the luckiest, happiest woman having you bring them up with me in whatever capacity the future brings." Though she certainly hoped that a future scenario of that sort meant they were bonded for life with more than just promises made to each other, but that might be a conversation for another night. "Please don't take that as me doubting us─ I'm only ever doubting myself."

Amy wasn't wrong. The closest thing Cass had to compare to the poisonous love song of pills were the years he spent shamefully addicted to the power started to feel standing over another as the victor with their blood on your hands, one of the most Earth shattering signs to him that he needed to escape the lifestyle. He was under no sort of impression that the things could compare, the same Amy would never truly get the complications of his relationship with C.K. and how low it had (less so, recently) brought him over the years. He nuzzles her when she voices her quiet fears, the vulnerability in them pressing on his ribs cage. Why couldn't his girl put faith in herself? She was stronger than she knew. "No, I might not be around 24/7, but you are more than capable of taking care of it by yourself. Baby," he keeps her chin in his hand, trying to help the closeness communicate his earnestness, Cass's unshakeable belief in her that he was trying to share. "When you're pregnant, you'll have cravings and swollen feet and a round tummy with our baby in it. Your mama bear, which, don't tell me you don't have because I've seen it several times, will kick in, I'm sure of it. You'll know what to do. What you have in here," and it's there that Cass let's go of her chin, pressing his palm above her heart. "Is more than capable of being an amazing mother. Kenny Chesney? If anything it'll be Johnny Cash. Gotta teach em the classics." The boyish grin comes out hesitantly to play, mercury quick, and in the back of his head Cass dazedly can't believe they're here. Actually joking about hypothetical kids. An impossibility not three weeks ago.

The sheer knowledge that Amy thought of him so highly, would only want him to be the father of her kids, mixed with the smug and happy feeling in his heart the moment it left Amys lips. Take that Cass thinks proudly at not particular person, insanely pleased with the fact. Perhaps a ridiculous sentiment, and their relationship status sort of dictated such a thing, but each thing he got from her was a victory in the eldest Kingston book. That alone makes him want to interrupt her with a kiss, the only thing stopping Cass being the words that continued to spill from her mouth. "There is no possible way you could be happier than me. I know you doubt yourself, but baby you don't see yourself the way I see you. Do you know who I'm dating? Who I'm love with?" Cass's last two questions are more like crooned demands placing both hands on her thighs to tug her forward so she's in his lap instead. The contact, he'd decided, was needed. Each thing he said following was punctuated with tiny kisses. "I'm dating Amelia Taylor. The smartest," Kiss to the forehead. "Most kind-hearted," One to her cheek. "Sexiest," one to her mouth, a little longer. "Strongest." To her jaw. "Jaw dropping gorgeous, endearingly flawed, owner of the cutest smile in the world. I know. That if she gave it a shot, at some point, Amelia Taylor would be a great mother to boot." And wife. And life partner. Things that to him were understood, to her not so.

When you're pregnant. The hypothetic scenario hadn't lasted very long, but Amy found herself somewhat at peace with the word choice. Sure, there was a part of her that roared in protest, slammed a metaphorical hand against the metaphorical table and argued they had not reached the when point. They were still at the if station, a fork in the road that could lead down two very different paths. But over the weeks that they had spent in quiet, simmering anger and disappointment, Amy had opened the door to the idea and realized it wouldn't be as bad as she thought. How was having children with another man any greater a betrayal than loving that man in the first place? And if she no longer saw it as that, if she came to understand Brooks would want this happiness for her, it followed the same thread of logic to believe he'd want her to have children, too. That issue was resolved soon enough, but the other, far greater monster still lingered, no longer obscured by shadows, baring its sharp teeth dripping with poison. Could she ever be a good enough mother? Could she ever do those innocent beings right by giving them birth into the mess of her life, involving them inextricably with all her flaws and mistakes? Her gaze dropped to his hand resting in the middle of her chest, right above the heart, and she worried her lower lip between her teeth. "I hope you're right," she said unconvincingly, not quite believing it all to the same level Cass did. After all, he didn't get to live inside her head every day of every year of her entire life─ an exhausting, hellish place if there ever was one. "I can let Johnny Cash slide."

