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lurkinglurkerwholurks · 6 months

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Kitten

First posted: March 22, 2019

Focuses on: Bruce Wayne and the Fam (plus a new addition)

Favorite bookmark: "GIVE BRUCE A BABY GIRL!!!! HE IS A DESTINED GIRL DAD AND DESERVES MORE DAUGHTERS!!!! AND HE NEEDS A BABY!!!!!!"

Tier: This is #11 in terms of hits and bookmarks?? How?? #9 in terms of kudos? #19 in comments?????? #14 in subscriptions. I am baffled by this.

This is my “behind the scenes” series where I indulge myself horribly by annotating my fics. Link to the fic itself above. Thoughts below the cut.

Apparently by this point I had secured a friendship with @audreycritter because she was the one who told me about the existence of Helena Kyle, Selina's daughter, and some comic book nonsense about her maybe or maybe not being Bruce's daughter also and how in some universes Bruce helps her get adopted out and no??? J'refuse????? This is the kind of canon nonsense fic was made to fix.

The decision was a spontaneous one. Rare, for Bruce, but not as rare as some might think. Nor were his decisions—including this one—as free from consideration as the label “spontaneous” might imply. While it was true that Bruce liked to put more deliberate, conscious thought into his life choices, the pieces had already been there, facts lurking in his subconscious like mayfly larva. When the moment had arisen, those facts had sprouted wings and coalesced into a swarm.

As anyone following along has clocked, the majority of my fics start with the author going "Now let me explain something I need you to understand."

Besides, it wasn’t like he didn’t have a history of making this kind of choice before.

We stan a self-aware man.

He wouldn’t make the same mistakes as before, even if it had taken him multiple times to learn his lesson.

I do want to write that fic someday. I had a specific framework mentally charted out that would partly involve Dick learning about Jason Todd's arrival. Someday.

“Bruce!” Dick’s voice was bright and warm, flooding through the interior like sunshine.

Bruce Wayne loves Dick Grayson so. freaking. much.

He could hear Dick shifting, probably settling against a wall or filing cabinet, before prodding, “No offense, but you’re not one for mid-day, no-reason calls. What’s up?”

Ah, that familiar "okay, who died" anxiety provoked by the unexpected call of someone who doesn't do unexpected calls.

“Bruce, tell me I did not just hear what I thought I heard.” Dick’s voice was flat and preternaturally calm, a detective arriving at the scene of a crime, analyzing and struggling to withhold judgement.

Dick: oh no who died

Dick, two seconds later: oh my god not again

“You were my first call.” Bruce offered the fact quickly, an olive branch to shelter under. He kept one hand on the wheel, one hand on the fussing baby in the backseat, and his focus on getting through this call. “I know I… haven’t handled this sort of thing well before. With you.”

Whatever else he may be, Bruce Wayne is a Dad Who Tries!!!!!

He was fumbling, words turning to sludge on his lips, gumming up with guilt and regret. It was always like that, for him. It was one of the reasons Bruce preferred the cowl. No one expected heartfelt speeches from a wraith out of Gotham’s darkest nightmares. Kids, though. Kids expected those sorts of things from their parents.

Always my favorite version of Bruce, this uneloquent and painfully aware version. Also, ironically, as best I remember this entire scene was one of the easier things I've written. I just watched it happen and took dictation.

He still had days with each of his children when seeing them at the breakfast counter or curled up in the den surprised him. That’s a living thing, he would think, and it’s mine, and he would be overwhelmed once more.

Literally me with my cats. The bit right before this about the choice crashing over him like a wave and taking him by surprise even years after the fact is a thing that happens to me. I adapt really quickly in the moment to various changes and then get hit with delayed, extended surprise. (But Bruce's literal surprised thoughts are me re: my cats.)

“As sure as I’ve ever been,” Bruce replied, and even he wasn’t sure which meaning he was reaching for.

Ah, duality. It's fun to think about which he might mean and which Dick might assume.

Still, it was a relief to have Alfred greet him at the door as if this were just another ordinary day and Bruce was not standing with his neck bent as a small child tugged on fistfuls of his hair.

What an an adorable art piece this would make. Not that I'm hinting. I just see it so clearly.

She was looking around with sedate interest, calm but alert, a monarch overlooking her domain. Or, Bruce realized with wry amusement, a cat eyeing a new box.

Please also know she's doing that little unbalanced head wiggle babies do when they're old enough to hold their head upright on their own but young enough to not do it well.

Bruce had planned on gathering all his children in the den, explaining as briefly as he could the circumstances of the baby’s arrival, and letting them make each other’s acquaintance. But his day had yet to go to plan, so why start now.

Drily wry Bruce is always so fun to write. He doesn't get to be as overtly funny as his kids, but I enjoy the humor.

It was an uncomfortable maneuver, since he had to bend further, almost double, to ease the tugging on his scalp until he could loose those little hands.

big man little baby BIG MAN LITTLE BABY

“I already have a sister,” he pointed out. Bruce was inclined to describe it as petulantly, but Damian managed to keep his bottom lip sucked in, if only just.

Damian: I claim none of you

Damian, confronted by a girl baby: HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO MY BELOVED SISTER

also he's jus' a babyyyy

Damian recoiled further, and Bruce let Batman fall from his shoulders like a loosened cape.

can't get enough of this crap

Bruce wrapped his arm around Damian’s middle and pulled the boy into his side. Damian turned away so he couldn’t look at the baby, who was gabbling to herself as she gummed on Bruce’s thumb. Bruce rested his jaw against Damian’s temple, both to keep the boy still and to keep his voice low. The Manor was the securest place in Gotham, other than the Cave, but he would not risk this.

Sometimes writing the logistics of physicality is so difficult, but when it works for me, boy does it work.

Bruce let the question settle against his skin like mist before answering the same way he would again and again for years to come. “She is now.” He didn’t know. He suspected Selina truly didn’t either. Whatever the case, it didn’t matter, in the same way it didn’t matter that his blood didn’t course through Dick’s veins, that he wasn’t responsible for Jason’s broad shoulders or Tim’s blue eyes or Cassie’s dark hair or Duke’s dimples. They were his. And now this child was, too.

I think, in canon, she's supposed to be his, maybe. Don't know for sure, don't really care, and I don't think Bruce would either, as stated above.

“You will be her big brother,” Bruce continued softly. “That is a solemn charge that you cannot take lightly. As closest to her in age, she’ll look up to you. As she grows, she’ll mimic you—your words, your actions, your behaviors. Which means you’ll be in a unique position, perhaps more than any of us, to influence the person she becomes. Do you understand?”

10000% shamelessly used this exact tactic on a nibling when they acquired a younger sibling.

That was something new, the idea of being able to name a child himself.

Isn't that fun! I love names and naming things. I'm delighted he gets this opportunity. (More on this in a minute.)

Somehow, choosing a name felt like a larger responsibility than all of his former child-rearing experience put together. My car is called the Batmobile, Bruce thought despairingly as he watched his children watch each other.

Did I mention that I love drily deadpan Bruce? That line still makes me laugh.

“So does she do anything?” Tim asked. He was eyeing the baby in the same way he might a particularly florid insect—with interest, scientific remove, and no small amount of wariness. Cass wrinkled her nose but didn’t comment. “She’s a baby,” Duke pointed out with the typical fond exasperation he had picked up once the shine of the Manor had worn off. “What do you expect her to do?”

I loved trying to figure out how each kid would react and if there were ways they might respond to the new baby that would be surprising but still sensible. I'm not sure if I managed that, but I'm still pleased with how they all ended up, this weird little family of only children.

Bruce’s brain made a sparking noise, like a fork left in the microwave.

BZZT DING DING A DING A BZZT DING

“Uh, yeah? Got back on Monday. Why?” Why, why, why. Why were his children so distrustful, that’s what Bruce wanted to know.

*taps the exhausted dry humor Bruce sign*

Bruce opened his eyes and stared at the baby shrieking inches from his face. Duke stood behind her, his hands clamped under her arms, and stared back impassively as she squealed into the phone.

Bruce has horrible children.

“B, what the—“ Bruce fought the urge to cover the baby’s ears, even though he was the only one who could hear the voice on the other end.

I love this stupid family.

There was an ominous gurgle from the baby. Duke looked at her, then at Bruce, then quickly handed her over. “Not it.”

I have literally watched hundreds of children in my life, related and unrelated. I have changed one (1) diaper, under duress, and immediately and deliberately forgot everything I was taught. J'refuse.

Helena, meaning bright, shining light, Bruce had explained almost bashfully to Selina. Selina, who had left town the same night Helena went home to the Manor but who saw each of Bruce’s texts and left the read receipt on so he would know. Selina, whose name meant moon. So she’ll always know where she came from.

Remember I said later? Later is now. As we were already spitting on canon, I was more than willing to change the kiddo's name if needed, but it turns out DC (I will be charitable and assume purposefully) chose a lovely, symbolic name that matched beautifully in a way that felt like Bruce. So I kept it. So Bruce did get to name a kid, but also not really because comics did it for him.

The legislation that he’d helped champion regarding the treatment of minors in the media hadn’t hurt either.

I think this was around the time there was a flurry of papparazzi nonsense and talk about this IRL with... Jolie kids or Cruise kids or something, I don't remember. Some grown adults being awful and pushy around famously related minors.

With each adoption, the celebrations had gotten smaller but more precious, the attendees a guard set in place, their names like a chant against hardship and a hymn of thankfulness.

I love this line, but I also think it's wrong now. I think the older Bruce gets, the more firmly he cements the relationships he trusts the most, but also the more he meets people deserving of that trust. Loner, low-key terrified Bruce wouldn't have held a gala to celebrate Dick's appearance. He would have gone full feral shields up. Maybe with Jason he would have given half a thought to expectations and appearances, but with a street kid like Jason, he would've wanted that child shielded from the horrible people in his social circle. And so on and so forth. By now he has his friends, but also his kids' friends, their allies both in domino and out.

Bruce vowed it, down in the deepest part of his heart, the core of him that let him lead a team of aliens and demigods, that made a double life possible and dressing as an armored animal a feasible life choice. A life choice he would not let the baby in his arms emulate.

I too sometimes have a deadpan sense of humor. Shocking, I know.

I take that final line not so much as full self-criticism but an acknowledgement that Bruce's children are all driven to the caped life in the same way he was—by trauma and loss and the need to fix Gotham—and all came to him with that drive already installed. With Helena, being separated from Selina is a trauma, even for an infant, but as is stated throughout the fic, Selina will remain fully present and involved as much as she wishes to be. And Bruce will brave hell and high water and even worse to keep this child from experiencing the kinds of trauma that brought his other children to him and into their other life.

She was already a wonder to him, his little moonbeam, a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a taffeta-heavy party dress with a matching headband.

The bookmark was right. Let this man be a girldad!!!! (I'd briefly considered writing a followup to this, where Cass had to sort complicated emotions about not being the only girl in the house. Never got enough reaction in the early days, though. Something about it or the tags or something attracted a larger than usual contingent of "okay but Bruce is a bad dad" crowd. Bleh.)

He realized he looked like his father, but with airbrushed grey hairs and crow’s feet lines that Thomas Wayne had never had the time to gather. He realized he looked happy.

me @ me: ow????

As stated in the before-cut stats, this ranks decently high in terms of all my fics????? Somehow????????? I can usually get a decent bead on reception just based on how option a fic shows up in my inbox or people reference it on Tumblr or whatever, but this one apparently was a sleeper to only me. Stunned. Bewildered.

#fanfic bts brain dump #batfam #fanfic #bruce wayne #helena wayne

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dailyadventureprompts · 2 years

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Happy Mermay Dapper. I know that's more of an art prompt thing but do you have any merfolk centric ideas ?

Adventure: A Tragedy Weighed in Pearls

"Never forget, my earnest student, that money is abstracted suffering, and we are all due a little fortune in life thanks to the sorrows we endure as beings of the material. There are however those clever individuals that feel themselves entitled to the fortune of others, and will yet contrive greater means of suffering the way a flax farmer might seek to improve her press to better squeeze profit from her crop.

In this, my little flax seed, we can see that the miser is infact a martyr, for who else would carve out their heart for a coin purse, and go fattening their ledgers knowing that the universe would come along and pay them what they are owed?

-The Unsung Poet, Book 1: Motives

Hooks:

There’s a new power player along the Windingvine river, that great highway of trade that binds together kingdoms and warlords and far off wild places. They’re a merchant group by the name of Coral-Gate, headed by a family with wealth enough to buy off politicians and pirates and anyone who might stand in their way. For those too obstinate to do business ( by which we mean let Coral-Gate absorb you or push you out of the market), the merchant group hires toughs to engineer compliance, and then pays magistrates to look the other way. The party can be repeatedly roped into these abuses when the shop they happen to be browsing gets shaken down, or the caravan they’re escorting gets ambushed. It only takes a couple of interrogated thugs with pouches full of pearls to realize that they’re dealing with an emerging criminal empire.

In addition to bankrolling all manner of evil dealings and noble debaucheries, Coral-Gate seems to have a fixation on poets, players, and musicians, anyone who’s repertoire touches upon tragedy and sorrow. While trading rumors at the roadhouse the party hears of performers shuffled off to back rooms and offered small fortunes to see if they could make an audience of hardened cutthroats cry. As the rumors go, those that fail to get a sniffle or even mixed results get tossed out on their ear, while those that succeed are never heard from again, whisked off somewhere to give a private performance from which they never return.

The party gets a chance to follow up on this when a noble family comes to them desperate to see their son returned. Always a quiet and contemplative sort, Lau Sen was prone to slip away from his busy life at the imperial academy to consort with artists and radicals, often sharing his minimalist and sometimes upsetting poetry to crowds of rapt listeners. One of these recitals was interrupted by a gang of armed thugs who carried Lau Sen away, but have yet to supply his family with any sort of ransom demands. Fearing the worst, they’re willing to pay the party a small fortune for the unharmed return of their sensitive scion.

Eventually the party is going to be mixed up with Coral-Gate badly enough that one of their bosses, a “reformed” river pirate by the name of Lionfish Min, will deliver unto them an ultematum: Die, or do her a favor: Min’s heard there’s a village somewhere along there’s a remote hamlet along the coast where the locals are overcome with inexplicable sadness, the “fall to to your knees and spend the rest of the day weeping” sort of sadness inflicted upon them by a haunting song that comes drifting in at low tide. Min wants whoever or whatever is making this song, and is willing to give the party their lives ( or the life of a certain kidnapped poet) if they get it for her.

Setup: For generations, the Jeng family were nobodies, fisherfolk scraping out an existence in a settlement too small to be recorded on the imperial census. One very bad year, the patriarch of the family was out in his boat long after dark, looking to net something that could fill his family’s empty bellies when he heard a beautiful song coming from a stretch of rocks most other families avoided as they were known to be haunted, and splinter the hulls of passing boats besides.

What did the elder Jeng find there but a mermaid combing her hair, basking in the light of the moon. The elder Jeng knew of a scholar who lived up the coast who bought all manner of oddities that washed up on the beach from time to time, and so with all the stealth of a lifelong fisherman, he let his boat drift close enough to the mermaid’s perch where he could throw his net and haul her from the water, binding her tight so that her hysterics didn’t tip him into the sea.

By the time he got home, the elder Jeng had realized that his little boat was beginning to ride low in the water, as the mermaid’s tears transmuted to glimmering pearls before they’d even rolled off her cheeks. There on the shore looking at a keel full of riches, he could have released the mermaid and still had enough to keep his family comforatable for a long time. The turn of years had been cruel to Jeng however, and he had grown cruel in turn, and so he dragged the mermaid up to his cottage, where he and his family would begin to conspire about what to do with their newly endless wealth.

