#they will flashback to something that happened 5 seconds prior

[kaybreezy3000]

The Anti Hero's Pitfall of Arrogance

Five Hargreeves / Female OC

What happens when you disarm an exceptionally arrogant person, one that is a self-absorbed, teleporting, teenaged superhero?

The answer is not great things.

Get ready for a taste of Five like you've never had before...

(Chapters 5, 6, and 7 post to complete this story)

- This AU starts off when the Hargreeves are 16 and but is based off the show. It's going to give you a look inside Five's mind at that time of his life and not all of it is good, but I promise it's not all bad. I always make sure to give our boy his day to shine.

Warnings and Tags: sexually explicit content, flashbacks, teen bad behavior, survival horror, bad decisions, regret, POV Five, aggression issues, suffering, humor and angst and fluff, redemption, sweet Five and mean Five in same story, Dolores is a factor, hurt Number Five, Five makes fun and dirty check lists in this one, Young Five is really something, Plot twists and many tags left off to avoid spoiling the story.

Link to Chapters 1 and 2.

Link to Chapters 3 and 4

Chapter Five: Snowman

Phoebe Leroux = Undeniably Extraordinary.

When we were sixteen, I never even asked her last name before I enthusiastically felt her up and then aggressively stuck my dick down her throat.

Five Hargreeves = World’s biggest asshole.

My ax slams down through the log, the pieces fling to the side, falling in the pile at my feet.

Thanks to Phoebe, I still have both my feet, and I also have my life.

It has only been three months since the day she found me, and it’s already falling below zero at night and it’s not much better during the day. It went from a world so hot you could hardly breathe, to so cold I feel like I’m going to freeze my nuts off every time I’m out here.

With temperatures consistently this low, we are rapidly depleting our indoor supply of firewood. There’s plenty here thanks to our location and the home’s prior occupant and their neurotic preparations, but if we are going to keep our fire lit, one of us needs to come out and get more wood several times a day.

Even with Fee’s special warming powers, heating the one room cabin all night is something she’s not capable of. The second she’s asleep, she can’t control the temperature of anything other than herself and the things she’s touching. Unless we want to wake up in a room that feels like an icebox, we need a fire going in our stone hearth.

I slam the heavy ax back down again, splitting my last piece of wood, then I look back towards the house. The sun fell below the horizon over a half hour ago, but it was never sunny during the day and hasn’t been for two weeks. I had hardly noticed it was getting dark, but now I see that the ghostly shadows from the last hazy light are stretching across the yard, out from the equally haunted looking ruined forest to the west.

I’m sure Phoebe is wondering what in the hell is taking me so long. We have plenty of branches and larger dry pieces of wood already cut up. All I needed to do was go get them and that should have taken less than five minutes. I saw her peeping out the window, checking on me a few times, but I pretended that I didn’t see her.

Deliberately delaying going in, I slowly start stacking the wood in the drum of the wheelbarrow. I hate making her do everything, so I came out, but it’s also because I needed to clear my head. Unfortunately, even this cold fucking air isn’t helping set me straight.

Nothing is lately.

Once I go in, it’s going to be another one of those long nights, and the colder it gets, the closer we need to be and the harder this is.

Cart loaded; I stare blankly at the ground. I still can’t bring myself to go in. I am engulfed in a cloud of white vapor as I release another frazzled sigh. Arms dangling sulkily at my sides, I begin to aimlessly pace the open area of our yard.

After tossing a few rotten branches out into the brush pile, I wander over to the greenhouse and start inspecting a window I repaired over a month ago.

Fee finding his place, which is an entire survivalist’s estate that was featured on one of those dooms’ day preppers TV shows, once again proves how sheltered I was growing up, and how little I know about what regular people do in their free time. I never would have found this place without her and that’s because I never would have watched reality TV shows even if dad would have let us watch TV. Fee only saw the show once, but that was enough for her to remember it.

I glance up, looking back at the cabin again. I can see the glow of the oil lamp on our small kitchen table inside. She left it going for me. It’s like a signal, telling me I should get my skinny ass inside and stop being so stupid.

Still dawdling, I make my way around the glass grow-house, testing window frames that I already know will hold up just fine in the vicious winter winds since they already withstood the massive shockwaves that tore through this area five years ago.

When Fee found me, I was in Nowheresville Pennsylvania, but I was almost in bum-fuck West Virginia, which is where we are now at our posh hillbilly haven. This cabin was strategically built into the side of a rock cliff, and it is fully intact thanks to its fortified construction and because of its shielded location in the Alleghanian Mountains. The vast store of supplies that were stored underground are plentiful and unspoiled. There’s even a freshwater spring on property that tests in a much safer drinking range than anything I have had in the last five years. This is also where Fee found the off-road jeep that she used to recuse me.

This place is a huge blessing, but so is she. With Fee by my side, my life would be a million times easier no matter where I was.

During my first days here, I learned so many things about her, one being that she hadn’t been in this area very long which made her and I crossing paths even more of a miracle. The other thing I discovered, though I should have already known, is that she is inherently kind and compassionate and extremely sharp. She can take any problem and find a viable solution, continually surprising me with how fast and cleverly she can think outside the small box of numbers and figures my mind is used to operating in.

Staggering into the cabin that first night, I was completely at her mercy. I was still too weak to get up without her help and she pretty much had to carry me again.

She did everything for me. I never had to ask.

One of the nicest things she did (and there were many) was she washed my appallingly soiled and pathetically boney body. I hadn’t properly washed for weeks, so she had her work cut out for her. She cleaned and rewrapped my injured foot while I was knocked out from her glorious pain meds, but the rest happened the next morning after I woke up, after she made sure I ate my fill of breakfast first. She did it all in such a way to let me keep what was left of my dignity. Inch by inch, limb by limb, and other areas too, she kept me mostly covered as she bathed me with warm, soapy wash clothes.

With as close to death as I had been, it felt like I had died and went to heaven having that done to me.

She rinsed me and helped me dress in comfortable, fresh clothing. She ensured I ate again and even carefully cleaned and reclothed Dolores, always making sure she was by me, but never saying anything about my intense emotional and deep physical connection to her.

Fee could plainly see that I was broken and not just on the outside. She never pushed me to talk, or in any other way. She just took care of me.

It wasn’t until almost a week later that I lamely attempted to explain Dolores to her by revealing that I found her just two days after burying my family. If it wasn’t bad enough that I cried in front of Fee several times already, when I talked about those first days, I cried again. She still never showed any signs of judgment about my mind falling apart so fast, or my need to cling to something outside of me to pretend that I wasn’t alone.

Fee was so sweet about it all, and I still don’t know how to grasp that or everything I am feeling about her.

She always makes it her priority to take care of me. Even letting me be the one to come out here in the bitter cold took some convincing. I insisted that I had to take a leak, otherwise I knew she would have stuffed her feet in her boots and came out without even needing layer upon layer to keep her warm like I do.

Fee coddles me, but she has her reasons. One being that, since she found me, I am the weak link in this relationship.

That has to change.

Straightening my back, I walk back over to the loaded wheelbarrow. Digging the heels of my boots into the frozen ground, I thrust the handles down, forcing the weight onto the front tire so I can get it moving forward.

“Fuck,” I groan because it feels like every muscle in my body is being put to the test just to keep the stupid thing level. “I fucking hate wheelbarrows, they don’t make any fucking sense!” I shout out to no one because I’m nuts. At least I’m getting stronger again, but I have a long way to go in the brain department and physically.

It took three days after nearly dying before I could walk normally on my own. Phoebe would stay with me most of the time if I was awake, keeping me company by reading to me until I dozed off again. It was as if she knew my mind was badly troubled by things I couldn’t articulate and she was trying her best to help me run from my demons even for just a little while.

Sadly, I couldn't escape the horrors I had been through no matter how much I enjoyed listening to the soothing rhythm of her voice.

On day two, when I was doing so much better, and I was awake most of the day. We talked more and more, but mostly I listened. I had little to tell her other than where I’d been since coming here, which wasn’t very far compared to her.

I learned that after our first fateful encounter, Fee went on to do many things, including getting her citizenship. Life wasn’t easy for her or what many would call conventional, but like she said the day I met her, she is extremely resourceful, and like now, she got things done no matter what and she survived.

Phoebe traveled the world, often with hardly a dime to her name. She had many jobs related to performing and music, and many that didn’t. She is the kind that radiates happiness, and people naturally gravitate to that, so there were plenty of interesting friends made along the way and even some people that sound like they were more than friends, though she didn't elaborate on those relationships. I had nothing similar to share, so I just listened, imagining her free spiritedly drifting through her life.

During our many talks, Fee has always been forthcoming, but she always keeps her stories positive in nature and I think it’s for my benefit. She doesn’t want to make me think of more bad things. But even with my lack of understanding people, I can tell that her inability to settle any one place very long wasn’t simply because she didn’t want to. It was out of necessity.  

She virtually had nothing, and she never told anyone about what she could do. Only her mother had known. Putting herself out there like that in the public eye could have changed everything for her when it came to money worries, but it also would have meant living a life under constant scrutiny and expectations. She’d seen with my family what kind of exploitation could happen if suddenly the world knew you had superpowers.

Fee was scared to tell anyone the truth and that prevented anyone from ever really knowing her.

She wanted a normal life, but sadly it seems you can’t escape the isolation of being born this way. Looking back, I realize that is in part why she felt it was so important to tell me about 'others' with powers; she had hoped telling me meant she wouldn't have to be alone. She was searching for someone that would understand and that she could trust.

It makes me sick thinking about that and how badly I messed that up.

The night the world ended, Phoebe was alone because she often was. She was backcountry camping along the Colorado River. Her campsite was in an open box canyon so there was nothing out there to crush her. She was laying there, contemplating her next moves in life, but she was also stargazing. To her horror, she saw what looked like our moon breaking apart. Then even more shocking, fire started raining down from the sky in all directions.

She told me how terrified she was and how that feeling didn’t get any better in the days after that. She survived because thanks to her powers, she can’t burn. She didn’t even know that till then, and that’s because in those first few hours after the initial blast, fire was taking everything that hadn’t already been destroyed. That part she said very little about and I can only imagine why. I arrived the next day and things and people were still burning but not like I am sure they were the day before.

The moon being blown apart makes no sense scientifically, but I believe her that's what happened. There’s no way our government agencies would have missed an enormous asteroid or a comet big enough to do that. That means something unnatural happened and I can’t help thinking my family was involved in some way. It’s just too coincidental that my home was blown to hell the day before, and that Luther was holding on to that eyeball.

After telling Phoebe my thoughts on that, it became our mutual goal to get back and do anything we can to try and save them, and all of humanity. It’s a lofty goal, but we both see no other way.

Now more than ever, I need to figure out a way to travel back, because I am certain that there is something I can do about what happened. Now I don’t need to just pull myself back through the unknowns of time, I need to bring her along for the ride too. There’s no way I’d leave her. She is my friend and my teacher, showing me how to survive in this place far better than I was before.

In what feels even more important, Fee shows me every day what it means to be loved.

Like she was that night I met her in that damp and dirty warehouse, Phoebe is all brightness and tenderness in this world of murky nothingness. Just watching her as we go about our days together makes my heart feel so heavy. Sometimes she leaves me speechless by simply smiling at me in that pretty way of hers while she's doing the most mundane tasks.

Anytime she shows me affection, it’s always innocently, but…

Yeah.

Yup, coming outside didn’t help. It’s just prolonging the inevitable.

I can’t hide out here forever and I am shivering so hard now my damn teeth are clattering together.

Getting on with it, I unload part of the wood by the door, then heave the sling full of the rest up on my shoulder before teetering up the steps with it. I am sure that by now Fee is done getting ready for bed, meaning she’s in bed.

Our bed…

Fuck, fuck, triple times a million fucks.

Dolores knows where my mind is at, and as always, she understands, but she also thinks I am being ridiculous. She loves Fee and has since day one. When we are out scavenging, Phoebe always makes a point to find little treasures to bring back for Dolores.

They are big time buddies now.

Fee decorates Dolores like she’s the queen of the apocalypse, dressing her in expensive pieces of jewelry and excessively feminine tops with sparkles and sequins. Basically, anything goes if it makes no sense in the conditions we are living in, and it’s the exact opposite of what either of us wear daily. I didn’t even realize Dolores liked all that stuff until Fee started doing that with her. Then I saw how happy it makes them both.

Fee treats Dolores like she’s real. But not since the first days, when I was still very sick, have I talked to or touched Dolores so openly when Fee was around. I know that a part of her doing this kind of thing is to try to make me feel like it’s okay if I want to do it too. But things have drastically changed for Dolores and I since Fee found us, and my normal mode of conduct with her has been strictly kept for when Fee is not around, which isn’t very often. I haven’t slept with Dolores in my arms since that first fevered night.

I love her but doing that with her, or doing much of anything else that I feel the urge to do feels very wrong now.

I do speak with Dolores all the time, but we keep our conversations private. Dolores knows I’m having a hard time navigating this bizarre situation, but she’s adamant that I open myself up to Fee. Like so many things, I don’t know how or if I should. I don’t want to ruin what we have.

Phoebe hasn’t let on that she has any feelings for me in other way than the friendly kind of way, and I can’t blame her. Back when she was head over heels for me, which for her was a long time ago, I wasn’t anything anyone else would look twice at. Here, even as the only man on Earth, I am clearly not a catch. She already gave me a chance even though she shouldn’t have, and I epically blew it, and now I’m even more of a mess than I was at sixteen. In a normal situation, a beautiful, mature woman like Fee would want nothing to do with a lanky, immature fuck-up like me.

I’d be laughing if this ironic twist of fate weren’t so fucking heart wrenching. My heart hurts when I think about how much I care about Fee.

I am completely crushing on the girl who once crushed on me and got her heart stomped on for it.

“Fuck,” I mumble when I realize my frozen fingers won’t tighten around the doorknob enough to turn it. “Fuck you, you fucking-"

It finally clicks open, and I ram my head into it to push the door wide. With my giant load of wood, I stumble from the weight of it, then unsteadily kick the door closed behind me and loudly tromp over to the fireplace letting my sack tumble to the floor.

When I look across the small room, I can see that Fee is trying not to laugh over my graceless performance.

“Sorry,” I sheepishly offer, along with a lopsided grin. If my face wasn’t already bright red from the blistering cold, it would be now.

Sitting up straighter with her back against her pile of pillows, Fee lowers her book. “We weren’t trying to go to sleep yet, there’s no need to apologize for crashing through like the abominable snowman. Do you need some help with all that?”

By ‘we’ weren’t sleeping yet, Fee is referring to Dolores, who is sitting, wrapped in a fuzzy blanket on the chair next to my side of the bed, just like she is every night.

Yes. I sleep between two beautiful women, and I can’t touch either one the way I want.

Awesome.

Now Dolores is trying not to giggle at me.

I shake my head at her and covey my thoughts on that silently. I’m glad you’re entertained by my blue balls, sweetheart. 

After biting my glove to pull it off my numb hand, I spit it on the floor, then awkwardly clear my throat as I look back at Fee. “Ah, no. I’m good. Thank you though.”

The 'ahh' I stammered on just came out several octaves higher than normal because why not look like more of a moron?

Shucking my other glove off, I put my shaking hands down by the flames, bringing some immediate feeling back to them, then I busy myself with throwing more logs on, restacking the rest next to the wall and cleaning up the big mess I just made.

When I am done with all that and I’m over by the door again, kicking off my boots and peeling off my layers, I notice that Fee set her book on the side table and is staring at me with a cute but very devious look.

“We were getting a little worried in here. I thought maybe you accidently got too close when you were pissing on your favorite clothesline pole and that you accidentally froze your dick to it.”

Another thing I learned very quickly about Fee is that she’s got a wonderfully crude sense of humor.

My cheeks stretch and my lips pull to the side again. “No, I didn’t freeze my dick to a metal pole, but I did almost freeze.”

Freed of my layers, and only in fleece sleep pants and a sweatshirt, instead of blinking there, I sprint over to the bed, vaulting over the footboard with childlike enthusiasm.

The bed springs springing back, give Fee a good bounce and I knew this would make her laugh. That was part of the point of it, but it’s also because I am so flippin cold. Hiding outside was to avoid going to bed with her, but the reality is, this is exactly where I want to be.

I want it way too much, hence a major part of my problem.

Once I have crawled up next to her, I waste no time shuffling my body under the mound of blankets. When my freezing foot locks down over hers, she jolts from the chilly assault, but she doesn’t pull away because she never does. Within seconds, my entire body is warming back up. Currents of heat brush up my leg from our point of contact, spreading through my entire body as I melt into the mattress with a sigh of relief.

“Yowza! You are so cold! Why didn’t you just let me go out there? You could have pissed in that lovely chamber pot, or did your business and just came back in. You were out there for almost an hour, what the heck were you thinking?”

Unenthusiastically, I look over at the pot she’s referring to. I have used the pot. It was in my first days here when I didn’t want to make her carry me outside.

Looking at her overly sourly, I say, “I hate that thing and I won’t use it.”

She chuckles at that. “You hate a lot of things, one of them being cold, but you just willingly went out in it and stayed out when you didn’t need to. You are such a stubborn asshat. Sometimes I think you do things like this just to drive me nuts. It’s like your secret superpower that no one else ever was lucky enough to be privy to.” She sneaks a hand under the blankets and lightly prods my side, to provoke me further.

I want to ‘provoke’ her right back, but instead I frown at her.

She merely raises a brow, brining it on even more. “You know, Five, you could have just whacked-off in here?”

A puff of air rushes out of my chest and I think my face just lit on fire, but I stick my head further out of the blankets anyway, defiantly jutting my chin at her.

“My family was privy to my assholery, and I wasn’t whacking off. I was chopping wood and you know it.”

I seriously can’t think of anything better to retaliate with, and that’s probably because I have whacked off plenty of times while wandering around outside with her on my mind, and talking about jerking it right now isn’t helping me get my shit together or think with even the tiniest bit of intelligence.

Her body quakes with laughter as I narrow my eyes at her. “Yeah. Playing with your wood, like I said," she beautifully chackles.

Fully rolling over in her direction, I do my best pouty face. She gives me one right back.

“Miss, Leroux, you are awful.” I have to bite the inside of my cheek to hold in my smile.

There’s scratching around under the blankets, and I can feel Fee fishing around until she finds my hand closest to her where it’s tucked under my tightly crossed arms. Her warm fingers wrap around mine as she offers a much less naughty look.

My stomach flutters from her touch and my heart rate kicks up accordingly.

“I am sorry. I’m just messing with you because you make it so darn easy. You know I love you, Five. I wouldn’t want to be here with any other asshat than you, and that’s only partly because you’re the special teleporting kind that is going to get us out of this apocalyptic shit hole.”

I can’t help my truly contented smile from hearing her say that she loves me. I know it’s not in that way, but I love that she says it, and how she’s looking at me right now, and that she’s touching me for reasons other than to warm me up, but it’s doing that too despite her intentions.

Phoebe’s strawberry blonde hair is tied back in her nightly braid, but the wavey pieces framing her face are just begging for me to tuck them back behind her ears. Just the memory of brushing her hair back so I could see her better while she pleasured me, how soft everything about her feels, how those pink lips felt against my own, and on my…

Fuck me, I need to go back outside.

I could lay here all night and stare at her while fighting boners, but I force myself to roll on my back again and she does the same about a minute later.

I feel her wiggle closer, causing our hips to touch as we both gaze up at the ceiling, watching the fire light dance on the beams.

“Someday we’ll leave this place,” I breathe. Getting us out of this is the most important thing. Her unintentionally reminding me of that important point has my fucked-up mind on my most recent equations and time dilation sequences rather than on her lips and my dick, and that’s a very good thing. “I’ll figure it out. I promise, I will.”

“I know you will because you are this planet's one and only, time traveling mastermind. Number Five Hargreeves, you are our only hope.” She softly laughs at me as she pulls her hand away from mine but not before sneaking in a quick tickle.

Man, do I want to tickle her, but I’m scared I won’t be able to stop there.

“Okay, that’s it,” I say squirming a little as her nails dig in between my ribs. “You’ve been allotted your making fun of Five time slot for the day. It’s time to be quiet. Keep those tiny magical heater feet of yours on me and go to bed, mean girl.” I say it with disgruntled authority, but I can’t help the full smile I am wearing.  

“You like it when I tease you.”

I do, but my response is nothing more than a dismissive huff that makes her let out another girly little giggle.

I peek her direction just in time to see her eyes shutting. She’s still smiling that curious smile of hers that I can only conclude means that she is happy and that makes me happy. What I want doesn’t matter when it comes to more than this.

I carefully move my arm out from under the bedding, taking Dolores’s hand in mine.

“Just tell her. It will be okay. Everything is okay now that we have her,” she whispers.

My tired eyes close and the fuzzy black and white stars start dancing behind my lids, but those lips and that smile will forever be imprinted in my mind and not even sleep lets me forget them. Soon, images and of the feel of her will fill my dreams, they always do.

------Sleepy, happy Five....

----------

The thing about winter in the Apocalypse is it’s even more unbearable to be outside than normal. We hardly ever go out lately, but that wasn’t stopping me this morning when I woke pre-dawn, determined to complete a very important mission.

Christmas is only a few days away and I have nothing for Fee. We are almost always together when scavenging and that’s for safety and practicality reasons, but today I snuck out early while she was still sleeping.

Months ago, while out foraging with her, I found a guitar in a case in the remains of someone’s bedroom. I didn’t even think to tell her about it or take it because I was so used to being solely focused on finding and bringing back only what I needed to survive. Looking back on that now, and the fact that I know Fee loves to play and is very good at it, I can’t believe I didn’t even consider taking it for her. It’s the perfect gift.

I wrote a note, stating that I’d be gone for an hour or so. I was hoping that she wouldn’t even wake up until I was back.

That was three hours ago now.

Even before I got down to the valley floor and started making my way through the deep snow to the closest town, the storm clouds were ominously moving in from the east and the freezing winds were cutting through the mask protecting my face. Being I’m on the western side of the range, I had no way of knowing how bad things were going to get, but even that is not a great excuse for putting myself in this situation.

The snow is falling fast, and the gusts are blowing it in such a way that I can hardly see a few feet in front of me at times. I think I’m on the right path, maybe?

Stopping, I clomp my snowshoes around in a circle formation as I recheck where I am. North, South, East, West, it all looks the same right now. Blinking won’t even get me back since I can’t orient myself.

“Shit.”

Fee is going to be livid.

Checking my compass and readjusting the strap on the case I have slung on my back, I start trudging uphill again, moving East. I’m going approximately the right direction. I’m sure I will see a landmark of some kind soon.

Not for over another hour do I know for certain I’m getting close. By then, I am too exhausted to pull off a jump.

By the time I am heading up the twisting inclined path that is the road into what is now Fee and my property, I have been gone a total of six and half hours.

Fee has the door of the cabin open even before I can make it to the snow buried steps.

Raising my stiff arm, I push my ski goggles up with my frozen mitten. Phoebe crashes into me, flinging her arms around me even though I am covered in ice and snow.

“Fee, I’m so-"

My snow blindness begins to clear after a few slow blinks.

Oh, shit. She’s crying.

“I thought you were gone! I looked everywhere. There weren’t even any tracks!” she hysterically sobs.

She’s holding me so tight that I can feel her shaking and I know it’s not from the cold.

“I’d never leave you,” I say, holding her right back, but it’s more like I’m pathetically slumped around her smaller frame.

Fuck, I feel like such a bastard.

With her tears streaking down her cheeks and the snow sprinkling her hair in downy white, she lets me go, but only enough to start towing me inside, loudly slamming the door behind us as I tiredly slouch into the closest kitchen chair.

I can hardly move, and I know I’m in deep shit.

Fee wipes at her eyes, as she kneels in front of me. Still sniffling, she immediately starts unstrapping my boots out of my snowshoes. She looks back up at me once my boots are thrown off, but she doesn’t release my sore feet from her hot hands. I wiggle my toes to give her confirmation that I didn’t turn them into two blocks of ice with my ill-timed expedition.

“What were you thinking? You could have died out there.” She releases my feet, and her hands come up to rub her temples.

I don’t know what to say. I feel so bad. She looks so hurt and that’s not at all what I wanted.

“I am sorry, I wanted to-"

I stop, taking a deeply defeated breath as my shame sets in even more. Dropping my head, I reach back and pull the frozen strap off my shoulder, bringing the hard black guitar case around in front of her.

Fee looks confused, meaning she’s so upset that she hadn’t even noticed it yet.

She takes it and I slowly lean back as I watch her unlatch the two clasps holding it closed. Her eyes run over the polished black acoustic guitar inside. All its strings are still intact, but even if they aren’t good, there are several other packages of new ones inside the case along with a few other things someone like her would know how to use.

“I wanted to get you a present. Merry early Christmas, Fee.”

Now, after seeing how anguished she is, this hardly seems like a good explanation for what I did, but it’s all I have.

Her brows pull down as her lips push out in a quivering pout.

Shit, she’s crying again.

Before I know it, Phoebe sets my gift aside, pushes up from the floor and starts draping herself around me again, only this time she’s got me pinned to the chair with her bottom in my lap, her spread legs dangled at my sides, and her magical warm lips pressing into mine.

I have wanted this for so long, but I can’t even begin to comprehend what is happening right now.

Worried that I’m going to scare her off, I very gradually turn my face up to get a better angle to kiss her back.

Her hips subtly rub up against mine in response and even through my sub-zero snow gear, I can feel it in all the right, or maybe wrong ways.

“Mmmmm- mmmfff!”

I am not even close to being able to hold that embarrassingly high-pitched moan in as she pushes herself closer and her hands move inside my hood, her hot fingers forcing their way under the heavy scarf still wrapped around neck.