Cass pulled her into his lap, her legs on each side of him as he forced her to face him, for once nothing sexual about their proximity and position. Idle hands lay in her lap, between their bodies, and Amy listened to the list of ways Cass saw her in. Superlatives and compliments raining down upon her head bowed in modesty. No, she didn't see herself the way he did. She probably never would─ and for that matter, no one else would, either. Arguments and contradictions to everything he told her burned on her tongue, white hot and heavy, and it was with all the power of will in her being that she reined them. He showered her in kisses, along with the compliments, and after the second one, Amy held her eyes closed and tried to listen to him, to hear what he was saying. To see the picture he was painting. But all that took shape behind her eyelids looked nothing like the reflection that stared at her from the mirror. "I don't buy all that for a second," she shook her head, laying her dainty fingers against the thick cover of his beard, foreheads pressed together. "But I love that you see me that way and I hope to God I'm wrong and you're right. For once I'd be okay with that."

He was at a loss for once, but the frustration that filled all over six inches of him was not new to him. As someone who was always the first to put himself between those he loved and anything that hurt him, it chafed at him that he couldn't protect Amy from her harshest critic - herself. Of course it was an impossibility, he could no longer keep the voices in her head from whispering lies than she could keep him from the insecurities he felt to his core as well, but Cass couldn't help wanting to do it. Couldn't help wanting to fill her life with as much happiness as he could. "Good." Having her in his lap felt right, the same way it did each time, even when Cass knew his words weren't reaching her. He wished that by pressing her forehead into his he could communicate it to her, convince her of it too, but that was a dream. One that he hoped to acheive one day, if not today. "I know I'm right, even if you don't. I'm glad you're okay with it. Because one day you're going to believe it too." He turns his head to press his lips to her hand, the touch of it on his beard intimately familiar to him. "At the end of the day..." Royal blues seek out hers, pulling back for a moment so that the muscular man could fully watch her face, for once calm. "Do you want kids with me?"

Want. An entirely different world to being open to the idea of kids, which was where they had started. But to want kids with Cass meant she wanted kids on her own, too, as this wasn’t something she could in good conscience just do for him. And did she? That was the tricky part. His whiskered mouth scratch against her hand as he lay a kiss to it, and when he looked into her eyes, searching for an answer, she bit down on her lip in thought. What should have been a resounding yes to any other girl was a hesitant maybe to Amy and she didn’t know how to say it without breaking his heart. “I can’t say anything about wanting them, but... with you by my side it’s... not out of the question.” Would that suffice?

It wasn't a no. At the end of the day, thats what he grasped onto, the hope that all was maybe not lost. That she understood that their bodies had a ticking time clock, that their deadline was coming up sooner than it was later, and Cass wanted a kid. One that he'd had a hand in making, that would grow in her. No one else. He knew that this was just the newest in his requests for things that Amy had buried with Brooks, locked her heart to it and thrown away the key long before he came back into the picture. Cass's nudging is what brought him here, his continued want to steal more of her possible future from the hands of a dead man, but he doesn't regret any of it. Look at what it had brought him, heartaches, and all? Time had taught him hesitancy, still knowing she could pull too far away for him to get to her, and under the calmness he's pulled taught as a bow. "Can I take that as not a no? As a, maybe we can reconsider it at another time?" Still not a yes, but it was something he could live with.