Further Adventures:

Fourteen years after her capture, Veils-of-light-among-the-reeds ( or Veils to her friends) has no more tears to shed, Sorrow and deprivation have scraped her spirit bare, and now her only desire is to return to the sea and feel the cool waters embrace her one last time before she allows herself to dissipate into the primal current. In those early months she made a fortune beyond imagining for the Jengs, on which they have sustained themselves as they built the Coral Gate merchant company to handle their business while they lived off the excess. Still, being merely wealthy isn’t enough, and the coldhearted family longs for yet another influx of tears to bloat their coffers. To this end they’ve been on the hunt for performers capable of making Veils cry, a tactic they had early success with for a few years until her tears dried up once again and the cruel and avaricious heir to the Jengs, Runan started killing any poet that failed to insight the mermaid just to get a response.

Veils and the captured performers are kept in a complex of tunnels beneath the Jeng family manor, a virtual palace situated on cliffs overlooking a great harbor the Cortal Gate merchant company has taken as its seat of power. Attacking the place directly would see the party running up against various fortifications and layers of hired defence, not to mention the city guard that the company has been sure to pay off. Perhaps a more subtle approach is required, something that will exploit the Jengs averice and need for comfort to allow the party to slip within their defences.

The song emanating along the coast is from another mermaid, Vault-of -the-deep-sublime-and-holy (or Vault to her enemies). She and Veils were two of a kind, spun from the same current and lifelong companions. She’s spent the last decade and a half searching the seas for her other half, and has after so long returned to the place she last saw Veils to greive her loss. If the party can get through to her, and the spirit breaking sorrow of her song, they may be able to peice together the thread behind Coral-Gate’s rise to power. Likewise, the promise of a reunion with Vault may be the only thing that can pull Veils back from her desire to dissolve, but even then it may only be long enough for one last poignant goodbye.

Art

#dnd #dungeons and dragons #adventure #5e homebrew #homebrew adventure #seaside #villain #mid level #Merchant #Merfolk #hooboy I found that art and knew it was going to be a sad one #prompt postage #pirates #conspiracy #politics #town #Village #ocean #wuxia

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neverfalling · 3 months

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☼ BASICS ☼

NAME: Safiye Başak BIRTHDAY: 24 April 1992 ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Neutral AGE: 31 SPECIES: Air Witch - Necromancy FACECLAIM: Melisa Pamuk

Safiye can be resourceful, determined, and patient, but also selfish, manipulative, and deceptive.

☼ BIOGRAPHY ☼

Born in Çeşme, Turkiye to a witch couple of utterly average ability, and was placed thoroughly in her older brother's shadow almost immediately. He was naturally gifted--there wasn't much he couldn't do with ease and mastery of most things came with little effort. Safiye, on the other hand, required steady hard work to come even close to whatever her brother did without trying.

Her parents didn't mean to neglect her, but their son excelled in every task--magical and otherwise--and so in their pursuit of ensuring a place of esteem for their son, they often forgot Safiye existed. Birthdays were sometimes forgotten, and a solo walk home from school when they failed to meet her there happened a couple times a month.

Despite this, her brother was never unkind to her, a fact that only served to infuriate a temperamental little girl. Loneliness grew to resentment and bitterness, and when he finally left to do whatever it was that would make him More Amazing, Safiye thought perhaps finally her parents would do something other than fawn over him.

That didn't happen. Instead, Safiye was made to learn the family business, which involved the buying and selling of books both magical and mundane. Though numbers and organization were easy and interesting to her, her parents' insistence that this would be her life soured the activity to her.

Around age 20, she came across a bit of information in an old book her parents acquired that involved a ritual to funnel power to a witch who performed it. It wasn't so much instructions as it was a warning against such a thing, but Safiye was nonetheless intrigued. If she couldn't come by power so naturally as her brother, then she may as well take it for herself.

It took her two years to cobble together the ritual as well as the reagents needed to perform it. The resulting spell should have killed her, but instead resulted in demolishing half her childhood home and her expulsion from the family for performing such an abhorrent ritual.

With little more than what she could carry in a backpack, Safiye left home feeling lost and betrayed, but she soon realized that despite the destruction, something had changed about her magic. Her survival meant she was drawn to the trappings of death, and such things gave her power. Blood, sacrifice, and the dead themselves were now her domain.

Safiye's business knowledge and ability to work harder than anyone else eventually landed her with a small but successful magical bookstore in New York City. She doesn't willingly associate with the coven in power there and discovered most witches find her a little off-putting anyway. The ritual left a stain on her magic, one the magically sensitive often notice but aren't sure of the source.

Her bookstore doubles as a front for a successful smuggling business, one she doesn't discuss and and goes to great lengths to hide.

Caring for people doesn't come naturally given her upbringing and the difficult life she's lived since leaving Turkiye, and so she was a little blindsided when a shithead little witch by the name of Astraea bullied her way into her life and quickly became the most important thing in it. Safiye is not a particularly violent person--if only because clean up for such things is a lot of work--but if something happened to Rae, she'd burn the entire world to ash.

☼ EXTRA ☼

The ritual Safiye performed may have given her a wealth of incredible power, but it's not without its drawbacks. For one, where most witches have some sort of guidance in the form of elders or old grimoires, Safiye's magic is largely unknown territory--what she knows has been gleaned through hard work and experimentation, and it's not always successful.

In addition, where some witches might exhaust themselves with over-extending their abilities, getting too close to such a limit feels akin to burnout. She toes the line of her abilities carefully, quite sure that a step too far will result in her death.

A lot of usual spells don't particularly work for Safiye anymore, particularly when it comes to healing. From what she can tell, she's lost all ability to do such spells, even if she comes at them from an angle of blood or death magic. The spells either fail or backfire catastrophically. It's inconvenient, but Safiye is nothing if not careful.

The smuggling business is incredibly private and she's very secretive about it. She needs to trust the people with whom she does business, and after a lifetime of mistreatment from within her family and without, that trust doesn't come easily.

Vampires are not welcome in her shop. After a near-death experience in her mid-20s, she's been incredibly careful about vampires, and that includes an enchantment in her shop that makes it deeply unsettling for a vampire. At first it simply feels like an oppressive atmosphere, but as the vampire lingers, the enchantment will eventually incite pain akin to an aneurysm.

#bio #bio: safiye

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akocomyk · 1 year

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VIII

She was not the youngest, nor was she the eldest.

She never had the chance to bear the Quill.

She was nothing but the second and unimportant princess.

However, she wanted to be something. She wanted to prove to everyone that she was as deserving as her two sisters. Years and years of hard work and over-studying made her what she was. She knew how to rule and govern her people. She knew the history of their land, starting from the very first ages until today.

She was obsessed with learning about the past monarchs and knew of a king who practiced magic and vanished on a whim one tragic night. This story consumed her being, and she went so far as to study the magical arts herself. She didn’t intend to vanish like the past king, but she wanted to use magic for the good of the kingdom and to show that she was more capable than her sisters.

In addition, she made herself beautiful by wearing clothes and accessories that were drastically different from her sisters’. She believed that a queen shouldn’t just be beautiful inside but beautiful outside as well. She knew everything that a queen should be, for she wanted to be. Despite all her efforts, the King never thought of her as the Bearer, nor did the Sorcerer. The King was adamant about putting the youngest princess on the throne, and the Sorcerer strongly believed in what was right.

While her sisters had the King and the Sorcerer, this wunderkind had the Queen. Since she had the most inclination to magic, their relationship was more than just any mother and daughter story. The Queen taught her everything she thought would be vital for a princess, but she saw how challenged the princess was when dealing with the mystical arts. Nevertheless, she carried on and even requested the aid of the Sorcerer for her daughter’s lessons.

Unfortunately, the Sorcerer saw the same problem the Queen had seen. The princess often went too far, giving more than enough, exerting too much, and being in vain. Anything she did, you’d feel her intention was to try to surpass everyone. She would always try to make anything she made more beautiful than her sisters’. Due to these reasons, her two sisters would sometimes joke that she had lost her mind.

There was one time when the wunderkind insisted that there was a young prince roving around the castle and he wasn’t even trying to hide. The prince, she described, wore an embroidered tunic in the color of deep blue—like the early morning sky as the first ray of the sun seeps through. But no matter how much she tried to prove it to her sisters, the prince wouldn’t show up.

She knew she wasn’t going mad. He came to her once when she was practicing some spells her mother taught her, and the prince guided her throughout until she perfected such spells. It wasn’t a dream; it all happened in her waking life. She was absolutely captivated by the prince’s grace and the way he wielded magic with so much ease, and she even felt a spark ignited within her heart and thought that maybe something was brewing between the two of them.

After that session, she raced to her sisters to prove his existence once more, but the prince disappeared. He never tutored her again, but she still saw him walking around, and she would sometimes run after him and call his attention. None of her efforts made the prince come back and see her again.

Undeniably, the Desperate Wunderkind was too soft-hearted or too hard-headed to handle the governance of the kingdom. That was her greatest trouble. Most of the time, she heard more from her heart than what her mind told her. She might have had the capability to do marvelously with all the things that she knew, but when her heart kicked in, everything would plummet down a great hole of nothingness. Yet there were also times that she used her head too much, and whatever she did would lack passion, resulting in a product that lacked emotion and heartfelt beauty.

There’s a reason why the head is placed on top of our bodies, above everything else, above the heart. When the heart grows too much, there’s the brain above that could and should control it. And when the brain grows, there’s the heart below to tone it down. The world has its ways of balancing everything out, a lot of people are just too blind to see it.

She might have worn the most sparkling dress among the three Princesses, but wearing such a dress was not enough to outshine them.

☆ ☆ ★ ☆ ☆

#Souls of TG Kingdom

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stingslikeabee · 2 years

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He sits close, eyes on her - hands surprisingly kept to himself. Though they've spent so many nights together now, they'd not yet been intimate. Perhaps they one day would or shit, maybe never. Maybe their closeness only exists in the nights he'd gone home alone.

Tension swells regardless; the agent so near her, she'd surely feel the warmth of his breath as he speaks. The booth suddenly so hot now that it's only them, a bottle of a fine wine and solemn words to go. ❝ people come to me, but in the end they always leave. ❞ he speaks truth but he doesn't speak the part he truly wishes to whisper - a beg and a plead that she'd not be one of them.

((It's 2am I wake up to send this then go back sleep 😴))

Murakami prompts . accepting

For a place so lively during regular business hours, it was always a jarring experience to remain behind after doors were closed to the general public and experience the surprising silence of a room generally filled with laughter, clinking silverware and the sound of champagne flutes making toasts. Melissa did not formally own the place - she shouldn’t be there, but then again, neither should Chris.

The fact that these one-on-one meetings without any additional witnesses were not infrequent was a sign pointing towards something out of the ordinary. Chris Redfield was no customer of hers - no girl was ever taken on a date or to a private room, and yet he happened to be a familiar face around the place that served as a front for her network. But people did not know the reason he kept returning - Dario and the other employees just assumed it was a bad crush on the surrogate mother of all the younger ones; what they failed to understand was why Melissa tolerated it.

Her policy had always been to direct the clientele to her own ‘flowers’ - otherwise there would be no business; she didn’t get paid to listen to him and make his life a little bit less miserable. But it was too late now - the modern-day madame had been roped into whatever secret agenda he had. Melissa had been meaning to follow him, track Chris and find out what he did for a living when he wasn’t looking so upset, full of regret and incredibly kissable.

But if he hadn’t yet worked up the courage to return any of her touches - then she hadn’t yet decided to see for herself what he was about. Just as Chris was afraid of some illusion shattering, the same was true for the brunette. She had never been the kind to have lasting, genuine bonds - how could she, when she kept her own name hidden, her living address undisclosed and put such a fabricated persona forth every night?

(Then why did it feel like Chris saw through it all - and still did not feel repulsed or tempted to go away?)

His words were shared by Melissa - the former escort could have said it all herself. Honestly, as much as she had enjoyed her time on active duty (and still thought her current self-employment a necessity to society as a whole), she had never been much more than a glorified honey trap. She seduced, enticed and played with men (and the very rare, occasional women) until she pushed them away and back into their lives - she was never to be a permanent fixture for anyone; just a regular comfort for a period of time.

“It feels like a perverse cycle, doesn’t it?” she countered - and there was no artificial smile, no mischievous twinkle in her eye; all the masks were off for a little while, and even if Chris had no idea, he was speaking to the woman behind the act - the original flower instead of the gardener. “To so desperately yearn for connection and yet push anyone else who gets too close away. I hate that,” she finally said it, words burning on her tongue as if they were poisonous - but they were just, really, the bitter truth.

There were no further words - but only because the brunette couldn’t trust herself to speak anymore; these realizations were heavy, and the burden on her shoulders felt oppressive. There was a way out of it all, of course - to demolish the walls; to admit to certain feelings. But it required a courage that, perhaps for the one fueled by the wine, she didn’t yet possess.

So instead Melissa did something different - a hand reached out to the agent, covering his with hers and letting the warmth of their skin mingle. At some point he turned his palm skywards, and the digits interlocked more firmly - all the while silence reigned around them, but their eyes could speak volumes in how their gazes seemed unable to drift apart from one another.

His silent plea hadn’t gone unnoticed - she didn’t want to go away; she had, in fact, been doing everything in her power to ignore the red flags and to believe there was no need to pull back and severe that tie. Melissa was clinging to Chris as if he was a rock and she had been drowning - she wasn’t ready to give up and fully sink to the bottom of the lonely pit she had been living in.

She couldn’t bear it - not the notion of Chris leaving.

#r-edfield #redfield #v: House of Flowers #Murakami prompts #replied #look I saw this originally at 4am #and it gave me such strong feelings #Melissa needed to wait until I was coherent to use words #but trust me she is NOT OKAY

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fatedtruths · 10 months

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☀ TOM HEADCANON 011 ☀ ▒ SYBBIE , MY LOVE

there is something UNDENIABLY possessive about the way that tom is with his daughter. not in any sort of way that means he wouldn’t let her life her life and experience things and be her own person but more of a reminder to the family. he’s away from his family and these people, in trying to help, ( and he acknowledges that is waht they are trying to do ) try to take over. They are almost trying to turn her into another Sybil but she’s not her, even if she is like her in many ways, and he is her FATHER. he finds himself emphasizing it a lot, both because he loves her and he cannot get over that she is his and to remind the family. “ my daughter.” “ hello sybbie my love.” she’s family to all of them, but she’s his daughter and he does make all the decisions for her, and sometimes they need to remember that. the ‘my love’ addition he started to add after the fiasco with nanny west. it’s the first time that he really realizes that there were be plenty of people who take the so called ‘scandal’ of her parents out on her and he hates that she’s in that position because it would never have happened in ireland. ( and he’s well aware that it is his fault that they are not currently in ireland so he feels like he has to fight against her being hurt constantly ) so calling her ‘my love’ is a reminder to her that it doesn’t matter what anyone might say to her, it doesn’t matter what someone might call her, she will always be LOVED by him, unconditionally and just for existing. she is his love, his daughter, his first born, and very much the only child he ever expects to have. and she can come to him about anything, can do anything, yet he will still always love her. the constant reminders that he loves her, the affection that is fatherly but also very unusual both for it’s time and in the halls of the upper class entirely comes from how sensitive and emotional he can be but also a promise he made to Sybil. her parents loved her, there’s no doubt about it, but their love had CONDITIONS, or seemed to. they didn’t approve of their marriage, they didn’t come to their wedding, they wouldn’t assist them in coming to her sisters’ weddings. they might not have known how it broke sybil but tom was the one who was there to pick up the pieces and he doesn’t ever want to cause that sort of pain to sybbie. she has to know that she can do whatever she wants, can love whoever she wants, can follow whatever path she wants, and she can always tell him and he will always be there. he also doesn’t want sybbie growing up with the stunted emotional constipation that all of the Crawleys have because he hates it and he doesn’t think it’s healthy so he pulls her back to him, reminds the world that she is his first and everyone else’s second and that he always has the final say. ( also always saw downton as always pulling and taking sybil away from him, ultimately the house took her away from him completely, and he is terrified of the same thing happening with his daughter because she is all that he has left. )

#[ TOM — headcanons ]#[ queue. ]

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Okay, so you know “Justice League meets Batman’s kids, who they’d previously been unaware existed” AUs?