Not sure what to do, I very hesitantly bring my hands up on her waist, slowly moving back down her curves until they are wrapped behind her, gently holding her bottom.

Despite my best efforts to contain myself, my tongue has a mind of its own and it darts out in my increasingly excited state, but she doesn't seem to mind. Fee letting me kiss her like this feels so good that my damn head feels like it could roll right off my shoulders. If not for her fingers splayed out on the back of my skull as they lightly tug at my hair, I'm sure it would. Phoebe clearly has me secured where she wants me.

Fuck… She wants me.

Maybe?

Yes.

Obviously.

I think…

“Fff-fff-e-Fee?”

“Hmm?” she hums back, still not stopping with her kisses. Now they are moving from my lips to my jaw, and-

My legs both spontaneously tense and my hands inside my mittens clench as I try to latch on to her ass even tighter.

“Ahh-ya-you- Ahhhh.” My words fail to land in a way that’s coherent as her mouth moves to what she can get of my neck.

Holy fuck, this feels amazing and it’s getting so hot in here or maybe it’s just me. Fuck. It’s both. I wish I wasn’t wearing all this crap.

My little goddess of fire and ice works me over a little more before she graces me with her stunning blue eyes gazing into my own much less alluring and very droopy ones.

Her plump pink lips spread in a coy looking smile as she speaks. “Thank you for the gift.”

“You like it?”

She nods a yes as she bites her lower lip with her upper teeth.

“Am I out of the doghouse then?” I question, even though I feel pretty certain I am.

Fee softly laughs at my question and maybe even at my attempt at a funny expression, which consists of me trying to conjure up some major puppy dog eyes for her. “You were never in it. I was just so scared I’d lost you.”

“I am so sorry. I never met to scare you. I would never leave you, Fee.” I pause and my words come out shaking as I say them but it’s only because of how much I mean them. “I’m hopelessly in love with you, Phoebe. You are everything to me.”

Suddenly her face looks so sad again and I desperately want to take back what I just said.

My eyes frantically search hers, but I don’t know what I’m seeing in them.

“I wanted to give you something special. You have done so much for me,” I further explain, because I don’t know what to say or do.

Her normally sure voice cracks just a little. “All I want is you, Five. You are my special, I thought you knew that by now.”

“You want me?”

“Yes. I love you. I want to be there for you, and with you in every way if you are ready for it. I thought you understood that.”

Oh.

My eyes dart around as my brain tries to figure out what I have been missing all these months. Dolores is sitting on the tiny sofa next to the fireplace and the moment I lay eyes on her, she rolls her eyes at me, giving me one of her ‘I told you so looks.’

Before I can come up with an answer to that, Fee kisses me again and as soon as she does, my mind can do nothing but think of her lips and how they feel moving with my own.

Fee’s hands make fast work of unzipping my outer coat but when they dig inside and she finds that I am basically like a human Russian Doll, because I have layer upon layer of clothing on, she bursts out laughing even as I am trying to entice her into another round of tongue war.

“Five, I think you need to remove some of this, or you are going to spontaneously combust.”

“Too late, I think I am already on fire, Amore mio.” I boldly lift my hips, while pulling her up against the bulge in my pants that I am not even sure she knows is there because of the sheer amount of thermal insulation between us. Fee actually looks a little nervous as she glances over my shoulder, looking out the window at the storm for a second or two before locking eyes with me again. “Was that okay?” I worriedly ask.

“Yes.”

I don’t think a one-word answer could ever give me more relief, but then again, I just finally declared my love for her and she isn’t running for the hills, and I also just realized she loves me more than as a friend, so I’m pretty much on cloud nine thousand nine hundred and ninety zillion.

"Amore mio, posso portarti al nostro letto?" I question as I glance over at our bed.    (My love, can I take you to our bed?)

“Five, you must be confused. You know I don’t speak your and Dolores’s secret love language.”

True. Fee doesn’t speak Italian, that’s one of the reasons I use it when speaking to Dolores. That way this firey little redhead can’t understand what we are talking about.

I don’t speak French fluently, but Fee does, so for her, I’ll give it a whirl.

“Mon amour, puis-je vous livrer à notre lit?” I nervously bite my lip as I wait for her reply. (My love, may I deliver you to our bed?)

Fee’s beautiful blue eyes wrinkle at the corners. “Oui.”

Not wanting to let her go yet, I summon all my strength as I start to stand but lifting her up with me turns out way easier than I thought because she’s so light, and the moment she realizes what I’m doing, she locks her legs around my waist.

My heart is fucking racing from adrenalin as carry her across the small room and drop her down on the bed.

“Are you sure?”

“Sì, il mio cuore,” she whispers as she looks back up at me with a wicked smirk.   (Yes, my heart.)

That was a big wonderful yes, and to my surprise, it was in perfect Italian, meaning Phoebe has been bull shitting me for months saying she doesn’t understand a word I say to Dolores. As my mind is reeling, thinking of all the little things she’s no doubt been picking up on, her hands fall on the hem of her sweater, pulling it up over her head, before tossing it over one of the bed posts.

I stop breathing and I think my heart stops all together.

There are those perfect breasts I wanted to see so badly when my hands were on them five years ago.

Not thinking, with only my outer coat off and my snow pants unzipped and pulled part way down, I stumble over them in my haste to get closer to her again.

Fee laughs when I crash land on the bed but try to play it off like I meant to do it.

“Oh my God, Five. I love having you around, you are such a sexy klutz.”

Eyes fixed on her, I anxiously yank my pants off and start working on my two extra layers of sweaters. “Baby, I’m here for whatever you need, even if it’s your daily dose of comic relief. Just don’t tell anyone that I let you get away with all your cute teasing shit or I'll be forced to punish you.”

She laughs again. “Har-har, Mr. Scary. There’s no one to tell other than Dolores and she already knows you’re a big closet softy and she thinks your hilarious too.”

Having pulled my head out of my last heavy layer, I hesitate, trying to decide if I should take of my cotton long sleeve.

Fuck it.  Fee has seen the good, the bad and the ugly and she still loves me for some reason. Right now, I am pretty sure my hair is sticking straight up, and she looks like she could care less about how stupid I look.

“Hey,” I sternly admonish, “Dolores doesn’t pick on me. That’s your thing and yours alone, and it's high time you get fucked with.” I hit her back with the most menacing look I can.

Laying splayed out waiting for me in all her bare breasted glory, Fee merely shrugs as if she is not at all intimated and she knows that’s not true about Dolores. The damn thing of it is, my fucked-up brain is instantly wondering what kinds of things Dolores tells her about me when I’m not around, because that was lie. Dolores fucks with me all the time.

Thinking of Dolores again, I spontaneously blink over to her, quickly facing her body that way so she’s a part of this too. She’s been waiting for it, so there’s no way I’m going to deny my lovely loyal lady.

When I blink back, I land on top of Fee with my elbows supporting the weight from my upper half, but my lower half is flush with hers, pressing into the space between her legs with intent. I immediately start kissing her again and she lets me, but she also seems to be unable to stop laughing, so I halt my attack.

“What was that all about?” she breathlessly asks as she looks up at me with her beautiful smile and her rosy cheeks illuminating the rest of her beauty to a starling degree.

Pulling together all the confidence I can, I quirk a brow at her as I move my hand closer to her cheek, letting my fingers tenderly brush against it. “Dolores likes to watch. Didn’t she tell you that?”

“Watch what?” she pushes back sounding so innocent but the look in her eyes is anything but.

“You want to see?”

“Yes,” she taunts as if she thinks she can call my bluff.

Wrong.

My body is so revved-up from pent up horniness, and this siren of a woman lying under me just asked for it, and she knows me in ways no one else ever will, so I figure why not. I have little to no shame left.

With no warning, I drop my face down against her neck, as I drive my cock down between her legs.

“Oh, fuck me, I love your legs!” I groan out with my nose pressed up just under her ear as my hand at her side moves to grip her thigh and I rut into her.

Fee lets out a sound of shock over me saying that and doing this, but when it turns into a whimper and her head fall to the side to give me more access, I increase my efforts both with the rock of my hips and my mouth. To answer back to that, she rips one of my hands off the bed, forcing my hot palm down over her breast. That lets me know for sure that she’s more than okay with me showering her with the kinds of affections Dolores is used to, and that in playing out my perversions, I’m actually doing something right.

Letting myself go, I begin kissing her sweet smelling skin any way that I see fit, soft, hard, nips, and licks, it all feels so good, so I grind myself into her harder, my core muscles flexing and my hips moving as if I am fucking her even though I am not inside her and I have never fucked anything other than my hand, her mouth, and too many inanimate objects to count, including hundreds of cushions and pillows, but also sometimes my Dolores.

Phoebe is so soft and responsive, and I know Dolores is seeing all this and loving it, and that is messing with me, but because I’m clearly a warped little bastard, it’s turning me on even more.

Again, with no warning, I stop dry humping Fee, quickly sitting up off her so I can latch on to the tops of her leggings, but I stop short of pulling them down, looking up at her hopefully.

“I want to make you feel good too, will you please show me how?” I ask.

Fee’s wide eyes move from mine, downwards, stopping on my crotch area where my pants are sticking out in a very notable way. 

She giggles at the sweet tent I'm proudly sporting, then says, “You were already doing a pretty nice job of things, but I can teach you if you want. First, you need to take those sweatpants off before you hurt yourself.” 

I glance down at my hard-on, then back at her with a big smirk on my face. “I am very skilled when it comes to sexual rubbing with my clothes on, but I can see your point. You first though."

I purse my lips as I narrow my eyes at her. She responds by lifting her hips so I can pull her leggings off.

Oh fuck. She's wearing red panties!

She had a similar pair on the night I met her. 

Both her brows lift as her grin spreads the more I stare. “Five, sweetie... Take your pants off right now or I'll make you."

“Oh, really,” I cockily taunt back, but I lose all my bravado when she drops her hand between her legs and slowly starts rubbing her fingers over the lacey fabric that is creating a ‘v’ over her mysterious lady parts.

“Yes, really. Now take them off,” Fee orders.

Eyes trained on her hand, I quickly kick them off, then come back to her, on my knees with my hard shaft in hand, at the ready.

“What do I do?”

Her hand slides up and under her panties, pushing them down as her knees come up so she can get them off. The red lace goes flying over my head and boy do I love those red panties, but holy shit do I love them more on the floor.

“First, what you do is, you touch me, like this.” Fee slips her index finger between her folds, pressing the tip down as she slides it up and down, slowly but firmly.

Wetting my lips with my tongue, I flip my head to the side, anxiously flicking my hair out of my eyes as my hand reflexively works my cock.

“Five, it’s unbelievably hot watching you do that while I touch myself but even as good of a student as I know you are, the best way to learn is hands on, not just to observe.”

I need no other invitation. Coming down over her again, the sensation of flesh on flesh has every nerve ending in my body supercharged. As I carefully mold myself to one of her legs, Fee reaches out, taking my shaking hand, placing it where hers had just been and already I am a changed man.

Fuck...

Chapter Six: Ain't No Place for a Hero to Call Home

Holding the woman that you love while you sleep is akin to transcending into a supernatural place where you are lighter than air and all your worries just float away. Waking up next to your lover is even better.

I know that me saying that is a lot like that whimsical crap dad warned me with the day I took off and ended up in here, but just like that crazy sliding along ice then descending blindly as an acorn bullshit that I should have listened to, this is also so fucking true.

I am certain that the magical reactions of a woman’s body to different forms of touch will never cease to amaze me. In my opinion, females are much more complex than men, both mentally and sexually, but despite that, I am absolutely going to ace the art of getting my girl off. I probably never will figure out her beautiful mind, but this, finding ways to make her all mine, over and over again, I will master this glorious deed.

“Am I doing it right, Professor Honey Bunny?”

I purposefully hum my silly words against the nap of Fee’s neck, nuzzling my nose up into her hairline as I breathe in her flowery scent and rub my slicked cock up and down between her ass cheeks.

First lesson when it comes to real women, and it’s one that I managed to figure out without Fee outright telling me, is that they love it when you whisper or speak softly anywhere near their ear.

The second lesson is that they also love it when you are boldly willing to let go of shame and fall all over them with your adoring and sometimes perverted affections. Nothing proves your love than letting your defenses down and not being scared that they see who you really are, which for me is a total perv and a major dork.

When Phoebe doesn’t answer my question with anything other than a muted sighing sound, I find that’s not good enough for my continued educational purposes, so I up my game, sliding my fingers faster between her legs.

“How about this?” I try again.

Fee reacts to that change of pace quick enough, her bottom pushing back against me, pressing my erection even tighter between us as her head falls back against my shoulder while she moans so perfectly wantonly.

Getting a much better reaction, I can’t resist my excitement or sinking my teeth into the soft curve of her neck, applying just enough pressure to make her mouth fall open as she releases a quick and very feminine sounding rush of air with the hint of the letter ‘F’ in it.

Whether she meant that as my name or fuck, doesn’t matter, both are good with me.

My mouth goes back to applying much gentler kisses. Eventually, I move my licks and kisses to her ear again where I then drag my tongue along the shell of it before I let my breath cascade down, tickling the moist trail I just left on her skin.

Her body shivers and wriggles against me.

“I’ll take that as a, yes?” I smart back, not at all trying to hide how proud I am.

Lesson three when it comes to real women is knowing that you have the power to make them writhe is a huge turn on. Thanks to Fee’s guidance, I am now capable of driving her crazy, but as my clever girl already knew, that’s a win for both parties.

My lady love lets out the prettiest little laugh when I nip her again. “Yes, Five,” she giggles. “What you are doing feels so unbelievably good. Congratulations, you can consider yourself graduated with honors when it comes to finger fucking and ass humping.”

I know Fee’s teasing me for being so arrogant and because I am literally fucking her butt cheeks, but she does so lightly, while also tenderly running her hand over the top of mine as it fervently works her.

Wanting to mess with her more, I force myself to speak as seriously as possible as I add, “That’s good you are enjoying my latest break of dawn boner on your ass attack, but I’m trying for doctoral level mastery in all subjects ‘getting off.’ So ready yourself, little firecracker, because I am going to be doing major research and it’s starting with documenting all the ways I can hump you and make you cum at the same time.”

Fee’s body starts jiggling again as she starts laughing at me in her delightfully breathless way. I knew she’d get a kick out of more of my jackass commentary, and that’s the point of it. Adding to her already losing it over my usual absurdity, I start passionately rutting my dick up on her like a mindless wild animal.

“See,” I exclaim, “You better hang on, honey. It’s going to get very bumpy.”

“You mean, humpy,” she corrects, still laughing at me.

I love making Fee laugh, she is the joy in my life I never had before.

Since our Christmas weekend together a month and half ago, Fee has taught me plenty about what makes women feel good, and I have been one hell of an eager student for her. I can blame my fervor for all things sex related on my younger age all I want, but Fee is well aware that it’s not just that.

The escapism of her body and the sheer bliss of shutting out all else while in the act of searching for my release is entirely addicting for me. During my first years alone here, it’s the only thing I had that took me away from my suffering. It became a near daily reward system for surviving this hell. Now I still cling to it, but not so much for the same reasons.

Fee is my everything.

She makes me so unbelievably happy every day in the simplest of ways that have nothing to do with sex. That said, feeling my cock slip and slide on Phoebe is otherworldly. So much better than dry humping pillows and harder objects that chaff and dry out much faster when my pre-cum and spit fail me. I tend to prolong my sexual exploits for as long as I possibly can and playing with Fee and her seemingly infinite ability to stay wet for me is fucking great.

I dig my fingers into her slender waist, searching for more leverage as my hips frantically pump my cock against her. Through the sweaty fringe of my hair, I can see Dolores in her chair next to us. Her cheeks are flushed so beautifully from lasciviously watching me take Fee like this. As thrilled as she looks by my valiant efforts to entertain her, I can’t help but notice that she also looks slightly pissed.

Five Hargreeves-Brainless insensitive jerk.

I am sorry. I meant no offense, sweetheart. I like the fact that you are hard and that we have our own special way of doing this. Your smooth, wonderfully cool breasts are still high up there on my list of favorite places to fuck. I’ll prove it to you later if our little red head is down to watch, but right now, I’m a-

“Oh, fuck!” I moan, my forehead pressing against Fee’s neck.

I am about to come already, and thinking about going full freak mode with Dolores while Fee watches, and maybe if I am lucky even joins the fun by playing with herself, isn’t helping reign it in.

Easing back a little, I force myself to push down the growing tension in my belly and the tightening waves of pleasure threatening to burst from my loins. Then I shove my whole hand down lower, pressing Fee’s pubic mound against my palm to keep applying proper fiction while my index finger begins dipping inside her tight entrance.

“Ahh -hha, ya-ye..ssss,” Fee whines so endearingly.

I risk glancing at Dolores again and she offers me one of her warm smiles.

‘That’s it, Five. Just focus on Fee a little longer. I’m not mad that you enjoy this. Don’t worry about me. You know I only want what’s best for you and this is.’

As always, Dolores' encouragement over Fee and I is never ending, and I love her so much for it. I love them both so much, and I know I’m nuts for entertaining all this madness still, but I can’t help it. I still hear Dolores even though now I am not alone anymore. Amazingly, Fee is just as understanding as her, because she lets me get away with this crazy shit too.

Listening to Dolores, I let go of Fee’s hip to further disengage myself. Instead, I latch onto one of her warm breasts, probably too roughly, but she doesn’t complain, so I don’t stop aggressively groping her.

“Baby, I want to fuck these sweet tits of yours so bad. I am going to make a mess of you when I paint your beautiful chest with my sticky seed.”

Fee’s laughter bursts out of her. “Five, you are so freaking cute. I love it when you try to talk dirty.”

“Cute?” I grunt in shock. “I am not cute, and I am not trying, honey. I am dirty.”

Finding a jerking rhythm, of hard, then soft, hard than soft, I show my girls just how I like it, and that I am not ‘cute.’ Knowing that Fee is plenty ready for it, I finally let two fingers plunge all the way inside her, angling them up the way she taught me so I am hitting her right where she can’t help but cry out.

“Yes, Five! Y-e-e-e-s-s-s-”

One of many other lessons about sex I’ve learned is that the build to the finish is over ninety percent the fun of it, so taking it slow at first and upping the level of intensity as you go is key to being a good lover.

Thank you, Fee.

My smile fortifies my words, as I keep up my pace inside her and up my filth factor. “I know just how wet it gets you two lovely ladies when I talk about blowing my load on you, and I love how open-minded you both are of my objectionable behaviors, but it looks like you’re going to have to wait for that titty fucking another time. I am very close, and Dolores is right, you need to come first. Is this going to be enough to get you there or do you want me to fuck you with my mouth too?”

“Fiv-ive-yo-you are fucking mee-ee just fine as you are, don’t you thhhh-ink?” Fee stammers as I slam against her.

“I could do better, honey. I know I can.”

I’d stop humping Fee and dive pussy deep like I said, but I honestly want to be next her, wrapped around her, because this feels like I am actually fucking her, or as close as I can get to it.

Fuck, do I want to stick my dick inside her and make her come with it. With me. I think about it all the time.

It’s not so much that this isn't enough, because it is. It’s just that we can’t do that. We can do everything but that.

Fee had plenty of medical supplies, personal care items, and medicine and other valuable things with her when she arrived here, but no birth control methods of any kind. She didn’t need it.

Since our being together like this, neither of us have found anything in our scavenging that looks like it’s still any good or worth the risk of trying it. Thanks to the nature of condoms being extremely thin latex, they unfortunately did not survive the intense heat of the near atomic blasts. And the birth control pills and other options that we’ve found are always melted in their packaging or destroyed from exposure and moisture.

Like so many things, birth control in the apocalypse is a problem.

Talk of having a child together is something we have only done in terms of getting back to the real world first. Once the world isn’t going to end and we are safe from the dangers of our current situation, then I want nothing more than to someday have a family with Phoebe if we can. Here, the risks are something I refuse to entertain. I can’t lose Fee. Just the thought of something bad happening to her because of complications from a pregnancy makes me sick.

This, what we have, is more than I ever dreamed possible.

“Fee, I love you so much. Come on, fuuu-ccckkk,” I anxiously groan, because I’m almost there again.

I feel her squirming as she searches for anything to ground her. Her small feet eventually end up locked around my own, helping to anchor us both. My fingers keep getting the tell tail sign that her climax is coming because her body keeps tensing around them as her breaths hitch for longer and longer periods.

Letting go again, I pull back enough to take my reddened cock in hand, directing it between her legs to re-wet it. The sensation makes my head feel dizzy.

“Oh fuck, yes, Five ! That’s it, leave it there. Baby, fuck me,” she moans.

Yup, I love the sound of that, but I don’t understand what she wants. I can’t fuck her like this. Not really.

Still positioned with my hips pressed up behind her and my length in my hand that’s wedged up against her delicious wet cunt, Fee begins to tighten her thighs around me.

I pull in a very unsteady breath as I loudly and frantically pant her name. “Fee?!”

My voice sounds so young, so unsure with its higher-than-normal pitch, but it's only because I am totally freaking out.

“Five, it’s ok. Do it like this. We will be super careful.” With my chin resting on her shoulder, I watch as Fee reaches out and grabs her shirt off the table next to her side of the bed. She tightens on me even more, her slender thighs working hard to encase me between them where my cock is now lying as motionless as my hand.

“I don’t-"

I don’t know what to say…

Fee reaches down, dragging my hand away from her heat.

“Fee?” I question again as my tacky fingers fall against her hip.

“It’s okay. This will feel just as good to me as your fingers. Just do it. Pretend you are fucking me, please, do it. I want to feel you like this so bad.”

I want it too.

Fuck.

As if her words are a knife to my throat, I instantly react, pulling back just enough to not slip all the way out of this confined love trap she made in the cavass between her legs, shoving back into her warmth.

And yeah. The feel of her desire wetting me as I slide, her swollen folds encasing me while her thighs tremble from her effort to keep them tightly clenched, it’s…

“Fuck,” I grunt as I thrust faster, making her have to cling to my hands on her hips where I now have them both locked, keeping us latched together.

That’s it.

This is too fucking great.

I can’t think of an objection no matter how hard I try.

It’s not like Fee hasn’t let me run my cock over her sex before, but I have only done it very cautiously from the front for fear of getting even the tiniest amount of my semen inside her.

This… It’s so close, so dangerous, but it’s so damn incredible. I could just slip inside her. I know I could. I can see it in my mind. I know the head of my cock is pushing out between her legs, covered in her love for me, and soon I won’t be able to contain my explosive desire for her as it streams out on the bedding. I’m going to pretend it is filling Fee, and I am very good at pretending.

Thinking about doing that, my body flames with fresh sparks of ecstasy, and I let loose, fucking her as fast as I can.

The increased friction is enough for Fee to dig her short fingernails across the tops of my hands, causing them to sting. Thankfully, even though I’m on another planet doing this, I feel it when her body begins to shudder in that familiar way that makes me so fucking proud every time it happens.

“Ohhh-fff, this feels so fucking-” I growl out as deeply as I can just below her ear as she gives herself over to her orgasm. “Fee, this feels so fucking-” I can’t even finish. I bite down viciously on my lower lip as I rail her, my pelvis absolutely thwacking against her round rosy ass, making the most wonderful kind of sound from our hot and sweaty skin-to-skin contact. “Ffff-"

My back arches and my eyes slam shut as my hips shunt in a very non rhythmic pattern. I am only partly aware of the sensation of Fee releasing my cock from her clamped together legs so she can jerk me through the last currents of utterly mind-blowing fuck tingles that are violently ripping through me.

Once I have some of my brain back at my disposal, I very groggily open my eyes. “That was…fuck .”