Perhaps it felt too soon to someone else to talk about children not even six months into a relationship, but that someone else wasn’t either of the people in said relationship. The turbulences they’ve gone through, all that they’ve overcome stood as a reminder of how committed they were to making it work, how much love there was between them that couldn’t be measured in the time past but the changes and growth willing to be made. And Amy had not changed her ways for just anyone. From the very beginning of their relationship, as far back as that first encounter by the fence, there had been a different energy about them, a giddy excitement no other man had given her. The kind she didn’t expect to feel ever again, and Cass had breathed fire back into her cold, dead heart. If she were to ever change her mind about what the future brought, those ultimate commitments and devotion that came with marriage and children, it would be for him. For Cass who loved her, flaws and all. Who fought for her when she pushed him so far away. Who had more understanding in his little finger than most people did in their entire bodies. That was who Amy could see fathering the children the future might bring someday, even if it wasn’t something she wrapped her mind around entirely. That would come, she imagined, aided by the feeling deep in her soul that Cass was the one— the one she would love, cherish, and care for for the rest of her life. That knowledge, however, she would keep safely tucked away in the hidden chambers of her heart for at least a little while longer. One step forward was all Amy could give him that night— especially when it was more a leap than a step.

Laying her hands on the sides of his face, the bearded cheeks and the chiseled jawline, Amy nodded her head and leaned in to kiss him. “It’s not a no. It’s a tentative yes to opening those doors again to more than the conversation. But if you let me, I would like to open it all up again when I feel ready. Is that okay?”

Two not a no's. Cass had already been luckier than he'd ever expected going into this conversation, her toned thighs on either side of him as he asked the impossible of her. He did it quite often, this giant golden cowboy and businessman who loved her, asking her for the stars. Pushing her beyond boundaries he was sure Amy had long since stopped thinking would even be touched by another, pressing against walls she'd had up for longer than they'd even known each other as teenagers and trying to get her to open her eyes to a future she buried with her boy so long ago. Now she cradled the face of her man, Cassidy, his lips pressing against hers as his arms held close the woman he wanted to have at his side, always. As far as he was concerned, Amelia Taylor was a necessary and required ingredient for a happy life, and it would always be the case. Even when she frustrated the hell outta him. When they were fighting or fucking or just freely with each other, enjoying simplest pleasure of each other's company. He wanted Amy. And Cass was getting as close to a yes as he was going to for now, though it was flirting with the proximity of it enough to bring him satisfaction for now. Besides - relationships we're compromises, right? "It's completely okay." He tells her after their kiss, keeping his growly tenor low as he presses his lips to her nose. "I'm content to pass you the baton on this one. Thank you for the tentative yes you were able to give." Cass gives her a pull and a twist and gets them further onto the bed, a knee pressing onto his comforter as he dips a whiskered chin and kisses her once more. "Seriously, baby. Thank you."

As he pulled her up higher against him and turned her around, Amy’s back fell against the mattress softly, with a slight bounce and a smile ghosting on her lips. The hardest of the conversation was over, she thought, their fight one that they had successfully resolved, even if it took them far longer than any other before. The days, weeks even, spent apart from him were not easy by any means. Every time she caught herself wishing to tell him something, she stopped and tucked her phone back into her pocket, wondering if they were there yet. With the conversation had, her allowances and promises given, Amy hoped that this would be it for a while, that their next torrent of worries and barbed words would be halted far away from them as they enjoyed each other and caught up on all they’ve missed. “No,” she shook her head against the comforter and reached up to scratch against his chin, trace the hard set of his jaws, the seam of his lips. “Thank you. For being patient and kind and loving me. Anyone else would have been out the door by now. I love you.”

Her fingertips touch his face with the care and affection that only a lover could give, the bushy face smiling down at her, framed a bit by warm light of his bedside lamps. This is what Cass always wanted, in the grand scheme of things, Amy in his home, in his bed, being the best thing in Cass's world and his favorite thing about leaving work to go see. For all their issues, the parts of their relationship that felt like 'red light green light's and when they stopped, he always had to look behind him to see where she stood, Cass loved her. Adored the way the liked to tease him and constantly poke the bear, searching for a reaction the deep well of kindness that sparkled in her hazel orbs and how firmly she took her stance on things, even if it frustrated the everlasting hell out of him. Loved the way she said his name and called him honey, the way she showed him how she felt with her lips even before she could express it and even now. He'd meant what he'd almost texted that night almost twenty four hours after her apartment had been left with shouting words and slamming doors, the words coming back to Cass as he nuzzled Amy on the bed, lacing their hands together. How could she think he could ever leave? Amy had too much of him. His heart, his soul, at the whim of her small hands and that dimpled smile. Who knew? "Anyone else isn't me. You are worth all of it, Amelia. I told you that back then, remember? Meant it then, meant it now. I love you too." My always for your forever. Rolling over, Cass likes on the bed next to her, hands still intertwined as his blue eyes raise to the wood ceiling, itching to bring something else up now that their biggest issue was now over. "Can I ask you something else? It's not above moving forward, it's actually about something that already happened."