So picture that.....but this time, instead of them just having no knowledge of any of these other Gotham vigilantes at all....the Batkids all migrate to various cities as they get older and become known as their protectors - Dick in Bludhaven, Tim in San Francisco, Cass in Hong Kong, etc....

Meaning they’re all established figures, the Justice League are aware of them as solo local heroes who stick to their cities and so they just don’t interact with them much if at all, or else some are members of team lineups but are particularly vague about their histories or life outside of the team’s adventures....

So the big reveal isn’t that they become aware of all these other Gotham vigilantes all at once....its that some big conflict or whatever requires a huge team up of all available heroes, and in the aftermath, they figure out that like.....despite being known as solo heroes who work alone or loners outside of their team settings, 80% of these heroes all not only seem to already know each other, they seem to be related.

And so naturally they all turn to Batman, who has profiles on every known hero and they thus figure had researched these individuals too and just never mentioned this little detail, and they’re like, “Did you know about this?”

And then Nightwing turns to him too, arms crossed and is like, “Yeah Dad, did you know about this?”

And the infamous Red Hood is all: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have never met any of these people before in my life. Lives? Whatever.”

And then Red Robin moodily grates out “I have no siblings.” Since he’s nursing a grudge since Dick and Jason broke into his apartment the night before and replaced all his custom Red Robin gear with Darkwing Duck merchandise and his vengeance will be swift and also totally disproportionate because things escalate quickly in this family, that’s true in every universe.

Cass meanwhile has deftly skewered Jason’s lie by walking over to him and brazenly patting down the man with many many guns with no fear whatsoever. He squawks and futilely attempts to bat her hands away as she riffles through his many pockets, but he doesn’t seem shocked, just annoyed. Eventually, she pulls away and triumphantly reveals a box of Hello Kitty themed band-aids.

“So these are yours then? Just for you?” Black Bat asks smugly. Red Hood squints at the box.

“What the fuck? How long have those been in my jacket? Why are those in my jacket? Did you freaking plant them in my jacket just on the offchance you could at some point in the distant future use them at my expense?”

Black Bat frowns, puzzled. “Yes?”

“Oh come on, Dead Hood,” Spoiler says with an exaggerated toss of her head meant to convey she’s rolling her eyes beneath her own mask. She skips her way across the room to Black Bat and then drapes herself languidly all over the smaller woman. Who in turn doesn’t so much as twitch beneath the sudden added mass as Spoiler holds out her hand towards the box of band-aids.

“One please. I have a boo-boo,” she says with easy familiarity straight into the intimidating cowl of Black Bat. Only then does she deign to finish her train of thought with Red Hood.

“I mean seriously, are you saying you don’t have potential blackmail set-ups, pre-rigged releases of incriminating material, and a random assortment of traps, pratfalls and mortifying scenarios in place for the express purpose of being able to humiliate any and all of your siblings at any given moment, without any need for additional prep time?”

“Is this true, Little Wing?” Nightwing whirls on the larger Red Hood with a faux-scandalized gasp. The founder and leader of the Titans, formerly the Teen Titans, renowned for his stratagems and calm competence when directing squads of supers in the heat of battle while he keeps pace with nothing more than naturally acquired acrobatics and a utility belt that apparently uses the same technology as Wonder Woman’s invisible jet....now appears to be....staggering with the back of his hand pressed to his forehead, moaning about how he felt....faint?

What is happening right now, several dozen superheroes want to know. Is this a drill? Are they supposed to be checking for signs of a mental ambush from undetected psychic saboteurs? Did they all hit their heads at the exact same time and are now experiencing some kind of shared mass concussion?

Look, that wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to ever happen on the Watchtower.

“Have I failed you so utterly?” The veteran child hero bemoans with a dramatic twirl - that when contrasted with his stern demeanor of a mere ten minutes ago - makes the fears of telepathic infiltration seem less paranoia and more....concerningly probable. “Did you learn nothing from me? Did you learn nothing from B?”

He stops and jabs a finger up at the sky. “Quick, everyone! What is the very first rule of Living While Batty?”

As if by rote, over a half a dozen voices chime in from all over the room, causing various heroes to jump. Spooked by yet more and more vigilantes joining in some kind of mass recitation like they and they alone have some kind of clue what the hell is going on and everyone else just hadn’t been invited to the party. Which is just rude, honestly. Nobody likes feeling like they weren’t invited to the party. Not even superheroes.

“If you’re not going to bother preparing for every possible contingency and at least six impossible ones, you might as well just stay in bed.”

Even the Red Hood joins in the Illuminati chant or Cub Scout pledge or demonic ritual or whatever the fuck that just was, though his slumped and exasperated posture gives away every hint of sulkiness his headgear otherwise would have kept safely hidden. He’s surprisingly more...expressive, than most who’d only known of him by reputation had expected him to be. The day continues to yield surprises.

“Of fucking course I do,” he growls out, snatching the box from Black Bat. She doesn’t even fight to hold onto it, just lets it go with a knowing smirk. “I wasn’t surprised by the idea of it, I was just surprised she bothered with such a weak effort. Like yeah whatever, actually those could be mine. I use those all the time at home. So what?”

He aggressively yanks one of the band-aids out of the box, fumbles with the peel-off strips with one hand and he roughly rolls up the sleeve of his jacket with the other. Then just slaps it on his forearm and raises said appendage high, showing it off this way and that. “See?”

“Oh yeah, for sure,” Signal drawls from the other side of the room, nodding his head approvingly. “Totally convincing. Nice job walking that one back, you really showed them.”

Red Hood’s head snaps in his direction with ominous intent. “Watch it, Day-Glo.”

Signal just snorts.

“Yeah, like I’m gonna take constructive criticism on my name and costume from a dude who’s spent the last several years calling himself Red HOOD while running around in a freaking HELMET.”

“Its not meant to be literal, you fucking pedant.”

“So wait, its not literally a helmet? Huh, does it at least protect your head literally, or just like...symbolically? Like if Bane were to clock you across the head, would your concussion just be a metaphor? What’s the treatment protocol for a metaphorical concussion? Fluids, bedrest and a philosophical prescription of two chapters of Chicken Soup for the Soul as needed?”

“Laugh it up, KC and the Sunshine Band,” Red Hood bats back. “You just got yourself disinvited from Thursday night’s poker game.”

Signal just grins and folds his arms over his chest cockily. “Please. You’ve been looking for an excuse to ban me for weeks, cuz you know until you can prove I’m using my ghost vision to cheat, you can’t actually bring suit against me for it in Family Court.”

“That, and also Family Court isn’t a real thing, you toddler. Stop validating Wing-a-ding-ding’s obsession with Shitty TV Nostalgia and just call it that thing where Oracle traps us all in a room until we settle our latest fight without anyone getting stabbed.”

“Yeah, but like, say that five times fast,” Spoiler pipes up. “Its just not practical. Family Court’s way easier.”

“Says the one who’s not even in our fucking family.”

“And yet I grace you all with my sublime presence anyway,” she blows a kiss at him, beatifically unbothered. “You’re welcome.”

The Red Hood scoffs and rounds on his heel, zeroing in on Batwoman in the far corner.

“Hey Auntie B, my siblings are all dead to me and I just helped stop an alien invasion so I deserve nice things like a fun Saturday night. Can you get me into Dad’s fundraiser so I can crash it? He won’t put me back on the list until I promise not to bring any C-4 with me and I won’t promise not to bring any C-4 because he should just trust me that I won’t when I say I’m not gonna and he won’t trust me that I won’t until I admit I shouldn’t have brought any to that sting last month where three tiny little yachts blew up through barely any fault of my own, and I’m just not gonna do that ever because I have convictions and I feel I shouldn’t have to be punished for that. Y’know?”

Batwoman blinks at him. “Kid, I’m not gonna lie to you. You’re my nephew and I love you, but I stopped listening three seconds into all that.”

“Ugh, fine. Can you help me crash Dad’s event tonight so I can teach him a lesson about why he should just trust me not to make a scene so I don’t have to always make a scene to make a point.”

“Tempting as you make that sound,” she says wryly, “I have a strict policy for dealing with you lot and your......everything. I only worry about tolerating one of you at a time, and there’s seven of you, and seven days in the week. You each get your own. You know perfectly well its Robin’s day today. You get me on Tuesday, just like always.”

“Auntie B, we’re not like other families, are we?” Red Robin’s delivery is sarcastically childish and his question clearly rhetorical. Most of his attention is fixated on whatever it is he’s doing with his wrist-mounted computer.

“No sweetie, we’re all severely fucked in the head and a little bit too comfortable with that.”

“Just checking. Oh hey, Hood, I just emailed you a patch for the hole in your firewall I exploited when replacing all my shit using your accounts just now.”

“You did what?”

“Used your accounts to pay to replace all my stuff that you fucked with last night?” Red Robin says slowly. “Did you not realize that I’ve been sticking within ten feet of you for the past five minutes just so I could clone your devices and do all that while BB and Spoiler kept you distracted? I gotta say, bro, I feel like that’s on you then.”

Red Hood swivels his helmeted head in the direction of the aforementioned two. Black Bat waves. Spoiler shoots him an utterly unrepentant thumbs up.

“You’d side with your ex over me? That’s what its come to?”

“My only allegiance is to chaos,” Spoiler says brightly. Black Bat shrugs.

“Plus he bribes better.”

“Hateful,” Red Hood points at Black Bat, moving on to level the same finger at Spoiler, who curtsies in acknowledgment: “Hateful-er.”

Then the finger rounds the bases to aim judgmentally at Red Robin. “Hateful-est. And that was all Nightwing’s idea anyway, not mine.”

“Oh, I assumed as much,” he says casually. “Your idea of a prank tends to have more of a Carrie vibe. Or be a literal literary reenactment.”

“Its called an homage, 4chan.”

“Whatever, plagiarist. And anyway, I couldn’t go after ‘Wing for payback on this one. He used an Immunity card. If you didn’t want me getting back at you, you should have used one too."

Red Hood looms aggressively. Red Robin ignores willfully. Round and round they go. Superheroes who can survive excessive G-Forces are getting dizzy just watching them have a largely motionless stand-off. That shouldn’t be how that works, but whatever. All the most infamously reclusive and isolated heroes in all hero-dom are apparently part of the same one big reclusive and isolated family of fucked up weirdos and they’re all officially bonkers. Nothing makes sense anymore. Reality broke. Try another stall.

“Okay, but see, in order to have an Immunity card, I would have to participate in one of you losers’ stupid Immunity challenges,” the Red Hood drags out with exaggerated patience. “And I’m just not going to do that, on account of those all being fucking stupid. You see the problem there?”

Red Robin just shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you, bro. You can have principles or you can have an Immunity card. You can’t have both.”

Meanwhile, on another side of....the same room.....look, its like, an octagonal room, probably. It has a lot of sides. Robin fends off questions from an aggrieved looking Superboy.

“You never told me you had a bajillion brothers and sisters!”

“Yes but I never said I didn’t either.”

Superboy rolls his eyes. “Oh yeah, so I should just assume everyone I meet has a bajillion secret brothers and sisters?”

“Well clearly it would have worked out in your favor in this instance if you had, now wouldn’t it?”

“Assuming of course that you can trust what has been said or implied here today and I am actually related to any of those numbskulls. Which I am not actually admitting to,” Robin tacks on hastily.

Superboy eyes him dubiously. “You joined in the same creepy chant all the others did and then got super self-conscious and looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Which uh. I did.”

“First off, your interpretation of body language is abyssmal. I do not get self-conscious,” Robin says with a delivery that probably could have benefited from being a little less self-conscious. “And second....that proves nothing. I guessed what they were going to say.”

“Word for word,” Superboy says super-skeptically.

“I’m very good at guessing things. You know this.”

“Okay. Guess how much I believe you right now then.”

Robin glares and folds his arms grumpily across his chest.

“And what was that anyway? Was that like....you guys’ family motto or something like that?”

“Oh no,” Spoiler pipes up. “That’s much shorter.”

Superboy balks at that. “Wait, you guys actually have one of those for real?”

“Yup,” Steph says, counting out the words with her fingers. “He who laughs last....probably works for the Joker. So tranq him just to be safe. See? Only sixteen words. The first rule of Living While Batty is way longer, and what we said was just the abridged version. You should hear the original, before Black Bat put her foot down and refused to memorize it unless sizable edits were made.”

Superboy hovers between her and Robin now, both in mid-air and on the verge of taking Spoiler’s words as an invitation to hear just that. A low growl arises from Robin’s direction.

“Must you?” He asks the older vigilante, with a most put upon expression.

She looks at him pityingly. “Do you actually need me to answer that? Like, we’ve met, right? Hi, I’m Spoiler.”

“Wait, so Robin said that I just never specifically asked him if he had a bajillion brothers and sisters, and that’s why he didn’t tell me, so that means he wouldn’t have just lied and there’s not some code of secrecy that flat out forbids telling other people stuff, right?” Superboy realizes excitedly.

“Yes, excellent direction. Go on,” Spoiler says, steepling her fingers. Robin buries his face in the palm of one hand.

“Soooo, what other stuff could you tell me about Robin’s super top secret family that I wouldn’t think to ask about but that he would tell me about if I knew what questions to ask?”

She claps once, lightly but with emphasis. “Well done. You’ve passed the first barrier. Untold secrets await you behind just a few more.”

“I’ll get you for this,” Robin vows calmly. She waves a hand at him.

“Yeah, yeah. Just make sure you do it before January 1st, remember? You’ve promised retribution like ten times already this year and those don’t roll over, y’know. Rules are rules.”

“Enough!” Thunders a voice then, from the front of the room. Well one of the fronts anyway. Like sides, it has a lot of them, but this is the one where Batman’s standing. All eyes snap to him. Which is kinda just what eyes do when Batman says stuff like that. Its like his superpower, except he doesn’t actually have superpowers, which is what makes it scary. But where the snapping of the eyes (directional) is usually followed by Batman saying something else besides just “hey look at me,” here he pauses in the wake of his own call to attention’s waning reverberations. Uncharacteristically silent.

Not that, y’know, he’s normally Mr. Talkity Talk, but usually his silences feel like he has the words to fill them, he’s just withholding them. This though, this feels more like he doesn’t have any words at all. And he’s as confused by it as any of them, and most everyone else is confused by Batman being confused, and its this whole trickle down economy of confusion and its wrecking havoc on the value of the golden silence standard.

Of course, not everyone present is rendered spellbound with confusion.

“C’mon B,” Nightwing cajoles, leaning forward and practically radiating delight. “I think you know what you have to do now. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Its not likely to come around again.”

Red Hood snickers beneath his helmet and chimes in. “Yeah Pops, go ahead. You do this and you’ll actually have my respect for a whole twenty four hours. No, wait. Sixteen. No! Eight. Yeah, eight. Still a good deal.”

“Carpe diem, B,” Red Robin grins, leaning back as if to enjoy the show.

“Hey! Infringe on my trademark one more time, dude,” Signal throws a faux-glare at the former. Red Robin just quirks an eyebrow.

“And what, you’ll start saying Yum every time you eat a burger? Oh no. I’m hoist by my own petard.”