Fee laughs as she wipes me clean with her shirt. “Yes. Yes, it was. Another job well done, mon amour. You are the best student ever, but I am not at all surprised by that.”     (My love-in French)

“Ti amo così tanto, prometto che non mi lascerai mai...” I whisper back, shutting my eyes again as I nuzzle my face against her neck. Soon I am falling into one of my many early morning naps while spooning the woman I love. We never even left our bed to start the day, but I'm right where I want to be.   (I love you so much, promise you will never leave me-in Italian),

~~~~~~~~~~

On the couch behind me, I hear the slow rhythmic strum of another cord. I love it when Fee plays like this. Between the soothing sounds of the guitar and the sound of the early spring rain softly pattering our metal roof, I feel so unbelievably relaxed and content.

I know I am not supposed to be happy living life in the apocalypse, but with Fee, I am. I am more settled and happier than I have ever been. I can easily pretend that we are in our own little world by choice, not because we are the only ones left, and I often find that I do and can’t help it. I am just that happy. I am in love with the perfect girl, and she is in love with me too.

I smile as I peek behind me. Phoebe senses me looking and looks up. She smiles back at me as she strums and plucks the strings, effortlessly making a song that is as beautiful as she is.

“My red-headed one, I want to be your everything…” I begin to sing as I fish around in the soapy water looking for another fork that I know is in there. “Fill your plate with me, lick and lap all you want, baby. I am all yours… I want to be consumed by your love…”

My impromptu attempt at serenading my lady love, and calling her by the literal and very fitting definition of her last name, is met with the breathy sound of Fee trying not to laugh at my very stupid lyrics.

I drop my cleaned dish in the drying rack and pick up another, using my cloth to scrub off the remnants of the shockingly satisfying wild mushrooms and rice that we made for dinner. There��s still no major growth outside of any kind, but that’s not stopping my crafty girl from finding all kinds of interesting and safe to eat fungus, or from attempting to start some seeds in the uncontaminated soil inside our green house. Maybe, if we are very lucky, by the time the longer warmer days fully set in, we will have fresh vegetables every now and then.

We love to fight over which will be better, the tomatoes or the cucumbers. Like the immature fool I am, I tell Fee she only thinks the cucumbers are going to better because they remind her of my amazing dick. She tells me I am amazing, but not just because my male parts are very nice. Fee always finds ways to tease me and feed my relentless ego. Finding that delicate balance to keep me in check is just one of her many talents.

Talking stupid and naughty always gets my lady smiling, so I am always going to do it. There is no shortage of love between us or laughs. Food on the other hand is, and always will be an issue for us. Even with the stores of dry things like rice and beans, and vacuum sealed seeds for potential future plantings that were left here, we still worry.

Thinking of food…

I loudly clear my throat, letting Fee know she’s in for another good line. “I want to be your breakfast in bed. I’ll be your food. I’ll run your bubble bath, make you laugh…  Tu me fais voir la vie en rose,” I croon, adding that last bit as French as I can, but even if it's wrong, I make sure to use my best sexy voice I can produce.  ('You make me see life in pink'-meaning, with you, I see life as perfect or through rose colored glasses- a similar line from the song Vie en Rosa.)

“Oh my God!” she sputters. “That’s it, Hargreeves. You are killing me over here. I’m not so sure about this ‘you being my food’ thing that you’re going on about, but in case you weren't already aware of it, you are one hell of a very sexy muse. Come here and let me teach you something new, you big goof.”

More than ready to please my girl, I excitedly pull the plug on the wash basin and aimlessly chuck my rag before bounding over to her. Crashing in next to her on our tiny loveseat, I look over at her with a big stupid smile as I try to suggestively wiggle one eyebrow at her. It’s a total sexy fail, and I know it, but that’s the point. Fee thinks I am irresistibly sexy when I am silly and that's because I am not normally a silly person.

It's all for her.

Another lesson with women, they like it if you are smart, but they don’t need to be reminded of it, especially if it’s in the arrogant, ass-hole-ish way I used to lay on thick for pretty much everyone.

“Teach away, baby. Like I said, I am all yours,” I push when she merely eyes me with that pretty smirk of hers.

When Fee doesn’t put the guitar away, that should have been the first sign she wasn’t planning on teaching me something new in the form of pleasuring her. But it wasn’t because I am a total boner.

Taking my hand in hers, she shifts my arms so that the black body of the instrument is in my lap, not hers. Placing my left hand on the neck, she positions my fingers around it so the pads of each are pressing down on different strings.

“There,” she says, “You are going to learn to play.”

“I am?”

“Yes.” It takes her a second to stop laughing at how baffled I am. “If you can sing, which you can, albeit somewhat more humorously than sincerely, then you can play and sing. They always complement each other nicely and it's fun. You just need to learn a few basic cords and then you can really get my panties wet with your mad skills.”

“I think I am good with having you as my own personal music box, sweet peaches.” I try to hand the guitar back but she pushes it away, shaking her head.

“Nope, you need a healthy hobby other than running all your big fancy numbers, and trying to find all the ways you can fuck me without fucking me.”

“Those are healthy hobbies.," I said defensively. "You said having a big libido was a good thing for a guy my age.”

Fee ignores that valid point as she stuffs a pillow down behind my back, then she pushes herself up so she can snake her body in behind mine. With her chin resting on my shoulder, she wraps her left hand around mine so she can maneuver my fingers how she wants them.

“There, keep that amount of pressure on those positions and bring your right hand down over the strings like this, Mr. Peaches.”

Her other hand lovingly brushes against my side before it finds my free hand, placing it how she means, with my palm flush against the body of the guitar. “Use the side of your thumb for now, and if you find that you like a pick better later, go for it. Anything goes, it’s all personal preference.”

Moving my hand for me, my thumb lightly jumps over the strings, one by one. I am shocked that a sound rings out that is not awful.

Fee kisses my neck from behind which increases my smile. “You know, I only call you peaches because they are my favorite canned food, and they are orange and sweet and they remind me of you. And I really like what you’re doing back there, ginger,” I say, leaning my head back so she is forced to press her lips on me again.

“I know you do,” she purrs, “but I am not orange. That ‘G’ major wasn’t bad, but your nicknames are. With your long, very clever fingers, you’ll be plucking those strings like a real wild West Virginia mountain man in no time.”

“I’d rather pluck your strings,’ I hum right back.

I can feel Fee’s mouth spread as her warm breath dances over my skin, sending wonderful shivers up my spine.

Maybe thinking I am cold, maybe not, within seconds of her focusing her energy on it, the hearth is filled with flames, working their way through the brush and other smaller pieces of kindling I put in there earlier. She didn’t even have to touch it to ignite it, and that is not the only thing she’s setting on fire.

Having her pressed in behind me like this… Yeah. It’s giving me ideas, but then again, so is her hand gently rubbing my thigh.

“Pay attention,” Fee scolds as she fights with my left hand to get it over the strings again.

Once they are placed differently, she guides my right hand again, only this time down, up, down, down, and up, in a different pattern, skipping the lowest sounding string every time. Again, it doesn’t sound bad. It sounds like music.

“That’s a ‘C’ chord. Not the easiest stretch for some but it’s looking easy enough for a very handsome drink of water like yourself. These fingers of yours, Hargeeves-damn. They are so long and useful,” she teases.

“I am slim and long limbed, but I am not attractive or tall, so saying that colloquial expression doesn’t really apply to me,” I correct.

"Wrong. You are very attractive and compared to me, you are tall,” she laughs.

“Only part true," I laugh back.

I am at least two inches taller than my little woman and I love it. I reverse the positions of our right hands. Gently stroking her hand, the strings under her fingers ring out again, but this time, I am pretty sure not in the way they should.

“Speaking of size, and my long, brilliant fingers, things are getting substantially lengthier in my pants the more you press that hot body of yours on me like that. I think we should do music lessons later. Right now, I think you should keep kissing my neck like that, while I teach you how to give me a reach around whack off.”

“Oh, you think so, do you?”

“Uh-huh,” I softly murmur, placing her hand on my leg again, moving it towards my sizable problem just so she’s fully aware that I’m not completely joking. Once her hand is on me, she gets it, and I know she's going to give in to my audacious request.

I can’t help but let my head flop back and my mouth drop open. My lids automatically close as I relish the feel of her touching me even if it’s just over my pants. “Maybe when you're done taking care of me, I can get on my knees, sit you back, and return the favor?” My words come out so incredibly strained already.

“I would love for you to do that, but first you are going to learn two more chords. Then you will be able to play something satisfying right away.”

"This is already pretty damn satisfying," I argue.

To that remark I get nothing, but her hand does keep moving up and down as I shift myself so she can get at my restrained shaft a little better. Being a musician who can do two very different things with her hands at the same time, she fiddles my clenched fingers on the neck of the guitar in a new way even while stroking me. “Try that one,” she commands, with her mouth tickling the back of my ear.

Right hand shaking, I bring it down over the strings again, making a pleasant sound that is a little deeper sounding.

“Good. That’s an A major.” Fee slides her right hand up my torso, bringing it back down inside the waistband of my pants.

“Fuck Fee. This feels so good,” I breathe when I feel the flesh of her warm hand directly on me.

“I know, baby, and you are doing so good. Just one more, I promise,” she says as she holds the head of my cock in her hand, her thumb rubbing back and forth on the underside, causing me to helplessly whimper. I hardly notice my left hand being repositioned as she spreads my pearly seed round and round my swollen tip. “Again, but try to only hit the four bottom strings,” she says, letting her words vibrate along my upper spine. I strum the strings with an even more unsteady hand. “That’s a D chord. We will save the B and several other nice ones for our next lesson. I am proud of you, Five.”

My hips shunt as Fee brings her hand down over my length again. “You are?” I ask in a fresh moan as she runs her hand further south, tenderly fondling my balls.

“I always am,” Phoebe claims, then kisses the back of my neck so torturously slow, in pace with how she’s handling my cock.

My jaw clenches and I force myself to relax. “Honey. You are driving me crazy.”

“I know. Payback's a bitch, isn’t it?”

Dropping my right hand, I push it inside my already stretched sweatpants, clamping my fingers around hers, forcing her to grip me tighter.

“Harder,” I demand as I show her what I mean, working her hand over me at a much more brutal pace. “This isn’t going to take long,” I warn. Like I usually do, my hips start fucking back up into her hand, increasing the feel that I am actually fucking her. “I love you so much, Fee. You are so good to me. Thank you,” I breathe, releasing her so she can get to it on her own. I reach next to me, grasping her right leg, my knuckles going white as my fingers dig into her calf.

“Rrrhhhaa, Ffffffff,” I groan through clenched teeth as my cock slides up and down in her hand at the pace that makes my brain completely turn off.

Fee’s lips caress my skin, moving along the back side of my shoulder over the fabric of my cotton shirt and back up again. “Five, you are one very horny young man, and I wouldn’t want you any other way because you are young, and you have every right to be horny. I love you too,” she says, letting her words softly vibrate my spine again. “Now, be a good boy and set that beautiful present you gave me down before you accidentally drop it. I am about to get really good for you, baby.”   

Holy fuck. I have no idea what chords I just learned, but I know that I will never forget my first guitar lesson.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bent over with my elbows on my knees, I rock back and forth, my heart racing as my fingers yank at my shaggy hair.

"Mother fucker of all fuckers!"

“Five, take a break,” Fee declares over my tenth outburst in the last half hour.

Opening my tightly clamped eyes, I wearily drag them across the yard in her direction. She is lying under the jeep, trying to see if there’s anything she can do about the cracked coil on the left rear tire. She thinks it happened the night she saved me, but since then we haven’t found a part to fix it. That’s not really the biggest problem though, because the thing won’t start anyway. Sitting all winter didn’t help, but Fee is almost certain that's because of a faulty starter, and we have nothing to fix that either.

With my lack of mechanical know-how, I can do little to help her diagnose all our many vehicle problems. Instead of getting greasy with her, most of the last two days of it finally not blowing like mad while the angry sky also dumped torrents of rain on us, I have been sitting outside with her, plunked down in my rusty old chair, swearing up a whole different kind of shit storm.

I can’t come up with anything that even remotely solves the issue of overcoming the indirect curvature of time and the rapid acceleration of energy needed to traverse it. Going forward when it comes to time travel was child’s play compared to going back. It’s all new, never done before math and concepts, and even with all that I know about it and having actually jumped years forward at a time, I am stumped.

“I can’t fucking figure this out,” I yell as I throw my latest scribble filled notebook down on the grass.

Hearing me really flipping out, Fee pushes herself out from under the vehicle and comes my way, stopping with her oily hands on her hips as she squints at me.

After a moment of silence, she reaches for her hat that’s hanging on the arm of my chair, plunking it down on her head so the sun isn't in her eyes. “You know, I can’t figure this shit out either, but you don’t hear me swearing every two minutes. Getting mad is never helpful. Why don’t you take a break?”

I don’t answer. My eyes dart away from her judgmental looking gaze.

She sighs loudly while bonking my foot with one of her sandals, and that makes me feel like I have to look back. When our eyes meet again, Fee gives me one of her sympathetic looks. “You will figure it out, Five.”

“Yeah, you don’t know that!” I bark back.

Clearly not liking that, she throws her hands up, shaking her head at me. “Maybe you just need something else to go on. We could go back to the city. You said the library there wasn’t a total loss. I am sure we can find texts in the ruins that will have some ideas you can use to expand your theories. I know you’ve been stuck on this for months. I am sorry. I know it’s driving you crazy but please don’t take it out on me.”

“We’ve talked about this, Fee. We can’t go. It’s so dangerous back there. And now, with the river flooding out all the roads around here, and the jeep not working, we can’t make it anywhere unless it’s on foot.”

“We can’t right now, but we can make the trip at some point. I know we can make it together just fine. You are acting like walking is a problem, but if I recall, that’s how you were getting around for five years before I found you.” She grins. “Has staying here in our luxurious mountain abode made you scared of getting your hands dirty or opposed to a few blisters on your cute feet? I thought we were saving the role of pampered princess for Dolores. Shall I start finding pretty little charms to decorate you with too? You know, you would look nice in sequins,” she says with a small laugh at the end.

“Real Nice,” I snap. “Why do you always have to act like you have all the answers? When it comes to this, you clearly don't know what the hell you are talking about. I have been in New York, you haven't! You think that your opinion is the only one that matters. It's like you enjoy making me feel like a little kid!

Fee instantly looks taken aback by my outburst, but she quickly schools her features to hide it. “Five… I was just joking. You know, trying to make you laugh and realize this isn't a big deal. I obviously know you aren't scared of hard work or walking. I never mean to make you feel like a child." She pushes her lips out, looking confused. "I am sorry, I didn't know you felt that I did." She pauses again, looking somewhere over my head with a blankness in her eyes before they come back to mine again. "Five, I don't understand. I am just trying to help.”

“Well, it's not funny and you can’t help with this. So just back off and do your thing and I will do mine!”

Her hands slap against her thighs as she pulls a frown at me. “No , I can’t. You are right. I am sorry that math and time travel really aren’t my thing, but I do my best with what I can help with, even if sometimes that’s putting up with your big boy tantrums.”

I cock my head, glaring at her as my shoulders rise with a tick like twitch that makes my growing anger and inability to control it blatantly obvious, which only pisses me off even more because I'm just proving her right; I am being a baby about this.

Leaving here is a very bad idea and every time Fee mentions it or questions how far I am getting with my calculations, my defenses trigger on a level that I am having a harder and harder hiding.

I feel like she’s trying to set me off on purpose, so I yell, “Fee. Just stop patronizing me, okay!”

“I am not doing that! I am just trying to make you realize that getting mad isn't going to help you.” She swallows several times trying to calm herself back down. Her eyes fall on the ground at my feet as she tosses her wrench back over by her other tools. “You know…” She pauses and my narrowed eyes come back to take on her fresh, icy blue glare. “I probably shouldn't say this, but sometimes I wonder if you are confusing the importance of what we have here with the reality that nothing is more important than getting back. There’s no reason we can’t go back to the city. You lived there on your own for five years and you survived. It clearly wasn’t as bad as the burning hot death hole you accidentally strolled into. You’ve got me with you now either way. Like I said, we will both be fine. If there's a chance that going will help you find the answers you need, then it's worth it. You know that we can't stay here forever.”

My eyes go wide as I jump out of my chair and get in her face. “I fucking know that, and I know you saved me! I know you are taking care of me, Fee! Do you always have to remind me of that!”

“That's not fair and you know it, and that’s not what I was saying. Why are you being so defensive? I am just pointing out that it’s okay to go and we should if it will help you figure out your math.”

“Phoebe, I know just how important getting back to save the entire fucking world is. Forgive me if I want to keep you safe and not have to bury another person that I love all because of massive amounts of stupid equations that I can’t figure out because I am stupid.”

“You are not stupid, and I am fine, Five. In case you forgot, I got along just fine without you, so with you I’m hardly in any more danger of death than I was before, and I came to this lovely area all the way from Utah so, yeah… Being mad at me for pointing that out, or not, going to New York from here is nothing. Like I said, we will be fine.”

“You just can’t stop, can you?" I furiously spit back. "I am well aware of how good you are at everything and how I nearly died next to a gigantic crater made by the fucking moon because I am an idiot!”

“Urgg! Five why are you being such a shit? I am not saying that!”

“It's because I am an asshole, remember?”

Fee’s expression softens into something that looks almost pained as her lips slowly part and her eyes crinkle at the corners. “Five, you are being an asshole right now, but I know it’s just because you are frustrated, and you are scared. I wouldn’t do something that could mean that I'd lose you either. Us leaving here together won’t risk that. We just need to watch the water levels and wait a little longer and we will be fine. I know we can find a route into the city and avoid the flooding. It may take a week or whatever for the latest storm damage to run its course but…”

She reaches out to take my hand, but like the baby I am being, a flash of electrical blue static surrounds me as I blink myself a few yards away where I reappear and instantly begin to pace with my head down rather than acknowledge what I just did or what she just said.

I hear her aggravated little huff, but I refuse to turn back and look at her.

“Fine. Whatever. You obviously need some space. I am going for a walk,” she mumbles as she marches away.

Hours later, Fee is not back.

I know that I was being awful, and I know I hurt her. I feel horrible about that and not being smart enough to solve the math needed to make this work. She is right as always. I am scared and I irrationally took my anger out on her. I am just mad that I can’t do this. It’s like when I was young and never good enough no matter how hard I tried.

Fee wasn't wrong that taking a break, or even going to the city to look for texts with ideas I can use, would be a smart plan of action, but no, I wouldn't listen. I yelled at her and blamed her for my own shortcomings rather than owning up to the real reason I am upset and digging my feet in.

I am putting being here with her, where I know we are safe, ahead of everyone else, and it’s selfish. As much as Fee loves me, I know being here alone like we are is not what she wants when she knows there’s a chance we can do something to prevent this. It’s not really what I want either, but I have never had this kind of thing with someone, and I am terrified of losing it.

That all lies on me, and I am being a total fuck head about it, and to her.

No wonder she didn’t come back yet.

I was such an epic asshole again and I hardly have me being an emotionally stunted teenager brought up in a house of equally confused kids as an excuse.

Walking down the gravel road to go after her, I have to constantly jump and dart around deep washouts. The rains that came in the last two weeks have been so bad that we are lucky there is any road left. Even so, taking the jeep anywhere or the bike isn’t looking promising even if we can get the damn things started.

When I get close to reaching where the small mountain stream runs alongside the road, I can already hear it, meaning it’s not a small creek anymore. When I get even further down the road, I am surprised to see it is still raging even though it hasn’t rained in over forty-eight hours.

When I get to the end of the line, which shouldn’t be, because it’s actually still about another mile and half before the road levels out and splits to the north and south along the range, I find there’s no road left as far as my eyes can see. The river swept it away.

Days ago, when Fee and I walked down here together, the road was just a little flooded on one side where the banks had spilled over.

Huge trees and branches sweep past me in the viciously churning water, moving so fast that when they slam up against other broken debris and rocks hidden under the muddy water, they make powerful cracking and tearing sounds.

There’s no way Fee went past here but I didn’t pass her so that must mean that she came back another way and I missed her somehow when I went in the house. Since it’s definitely not as sunny or warm over here, I figure that maybe she's wandering around on the other side of the bluff like she likes to do in the afternoon.

Looking up, I see the sun’s rays illuminating just the tops of the remaining trees that still stand tall, like smooth gray, wind torn monuments to what once was part of a vast wooded range formed over 480 million years old. A chill runs up my arms from the breeze blowing through the pass.

Spinning around, looking at the river again, something brightly colored catches my eye.

I walk over and bend down.

It’s a tiny bouquet of early spring purple wildflowers mixed with a few budded shoots from some kind of tree.

Fee loves finding things like this and bringing them back so she can show me and then proudly display them in the colorful glass vase I found for her that sits on our mantel.

“Fee!”

My shout is swallowed by the much louder sound of the water.

My heart sinks when I think about how she wouldn’t have dropped those by accident or just left them like this.

She has to still be near here.

Full-on panicking, I sprint around, searching the area, calling for her, over and over.

She doesn’t answer.

Nothing looks the same as it did a few days ago and I have no idea which way she would have gone. There isn’t really anywhere obvious to go. One side of the road is butted up to a relatively steep rocky cliff and the other is flooded.

Working my way back up along the winding water’s edge I see something.

Back where I just was, where the road had been, I can see that the soil there is darker colored and freshly disturbed compared to the rest of the embankment around it. It’s like it very recently washed out, eroded by the rushing water, causing it to abruptly collapse and disappear like the rest of the road in front of it already has.

Holding my breath, I come as close to the edge as I can without potentially making my weight cause it to collapse again.

“No, no, no! Fee!” I scream when I see Phoebe’s baseball cap down below, stuck a little way out on a half-submerged branch.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I searched everywhere for Fee. Up and down the river, over and over. Through the woods, miles and miles around our cabin and I found nothing.

Not another trace of her.

Every day I refused to give up hope that she was out there, somewhere. Maybe she was mad at me still and just not ready to come back yet.

All I wanted was for her to come home.

It wasn’t until almost two weeks later, when the river had become nothing more than a lazy stream again that I found her.

She wasn't far from where she disappeared.

A clump of her long red hair was wrapped around a branch laying on the ground, and at first, I just thought she must have got it stuck on there and she had to have cut it off or something. When I tried to pick up the snarl covered wood, I realized it was stuck down because it was attached to something buried under it. Then, as sickness filled my gut, just a few feet away, partly hidden in a tangle of grass, I saw a familiar rainbowy strappy sandal with a foot in it. It was partly encased in the gray clay. Those two parts of her were the only things of color on the dead landscape.

Seeing that... Finally knowing... My heart broke and so did I.

I couldn't see the rest of her body, but from what I could tell, she was there, only twisted in a sick and unnatural way based on where her head was compared to her feet. My beautiful girl was stuck into the dried mud so hard that it took me hours with my bare hands to get her out, but there was no way I could pull myself away from her to go back for a shovel. Even if I did go get something better to break the ground, I would have been too terrified to use it. She was so hurt already; I couldn't risk hurting her even more.

I wanted to die right there with her.

It felt like I did.

It didn’t matter that she was decomposing, or that her body was brutally ruined by the wrath of the river, once I had her free, I held her to me, begging her to forgive me.

As crazed as I was, my fractured mind wouldn’t give me the solace of letting her answer my pleas. Her voice is one I could not conjure but that didn't stop me from trying.

I tried to blink with her to get her back but the first time I landed with her, just up the dried embankment, her body tore apart, and I knew I couldn't go further with her that way.

Like a mindless zombie, covered in dirt and the pungent smell of human decay, I eventually made it back to the cabin. I don't remember that walk or the walk back to her. Near dark, I pulled my wagon up the mountain pass, loaded with Fee's small, battered body in a blanket on top of it. As I wheeled her along, all my mind could do was think about getting her somewhere safe.

Once I finally had her to our home, I couldn’t bury her.

I couldn’t think.

My mind at that point was more gone than it had ever been. I was mad with rage one minute then sobbing endlessly the next.

Days later, with no other choice but to give her dignity, I finally buried Phoebe under an old, dead black ash tree that she had always said would have been so beautiful if it were alive still.

Unable to leave her, I stayed at our cabin for two more months. I hardly ate. I hardly slept more than a few hours at a time, but when I did, it was clinging to her pillow, pretending that the faint traces of her scent meant that she was still with me.

When I left, it was only because I had finally pulled myself together enough to face the horrible world again and because it was the only way I could save her.

That thought alone is what held me together.

Like the day I lost her, I was stuck. Stuck inside myself, stuck with my calculations, and stuck blaming myself for something that I knew deep down Phoebe would tell me was wrong for me to be doing.

She would have said it was an accident. Fee never wanted me to suffer. She always said that none of this was my fault.

But it was.

I know that she went for that walk because of how unfair I was being to her.

She was upset by my behavior, and she had reason to be.

I know the only reason Fee went down to the river’s edge that day was because she was checking to see how bad it was. She wanted to help me and leaving to go back to the city seemed like the best option in her mind.

But, even getting to the city and my library, I remained stuck, unable to perfect the math that I needed to get back. I was trapped there another thirty-eight years, alone except for Dolores. After that, Dolores did all she could do to comfort me, just like she always did. We eventually picked up our old routine, but the reality was, neither of us could ever move on from losing Fee.