Cass had told her that many times, and he would probably have to do it many more. The stubborn parts of her so obstinate and out of touch with reality that she could never quite come around to how Cass saw her, what he thought about her. A day might come when that image was less of a blurry outline, but for now his eyes would have to be the ones she used to tap her way through the dark. Her guiding force, the light she kept moving to. A smile stretched across her full lips, and her hand squeezed his more tightly as he lay on the bed beside her. The quiet of the aftermath settled around them, and Amy’s lids slid over the hazel of her eyes giving her a short lived moment of peace. Cass’s voice had her peering through one eye, then looking at him, alert and present in the moment. She shifted a little on the bed, cuddled into his open arms, and looked up to his face. “What is it?”

Even with the burning question dancing on the tip of his tongue, for a moment Cass is lost in the fantasy that her allowance gave permission to grow in his head. He had not so long since decided she was going to be the one for him; why would Cass look for anyone else when she was standing there in front of him? Dimpling, kissing, holding his hand on taking on the world with him. Amy made him feel lighter in a way he hadn't felt in untold years, and he was rock solid confident she would always inspire that in him. He looked forward to years they were going to spend together, and they were going to be years. Her permission to bring up kids at some point was the last green light Cass needed to start picturing their future together, one including an aisle and her walking down it. She settles into his side naturally, a comfort of behavior the two of them fell into awfully fast, and his left hand slipping under her shirt to stroke her tummy, his right drawing rough skinned fingers through her hair from the root, rhythmic and steady. "Sometimes I can't help but wonder what you were thinking that first night I said I love you. And...it's dumb, of course, but some part of me feels like whenever you say it, it's just because you're afraid to lose me." And not because you actually feel that way. Not fully.

In light of everything that had happened, all the turmoil they had been through, the tensions that had clouded their times together, Amy thought it was finally time to breathe easy as she snuggled into his embrace, her single most favorite place in the entire world. The warmth of his body so close to hers, the comfort his fingertips inspired as they danced through her hair and ghosted over her skin, it all worked towards easing the stress their relationship had endured over the course of the past few weeks. But it was a tentative, fragile kind of comfort that shattered like glass the moment the words rolled off his tongue. Incapable of keeping herself in spot, Amy was jolted upright into a sitting position, looking down at the man she loved, the man she had given every bit of her heart that she could at every possible turn, and listened to him question her love for him. "Cass," the whisper came full of disbelief, even hurt lingering there somewhere. After all this, was he really questioning her? "I was thinking about how I wished I could say it, because I've felt it, I've known it, but they're not words I throw around lightly. I couldn't say it back then, and I know it took me a while to get there, but I've only ever said that to Brooks before, no one else. It wasn't because I didn't feel it, it was because I needed time for my heart and my mind to get on the same page." It was as much an explanation for Cass as it was a defense of herself, shaking her head at the unspoken, underlying statement of it all.

"That's not it. I am afraid to lose you, but I don't use that as a bargaining chip. I'll love you whether you're mine or not, it's not something I can change, but I don't mean to tie you to myself by saying it. I only mean to tell you how much I care about you when I say it, how much of my heart you have and it's all of it, Cass." She took his hand, the great, rough palm, and splayed it on her chest where her heart beat steadily despite the tension that coiled her insides like a snake. "I love you with every beat of it, even when I don't say it, whether I'm afraid or not."