Signal flips him off with a grin and then redirects his attention back to Batman. “Yeah seriously though B, you kinda gotta do it now. Because if you don’t do it, then you’ll forever be the guy who didn’t do it, and you don’t want to be that guy, do you?”

“Yeah you really don’t want to be that guy,” Spoiler shouts out. “Nobody likes that guy. He’s the worst.”

“Do it, do it,” Black Bat starts chanting beside her, steadily picking up speed and volume. Several others start joining in. Even Robin appears to be slightly anticipatory, albeit trying very hard to hide it.

Batman sighs, and somehow everyone manages to hear it. Stills. Waits for....something? Nobody but them seems to have any clue what, but the air is thick and heavy with portentiousness. Something is about to happen, and all most of the heroes present could say for sure is it was something they never would have in a million years seen coming.

Finally, Batman straightens with the resigned air of a man about to have oh so many regrets. He crosses his arms, shakes his head, and in an absolute deadpan monotone, says:

“You are awful children. You know you’re killing me. You’re killing your father.”

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nothoughtsonlynat · 3 years

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Resurrect Me (N.R.)

Warnings: swearing; death; Hell/the Underworld; cliff jumping lol

Word Count≈ 3.1k (yikes lol my bad)

Hecate一 the goddess of magic, witchcraft, the night, the moon, ghosts, and necromancy. Known to be an intricate mosaic of good and evil, destruction and beauty. Capable of granting wishes, summoning the dead, resurrections, teleportation, warping realities on unfathomable scales, mind control, energy manipulation, and any sorcery or magic known to the Gods. Second only to Zeus himself.

I am the human embodiment of Hecate. I am not Hecate; she merely resides in the depths of my soul and provides me guidance. We do not communicate through words; she speaks through dreams and gut feelings, and sometimes even through signs in the outside world. I have not mastered the powers she’s granted me, nor have I reached my full potential. In addition to the Goddess’ powers, I hold the basic Olympian powers, such as superhuman speed and stamina. I have no recollection of how I merged with Hecate or the life I lived before this point, and she has provided me with no answers, but I do not question her motives.

Agent Phil Coulson came across me in my temple in Turkey. Apparently, he had discovered strange energy readings coming from the temple. When he arrived, I used the power of energy manipulation to blow the concrete off of me, and that is the first thing I remember一 emerging from underneath Hecate’s temple.

I joined the Avengers during the Battle of New York. Agent Coulson had recommended me to Fury when he was piecing together the Avengers Initiative. In the three years between my awakening and the invasion, I practiced my sorcery mercilessly and studied Hecate deep in the Greek countryside. I’ve stuck with the Avengers throughout the years, fighting every battle alongside them. Through the ups and downs, I’ve fallen head over heels for Natasha Romanoff. One would assume that with so much power, I’d be confident and have any mortal begging at my feet. That couldn’t be any more inaccurate, however. As I’ve said, I am not Hecate; I am simply the human embodiment of the goddess. And as a human, I turn into a blushing, stuttering mess whenever the levelheaded assassin is near. Consequently, there have been many years of pining, but I’ve yet to muster up the courage to ask the woman on a date.

In our most recent war, we’ve gone up against a mad titan一 Thanos. We lost terribly. Half of all living things inhabiting the universe were snapped away. I can’t help but ponder whether things would’ve gone differently if I had better mastered my powers. I potentially hold all the capabilities of the goddess of magic; aside from Zeus, I hold more power than any being to ever exist. I’ve practiced my sorcery every day for the past five years on the off chance that we ever get a rematch一 a chance to bring everyone back. I’ve improved significantly, but Hecate has been oddly quiet for the past few years. It’s driving me crazy. I know she’s still there, but she hardly provides an ounce of guidance.

And so, that is where I find myself now一 practicing sorcery in the room specifically designed to isolate me when I use dark magic. Everyone who has access to the training section of the compound knows that they should never enter this room. It is far too dangerous for regular mortals. As I warp the room’s reality, a dark mist envelops me. When it clears, the room has changed into a 50s ballroom. I look down to see an elegant maroon ball gown covering my body, and I scan the empty area. I hear a pair of heels clicking toward me, and I spin around, already panicking. In order for someone to be here with me, they would have to be an inhabitant of the location’s true reality. My eyes land upon the woman I’ve grown to love, dressed up for the event. She is wearing an extravagant light blue ball gown, and her hair is carefully done up.

“Natasha? What are you doing here?”

“Why I came to dance with you, of course.” She steps closer and drapes her arms around my neck, swaying to the nonexistent music. Stay calm. Don’t panic. There’s no way I’m making her do this. I’m not even doing anything! Of course I’m the one making her do this, who else would it be?! Breathe in. Breathe out. My powers don’t control me. I control them. Just breathe. I can do this. I know how to do this.

As I focus on the magic coursing through my veins, a black mist envelops us, and the room returns to its original form一 a basic training room with black padded walls. I immediately take a large step back from Natasha.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Natasha?! You know you can’t come in here! I could’ve seriously hurt you!”

“I...I’m sorry. I thought you’d just be moving shit with your mind. I didn’t realize you could do...that, whatever that was.”

“That was reality manipulation. I didn’t know you were here and I don’t have full control of it, so you got caught up in it. Are you okay? Do you remember it?”

“Yeah, I remember it clear as day. I was still me and I was still in control, it was just...different, I guess.”

“Well, I literally warped your reality, so even if you felt in control, you might not have been.”

“You stopped it, though. I remember when that seemed impossible. You’re getting better.”

“Thanks, I guess.” I awkwardly scratch the back of my neck. “What did you come in here for in the first place?”

“This is gonna sound crazy, but Scott Lang is here. We might have a way to bring everybody back.”

“Wait, what? Holy shit. It’s happening. Okay, come on then!” I eagerly walk past her, grabbing her hand as I pass her, and we leave my training room. I realize that I’m still holding her hand as we make it to the meeting room, and I immediately drop it, clearing my throat. If I wasn’t so familiar with the sensation, then I would swear that my ears and cheeks are on fire.

<//>

We all step onto the platform in matching white and red time-travel suits. “We’re really doing this?”

“Hell yeah, we’re doing this,” Clint answers.

“Alright, then. We bring everybody back,” I say with determination. “Whatever it takes,” Steve adds.

“See you in a minute,” Natasha adds with a smirk. Before I can appreciate how beautiful she looks with the glimmer of hope in her eyes, we’re flying through a flurry of colors. Nebula, Natasha, Rhodey, Clint, and I land on Morag. We all say our respective goodbyes before Nat, Clint, and I get on a jet to head to Vormir.

<//>

“A soul for a soul.”

“What? That’s insane. Look, no offense, Mr. Bloody Tampon, but why should we just trust what you’re saying? Because you know their fathers’ names?”

“I didn’t.” I looked into Natasha’s eyes as she spoke and I instantly wish that I could replace the dull sadness with the bright hope that had filled them before.

“He doesn’t know my father’s name. If he’s some mystical being, then why can’t he tell me that?” I turned to face him as I asked the question.

“I’m afraid you are a mystery. I am meant to know everything about any being who seeks the stone, but I know nothing of your identity.”

“Hm. Seems like a load of bullshit to me,” I deadpanned.

“We need to do this. We need to bring everyone back. I’ve spent the past five years trying to reverse the snap, and now I finally know how to fix it. Let me do it.” As Natasha spoke, she grabbed both of my hands in hers.

“And I’ve spent every day for the past five years training to do this. I wasn’t just practicing sorcery and talking to dead people for fun, Nat. All I wanted was to do better一 to fix this. If anyone is jumping off that cliff, it’s gonna be me.”

“No. Absolutely not. Neither of you is dying for that stone. I’ve done horrible things these past few years. I’ve killed...so many people. It should be me,” Clint says, and Natasha and I turn to face him, but one of her hands remains in mine.

“No way in hell, Clint. And not you either, Nat. Both of you guys have families. You’re not sacrificing yourselves. I won’t let you. And you can’t stop me even if you try.” Nat gives me a questioning look as I mention her family and I speak in her head ‘I know about them, Nat. And they need you. She needs her big sister.’

“What are you saying?” I can hear the anxiety lacing Nat’s words, and it causes a pit to form in my stomach.

“I think you know what I’m saying, Natty.”

“Then you don’t leave me much of a choice.” She shoots a Widow’s Bite toward me, but I stop it using energy manipulation without even having to lift a finger.

“You can’t beat me, Nat. Please, don’t fight me on this.”

“I call bullshit.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Clint running toward the edge while we’re distracted, and I teleport in front of him, throwing him backward. I use mind control to force him to stay down. I sense Natasha running toward the edge behind me, and I teleport in front of her. I use energy manipulation to keep her in place, and I grab onto her biceps.

“I’m really sorry, Nat. I hate that I’m doing this to you, but I can’t let you throw yourself off a cliff for some stupid stone. Your life is worth so much more than that. You’re an amazing person, and your ledger was cleared of its red so long ago. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.”

“This is sounding an awful lot like a goodbye.”

“You can be sarcastic all you want, but I’m not walking out of this one, Natty.”

“Don’t do this. The team needs you.”

“No, they don’t, Nat, and we both know it. They need you.”

“And what if I need you?!”

“Well if that’s the case, you’ll figure it out, just like you always do. Don’t let something like this hold you back. Goodbye, Natasha Romanoff.” I kiss her cheek before turning around. I start walking towards the edge, but it quickly turns into a sprinting pace as I hear Nat screaming for me to stop. Just before I reach the edge, I lift the mind control from Clint and I release Nat, just in case it doesn’t automatically lift when I die. I push myself off the cliff, turning mid-jump so I’m not facing the ground. As I’m falling through the air, I see Clint holding Nat in his arms as her screams fill my ears. I hit the ground and everything goes black.

<//>

“Hello, y/n. It’s good to see you again.” I sat up and一 what the hell is that smell? “Ah, yes. That would be burning flesh. Welcome to Hell, darling.”

“Uh...what? Who are you?”

“Yes, I suppose I should explain, hm? I am Hecate, Goddess of一”

“Yeah, I know what you’re the goddess of. How did I get here?”

“I thought you were smarter than this. You died, obviously.”

“And went to Hell? Damn.”

“Oh, relax. Hell isn’t what the mortals think it is. This is the Underworld. All of the dead reside here. The bad people get punished, the good people don’t. Simple as that. We don’t have a lot of time, so I need to explain. I am cursed; I cannot leave the Underworld. However, my human embodiment can, and that is where you come into play. You hold all my power, and I can see you’ve been practicing, but you’ve never lived up to your full potential.”

“Hey! Rude!”

“Don’t interrupt. I didn’t allow you to live up to your full potential, not until we met, anyway.”

“And I had to die in order for that to happen?”

“Yes. I’m giving you all of my power, but I can still stop you if I ever need to. I know you don’t want to risk hurting the people you love, especially the redhead, but you need to trust yourself. Trust your powers. Have a little faith. You are a goddess, remember. Don’t let people forget it. That purple thumb is nothing compared to you, even with his colorful rocks. Your family needs you now. You must help them.”

“That’s it? Why do they need help? How will I know what to do?”

“I will always be there to help you, Y/N. You can handle this. This is nothing. You are part of me, just as I am part of you. You are my daughter, after all. I should know your capabilities better than anyone.”

“Wait, daughter?!”

“Oh, did I forget to mention that part? Oh well, it doesn’t matter right now, anyway. You need to go.”

“Go where?”

“Home, darling.”

The earth above us cracks open and I can hear faint sounds of fighting on the surface. I look at Hecate as she nods. Before I even realize I’m doing it, black mist surrounds my body and lifts me through the crack. I step out of the mist onto the ground and a staff appears in my right hand. I tap it once on the ground and my white suit is replaced by an all-black leather outfit that’s definitely made for a goddess. I smirk and make eye contact with the titan across the battlefield. His sickly creatures race toward me as they notice the new threat on the field. I summon an army of ghouls from the cracks in the earth. As the aliens and the undead clash, I teleport in front of Thanos.

“And who might you be, dear?” He acts confident, but I can sense his fear.

“I am Y/N, daughter of Hecate.” He tilts his head in a questioning manner. “Oh, did someone not study mythology? Hm, then let’s be blunt, shall we? I’m a goddess, ass-chin.” I throw my staff at his throat, but he catches it. He moves to swing his large sword at me, but I capture his arm in black mist. When he tries to move the other arm, I restrain that one, as well. “Well, that surely can’t be all you’ve got, hm? Pity, I thought it’d be more exciting than that.” If I were to look in a mirror at that moment, I would’ve noticed my ghostly pale skin, black eyes, and the raw power spreading through my veins like a black road-map.

“It’s not over yet, my dear child.” Before I can question the meaning of his words, an alien tosses him the gauntlet. It slides on his exposed hand, but I hold it open with dark magic. I look around and notice that the army of the undead is nowhere to be seen. My teammates are pinned down, even with the help of those who were snapped. There is a feeling in my gut and a voice in my head that tells me what I must do. I pull the gauntlet off his hand with black mist and slide my hand inside. I feel the power surging into my body. “What are you doing? That power will kill you!” Thanos sounds truly desperate.

“That’s cute. Truly, it is, but you can’t kill someone who’s already dead.” I close my hand and snap my fingers. His army fades to dust and he slumps to the ground before floating away with them. I drop the gauntlet to the ground and look around. Natasha runs toward me and throws her arms around my neck in a firm hug.

“Wha一what happened to you? How are you here? I thought you died!”

I wrap my arms around her waist and rest my chin on her shoulder before saying, “I did die. I am dead.”

She pulls away and looks at me from head to toe. “Well that explains why you’re so damn pale, but now I have so many more questions.”

“I am Hecate’s daughter, so I am technically a goddess, like her. I’m not sure if I was technically resurrected or not, but I can probably一”

She cut me off with a gentle yet passionate kiss. She pulls away and searches my eyes. “I’ve wanted to do that for a very long time,” she admits.

“Me too,” I breathe out.

“Yeah, I picked up on that. You’re not very discrete.” I laughed and a smirk spread across her face. “As sexy as this whole ‘powerful goddess’ thing is, am I going to get the old you back? You know, the one who blushes whenever I look at her? The one who’s, like, alive?”

I smile at her and glance down at her lips as a thick black mist appears behind me. I step backward into it as her face morphs into a look of confusion. She disappears from sight as a wall of black fills my vision, and a surge of power spreads throughout my body. I fall to my knees and the black cloud disappears. Natasha rushes over and kneels in front of me. “Are you okay? What the hell was that?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but I think I’m alive again.” I lift my head and meet her eyes.

“Your skin isn’t crazy pale anymore, and your eyes are their normal color again.”

“Sweet.”

“Cool.”

We both crack up and I lean my forehead against hers as our laughter fades.

Tony interrupts our moment of peace. “This is all good and dandy, but does someone wanna explain what the hell just happened?”

I raise my head and look at my teammates一 my family. “I kicked the purple thumb’s ass. That’s what happened.” I can feel a warm presence in my heart, and I know that my mother is with me.

“Yes, yes, I noticed. I also noticed a bunch of demons. Care to explain that one?”

“They weren’t demons...they were just...the souls...of dead people. I can summon the dead. You knew that.”

“Uh, I definitely didn’t know that.” I laugh and shake my head at the eccentric man.

I stand up, pulling Natasha with me, and bring her into another embrace. “I’m really glad you’re okay, Natty,” I whisper in her ear before pressing a delicate kiss to her temple.