Even in my time with The Commission after The Handler came to pluck me out of my hell, I suffered for my sins, just in new ways.

I don’t think I could ever hate myself so much as I did that day I found Phoebe’s body, but as it turns out, almost a lifetime later, I did thanks to my years of killing innocent people all in the name of maintaining the generally accepted timeline for a corrupt space time continuum organization ran by a bunch of creepy manipulative self-serving fucks.

As long as it has been, no matter how many years pass, and how unredeemable I become, I still love my Fee.

For her and for everyone else, I will figure out this mess I've made.

I promised her I would, and I won't stop until I do or until I have no choice in the matter.

No matter what, every single day, I never give up hope that I will someday be deserving of seeing her smiling face again.

Someday...

Chapter Seven: Epilogue (Oblivion Park)

Klaus puts both his hands out in front of him, wiggling his fingers as he concentrates. "Alakazam, ghosties!"

And...nothing.

Our newly alive again ghost whispering brother looks very perplexed at his inability to use his powers, as do all of us.

After the recently resurrected, much less ape-like looking Luther finishes angrily grabbing me by my collar, yelling at me about Sloane being missing from our group, I am forced to tell him I have no idea where she is. He clearly thinks this is my fault and he does not look pleased when I add that she may not even be in this new utopian version of the world our dad and Allison must have created with that little coup they pulled back in the hotel hell that miraculously had been right here a few minutes ago but isn't now.

Everyone is having their own usual meltdowns, babbling on like always about themselves. Then, after zero discussion, other than that we have no powers, and deciding that we are pretty much shit out of luck with what to do about that, they all just start to wander off.

Again, taking another look at my suddenly reappeared severed arm, I shake my head in disbelief. It's nice to have that back, and not have blood all over my brand-new suit, and not be dying but...

Looking up at Lila’s excited expression and Diego’s equally eager look, then the bronze statue of dad’s head, I can’t help my frown.

They are all leaving. After everything.

We almost just got kugelblitzed. Reginald nearly just killed us. He sucked our powers from us like we are nothing more than batteries that he always planned to drain, then he just threw us away, and this is what we do about it? We abandon each other? Have we learned nothing?

Really?

Cursing, Ben disappears the same way Luther just left without so much as a goodbye.

Viktor clearly feels the same way I do about this, and despite him trying to stop them, he is losing his fight to keep us all together, but I shouldn’t really be upset or surprised by that or any of this.

Thinking and trying to understand what just happened and what this means, it dawns on me that we might have actually done it this time.

Well, maybe we didn’t, but Reginald or Allison did. Either way, they never would have reset the world on a course that was going to simply end again in a few days.

That means the apocalypse is over. We are safe. Lila is right. We can start to live our life as we want for once.

I spin around, my suit jacket swinging open from the momentum. It’s just me and Viktor left with our dad’s monument between us.

My eyes widen with realization. “Fee,” I whisper under my breath.

Twisting on my heel, I start picking up pace as I head toward the large stone arch leading out of the circular garden.

“Five! Where are you going?” Viktor shouts, interrupting my racing thoughts and my attempt at a hasty departure.

The heels of my dress shoes grind on the loose stone path as I turn back. “I am going to find Fee.”

“Who?”

“Phoebe Leroux.” Just saying her name out loud makes my heart feel so tight. It always aches when I think about her, but I’ll never stop.

"Who is Phoebe Leroux?"

My brows furrow as my mind goes back to her, remembering.

“Fee is a woman that I have been in love with for nearly forty-five years,” I quietly admit, “and she is someone that I wronged very, very badly.” I pause as I think about the extremely heavy truth of that.

Seeing Viktor looking at me like he has no clue what the hell I am talking about, I find myself laughing even though I shouldn't be. It's like a madness erupting in me that I can control. They know nothing about Fee. Not even The Commission let on that they knew she was with me in the apocalypse even though I am sure they knew. All of this is madness but it's finally over. We are finally free of all of it.

I stride back, meeting Viktor halfway in the shadowy garden. Running my hand back through my hair, I shake my head, trying to think of a way to explain all this.

“I met Fee only once, back when we were sixteen, and I epically fouled up that first brief encounter. Then, as fate would have it, because she had powers like we do, she survived when the ‘moon’ thing went down.”

I try to smile at Viktor when I air quote the moon thing, and that’s because I know full well that he still feels awful about that. My small overture gets him to return one of his very awkward looking grins.

Placing my hands back in my pockets, I continue explaining. “Phoebe was there alone in the apocalypse too, and she found me and saved me when I was about to die because I’m a never-ending arrogant asshole. That bright moment on my list of many happened five years into that hell. Her saving me is what ultimately got us all to this point, so I guess, in a way, she’s the one that saved everyone. She is the bravest, most caring person I have ever met, and I love her.”

“You mean you weren’t alone all those years?” Viktor looks utterly confused and even more floored by my explanation. “I mean, other than Dolores? I know you were with her and all that, and she is very real to you but…” he tries to clarify. “I am sorry, that’s not coming out right at all,” he apologizes, his pale cheeks flaming.

I smile at my brother’s embarrassment over my lifelong romantic relationship with a mannequin. I can’t exactly blame him for still being weirded out about that. “Don’t apologize, you have no reason to, and yes,” I say with another laugh. “I was with my loving Dolores for the entirety of my time in the apocalypse, but there was a short time when we weren’t alone. For eight months, seventeen days, ten hours, thirty-six minutes and give or take forty-nine seconds we were madly in love with a very special, very real woman.”

“Where’d she go?”

My somewhat manic smile evaporates as I think about what happened.

“We had a stupid fight about me being stupid. Fee went for a walk to give me space to calm down and get my shit together.” I have to stop to swallow the lump in my throat. “I messed up and I let her down. She didn’t deserve that from me, not after everything.” The lump comes back, but I speak through it, my voice cracking just a little. “There had been storms for weeks, and…” I look down at my shoes. “She drowned,” I simply say because I’m unable to say more.

“Oh no, Five! That’s-”

“That was a long time ago,” I quickly add, cutting him off, trying to let Viktor know he doesn’t need to say anything. I don’t want him to.

This is why I never told any of them. One, because everyone, including myself, were too wrapped up in their own things and jumping through time and fucking everything up, but it's also because I didn’t want them to know. If they did, it would just be one more thing I have to explain about my dark life that is too hard for me to talk about.

Something feels different now though. I want Viktor to know. Memories of Fee playing her guitar and me telling her about my siblings fill my mind with warm loving nights cuddling next to her by the fire, me talking with her for hours, back when I was happy.

The Handler was right. We all want happy.

A small smile tugs at the corner of my mouth when I remember telling Fee of how my sister may not have had powers like us, but she was a very kind and passionate and proficient musician that I knew she’d get along with famously because they were actually very similar in many ways.

Avoiding that same person I had long ago told Fee about and their wide eyed, very concerned gaze they are giving me, I look around again, checking out what I can see of the city skyline peeking out over the tall, groomed hedges. Slowly I count in my head the days since when the apocalypse should have ended all this.

Fee would have caught a flight this morning out of Salt Lake City. Based on the time, she is supposed to be performing at a location not that far from here.

“I have to go,” I say as I start walking away.

“What are you going to do, Five?” Viktor asks.

“I need to deliver a long overdue apology.”

“But if the apocalypse didn’t happen and you guys never met again, how’s she-”

“It doesn’t matter if she remembers what we had,” I say, interrupting him. “I still owe her an apology.” Viktor just stares at me with his big brown eyes looking so lost, so I find myself saying, “I just need to see her again. It’s been so long and I…”

I can’t even begin to say how I feel, so I don’t.

Viktor stuffs his hands in his pockets the same way I have mine. “Well, if you want company, I would be happy to come with you for emotional support,” he offers.

“You mean like my wingman?” I correct him with a knowing smile.

Viktor isn’t like the rest of them, ready to leave everyone behind and never look back. He has never been that person. As his older brother, this time around my instinct to take care of him is stronger than my desire to figure out how to save the world and that's because it is figured out. No more apocalypse, that's all that matters. All this has me thinking that doing what my girl taught me, showing a little more heart, and by doing so, letting him be my ‘wingman’ isn’t a horrible idea.

Viktor nervously laughs. “Yeah, I guess I mean like that. This woman sounds pretty special, maybe you can hope for more than just a chance to say you’re sorry. If she forgave you for whatever happened between you two when you were sixteen, and she fell for you once before, then maybe she will again. You are only a few years younger than you were. You're technically legal, so maybe that wouldn’t be too…” He nervously laughs again, and I can’t help but join him.

I am physically eighteen instead of fifty-eight thanks to accidentally fucking up a decimal placement in my math so yeah… At least I'm legal as he so nicely just reminded me, then again, Fee is five years younger, so...

“Yeah, maybe…” I agree with a smirk, thinking about what Phoebe would have to say about all that and my nerdy, even more boyish appearance than what she had to deal with the first time. Looking back over at my brother, I nod. “Well Viktor, I think I’ll take you up on that offer, if you’re willing to be my emotional support sibling, I’ll take it. Clearly, I can use all the help I can get.”

Viktor nods back, probably unable to come up with words to express his shock over my rare show of maturity and willingness to admit so openly that I need someone.

As my brother and I silently start walking out of the garden the same why the rest of our family vanished, we begin to take note of all the strange new buildings that weren't there before, especially the fact that nearly half of them appear to be owned by none other than Sir Reginal Hargreeves, the alien ass lord who is responsible for stripping us of our powers and for us being here.

Moving down the sidewalk heading towards the busy downtown, I know I should be more concerned about all that, but my old broken heart in my new young body races as I let myself think about Fee and all the possibilities a woman like that can bring to a broken man’s life if she’s willing.

She saved me once before, so maybe, just maybe, she will open her beautiful heart to an old crazy wretch like me and do it all over again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Link from a special request scene extension from the point he found her.

Thanks to all who read this one. ❤️

Master Post List to all my Five Centric Stories and Art

Link to visit me on AO3

Link to my other posts on Tumblr

#umbrella academy smut #number five smut #number five #the umbrella academy number five #umbrella academy five hargreeves #five hargreaves #five hargreeves imagine #tua fanfiction #number five female oc #kaybreezy-on-a03 #tua fandom #number 5 #number five hargreeves #hurt number five #number five fanart #Five hargreeves fan art #number five imagine #tua imagines #kaybreezy-on-aO3 #five hargreeves smut #smut with plot #smut with feelings #smut with story

[batmancomicanalysis]

Did Batman kill The Joker in The Killing Joke?

Note: "Alan Moore said" is not a valid refutation. A great article on the concept of authorial intent with particular reference to TKJ:

1. Batman’s early statement “I don’t want your murder on my hands” could foreshadow The Joker’s murder by Batman’s bare hands, à la TDKR. Ironically, Batman’s hands are literally stained (by white makeup) in this scene. Joker’s death may have been foreshadowed again when Batman crushed The Joker’s card in silent rage in response to hearing what he did to Barbara

2. Batman asks The Joker impersonator “Do you realize what you’ve set free?”, implying that Batman doesn’t regard The Joker as a mere human but an animal, a force of nature or a demonic entity; i.e., dehumanised, something one would have fewer reservations about destroying

3. In a conversation with Alfred (prior to The Joker’s brutal assault on Jim and Jim’s daughter Barbara), Batman admits that he hates The Joker: “How can two people hate so much without knowing each other?”

4. Batman states that “in the end, one of us will kill the other” near the beginning in Arkham (with Batman and what appears to be The Joker, captioned as “two guys in a lunatic asylum…”; the start of The Joker’s eponymous joke, sitting opposite each other in The Joker’s cell, with Jim on the outside looking in) and the “one of us will kill the other” monologue (the second time internal) appears again towards the end: Batman reluctantly accepts the necessity of killing The Joker (if The Joker doesn’t kill him first). Batman’s “we’re both running out of alternatives”, “Maybe it all hinges on tonight” and “it doesn’t have to end like that” come just before The Joker apologises, rejects Batman’s “last chance” offer of rehabilitation (after “all these years” of conflict) and tells the eponymous "killing joke"

5. Batman laughing maniacally with The Joker (who recently committed atrocities against partner Barbara and best friend Jim to boot) is extremely out of character (getting through to archnemesis Batman and breaking his stern exterior represents a major victory for the former failed comedian in itself), possibly suggesting that Batman’s snapped (proving The Joker at least partly right whatever way you look at it, whether one views an endlessly pacifistic Gordon or homicidal Batman as insane but TKJ is predominantly The Joker’s story) and is raising his arms to kill (in the last panel where we see Batman’s face, his facial expression can easily be interpreted as being sinister)

6. The way the perspective pans down after Batman places his hands on The Joker, first excluding their chests and above, then excluding all but parts of their feet, and finally omitting the two men entirely, suggests that something significant may be happening just out of our view

7. The laughter ceases abruptly (maybe of one first, then both) while the police siren continues

8. In the last panel the “light” (which has been “on” since the very first panel) has gone out, the “bridge” has disappeared and the two men are out of the picture, their visual opposition gone. Having finally understood the insane futility of trying to rehabilitate The Joker (who has escaped from Arkham to maim and murder time and time again), Batman may have ended their duality and conflict by killing him

9. The title being “The Killing Joke” may be a hint in this direction: the final joke doesn’t directly describe killing but perhaps that was its consequence, killing The Joker physically and Batman metaphorically

10. The flashbacks show what was potentially the “bad day” which sent (an already mentally unstable) pre-Joker over the edge, maybe TKJ is (an already mentally unstable) Batman’s second “bad day”, orchestrated by The Joker with fatal consequences

11. From The Joker’s perspective, Batman (a renowned costumed nightcrawling outlaw and obsessive genius of questionable sanity and ambiguous sexuality, with a generally unknown identity, whose genesis was a response to tragedy) has more in common with The Joker than he does with the politically correct and legalistic Jim. Hence: “You know the laws regarding mistreatment of inmates as well as I do!”, “If you harm one hair on his head…” and unlike Batman and The Joker, Jim is seemingly unchanged by his “bad day”: “I want him brought in by the book!”, followed by Batman’s “I’ll do my best” (with Batman looking in the opposite direction to Jim), suggesting that he’s seriously considering murder, especially if his last desperate attempts to rehabilitate The Joker are rebuffed (which they are). The early appearance of an imprisoned Two-Face in Arkham (simultaneously looking more like Bruce Wayne and The Joker than usual) is another nod toward their duality, as is the hall of mirrors (also present in The Dark Knight Returns and The Man With The Golden Gun). Furthermore, Batman was apparently present and instrumental in The Joker’s “birth”, there’s a perfect symmetry if The Joker was present and instrumental in their “deaths”

12. TKJ was an extremely brutal, politically incorrect, “realist” graphic novel

13. It’s strongly implied that Batman killed The Joker in Miller’s TDKR, which was published two years before TKJ and influenced Moore

14. TKJ was written as a standalone story, perhaps as the final Batman-Joker conflict (similar to how Moore’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”, published 18 months prior, was written as the final tale of the Silver Age Superman)

Batman’s murder of The Joker can be interpreted as a mercy killing: The Joker’s laugh is a warped form of crying at the random injustice of human existence; he wants Batman (his sole equal and opposite) to put him out of his misery (“It’s all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for...”)

#batman #the joker #the killing joke

[the-capt0r-system]

Reading this from Beauty After Bruises. God we can relate to "but little me didn't exerperince the bulk of the trauma back then" so hard. Our little Ash has the most significant amnesia, for example still can't tell us what happened two years ago when they fronted for two days while the rest of us (all the adults who usually protect them) experienced a complete blackout, and they define their lower age range as 7 years old because they have next to no memories about being any younger than that. (In March they slid younger for a while but we're uncomfortable with how young that might've been so we haven't analyzed it further.) We have a single snippet of memory of being in the place we lived in before age 5, it only lasts a second or two and there are no feelings attached to it, and a similar snippet of being in our preschool, again no feelings just "I remember being in the room at some point"

This is why when our 30 year old host was told something significant and drastic happened to cause this, she didn't want to believe it. Why wouldn't we know that? Can the brain really shut down so hard that the actual memories are just gone?

But they aren't as gone now, that's the thing. Last year after our ex recorded audio porn of us it was like the trauma floodgates opened and we could access very specific anxieties that had been locked up our entire life prior. It's like there's no source memory, no "reel of video" as I've seen another system call it, but vague flashbacks of moments we've been trying to convince ourselves are imaginary, disgusted feelings that we must've had at some point and are just remembering now. TBH the alter who got us through it back then probably isn't even here, or has been dormant for so long that we have zero memory of who that might've been. It may be one of the alters I was before we integrated, but we can't say because not even she knows what happened back then anymore, just speculates and knows that she's chronologically the first alter (the "tomboy" that Ash started calling themselves as a child) and has a LOT of anger about what we know about how our parents could've gotten away with it.

"Rewrites my entire story from how I once knew it" yeah, the host (Larissa) is now mortified that ever she went around giving our parents any credit for their parenting skills and homeschooling us, when all it really was was selfishness, to keep us to themselves and hide their abuse. Wish when we left home at 17 we knew we were a system and cut the family off back then when we had more resources and a fresher start

But I (Sollux) have been trying to remind her and Ash and hell even myself of the sunk cost fallacy: continuing to do things just because you regret the time and money already spent and wasted on the things. Nothing we can do about changing the past, only way to survive is to ground ourselves in our present adult life, remind ourselves that the past-that-feels-present syndrome is a symptom of CPTSD and brain damage from stress, not something we chose to experience. Finding out we're a system just had that much of an impact

#did #dissociative identity disorder #did system #sysblr #actually traumagenic #S #L #A

[cool-robin-weatherbee]

Never Give Up Hope: A Black Arms Sonic Story

BASED ON: https://www.deviantart.com/airsharksquad/art/Black-Verge-Black-Arms-Sonic-4-947469046 ALTERNATE VERSION: https://www.deviantart.com/airsharksquad/art/Black-Arms-Sonic-w-Normal-Sonic-s-Colors-2-5-949540350 , https://sta.sh/01adnk1zmmf0

*shots of a night sky with stars and full moon* The war is over. Eggman...Black Doom...are no more. *shots of a city skyline at night* And yet...another conflict still goes on. *shots of police and military officers searching the city* *shots of Black Arms Sonic roaming the back alleys of the city, hiding from the authorities* As I roam the dark and damp back alleys of the city in secret, evading the authorities, government agents and so on, I remember what my life was like before Black Arms arrived on Earth. *shots of Black Arms Sonic picking up and looking at a Missing poster off the street showing images of his former self as Sonic The Hedgehog* *flashback shots of Sonic's past prior to his Black Arms alien transformation* I remember my battles with Dr. " Eggman " Robotnik, my heroic deeds and all the friends I made along the way. Everything was good and nothing tragic had ever happened. *flashback shots of Black Doom and his Black Arms alien soldiers invading Earth* Then, one day...everything changed when Black Doom arrived. They began their conquest of Earth, attacking everyone and everything in sight. *shots of multiple Black Arms assimilation pods with some unlucky victims inside them being assimilated* Those who were not killed were taken captive and assimilated. *shots of Sonic The Hedgehog battling and defeating a Black Arms alien soldier* Me and my team had to fight them. We managed to destroy many in the process. But the situation was getting relentless. *shots of Sonic The Hedgehog getting splashed with blood from a slain Black Arms alien soldier* And then...that's when it happened to me. *shots of Sonic The Hedgehog in shock as he sees himself absorbing the blood of a slain Black Arms alien soldier through his own hands and skin* I watched in horror as I had inadvertently absorbed the blood from one of the Black Arms aliens though my own hands and skin. It was only a matter of time before I knew what was going to happen. *shots of Sonic The Hedgehog screaming out in agony and pain after absorbing the blood of a slain Black Arms alien soldier (close-up shots of Sonic's bloodshot eyes included)* *shots of Sonic The Hedgehog's painful transformation into Black Arms Sonic* The transformation I went through was painful. Every part of my body screamed out in agony as I went through this painful endeavor. It was getting harder and harder for me to breathe, I was starting to lose my mind because of it. I could feel something unnatural coursing through my veins, my face melting and being reformed, something covering up my mouth and nose and thickening like a second skin. I could also see the pupils in my eyes disappearing as the rest of my bloodshot eyes turned yellow. *shots of Sonic The Hedgehog's final stages of his transformation into Black Arms Sonic* I closed my eyes and prayed for the madness to stop. *shots of Black Arms Sonic breathing heavily, post-transformation* I felt very unconscious as I stopped to catch my breath. Once I regained consciousness however, everything about me changed into something that's barely recognizable to me and my friends. *shots of Black Arms Sonic looking at his new Black Arms alien body (first and third-person shots included) before looking in a nearby mirror in shock and terror* Sonic The Hedgehog: (inner thoughts) " Oh, man. This isn't happening. It only thinks it's happening. " But it WAS happening. My recognizable blue quills were replaced with purple and red alien skin. My hands and feet were replaced with replaced with the traditional three-digit claw-like hands and talon-like feet of the Black Arms aliens. I became taller and my body became more muscular and buffier in an alien-like way and even had spikes that had sprouted from my wrists, shoulders and ankles. The only things I recognized about my new body were the traditional Hedgehog/Mobian proportions of my former self. *close-up shots of Black Arms Sonic looking at his face in the nearby mirror in terror* But the most terrifying part of this transformation was what had happened to my face. My beautiful green eyes had became Black Arms-style golden yellow eyes with no pupils that never blink. My ears became devil-like horns and there were parts of my new alien skin that were luminescent. My nose had disappeared and my mouth resembled that of the Black Arms beings themselves. *shots of Black Arms Sonic splitting his mouth open his alien mouth open revealing a wide, gaping alien maw full of razor-sharp teeth and a Xenomorph-style tongue/inner jaw* And when I opened up my mouth, it split open and revealed a gaping maw chock full of razor-sharp teeth and a strange alien tongue that also had a mouth with teeth. It hid at the back of my mouth/throat and had the ability to lash out at victims. The maw itself never closed and was instead covered up by the alien facial skin flaps that was part of my " face/mouth ". *shots of Black Arms Sonic letting out an ear-piercing, inhuman alien scream with alien mouth split open and Xenomorph-style tongue/inner jaw lashing out as he stares in the mirror in shock and horror* I screamed when I saw what had became of me. I was barely recognizable as what my friends knew as Sonic The Hedgehog. I had become a demon-like alien being that resembled the Black Arms aliens. And when I tried to speak normally, all of my words that I intended to speak were instead alien-like screeching, chirping, hissing, howling, growling and even strange throat-rattling sounds. Not a single word that's recognizable in any language. *shots of Sonic The Hedgehog/Black Arms Sonic's thoughts in visual form* What would my friends think or do if they saw me like this? Worse...What would the police or the military do if they found me? Worse, still...What would Black Doom and his soldiers to if they found me? Would I be taken to Area 51 and become detained from the world? Or worse? Sonic The Hedgehog: (inner thoughts) " No, no, no...I can't let myself fall into the hands of Black Arms. I need to stop them! I MUST find a way to help my friends out to destroy those...those beasts!!! " *shots of Black Arms Sonic running to evade police, military and Black Arms soldiers* I had to run to avoid being spotted/detected by police, military and Black Arms soldiers alike. Where to hide was another story altogether. *shots of Black Arms Sonic disguised with a brown trench coat, black leather gloves, black fedora hat, black sunglasses and a face mask* I had to disguise myself to further avoid detection. But...I couldn't keep myself in hiding much longer. I know I'm not alone in this, however. *shots of Knuckles The Echidna, Blaze The Cat and Silver The Hedgehog transforming into Black Arms alien beings* When I found out that Knuckles, Blaze and Silver had also became Black Arms alien beings, I had to do something about it. I had to rescue them. *shots of Black Arms Sonic fighting other Black Arms alien solders and rescuing Black Arms Knuckles, Black Arms Blaze and Black Arms Silver from Black Doom's mind control along the way* Once I had rescued them from the clutches of Black Arms before they could be put under mind control, we had to come up with a plan to destroy them without getting destroyed or even detained by the military and to keep more innocent victims ( including our friends ) from getting killed or assimilated. And since Shadow was either missing or dead, he was out of the picture altogether. Once we had our plan, we relied on our teamwork and our traditional power and abilities along with new ones that came with out new Black Arms forms to get us through. *shots of Black Arms Sonic, Black Arms Knuckles, Black Arms Blaze and Black Arms Silver fighting other Black Arms alien soldiers alongside their friends and the military in secret and rescuing innocent victims from death and/or assimilation* And then...last was Black Doom, himself. *shots of Black Arms Sonic, Black Arms Knuckles, Black Arms Blaze and Black Arms Silver confronting Black Doom* Black Doom, the supreme leader of Black Arms was indeed powerful. But together, we managed to bring him down after a long-fought battle. When he changed into his ultimate form in a last-ditch attempt to destroy the Earth along with his Eclipse Cannon, we transformed into our Super forms to destroy him once and for all. *shots of Black Arms Sonic, Black Arms Knuckles, Black Arms Blaze and Black Arms Silver in their Super forms destroying Black Doom's ultimate form, Devil Doom and his ultimate weapon, the Eclipse Cannon* Even though we had finally rid the Earth and the Universe of the Black Arms race, we were still unable to revert back to our former selves. Was this a curse? Was it permanent? Or was there still a cure somewhere out there that was yet to be found? Regardless, we split up after the battle to avoid being detained or killed. But we kept our promise to protect the city, despite our unnatural, monster-like appearances. *shots of Black Arms Sonic, Black Arms Knuckles, Black Arms Blaze and Black Arms Silver splitting up after their battle with Black Doom* As we went our separate ways however,  I saw a glimpse of my friend, Miles " Tails " Prower turning to look at me as if he seemed to, or at least tried to recognize me in some way. *shots of Miles " Tails " Prower catching a glimpse of Black Arms Sonic in the corner of his eye and turning to face him and run to him* But I knew I couldn't stick around for long. I had no idea what the military might do if the spotted both of us. I had to run and go into hiding. *shots of Black Arms Sonic running away as Miles " Tails " Prower watches him leave quickly as the military rolls in* It was painful for the both of us. I could tell that Tails wanted to talk to me, because he knew who I was under that alien shell that was my new body. I wanted to talk to him and hug him, too. I could tell that he could feel my pain and I could feel his pain, too. He wanted to help me in some way. But with the military and government agents about, I feared the worst. I knew deep in my heart however, he would not give up on me as I fled the scene. Tails would never give up hope. None of us can. *shots of Black Arms Sonic in the city back alleys, looking at a Missing poster showing images of his former self as Sonic The Hedgehog, tears streaming down his face as his alien mouth splits open revealing a wide, gaping alien maw full of razor-sharp teeth and a Xenomorph-style tongue/inner jaw that lets out a sad, low-sounding alien-style chirping sound* As of today, the military is still out and about, searching for any remaining Black Arms aliens that might still be out there. Those who were assimilated are either dead or alive and either detained or quarantined. Scientists are still looking for a cure that will reverse the mutation by the Black Strain. *shots of Black Arms Sonic waiting for the coast to clear and making his way to the outskirts of the city without being detected by the authorities and/or the military* Until that day comes...Knuckles, Blaze, Silver and I must continue to evade military detection. *shots of Black Arms Sonic arriving at the edge of a lake in a forested area on the outskirts of the city* Until that day comes...I continue to mourn for my life...the life I once had...before the transformation. Before I became this alien beast that people fear. And every night, I look up towards the night sky. Towards the moon. I look up and see visions of my friends and scream out in the night with emotional pain. *shots of Black Arms Sonic looking up at the night sky towards the full moon, tears streaming down his face and splitting his alien mouth open, revealing a wide, gaping alien maw full of razor-sharp teeth and a Xenomorph-style tongue/inner jaw that lashes out as he lets out an ear-piercing, inhuman alien scream that echoes through the night* But...I know I shouldn't give up hope. I never do. I will continue to live this life until there is a cure. *shots of Black Arms Sonic leaning down, reaching with his claw-like hands, scooping up and drinking the water from the lake of the forested area on the outskirts of the city* Never give up hope.