Through some miracle, his heart stays in the cage of his ribs even as the question leaves his lips. Though Cass means what he says, that niggling doubt that wouldn't leave his mind during his weakest moments, when his fathers words permeated what he knew was true and planted doubts he'd always just managed to dispel. Somewhere in his core, the thirty two year old man knew that Amy's devotion and commitment to him was no small feat. His girl had been traumatized, irrecoverably changed by losing the love she wanted to spend the rest of her days with. He believed her when she told him she'd never been with a man longer than a night after Brooks, could tell by the stubborn ways her walls refused to come down, the terror that still lived there. Cass had seen it that night she'd flung herself bodily in his soot covered arms, her first confession of love a torrent of emotion from what he'd believed to be a terrified place. The hurt in Amy's eyes and tone is the first reaction he registers, and it makes him push himself up onto muscular forearms, still reclined, blue eyes unsure if they should stay vulnerable or go guarded. "You did?" They're a lighter rumble than he was expecting to come from himself, and he hates the tone of it. Wishes it didn't betray his emotions so often.

And then, as blue and hazel meet and Amy keeps talking, he can't stop the wonder that crosses his face. Yes, it still killed him the smallest bit that she was afraid to lose him, to whatever cruel twist of fate might snatch him from her arms (he'd already told her she had too much of him he was never letting her go if he could help it - ), but what she said afterward? Felled him. Quietly and without much fanfare, but just cemented even more Cass's adoration of her. He never though another person would care about him to that depth, much less Amy. Amelia who had her loss tattooed on her body and her soul with loyalty twined within it, whose personal ghost she'd shackled herself to. Amelia, who'd made so much progress since them. Amelia, who called him her boyfriend, who took care of their dog and supported him, championed him in a way no one else ever truly had. Who made him feel like he wasn't just a good man, but a great one, the kind that she made Cass want to be. Who, on his bed, in this home he'd built with his hands that was only complete with Amy in it, confessed to him that her love was not an occasional thing. It was an always thing, spoken with enough conviction that Cass, in that moment, truly believed her, heavy palms absorbing the beats of her heart into himself. "Amelia. You're not going to lose me. You're never going to lose me. I'm never going to lose you." Genuine distress constricts his heart, that thing in his chest that beat for her only, and he expresses it with a hard, impassioned kiss, one hand at the back of her head. I'll love you whether you're mine or not. "You know that I feel the same way too, right? All of me that I have is in love with you. There isn't one part of it that doesn't want you forever."

It was a question that followed her confession, and Amy's chest tightened, shrunk in on itself. Had she done such a bad job at being his girlfriend, at showing him just how much she loved him, simply because she hadn't said it as much or as soon as he did? In her eyes it did nothing to diminish the expanse of her affection, but perhaps Cass saw it in different ways, the scars he carried from his family and his childhood marring him even now. Always, probably. Thinking about it, the jigsaw pieces falling into place, it dawned on her that what she thought was a given implicitly, he needed to have spelled out otherwise he wouldn't believe it. Courtesy of the emotionally and verbally abusive father that C.K. had been to his only son. Whatever hurt she may have felt for having her ardor questioned, it subsided, sizzled out as it occurred to her that it might not have been about her after all. "Honey," she whispered, reaching over to run her fingers along his cheek, tender and caring. "I've been in love with you longer than either of us has known. I have a feeling I always will be," she admitted, a fleeting smile curving her lips as she said it out loud for the first time, both to him and herself. Cass sat upright and planted a kiss to her lips, searing and full of promise that, coupled with what he said, quietened the rational parts of her heart. These were the promises he couldn't keep hard as he might try, promises she knew neither of them had any control over, but she did not want to question him, not even for a single moment. Instead, for maybe the third time in her life, she threw all caution to the wind and nodded her head. She would believe him, that night if no other, that he would always be by her side. Hers to call. Her gentle fingers cradled the side of his face in her small palm, and her eyes closed over, the scent of him all she ever wanted to breathe in, his warmth the only sun she'd ever need. "I know. I've never doubted you for a single moment. And I hope you'll doubt me less from now on."