A/N: I literally had this completely finished and edited over a month ago and I hadn’t posted it yet soooooo... idk here it is

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff #natasha x reader #natasha romanoff fluff #natasha romanoff fic #natasha one shot #black widow #black widow x reader

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seesgood · 3 years

Text

can we very gently talk about call out posts / culture really quick? not in a judgmental way, but in like a: i just want to pose a thought and explain why i’m never going to buy into it and why i wish it would become less of a trend instead of more of one? and i’ll add the disclaimer here: i totally get not wanting certain people around you for various reasons, that is all your prerogative. that’s your comfort level. but in emphasizing “your blog should be a safe space” we’re kind’ve losing sight of the fact that the rpc should also be a safe space, and as much as your comfort and safety matter, so do other people’s. and not just the person who hurt you, but the third parties and other mutuals and 99.9% of people who are not at all involved in any way in whatever happened. so, anyway here goes, read it or don’t, we all have different opinions or reasons, i just want to be heard:

people are allowed to change. think back to who you were last year. two years ago. think about the stuff you said when you were seventeen, or twenty-one, or hell whatever age you were. current-you would probably cringe at the kind of stuff past-you had to say. because you grew. you learned. you had life experiences. in hindsight you have the freedom to be like “oof yeah that was not the best version of myself right there damn i don’t want to be like that again.” the growing trend of ‘here’s a 10+ page google doc complete with out of context screenshots that sometimes date back to like 2017 or earlier’ makes this kind of change impossible. because right there, you’ve just frozen a person in time, probably not at their best, removed any and all amounts of context, and put it on the internet and let other people judge it for themselves.

so that leads into another point that i want to just kinda present to the community at large: the act of documenting behaviors and storing them for months / years at a time, in itself creates a super unsafe environment, not just for you, your friends, the people who have hurt you --- but also for anyone else that isn’t at all involved in whatever happened. like, for example, i like to think that i’m a pretty nice person. i actively try to be a nice person. am i sometimes not having the best day? have people definitely caught me in bad moments? oh hell yeah. but am i, as someone who tries really hard to be nice and welcoming, constantly thinking through every message i send to someone knowing that a) i could have a reputation that makes them read into context that isn’t there and that could contribute to them misinterpreting words i meant in a different way, b) very aware that every post i make, ask i send, message i send can at any moment be screenshotted and posted and taken out of context and either serve as someone’s only opinion of me or pile on to someone’s existing opinion of me? yeah. so in my experience, and based on people i’ve talked to, we now have this thing where you can be surface-friends wtih a lot of people, but if you want to survive in the tumblr rpc you should really only have 2-3 people that you really trust that you can actually talk about shit with.

and lately i’ve been seeing a resurgence of posts on my dash about like “bring back xyz in the rpc” or “the reason the rpc is like this is because of xyz” and i both agree and disagree with a lot of this, but primarily i think the reason the rpc is Off lately is because everyone and their cousin has a DNI, which is --- again --- your decision and i understand and respect that, but while you know the context of every name on that DNI, other people don’t. and to be honest: other people don’t really care and honestly maybe they shouldn’t care. --- and don’t get me wrong, your friends should care if someone has hurt you. that’s important. but joe billy bob who just wants to write their character with yours is going to read through your rules, they’re going to see “do not interact with me if you follow with or interact with these people you’ve never heard of and if you want me to tell you why just message me” (which no one is ever going to do, i’m sorry to say). and say, joe billy bob also followed that other person because they were like ‘omg this blog looks cool’ --- now joe billy bob, who just wants to write cool plots, is suddenly the middle-man in some type of drama that they do not understand, and maybe they’re able to remove themselves from the situation, but even then it’s still in the back of your mind.

this is getting long. it’ll be longer, but let’s take a brief break for me to remind you that in some cases, it’s definitely good to give your mutuals and friends a heads up when someone has done something really, really bad. like, remember x amount of years ago when some dude was like ‘i’m gonna make up a new person and say they died by suicide as a social experiment’ or ‘hey this person actively tries to force very triggering plots about abuse / rape / incest onto people and has been doing so for years and does not seem to change their ways no matter how many people try to educate them’ that’s shit people should probably know about. and it’s also okay ( in my opinion ) for your friends to be able to message you like ‘hey i saw you’re writing with x and i just wanted to let you know i had this experience with them’ if that’s something they feel comfortable doing. and if they are comfortable with you still having the autonomy to make your own decision regarding the person.

i’ll be honest, for a second: i’ve been part of friendships and groups that have turned really toxic for one reason or another. a handful of times. there are probably people out there that are like “yeah this chick is really fake and manipulative and etc, i was friends with her back in 2019″ which, okay. yeah. i’ve definitely done shit and said shit that was not the most representative of who i want to be and who i want to become, and you probably have to. because we are human beings and we are a product of our social groups and the community around us. and you shouldn’t be chained to a version of you that isn’t you anymore. people change. they grow. you don’t have to like them, but you should respect that sometimes people don’t mesh, and that doesn’t mean any of them are bad people, it just means the experience was bad.

a few additional notes i would like to make but i’ve already gone on way too long:

90% of the callout posts that i’ve seen and the DNI’s that i’ve seen can, in my opinion, be classified as a friend group thing. you were friends with x, x did something, now y and z aren’t friends with x anymore. pain is a very, very real thing and people hurting you should never be minimized, but at some point i just want you to remember that not every friendship is going to end happily, but both you and the other party should be allowed to move on and grow better, healthier friendships after. rehashing Friend Group Gone Wrong instances removes that ability for not only person x, but also person y and z.

you putting out a callout says just as much ( maybe more ) about you than it does about the other person. which sucks. because i’d like to think we all have great intentions, and i’m not saying that you should swallow your pain, but it might not be the kind of thing that impacts the community at large, and maybe you should try to find a better way of working through it with a trusted friend(s)

i’m going to be very real and very blunt on this one: literally no one cares. i say that with love. i’m good friends with people who have each other on their DNI’s. establish a baseline of respect and ‘i’m not going to say anything to them about you and vice versa because there’s no need for me to do so’ and move on. but seriously. no one cares. most outside people read callout posts because they like being in the know about the drama, not because they actually care.

person a and person b who are mentioned in the DNI / callout aren’t the only ones who are going to be affected. your friends, your mutuals, your writing partners are now all put in a weird spot where you have to pick sides on an issue you know nothing about and shouldn’t have to know anything about. you’re asking people to choose sides on an issue they cannot fully understand, and that’s not fair to them or to you. and it drives great people away. and then we all lose out on having more awesome people in the rpc.

you’re entitled to your safe space, but this is a public platform and you are also responsible for maintaining your safe space. you shouldn’t put it entirely on other people to do that for you. you can block, blacklist, make up funny names for, or spitefully erase from your many anything and anyone that you wish. but you shouldn’t make your friends do it for you.

there’s always an inherent power imbalance when any kind of drama occurs between those who have more followers / friends / connections and those who do not. and the smaller blog is always going to suffer a little bit more because they don’t have people blindly coming to their defense.

bad moments, bad experiences, bad decisions DO NOT equal bad people.

allow people to make up their own mind about something or someone

anywho, if you read through this whole thing i think i owe you financial compensation. but also thank you for reading / listening / considering. even if you rolled your eyes through the whole thing like “stfu lia” that’s fine. i’m just presenting an alternative thought. i’d like to once again state: i’m not judging you if you’ve made a callout/DNI or if you’re on a callout/DNI. like i literally don’t care. and frankly, in my opinion, i shouldn’t have to. because i, and you, and your friends, and your mutuals, and your non-mutuals should be allowed the space to make up their own opinion and mind on something or someone without being told that there will be consequences if they don’t agree with you. set boundaries. communicate in healthy ways. you don’t have to forgive the people who have hurt or wronged you, but you also don’t get to decide that their actions make up 100% of who they are as a person, or decide that that is the only side of that person people should get to see.

#ʟᴇᴛ’s ᴛᴀʟᴋ ɢʀᴏᴜɴᴅ ʀᴜʟᴇs ⸺ psa.#/ long post cw.#when i say long i mean LONG #i could do an entire dissertation on this #i could do a ted talk #but ys know #if anyone wanted to do some ahem non-light reading this morning #*jazz hands*#( if you want to reblog this monstrosity you definitely can )

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nitw · 3 years

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Can you explain what you mean with misinterpreting Chara? I've always been confused about that character and you seem to have a pretty solid read you alluded to in that post about Snowgrave.

of course!!! as your local chara defender since the ripe age of 13 i hope you don't mind me doing a small essay on this. please bear with me tho because i sometimes can't articulate my thoughts well on stories that deal with philosophical themes ;;

UHHH SPOILERS FOR UNDERTALE AND DELTARUNE CHAPTER 2 BELOW

first let me make a few things clear so i don't have to repeat myself a bunch:

only tobias radiation fox himself has The Word of God privilege when it comes to things that haven't been explicitly confirmed in the games yet, EVEN if they're strongly hinted at. don't take anything i say about the plot as more than firm personal interpretation based on the info we have right now!

i cannot stress this one enough: undertale is a game that was never meant to be experienced from a singular perspective/mindset. the genocide route doesn't JUST exist for the sake of "enjoy your personalized edgy fuck-you run for being a serial killer in a video game", every one of the total 93 endings (look it up) in this game exists to reflect the player who achieved it in one way or another. the genocide route is really no different from any of the others, because in the end, no matter what, the player who decided to go through with the things they did will ALWAYS be rewarded for it. the question the player will have to ask THEMSELF afterwards is "is this what i wanted?"

OK MOVING ON-

let's think back to the little but vital amount of info we have on who chara actually was, like, as a person. we know pretty much all of this due to 1) the tapes in the royal lab 2) asriel's additional dialogue at the end of true pacifist.

while we'll never really know why frisk fell into the underground, asriel tells us explicitly about chara's hatred for humanity, and how they jumped from mt. ebott for "not a very happy reason"; supposedly a suicide attempt. chara "never talked about why", it's left intentionally vague because their reasoning isn't really what matters. what DOES matter is how this is relevant to the genocide run, ESPECIALLY with the new obvious parallels in deltarune's snowgrave route. i'll get to that.

when you finish the genocide route, chara will talk directly to the player in person. they talk about your (you AND chara's) success, despite "their plan (having) failed". this "plan" is one they secretly made with asriel when they were both still alive, as revealed from the tapes. chara got terminally poisoned from eating buttercups (whether this was fully intentional or not is still kiiinda up for debate), and while on their deathbed, asriel says that he doesn't like the plan anymore. yet despite his fear, he still fused his soul to chara's when they died.

the actual plan here was to become a monster powerful enough to slaughter humanity, specifically chara's home village by their own dying request - this all ties into their mysterious spite and hatred mentioned before. but due to asriel's resistance against chara, their fused body was killed by the humans - which eventually led to the creation of flowey, and asriel's inner demons after death.

but back to the genocide route. during chara's monologue to the player, they give us a LOT of important exposition. basically:

at the very start of the game, frisk's own determination is literally what brought chara's soul 'back to life'. we know how human and monster souls are different and how "determination" in this universe is something only humans possess, so it makes sense why it awakened them. i won't get into the whole narrator theory because i feel like it's not that relevant to my point (it's fun tho), but chara is always present from the moment frisk falls down, and stays regardless of the player's actions.

if you managed to finish undertale at all you'll already kinda know this (thanks sans), but the EXP and LV you (can) gain throughout your journey aren't just numbers on your screen - they're genuine in-universe manifestations of power that increase when you kill someone. and in genocide, chara explains how they were directly affected every time your stats rose. they could FEEL their spirit growing stronger for every life you decided to take (REMINDER THAT THE GENOCIDE ROUTE CAN BE PERMANENTLY STOPPED AT ANY POINT BEFORE SANS. YOU DID THIS.), so is it really that strange that they felt the desire to grow even stronger?

and once you do reach this point, there's no return. all that excessive time and effort you put into killing off a civilization OBVIOUSLY has some consequences. the consequences HERE being - if you paid attention to chara's life story - you took advantage of a traumatized child who was already at the breaking point and making irrational choices on their own, and you led them to believe that this was what they needed!

this is VERY MUCH SUPPORTED by the snowgrave/weird/pipis/whatever route of deltarune chapter 2 that was discovered about 2 days ago as i'm writing this. i'm gonna go ahead and assume you know what happens in it and i don't care to go into details if you don't, since this post is about chara, but surprise: THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO NOELLE, TOO! even in a completely normal run, noelle makes it clear multiple times that she wouldn't mind staying in the dark world; that in spite of how scary and dangerous it seems at times (something something horror movies), she started to feel at home. POSSIBLY even more so than her ACTUAL HOME, with her dying dad and negligent mom. like chara, noelle is a young person with low self esteem and her fair share of trauma, even if it's not as apparent. and like in the genocide run, the player's desire to ruthlessly kill in order to grow stronger affected her already-poor mental state.

someone else already pointed this out specifically, so don't credit me for it, but the main difference between chara and noelle is that noelle managed to break free in the end.

if you're like Most People Who Played The Genocide Route Back In Like 2016 and you played the genocide route with no further knowledge about it than "i have to follow these specific steps to get a harder fucked up version of the game", i don't blame you. you didn't actually know what you were doing in the end, did you? but did the outcome disappoint you, make sense to you, or did it just leave you with an empty/confused feeling? i love undertale because it WILL force you to think about things like that. i mean, if the result wasn't gonna affect you in SOME way, why would you go through all of that trouble in the first place? you had your reasons, as the player of any video game where you know your choices matter. would you have carried out the entire thing if you knew what was coming? the answer to that is only relevant to yourself.

#i'm EXHAUSTED girl.#asks #chara #ut #undertale #dr #deltarune #noelle holiday #dr spoilers #deltarune spoilers

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writingblock101 · 3 years

Text

Still Insufferable (Damian Wayne x Reader)

This is a part two to Insufferable! I had an anon request this a while back and found some prompts that gave some great inspiration! Hope y’all like it! You don’t need to read part one, but it does make the transition smoother. For reference, you and Damian are 17.

Words: 2,800

Tags: @idkmanicantenglish @mayahoelland2013

Warnings: None

“Do you ever follow directions?” A familiar, condescending voice asks you from the ground.

You spot an annoyed Damian Wayne from your upside perch, staring up at you with crossed arms. You grin, a little too excited to see someone who looks so annoyed with you.

“I’m creating an extensive target practice!” You claim, gesturing with your bow to the targets down range

“By hanging upside from the rafters?” Damian raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

“You’re questioning my methods.”

“I’m not questioning it,” Damian corrects. “I’m saying it’s stupid.”

You gasp in mock offense then unhook your legs and flip to the floor.

“Your words wound me!”

“You’ll recover,” Damian says dryly.

“I thought you would approve of me making a more comprehensive training.”

“You were hanging upside down from the rafters. How is that more comprehensive?” Damian questions.

“Because I don’t always get the pretty shot with the perfect set up in the field!” You argue. “Sometimes, I’m making the shot while hanging upside down with a broken toe!”

Damian pauses, his eyes flickering to your feet.

“Is your toe broken?” He asks.

He almost sounds concerned. It’s kind of sweet.

“No,” You admit. “But what if it was?”

He blinks. The concern is gone.

“You spend too much time with Roy and Jason.”

“Well, Roy is basically raising me at this point, so yeah, kind of,” You point out.

Damian rolls his eyes.

“Mission briefing.”

“Aw, you came all the way here to tell me yourself,” You tease Damian, aware of the various intercoms around the Tower.

He scowls at you, but doesn’t dampen your good mood.

“I was the closest to the range. It made the most sense for me to come tell you.”

“No need to make excuses,” You shrug. “I get it, I’m amazing and you can’t resist being around me.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“You know, that line didn’t fool me when we were 12 and it’s still not fooling me now.”

Damian’s scowl deepens.

“Mission briefing, now.” Then he walks off before you can make another smart ass comment.