#Sega #sonic the hedgehog #Alien #assimilation #alien assimilation #black arms #black arms sonic

[mesmerium]

Dont mind me just dumping my 2.5/5 star review of s1x of cr0w5 here because i need to get this off my chest 😭

I consider myself a very average person in the sense that i, more often than not, like what’s popular. Usually i agree with the majority and even when i don’t, i still see the appeal and just go, “ok, not for me.” But this book was terrible. I fail to see what people actually like about it…… and it’s not like i picked it up because of the rave reviews, my sister let me borrow it because she liked it. I didn’t check other ratings or reviews at all, so when i finally finished it (a feat in and of itself) and went to log it onto my goodreads, i was shocked by how much love it received lol. Yes i am 27 but i still do like YA, so that wasn’t the issue here

Starting with the good: i think b4rdug0 did decently with her prose and worldbuilding, settings and people were described well enough that i wasn’t TOO confused. That and w¥lan and j3sp3r’s banter were the only things i liked.

Getting it out of the way that although i would’ve preferred them to be aged up, it’s not really something i cared about much. A lot of the people who didn’t like the book complained about this, but other than them having too much experience for the years they have lived on this planet, i just shrugged it off because eh, it’s YA. Ofc there will be some sort of power fantasy involving teens.

For the plot, i was so excited for it because heists are fun and it’s amazing when the tension is set up right!!! Alas, everything was too conveniently resolved. Just as you think the tension can finally be built, the scene is over. Or something is happening omg, and then you’re hit with a flashback that completely takes you out of it. Don’t even know what the stakes were for this operation. It sucks how predictable a lot of the conflicts were :’) the appeal of a heist is when you don’t know what will happen, when you’re a hair’s breadth from getting caught but you don’t.. didn’t feel that at all here. It almost felt like they just waltzed in and out

The characters felt SO flat to me. Some of them felt like caricatures while the others were simply trying too hard to be edgy, and some felt like an afterthought (ahem, w¥lan). None of them are likable, which is fine i don’t need to like characters honestly, but unlikable to the point of me not being invested in them at all. I didn’t care what happened to any of them. Their relationships with each other don’t feel important enough, and then they’re all paired up… huh? I don’t care enough about nin4 x matth14s, the author didn’t care enough about j3sper x w¥lan. In3j and k4z would’ve been ok if the author set it up well enough. It would’ve been nicer if it were a bit more of a slow burn, perhaps their relationship picking up in the second book. WHY did she have to force it to happen in the first?????? It felt so out of character honestly, like you set up k4z that way and then you tell me he acts like this…… if there were moments prior wherein k4z would act contrary to how people thought he was then it would’ve been believable. But legitimately his behavior blindsided me lol.

Nin4 being plus sized could’ve been handled better too. Oh i like eating, i’m indecently round (LIKE WHAT IS THIS), my jugs are big. What in the world

The use of foreign language feels… kinda forced and clunky? I’m all for worldbuilding, and it’s great that there’s diversity in this fictional world, but the foreign languages aren’t used in any way that furthers the narrative. It’s jarring, like when someone is speaking in an american english accent and then says croissant as cwahsahn. D

Anyway i’m surprised i finished it. Had to skim the last 50 pages because i just wanted to see how it would end. Kinda expected the “twist” unfortunately. Also i cannot take anyone named p3kk4 r0llin5 seriously as a villain lmao

[stealyourhearts]

jrpgs in a nutshell

#fhgdgdggr #im right tho #they will flashback to something that happened 5 seconds prior #persona #persona 3 #persona 4 #persona 5 #ace attorney #danganronpa #jrpgs

[tempenensis]

a (sort of) comprehensive analysis of the second opening

So, this opening from what I saw really got people think. There’s so much to unpack here.

Heavy spoiler warning.  Also, very long post.

1. The cat and Gojo   

Right on to the first, we see this cat with only one eye illuminated perching on the window. There’s an allusion to Gege - who always draws themself as cyclops cat. But then there’s a scene with Gojo with one of his eyes shaded white. The one opposite of the cat. 

By now we knows that sometimes the opening of the anime can allude to the things happening in the manga. In addition to my previous post related to the lyrics of the song used, one of the possible explanation - if we consider the things already happens in the manga - that this might alluded to his sealing during the current arc. Another speculation is that he possibly actually loose one of them in the future to come. 

More liberal and loose speculation; one of his eyes is ‘stolen’ and then put into someone other - possibly an adversary and we may see another “Gojo” emerge as an enemy. The current villain is very capable of doing that.  

2. The Funeral 

The black clothes, the incense, the rain, and the solemn faces. It all alludes to a funeral. But whose funeral? There are two possibility - first is after Shibuya incident because Nanami is the only one who doesn’t wear black and he also doesn’t wear his glasses. The second one is they are paying respect after the the incident during exchange event with Kyoto school, as several staffs of Tokyo Jujutsu High are killed by Mahito when he infiltrates the school to obtain the fingers.

There’s also Gojo here, walking alone without umbrella because he actually doesn’t need it with his technique - with same atmosphere as a funeral. The interesting thing is the bouquet he brings -- blue flowers and white flowers.

Someone in twitter points that the blue flowers could be Periwinkle (in flower language means “lifelong friendship”) or American Blue (means “the bond between two people”), while the white flower is possibly lily - a common flower for funeral. As he is shown alone, this maybe indicates that he is in separate mourning from the rest of the Tokyo Jujutsu students and Nanami above. And yes, I mean Getou.

3. The Bubbles 

There is a saying that human life can be compared to bubbles in a stream. Mahito blowing bubbles here may alluded to him who plays so easily with human’s life. People are nothing but literally mere bubbles for him to toy with.

Especially here. If you see how this bubble break, it shapes like a jellyfish. Yes, it’s Junpei. This shows how he destroys Junpei’s life.

4. Chocolate desert 

Alludes to the curse manipulation power that the Fake!Getou coveted that he took control of Getou’s corpse. And then there’s fillings inside the chocolate ball - which maybe a nod to the ‘something’ inside that body - more specifically, inside the skull; the brain.   

5. Nanami’s death 

Nanami is only shown to be walking straight ahead - yes, that’s all he does in his life. Walk straight in the ‘right’ path of being a sorcerer after he returned from his office job. But where that got him? A half-eaten bread. 

Nanami is a foodie and his favorite food is bread. It is a foreshadowing of his death in the Shibuya arc on the hand of Mahito who is shown right after the bread scene. The ants may be a nod to the transfigured human that he kills just prior to Mahito killing him - leaving only his lower body, surrounded by transfigured human he defeats.    

Mahito here seemingly is doing the incarnation of the Kusouzu brothers - behind him is a human suspended in T-pose. That means this cour possibly cover the Origin of Obedience arc too.

6. Origin of obedience arc 

There’s a pretty sizable chunk of possibility that this cour probably covers up to Origin of Obedience arc. That Mahito above and this river with crystal-like structure. This is where Fushiguro does his first ryoiki tenkai to fight a curse who has one of Sukuna’s finger. In addition Sukuna here shown in a river - watching over him.

Also, here the original Kamo Noritoshi, which we only see during the flashback of the Kusouzu brothers - when they fight against Itadori and Kugisaki on the Yasohachi bridge. 

7. The traitor 

Utahime looking for something - rather, someone. Yes, the traitor in the Kyoto school as Gojo asks her. And then we get this shot of Kyoto students.  

Mechamaru is the only one in the shade - as he is the one traitor working with Fake Getou and Mahito because they have a deal. Literally shady - he is the traitor that Utahime is looking for and finally found. Subsequently, that deal with Mahito causes Mechamaru’s death.

8.  Yu-un and Hyakki Yakou

Yu-un (Playful cloud) is originally three-section staff special-grade cursed tool owned by Original Getou, which he used when he attacks the school and fights Yuuta in Vol. 0. Here Yu-un shown in the midst of ruins is a strong nod to Getou’s defeat during Hyakki Yakou and subsequently his death. Yu-Un is then picked up by the school and used by Maki to fight Hanami during Goodwill event arc. 

But Yuuta here is really just a cameo. He is with Miguel, ex-Getou family, maybe over there in Miguel’s original country. 

9. Three becomes Two 

The three of them are together during this scene. But during the flashing back scene sequences at the end of the opening after the guitar scene - there are only two of them.

You can probably imagine what will happen to Itadori. This just drive that point home. A strong nod to his death penalty.

10.  Flower and The Fish 

Another nod to Junpei after that bubble - the same fish that alluded to him as in the first opening. There are a lot of symbolisms here; firstly Junpei’s incident is what makes Itadori “blooms” as a sorcerer. This also supported by how the flower shape likes Itadori’s family crest here, which someone pointed out in twitter. 

Secondly, a nod to Itadori’s fight with Hanami - the special-grade curse with power based on plant and forest. Hanami has a cannon shaped like flower. Also, the first time Itadori does Kokusen (”Black Flash” - see? Black, like the color of the flower) is against Hanami. Another part of his growth as jujutsushi. 

And lastly, the flower is possibly black lily, which means “curse” that Gege mentions on one of the extra page. It is also drawn in Fushiguro’s flashback scene in the background of Tsumiki who is cursed and has fallen into a coma.

tl;dr: amazing opening. 100/10.

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk manga spoilers #brain vomit #jjk meta

[dangermousie]

Mousie’s absolutely subjective, very biased Top 10 web novels list

Please note that this is hardly aiming to be objective, if one can even be properly objective about a work of fiction. It is 110% based on my preferences, which means this list is heavy on the angst and has nothing set in the modern day. It is also heavily danmei-centric, even though I read way more het romance than danmei, because for whatever reason, most of the danmei I’ve read has been insanely good.

10. Return of the Swallow - one of the two non-danmeis on this list. Smart and nuanced and with a large cast of characters. Our heroine is a long-lost daughter of the family that is brought back in and has to cope with familial struggles, crazy royals, court intrigue, invasion et al. It’s SO GOOD! There is romance with the sexy smart enemy general but honestly, it’s the heroine that is the main selling point for me.

9. Transmigrator Meets Reincarnator - the only other non-danmei novel on this list, this was my very first web novel and what drew me into this insanity. This is just a ton of fun, probably the lightest novel on this list, not an ounce of angst to be found. But it’s hilarious and features competent heroine and tsundere hero and I will always love it for opening a new world to me. Anyway, our heroine transmigrates into the novel as the female lead. Unlike the original lead though she doesn’t want to seek adventures and angst - she just wants to comfortably live with the wealthy, nice husband heroine has. Alas, said husband is no longer nice since he has previously lived this story where he was betrayed by FL and then transmigrated/reincarnated into the past. Oh well, the heroine opens up businesses and makes friends. And eventually, her husband realizes his wife is way different this time around. This actually doesn’t have much romance, not until close to the end, but this is so fun I don’t care.

8. Lord Seventh - I am only partway through this so far, but it’s already on the list because it’s smart and somehow intense AND laid-back (not sure how this works, but it does) and is honestly just a really really solid and smart period novel, with the OTP a cherry on top of a narrative sundae. Plus, I love the concept of MC deciding he is not going for his supposedly fated love - he’s tried for six lifetimes, always with disaster, and he’s just plain done and tired. When he opens his life in his seventh reincarnation and sees the person he would have given up the world for, he genuinely feels nothing at all. (Spoiler - his OTP is actually a barbarian shaman this time around, thank you Lord!)

7. Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (MDZS) - oh come on, how are you even on this tumblr if you don’t know MDZS/The Untamed? This was my very first danmei and it’s so much fun! I love everything about it - the unreliable narrator, the looping structure, the main OTP, Wei Wuxian’s laidback, traumatized insouciance, everything. Anyway, the plot in the event you somehow transported here from 2005 is that the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Wei Wuxian, was defeated by the righteous sects over a decade ago and fell of a cliff to his death. Only now that same Wei Wuxian opens his eyes in another body and everything that was supposed to stay in the past starts again.

6. Heaven Official’s Blessing (TGCF) - people either love its meandering narrative, picaresque structure and cast of thousands, or find it a detriment compared to much more compact MDZS. I love it even more than MDZS for those very qualities. It does have a rock-solid, darling OTP, but what really elevates it to me are the MXTX trademark combo of snarky/light tone hiding a ton of trauma underneath, the insanely intricate world-building, and what it has to say about the nature of grace and goodness. Xie Lian is one of my top 5 web novel characters and probably in top 10 from anywhere. Oh, and while MXTX’s stuff is not as angsty for me as Meatbun’s or even Priest’s, there are always exceptions, and there is one chapter in this novel that pretty much broke me and sometimes I still flashback to it and feel unwell.

Anyway, what is it about? There is a commotion in the heavenly realm - Xie Lian, the Crown Prince of a long-destroyed kingdom, has ascended to Godhood. That in itself is not so exciting. However for Xie Lian this is the third time (!!!!) as he’s ascended and lost his godhood twice prior. And now, the biggest joke of the divine realm is back, throwing the heavenly realm into chaos. And elsewhere, Hua Cheng, one of the four most powerful demons of that Universe, sits up and takes notice.

5. Golden Stage - my perfect comfort novel. Probably the least angsty of any danmei novel on this list (which still means plenty angsty :P) It also has a dedicated, smart OTP that is an OTP for the bulk of the book - I think you will notice that in most of the novels in this list, I go for “OTP against the world” trope - I can’t stand love triangles and the same. Anyway, Fu Shen, is a famous general whose fame is making the emperor antsy. When he gets injured and can’t walk any more, the emperor gladly recalls him and marries him off to his most faithful court lackey, the head of sort of secret police, Yan Xiaohan. The emperor intends it both as a check on the general and a general spite move since the two men always clash in court whenever they meet. But not all is at is seems. They used to be friends a long time ago, had a falling out, and one of the loveliest parts of the novel is them finding their way to each other, but there is also finding the middle path between their two very different philosophies and ways of being, not to mention solving a conspiracy or dozen, and putting a new dynasty on the throne, among other things. It always makes me think, a little, of “if Mei Changsu x Jingyan were canon.”

4. Sha Po Lang - if you like a lot of fantasy politics and world-building and steampunk with your novels, this one is for you. This one is VERY plot-heavy with smart, dedicated characters and a deconstruction of many traditional virtues - our protagonist Chang Geng, a long-lost son of the Emperor, is someone who wants to modernize the country but also take down the current emperor his brother for progress’ sake and the person he’s in love with is the general who saved him when he was a kid who is nominally his foster father. Anyway, the romance is mainly a garnish in this one, not even a big side dish, but the relationship between two smart, dedicated, deadly individuals with very different concepts of duty is fascinating long before it turns romantic. And if you like angst, while overall it’s not as angsty as e.g., Meatbun stuff, Chang Geng’s childhood is the stuff of nightmares and probably freaks me out more than anything else in any novel on this list, 2ha included.

3. To Rule In a Turbulent World (LSWW) - gay Minglan. No seriously. This is how I think of it. it’s a slice of life period novel with fascinating characters and setting that happens to have a gay OTP, not a romance in a period setting per se and I always prefer stories where the romance is not the only thing that is going on. It’s meticulously written and smart and deals with character development and somehow makes daily minutia fascinating. Our protagonist, You Miao, is the son of a fabulously wealthy merchant, sent to the capital to make connections and study. As the story starts, he sees his friend’s servants beating someone to death, feels bad, and buys him because, as we discover gradually and organically, You Miao may be wealthy and occasionally immature but he is a genuinely good person. The person he buys is a barbarian from beyond the wall, named Li Zhifeng. It’s touch and go if the man will survive but eventually he does and You Miao, who by then has to return home, gives him his papers and lets him go. However, LZF decides to stick with You Miao instead, both out of sense of debt for YM saving his life and because he genuinely likes him (and yet, there is no instalove on either of their parts, their bodies have fun a lot quicker than their souls.) Anyway, the two take up farming, get involved in the imperial exams and it’s the life of prosperity and peace, until an invasion happens and things go rapidly to hell. This is so nuanced, so smart (smart people in this actually ARE!) and has secondary characters who are just as complex as the mains (for example, I ended up adoring YM’s friend, the one who starts the plot by almost beating LZF to death for no reason) because the novel never forgets that few people are all villain. There is a lovely character arc or two - watching YM grow up and LZF thaw - there is the fact that You Miao is a unicorn in web novels being laid back and calm. This whole thing is a masterpiece.

2. Stains of Filth (Yuwu) - want the emotional hit of 2ha but want to read something half its length? Well, the author of 2ha is here to eviscerate you in a shorter amount of time. This has the beautiful world-building, plot twists that all make sense and, at the center of it all, an intense and all-consuming and gloriously painful relationship between two generals - one aristocratic loner Mo Xi, and the other gregarious former slave general Gu Mang. Once they were best friends and lovers, but when the novel starts, Gu Mang has long turned traitor and went to serve the enemy kingdom and has now been returned and Mo Xi, who now commands the remnants of his slave army, has to cope with the fact that he has never been able to get over the man who stabbed him through the heart. Literally. This novel has a gorgeously looping structure, with flashbacks interwoven into present storyline. There is so much love and longing and sacrifice in this that I am tearing up a bit just thinking of it. If you don’t love Mo Xi and Gu Mang, separately and together, by the end of it, you have no soul.

1. The Dumb Husky and His White Cat Shizun (2ha/erha) - if you’ve been following my tumblr for more than a hot second, you know my obsession with this novel. Honestly, even if I were to make a list of my top 10 novels of any kind, not just webnovels, this would be on the list. It has everything I want - a complicated, intricate plot with an insane amount of plot twists, all of which are both unexpected and make total sense, a rich and large cast of characters, a truly epic OTP that makes me bawl, emotional intensity that sometimes maxes even me out and so much character nuance and growth. Also, Moran is my favorite web novel character ever, hands down.

Anyway, the plot (or at least the way it first appears) is that the evil emperor of the cultivation world, Taxian Jun, kills himself at 32 and wakes up in the body of his 16 year old self, birth name Moran. Excited to get a redo, Moran wants to save his supposed true love Shimei, whose death the last go-around pushed him towards evil. He also wants to avoid entanglement with Chu Wanning, his shizun and sworn enemy in past life. And that’s all you are best off knowing, trust me. The only hint I am going to give is oooh boy the mother of all unreliable narrators has arrived!

The novel starts light and funny on boil the frog principle - if someone told me I would be full bawling multiple times with this novel, I’d have thought they were insane, but i swear my eyes hurt by the end of it. I started out being amused and/or disliking the mains and by the end I would die for either of them.

#cnovel #2ha #yuwu #to rule in a turbulent world #lsww #sha po lang #golden stage #return of the swallow #transmigrator meets reincarnator #lord seventh #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #heaven official's blessing #the dumb husky and his white cat shizun

[spiderling-space]

Hey so this thought has been on my mind for like ages and I think that you'd be able to write a headcanon about it in a wonderful way, so I'm presenting this idea to you hehe ( I love ur blog so so so much btw!)

So let's say that whatever miracles of seven happened, that Yuu overblots. Being constantly pushed around by other students by being magicless, solving the idiot trio's problems, trying to survive overblots and dealing with Crowley's neglectful ass cheeks sure is not easy. With all the piled and bottled up negative emotions, Yuu like the previous boys, overblots. Yuu wasn't that hard to defeat cuz you know, they're magicless, but the twst boys did struggle and Yuu's quite the challenge too. So what if, after Yuu's overblot, they had a full on mental breakdown. Not like crying mental breakdown, they're full on SCREAMING, their voice are cracking too, and very painful to hear. They started to unconsciously harm themselves so they have to be tied down to prevent to hurt themselves further. How would the dormleaders react to that?

(Sorry for my English and if I ever break a rule, it's OK if you decide to not do this too. Btw I got this idea when I watch ATLA aka Aang the last airbender, for reference of the breakdown of Yuu just search "Azula's breakdown" that practically how their breakdown looked like :D)

I cant write headcanons because you basically wrote everything. I will just make comments and additions to this. first I mention the background, secondly Azula’s breakdown so non ATLA watchers can understand a little and lastly, MC having breakdown like Azula. For the record, I could write about ATLA for pages since it is something I love since 2005. LOL This became a bit meta xd

You can join the discord server here 😉🤣

Firstly, the back ground:

I was 7 years old when ATLA started airing. I’d be excited to get back home to watch ATLA after school. Azula’s breakdown was awful back then when I first watch it as a kid. And of course, when they aired the episodes again and again. I rewatched again because I remembered the show being dope when I was in 12th grade which was stress relief while studying for university exams, and then I rewatched last year and even founded a Zutara server. Now I’m getting back to the point. In the last two rewatching, I saw Azula in a different light and her breakdown at the end of the show was understandable. I can recommend some ATLA meta that you might like. 

Secondly, Azula’s breakdown: 

Azula lost everything. In the flashbacks, you saw she was getting along with Zuko, laughing and playing tag until Ozai’s influence on her grew while Ursa showed more affection towards Zuko since Ozai basically hated Zuko. These two triggered each other and it grew like snowball effect which came to the point that Ozai-Azula and Ursa-Zuko. She didn’t get love from Ozai, she was just a puppet, someone to empower him more, not his daughter meanwhile to Ursa, she was a monster. Azula was 8 years old  Ursa disappeared. Imagine how this would affect the child. After this, she had estranged brother that she was jealous of because of Ursa’s love, a father who manipulated her, and an uncle who was too in pain to do anything and he was more focused on Zuko. She only had Mai and Ty Lee as “friends” but it was toxic and Azula used fear to control them. After Zuko got banished, Mai and Ty Lee went to their own places, leaving Azula alone with Ozai. Just when Zuko got back, she was being like the last times, cruel teasing, Mai and Ty Lee with her. Later, Zuko went away and probably got lectured by Ozai for her lie. Mai and Ty Lee stood against her. In the end, she had no one. Ozai didn’t want her with him either because he only wants power. Being alone drew her to the edge. In the Royal Hair Washing, the girl sje fired had her face. Her self hatred was palpable. She started to reflect this via Ursa, the mother who thought her as monster and didn’t love her like she did Zuko. I believe she would have had breakdown if she actually killed Zuko. At the end, she couldn’t handle it anymore. Being all alone, not being loved, self hatred and finally failing at something which is something she knows Ozai would never tolerate like he did with Zuko. This 14-year-old wouldn’t be able to handle it anymore and had breakdown.

Now last section, MC having breakdown like Azula’s:

Let’s see the things MC went through:

Stripped away from home

Doesn’t have much memory of it

Is thrusted into a world so foreign to them, where everything is foreign to them. There is no familiar thing that can make them recall home or feel at home

Is forced to study things that they have no prior info where the others have prior info and they are expected to ace the tests. This puts on pressure on regular students, can’t imagine the pressure they would feel since they barely understand the magic.

Is treated like trash by everyone at least once. From the first moment they came to Twisted Wonderland, they were like dirtbag. Dire gave them a house where they could get Hepatitis A to C, tetanus, hypothermia and any other disease. They have lived in that state for months and the house barely got fixed by the end of exams. They got belittled or used by almost all characters at least once. Examples: Vil calling them nobody; Azul trying to take the only thing they have from them, the dorm; Riddle calling them uneducated because not having magical parents; Leona acting like they are a toy in E2; Jamil literally manipulating their choice; sometimes NPC characters talked; Cater making them do his work etc.

They are given more than a person should handle. They are not certificated psychologist, they aren’t superhuman, they don’t have super healing... They are just human but has to fight enemies than can easily kill them if it were not the magic users around them. They are given the task of dealing with the emotional breakdown of the other people.

All of these are building up more and more. Maybe they started to get along with people after the belittlement and being used but every new character does this. At one point, it will be too much and they will think “they are only nice to me because I did a favor to them. If not for that, they wouldn’t be nice to me” which would lead to self doubt. When one starts doubting themselves, everything else starts to go down. Also, new characters treating them that way adds salt to the wound.