#para: all the way in #para #para: amy #self para #BABIES #SOBBING #also this canonically happened like a month ago holy shit #tw: pregnancy mention #in a general not solid way but whatever

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ruffsficstuffplace · 6 years

Text

The Viridian Vanguard (Part 25)

<I’m really very sorry we have to part ways like this, Ruby...> Varryn said as they bowed, all of their belongings in a sack on their back, and the Grove’s Tube station behind them.

<It’s alright, Varryn, we all knew it was much more likely to end like this than not,> Ruby said, bowing back.

<I really do wish that I could have lasted longer in the team’s service, Ruby!> Varryn said as they bent back up. <You’ve been an excellent leader, both within and outside of the walls of the Bastion, and a great friend beside; and to say that the credentials and the experience I’ve acquired in my relatively short time with all of you will be invaluable for the rest of my life will be a severe understatement!>

<Aww, thank you, Varryn!> Ruby replied, smiling now. <You’ve been a great team member and a wonderful friend, too. I’m sure we’d have had spent way more time and had a whole lot more stress trying to navigate, hunt, and trap in the wilds if we didn’t have your skills, not to mention your help with all the Big Game, like Grarr VII!>

The colour drained from Varryn’s face, particularly impressive due to the dark colour of their skin.

<Sorry.> Ruby whispered.

Varryn gulped down the lump that had formed in their throat, before awkwardly jerking a paw behind them. <I’m just going to be leaving now, Ruby… need to get settled in my new home, get my affairs here straightened out, before it’s back out to the wilds again!> they said, backpedaling to the Log that was awaiting them.

<Good luck with all that, Varryn!> Ruby cried, waving. <And if you ever need anything from us, don’t hesitate to call!>

<I won’t, thank you, Ruby!> Varryn shouted back, before they swiftly spun around, stuffed their sack of belongings as quickly as they could into the cargo hold, before diving in and strapping the belts in place all by themselves.

The two Tube technicians looked at each other, shrugged, and proceeded to shut the hatch on Varryn, before sending them out of Keeper’s Grove for the last time. Ruby stood where she was for a few moments, before she sighed, turned around, and went back to the house with her head hung.

As she stepped back into the living room, she found everyone still at the “command center,” a table set up with Ruby’s terminal, plus a handful of loaned units. Qrow was the first to look up from his screen, and waved at Ruby. “Welcome back, kiddo, got to say goodbye Varynn like you wanted?”

“Yep! Managed to screw it up, but hey, it’s not like we’ll probably be hearing or seeing from them any time soon!” Ruby said as she plunked herself down on her chair, and reactivated her terminal. “Thanks for the break, everyone, I really appreciate it.”

Penny bid farewell to whoever she was talking to, then smiled at Ruby. “You are welcome, Ruby, and please, think nothing of it! Proper closure is absolutely vital for mental and emotional health.”

Ruby nodded as she returned to her recently moved terminal, and resumed the search for Varryn’s replacement.

“… Thanks to filters, bots, and the Codex, it was easy to screen out almost all of the folks who were completely unqualified, or that we didn’t need as badly as a new wilderness expert, but there were still LOT of folks to screen, references to call up, and a couple of extra background checks to do.”

“I’m surprised that there’s actually so many Fae who want in on the Keeper Team,” Weiss said.

“It’s probably because of all the benefits!” Ruby replied. “The regular pay may be crap, and the job is difficult and dangerous, to say the least, but even if you only lasted a single season with us, that’s the same rep and credentials as you would have had if you spent a year—maybe two—only taking some of the highest risk jobs available in the Valley, nearly non-stop.

“And if you managed to help me put down a Soul Eater? Well, provided you could still fight and venture outside the walls after, the Roost and private contractors will pretty much let you set your own fee, among other things.”