Sometimes, Damian makes it too easy. You hit the switch to pull the targets back in, figuring you’ll get your arrows later.

You’ve been an official Teen Titan for a few months now. After Roy talked you into tagging along with the team for a mission, you were hooked. The rest of the team agreed to extend an invite to you, which you happily accepted. You love the team, including Damian. Despite your constant bickering, you and Damian work well together in the field, enhancing each other’s skills.

In all honesty, you really enjoy being around Damian. While he’s a bit uptight, when he relaxes, he’s fun to be around. You’ve enjoyed getting to see the more relaxed side of Damian. Besides, it's fun to have someone who keeps up with every sarcastic remark you make, even if it includes him calling you insufferable. It’s a bit of a long shot, but you know Damian likes you more than he makes it seem he does.

You head to the main conference room of the tower and settle in for a long presentation. While the briefings are long, and rather boring, they’re in depth. You have to give Damian credit, even when things go wrong on missions, his extensive briefings prepare your team for almost every possibility and help make adaptations to the plan on the fly.

You fiddle with a pen, unscrewing it, laying out the pieces then put it back together as Damian talks. As you get more fidgety the longer the meeting goes on, Damian wordlessly slides a new pen over to you with a slightly different composition. You smile at him and busy your hands with taking part the new pen. Damian’s cheeks darken slightly, but before anyone can notice, he’s back in leader mode.

Damian pulls up the blueprint, running through everyone’s role and position for the mission.

“And Black Falcon, you’re with me, handling guards on the roof and additional security measures.”

“The dream team,” You grin with a wink.

Damian rolls his eyes and ignores your remark. Instead, he fields any questions then dismisses the team. You glance down at the file briefing in front of you then remember one last question for Damian. As a few Titans clear out, you wander to the front of the room where Damian is studying the blueprint from the presentation.

“Hey, boss man,” You wave your file at him. “This building is using the Kingsley Security system. What are your thoughts about debuting the new hacking arrows?”

Damian frowns, flipping to the page with the schematics concerning the security system.

“How effective is the firewall on the arrows?”

“If you’re worried about them tracking back to us, the arrows’ firewall should be strong enough to erase our trail.”

“Should be?” Damian raised an eyebrow.

“They’ll be fine, but I don’t like to make guarantees.”

“And why is that?”

“Because sometimes, shit happens.”

“I don’t like variables.”

“Well, Dames, I’ve got bad news for you about how life works.”

You cross your arms, leaning your hip against the table.

“I don’t like variables on my missions when lives are on the line,” Damian says, scanning over the Kingsley credentials.

“We’re connected to a computer with the highest level of security to currently exist. Even if they manage to trace back the arrows, they won’t get far.”

Jon and Colin watch you two bicker about arrows and security.

“He likes having someone to argue with way too much,” Colin mutters to Jon.

Jon nods along.

“You’re telling me. He’s not going to do anything about it though.”

Colin cracks a grin.

“He’s just gonna roll his eyes and tell her she’s insufferable.”

Jon and Colin snicker, catching Damian’s attention. He narrows his eyes at the two who sit innocently.

“Listen,” You bring Damian’s attention back to you. “It’s your mission and I’ll respect whatever you want to do, but the only way for me to improve the arrows design is to test them.”

“I’ll consider it,” Damian says.

His phone lights up with notification on the table. Your eyes dart toward the light and your eyebrows go up. Damian catches your eye and snatches his phone off the table with red cheeks.

“Am I your lock screen?” You ask with a small grin.

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” Damian shoves his phone in his back pocket.

“Really?” Your grin grows as your eyebrows move higher.

Jon and Colin watch with shit eating grins.

“Grayson set it,” Damian growls. “I haven’t bothered to change it.”

“Sure, he did,” You nod. “It’s a cute picture.”

The picture is after Damian and Bruce got into a huge argument, bad enough that Damian called Dick to get him out of the Manor. Dick figured it would be a good day to give Damian a childhood experience he missed out on and decided to take Damian to a theme park. Knowing you were in town with Jason while Roy was handling some business in Gotham, he talked Jason into bringing you. While at the park, Dick insisted you and Damian needed to try a funnel cake since neither of you had ever had one.

You and Damian decided to split one since Dick warned you they were pretty sweet. When you and Damian tried your first bites, Damian’s face instantly scrunched up which made you laugh and Dick managed to catch the moment on camera.

Damian scowls at you while you just grin.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone and ruin your reputation,” You laugh, leaving the room.

Damian scowls at you as you leave and returns his attention to collecting his files.

“Ah Dames, get that look off your face, we all know how you feel,” Jon teases.

Damian turns, scowling at Jon.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you don’t,” Colin rolls his eyes. “We can all tell you like Y/N.”

“She’s--”

“Insufferable,” Jon finishes. “Yeah, we know. You know, just because you keep saying it, doesn’t mean it’s actually true.”

“And you know, we get it, you’re a condensing, uptight dick--” Colin starts to rattle off.

“Why does everyone assume the worst of me?” Damian scowls at Colin.

“It saves time,” He grins at his friend. “But, despite those things, you can be charming when you want to be. And if you actually acted on that charm, Y/N would agree to a date with you.”

Jon stares at Colin for a minute, looking unimpressed then turns to Damian.

“My advice is much more subtle. Stop being an ass.”

“I didn’t ask for advice,” Damian growls.

“We are aware and we also are aware that you never will,” Colin nods.

“Why not let yourself be happy, Dames?” Jon asks.

“I am happy,” Damian glares at the two of them then walks out of the room, tired of hearing their advice.

“Think he’ll listen?” Colin asks.

Jon shrugs.

“Who knows.”

. . .

Your back hits the ground but you roll to the balls of your feet, breathing hard. You tighten your grip on your bo staff, ready to lunge for another hit when you notice Damian walk into the training room. As he walks toward you, you straighten up and grab your water, figuring it’s time for a break. Damian raises his eyebrows at your bo staff.

“That’s not your normal choice in weapons,” He observes.

You shrug, taking a swing of water and ignoring your cheeks heating up. While you wanted to expand your training, you’ve seen Damian using a bo staff a lot. He seems to like them so you figured you’d give them a shot. Besides, Tim has given you a few pointers.

“Decided to try something new,” You say casually.

Damian quirks an eyebrow, but says nothing else.

“I’ve been thinking--” He starts.

“A dangerous pastime,” You nod solemnly.

Damian glares at you but continues, as if he didn’t hear your sarcastic comment.

“We have a strong enough firewall on the computer in the Tower that if your arrows malfunctioned, we could detect and fight a security breach.”

“So, I can bring them on the mission?” You finish.

“Yes.”

“Sweet!” You grin, pumping your fist.

Damian rolls his eyes again at your celebration, but you can see him trying not to smile. He turns to leave, but you look back at the bo staff you were training with.

“Wait! Damian!” You call.

He turns, looking at you with raised eyebrows.

“You’re better with a bo staff than I am,” You admit. “Wanna help me out?”

Damian’s eyes flicker between you and the bo staff. You see a small smile fighting its way onto his face.

“I’ll change into something more suiting for training.”

You grin, spinning the staff around you then go into a mock solute.

“Yes, commander.”

Damian rolls his eyes again, but leaves to change.

. . .

You swing your staff up hard, but Damian blocks it and swipes at your legs with a low kick. Grinning as he falls into the expected move, you flip your staff around and hit Damian’s side. He grunts and moves again, this time, landing a hard blow to your arm. You grimace at the force, but swing your staff around again and manage to knock Damian’s legs out from under him with a move he showed you.

Damian hits the ground hard with a grunt, but instead of rolling to his feet for another hit, he lays on the ground, looking a little dazed.

“I got it!” You cheered as Damian sits up, watching you with a small smile.

“Drive your hips more so the power doesn’t come from your arms as much,” He instructs.

“You know, with all the archery I do,” You flex a muscular arm. “I’m pretty sure my arms are stronger than my hips at this point.”

Damian rolls his eyes as he pushes himself to his feet. You swear you sees his eyes lingering on your flexed arm.

“Basic anatomy,” He claims.

“Right, your definition of “basic” and a normal person’s is pretty different.”

Damian raises an eyebrow at you.

“How do you mean?”

You narrow your eyes.

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” But the slow start of a shit eating grin on his face tells you Damian knows how you meant that statement.

You groan, throwing your hands up.

“Okay, fine, Wayne. I’ll give it to you, you’re pretty smart.”

“Am I now?” Damian full on grins, making your heart flutter.

You roll your eyes again, despite your raised heart rate.

“I’m not going to say it again.”

“I didn’t think you would. It doesn’t change the truth.”

You sigh, shaking your head.

“Why do I still like you, knowing you’re a total asshole?” You question as you walk toward your water.

Damian freezes for a moment, your words slowly mulling over in his head. Before he can say anything else, his watch beeps. Damian looks down at it with a scowl.

“Duty calls?” You ask, handing Damian his water.

He looks up from the notification and nods.

“Get dressed, we leave in ten minutes.”

. . .

Following your normal post mission tradition, you relax on the roof with a few boxes of take out. You dig into your box of fried rice, enjoying the view as your legs dangle over the edge of the huge tower. The roof access door opens and someone sits next to you but you don’t have to turn to see who. Wordlessly, you hold out Damian’s vegetarian Lo Mein which you took the courtesy to grab while he showered after the mission.

“Your arrows worked,” Damian comments, accepting the box from you and digging in with his own chopsticks.

“Mmhm,” You hum with a smirk. “Told you.”

Damian rolls his eyes.

“Of course you wouldn’t be able to resist making a childish remark.”

You grin, nudging Damian’s shoulder.

“You knew I already knew the arrows worked. You just wanted to hear me say it.”

“I absolutely did not.”

“Sure you didn’t. I’m irresistible.”

“You’re insufferable,” Damian corrects.

“I still don’t believe that line.”

“Your belief does not change the truth.”

You laugh, leaning against Damian as you both continue eating, enjoying the view and each other’s company. After the first time Damian joined you on the roof, it became both of your traditions to enjoy your post mission meals together. Later, you would rejoin the team for game night or movie night, but for now, you two enjoy your quiet meals and unwind peacefully.

Once your meals are finished and the boxes are discarded to the side, you scoot closer to Damian, resting your head on his shoulder. He slowly places a hand on your knee, seeming a bit uncertain. You smile to yourself and squeeze his arm, scooting a little closer to encourage him. He leans into you, seeming more relaxed by the affection.

“You know,” You finally say after a few minutes of silently watching the sun set. “I turned out liking you a lot more than I originally planned.”

“How much did you intend to like me?” Damian asks.

You feel him starting to go stiff.

“Well, given you insulted me when I first met you,” You point out with a shrug. “I didn’t expect to like you very much.”

“And now?” Damian asks hesitantly.

You lift your head from Damian’s shoulder to look at him, your noses inches away.

“Now, you’re pretty alright,” You tease, admiring his pretty green eyes.

Damian rolls his eyes with a small laugh.

“Just alright?” He asks, squeezing your knee lightly.

“Well,” You shrug again, feeling your heart pound. “Maybe a little more than alright.”

You stare at each other for a long moment until Damian’s eyes flicker to your lips. Here goes nothing. Before you can bring yourself to regret, you close the small distance between each other and press your lips to his. He’s hesitant for a moment, stiff against you. Before you can pull away, Damian’s fingers sink into your hair, pulling you closer as he kisses you back.

You melt into the kiss and grip his shirt tightly. As he shifts his head to deepen the kiss, a voice yells from behind you:

“It’s about time!”

You and Damian jump apart, still holding a hand on each other to see Jon standing by the roof access door. Damian scowls at him while Jon grins like he’s just won the lottery.

“You have no idea how annoying it was so watch you two pretend like you don’t like each other,” Jon rolls his eyes. “Come on, we’re starting game night.”

He disappears back through the door as you look back at Damian.

“Well, duty calls,” You joke, sliding off the ledge.

Damian turns, catches your wrist, and tugs you back to him.

“They can wait,” He mutters to you, kissing you again.

You happily melt into the kiss, your hands on Damian’s chest as his hands slide to your hips.

“Am I still insufferable?” You tease against Damian’s lips.

He smirks, standing to his feet and pulling you close by your waist.

“Yes,” He kisses you again.

I’ve been writing things as I get inspiration. I think I’ll be compiling a prompt lists soon because I have some request... They are really big ideas and I don’t think I can take on any projects that big right now. I hope you enjoyed!

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sage-nebula · 3 years

Text

The past three years were eventful for Misaki Shiki, and not just because she ran her own fashion brand. They were eventful, but they were not easy. Of course they weren’t.

Working on Gatto Nero helped. Shiki and Eri started working on it as soon as Shiki returned from the UG, meaning that they were working on it before Coco murdered Neku and he was trapped in the UG once again. Building a fashion brand is incredibly difficult, especially since Shiki and Eri were still in high school for half of the past three years, and that means that a lot of Shiki’s time, energy, and attention was taken up by her business. This doesn’t mean that she didn’t care about Neku, of course; quite the opposite. She was frantic when she found out what happened to him, that her foreboding feeling had turned out to be right after all, and she was only able to choke down her hysterics when Rhyme reminded both her and Beat that Neku’s death wouldn’t be permanent. Neku would get to play the Game again, whatever Kitaniji had said before, and he would win and come back. That was certain. There was no way he wouldn’t win; all they had to do was wait for and believe in him, and Shiki could do that.

The thing is, the rest of the RG didn’t know that. Neku’s relationship with his parents was . . . complicated, to say the least, but they were still informed of his murder and still had to plan the funeral. Shiki, Beat, and Rhyme all attended; Neku was their best friend, after all, and they’d been around his house enough times for his parents to at least recognize Shiki and Beat in passing, and it would have been strange to everyone (Eri, their own parents) had they refused to attend. How were they supposed to explain that they didn’t want to attend his funeral because they knew he wasn’t really dead? That although it had already been two weeks, they were sure he was coming back? There was no way to explain it, so they didn’t even try. They just attended his funeral, and reminded themselves over and over again that it wasn’t real, that it wouldn’t stick, that Neku would come back.

(At one point during the service, Shiki caught a flash of light out of the corner of her eye that she could have sworn was Joshua. But when she turned to look properly, he was gone.)

In the weeks following his death, Shiki waited by Hachiko whenever she could—which wasn’t often, given how much work she and Eri had to do with Gatto Nero, although Eri wordlessly took up the bulk of the work, figuring that Shiki needed time to grieve. Which was . . . not exactly wrong, but not exactly right, either. Shiki wasn’t grieving, because Neku wasn’t really dead. Not dead forever, at least. He would be back, she knew he would. He just needed more time.

Weeks turned to months. Months turned to a year. A year turned into a year and three months.

It was around this time that Eri started cheerfully suggesting double-dates for the two of them. At first, Shiki politely declined without thinking too much of it; Eri was an extrovert whose life motto was “the more the merrier” and so it wasn’t surprising at all that she’d want company for her dates with Mina. But the third time Shiki declined Eri’s offer to go out on a double-date, Eri frowned and said, “Shiki . . . come on.”

“What?”

“It’s almost been a year and a half. Don’t you think it’s time?”

“Time . . . for what?”

“To . . . you know.” Eri waved her hand in a circular motion in the air. “Move on. Or try to, at least. With someone new.”

Oh.

“I’m fine,” Shiki said, and though she thought her voice was happy enough, it sounded brittle in her ears. Strange, too, like the words were gibberish instead of actual words. I’m fine, I’m fine. “I’m happy enough.”

“You shouldn’t have to settle for ‘happy enough.’ You should be happy! Really, truly happy.” Eri took Shiki’s hands in her own. “Just come out with us. Get to know Takeshi. We’re going for karaoke—it’ll be fun! You don’t have to do anything you’re not ready to, but . . .” Eri smiled ruefully. “You can’t date a ghost, either. I think it’s time to let him go.”