MC isn’t a professional psychologist. They can’t handle other people’s issues without taking a toll at themselves. They don’t even catch a break between everything.

Dire is deliberately keeping them away from home as they all do the errands he say. To him, what MC wants doesn’t matter much. The game doesn’t show but if MC has family and friends or pets, you can’t tell me that they wouldn’t miss them once or see, hug them or know their state, alive-dead, healthy-sick etc. 

Lastly not being invincible. The end of Episode 5 shows this well. They couldn’t stand against Grim who isn’t as powerful as the other overblot characters. They are mortal who can get hurt easily.

Now all these build up meanwhile we don’t see an MC centered chapter, how they are etc. It’s all about the others. Maybe there were a few chapters asking if MC is okay after everything but it feels like it is in the second plan. 

Everything that I mentioned can lead to a breakdown like Azula’s. Everything is just too much to handle and they don’t talk with a professional about it. When they finally let out everything, it feels much better, screaming out their lungs, lashing out like all of them did. They are finally letting out all of their emotions, crying and screaming; yet still feels better than bottling everything up. They think maybe that’s how overblot characters felt.

All in all, everyone in NRC needs a counselor.

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst mc #twisted wonderland mc #MC/Yuu #twisted wonderland meta #twst meta #twst yuu #twisted wonderland Yuu

[mega-bastard]

Bitch in Heat Stuck Under Debris Gets WRECKED

a miki mouse whorehouse collab, the m.list you can find here 

cw: sexual harrassment, abo themes, dubcon kinda

as the poor quality picture can’t really show you, I got stuckage and I chose Bakugo with the finishing touch of making it ABO <3 It’s also two days late but shhhhh we don’t talk about it uwu also 2.7 words of pain enjoy 

katsuki bakugou is becoming a thorn in your side.

you’ve both been metaphorically and somewhat literally glued to each others sides since highschool. it’s not necessarily a bad thing, to be quite frank katsuki is something of a deterrent in a world of second genders and pheromones— something you capitalized on in high school.

being an omega hero isn’t something entirely world shattering, but it’s a position that comes with lots of stereotypes— stereotypes you fought tooth and nail to fight against in your younger years. being one of four omegas in your class was...irritating, to say the least. lots of preconceived notions that you needed to be helped with trivial things, and while your classmates intentions came from a good place it was maddening. save for katsuki, back when he had no restraint with his anger and aggression, he didn’t coddle you like your classmates did. Labeled a brute for his actions towards his omega classmates in trivial interaction or sparring, you thrived on the normality— katsuki was an ass to everyone. Your omega was placated, finally encountering an alpha who wasn’t belittling her with preconceived daintiness.

it was easy to hang near katsuki, ignoring the atrocity that was his vocabulary. eventually like the rest of the peanut gallery that was the bakusquad, you just existed alongside katsuki— which meant that you grew on him. katsuki swears up and down that you’re all a nuisance but you’ve seen him go up to bat for all you at some point, you knew you’d all made some sort of ragtag pack with one another. this was rather amazing to you at the time, not to sell yourself short but you’d never really imagined belonging to a close knit group of friends— especially realizing that they understood when it was appropriate to step in for you. katsuki in particular had a knack for being at the right place at the right time.

During your second year you fumbled.

interning with miruko had its perks, a top 5 hero with raw strength, cunning, and the drive to just keep going— and an omega. landing and internship with her had been a dream, even more-so when you learned she’d been watching you since your first year because of the festival. bright eyed and eager, nothing could have dampened your spirits— neither katsuki and his usual moody behavior or the standoffish alpha from shiketsu. yes, you all had landed an internship with miruko and part of you was...worried? katsuki had never looked down on heroes based on their second genders but you couldn’t speak for the shiketsu alpha, both alphas interning under an established omega hero put your inner omega on edge— you didn’t quite know why though. but you chose to squash the feeling and enjoy your internship with who was essentially your idol and continue on.

then you started getting sexually harassed.

his name was omori kisai and he was the worst. hailing from shiketsu, known for their dignified schooling, he was far from it. salacious comments dropped when no one was listening, less that appropriate touching when passing by and just general ick that had your skin crawling and omega snarling. it was easy to brush it off as banter the first time, section off the awkward contact as an accident. The second time you made it clear the comments were not liked and the touches far from appropriate, after the third time you’d snap an insult or have to hold a trembling fish from making contact. but it was coming to a head and your suppressors could only do so much to hide your souring scent. looking back you should have said something, but your pride had told you that it was a necessary step to overcome and push through— that he wouldn’t be the last. it weighed you down, day by day, a heavy cloud that wouldn’t let up. one particular bad timed comment brought tears to eyes and shame to your entire being.

thankfully, as time would come to show, katsuki tended to nose into your dilemmas.

the day prior to the abrupt end of your harassment  you’d been tripped up by a villian and had fallen a sizeable distance into a pitiful excuse of pond. of course, omori had taken this as an open invitation to mock you and then offer you his shitty hero costume cloak— not without hinting at you returning the favor ‘somehow’. yeah right. you had stomped off, unaware of katsuki’s presence nearby. come next day, omori avoided you like the plague and katsuki not so subtly stuck to your side like an unwilling chowchow— all growly and temperamental. but his constant presence rubbed his scent off on you. despite his less than chummy attitude, you weren’t mad; katsuki smelled like cinnamon spice and whiskey with hints of burnt caramel— absolutely overpowering yet decadent all the same.

you tried not to think about just how much you enjoyed his smell. your omega was purring about it.

the omori incident was the beginning of katsuki’s subtle hovering. though you pried the truth of his involvement in omori leaving you alone after offhandedly bringing it up to mina and jirou one day, katsuki helped you out of situations as invasively as possible time and time again. by the end of third year it was no secret to you of your classmates teasing of your relationship with katsuki; an amiable and prideful omega and the irritable powerhouse of an alpha. you brushed it off because...well you didn’t know why, but katsuki’s seeming indifference to the teasing had you quelling every jittery happiness your inner omega expressed at the thought of katsuki being your alpha.

now, three years out of highschool and beginning to climb the ranks, katsuki was becoming testy— and for the life of you the reason couldn’t be more opaque.  you both work at the same agency, and due to the nature of your quirks you spend all your time together due to their compatibility. compatibility was a bitter word for you, katsuki and yours supposed compatibility had been talked about for some time now but the sobering reality is that perhaps you two were simply good friends— and now sharing your omegas endearment for the explosive alpha had reared its ugly head.

your heat was a week away and already you felt the familiar fatigue begin to lap at you alongside general moodiness. all that coupled with the annoying need to be around katsuki was maddening and sprinkling his own extra grouchy attitude on top and you were ready to snap. in hindsight, that should have been your cue to take an extra week off— instead you chose to once again to champion pride instead of your intellect.

you could have stayed home this morning, you should have.

patrol had been slow, not particularly unusual but favored nonetheless. face raised to the slowly dipping sun you couldn’t help but sigh, the warmth of the late afternoon sun was heaven sent-- you could sleep standing up with much issue. it remided you katsuki, strangely enough though most things did recently.

the sound of screaming and rushing feet shook you from your drowsy stupor. Set on alert, you spied the source of the sudden discordance and found several villains causing a commotion. quickly calling for backup for you before finding yourself facing a hulking mass of green charging you head on. tranquility gone, it was time to fight.

the ache in your body could not be more apparent but your humiliation ran more rampant in your system than any ache or pain could, your fatigue more than present as your body hummed with warmth. leave it to you to get stuck face down and ass up amongst the trashed ruins of what was an office building, weighed down between a broken desk and a collapsed bookshelf. the villain you had engaged with, some self-named idiot calling himself cruel croc, packed a punch and your bruised body and rendered office floor were a testament to that. of course, you’d done quite the bit of damage to him yourself before the entire floor collapsed underneath you both— rendering the meathead unconscious under a rather hefty pile of concrete and debris whereas you were pinned and to utterly weak to do much.

the thrum of your heat was beginning its path of vengeance through your body, feeling too pliant to get yourself out of what was otherwise easy to fix problem. you were feeling it, bad. the heat of your clothed cunt was beginning to become too apparent, unconsciously squeezing your thighs to provide relief to no avail. no, this could not be happening right now of all times. but as much as your inner monologue fought to try and will away your heat, the warmth was becoming too much and sudden breeze of wind had you trembling and whining. the feel of slick beginning to wet your hero costumes spandex set your hazing thoughts into sudden panic, if cruel croc woke up or if another villain came across you would they be above...the thought alone could’ve made you puke. flashbacks to second year had you bucking wildly for freedom, you wouldn’t let anyone have the opportunity for—

“ OI! Shitty ‘mega were are you? Are you—“

you stilled, biting hard to keep your mouth shut. your omega was whimpering, desperate for the alpha, HER alpha to relieve her from her heat. on a normal day she could melt into his scent, but right now? she could drown in it and die happy. with his scent getting stronger the closer katsuki clambered toward you, the more the head haze grew-- the slicker your thighs became. the whimper you let loose was pitiful, the need for some sort of stimulation to your cunt becoming near painful the longer you remained so close yet so far from katsuki. the pathetic little “alpha” you whined as you heard him quickly approach from behind would’ve been utterly embarrassing to you in any other situation.

but if you could have turned to see katsuki, you would’ve been met with the look of an unmistakably feral alpha-- pupils dilated to hell, fingernails blackened, and canines elongated and sharpened. but what you lacked in sight, you could hear and smell.

katsuki was the definition of an alpha as is, but the way he was pushing his scent out was like a big red sign that screamed ‘DANGER’. To you, it had you feeling utterly submissive-- if you weren’t already face down and ass up you certainly would’ve moved into position.  practically salivating at the thought of what katsuki could do--

the heated palm on the globe of your ass is thought pausing, the sudden heated touch coaxing a sugary sweet moan from deep in your throat-- the small touch quickly turning to rough palming at your moaning. tt feels so good, but you want more. need more. 

“Please, need more Alpha” it's breathy and whiny, something you're far from day to day but it feels too natural escaping you. mewling at the ghost of a touch over your clothed cunt, your blubbering when it presses harder-- escalating you to tears of frustration when it ceases. practically feeling katsuki’s harsh breathing near your cunt you begin to wiggle and wail with all manner of unrestrained vigor; chanting alpha and katsuki like a prayer and begging for relief like a sinner for forgiveness. it’s working, you know it is, if katsuki’s breathing is anything to go by but he refuses any further touching. you want katsuki everyday, but right now you need him. 

“Only want you Katsuki, please it’s only been you,” you hiccup your words through a shrill plea, but the tearing of your soaked spandex sends an excited chill down your spine. your legs tremble with excitement when katsuki grips the tops of your thighs and spreads them-- revealing your drooling cunt. it’s both too much and not enough all at once and you wiggle once more, yelping from a smack to your left ass cheek. it’s not particularly painful, not even as katsuki rubs over it right after the hit, but it quells your wiggling nonetheless. you open your mouth to urge him on but he beats you to it.

“No one else, you got that ‘mega? No one gets to see you like this, no gets to touch you like this-- your mine,” he punctuates his declaration with two of his deliciously thick fingers in your cunt and you squeal, “ you got that? I’m your alpha, always have been always will be.” nodding despite yourself, you struggle for words with his fingers pumping in and out alongside the ghost of pressure on your clit “Yes! Yes, I’m yours Katsuki!” you babble your words already teetering on the precipice of your first orgasm. it takes a pickup in pace and a rough rub along your clit and your wailing, slick streaming down your thighs as your first orgasm crashes into you.

despite the pleasant haze in your head, you faintly hear zippers being undone and the shuffling of clothes. licking your lips, you perk your ass up as much as the heavy bookcase allows, purring in excitement like a spoiled cat. The rough grab of your hips leaves you gasping, feeling the length of katsukis dick along your thigh-- long and heavy. you're salivating as he lines himself up with your weeping cunt, ramming his entire length in you with little regard. stars shoot across your vision and your ears deafen, crying out at being so full. it feels wonderful being stuffed this full and you babble it to katsuki. if you could see him, you would see just how prideful and smug he looked-- only he can take care of you like this, none of the other shitty alphas can take care of you this well.

katsuki sets a rough pace, drawing himself out slowly like he’s aiming for you to feel every vein of his dick before slamming back into you. your poor cunt clenches sporadically, drawing groans and growls from your alpha and all you can do is choke on broken moans because the way he feels churning your insides is downright sinful. you felt a band begin to tighten in your belly, your broken moans evolving into babbling-- how good katsuki was making you feel and how he was the only one who made you feel this good. it spurred him onward, fucking into you with more vigor alongside groans of your names and his own praise for you. “Good fuckin ‘mega”, “Takin’ me so well”, and “My perfect little mate” were some of the praise you could catch and had you preening. All of it combined you felt the band tighten and you couldn’t stop yourself from sobbing out. feeling the base of Katsuki’s length begin to swell, you could only salivate at the thought of being knotted.

“Want your knot Katsuki! Alpha I need it”

 at your blubbering demand, katsuki faltered in pace for only a moment before a deep mix of a groan and growl ripped from his throat. grabbing and bending your leg upwards he fucked deeper and faster into your battered cunt, the new angle sending you hurtling into your orgasm. eyes rolled back and tongue, you felt utterly boneless-- momentarily brain dead before screaming out at Katsuki knotting you, his own groan of pleasure mixing with yours as he filled you impossibly full with his seed. 

 trembling underneath him, you were only a fraction aware of movement above you before the weight of the bookcase vanished from you. weakly you glance back up at your alpha. your surprised to see just how feral he looks, no doubt you’ve pushed him into his rut. whimpering as he moves down upon you, he nibbles and kisses along your jaw and neck before biting down on you scent gland. a flash a white hot pain curtailed by just as intense pleasure wracks your wrecked body but the dopy look of happiness pulls a low purr from katsuki.

you wanna say something, anything, but your too exhausted and as katsuki knot subsides you let another weak whimper as he removes himself-- feeling his seed spill from your battered cunt. he pulls a quiet moan from you as he gathers some of it a pushes back in-- and a glance at his smug face lets you know that he’s decidedly not done with you yet.

#miki mouse whorehouse collab #whorehouse compilation [rawdog 1080p] (try not to cum) #stuckage #bakugou katuski x reader #bakugo katsuki x reader #bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #abo #alpha/beta/omega #omegaverse #alpha katsuki #omega reader #self indulgent in that I want more alpha katsuki #so #I'll do it myself #happy belated valentines whores <3

[jjkpls]

the wishlist (m) - 5

“She broke up with me.”

> genre : Angst, fluff

> pairing : jeon jungkook x reader (f)

> words : 4k

> content/warnings : back at it again w/ the bff2l; one sided love, lot of pining; explicit language; ambiguous infidelity; jjk heartbroken & crying; some wholesome flashbacks to make you swoon

previous - next

The next box arrives about a month or so later. You haven’t seen Jungkook in a while. He had been out of town, hopping from shop to shop, completing a series of long-awaited guest positions. 

He’s kept you up with his days and his appointments as much as he could, sending you dorky selfies, little videos of city landscapes you’ve never seen before, and exhausted late vocal notes made in tiny, with dragged on, mumbled words, to wish you luck and send you some courage for work. 

You did not expect that the day you’ll meet again, he’d be so different from the Jungkook you prefer and left a month ago.

It takes you a few seconds to realize. At first, you’re preoccupied with the sudden set of needles stinging your insides when you hear the peculiar sound of your front door being unlocked. There’s a very finite amount of probability that it’s not him, he's the rudest of your tiny group of friends and the only one that feels comfortable enough in your home to invite himself without any prior warning.

It’s him, your best friend and subject of too many of your both daily and nightly thoughts and preoccupations.

Once he appears in the door frame, with his heavy coat on his heavy XXL sweatshirt, in his heavy military pants, face turned down hidden by his hair, the magic thing, that grows so mysteriously quick. There’s the little explosion of warmth in your chest. The one that makes you smile tenderly without meaning to. He’s allowed to see how happy he makes you, as a friend anyway. Everybody smiles this way when he walks into a room.

Your eyes catch sight of a box, all white, that fits in his hand. Your eyes roll on reflex. You’re about to curse again. It’s not nice, you don’t want to, to attack him as soon as he returns to you but he’s asking for it, isn't he?

He’s still in the hallway, slowly slipping his shoes off, focus fixed on the present in his hand. The time he takes doing it and the seemingly seriousness you feel irradiating from his aura, confuse you.

Jungkook shakes his head twice, the way he does, kind of like a wet puppy would, before setting the box on the counter of your open kitchen.

It’s only when he starts walking towards you, that his head raises up, just a bit, enough for his eyes to meet yours through his hair. He has a tiny smile as a greeting. He looks really upset. 

He should be bouncing on the balls of his feet, he should be doing some TikTok cringe dance moves to make you laugh or yell some greetings in a dialect. He has a lot of peculiar, very Jungkook ways to celebrate meeting you again after a while. Even if neither of you has ever said the words, you do miss each other a lot when you can’t see each other, and the excitement that blooms during your reunions translates that. 

But he’s sad today. It’s obvious. 

When he takes a seat beside you on the couch, he avoids your gaze. You’re agape, watching him with probably too much insistence, a hand holding a spoon half-filled with yoghurt in the air.

These few moments are decisive. They’ll determine rather he’ll talk or not. Jungkook, for someone who cries easily, is not good with feelings and sharing them aloud. Sometimes he can, often he can’t. He’s told you not to worry about it before, that it was fine because sometimes he just didn’t need to, he just wanted a shoulder to lay his head-on. 

“You okay, Guk?”

He shrugs. You just have the time to catch his upper lip sucked in, a twinkle in his eye before he’s switching position, bumping into you and hitting his own shin against the coffee table like a giant dog, unaware of his own growth, would. Only to settle for an impressively tiny huddle against your side, cheek pressed to your shoulder. 

So that’s how it’ll be. 

It’s heartbreaking, torturesome. You always feel miserable when you know he’s sad but not knowing the reason makes it a thousand times worse. You might be the same vengeful kid you used to be. The one who’ll inquire straight away who made him cry and immediately went on her way to beat that reason up -it being another child or the troll of a tree that made him trip. 

Except you are grown-ups now. He knows he can deal with his problems on his own and he would probably not let you go and try to beat up everyone -he probably doesn’t believe you can too, even though he’d be wrong about that. 

Jungkook tears his hand out of his pocket only to mime you to turn up the volume of the television. You do so and the pretty hand is gone and if it wasn’t for his quiet sniffling and the heavy press on your side, you wouldn’t know he’s really here with you at all. 

Your heart hurts the whole duration of the shitty afternoon movie, even if having his warmth next to you helps a little. He leaves later the way he entered, mostly silently, only smiling a bit when you smooch the side of his head and squeeze his forearm in a wordless comforting effort.

Guk

Sorry for earlier

Guk

It was nice seeing you though

You

Don’t be sorry. Can you call?

Guk

Yes, in 5

The five minutes turn out to be twenty. You wonder, hoping to be wrong, how numerous those tears were that he needed twenty minutes to dry them. 

When he finally calls, voice quiet and throat dry, whispering through the phone straight in your ear, uneasiness settles deep and heavy in your stomach as you know, you were right. 

“What happened, Jungkook?”

He must not have heard you this soft and gentle for a while because you can hear a humourless chuckle you recognize as incredulity. He clears his throat a first time, inhales deep and has to clear it a second time before he can start, still choking out on a syllable or two. 

“She broke up with me.”

The gasp that escapes you, loud and obnoxious, could not have been faked. This news is hardly believable to you. First of all, because, to your greatest guilty despair, Jungkook and his girlfriend, who’ve been dating for almost a year, are probably the embodiment of The Power Couple. There’s no doubt, in all the people that know them, that they are meant to be. They look good together. They are on the same page, always, it seems. They’re beautiful and enviable, an example of a match from Heaven, healthy and aesthetic if that's even a mentionable point.

You can’t, even in your deepest, darkest fantasies, have imagined them to break up. 

But the thing that makes it all the harder to comprehend is that she is the one who did it. The girl is great. She’s beautiful, she’s smart and funny, so you heard. She has that glamour to her, with her dainty pretty milky hands and long thin milky neck, with her silky, shiny black locks wondrously floating over her shoulders. She is great, matches him well.

She is not that far behind him but she's still not Jeon-Jungkook-great.

How could she have broken up with him? Someone dumping him makes no sense to you. 

“That’s-“ You catch yourself before the words slip out clumsily. You’ve never really been talented at comforting people with words, especially a crying Jungkook which is the equivalent of your very own kryptonite. “I’m so sorry, Jungkook.” And you mean it. Even more so when you hear him snivel hard. You’ve never allowed yourself to, even just for yourself, in the quiet and discreet comfort of your own head, wish for that to happen. Because if there’s one thing that you want more than anything else, more than having him for yourself, more than your own fulfilment, it’s his happiness. And he was happy with Jiyeun. He’s got the girl he had a crush on for months and they went so well together. “But why? Did she give you a reason?”

You hate how eager you sound asking. The question is so pressing though. You wish to know so bad why, in what circumstances, Jeon Jungkook gets dumped. 

“She-“ There’s a sob he swallows back. “I know what you’ll say,” Your eyebrows dip low on reflex. You couldn’t imagine the reason. He must have really fucked up but Jungkook is not the kind to fuck up. Even when he’s annoying, even when his mindset on something turns a bit auto-centric, he’s too compassionate, he’s too considerate and loving, to suddenly stop wondering how the person facing him is feeling and act without care, hurt them, in any way. It’s just not his kind. So what did he do that even you’ll have a word to say about it. “Spare me because she’s done enough.” 

It takes another set of minutes for him to gather himself, find most of his voice back clear enough for you to decipher. You show yourself patient, not saying anything and leaving him all the time that he needs. In all honesty, in the darkness of your curtain closed bedroom, tucked comfortably in your mountain of pillows and blankets, with your phone stuck to your ear and just the quiet sound of his breathing and humming to himself to break the silence, but rock it rather than disturb it, it’s easy to be patient. Feels like an ASMR. A class A type of ASMR, his breathing to your ear could so easily lead you to sleep. 

“Yesterday, she came to welcome me back and-“ Rather than hurt, his tone sounds weakened by shame now. What the hell did he do? “She found the- the thing I brought for you today.”

The fucking idiot.

“Oh my God.” You feel instant nausea. It's not like you never thought about it. You wondered, multiple times, if she was aware that her boyfriend was buying you these. You never allowed dipping far in the questioning because what would be the point? Ultimately, it's his relationship. And it's his way of shaping your friendship. If she kept smiling pleasantly, asking politely, as she always would, how you're doing whenever you happened to cross her path, leaving his apartment, or visiting his shop, it was fine by you. It must have been fine by her. She might have known about it, or she might not, didn't really matter. Jeon Jungkook is a grown-ass man, who's allowed to make his own decisions, no matter if they make sense to you, or her, or whoever.

But he's a fucking idiot.

If she didn't know, if he didn't warn her, and now she's mad after learning about it, and he's surprised and he's sad then he's a fucking idiot.

“She asked if it was for her, I wasn’t gonna lie!” Fantastic. He's passed the shock, soaked in wrath now. That was quick.

"For fuck's sake, Jungkook!"

"What?" He sounds a bit hysterical on the phone, voice rough and angry, incredulous, even mad that you might suggest he's wrong. Obviously, he already knew you'd react this way, hence the primary warning. "You're my best friend. I get to gift you whatever the fuck I want." He whisper-yells, suddenly very much aware again of the late time and the quiet calmness he'd perturbed. "She-"

"I don't think that's the issue, is it? Did she- Did you tell her that- Like, nothing was up?" You don't know how to articulate what you mean to ask. It sounds so bizarre, so irrealistic, the idea of something romantic or sexual going on between you two. It sounds so ludicrous you can't even say it. And again, you're scared to say the words. You don't know how they'll sound leaving your mouth. Suspicious, maybe revealing.

You owe to ask the question though. Because the cause of the sudden nausea comes from one surprisingly major reason, you would hate for her to hate you. To think of you as the bad guy, the massive bitch who stole her boyfriend. It shouldn't matter but it does.

"What do you mean?"

"That it was just friendly. Did you say that to her?" You stutter, largely on edge.

"Of course, I did." He doesn't seem to notice. Or to pay attention to the, evident to your ear, change in your tone. "She said that it didn't matter." You bite your tongue, along with the couple of words threatening to slide off it. Quite frankly, Jungkook is a weirdo with his own intake on the world surrounding him, she chose to date that special, in a lot of different ways, one, however, you can fairly understand that she wouldn't accept any explanation, of any kind, for this situation. "Do you get that? If she thought I was cheating, I'd understand that she'd be mad but- it's not even the case!"

You try to focus on the essence of the conversation, annihilate the faint words you can read in between the lines. The ones that say that even his girlfriend, in those strange circumstances, couldn't imagine the two of you as more than friends. Just as he couldn't. Just as you can't either.

"She knows and she's still mad. But- I do- I was just curious about it."

"About what?"

"The toys." He pouts, barely articulate like the kid he really is.

"Why didn't you get them for her, then? She's your girlfriend."

There's a pause after your words coming from him.

"She hates those." The pout sounds so thick now, in between the sniffs, you wonder if his mouth won't stay stuck in this position, like a cute permanent raspberry on his cute little dumb face. "I did once and she- threw it in my face and called me a freak."

"Jungkook." You sigh. "That explains a lot, by the way." This comment might be mainly for yourself. He doesn't need an explanation, as it seems. He doesn't seem that troubled about the whole deal, about that new hobby he's picked for himself. But you did. It's hard to simply content yourself with a "well, it is what it is" and nothing more.

He's been curious about them, couldn't buy them for Jiyeun because she wouldn't use them and make him feel guilty about his interest. He's sort of living it by procuration this way.