“And if you haven’t had that distinction, and can’t continue working as a Watcher?”

“Then there’s hefty benefits you could live off of if you’re not too extravagant about living expenses, let alone the folks that’d love to employ a former Keeper Team member for the PR points. And if you end up getting killed in action, whoever’s your beneficiaries will be pretty much set for life, and if you don’t have any, you’ll get a fancy, permanent memorial at the Roost—for some, that’s all they really want or need.

“Of course, there are some folks that are just using it as a stepping stone for their careers—‘High Honour Hopefuls,’ we call them. After all, nothing pleases supporters, and looks damn good on a public service record than helping keep Avalon from getting overrun by near-unstoppable monsters!

“Uncle Qrow really doesn’t like it when we get them, though...”

“Fucking hell, Penny, I thought you said you could screen out every single last one of these suck-ups!” Qrow griped as he angrily pressed the “reject” button, so hard his talon scratched the stone of the terminal underneath.

“I only said ‘Most of them,’ and I’m certain that your chronicle data will be concurrent with my own,” Penny replied coolly. “It’s not any fault of mine that some of them are able to avoid detection relying heavily on word and pattern recognition algorithms.”

“Heh, guess they wouldn’t be Honours if they couldn’t, huh?” Nora said playfully.

Qrow side-eyed her, before shaking his head.

“How many of them have you seen so far, Uncle Qrow?” Ruby asked.

“One, and that’s already one too many...” Qrow grumbled, before he sighed then started to shut down his terminal. “You know what? I’ve had enough of screening hopefuls today, I’m clocking out.”

“We have been screening for several hours with just the bare minimum of breaks, it would indeed be wise to end now and resume tomorrow morning, to avoid unnecessary error and impaired judgment due to fatigue,” Penny said.

“Great, now it’s Mender’s orders, too!” Qrow said as he got up and stretched his legs. “Time for dinner—who’s turn was it, again?”

“I think it was Varryn’s, actually!” Ruby said as she and the others began to shut down their terminals, too.

“It was indeed!” Penny said. “So, with him gone, that means it’s Qrow on dinner duty, myself with dishes, and Ruby to attend to Zwei.”

Qrow paused for a moment, before he happy look on his face disappeared. “Ah, shit, you’re right...” he mumbled, before he dejectedly marched into the kitchen, pulling his flask out of his pocket as he did.

“We’ll help,” Ren said, as he and Nora got up, and followed him.

“And just so you know, I am starving after all that work, so it’s gonna be a total crumb-pocalypse tonight!” Nora said, chuckling.

“Please remember to pace yourself so you don’t end up with indigestion!” Penny called after them, waving, before she turned to Ruby. “Would you like some assistance with Zwei, Ruby? I was thinking of contacting some more character references before I stop completely myself, but I am willing to provide an extra hand and/or company, should you need or want it.”

“Nah, I’m good!” Ruby said as she pulled her cloak back on her shoulders and turned the hood up. “Besides, I wouldn’t mind some alone time with Zwei, he’s probably been so bored and lonely all day!” she said before she made for the door.

“If that’s what you wish, Ruby!” Penny said. “Don’t hesitate to call if you change your mind!”

“I won’t!” Ruby said, before she stepped out of the house and shut the door behind her, stood on the edge of the rail and yelled, “Zwei! We’re all done for today! We can go play now!”

She smiled as she leaned on the railing, gazing out at the overgrowth down below, waiting for Zwei to rip a new straight line through them in his rush. “Heh, he’ll probably leap all the way to the balcony and take me back down with him,” she thought, smiling.

The smile disappeared when she five minutes later, she didn’t see, hear, nor smell him. “Zwei!” Ruby called out again. “Zwei! Shift’s over today! Uncle Qrow’s already getting dinner! I’ll make sure you get an extra serving tonight if you get back here within a minute! Counting down: 60… 59… 58...”