It wasn’t, and it never would be, because Neku wasn’t a ghost, not really. He was just in the UG, which was a separate plane of existence, and he wouldn’t be there forever. Shiki knew that, but knew just as well she couldn’t explain it to Eri without Eri recommending she check herself into a psychiatric hospital. So with a rueful smile of her own, Shiki nodded and accepted Eri’s invitation. She would go on the double-date—just one. Just enough to satisfy Eri.

But one double-date wasn’t enough to satisfy her. Eri accepted that Takeshi and Shiki didn’t vibe, but if there was one thing that could be said about her, it was that Eri was never one to rest when she felt one of her friends needed help. To Shiki, it felt like Eri was pulling potential suitors out of the woodwork; every time she turned around Eri had another blind date to send Shiki on, sometimes as doubles and sometimes just on her own. Shiki went along with them, to placate Eri—but eventually, Eri caught onto that, too.

“Why don’t you just try? You don’t have to try for me, but for yourself?”

“I’m—!” Shiki took a deep, calming breath. “I am trying, Eri. It’s just not working.”

“You’re not trying, I can tell. Your heart isn’t in it. Just attending the dates isn’t enough; you have to unlock your heart if you ever want to let someone in.”

Shiki pursed her lips, to stop herself from saying that maybe she didn’t want to let someone in—that maybe she was fine staying single, fine with waiting for Neku to get back. But this time, it wasn’t just the fact that she couldn’t share this information with Eri that held her back, but the knowledge that it would make her a hypocrite. Wasn’t she the one who had told Neku to give her a chance, to let her in? To open up and let her know what he was thinking? And that had been for far higher stakes than a simple date.

Shiki sighed, and nodded in acceptance. “Okay. I’ll try a little harder.”

Eri beamed. “That’s my girl.”

That night, Shiki texted the last person she’d been out with, a guy named Keisuke, and asked him if he’d like to go out again later in the week. To her mild surprise, he replied quickly and enthusiastically that he would. The date set, Shiki lingered for only a moment more before she gathered her things and went to sit by Hachiko for a while, watching the crowds pass by without really seeing any of the people at all.

She promised Eri that she would try, so she did. She listened when Keisuke told stories about himself and his friends and, to his credit, some of them were kind of funny. He was nice. He was polite to just about everyone they encountered and had real interest in Gatto Nero, even though the only way Shiki and Eri had made any sales so far was through their online store (which was less a store and more a page they made on a site that let indie creators sell all sorts of things). It wasn’t bad spending time with him. Shiki didn’t mind it. And Eri was really happy when she learned there was a third date on the horizon, so that was a bonus, too.

Two dates turned to three, three dates turned to four, and before Shiki knew it she was graduating high school and in a steady relationship with Keisuke.

It had been a little over two years since Neku had been killed, and so much had changed but it still didn’t feel real. Of course, it couldn’t, because it wasn’t. His death wasn’t real, or at least wasn’t permanent. But it had been two years, and she and Eri were now able to do once-a-month popup stores near Tower Records to sell Gatto Nero merchandise in addition to their online store, and she and Keisuke had been dating for six months. Truth be told, her relationship with Keisuke felt the least real out of any of it. They went on dates regularly, and he texted and called her regularly, but she still felt a little flash of surprise when people referred to him as her boyfriend and didn’t notice very much when time lapsed between when they were able to see each other, though he always seemed to. It wasn’t that she didn’t like him. She did, even though Beat and Rhyme didn’t (though only Beat would say as much out loud; Rhyme only smiled and said, “If you’re happy, I’m happy,” and Shiki could never bring herself to respond if she was happy or not). But it was just that being with him was . . . he wasn’t . . .

He was fine. Being with him was fine. It was fine. She was fine. But sometimes . . .

Sometimes, it was the little things.

He was nice. Keisuke was nice. But he had a habit of making little comments. They weren’t mean—he was never mean. But a few months into their relationship he started making little comments that, while Shiki never thought much of them in the moment . . .

“You keep your hair so short. I bet it would be pretty if it was longer.”

“Why do you always wear such baggy clothes? Form-fitting clothes look better, don’t you think?”

“You should wear makeup, you’d like nice with it.”

“You always carry the same bag. You must like that one, huh?”

“Wow, you sure do eat a lot!”

“Your glasses are so big, it’s like they take up half your face.”

“You’re like the only girl I know who never does anything with her nails.”

Nothing Keisuke said was mean. Shiki never felt as though he was being mean, even when the moment had passed and she reflected on what he said later. But his comments . . . his little comments . . . they weren’t one-offs, not really. And it must have been important to him, for him to mention things like her hair or her nails or her clothes more than once. She supposed, if she was going to date him (and she had been dating him for months already), that she should take what he said into consideration, if for nothing else so that he wouldn’t feel the need to comment as much anymore. So she started growing her hair out, and smiled when he noticed and pointed it out and beamed at her for it. She switched up her wardrobe to clothes that were less comfy, but that hugged her body more. She had Eri give her lessons on how to correctly apply makeup. She ordered prescription contacts and made sure to take a different bag with her at least once a week, if not a little more often than that. And she started paying more attention to her diet, too, because it was important to eat healthy, after all.

All of these changes were good ones—positive ones. Keisuke certainly seemed to like them, and while Eri was surprised when Shiki asked for things like makeup lessons or to borrow clothes from her closet, she didn’t mind, either. The only ones who seemed to were Beat and Rhyme; Beat openly derided the idea that Shiki was making changes for Keisuke (“It’s not for him, Beat, I’m just . . . making changes”), while Rhyme gave her strange looks when she thought Shiki wouldn’t notice. Shiki tried not to let it bother her. She was too busy to dwell, what with a deal being in the works for a Gatto Nero store in 104, dates with Keisuke, and time spent at Hachiko whenever she stole a moment away.

Of all the things he found bizarre about her, Shiki’s time at Hachiko seemed to be what stuck in Keisuke’s craw the most. Whenever she told him she was there (usually sketching out new pin or clothing ideas nowadays) he could never let it go. It was a tourist spot, he said. It was weird for her to be there if she wasn’t meeting anyone there, he said. If she had time to be there why wouldn’t she come over to his place, he said. Shiki dismissed his comments by changing the subject or, if he was really reluctant to let it go, with a kiss. It was enough to placate him until the next time, which Shiki felt was a good enough compromise. It was one thing she refused to give up.

And then he saw her phone.

Nine months into their relationship (two years and three months after Neku’s death), she returned from a trip to the bathroom to find Keisuke staring at her phone, which she had left on the sofa behind her. When his eyes met hers, they were blazing.

“Who is this?” he demanded, and flipped her phone in his hand so that her phone’s wallpaper—a selfie she had taken with Neku at Hachiko, weeks before his murder—stared back at her.

“I . . .” Shiki’s voice was lodged in her throat. “It’s me. And a friend. How did you unlock my phone?”

“Why does that matter? A friend?” Keisuke got up from the couch, his phone still in her hand as he stalked toward her. “Who is he? Why haven’t I seen him? And why is he your wallpaper, if he’s just a friend?”

“I . . . that picture’s been my wallpaper for years, I . . .” Shiki shook her head, and took her phone as he angrily thrust it back at her. “I never thought to change it.”

“Never? We’ve been dating for almost a year, and you have some other guy’s pic as your wallpaper—”

“Keisuke—”

“Is he who you’re hanging out with at Hachiko every other day? Is he—”

“He’s dead!” Shiki’s voice splintered on that single word, hot tears she hadn’t planned on burning in her eyes. It was the first time she’d said as much out loud; every other time she’d nodded in placating agreement with Eri’s insistence that Neku was a ghost, or her parents soothingly telling her that they knew that a friend’s death was hard but that they knew she’d make it through. She knew it wasn’t true, not really, and so she’d never bothered to dignify it by saying it out loud. But here, now, as her—as Keisuke accused her of cheating— “He . . . died—he died two years ago. He was murdered.”

“. . . Oh.” The silence was tense. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Shiki shrugged, and sniffed as she swiped her tears off her cheeks—gently, with a finger, lest she smudge the mascara she’d painstakingly applied before going to his apartment that night.

Another moment passed before Keisuke crossed the last few paces and put his arm around her shoulders, and placed a kiss in her hair. “I didn’t know he was dead. I wouldn’t have yelled if I had. I’m sorry.”

Shiki swallowed. He’s not . . . “It’s okay.”

“But . . . hey. He’s gone, right? Has been for a while now.” Keisuke’s voice was light, and when Shiki looked up at him, she saw that he was smiling. “Why don’t we choose a new wallpaper for your phone? Maybe one of the two of us. That will help get your mind away from your sadness, too.”

Keisuke wasn’t mean. He wasn’t trying to be hurtful. And she couldn’t fault him for his logic. What was it Eri had said a little over half a year ago? That it was time to move on? To try?

Shiki squeezed down a sob as she nodded, and scrolled through her photos to find a selfie she had taken with Keisuke upon his request a few weeks prior. She set it as her wallpaper, and forced a smile as he kissed her cheek.

Shiki left his apartment not too long after, and returned to the one she rented with Eri. Eri wasn’t home when Shiki arrived, but that wasn’t surprising; it was a Saturday, and Eri tended to stay out late on weekends. Shiki slipped her shoes off by the door, hung her bag on the coatrack, and went to the kitchen to pour herself a cup of water. She took one sip before she found she wasn’t thirsty; she abandoned it on the counter and went to her room to turn in for the night instead.

She didn’t make it very far. She and Eri kept a mirror in the hallway, just outside the living room, for a quick check to make sure they were ready to leave before they did. Usually, Shiki didn’t pay the mirror too much mind unless she had specifically decided to check it. But as she made her way to her room the mirror caught her eye—or rather, the reflection inside the mirror did, and her heart stopped.

For a split second, she didn’t recognize who she saw.

For a split second, it was if she had forgotten that what they had hung on the wall was a mirror and not a window. The girl who stared back had wide eyes unobscured by glasses, but rimmed with dark, smokey makeup. Her dark hair was just past her shoulders and lightened on the ends. Her lips were painted to make them look fuller, foundation and concealer both caked on her cheeks to hide blemishes, with artificial blush added on top. Her clothes were tight, hard to move in. Her feet hurt from the heels she’d worn. A girl was staring back at her from the other side of the looking glass—a girl who was not who she was, but rather who she had become.

Her reflection’s painted lip trembled, and this time Shiki couldn’t restrain the sob that burst unbidden from her chest.

She tore into her room, ripping her clothes off with enough ferocity she was at risk of tearing the seams. She threw them not in her hamper, but on the floor, and ripped every similar article of clothing—every tight miniskirt, every suffocating tube top—out of her closet so it could join them. She changed into the baggiest, ugliest pajamas she could find, and then charged into the bathroom to scrub her face with makeup remover. She scrubbed hard enough to burn, to tear her skin a little as she ripped off her false eyelashes and tossed them in the trash, her contacts following soon after. She stared at her now blurry reflection in the bathroom mirror, and ran her fingers through her long hair. Her hair. Her hair. That was the next thing. It had to go.

Eri came home in time to find Shiki surrounded by a haphazard pile of her own hair on the kitchen floor, for after retrieving the scissors she hadn’t had it in her to make it back to the bathroom before starting her hack job. (Not that it would have mattered; it wasn’t as if she could see without her glasses, and she was too upset to remember where she’d stashed them.) To say that Eri was alarmed was an understatement; she pulled the scissors from Shiki’s trembling hands and asked, over and over, what had happened, what was going on, was she okay, no she wasn’t okay, but what happened, what was wrong?

“E-Everything,” Shiki gasped, gripping Eri’s shoulders for dear life, fighting to get the words out around her tears. “It’s—it’s not fine.”

That night, Eri held her while she cried. Held her until she fell halfway asleep, and then helped tuck her into bed. Eri was waiting in the kitchen the next morning when Shiki woke, breakfast already made, warm tea prepared just the way Shiki liked it. Eri patted the seat at the table beside her and said, “I’m here to listen if you’re ready to talk.”

Fortunately, an emotional breakdown and a long rest after a strong cry was enough to help Shiki sort through her thoughts, and feelings. She told Eri . . . not everything, but most of it. She told her how she’d lost herself—how she had, without meaning to, changed herself to meet the expectations that Keisuke and she felt the world at large had for her, as one of the lead designers for an up and coming fashion brand.

“That’s why? I thought . . . I thought you just wanted to try something new . . .”

“I thought that, too. But I was just . . . lying to myself, I guess.” Shiki smiled ruefully at her mug of tea. “I should have listened to Beat. He knew. Rhyme too, but she never said so out loud.”

“I always liked your clothes. You looked so cute and comfy.” Eri squeezed her mug more tightly. “You never had to change . . . I never wanted—!”

“I know, Eri.” Shiki placed her hand over Eri’s, and smiled despite Eri’s watery eyes. “I know.”

Shiki wasn’t okay with how things were. She wasn’t okay with how she’d lost herself, how she’d broken her promise to never go back to the old Shiki who always tried to meet others expectations of who she should be, rather than staying true to who she actually was. She wasn’t okay with her relationship, with tying herself to someone she didn’t truly love, who brought out the worst in her whether he meant to or not. She wasn’t okay with Neku, either—with the whole situation surrounding him. She wasn’t okay forcing herself to try to move on and let go, but she also wasn’t okay pretending that she was just fine waiting indefinitely without having even a clue as to how he was faring in the UG.

Shiki wasn’t okay. But she knew what she had to do to get there.

First, she called Keisuke and had him meet her at Hachiko Café—a public place, in hopes he wouldn’t make a scene. She told him, firmly but politely, that she wanted to end their relationship.

“What? I don’t understand—why?”

“I’m not happy. And I don’t think we’re right for each other. I . . .” She reached up to cut her short, unevenly cut hair. She would need to get it fixed sometime soon, but this had to be done first. “I changed myself for you, a lot. And—”

“You looked good. Your hair was so pretty. Why did you do this to it? Where is all this coming from?”

“I wanted to. This is who I really am. And I know that you preferred me the other way, but . . . that’s not who I was. And I think it would be better for you to find someone who can be that person, just like it’s better for me to find someone who likes me as I am.”

“Like that guy on your wallpaper?”

“Like . . .” Shiki smiled a little as she stared down at the table between them. “Yeah, I guess so. Like him.”

“I thought he was dead.”

“He—” isn’t “—is.”

“Then why—why are you comparing me to him? That’s not fair.”

“I know it’s not. That’s why I’m ending things.” Shiki stood up from the table, and pulled her old bag over her shoulders. “I’m sorry, but this is for the best. Goodbye.”

She kept her eyes forward, and left him sputtering protests behind her.

After leaving Keisuke behind at the café, she blocked his number on his phone and changed her wallpaper—not to the selfie with her and Neku, but instead to a picture of her and Eri outside a Gatto Nero popup. It wasn’t that she was giving up on Neku. She wasn’t—she never would. But . . . she needed time, and besides, that picture was outdated. She would get a new one whenever he was able to come back.

In the following days, she made several appointments. One was with a stylist, who fixed her shaky, messy hack job into a cuter pixie cut that would, with time, grow back into a bob Shiki would be more comfortable with. The next was with a therapist, recommended to Shiki by her primary care doctor, whom she would see once a week. Of course, she was limited in what she could tell her therapist as well; it wasn’t as if her therapist would understand about the Reapers’ Game and the UG. But her therapist did understand about unhealthy relationships, about difficulties with self-esteem, about the stressors of launching a fashion brand, about how painful grief was and how difficult it was to balance it with everything else. And in that, her therapist helped.