Now you feel guilty. He can't have found much satisfaction from your reviews if you ever have given him any. And she called him a freak. What a bitch. You wouldn't have imagined that coming from her.

Your mind is a mess.

"And it makes you happy. I see the way-" You hear the friction of tissues, the squeaking of his bed, and the deep sigh that follows when, as you picture, he finds a comfortable position on his back. "You seem much better. Less stressed and-" You cannot deny that. Even though it's partially frustrating, to think that he has this very unpleasant picture of you, of the version of you preceding the very first orgasm brought by him - sort of. You are feeling considerably better. Even if you have to force yourself not to abuse the masturbatory habits, not wishing to turn into a jerk off crazed teen like you once was when your hormones were fucking you up, it helps a lot. Sometimes it's a late-night quickie, other times a longer seance to celebrate the start of the weekend, or find force for the beginning of a new week.

"What was that again? Youthful?" You wonder aloud, an annoyingly amused smile on your face.

"Rejuvenated." He's laughing a bit. And for that, all the turmoil he's been putting you through feels fine and worth it. When you think about the heartbreaking tone of his voice when you first heard it through the phone, it eases an incredibly heavyweight to your heart, enchants you to know that he can still laugh, and you can still be the one reminding him how to. Unfortunately, his heart's just recalled how to hurt and the ache is back as quick as it pretended to leave an instant ago. "She said to never call her again." He confides with a hearable sorrow.

"She didn't mean it." It's surprisingly easy to be a good friend to him. The words you know he needs to hear not even hurting that bad.

"I don't know. We never fought like that before."

"Of course, you didn't. But it's been a year, it ought to happen at some point."

"But if she won't even let me talk to her, how am I supposed to make it better?"

"Be patient and leave her time to cool down." He sighs, already defeated. "Maybe send her a vocal note, she'll listen when she's ready.” They're awfully nice when he sends some to you. “It'll be fine." You're made to be together, probably, you should add. You could add, it might help him immensely, to dry the tears you can picture filling up his eyes. It's a little too much though. You're not that strong of a masochist to force this on you.

"How do you know that?"

"I just do. Don't worry too much." He can't. His heavy silence precisely screams that. "Do you wanna come to my island? I'll let you run in my flowers if you want."

It makes him laugh once again. The lovely, most satisfying sound to your ear.

"That's sweet of you." And it is, extremely sweet of you. If there's one thing that you despise is him sprinting through the mindfully planted flower beds of your Animal Crossing island. It pisses you off. Even more so when he does it by accident than on purpose, because this shit happens way too often. And now, you're allowing him to do so. You're definitely too good at being his friend. "It's fine though. Turnips sell at 138 on mine if you're interested."

It's your turn to be laughing now. You love how even with his heartbroken, upset and crying, he still picks up his Switch to check where's the turnips' stock at.

"Jungkook." I adore you.

You have for seemingly ever. Since the very first time you met.

You'd never forget it. How you almost passed out from laughing because of the street sign that nearly knocked him unconscious. His forehead was already bruising dark, eyes unfocused and shiny with tears. You didn't mean to laugh but he was adorable and funny, and even if you felt guilty for enjoying it, people don't run their faces into street signs every day. You called it in your own head a miracle.

He had to sit for a little while from how dizzy he felt. His ears were burning with embarrassment too, your uncontrollable giggling not helping. He just sat there, on a bench you had dragged him to, hands tucked in the pocket of his sweatshirt, waiting for you to allow him to leave.

The kid stood unbalanced the four times he tried to walk and even if at eleven, you had nothing close to a doctoral degree, you still felt like it was wrong to just let him stumble his way back home straight away. You had to hold him hostage for a little while. You had shared your homemade cookies with him, the ones you hid deep in your bag for you didn't want anyone to ask for a bite at school. You made him drink the whole content of your water bottle because drinking water is never an unhealthy thing to do, therefore, it felt like a good idea.

He was so shy that your own timidness quieted down enough to allow you to make conversation to him. Or more accurately talk over the silence and distract him. He giggled a lot and smiled with cute bunny teeth. Kept saying thank you for every bit of cookies you'd given him and once you had walked him home and he arrived safe and sound, he bowed very low, apologized and thanked you again.

You thought it'd be the end of it. He pretended to be going to the same school as you but you had never seen him also he was a few years younger.

The next day, and every single day after that, at recess, he would appear out of nowhere. Wearing his adorable smile, and a tint of red on his ears, a bunch of homemade cookies of his own filling up his pockets. As a puppy would, he'd follow you around with a certain distance until you waved him over, rolling your eyes, because if he was going to stick by your side, he might as well actually play with you.

The most precious friendship you have ever experienced bloomed from this seed. A friendship, at the start, mainly based on a shared interest for very sugary treats, marbles, and that common memory of him eating shit in this street sign. You didn't mean to remind him, it made him flush furiously each time and you were not that cruel, but you couldn't help bursting out in laughter whenever you'd walk home -with him or alone- and pass that sign. It's your favourite spot in your home town. You never miss an occasion to take a selfie for him whenever you go to visit your parents.

It's hard to define the moment your feelings, once purely platonic, changed. But there's a memory that feels notably significant.

A guy made you fall. A useless asshole, who in retrospect was not even worth a single crumble of your time. You were confused. As you often get, without really knowing why. Maybe it's just you, maybe it's for everyone the same. People start by being too good in your eyes, too good for you not to give them your all, and maybe build pyramides upon pyramides of expectations.

Until they're not anymore.

Suddenly, they hurt your feelings. They suck ass and you felt so invested emotionally, way too invested for it to be any kind of healthy, and their very human selves harm you straight in the heart, where it is the most painful.

It didn't feel like a mistake this time. Like any of the other times, at the beginning, of course, otherwise, it wouldn't catch you again and again.

You fell hard and it's Jungkook who picked you up. He had cooked for you, one of his mother's infamous recipes because he knew you wouldn't even bother eating otherwise. He had held you close. He had kissed the top of your head, your cheeks and your eyelids when a diehard tear had slipped. He had called you baby and sunshine and his little kitten. Had showered you in an unfamiliar type of loving. Something so soft, so tender and warm. Hands firm when they'd wrapped around you and pulled you in. Fingers gentle when they'd brush the hair out of your face. He took care of you, made you feel good in ways no one has ever had. You had not known him to be like that. Suddenly, he really felt like a man when he touched you, when he talked to you. He wasn't only a dorky little overgrown baby anymore. He was a man, shaped like one but also able to act like one. Able to take care of a woman, please one you were sure of it. And suddenly, you wanted, so desperately, to be that woman. To have the same free access you had on his usual candid-self, on this newly met man.

Of course, it's too ludicrous for you to ever act on it. But deep down, a naive tiny voice kept claiming, in the back of your mind, that you could spoil him. Very few people in this world know him the way you do, surely, no one can please him the way you could.

Guk

She listened to my note!!!

Guk

She said she'll make me miss her a bit more and then she'll call

It took less than a day for her to give him a sign. You're not surprised. It's hard not to miss him. You're not surprised but somehow, still, disappointed.

A/N: tadam!! i needed to include some flashbacks because i know my fellow f2l addicts just adore these, also, i just can’t get over writing kookie as a cute kid.

Guess what guys? there is only one chapter to go *sweats profusely* I- am worried. I hope you keep enjoying it and will enjoy the rest. :] For now, let me know your thoughts. I hope you have a sweet, lazy Sunday and wish you a lovely, peacful week! bises!

As always please ask to be tagged for the final chapter on this post

#btswriterscollective #networkbangtan #ggukienet #bts smut #bts fanfic #bts angst #bts fluff #jungkook angst #jungkook smut #jungkook fluff #jungkook fanfic #my writing

[theseerasures]

For the meta thing, how about big sisters with absent mothers: Winter and Yang? Like, how they dealt with things differently and what a friendship between them would look like

anon i just want you to know that as soon as received this ask i barged into my girlfriend’s room to be like “is this you???” because this ask is so EXQUISITELY tailored to my personal interests that i was like “literally who else would cater to me like this” and it was not her, apparently!!! so thank you very much for this ask.

of course i have SO MANY thoughts about this topic that it took me a complete month to marshal them into something faintly coherent, if staggeringly long, so. i hope it’s worth the wait.

S(chnee)-side: how to lose brothers and alienate sisters

let’s start from some well-trodden ground: the season 5 character shorts, and their subsequent caricaturization via Chibi, which posit the Yang vs. Winter dichotomy as something like “Yang loves Ruby by diving into a monster’s mouth for her, and telling her she always has her back, and Winter does the same for Weiss by...siccing monsters on her, and telling her that she won’t always be around to save her from them.” much hay has already been made about the reasons why the two of them would act in the ways they did, so for the purposes of my own meta i’m going to skip over those, and concentrate on how content since season 5 has updated these conceptions.

and on Winter’s end of things, these conceptions have been updated by showing that she’s, uh.

...full of shit.

we’ve now had TWO instances of Winter going above and beyond to protect someone vulnerable. the first time was for Penny, with whom she has a sisterly bond, and the second time was for Ren, with whom she has...exchanged a few lines of dialogue. if she’s so ready and willing to hurl herself bodily into the path of an aggressor for someone who is basically a stranger, then why all the pageantry with Weiss about how she can’t (or won’t) save her? did she carve some kind of blood relative exemption into her saving people thing? does it only apply to people who wear a lot of green?¹

to properly address this question--and to bring in the Willow of it all--i think we should step back and ask: how does Winter actually feel about the Schnee name?

not Jacques’ name, mind. nor anything he did to besmirch it. Willow’s name, and Winter’s birthright.

because what has always been interesting to me is that while Weiss has talked about reclaiming or rehabilitating the Schnee name from their father’s meddling and still clearly wants to reconcile herself with it, even after being disinherited, Winter has only ever talked about distancing. it’s entirely possible that she had similar aspirations when she was around Weiss’ age and was just more thoroughly disabused of them, but my point stands: Winter shows a discomfort with the Schnee name overall in a way that Weiss has yet to. you don’t have to look any further than Winter’s combat style to see how this discomfort is telegraphed, as she barely uses any Dust, or Glyphs, and the one aspect of her Semblance that she does use and tout are Summons, which just so happens to be the part that emphasizes her own individual ability to conquer foes. something about the Schnee name feels irreconcilably tainted for Winter,² and while i’m sure a large part of it has to do with her father, who can make her explode into emotion confetti by just being in the same room as her for thirty seconds, a not-insignificant part can probably be chalked up to the fact that...

Willow Schnee was probably never all that good a mother.

granted: we’ve have exactly one scene (two if you count the 8.2 sneak peek) with her, so i’m fully ready to be called Boo Boo the Fool if we get a flashback and Willow was some kind of crusading super-mom prior to her descent into alcoholism, but. the idea that she hasn’t ALWAYS had to compromise herself and her children just to get by feels facile. this is not to victim blame, but to say that Willow is an imperfect person (in that she is. a person) placed into a horrific situation, which means that she could not always deal with the situation perfectly. it’s important to remember her agency--both before and after she became an alcoholic--but it’s just as important not to idealize it into something it’s not. Willow was by no means a co-abuser to her children, but she was probably always inconsistent, because living with your abuser for years on end does that to you. personally, i’ve always envisioned pre-alcoholism Willow as...well-meaning and much more perceptive and intelligent than people give her credit for, but beset with her own flaws that grew in proportion to her hurt and bitterness. she was capable of shielding her children from her husband’s worst excesses, and often did; but she was just as capable of retreating when she might have fought, of excusing Jacques’ actions to try to keep the peace, even of lashing out at those who shouldn’t have to handle her negative emotions.

her descent into alcoholism exacerbated these tendencies, but Willow has always been a complicated woman, and the idea that there was a prelapsarian time when Willow was an unmitigated good, before...idk, her Good battery ran out and she became Drunk Victim Non-Mom, is...well, it’s definitely something that a ten-year-old who had an ENORMOUSLY traumatic birthday would believe (and blame herself for), but Winter might disagree. i don’t think her view would be any more objective, if only because the day Winter Schnee has an un-myopic thought is the day i pass gracefully into the West, but her view is probably more complicated and less flattering, because Winter knew her mother more as a person, and that’s something we’re gonna talk about more with Yang and Ruby, later.

the point i want to make now, with Winter, is that her determined inconstancy, where she’ll readily jump into the jaws of a monster for her siblings in one breath and berate them and caution them against needing her in the next--that comes from her experience with Willow. the lesson she wants her siblings to learn is not just “the people who are supposed to love you are cruel, so get a helmet,” but “the people who are supposed to love you disappoint you, which is worse, so it’s better to not rely on them at all.”³ better for them to learn it from her than firsthand, but also--better for herself, because when she does disappoint them (and she did. she left.) at least she can take comfort in the fact that surely it doesn’t hurt as much; she warned them, after all.

in Winter’s mind, this kind of disappointment is an inevitability, so what’s paramount is to make sure that when it does happen her siblings are at least prepared for it. in the face of that the fact that she would actually risk life and limb to help them if they ever need it falls to the wayside; i don’t think it was a mindful decision that Winter consciously made--like, i don’t think she ever thought “i’m going to withhold the fact that i would die for them because that would contradict the whole social Darwinism thing i’m trying to drill into their heads,” because Winter’s just...not that kind of deliberate rational actor, in any arena. rather--and maybe even more damning--i think she just assumes that Weiss and Whitley already KNOW, that it’s a given for them the sacrifices she’d make for them in the same way it’s a given for her. but they don’t! because you have to say these things, and Winter has been force-feeding them the precise opposite.

ultimately all of these contradictory impulses stem from Winter’s deep-seated need for control--both of herself, and of the environments around her, and those in turn come from the fact that she was a) repeatedly wounded as a child and b) had to shoulder responsibilities far beyond her own ability as that same child, which...continues to this day. from this perspective, what matters is less keeping her siblings safe, and more her own ability to save them. she knows that’s imperfect, so she compensates by enforcing what worked for her onto them, and also by keeping them away from anything that could harm them, without their input. i never thought much of the contrast in environments for the character shorts--like of course Weiss would spar with Winter’s Summons at home like the untested shut-in she was--but what did take me aback was that in season 7, after Weiss has waltzed across an entire continent and been promoted to a full Huntress, Winter...still exclusively trains Weiss with her Summons up in Atlas, while Ruby and Yang are traipsing across Mantle killing ACTUAL Grimm. i have no doubt that this was for foreshadowing reasons, but still: it points to the fact that for all Winter loves Weiss and would fight giant monsters for her, there’s a part of her that...doesn’t trust Weiss, and wants to maintain control over her.⁴

this, i think, is part of the reason why Whitley treats her basically like an un-person: it’s not just that she left when he was too young and Jacques filled in all the gaps with lies and slander, it’s also that even when Winter was around the bigger age gap made it much easier for her to reconcile keeping him out of the loop, for his own good. she can’t ever be vulnerable around either of her siblings, but especially not Whitley, because he’s too young; he might let something slip when they’re around Jacques, and she shouldn’t be putting that kind of burden on him anyway. if he resents her when she’s just trying to protect him--except you said that you wouldn’t, Winter you absolute moron--then that’s his prerogative. it doesn’t change her own responsibilities. they can be miserable and Byronic in their own separate cubby holes and it’s fine.

(it’s not fine.)

R(ose)⁵-side: tonight, the role of Replacement Goldfish will be played by...everyone

let’s get one thing out of the way: Yang is a GOOD big sister, and some of the ways that she is good can be chalked up to the fact that she had a better home life, but only some. her character short ends with her promising Ruby that she’ll always have her back after spending the short proving it, and she has--until recently, and we’ll get to that--lived up to it. people get caught up on how much time Yang spends with Blake nowadays, but it’s important to remember that the entire impetus for Yang reuniting with anyone during the Mistral arc was about Ruby. so is the thing that separates a Yang from a Winter is that a Yang preaches what she practices, and isn’t firing a million zillion mixed signals at all times?

well--yeah, basically, but we’re gonna make a big thing out of it anyway.

what made Yang and Ruby different from the Schnees--even before the character shorts--was a sense of parity. in contrast to Winter insisting on maintaining a) the most unapproachable facade in the world, and b) a death-grip on every situation at all times, Yang was characterized from the outset as...chill (ironically). despite her Semblance being LITERALLY hotheadedness, Yang’s passionate energy never manifested in any real desire to take charge. the fact that she was fine (even happy!) with Ruby being bumped up to her year and then becoming leader speaks volumes to how much Yang trusts and respects Ruby’s judgement. rather than try to mask her flaws, she exudes this kind of...radiant fallibility and lets Ruby take care of her, or keep her in line. they complement each other: Yang takes care of more grounded concerns like individual fights and making friends, while Ruby--again, until recently--set more abstract goals and gave them moral direction.

a lot of this can be attributed to the smaller age gap, but i think it also comes from growing up as two motherless free-range children on an island--and the motherlessness is obviously a huge deal for both of them. when i started writing this i honestly thought i’d talk more about Raven, since she’s the mom who’s actually a character already, and her absence plays a huge role in how Yang deals with her abandonment issues in the present, but to be honest: the loss that cut the deepest for Ruby AND Yang is Summer, because Summer was actually around enough to be lost. despite the show frequently dividing custody of Team STRQ right down the middle between Ruby and Yang, where Ruby “gets” Summer and Qrow and Yang “gets” Tai and Raven, it’s the admixture of Rose and Branwen that makes the two of them who they are.⁶ Yang spent more time with Summer, but Ruby spends more time with Qrow, who is Yang’s blood uncle, so the dichotomy between nature and nurture is fascinatingly blurred.

i know this is an unpopular opinion, but i hope Summer really is dead, because the ways that her daughters interpellate their own identities from her absence drives so much of the story. that SUMMER was the first mother Yang lost--not Raven, because Yang didn’t even know about Raven until Summer died--is what shapes her relationship with Ruby, but also her relationship with Raven. what’s always simmering just below the surface of any Yang-Raven confrontation is that the person Yang actually wanted to find the whole time she was looking for Raven was Summer, because she wanted a mom, and a mom looked like Summer. Raven’s not stupid--it might be her one redeeming quality--so it’s likely that she’s always known and resented this. it’s not an accident that the moment Yang stopped looking for Raven for Raven and started looking for her for an easy conduit to her real family was the moment she actually found Raven.⁷ it was the first step to Yang outgrowing her old habits, of waiting for a mother to return--a classic “she needed a hero so that’s what she hurdy blah”

in a way that’s what she’s been doing this whole time. in contrast to Winter, who compensated for her mother’s flaws by ratifying them into universal law, Yang did the same by defying their supposed truth: people might leave her, but she won’t leave Ruby, and Ruby won’t leave her. it’s telling that whenever Yang leaves--even as a literal child--she always took Ruby with her, even if she planned on coming back. (it’s just as telling that when Winter left she didn’t.) she’ll always be there for Ruby, to give her the boost she needs to become the Summer they all want her to be, which means being a little of Summer herself--the part of Summer that baked cookies and slew monsters. and in return Ruby gave her...a sense of certainty, i think: that Ruby needs her and therefore won’t leave, but also that Ruby has the parts of Summer that Yang can’t muster herself--the grand heroic ideal, the moral certitude, etc.

...and now we’re finally gonna talk about the Schism, which i honestly think is the best thing that has happened to their relationship, development-wise. by the end of the Mistral arc Yang has arrived at a healthier perspective with respect to her relationships with everyone: now it’s not about indiscriminately giving herself away to people in the hopes that they might not leave her, but about choosing to give herself away to the people she loves and trusts. on one level this should not conflict with her relationship with Ruby at all, because Yang loves Ruby, but on another...the fact that Yang no longer feels obligated to perform unending support, to be the grounded complement, to fill in the parts of Summer that Ruby can’t--of COURSE that’s going to bring about conflict. because it turns out Yang never needed Ruby to give her direction or discipline. she’s now had time to think of the things she herself values, and those...don’t exactly match up with Ruby’s--or Summer’s.⁸ Yang, having known Summer as a mother, having been confronted repeatedly with the fallibility of mothers, is starting to outgrow Summer, and grow separately from Ruby.

but growing separately doesn’t have to mean growing apart, and i think Yang, at least, knows this. she clearly feels Some Kinda Way about their disagreement (and Blake’s implicit alignment with Ruby), but she’s also confident enough in her own beliefs by this point to commit to them. Yang’s taking charge instead of deferring to Ruby, and it turns out that...she’s actually not a bad leader herself, since she and Jaune have pretty much split a lot of those responsibilities. for her it’s not a question of losing faith or love in Ruby as a person, but about discovering what she herself fights for.

Ruby...sees it differently, because Ruby sees Summer differently. if Yang has always defined herself against Summer by deciding that she can NEVER fully be Summer, so she’ll make do with what she can, then Ruby’s always defined herself against Summer by marking Summer as the endpoint of her personal trajectory. what Ruby knows of Summer--that she was a person who enjoyed life and did not believe in original sin, that had a magical special destiny that was totally fine and awesome and didn’t drive her to her death, that she was a baker of cookies and slayer of monsters--is what Tai and Qrow--and Yang--told her about Summer, because Ruby was too young to remember the real Summer. so Summer for her is this abstract paragon to live up to, and no more. she can’t possibly exceed Summer, because the Summer Ruby knows encompasses literally all that is good.

when Yang tells Ruby “i’ve always got your back” in the short, a lot of it is about Yang, and the ways Yang needed to be there for other people so they’ll be there for her in return. but it’s also something Ruby really needed to hear, because Ruby needed the security and comfort of knowing that even if she screws up there are people around her who can help shoulder the burden. that security already took a serious hit after Yang lost her arm, but Ruby, kind and generous person that she is, was able to reconcile with that, because YANG HAD JUST LOST HER ARM. it would be ridiculous to expect Yang to have her back the way she used to, and besides--it was time she grew up, and growing up means becoming more like Summer, all of Summer, by herself.

and...she gets pretty far, is the thing, because Ruby IS a lot like Summer, and is incredible and amazing all by herself to boot, but the point is that no one should feel this much pressure to be All That Is Good, especially when you’re a teen. Ruby’s not ready to recognize that, partly because at this point so many people are looking to her for leadership, but also because being Summer’s heir is the only real link she has to her mom.⁹ so she hunkers down and does the best she can, in a situation that has far spiraled beyond anybody’s control...and then Yang tells her that it’s not working out, that this time it’s not that she can’t have Ruby’s back, but that she won’t. in Ruby’s mind, this could only mean one of two things: either Yang no longer believes what Ruby believes--what Summer believed, or...Yang no longer believes in Ruby, because she wasn’t good enough.

and well. it’s Ruby. it’s not hard to guess which reason she’s picking right now, especially since she pretty conspicuously refused to call the shots during the Amity heist.

but this is of course a false dichotomy. it’s not about which one of them is right, or even more right, and the show does a very good job with the framing to show that both of them have a point. similarly, what Ruby needs right now is neither confirmation that her long-held beliefs are objectively the best ones, nor that she is good enough to become Summer after all. no; what she needs instead is the knowledge that she’s allowed to fuck up, to deviate from what people have told her about Summer, to become what Summer never was. that’s something Yang can--and will--help her work out.

oh no this analogy is breaking apart: how they’d get along

...oi.

look, even beyond the fact that Winter doesn’t get along with ANYONE over much, i don’t think there’s any universe where she wouldn’t immediately rub Yang the wrong way. not only because Winter’d initially treat Ruby with the same cold tyranny that she (up until very recently) treats Weiss, but also because Yang’s partner is Blake, and--to say nothing of Atlas/Schnee-on-Faunus oppression--she was personally made collateral during the fallout with Blake’s abuser.¹⁰ i myself wouldn’t say that Winter abused Weiss, but to Yang’s protective and skewed view...

well, can you imagine Weiss trying to explain the way Winter ~~~trained her to the Bees? “oh, she sent a pack of Beowolves to hunt me! it was a meant-to-lose fight and when i started doing well she just moved the goalposts. one of her wolves almost ate me before i begged her to stop but it...probably...wouldn’t have...it was fine! my Aura didn’t dip THAT much. Winter’s the best!!” Yang’s hair would have been on fire after the first sentence, is all i’m saying. this coupled with the fact that Yang would very likely view Winter leaving Weiss and Whitley through the lens of Raven doing the same thing to her, and i think it would take a pretty long time for the two of them to see eye to eye on anything.

which is not to say that they have nowhere to go but antagonism, because at their cores Winter and Yang both have a) no hesitation whatsoever when it comes to protecting the people they care about and b) a tendency to define protection literally, often bodily. the difference is that Yang’s Semblance weaponizes these protective instincts for her, and she learned the limits of taking that too far. Winter...doesn’t, and hasn’t.¹¹ that COULD lead to some interesting conversations, but i don’t think Yang has quite the emotional clarity and generosity to reckon with that yet, and they’re not about to talk about it inside the Giant Whale.

a necessary part of Winter’s development is learning to respect the people around her instead of instantly categorizing them into boxes labeled “to fight” and “to protect and order around.” her friction with Yang could be an intriguing way to explore that; i have no doubt, for example, that Winter would have hurled herself between Elm and Yang just as readily as she had between Elm and Ren. similarly, i think if Winter ever were in the same room with both Raven and Yang she’d last about ten seconds before trying to rip Raven’s hair out with her teeth, because Raven is neglectful and casually demeaning in ways that are instantly recognizable to Winter (in the same way they were to Weiss).¹² the issue is that her doing any of these things for Yang--y’know, the same Yang who IMMEDIATELY gave Blake the cold shoulder when she tried to pull the whole “i’ll protect you” crap--is that she would only find it confusing and frustrating, and likely wouldn’t mince words expressing that.