She peered out at the swamp, trying to notice anything off, closed her eyes and counted silently, skipped a few as she sniffed and tried to get even the vaguest whiff of Zwei’s powerful, unmistakable smell.

“… 3… 2… 1… 0!” Ruby cried. “Times up, Zwei! Maybe I’ll consider still giving those extra servings to you if you come back right now…!”

The door opened, Penny peered out. “Has Zwei still not returned, Ruby?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s really weird...” Ruby said, still looking out. “He’s never strayed that deep into the swamp without us, hasn’t he?”

“No, based on my own Chronicle, Qrow’s, and the previous chroniclers,” Penny replied.

Ruby turned around, the worry clear on her face. “Do you think he’s okay?”

“Most likely!” Penny said, smiling as she stepped out of the house and towards Ruby. “He’s an incredibly powerful, durable, and intelligent dog! That aside, it’s highly probable that he’s found an incredibly comfortable, secluded spot and fell asleep there, and it just so happens that he can’t hear you.

“Shall we go look for him?” she added, putting a hand on Ruby’s shoulder and gesturing out to the swamp.

“Please,” Ruby said, heading to the boat-elevator.

“I will inform the others that we’ll be searching for Zwei, then will join you post-haste,” Penny said.

Soon, the both of them were wandering deep into the swamps surrounding Keeper’s Grove, beams of light shooting out of Penny’s unblinking eyes; her ears slowly rotating around her head like radar dishes; her mouth open and her hands cupped around it, and her tail in Ruby’s hand and leading up to her mouth as she used her like a megaphone.

“Zwei!” Ruby called out, her voice booming and echoing off the trees as they hopped and walked on the giant roots. “Zwei! Where are you?! I’m really worried, boy!”

After yet another minute of silence, Ruby whined and let go of Penny’s tail. “He’s not answering or anything! Do you think something bad happened? Should we call the others?!”

“It is extremely concerning, but I urge you to please remain calm, Ruby,” Penny said as she put her hands off her mouth, shut off the spotlights in her eyes before she faced Ruby. “I’m going to contact them now, so we can get the equipment and the heads for a proper search.”

It was then that something fell from high up above, and noisily plopped into the water, followed by some leaves and branches that had been messily cut apart, likely by accident. Ruby and Penny both looked above, into the thick branches and leaves obscuring whatever was above, before turning to the water where the object had landed.

They shared a look with each other, before Penny reached in, and pulled out a black breakneck, now covered in swamp muck and dripping with water. She reactivated the lights in her eyes, Ruby frowned as she examined the weapon.

“This is Celestian made…” she muttered.

“Indeed,” Penny said, before she contacted the others back at the house. “Sorry to interrupt your dinner, everyone, but it appears that Zwei has found an intruder, possibly still armed and dangerous. Please prepare accordingly, bring the necessary detaining equipment, and alert the Roost.”

Qrow sighed. “And of course it’s right as I sit down and got my plate ready… alright, got your location, got a visual and any info for us?”

“No visual, and two things: there’s a good chance they’re from Celestion, and down a primary weapon,” Ruby said, holding up the breakneck for the others.

“Oooh, a possible assassination attempt!” Nora chimed in, her mouth obviously full of cookies. “Isn’t this exciting, Ren?! I mean, it’s not great obviously, but we get to check this off our milestone list of being with the Keepers!”

“I suppose so, Nora,” Ren said. “ETA 25 minutes—you want us to bring anything else alongside your gear, Ruby?”

“Yeah: dinner to go,” Ruby added. “Something tells me this is going to be a LONG night...”

Note: The Watchers, Seekers, Weavers, Makers, and the rest of the Orders are free to make recommendations for replacements and additions to the Keeper’s team, but aside from the most basic litmus tests, all the screening, interviewing, and hiring is done by the Keepers themselves, usually (but not always) with the help of the current and/or recently retired members.

This is because the Keeper Team has historically had a LOT of questionable hires, who turned out to be incredibly great assets, such as Abner.

#rwby #white rose #the viridian vanguard #fanfic

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