Three months after Shiki started therapy (two years and six months since Neku’s death), the 104 deal went through and she and Eri cut the ribbon on their brand new, brick and mortar storefront. Three months after that (two years and nine months since Neku’s death), Shiki was able to cut her therapy meetings down to once every two weeks, and her hair had grown out again, enough so that she could get a nice little trim to keep it neat. Two months after that (two years and eleven months since Neku’s death), Eri approached her with a month-long business trip to South Korea to market their brand.

“A month?” Shiki frowned as she looked over the itinerary that Eri handed her. “I don’t know . . .”

“I know it’s a long time, but I think it might be good for you to get away for a little while. You’ve been doing so much better!” Eri added quickly, as Shiki frowned at her. “But, you know . . . a change of scenery might still be nice. And you can still talk to your therapist over video chat, right?”

Eri was right, of course. And she was also, Shiki was sure, all too aware of how Shiki still visited Hachiko whenever she could, and how just a few weeks prior she’d re-sewn a coat she’d made a year ago for a so-called ghost, to move it up a size, just in case.

So Shiki nodded. “Okay. I’ll go.”

Eri beamed, and gave her a tight hug.

One month after that (three years since Neku’s death), Shiki had just stepped off the bus that had retrieved her from Narita Airport when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She fished it out, and smiled when she saw Rhyme’s contact photo beaming up at her.

“Hello?”

“Shiki! Are you back in Japan?”

“Yeah, I’m back.”

“I’m happy to hear it. Things have been a bit hectic here since you left.” A pause. “Do you have some time to talk about it?”

It had been three years since Neku’s death. Things were always hectic in Shibuya, and there was no reason for Shiki to believe that what Rhyme had to talk about was anything related to Neku or the UG. After all, she would have said as much immediately, wouldn’t she?

But—

“Mmhm. When can we meet? Are you free now?”

Rhyme laughed. “I am, but I think I can hear the sounds of the bus station behind you. I think you need some time to at least get your suitcase home before we talk. Call me in about an hour? Or whenever you’re ready, I can wait. Patience is a virtue, after all.”

Shiki smiled. “All right. Got it. Talk to you then.”

“See you later!”

Rhyme ended the call before Shiki could, and Shiki took a deep breath after she slipped her phone back into her pocket. An hour or two. Just long enough to get her suitcase home, a shower and a fresh change of clothes, and then she could meet with Rhyme to discuss what had been happening in Shibuya—why the air felt oddly still as Shiki made her way through the West Exit Bus Terminal, toward the Scramble Crossing.

It had been three years since Neku died, and there was no shock of orange hair near Hachiko when Shiki passed it. Despite everything else that had changed, Hachiko’s plaza being devoid of her partner hadn’t. But . . .

Shiki looked up at the sky as she waited at the crosswalk, and watched as a bird swayed jerkily through the air, as though having trouble flying.

She had a feeling that, too, finally had a strong possibility of changing soon.

#the world ends with you #neo: the world ends with you #misaki shiki #twewy eri #neshiki #fic fix #this started as a meta then turned into a fic & spiraled out of control & it's almost 2am #i spent several hours on this #anyway I don't think that Shiki sat by Hachiko every day for 3 years #she never gave up on Neku but also she had a life to live too #& I can't see Eri being content watching her bff refuse to move on from someone who is (as far as Eri can see) dead & not coming back #she wants Shiki to be healthy & happy #anyway I will revise this later but for now here's this #ntwewy spoilers #neo twewy spoilers #ntwewy #neo twewy

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subtle-carrot · 2 years

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Invisible Visibility and Queer Absence in Archive 81

So, my video on Netflix’s Archive 81, its straightwashing and adaptation in general came out a while ago. Which means it’s time to talk about the ideas that didn’t get into the video for one reason or another.

This time we’re talking about the importance of unimportance, the absence of Cassandra’s lesbianness, and what a podcast can offer to a streaming show in adaptation.

It’s a bit of an old hat to talk about but let’s have a look at how it’s important that podcast Melody Pendras’ and show Cassandra Wall’s lesbianness is unimportant. By unimportant, I mean thematically unimportant, ie. it doesn’t exist to say something. Which in turn makes it important because it presents sexuality as something that isn’t inherently about saying something, unlike the non-saying, normal straighteness.

At one point, this was revolutionary. People just were gay or trans, and I think there’s an important place for that representation still but I’ve also started recently to feel that this has its pitfalls. Mainly that it can miss how particular the queer experience can be and how it affects how we interact with the world, systems, and other people. And I don’t just mean difficulties in a heteronormative system. I also mean the communities we create, how we find new ways to exist and how queerness can shape our view on the world in general. Sadly, most of the representation we have in mainstream media is still either “Just happens to be queer” or “OH THE SWEET QUEER PAIN!”, but there is some change happening as well.

Of course, if my reading of Cassandra Wall as an Evil Lesbian (check my video!) has any merit, that kinda changes her lesbianness more toward some kind of thematic importance. Which leads me to the absence of her lesbianness.

So, the main way we the viewer are aware of Cassandra being a lesbian is because Annabelle tells us about it. Everything else is, more or less, subtext. But we never see her BE a lesbian. By that I mean, that her partner is not around anymore and she seems to have settled into a solitary life without her (which is kind of a Queer Pain trope in itself). The closest we come to seeing her showing interest in other women is when she does her presented-as-creepy cheek kisses.

I’m not trying to say that one is a lesbian only when one is actively attracted to someone or in a public relationship. What I’m saying is that a series, a movie, whatever, has to show us what is real. Not necessarily with certainty, but what you’re saying has to exist in the text or subtext. Otherwise, you’re just labeling, or could just as well say that Man #17 who appeared for half a second in one episode is queer. Even Annabelle saying that Cassandra is a lesbian is suspect. That is her estimation of the situation and we never get a direct confirmation for it. She might be right, but considering her character, she might just be seeing an exciting story where there’s none. The rest is just conjecture, viewed through the context Annabelle has given.

This makes it almost so that in addition to Melody being straightwashed, Cassandra is nearly as well. Or the makers have gotten it both ways; there’s as little as possible queerness to her while at the same time, there is enough for you to say that there is queerness.

But before I get too deep into this subject, let’s talk a bit about what a podcast can offer a streaming show via adaptation.

In my video, I said that cultural capital* probably wasn’t one of the reasons why the makers of Netflix’s Archive 81 decided to adapt the original podcast. I still think that, but that isn’t always the case. Sure, Archive 81 the podcast doesn’t have a lot of cultural capital, but it might have subcultural capital. And especially today, there’s a a good exchange between those.

Mainstream culture has adapted subcultural works for a long time, even before our mass media age. There is excitement in (safely) participating in something “bad” or “mysterious”. The Other, essentially. Of course, usually some translation work is needed and there’s a famously thin line between appropriating and appreciating. Quite often, this translation process creates a veneer of subculture while underneath, it holds the values of the mainstream, creating the illusion that we’re all the same, there is no other modes of living.

For a while, queer representation in media was largely appropriation. And we loved it. We were so starved for some, any representation that we would take anything. Times have changed though. Now we actually have openly queer people making our media. The only fear I have is that the media industries are still mainly controlled by straight white cis men. My question is: can a system so controlled by one experience truly bring forth and appreciate the new modes of existence present in the subcultures they want to adapt?

Genuine question, I don’t have an answer for it.

* See Hutcheon and O’Flynn A Theory of Adaptation.

#archive 81 #archive 81 podcast #archive 81 netflix #melody pendras #cassandra wall #adaptation #representation #queer creator #queerness #queer representation #queer youtuber #queer reading #text post #scrapped ideas #literary carrot muncher #straightwashing #heteronormativity #heteronormative society

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dickspeightjrs · 3 years

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New Year’s Eve (au / 1.6k words / parent!destiel)

ao3 link

Ten years ago, Dean would never have dreamed of being at home on New Year’s Eve. But now? He couldn’t think of anywhere else he’d rather be.

Taking in the sight in front of him, he wouldn’t change a thing.

The TV was playing quietly with the sounds of the DVD menu repeating itself. He could feel the warm weight of a small body relaxed against him.

Looking down he could see the blond wisps of hair on his daughter’s head. The three-year-old had been determined to stay awake until midnight like everyone else but it seemed she’d been defeated by the sleep monster (which surprised absolutely no one).

Dean reached out a careful hand, making sure not to jostle Emma in her slumber, to grab her Frozen blanket from her lap and wrap it around her shoulders.

Another hand reached across to help secure the wrapping. Dean allowed the comforting hand to brush against his and looked up to meet his husband’s eye.

“So much for her wanting to stay awake like a big girl.” Blue eyes lit up with a chuckle.

Dean snorted. “Yeah. Guess she must have crashed out after the second load of candy and Tangled.”

“Though, to be fair,” Castiel said, eying the clock on the wall above the fireplace, “it’s only fifteen minutes until midnight, so she was close.”

“Hm,” Dean agreed. “She’ll have to try for a new record next year.”

Castiel chuckled, a small smile gracing his features. Dean let himself get lost in it for a moment.

He wasn’t usually one to be overly sentimental (he left that to his brother Sammy) but looking at his husband in the dim light of their living room, Dean couldn’t help but be grateful to whoever looked down on them that he got another year with the man.

Dean hadn’t been joking when he thought about how he used to spend his New Years Eve. The Dean before he met Cas was one that he now couldn’t believe ever existed.

His childhood wasn’t the happiest, which resulted in Dean searching for that happiness in other places. As a teenager, and into his twenties, Dean found himself stumbling in and out of bars with an endless stream of black eyes and bed partners.

But then he’d met Cas – who had just graduated from college – and everything changed.

“What are you thinking about?” Castiel asked, softly, bringing Dean back to the moment.

“Just how much I love you.” Dean hummed.

Castiel scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Okay, Mr Sentimental, I think it’s time for bed for you too.”

Dean was ready with a retort about how being a little romantic wasn’t because he was tired, but a yawn fought its way up through his throat instead, rendering his point useless.

Castiel levelled Dean with an arched eyebrow, which Dean knew all too well meant I told you so.

“Okay, fine,” Dean relented. “Let’s head to bed. You tidy up the movie snacks in here and I’ll take Em upstairs. Meet you up there in five?”

His husband nodded in agreement and placed a soft kiss on their daughter’s head as Dean scooped her carefully into his arms – keeping the blanket cocoon firmly in place around her.

Walking through the house to the bottom of the stairs, Dean holds Emma firmly but lovingly in his arms.

She was another addition to his life that he’d never seen coming.

After raising his brother, Dean had sworn off having children of his own. Not that it was Sam’s fault, that kid turned out great, but Dean had had parenthood forced upon him once. There was no way he was going to voluntarily choose it again.

Even his developing relationship with Castiel wasn’t going to change it.

That was until Dean had attended a particularly bad call at work.

He had followed his secret dream of becoming a firefighter once Castiel had managed to needle it out of him (perceptive bastard). To start with, most calls had been pretty average with the occasional major job thrown in.

But this call had been the worst Dean had ever attended.

Some guys had hijacked a lorry and taken it for a joyride, only stopping when they eventually collided with an on-coming car in the other lane.

The sole survivor of the entire wreck was a little baby girl, trapped but ultimately unhurt in the backseat of the car.

It had been Dean’s job to monitor her as the others worked to cut open the car to get to her safely.

In those moments, Dean fell in love with the little girl. Despite the environment surrounding her, she didn’t cry. Instead, she spent the whole time with her tiny fist grasped around Dean’s finger and staring up at him with the biggest blue eyes he’d ever seen – ones that reminded him of Castiel.

Eventually, after safely retrieving her from the wreckage, Dean held her close as he allowed the paramedics check her over. Dean had let out a sigh of relief when they said it didn’t seem that she’d sustained any injuries, but they’d decided to take her to the hospital for a full check up anyway.

Staying with her in the ambulance, Dean kept his firm hold on her as she finally cried from sheer exhaustion. He rocked her gently from side-to-side, cautious that she still hadn’t been given the all-clear.

She soon settled and the paramedic, Jody, who Dean had worked with on a few occasions, made a quip about him being the baby whisperer. Dean just chuckled and looked down at the now sleeping baby and felt himself reconsider his stance on having children of his own.

Upon reaching the hospital, Dean was met by a police officer and some lady who worked for children’s services.

It turned out that the little girl’s parents didn’t have any relatives that were capable of taking her into their care. She was going to be fostered with the intention of being adopted.

Dean’s heart broke for her. He knew what it was like to have a disrupted childhood and he wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

He reluctantly handed her over to the children’s services lady, his finger feeling cold without the warm, tiny touch of the baby’s hand wrapped around it.

That night, Dean recounted the events of the day to Castiel as they lay in bed together. Into the curve of Castiel’s neck, he whispered the thoughts that had been plaguing him since he’d left the hospital. The admittedly absurd idea, hope, that Dean could keep her himself. Dean couldn’t even look his new husband in the eye, knowing how stupid the idea was.

But, as always, Castiel had been the voice of logic and reason and he’d replied in an equally soft whisper that it wasn’t stupid or absurd and you never know if you don’t try.

And so, it began. The long, almost painful, process of bringing her home with them. It had taken a little while for anyone to actually them seriously but soon they knew that Dean would give anything to give the little girl, whose name turned out to be Emma – the most beautiful name Dean was sure he’d ever heard, the childhood and life she deserved. The one that he never got to have.

It was almost Emma’s first birthday by the time Dean carried her into their home for the first time as their daughter. Castiel immediately framing the adoption certificate and displaying it proudly on the mantel.

Fireworks brought Dean out of his wistful musings. Emma stirred a little in his arms and he realised what the fireworks meant; it was midnight! The new year had begun.

Realising there was something he forgot to do, Dean cradled Emma tightly to his chest and turned on his heel to dash away from the stairs and instead towards the kitchen.

Castiel looked up from the dishes he was putting away with a face filled with confusion.

“Dean? Is everything ok-“ Castiel was cut off by Dean’s lips on his.

“I almost missed our New Years’ kiss.” Dean explained as he pulled away.

Castiel let out a breath of laughter. “We’ve been together for six years; I think it’s okay not to have a New Years’ kiss every year.” He said, moving into Dean’s space, encasing Emma between them.

“Nope! Not happening. Sorry, Cas. You’re stuck with giving me a New Years’ kiss every year for the rest of our lives.” Dean laughed, leaning in to give his husband an over-exaggerated kiss on the cheek.

The movement jostled their sleeping daughter and she blinked awake, rubbing at her eyes. She made a disgruntled noise at being woken up from her otherwise perfect sleep.

“Oh, hello there, sleepyhead!” Castiel grinned down at her.

Emma frowned in response. “I didn’t fall asleep! I stayed awake the whole time!”

Dean chuckled, bouncing his pouting daughter in his arms, “Sure kiddo, whatever you say,” he grinned. “But awake or not, you’re definitely going to sleep now. Say goodnight to Daddy.”

“Night, night, Daddy,” Emma yawned as she waved at Castiel.

“Goodnight, Sweet Pea,” Castiel replied, leaning over to give her a kiss on the head again.

Before Castiel could get too far away, Dean swooped in to place another kiss on his lips.

“I’ll meet you in bed.” Dean winked over Emma’s head.

Castiel shook his head affectionately in response.

They both knew that in all reality they’d be asleep before their heads hit the pillow. Leaving the new year to creep in while they are curled up together.

And Dean wouldn’t have it any other way.

A/N: My first fic posted in nearly two months! Hope you enjoyed :)

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#destiel #destiel fic #dean winchester #castiel #destielfanficnet #myfic #fluff #1k #au #parent!dean #parent!cas #minor:emma #married!destiel #established relationship

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