Yang’s a big sister herself, and therefore knows all the big sister tricks, and Yang has a consistent pattern of not wanting to rely on other people, particularly people she sees as adults. so the best path toward a Winter and Yang friendship is probably not the head-on approach, but obliquely through someone else. that someone else can’t be Weiss, because Yang would be already hypervigilant about the way Winter treats Weiss--but it could be Ruby. even putting aside the fact that she is now one of the most important people in the world for BOTH her sisters, Ruby herself is very easy to love, and Winter loves very easily, despite herself. what they have in common--idealism and a martyr complex--would also engender some cool interactions, and Ruby would let Winter take care of her, if only to make Winter feel better.

i could see that being the impetus for Yang tentatively, grudgingly forming her own friendship with Winter, because there ARE things that Winter can give Yang, even if Yang can’t (or won’t) admit she wants them. it’s nice to try out being the kid sister, once in a while.

still, even if they get that far: i can’t imagine their relationship as anything friendlier than this.

¹ tbh neither would actually surprise me; what Winter does and doesn’t let herself do is only knowable to the Gods Who Have Forsaken This Land, and they’re certainly unknowable to Winter herself.

² maybe she knows that the whole “the Schnees were up-from-bootstraps-good-capitalists until that guy Jacques came along” thing is stupid!! i don’t care that he’s Santa Nicholas Schnee ain’t shit

³ this i think is why the current thing with Ironwood is such a bitter pill to swallow, because...she thought she’d been so careful. not in thinking that she’d chosen a man who couldn’t disappoint her, but in caring so deeply about him and investing so much of herself into him, despite the fact she’s only ever let herself call him “sir,” or “General.”

⁴ though i will say, to give Winter some credit: she actually accepts the fact that her sister is totally her own person now with a lot more aplomb than i’d expected, both in the “you stole an airship” scene and during all of Sparks. i wouldn’t be so generous as to read subtle treason into her disclosure of Ironwood’s Winter Maiden plans, but it does point to Winter’s desire for control being much more easily unlearned than that of her boss.

⁵ geddit? it’s a joke about handed-ness because now they both have the Hand Tremor

⁶ Tai is, as always and on purpose, the stabilizing agent. “appropriately underwhelming,” as Winter might put it, but absolutely essential.

⁷ of course then Raven had the gall to resent THAT too, because she’s the worst, and...see above, about Winter Schnee’s self-unknowing.

⁸ curiously, the values that Yang most espouses now--the importance of knowing what you’re getting into, protecting what is tangible, what is within your ability--are a) hard-won from years of taking care of Ruby and b) ones that she shares with Raven. the only difference is that Yang’s circle of protection extends far beyond Raven’s, which only includes herself.

⁹ weirdly enough the best person to talk to Ruby about this might be Raven, who has a very skewed perception of Summer herself (because Raven’s perception of EVERYONE is generally fucked up), but probably won’t hold back when talking about Summer’s flaws. Ruby won’t want to hear any of it, but i think she needs to.

¹⁰ i do think Blake and Winter would have some interesting conversations, if Blake ever...was generous enough to deal with *gestures at all of Winter.* it’s easier to compare Blake to Willow given the shared nature of their interpersonal abuse, but Winter on the other hand knows what it’s like to be hand-picked and groomed by a charismatic man with a singular vision who ended up wholly compromising that vision for the sake of their personal ego. that the White Fang are a good force perverted while the Atlesian Military is rotten to the core would...make the conversation more lively? it’s probably fine?

¹¹ “i’m Winter Schnee and i have maladaptive coping mechanisms that i am currently clinging to, as a maladaptive coping mechanism”

¹² though there...probably IS a world where Raven and Winter end up getting along after the initial skirmish, and it disturbs Yang and Qrow to no end

#Anonymous #yang xiao long #winter schnee #rwby #tl;dr they both play vanguard when they play mass effect #helen writes meta

[jmblyajones]

Eagles: Date Night 3x4

*Check out my (long 😇) analysis/review and peep my OTH comparisons lol

1. Mats is literally falling apart at the seams. He looks a wreck. Is this his rock bottom?

2. Can you imagine playing hockey? I wouldn’t even be able to catch myself on rollerblades. I would fall on my ass repeatedly….

OMG DATE IDEA: Amie and Elias go ice skating/rollerblading! He teaches her how to skate?!! Ooo or a karaoke date!

@ Carl and Stefan

3. Felicia is posted up having last night regrets…Chile, we’d all hope this was enough to stop whatever is coming. That makes me sound like a fortune teller but I just don’t think this is the episode she decides she will become clean and sober.

4. I feel really bad for Ludde. I don’t know if he will ever be close to what he was… You know what this reminded me of, Lucas Scott when he found out about his heart condition. If you’ve watched OTH you know he eventually moved on to writing novels. Ludde likes to write music….very left field me talking about this I know but it just had me thinking

Update: “Hockey isn’t everything” well well well. I guess I’m not far off. The OTH blueprint still lives!!

5. Elias is so damn cocky lmao just like Nathan. lol

6. I am just waiting for Mats’s huge “this team is special” speech. I have faith it will come.

7. Retro in Swedish is so extra and expressive, I love it!

8. I ALMOST CHOKED ON MY CURTESY TACO BELL DIET COKE DRINK! AMIE, LUDDE, ELIAS? ABORT ABORT ABORT!

Oh this is fucking awkward. Ok well she’s smiling so, that’s a good sign. Things seemed to be squashed since the funeral? Am I reaching with that conclusion? Ludde looks like he’s about to choke too tf 😂……..

Ludde looking at Elias and Amie, oh my gosh 😂😂 yup, you picked up the vibes too huh? BIIIIITCH! Look at Ludde hooking a brotha UP!

Elias is acting so anxious about asking Amie out and Amie is just chillin’! Icing on the cake if he were to turn around and bump into the beetle. But I guess he’s too suave for that 🙄😂 Definitely ‘boy likes girl more’ trope on LOCK!…

Ugh YES! Amie and Ludde are back to being friends (somewhat of that Haley and Lucas friendship)!! I liked them working on music together. I’m excited to see what they come up with. OOOOR when Amie goes back to music full time, she hires Ludde to be her collaborator and songwriter (if there is a chance Ludde doesn’t get in to the London school)?!

9. WAIT? Why didn’t I catch this earlier??? Sam is Andres’s boyfriend? I really missed that last episode? 😂…

Aw shit… why is Andreas coughing up a lung now??

10. I need this mother/daughter relationship repaired! Y’all hate to see it but I’m siding with Petra. Idk how the laws work over there with minor’s signing contracts without legal guardian’s consent but putting my self in petra’s position, I would feel some kind of way if my child just left without a moments notice and the only times I heard about how she was was on the radio when she indirectly disses me. I am all for Amie following her dreams but not at the cost of loosing her mother.

MAN, THE WAY PETRA ALMOST JUMPED OUT HER OWN SKIN WHEN SHE HEARD AMIE SAY ELIAS 😭😭 I know those 1980’s flashbacks hit miss mama’s HARD

What prior relationship was Amie in? tf??

“We don’t need to talk to each other” Girl what the hell is going on? I’m at a cross between being irritated and being hella sad. I must have missed something because this don’t make no kinda sense…

11. Aw, look at Felicia being all romantic… I know that food is cold but at least your man showed up lmao

12. Why the hell is this girl talking about her funeral AGAIN?? This is the second time DAMMIT!! Y’all think I’m playing and kiki-ing but there is really something wrong with Felicia. Something is going to happen and I don’t think we are ready for it.

13. Amie… you really thought this was a group thing? AAAAHAHAHA! Elias said “probably just us” boy is trying to play this shit off so WEAK 😭😭 If y’all don’t stop playing… y’all know this is a date *raises eyebrows*.

Elias is so nervous, i LOVE IT! If anybody has ever been to the movie theaters, you know that the snacks always cost more, good bye 💀

Elias asked her to pick out candy he’d like? Are we serious?? Of course Amie knew what he’d like 🤪 soulmates usually do.

Holy shit, Elias is asking if Amie has a boyfriend. Guys my heart right now… CREEPER BO WAS AMIE’S BOYFRIEND?!?! (makes sense why she was playing with his fingers) THAT MAN HAD TO BE IN HIS 30’S WTF?!? The name Creeper Bo remains.

Amie did not just call Klara the biggest bitch in their city bro SHUT UP! She ain’t wrong but my gosh girl 😂😂 I am getting my LIFE RN! She really has that “everyone can get the smoke” energy (even for her mom :((.. petty me is stopping lol) I love Amie’s character so much. she is very well rounded. she definitely has room to grow and mature but you can see she is still a good person and never wants to maliciously hurt anyone. Even calling Klara a bitch, which we all know she is, Amie still says she sees good in her.

Elias is just straight flirting with my girl oh my gosh 😭 i’m so happy.

14. Ok, great! We are getting into Felicia’s whole mindset with this social media gig. Cuz a girl has been wanting to know! Ok, i’m teetering on the line of Felicia telling Ludde, she just wants them to not have plans and dreams and stay in their town forever as selfish but honest. Only because us as the audience knows ludde actually has dreams. this all depends on her reaction when she finds out which by the tell of this current convo, her ass is definitely finding out unintentionally. she might hear an admissions voicemail, read an email or peep a submission packet. ludde’s ass is definitely not saying a damn thing.

Ludde says he doesn’t want to be a sugar baby anymore. Felicia just completely shuts down during any argument when she is being contested.

15. I’m like, nervous watching Amie and Elias on this stroll right now 😭 You see his body language. He is literally turned to her while they are walking forward. Love to see it.

16. Clearly Felicia is depressed and she turns to drugs. Sometimes a simple “promise” doesn’t help someone actually get clean.

Hold up hold up hold up… I think Ludde and Felicia are both right and conveniently none of them were thinking about the other.

Now…. if you forgive someone, you don’t bring up their past and rub it in when it suits you. Either forgive him or don’t be with him again. Felicia just copped to doing drugs and she turns it around to talk about Ludde and Amie… the deflection is wild

17. Oh another thing Amie and Elias have in common, they both moved back home. Wowowow. Oh he is down BAAAAAAAAAAD!

18. Okay……… I had a feeling Amie’s dad might be brought up. Oh gosh 🤦🏾‍♀️ 1. We gotta verify because that voice sounded a bit off, sorry. 2. of course when we see him in person, Petra has to verify! What I think might happen is, dearest daddy is really back, with petra and amie fighting (or more, amie fighting petra) amie might stay with her dad which would be horrible. i can see it now, he would definitely play that “your mom wouldn’t let me see you” card and he would help drive the wedge further and further away. I can definitely see Petra putting things to the side with the Kroon’s and asking Elias to bring Amie back home to her. Elias could possibly see that Amie’s dad could be using her for her name and fame. Or I could just be all wrong here…

* also, amie and elias’s first kiss better be as enthusiastic and passionate as they did with other folks prior, js (what if their first kiss is really in the rain yall..)

Tell what y’all think?! What are y’all’s predictions?

#svt eagles #eagles svt #eagles #eagles season 3 #alva bratt #felicia kroon #edvard olsson #elias kroon #yandeh sallah #amie samuelsson conde #amie samuelsson #amie condé #ludde johansson #ludvig johansson #adrian ojvindsson #elias x amie #amie x elias #amias #amlias #Felicia x Ludde #Ludde x Felicia #mats kroon #petra samuelsson #one tree hill

[theprocrastinatingredkitty]

Byeonduck-nim is telling us something suspish, I can tell

LOOK AT THOSE GORGEOUS BRIGHT COLORS 😭 Yes, I know, the drawing itself doesn’t seem to be finalized yet BUT LOOK AT THOSE SUNBEAMS!!!!

Nothing in the series is coincidental, everything has meaning

This seems to be from a flashback of sorts, as Na-Kyum’s body seems to be thinner and smaller here. He seems to be at a tavern as well. (BOY, WHERE ARE YOUR GUARDIANS???) For me, this seems to be a time when he was still full of joy, judging by the rays of sunlight beaming down at him. The tavern and its shadows seem to symbolize his state of mind, as he was still a sheltered child in this scene. And the presence of four stacks of cups (15 in total) tell me that the other adults are somewhere within the vicinity and they left Na-Kyum alone with the sweet treats for him to consume (poor bby 😭)

Now, in BD’s post, she asks us to imagine taking medicine, which doesn’t sound much at first glance, but do you remember something similar to this scene?

In c57, we see the doctor telling Na-Kyum of a flashback about Seungho’s “illness”.

Later on, we see the adults talking in one corner while Kim talks to little Seungho to keep him entertained and to keep an eye on him

In contrast to the first picture above, as Na-Kyum didn’t really have any servants as he was an orphaned boy, he’d be left alone while the adults talk away doing adult things while Seungho, at least, had his servants to keep him company

If we align this to BD’s post, what’s there to say that the adults there went away from Na-Kyum so as to talk about him and possibly... of an “illness”? Probably an “illness” that is similar to Seungho’s? I suddenly had a thought. We know that Heena had most likely told (or suggested) In-Hun of Na-Kyum’s homosexuality. She probably told it to him in a roundabout way, probably telling the scholar that her brother loves him a little too much, like that of a father (or something). What if In-Hun knew of this all along and his suspicions were confirmed when Heena told him of Na-Kyum’s condition, and therefore had suggested that Na-Kyum be treated as well, similar to what Yoon dad wanted for Seungho?

I am guessing that Heena didn’t agree to these methods as Na-Kyum remained of sound mind in his childhood, and she probably asked In-Hun to keep it a secret from Na-Kyum, thus planting the seed that In-Hun had now thought of Na-Kyum becoming a prostitute due to his upbringing and his secret homosexuality. The sweets that Na-Kyum ogled at is a distraction so he couldn’t hear what the people around him were saying about him, it was like how Seungho was “distracted” due to the drugs he had after the beating and assault took place. 

The only difference between this situation compared to Seungho’s is: In-Hun thought of making Na-Kyum the scapegoat much, much later, during the time he realized Seungho is smitten with Na-Kyum, compared to Yoon dad, who thought of Seungho as a prostitute prior to the doctor’s visit

So, to summarize the similarities of these two scenes, we have:

1. the scene opened with closeups of the thatched roofs

2. the presence of light reflecting innocence (for Na-Kyum, the sunbeams; and for Seungho, his “lighthearted” expression)

2. a flashback of their younger selves

3. a trip outside accompanied by adults

4. the mention of medicine for a treatment of an “illness”

5. father figures trying to use their “sons” and sell them into prostitution

The question now is, what could possibly trigger Na-Kyum to recall these memories?

If you notice the pattern in s2, after the doctor had told Na-Kyum of Seungho’s “illness”, Seungho returned to him, feverish. And after a love session, Na-Kyum was kidnapped. Things happened, and all went down the drain from there on out

So I am guessing the first picture will only appear AFTER THE SECOND KIDNAPPING takes place, wherein Na-Kyum’s brain will go into fight or flight, recalling all memories that he could use to possibly escape or for people he can call help to, similar to c60

Now, THAT is possibility number 1.

Possibility number 2 is through a clue on BD’s recent sketch:

Recall that in s1, Na-Kyum also witnessed a similar situation where they slept together and Seungho was in the middle of a nightmare. In my theory, the sight of Seungho having a nightmare could trigger Na-Kyum to recall the doctor’s words about the illness, thus also prompting him to recall his own memories about the adults talking in secret about him. This could throw Na-Kyum into protective mode over Seungho, as he had done so since c38 when he first saw Seungho have a nightmare while they slept together

And what happened after that particular scene?

In-Hun comes to his room, asking about Seungho and his recent bout of scandal in public about him being seen with a lowborn at night.

And that’s it. THAT IS WHEN IN-HUN WILL RETURN. TO ASK NA-KYUM CONFIRMING IF THE RUMORS WERE TRUE. YET DIFFERENT FROM S1, NA-KYUM WILL NO LONGER REPLY:

But rather probably somewhere along the lines from c11, but instead of Na-Kyum contradicting In-Hun, it would be:

Na-Kyum has nothing left for In-Hun but pain and dead anger that he cannot express, and only Seungho will heal that pain, urging Na-Kyum to now become truly protective of Seungho’s name and reputation. Similar to Seungho who had been thrown away and had externalized his father’s teachings that he’s a prostitute, Na-Kyum, too, will externalize In-Hun’s accusation of him becoming a prostitute, making it “come true” as well. The only difference is, Na-Kyum will only be for Seungho and Seungho alone, as the painter had proved himself to be extremely loyal to those he loves

#potn #painter of the night #yahwacheop #potn analysis #painter of the night analysis #yahwacheop analysis #manhwa analysis #seungho x nakyum

[jade-marie]

Rio Flashbacks/Backstory Thoughts

Flashaback 1

Baby Rio was lefthanded, adult Rio is not. Also, WHY DOES NO ONE ADDRESS HIM BY NAME. FUCK MEEEEE. THEY LITERALLY GO SO FAR OUT OF THEIR WAY TO AVOID IT AND I HATE THEM.

The rotten eggs thing was soooo on the nose, it's super lazy and a really weird thing to translate into crime. Like he adopts a mentality of killing people before they cause problems because of grandma baking cookies? Ok.

So brother-cousin disagreements are a lifelong thing, I would've liked to know... why? Anyway, Nick is the rotten egg of the bunch, already gathered that, and Rio is a good egg, also not news. I've called him a good egg before. I assume the thing about learning to draw eyes is about Rio learning from Nick and manipulating people to further his own agenda, I guess we shall see if he's successful.

I feel like this didn't really fill in many blanks. Like grandma raised them as brothers but when did this start? Why did it happen? Where are their parents? Why does Rio not accept Nick as his brother at this young age? I could understand if it was later, after he got out of prison, that he effectively demoted Nick from brother to cousin. But like - this was so odd.

Flashback 2

Really not vibing with Marcel. He's not a bad actor or anything, he's just not Rio. I'm glad this is a one and done flashback episode tbh. The half-on-half-off hoodie thing and 'champ' - goddd why are these flashbacks so on the nose? Like, it's genuinely cheap and lazy. I expected them to be trash but this literally confirms how they feel about who and what Rio is. They reduce him to these random little quirks but there's no substance.

So Nick has been playing the game from day 1, exchanging favours with powerful white guys to get ahead etc. Not at all surprising.

Flashback 3

Rio is a little country club Robin Hood. Stealing from the rich white men to get grandma a new oven but like... why? He's got his whole future ahead of him and there was no indication that they were in deep financial struggles. He could've got a second job or something to achieve the same thing. They didn't really show his true motivation for crime or whether the wallet he emptied was a one-off or if he'd been doing it for a while and this was the one time he got caught.

Flashback 4

Fuck Nick. He can choke. And die. How is grandma ok with him ratting out his brother cousin? Especially when Rio was her golden boy???

Flashback 5

This is confirmation that Eddie must be alive because Rio can't handle rotten eggs for shit and snitches do not get stitches or end up in ditches. Nick the Nark needs to get fucked. I would like Rio to shoot him in the face. See how smug he looks then.

Anyhoo. Rio got 6 months for petty theft with no priors? Seems a bit excessive. But even then, why would he still work with Nick? He did 6 months not 6 years and he suddenly got a whole new personality? LOL. And the bird is definitely not a prison tattoo. Give the fuck over.

I really don't get the rationale that Rio would go to work with Nick, who cost him his entire future and allow Nick to maintain this ‘man of the people’ image, while he's the criminal. I can understand him pursuing things alone because he feels like he's got no choice after being robbed of every other opportunity. But the only one who truly benefits from this endeavour is Nick. Rio wasn't motivated by money, he was trying to help his grandma. So why would 6 months in prison turn him from that into the Rio we know today? He went from petty theft to racketeering and murder but they've given us no real indication as to why.

Also, the level of overacting was painful. Like Rio got out of prison and suddenly his voice drops etc? It felt really forced and Marcel tried too hard with the accent on "who do I need?" but again, I think this boils down to how little consideration the human aspects of Rio's character are given by the writers. Rio is Manny. Everything we love about him comes from Manny and this episode confirmed it.

Overall Backstory

So basically Nick the Nark is a slippery fucking bastard who manipulates Rio to serve his own agenda. He wants to get down in the dirt but he wants to keep his hands clean, offering Rio up as a fall guy instead. Sound familiar? The whole conversation in the car between Rio and Nick about adding this favour to the list just made me sad for him. Not only did Nick steal his life, but he's also now holding favours over his head as a means to control him? Tbh that doesn't line up with anything we've seen of Rio in previous seasons and the fact they're related makes it suckier. Also, the whole "put your seatbelt on. Are you hungry?" part was kinda infantilising, again making it feel like Rio is just Nick's broken, beaten little attack dog.

Presumably, Rio intends to use Nick's own strategies against him and maybe use the Secret Service to exact his revenge... Idk. It was all very lazy and stupid.

I find it very telling that we learned 100000x more about Nick than we did Rio, and it was supposed to be his episode. Typical

#good girls nbc #rio good girls #nbc good girls #gg season 4

[statusquoergo]

Can we talk about how much of the ending montage of the finale was just marvey moments? They weren't even chronological, it was all these other moments with other people (the one clip of Jessica was from the 'How do you know I'm thinking about Mike Ross?' 'Who else would it be?' scene) interspersed with classic marvey faves especially from the pilot, like Harvey just kept coming back to meeting Mike as the thing tying it all together, his underlying theme at the end of his journey was Mike Ross.

p.s. re: the ending montage, it's even more obvious if you watch it without the music somehow

We sure can talk about that ending montage! (Before we get into the Marvey-ness of it all, though, I just gotta say that especially watching it out of context, and especially with the soundtrack muted, Donna approaching Louis at the elevators and then him biting his lip and them holding hands as the doors close definitely reads to me as a Lonna moment.)

So. Structural critique. A couple of things read weirdly about this whole setup; first of all, they cut immediately, and I mean immediately, from Harvey looking...nostalgically? Mournfully? Reverently? at the painting his mother gave him of baby!Harvey watching Lily paint that stupid duck painting to the first clip of the montage, i.e., Mike’s briefcase breaking open at the interview. So this is either a “Look how far we’ve come” overview, in which case I’m confused that it starts off with a reference to Lily, since she doesn’t come up again so the painting has no referential anchor point, and the montage itself doesn’t specifically reference Harvey’s childhood or life before coming to the firm in any way (which isn’t to say it’s not a nostalgic overview, but if so, it’s very poorly arranged), or it’s a commentary on important people in Harvey’s life, in which case it sure is interesting that we go straight from Harvey’s mother to Mike, given that literally the only link between them is that Mike showed up at her funeral to support Harvey.

Getting down to a granular level, the clips in the montage are:

1. Mike crashes Harvey’s interview (s01e01) 2. Harvey lectures Mike about the importance of a good first impression (s01e03) 3. Jessica advises Harvey to support Mike in being himself (s04e02) 4. [Flashback] Harvey and Louis give each other shit right after Louis becomes a junior partner (s02e08) 5. [Flashback] Harvey and Donna's first meeting (s04e16) 6. Harvey invites Mike to come with him to visit Ava Hessington (s03e03) 7. Harvey yells at Mike for not coming to him when Jessica threatened him (s03e01) 8. Mike tells Rachel he’s a fraud (s02e16) 9. General cycle of clips of everyone supporting each other over Harvey’s dialogue that “We’re not just colleagues, or even friends. We’re family.” (s05e10) 10. Mike does finger guns and Harvey swerves out of the way (s01e01) 11. “Life is like this. And I like this.” (s01e10) 12. Mike and Rachel reunite when Mike gets out of Danbury (s06e09) 13. Harvey and Donna make out (s08e16)

And for a bit of analytical commentary:

1. The start of the series and introduction of the premise, this is an obvious choice. 2. An interesting direction; possibly a commentary on Harvey’s general life philosophy, this could also be interpreted as a continuation of the Harvey-Mike dyad established in the pilot being the show’s central focus, particularly when one considers that it comes on the heels of Harvey’s rather...interesting first impression of Mike. 3. Lacking context, this is just an excuse to showcase Jessica in the montage as Harvey’s mentor; with context, it’s easy to interpret as another reminder that the show is centered around Harvey and Mike as a pair. 4. This is a weird moment to choose because while it fits the direction of Louis’s ultimate story line quite well, from struggling in Harvey’s shadow despite his considerable accomplishments to becoming head of the firm, it doesn’t fit in with the other incidents Harvey’s recalled up to this point; this is for the benefit of summarizing the show, not consistency with the direction of Harvey’s thought process. 5. Another moment for the benefit of summarizing the show that comes otherwise out of nowhere. 6. While this gets us back on track with Harvey’s train of thought prior to the Louis interruption, it really has nothing to do with anyone other than Mike and Harvey; in fact, it’s very much about a moment of reconciliation between the two of them. (On the surface, it’s merely circling back around to the Harvey-Mike dyad, but if you want to go full conspiracy theorist, it’s like...an apology to the viewer, or to Mike, that the narrative got distracted for a minute. And that’s an extremist interpretation that I’m not advocating as truth, but it’s also kind of funny, so I’m mentioning it anyway.) 7. Harvey needs Mike. Harvey needs Mike to need him. There’s not a whole lot of maneuverability in that one. 8. The interesting thing here is that the clip stops right before Mike and Rachel kiss. Showing it would require an extra two seconds of footage and could have been fit in, but the way it’s cut puts the emphasis not on them as a couple but on Rachel’s sense of betrayal after Mike’s deception. 9. The first clip of this montage-within-a-montage is of Rachel hugging Louis, which follows naturally from Rachel interacting with Mike as a way to ease the focus from Harvey-and-Mike to...literally anyone else, but also sets up this quick cycle of clips as kind of a catchall for “characters being supportive of one another because they’re not just colleagues they’re also family but also we need to fit in everyone who isn’t Harvey and Mike because this is technically an Ensemble Show™.” 10. Okay what the fuck, there’s absolutely no reason for this to be in here except to emphasize Harvey and Mike’s camaraderie and easy friendship. It’s from the pilot, for crying out loud. 11. This one is a little bit of a wildcard in that it both re-centers us on Harvey and Mike as partners (reading just slightly deeper into things, Harvey hired Mike in the first place in part because he likes taking risks, but also, having Mike around makes his life exciting), and could also serve as another general commentary on Harvey’s life philosophy. 12. Yet again, this is a Mike-Rachel moment that ends right before the Machel part. Mike walks out of the prison gates and Rachel gets out of the car, but they don’t noticeably move toward one another, let alone actually hug. Maybe this is out of sensitivity toward Meghan’s status as the Duchess of Sussex? (Or it’s a liability issue, I don’t know.) 13. This makes sense as a conclusion to the montage because the final season is largely focused on the Darvey narrative, or trying to establish the Darvey narrative, but it also comes out of nowhere in that very little of the rest of the montage has featured Harvey and Donna as a couple, or even a pair, with the exception of their first meeting (which was right on the heels of Harvey and Louis interacting, making it less an intimate start-of-something type of scene and more of a “Hey remember when the show was just about these six specific central characters, well, now we only have three of them left” tag).

In summary: Boy that sure is a lot of Marvey and Marvey-adjacent content for a series of clips that are supposed to be about everyone but are in fact badly disordered and don’t tell much of a cohesive story. Looking back, especially with this legend of episode citations, it really does seem to be a pretty slapdash collection of some editor’s favorite scenes, or more likely Korsh’s; it doesn’t even have a very smooth emotional trajectory, it’s just a bunch of stuff that happened in no particular order. Oh well, I’m sure they had fun putting it together probably.

Thank you for...asking? Well, thank you for bringing this up, anyway!

#marvey #analysis #Anonymous